Vanguard of Expansion Army Engineers in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1819-1879

With the exception of the mountainmen, few Americans knew more about the Southwest in 1845 than they could find in a Santa Fe Trail guidebook. Up to that year, the Army had done little to explore and chart the region, which, except for the nine-year-old Republic of Texas, still belonged to Mexico. Commerical maps, frequently based on hearsay and conjecture, were woefully inaccurate. Even topog Lieutenant William H. Emory's 1844 map of Texas relied on the labors and—too often—the imaginations of earlier explorers and cartographers. The lack of reliable information became a major concern after Congress approved the annexation of Texas and war with Mexico became likely. Three expeditions, dispatched in the spring and summer of 1845 to examine the regions in which fighting appeared likely, passed through or skirted the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and California and inaugurated a long period of Engineer exploration in the Southwest.

The northernmost expedition stayed clear of foreign soil, but was nonetheless related to the dispute over the annexation of Texas. Because war with Mexico would make protection of the Oregon Trail difficult, a large force was sent to frighten the Sioux into allowing travelers to pass. Strung out in a column of twos behind Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, 250 blue-clad horsemen of the First Dragoons made their serpentine way up the Platte to Fort Laramie, looking more like a punitive expedition than a reconnaissance. Only the presence of topog Lieutenant William B. Franklin, who accompanied Kearny to map the route, suggested anything but a warlike purpose.

Kearny's reconnaissance in force made a great impression on the Sioux. When told by a Fort Laramie trader that a large expedition would come up the Platte, they scoffed and called their informant a liar. Their disbelief turned to apprehension and fear of punishment for depredations when Kearny appeared at Laramie with his dragoons. Over one thousand Indians reluctantly responded to his demand for a conference. After watching the troops parade, flash their sabers, and fire their artillery, the Sioux readily agreed to allow the road to remain open and undisturbed. [1]

Up to the time of the meeting at Fort Laramie, Lieutenant Franklin, a bright young officer who graduated at the top of the West Point class of 1843, had little to do. Later he would map the route of the expedition's return by way of Fort St. Vrain and Bent's Fort, but the Oregon Trail needed no cartographer. Worn smooth by numerous emigrant parties and well publicized by Frémont, the route was fast becoming an early-day equivalent of an interstate highway. Franklin met and talked with numerous emigrants on their way to Oregon, most of them optimistic and in good spirits. As he conversed with them and promised to carry their letters back to the States, he learned that many of these pioneers had a clear vision of the nation's continental future. Though bound for Oregon, they had an eye on the land to the south, Mexican California. In Franklin's words,

Very few of these people looked forward to staying in Oregon, but expected if they did not find very good land there, to push on to California, hoping as they said, that Uncle Sam would do something for them there one of these days. [2]

Oregon-bound settlers were not the only ones to share premonitions with Lieutenant Franklin. Old Soldier, a Northern Cheyenne chief who talked with the topog at the Indian village on Chugwater Creek, also saw clearly into the future. Although the systematic slaughter of the buffalo was yet to come and the whites did not present an immediate threat to his tribe's hunting grounds, Old Soldier foretold the tragedy that would overtake his people:

He was very anxious to come to the States to see how the Eastern Indians live. He was convinced that something must be done by the Western Indians, as the buffalo were getting scarce, and unless they found some other way of living, they must starve. He was the only Indian whom I ever heard say anything on the subject, and we were sorry he could not come with us, perhaps it would have done a great deal of good. [3]

Like a few of the exuberant white pioneers, some among the doomed plains Indians also understood what was happening in the trans-Mississippi West.

Guided by Thomas Fitzpatrick on the more circuitous homeward route, the expedition made its way south along the eastern edge of Mexico's vast possessions. During the journey from Fort Laramie to Bent's Fort, the Arkansas River capital for the fur trading empire of Charles and William Bent, Franklin paid careful attention to the topography. He made daily notes on the direction and distance traveled as well as nightly observations for latitude. [4] Once a show of force, Kearny's expedition was now a reconnaissance.

For all except Fitzpatrick, the summer's work was nearly over once Kearny's troops turned eastward at Bent's Fort onto the Santa Fe Trail. Six days after the command struck the Santa Fe road, an express rider overtook Kearny with a letter from Frémont, who had just arrived at Bent's. Preparing to lead one exploring party into California and to dispatch another into New Mexico, Frémont wanted Fitzpatrick to serve as guide for New Mexico-bound Lieutenants Abert and Peck. Colonel Kearny, with his command on the clearly marked road to Fort Leavenworth, released Fitzpatrick. Lieutenant Franklin, who watched with regret as the mountainman—"a perfect master of woodcraft," according to the admiring topog—departed, knew Fitzpatrick would be "a great acquisition to any party that may go into any part of the Far West." [5]

William B. Franklin. U.S. Military Academy Archives.

After a brief reunion at Bent's Fort, the discoverer and the chief publicist of South Pass went their separate ways. Frémont departed for the Great Basin and Humboldt River on an expedition that would place him in northern California when war broke out the following year. Fitzpatrick joined young Abert, the intelligent and sensitive son of the chief of the Topographical Bureau, for the journey into northeastern New Mexico. Although Abert was a tenderfoot explorer, totally unfamiliar with the country, he was a perceptive observer and a skilled artist. Moreover, with Fitzpatrick at his side, he knew his own ignorance of the terrain would be immaterial. [6]

Equipped with only a sextant and a chronometer, the Abert party set out to survey the Canadian River from its source high in the Sangre de Cristo range to its junction with the Arkansas near modern Tulsa. They followed the Purgatory River to its head near Raton Pass, gateway to Santa Fe for trading expeditions or an invading army, where the cool, clear water was a welcome change from the saline pools of the plains. As the men urged their mules along the streambed, luxuriant vines, ferns, and trees blocked the sun, reminding Abert of a tunnel "formed by the goddess Flora." "Almost wild with excitement," the party reluctantly left the Purgatory and sought the head of the Canadian. [7]

On the Purgatory, Lieutenant Peck learned something of the reliability of mules. The mainstays of many exploring parties, these ordinarily patient and durable beasts carried baggage, scientific instruments, and frequently explorers over the most difficult terrain in the foulest weather. As a last service, they sometimes provided famished men with a bad-tasting but desperately needed dinner. Unsung despite their important role in western exploration, they did not go uncursed, for they sometimes went their own way or refused to go at all. Lieutenant Peck joined the ranks of mule-hating ingrates after he dismounted to pluck a snack from a plum tree. Smacking his lips he started toward the tree. The mule, with Peck's gear and journals, set out in the opposite direction. The topog could only watch helplessly as the animal trotted away. Fortunately, other members of the expedition caught the truant, but Peck almost paid for this fruit with his mount, saddle, and notebooks. [8]

Although assigned primarily to a route reconnaissance, Abert examined the country carefully as he picked his way along the mountain trails. South of Raton Pass he located a good site for a military post, "should our government succeed in extending its territory to the Rio [Grande] del Norte" and he found ample evidence of gold-bearing rock. [9] Fearful of arrest as a trespasser by Mexican authorities, he never tarried to collect geological specimens. Instead he and his party followed the Canadian eastward out of the mountains to the Texas panhandle. Free of any danger from the Mexicans, Abert now faced an even greater menace, the Comanches.

William H. Emory. U.S. Military Academy Archives.

Considered by many the finest horsemen in the world, these fierce and courageous people were rightly known as the lords of the southern plains. Masterful tacticians who would wait patiently out of range for a volley of musket fire before charging their reloading enemy, they waged war for plunder, status, territory, and the joy of a good fight. Even the Apaches, themselves bold and fearsome warriors, cringed before the superb Comanche cavalry. Lieutenant Abert, a newcomer to the hunting grounds of these tipi-dwelling nomads, knew before he left Bent's Fort that the Comanches "were greatly to be feared." [10]

The Comanches watched the party as it crossed the panhandle, and Abert, who saw their signal fires, knew it. The men remained constantly on the alert and were once nearly attacked by a band of Kiowas who mistook the explorers for the hated Texans who had come into their country and fought for the right to stay there. On another occasion, Abert convinced a few Comanches, who had followed at a distance, to visit his camp and share a meal. Baffled by the explorers, who had come neither to trade nor wage war, the Indians allowed them to pass unharmed.

Before leaving Comanche country, Abert almost made a potentially fatal mistake. He found a good sample of an Indian cranium and was about to add it to his specimens, when some frontier-wise members of the expedition convinced him to discard it. He would not have found it easy to explain possession of the skull to a Comanche chief.

The brief reconnaissance, which ended in October at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, was useful in several ways. Abert produced an accurate map, which included the location of the three crucial means of survival in the wilderness—water, wood, and grass. He also supplied important information on the Comanches and Kiowas. Under the tutelage of Fitzpatrick, whom Abert credited with preservation of his party, he and Peck gained valuable field experience, which they would put to good use on their more extensive exploration of New Mexico in 1846. [11]

As he started east from Fort Gibson, Abert observed the same phenomenon that had impressed Franklin on the Oregon Trail. Everywhere he saw pioneer wagons bound for newly-annexed Texas. A trace of awe crept into Abert's journal as he noted the size of the migration into the new country:

The way from Fort Gibson was literally lined with the wagons of emigrants to Texas, and from this time until we arrived at St. Louis we continued daily to see hundreds of them. [12]

In Bernard DeVoto's words, 1846 was "the year of decision." In that year several crucial events in the development of the trans-Mississippi West took place. The United States and Britain ended their joint occupation of the Oregon country and agreed to a division of the region. The first Mormon emigrants crossed the Mississippi on the long, tortuous road to their new haven in the Great Basin. And, in April, shots were fired along the Rio Grande, and the war with Mexico began.

As soon as hostilities opened, the administration of President James K. Polk moved to seize the Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico. The government directed Commodore John D. Sloat, commanding naval forces off the California coast, to take San Francisco and Monterey. At the same time, Colonel Kearny received orders to organize an invasion of New Mexico. Kearny and the 1,500 members of his Army of the West set out down the Santa Fe Trail from Fort Leavenworth in late June, 1846.

Santa Fe after occupation by Kearny's Army of the West. National Archives.

Included in the Army of the West was a topographical detachment commanded by Lieutenant William H. Emory, a red-whiskered, soldierly former artilleryman who became a topog in 1838. Like Frémont, he had good connections. His wife was Matilda Wilkins Bache, a great granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin and a sister of Alexander D. Bache, who succeeded Ferdinand Hassler as superintendent of the Coast Survey. Emory's circle of friends included Henry Clay, Jr., Jefferson Davis, and Maryland Senator James A. Pearce. A zealous explorer, fascinated with the history and ethnology of the Southwest, Emory was a good choice for the Kearny expedition. [13]

Although Kearny's large force had a purely military mission, the conquest of New Mexico and California, Emory availed himself of every opportunity to explore the countryside on the long march from Bent's Fort to Santa Fe and thence to San Diego. His staff was small, only three officers (young Abert, Peck, and Lieutenant William H. Warner), and two civilians (statistician Norman Bestor and artist John Mix Stanley). His hastily collected gear was scanty. Moreover, military duties had always to come first for, as Emory acknowledged, "war was the object," not investigation. [14] Yet through almost superhuman effort, he managed to carry out his inquiries. Aided by a dwindling number of assistants (Abert took sick on the trail and was left at Bent's Fort; Peck remained in Santa Fe to wait for Abert), he denied himself sleep to observe the heavens and fix geographic positions. Stops to collect specimens, survey "long-sought ruins," visit pueblos and Indian farms, and study the culture and customs of the native tribes interrupted each day's hard ride. "I am worked almost to death," he complained at one point. [15] But if the strain was great, so was the accomplishment.

Ceresu Giganteus, from Emory's report of the Kearny expedition.

From his careful scrutiny of the unfamiliar terrain, Emory arrived at several important conclusions. Although at places like the confluence of the San Pedro and Gila rivers "not an object in the whole view, animal, vegetable, or mineral had anything in common with the products of any state in the Union, with the single exception of the cottonwood...," Emory came to know the country well. He realized that New Mexico's limited agricultural potential would depend on irrigation, which in turn would require centralized community control—much like the procedures that the Mormons would shortly employ in the Great Basin. The scarcity of fertile lands also meant that slavery would be unprofitable in the Southwest. The presence of a free, dark-skinned native population only underscored the problems slaveholders might face. With the Indian villages offering tempting refuge, control of bondsmen would be difficult indeed. Most important was Emory's discovery that the central government in Mexico City, unable to provide protection against the raids of Apaches and Navahoes, was little respected by New Mexicans of all classes. This was important intelligence. The conquest of the province, worthwhile because of the Santa Fe trade and the easy possibility of running a wagon road or railway across it to California, would meet little local resistance. [16]

In addition to these shrewd observations, Emory produced the first accurate map of the Southwest. Later popular among gold-seekers who took the southern route to California, his map was based on hundreds of barometric readings and 2,000 nighttime astronomical observations. On the march during the day, Emory measured streams, calculated grades, examined topographical contours, and recorded information on the climate. Unusual problems complicated his task. When he set up his horizon to measure altitudes, he found that the galloping of horses as far away as five hundred yards agitated the mercury in the instrument. This caused trouble throughout the journey, but particularly near villages of inquisitive Indians. Near the Pima village on the Gila, Emory wryly commented that "news got about of my dealings with the stars, and my camp was crowded the whole time." His accomplishments in the face of the many difficulties measured his persistence and dedication. Added to Joseph Nicollet's cartographic achievement in the north country, and the work of Frémont and Preuss in the Great Basin, on the Oregon Trail, and the Columbia River, Emory's map was the last building block for a basic understanding of the geography of the trans-Mississippi West. [17]

As the Army of the West marched along the Gila toward California, Emory and his topographical detachment, together with a small dragoon escort, led the way. At the confluence where the Gila's "sea green waters are lost in the chrome colored hue of the Colorado," the topogs met a party of herdsmen with about five hundred horses. [18] Their leader claimed to be employed by wealthy Sonora horsemen, but Emory was unconvinced and detained the entire group. On the next day, his suspicions were confirmed. He and Stanley stopped a well-mounted Mexican, on his way, he said, to hunt horses. Emory took the rider to Colonel Kearny, who ordered the Mexican searched. He turned out to be a courier from California with a packet of letters that identified Emory's earlier captive as a colonel in the Mexican Army, then enroute to General Jose Castro's army with his large herd of horses.

The Army of the West on the march across New Mexico.

Emory's capture of the Mexican herd was the Army of the West's only contact with the enemy until the column neared San Diego. Confident of an easy passage to his destination, Kearny had divided his force. With many of his soldiers garrisoning Santa Fe and others invading Mexico under Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan, the once-formidable army was reduced to a mere company of 160 hungry, bone-weary men. Challenged near modern Escondido by a fresh, well-mounted force of Californio cavalry, Kearny unwisely decided to stop and fight. Instead of drawing his troops into a compact formation and remaining on the road to San Diego, he led his men in a charge against the pike-wielding foe, gave them just the kind of fight they wanted, and paid dearly for it. The bitter hand-to-hand clash, known as the battle of San Pasqual, took eighteen American lives and left Kearny with a saber wound of the buttocks. After a marine detachment from San Diego reinforced his badly mauled army, Kearny made it to the coast. Technically victorious because he held the field after the Mexicans withdrew with their two dead, Kearny was lucky to escape with only his embarrassing scratch. [19]

At San Diego, whose harbor Emory considered among the finest on the Pacific coast, many of the members of the expedition had their first view of the ocean. The vista was stunning. Few of the men had seen anything with which to compare the broad green expanse of water. One mountainman, groping for a metaphor, turned on its head the familiar comparison of the great plains with the ocean, exclaiming, "Lord! There is a great prairie without a tree." [20]

Emory had just left Santa Fe for the trek to California when Lieutenant Abert recovered from his illness at Bent's Fort. Alternately delirious with fever and despondent because of his condition, Abert whiled away the time on the Arkansas reading Horace, sketching Indians, and arranging his growing collection of natural history specimens. Employees of the Bents, who daily brought him rare plants and minerals, birds and fish, helped lighten the burden of enforced inactivity. Vexed nonetheless by his inability to resume active duty, Abert recorded his despair at "having come this far, and having been stopped just as I was entering upon a field full of interest to the soldier, the archeologist, the historian, and the naturalist." [21]

One of the drawings made by Lieutenant Abert during his convalescence at Bent's Fort in 1846.

The young topog spent much of his time at Bent's with the Southern Cheyennes who traded there. Renewing acquaintances with some whom he had met in 1845 and entertaining them by drawing their likenesses in his sketchbook, Abert learned a great deal about tribal life. Like their northern cousins, whom Lieutenant Franklin had visited on the Chugwater, the Arkansas River bands depended on the bison for their daily necessities. The meat was their basic food, the bones became their utensils, and the skins protected them from the savage plains winter. Also like their northern relatives, the wiser among them saw clearly the grim future. In conversation with the influential and farsighted Yellow Wolf, Abert learned of the decreasing numbers of buffalo on the southern plains and the corresponding decline of the tribe. "He says," Abert wrote after a conversation with Yellow Wolf, "that in a few years [the buffalo] will become extinct; and unless the Indians wish to pass away also, they will have to adopt the habits of the white people, using such measures to produce subsistence as will render them independent of the precarious reliance afforded by the game." [22] Sympathetic with their plight, Abert urged government assistance for the Cheyennes. The whites, with their continuous travel through the buffalo ranges, their evergrowing number of roads, and their hunts for buffalo robes, bore responsibility for the impending disaster. Neither the ailing topog nor the perceptive chief knew that, before any assistance came, the Cheyennes would have to endure Chivington and Custer, Sand Creek and the Washita.* Abert and Yellow Wolf were voices crying in the wilderness.

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*Major defeats inflicted on the Cheyennes by Colorado Volunteers in 1864 and by U. S. troops in 1868. See, for example, William H. Leckie, The Military Conquest of the Southern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), pp. 22-24, 99-105.

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In early September, 1846, shod in antelope mocassins and astride a buffalo-skin saddle, Abert finally left Bent's for his rendezvous with Peck in Santa Fe. Again up the Purgatory and over Raton Pass. Abert guided his mule into New Mexico. Although he was retracing the route he had taken in 1845, the trip was not without some excitement. There were grizzly bears in the mountain passes, and rattlesnakes once spooked his mount. And there were huge masses of stratified rocks that were better historians than mortals could ever be. Fired with romantic enthusiasm, Abert examined these massive records of the past and pondered their significance:

I could not but compare the legends these rocks unfold with the doubtful records of history. See with what detail they present everything to us, showing us specimens of birds, of plants, of animals, and the like, telling us when and where they existed. See how they go back ages upon ages! behold with astonishment the mighty deeds in which they have been concerned, the grand convulsions they have undergone. [23]

After Abert rejoined Peck, who had already examined the country north of Santa Fe, they rode out to survey the settled Rio Grande valley. Guided by Emory's detailed instructions, they made a meticulous inquiry into the uses and possibilities of the region. In the saddle for nearly three months, Abert and Peck went from town to town, studying agricultural production, estimating population, and examining mineral resources. Whether on the road being pelted by large hailstones or sampling the peaches and melons of the Indian pueblos, they constantly scrutinized and recorded their surroundings. They finished their survey just before Christmas and returned to Santa Fe with detailed notes on the economy and resources of the Rio Grande valley, from Socorro to Santa Fe.

The Abert and Peck map of the Rio Grande valley. National Archives.

Abert's return to Fort Leavenworth proved far more difficult than either his illness or his survey. Struggling over the top of Raton Pass in a vicious snowstorm, with the wolves patiently following his almost exhausted men and animals, Abert faced the kind of winter that occasionally turned civilized men into cannibals. East of Raton, the weather grew worse. Stung by fierce north winds, their faces covered with frost, the men struggled eastward, while the mules moved in clouds of vapor as sweat evaporated from their hides. With one man snowblind and two dead—one had shot himself and the other had suffocated when snowdrifts collapsed his tent—Abert stumbled into Leavenworth on the first of March. As he boarded a Missouri River steamer for the next leg of the journey home, he looked back on his southwestern journeys "like the realization of some romance" and wondered "that I could have borne so much." [24]

As Abert wrote those lines in March, 1847, the romantic first phase of the southwestern reconnaissance was rapidly fading. Already Emory and Frémont had been under fire in different parts of California. Like their fellow officers in the Corps of Engineers (including Lieutenants George G. McClellan, George G. Meade, Pierre G. T. Beauregard, and Captain Robert E. Lee), many other topogs became involved in the combat operations of the Mexican War. While some surveyed the coastal waters of Texas and located supply depots for the invasion, others accompanied the attacking columns across the Rio Grande, surveying routes, constructing fortifications, and probing enemy lines. Still others, such as Captains Joseph E. Johnston and George W. Hughes, commanded troops in the campaign for Mexico City. In addition to these numerous duties, there was still surveying and mapping to be done—in the heart of Mexico.

Two surveys south of the Rio Grande, led by Hughes and by Lieutenant Edmund L. F. Hardcastle, became significant beyond expectations. Hughes, who entered Mexico with General John Wool's column in the fall of 1846, collected data similar to that obtained by Abert and Peck in New Mexico. During his tour, he also formulated the defense plan later used to protect Texas against Indian raids. Two years later, after the conquest of Mexico City, Hardcastle examined and mapped the Valley of Mexico. His survey, performed with instruments once used by von Humboldt, became an issue in the controversy over the annexation of all of Mexico, when opponents of expansion south of the Rio Grande claimed that he was preparing the way for a huge land grab. [25] Ironically, Hardcastle's matter-of-fact description of the campaign for Mexico City with its attendant map drew attention that should have been reserved for Captain Hughes. In his brief report of his journey through Coahuila and Chihuahua, Hughes identified lucrative possibilities for American entrepreneurs and assessed the political loyalties of the residents. The majority, Hughes found, were not anxious for the Americans to take their country. On the other hand, many wealthy citizens opposed their government. As one gentleman confided to the topog, "Sir, we have a glorious country and a good population but our government is the worst in the world. I would rather be under the dominion of a Comanche chief." [26] If either of the surveys of Mexican territory was an incitement to further expansion, it was Hughes's, not Hardcastle's.

In all, two-thirds of the thirty-six officers of the Corps of Topographical Engineers served in the field during the war. Colonel Abert spoke proudly of his officers, who, he said, showed "the versatility of talent in the Corps and its ability to fulfil any military duties which it may be found necessary or proper to assign to it." [27] Colonel Abert was right. As explorers and cartographers, naturalists and soldiers, the topogs were as much a part of the Mexican offensive as the officers and men of the line.