Answer:
After a protracted struggle for independence, New Spain became the sovereign nation of Mexico, with the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba.
<span>Tensions in the region started rising in 1863, when John Bozeman blazed the Bozeman Trail, a new route for emigrants traveling to the Montana gold fields. Bozeman’s trail was of questionable legality since it passed directly through hunting grounds that the government had promised to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Thus when Colorado militiamen murdered more than two hundred peaceful Cheyenne during the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Indians began to take revenge by attacking whites all across the Plains, including the emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail. The U.S. government responded by building a series of protective forts along the trail; the largest and most important of these was Fort Phil Kearney, erected in 1866 in north-central Wyoming.</span>
The families are in hiding, so no one can know they are receiving rations.
<u>SOVEREIGNITY </u>means the people are independent and have individual right and the people choose who represents them in the government.
