Background
John Merin Bozeman was born in 1835 was a native of Georgia where he left a wife and two children, to try his luck at placer mining near Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1861.
John Merin Bozeman was born in 1835 was a native of Georgia where he left a wife and two children, to try his luck at placer mining near Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1861.
Learning of rich gravels in Montana, Bozeman set out with eleven companions, arriving in Virginia City in June 1862. The bonanzas of Idaho and of Alder Gulch, Bannack, and Virginia City were bringing thousands into Montana.
The Mullan Road from Walla Walla to Fort Benton, opened in 1861, provided an approach from the west, but gold seekers from the east only reached the diggings by boat to the head of navigation of the Missouri and thence by road, or else by an equally circuitous route over the Oregon trail to Fort Hall and north to Virginia City.
It was to discover a more direct route east that Bozeman and his partner, John M. Jacobs, left Bannack in the winter of 1862-63. Venturing along the old trail into the territory east of the Big Horn Mountains reserved by treaty to the Indians, and apparently quite insensible of danger, they were attacked by a party of marauding Sioux, robbed of horses, guns, and ammunition, and turned adrift on foot, finally reaching the Platte after severe hardships.
Untaught by experience, Bozeman returned the following spring at the head of a party of freighters and emigrants, but, when about a hundred miles north of Fort Laramie, the party was induced by an Indian attack to follow the safer route west of the Big Horn Mountains via Bridger Pass into Virginia City. The determined Bozeman, however, again venturing across the Indian country, and traveling chiefly by night, finally crossed the divide (Bozeman Pass) between the Yellowstone and the Gallatin and reached Virginia City.
In 1864, he conducted one of many caravans over his "road. " The Indians had become increasingly menacing as their treaty lands were invaded, and in 1865-66 the government undertook to police the Bozeman road by successive Powder River expeditions and the erection of Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith.
The Fetterman massacre of December 1866 re-established by force of arms the Indian claim, and led to the abandonment of the Bozeman road south and east of Fort C. F. Smith. Still blind to the Indian danger, Bozeman and a companion left Virginia City, on April 16, 1867.
Four days later, at the crossing of the Yellowstone, five Indians approached their noon camp. Assuming them to be friendly Crows, Bozeman welcomed them only to discover too late that they were Blackfeet. He was instantly shot, while his wounded companion escaped. He thus at last paid the penalty of ineptitude and lack of judgment in dealing with the hazards of the country.
Bozeman, along with John Jacobs, blazed the Bozeman Trail, a cutoff route from the Oregon Trail that traced from Wyoming to Bannack, Montana, in 1863 (the former trail closed in 1868 because of the Indian Wars). The same year, he discovered Bozeman, Montana, and the Gallatin Valley (which he thought as a most desirable place to live) and founded the town Bozeman in Montana.
John Bozeman was married to Lucinda Catherine Ingram Howell. They had three children.
12 March 1819 - 1852
1810 - 1887
10 September 1846 - 21 January 1921
6 September 1850 - August 1888
Born in 1840.
24 December 1837 - 3 August 1898
6 November 1856 - 8 March 1931
29 November 1853 - 22 July 1909
16 December 1860 - 26 October 1932
