1867: The Indian No Longer Has a Country

July 4, 1867
The UP establishes the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

August 27, 1867
Cheyenne Indians sabotage the UP track at Plum Creek, Nebraska.

December 12, 1867
Crédit Mobilier stock pays a large dividend, and 163 shares are distributed to eleven members of Congress.

The Plains Indians

"We've got to clean the damn Indians out, or give up building the Union Pacific Railroad."
-- chief engineer Grenville Dodge

"We will build iron roads, and you cannot stop the locomotive any more than you can stop the sun or the moon, and you must submit, and do the best you can."
-- General William Tecumseh Sherman, addressing a group of Plains Indians

"On leaving Sidney, I opened the side door of the baggage car nearest the bluffs, threw down a trunk at the door and sat down. All at once, 'Bang' -- there was an arrow sticking in the trunk between my legs just about six inches too low to get me."
-- brakeman C. C. Cope

The railroad cut through the lands of Plains Indian tribes, resulting in deadly conflicts. Railroad workers and pioneers slaughtered buffalo, for both food and sport. Railroad tracks cleaved the landscape and paved the way for permanent white settlements. To defend their land, Native American warriors ambushed and killed surveyors, tore up tracks and attacked trains.

UP leaders called for the outright extermination of the Native American population. In 1867 President Andrew Johnson formed a Peace Commission to negotiate with tribal leaders, culminating in a peace conference in North Platte, Nebraska. Conflicts continued, but in the end, the Plains Indians saw their world destroyed.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

"The whole city was the scene of one high carnival -- gambling saloons and other places of an immoral character in full blast... vice having unlimited control, making the Sabbath evening a sad and fearful time."
-- surveyor Arthur Ferguson

As the UP moved across Nebraska, engineer Grenville Dodge was out ahead scouting, eventually establishing a post where the plains met the Rocky Mountains. It was a choice location, near the coal fields of Western Dakota and well suited to be a railroad transfer point. Westbound trains would need to take on more locomotives to help power them up into the mountains, while eastbound trains could shed their extra locomotives in anticipation of the flat route ahead. Dodge named the town Cheyenne, in honor of the Native American tribe that inhabited the region. The town became a Union Pacific hub and its population soared.