GOSHEN COUNTY – The Goshen County Chapter of the National Historic Society held its last spring meeting on Tuesday evening, May 27. The meeting was held in the Community Room of Platte Valley Bank. The chapter president, Marge Meyer, called the meeting to order. After the opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, a few announcements were made before the speaker, Mike Kassel, associate director/curator Old West Museum in Cheyenne was introduced. 

“As Marilyn has mentioned, I am the curator at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum and the associate director so I’m going to be very busy in the next couple of weeks getting ready for this little event that’s going to be happening a little bit further south. But we’re excited about what’s happening this year. Lots of interesting new changes that are happening on the road, including the fact that we’re building a brand-new Indian village,” Kassel noted. “That’s one of the most wonderful aspects of the Cheyenne Frontier Days is we do have members of the Sioux Nation and other tribes. Right now, we have the Shoshone that are coming to dance with us every year. We’re giving them a brand-new village and a brand-new place to dance, a new pavilion. That’s going to be coming in 2026.”

Kassel noted he was also an adjunct professor of history for Wyoming history at Laramie County Community College. 

“One of the aspects that we talk about is the history between the white settlers and Native Americans and many people that come to my class don’t realize how quickly things went from a mutually acceptable arrangement to absolute catastrophe. It only happened in the span of one generation, which is hard to fathom. That’s what I’m going to talk about today,” Kassel explained. “We’re going to start with the discussion about how the Native Americans of this area, we’re talking about the Shoshone, the Arapaho, the Sioux and of course the Ute and other nations helped the white man when they were first coming across this territory.”

“But unfortunately, mutual misunderstandings and some resentment just meant that we were going to end up in catastrophe. That’s what I’m going to try and talk about today. But first, as I go ahead and mention and this is something again, my students don’t usually understand, is that when we usually have the image of the Great Plains Indians, the nations that are part of Wyoming was, they always kind of have this image,” Kassel pointed toward a photograph of Sioux warriors on horseback. “These are actually 20th century warriors because they have stirrups on their saddle, which I just noticed earlier today.”

Kassel noted most Native tribes who used horses did not have saddles similar to present-day American-made saddles until the 20th century. 

“One of the interesting aspects about the horse and the Native Americans is that all the people that I’ve mentioned here before, the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Shoshone, the Utes, the Comanches, the Kiowa, they were all here before we had horses,” Kassel explained. “The horse was the first interaction that many of the tribes had with the white man. They didn’t even know the white man was involved. But the horse didn’t come back to the New World until after 1492 when Columbus and the conquistadors that followed him brought horses as a means to dominate the Native people on the continents.”

According to Kassel, in 1680, the Spanish suffered a revolt with the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico. 

“The Pueblo people grabbed the horses, started trading them in Texas and from that point forward horse spread throughout the Great Plains as an immensely valuable tool to every last one of these nomadic tribes. The horse, to the red man, was amazing because before you could only walk to go ahead and get from one location to the next. To hunt, you had to use very dangerous methods of hunting like buffalo jumps instead of trying to meet the animals on their own, on horseback. So, you had to be very delicate. It was a very dangerous process of hunting buffalo,” Kassel said. “They didn’t have the ability to do war over great distances. The horse became a great source of wealth and a great source of power for every last one of these tribes. Most of them had no idea where these horses came from aside from the fact that they were taken from the white man.” 

“Now, by the time that most of this story is going to be taking place, the horse has been part of Native American culture now for almost a generation, if not more. The Native American have already established themselves as some of the best horse-mounted warriors in human history. Light cavalry that was amazing – that hit, run and disappear faster than anyone would be able to react on more traditional armies that the Europeans were bringing with them to the Great Plains,” Kassel said. “For all intents and purposes, for our story to begin, I started in 1803 and that’s a good one because that’s the story of the people of the United States and our interaction with the people that are living out here on the Great Plains.”

According to Kassel, before 1803, Americans had no ideas what was in Wyoming or who was there. 

“There was another group of people that traded with people out here. The French came out to this area quite a bit in the 1700s and all the way up to 1803, but the people of the United States, it was a blank slate. So, in 1803, Lewis and Clark were given charge by Thomas Jefferson to make their huge journey from the east to the west to find, hopefully. What they were looking for was the Northwest passage, the waterway that would connect the Pacific to the Atlantic, making things easy. Thomas Jefferson wanted to know who the people were out here and also what was available out here,” Kassel explained. “When they came, it was an expedition tantamount to us going to the moon. It was that technically sophisticated and it had that kind of risk.”

“Very fortunately for Lewis and Clark, as they made their journey across the Great Plains, one of the first places they stopped was in, of course, they met several tribes along the way, but they met the Mandan Indians, who introduced them to a woman who was of the Shoshone Nation, and that, of course, is Sacagawea, who was probably the single greatest factor in their success and survival once they got out here,” Kassel said. “As a woman that was from the Shoshone tribe, she knew many of the languages, she knew the people and she knew many of the means to survive out here on the Great Plains that were completely alien to Lewis and Clark.”

Kassel noted Sacagawea was an amazing contribution and potentially the first Wyoming citizen recalled in history. 

“Because of the fact that she was with these explorers as they were heading west, many of the tribes that encountered Lewis and Clark realized they were not hostile. Because when you travel with women in your party, you’re not looking to start war,” Kassel said. “She did a lot of amazing things.” 

One of the meeting attendees asked Kassel is Sacagawea could speak English.

“No. As a matter of fact, Amy and I, my wife, who’s with us today, we actually went to the Mandan village up in North Dakota, our way up to Canada and found out that her husband, Charbonneau, who was a French trader, could not speak very good English,” Kassel explained. “But Lewis could speak pretty good French so he talked to Charbonneau in French and then Charbonneau asked his wife what was happening and how to translate the languages. Then, she told him in French, or in her native language, as she understood and he could translate it back to Lewis and Clark. Very simple,” Kassel chuckled. 

Kassel noted Sacagawea did many “wonderful” things to help Lewis and Clark.

“Also, of course, one of her most amazing contributions is while they were passing through the Rocky Mountains, she met her brother that she had been separated from as a young girl. She recognized him. It was a family reunion. Because of that relationship and that reunion between Sacagawea and her brother, that was an amazing positive start to the relationship between the Shoshone Nation and the white men who came from the young United States.” Kassel explained. “That was something that was going to carry on for many, many years. Very significant in time. Now, of course, Lewis and Clark also started blazing trails. They went all the way to the west coast, stayed there for a winter, then started heading back, spread out and explored.”

“We have a gentleman by the name of John Colter who used Shoshone guides to take him into Wyoming and is the first American to have known to have crossed into Wyoming territory with their help. He then came back and did trading on his own. But to go a little bit further, let’s go ahead and talk about the Mexican Americans that started coming out here and understand exactly how the Native Americans helped them,” Kassel said. “This man is one of the Astorians. It’s a famous fur trapping party that originated from St. Louis. This particular gentleman, this is Wilson P. Hunt,” Kassel said pointing to a photo. “He was in charge of a group of Astorians who were supposed to follow the Lewis and Clark’s expedition all the way to the west coast in order to start a fur trapping trade and specifically hunting beaver. But they were supposed to go all the way to what was eventually going to become Astoria, Washington or Astoria, Oregon to set up camp there.”

According to Kassel, the only map they had to follow was the Lewis and Clark Trail. 

The meeting continued well into the 8 p.m. hour. The next chapter meeting will be held in September.