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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT ATKINSON
Nebraska
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Location: Washington County, on a secondary road,
about 1 mile east of the town of Fort Calhoun.
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One of the first forts west of the Mississippi, the
first west of the Missouri, and at the time the largest and most
advanced frontier post, this fort (1819-27) had a short but important
history. Next to Fort Smith (1817), it was the earliest on the
"Permanent Indian Frontier." It was also an administrative center for
the Indians on the upper Missouri and a base for fur traders and
explorers.
The fort was founded by the first Yellowstone
Expedition. The expedition was one in a series planned after the War of
1812 by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun to awe the Indians of the upper
Missouri River with U.S. military power, counter British influence, and
establish a chain of military posts. Col. Henry Atkinson set out from
Plattsburgh, N.Y., in the spring of 1819 with 1,126 soldiers of the 6th
Infantry and many women and children. He planned to proceed up the
Missouri and found a post some where near the mouth of the
Yellowstonea goal never reached because of lack of funds. In the
fall, at the end of a 2,628-mile trek, the expedition bivouacked at
Council Bluffs, a site on the west bank of the Missouri River at which
Lewis and Clark had camped in 1804, held their first council with the
Indians, and recommended as a site for a fort. On the river bottom near
the bluffs, Atkinson and his men constructed Cantonment Missouri. But,
after a winter of disease and hardship and a disastrous spring flood,
they moved to a site high on the top of the bluffs, where by fall a
permanent brick and log fort, soon known as Fort Atkinson, had taken
shape.
A quadrangular stockade, with bastions at the
northwest and southeast corners, surrounded the buildings. They included
barracks, officers' quarters, sutler's house and store, Indian council
house, hospital, powder magazine, laundresses' quarters, and stables.
Near the fort were a dairy, gristmill, limekiln, sawmill, blacksmith
shop, and brickyard. Agriculture and Indian management dominated life at
the fort, which more resembled a frontier village and social center than
a military installation. The soldiers, supervised by a director of
agriculture and a superintendent of livestock, farmed and raised stock.
By 1821 they had tilled 504 acres of land. Agricultural activities
embraced dairying, cheese-making, meat curing, soapmaking, and milling.
Fur traders brought news from St. Louis or the Indian country. Indians
dropped in to hold councils and trade at the agency. Indian Agent
Benjamin O'Fallon, who had established the Upper Missouri Indian Agency
at the fort in 1819, worked to keep peace among the tribes and insure
their cooperation with trappers and traders. Visitors at the fort were
such explorers and mountain men as Jed Smith, Ed Rose, Hiram Scott, Jim
Beckwourth, Jim Clyman, and Tom Fitzpatrick.
In 1823 news reached Fort Atkinson of an Arikara
attack on William H. Ashley's fur brigade, 14 of whose 90 men had died
and 11 received wounds. To punish the Indians, Col. Henry Leavenworth
led 220 Regulars, 120 mountain men, and 400 to 500 Sioux allies up the
Missouri to the Arikara villages and fought the first large-scale battle
between U.S. troops and the Plains Indians. Although he recovered some
of the goods stolen from Ashley, he mismanaged the attack and inspired
the Arikaras with contempt for U.S. military prowess. Two years later
the second and last Yellowstone Expedition in the 1820's had more
success. Colonel Atkinson, 457 soldiers, and Indian Agent O'Fallon
traveled to the mouth of the Yellowstone, negotiated treaties with 12
tribes, and accomplished much toward gaining the friendship of the
Indians and promoting the fur trade.
In 1827, to afford better protection for the Santa Fe
Trail, the Government replaced Fort Atkinson, distant from civilization
and not on main routes of travel, with Fort Leavenworth, Kans., farther
down the Missouri, and relocated the Indian agency.
Fort Atkinson State Historical Park consists of 147
acres, including a buffer strip. The cantonment site, on the river
bottom, has not been exactly determined. The fort site lies on a plateau
rising from the flood plain above the western edge of the Missouri River
Valley. In the 1820's the river ran along the foot of the bluffs. The
old channel is still evident, but the modern one is 3 miles to the east.
The only visible remains at the site are low earth mounds on the eastern
edge. The rest of the site has been leveled and placed in cultivation. A
continuing program of archeological excavation by the Nebraska State
Historical Society has yielded numerous artifacts, many of which are
displayed at the Fort Calhoun Museum, and exposed several
foundations.
NHL Designation: 07/04/61
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/siteb15.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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