In real life, the Wind River Indian Reservation is a huge 2.2 million-acre tract of prairie and mountains in west central Wyoming, set aside in 1868 for the beleaguered Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. Sacagawea, the famous Shoshone woman who guided Lewis & Clark’s exploration of the area, is buried there. But it’s better known, historically, as the end of the trail for the 1864 Sand Creek massacre, when a U.S. Volunteer Cavalry force attacked a Cheyenne-Arapaho village, slaughtering 130 defenseless natives, most of them women and children. And it’s better known nowadays for crime, widespread drug and alcohol abuse, and the legal dumping of toxic wastes. ......
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