Talk:Bozeman Trail

Shorter route
Seems it'd have been a lot quicker to build the trail direct from Virginia City to Fort Hall. BarkingMoon (talk) 23:39, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

"Defeating" native Americans
Please do not try to revise history. When a group of soldiers enter a village and murder everyone they find, they are not "defeating" them, they are "massacring" them. I'd accept "killed" or something similar, but implying a full military engagement is unacceptable for well-attested massacres (largely of women and children and infirm, elderly warriors). Grace Note (talk) 02:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Need some sources that call these "massacres". It's neither my opinion or yours that counts here. --Mike Cline (talk) 03:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Need some sources that call these massacres "defeats". You seem to be pretty keen on imposing your revisionist opinion on the article. Given that our own article on one of them calls it a "massacre" seems to put you in the awkward position of quite obviously pushing a POV. Grace Note (talk) 04:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Your own source gives "attacked" not "engaged", and the source for Bear River Massacre describes the massacre in some detail. I will add a reference when I have time. Please don't revert it back to your POV version. Grace Note (talk) 04:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Grace. This is an exact, verbatim quote from a reputable source: He [General Connor] was a hero to frontier settlers and traders after he soundly defeated a combined group of Bannacks and Shoshones at the Battle of Bear River in northern Utah in January, 1863
 * Nothing revisionist about it. Plenty more sources that will characterize the battle at Bear River as a defeat.  I thought the wording was a reasonable compromise. --Mike Cline (talk) 04:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Looks like the current wording is "killed." That works for me.  Grace, you mean well, but "massacre" is the sort of overwrought language we need to avoid in an encyclopedia unless we have quite solid and respected sources.  Please provide us WP:RS source material to back your view, otherwise we really cannot use it.   Montanabw (talk) 05:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * My source is the citation given, titled "Bear River Massacre". I don't think "massacre" is overwrought. It just means "violent killing of many people", which is what happened, and is why it is described that way. "Engaged" is unacceptable for an action that involved attacking and murdering villagers, where there were few warriors present. I think "attacked" is already sufficient compromise and is supported by your own citation in the text. Grace Note (talk) 06:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Seriously guys, maybe "killed" is doable, but "engaged" implies a contest of arms. The US forces attacked a village by surprise. The inhabitants that were armed fought back. If you wanted to say "attacked... leading to an engagement", perhaps that would be accurate enough, but as you have it, it seriously implies a military action on both sides. Riding into a village and murdering everyone you find is not generally considered an engagement of military forces however you cut it, even if some of the people you are murdering are armed and fight back. This is a bit like saying the Luftwaffe engaged the British in London. WP:NPOV doesn't allow cherrypicking sources to create POV btw, particularly when you are attempting to use someone's wording in a source to do so. The natural reading of the words on the page is not trumped by being able to cherrypick a source that uses that wording. Grace Note (talk) 07:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, "he massacred at the massacre" is also just poor writing. The Lemhi source doesnt't really verify much of anything as it sits (URL just to the home page) and so I rewrote that whole ssection a bit.   Montanabw (talk) 22:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Error on Bozeman Trail map
Note that the Bozeman Trail map depicted at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bozeman01.png contains the following error: The "Flathead River" label presumably should read "Sun River" instead. (That is, the Flathead River lies west of the Continental Divide, which occurs along the left margin of this map.)

For an example reference, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_Montana#/media/File:Mt-rivers.gif


 * Good point, the map can't be fixed from our end, so I'll toss it for now until we find something better.  Montanabw (talk)  07:31, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

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