Editing Cheyenne (section)

====Pike's Peak Gold Rush====
[[File:Dull Knife.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Morning Star (chief)|Morning Star (aka Dull Knife)]] ([[Cheyenne language|Cheyenne]]: ''Vóóhéhéve'' or [[Lakota language|Lakota]]: ''Tamílapéšni''), Chief of Northern Cheyenne at [[Battle of Little Bighorn]]]] [[File:Chief Black Kettle.jpg|left|thumb|180px|Chief [[Black Kettle]] of the Southern Cheyenne, an advocate of peace among his people.]]

Starting in 1859 with the [[Colorado Gold Rush]], European-American settlers moved into lands reserved for the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians. Travel greatly increased along the Emigrant Trail along the [[South Platte River]] and some emigrants stopped before going on to California. For several years there was peace between settlers and Indians. The only conflicts were related to the [[endemic warfare]] between the Cheyenne and Arapaho of the plains and the [[Ute people|Ute]]s of the mountains.

US negotiations with [[Black Kettle]] and other Cheyenne favoring peace resulted in the [[Treaty of Fort Wise]]: it established a small reservation for the Cheyenne in southeastern Colorado in exchange for the territory agreed to in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Many Cheyenne did not sign the treaty, and they continued to live and hunt on their traditional grounds in the Smoky Hill and Republican basins, between the Arkansas and the South Platte, where there were plentiful buffalo.<ref name="Grinnell, pp. 124">Grinnell, ''The Fighting Cheyenne'', pp. 124 to 158</ref>

Efforts to make a wider peace continued, but in the spring of 1864, [[John Evans (Colorado governor)|John Evans]], governor of Colorado Territory, and [[John Chivington]], commander of the Colorado Volunteers, a [[Militia (United States)|citizens militia]], began a series of attacks on Indians camping or hunting on the plains. They killed any Indian on sight and initiated the [[Colorado War]]. General warfare broke out and Indians made many raids on the trail along the South Platte, which Denver depended on for supplies. The Army closed the road from August 15 until September 24, 1864.<ref name="Grinnell, pp. 124"/>