This trail was probably one of the bloodiest trails for whites and Indians.  The trail was supposed to be a shorter trail to the Oregon country, but then gold was found in the Black Hills, which is an ancestral holy place to the Lakota Indians.  The land had been given to the Indians in a treaty at Fort Laramie, but as usual, it was the white man that broke the treaty.

Many Forts were built on the trail to protect the settlers and the miners.  The Forts only caused more aggravation with the Sioux, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho, and escalated the hostilities.  When the white men finally left, the Indians burned the forts.

The Bozeman Trail was the prelude to the Battle of the Little Big Horn and to the eventual demise of the Indians and their way of living, resulting in their transference to and degradation on the Indian reservations.

http://www.bozemantrail.org/

http://www.philkearny.vcn.com/

http://www.bozemantrailgallery.com/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues00/oct00/bozeman.html