Dodge City

We are told that the Tomah Stage Lines ran an east/west-bound stage route just outside of Sioux country. The very title of the episode itself is "Stage West." Yet the passengers getting off the stage at the Packsaddle Station seem to be coming from Dodge City, 360 miles to the south.

Perhaps the most favorable trail from Dodge City would have been through an unnamed town east of the Packsaddle Station along the Tomah Lines road, although it seems a rather inconvenient route, considering the threat of the nearby Sioux. And perhaps there was more to Mrs. Harris' story that made traveling through Dodge City a more favorable route from Boston.[4]

Bret Maverick in the Black Hills

In 1875, the Black Hills were deep inside very hostile Sioux country, the land ceded to the Indians by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Upon the signing of the treaty, the U. S. Army abandoned their camps and outposts within the borders of the newly established Great Sioux Reservation in honor of the agreement. White men trespassing into the region were considered in violation of the treaty and either met their fate at the hands of the Sioux, or were dealt with severely by the U. S. government. Fur trappers and gold prospectors did, in fact, invade the Black Hills during that time, but knew the risk they were taking.[2]

Why then, would Bret Maverick — a man known to "never go anywhere without a reason"[3] — just happen to be wandering Sioux country? So deep, in fact, that he stumbled upon a man shot and left for dead leading other men away from a secret gold strike hidden in the maze of rocks and canyons of the Black Hills? And with no other people for hundreds of miles around but hostile Sioux who would think nothing of torturing and/or killing any white man they found on their land?

It is highly doubtful Bret was so deep in Sioux country by accident, or just traveling through without a very strong incentive. We are never told what his reason might have been, but we can be confident that it had something to do with money. Unless further evidence arises, we may never know.[4]

Some things in "Stage West" are wild as the wind in Oregon, such as: