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- Military Explorations of the Great West
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- │ F1 - Introduction │
- │ F2 - Wilkes │
- │ F3 - Fremont │
- │ F4 - Emory │
- │ F5 - Railroad Surveys│
- │ F6 - Filling the Gaps│
- │ F7 - Post Civil War │
- └────────────────────────┘
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- ~#1
- Introduction
-
-
- The West had clearly changed by 1838. It was being thought
- of as a potential home - land to be cultivated rather than
- plundered. A new kind of explorer was required. The Army was
- largely unused since the War of 1812, its tasks minimal and
- unchallenging. This led to the development of the U.S. Corps of
- Topographical Engineers and the military explorer. Officially
- formed in 1838, the topographical Corps was composed largely of
- the best of the West Point graduates who were specially trained
- in scientific skills, engineering, map-making and topographical
- drawing. Though they worked on coastal fortifications, river
- surveys, and the mapping of the Great Lakes, in the 1840s and 50s
- they turned their attention to the West and became its dominant
- explorers. Their model, however, was not a West Point graduate.
- He was the John C. Fremont, a product of the U.S. Coast Survey, a
- flawed protege of French scientist Jean Nicollet and Ferdinand
- Hassler of that Bureau. He was also to reduce exploration (and
- public relations) to a science. For the next two decades Fremont
- and others more competent than he brought the direction of
- government and the skills of science to the exploration of the
- West. In so doing, they were agents of Manifest Destiny and
- servants of a rapidly-growing America whose citizens echoed the
- cry, "Westward the course of empire takes its way."
-
- ~#2
- CHARLES WILKES [1798-1877]:
-
- Going West in the early 1840s usually meant going to Oregon,
- which had become a focus of American aspirations. Fremont's
- mission in 1842 was to map the South Pass, a key point on the
- Oregon Trail. But even as he was carrying out that assignment,
- another expedition had returned to Washington with a report on
- the Oregon country. Capt Charles Wilkes was born in New York
- city. He entered the Merchant Service in 1815. In 1838 after
- various experiences he was but in command of the U.S. Exploring
- Expedition, a naval enterprise, which made a thorough
- investigation of the Oregon country as part of his great global
- exploring expedition of the Pacific Ocean. What he had to say
- about Oregon was important, but he was having trouble getting
- Congress's attention because of a flurry of courts-martial
- charges preferred against him upon his return from the world-
- circling voyage.
-
- Wilkes had departed from Hampton Roads, VA, on August 18,
- 1838, as commander of a flotilla of 6 ships bound for the Pacific
- Ocean. His expedition represented a concession to the eastern
- seaboard maritime interests who were concerned about the whaling
- and sealing industries and trade with the nations and peoples of
- the western Pacific. In one of the epic events of 19th-century
- exploration, Wilkes took his fleet through the South Atlantic and
- around Cape Horn to Australia and the South Pacific islands.
- Turning south, he coasted the icy shores of the Antarctic for
- 1500 miles (in the process proving that the Antarctic was a
- continent), then sailed north via the Pacific islands to the
- Oregon coast. Here he divided his forces. Wilkes led one group
- of ships in an exploration of Vancouver Island, the Straits of
- Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. He also examined Gray's Harbour
- at the base of the Olympic Peninsula while searching for a viable
- port on the Pacific. The captain and his men found the beautiful
- coastline every bit as exotic as the South Pacific. It was a
- land of fur-caped Indians who danced in hideous masks, sailed
- their carved 50-foot-long war canoes far out into the ocean, and
- studded their villages with mysterious totem poles. Wilkes's
- scientists and ethnographers found the Northwest Coast a rich
- exotic region for study.
-
- The captain, however, was primarily interested in global
- policy and safe harbors on the Pacific shores, which is why he
- carefully searched the entire coast north of the Columbia. He
- also sent exploring parties inland: one from Puget Sound south to
- the Columbia; one up the Columbia past the Dalles, or rapids, to
- the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Colvile near the junction of the
- Snake and the Columbia; and one south through the Willamette
- Valley to California's San Francisco Bay. The latter expedition
- determined that there were no good harbors south of the Columbia
- and no large rivers flowing from the interior.
-
- Meanwhile, Capt William L. Hudson, in charge of the other
- half of Wilkes's fleet, came to grief of the mouth of the
- Columbia. He lost his flagship Peacock to the treacherous
- currents and sand bars at the mouth of the river. It thus became
- clear to both Hudson and Wilkes that the Columbia estuary was not
- a safe harbor. The only such harbors lay far north of the
- Columbia in or around Puget Sound. Thus Wilkes thought American
- diplomatic efforts should be aimed at securing territory at least
- that far north. But he returned home [1842] under such a cloud
- of acrimony over the methods he used to discipline his seamen
- that Congress authorized only 100 copies of his report to be
- published, and a lengthy court debate ensued as to whether Wilkes
- and Hudson were covering up for bad seamanship when the described
- the mouth of the Columbia as an unsuitable harbor. Neither
- Presidents John Tyler nor James Polk paid much attention to the
- valuable information he gave them. Perhaps the outstanding
- positive result of his expedition was that his extensive
- scientific collections eventually came to form the nucleus of the
- Smithsonian Institution after it was created in 1846. Wilkes
- spent 1844-61 preparing the final report which came out in 19
- volumes.
-
- ~#3
- JOHN CHARLES FREMONT [1813-1890]:
-
- John C. Fremont conducted 5 explorations between 1842-54.
- Called "the Pathfinder" in the public press he actually found few
- new paths himself. Yet, through his published reports, he became
- a symbol of adventure and expansionism. A slipshod explorer and
- scientist, he was glamorous and appealing, a man who always
- looked for the grand gesture that would promote his interests.
-
- Poinsett, Fremont's patron, helped to organize the Army
- Corps of Topographical Engineers while Secretary of War. He then
- obtained a 2nd Lt commission for Fremont at the same time
- assigning him as a civilian to the Corps' first major western
- project: an expedition into the area between the upper
- Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The tour was under the
- direction of Joseph Nicollet the most competent and thorough
- topographer in America at that time. Fremont spent two years
- under Nicollet's direction and instruction.
-
- Back in Washington, Fremont married the daughter of Thomas
- Hart Benton, the powerful expansionist Senator from Missouri.
- The Senator and other expansionist colleagues pushed through
- congress an appropriation of $30,000 to chart the area up to
- South Pass to map the whole area scientifically, covering ground
- poorly defined by trappers more interested in beaver than details
- of elevation and longitude. With Nicollet ill, Fremont's name
- was pushed to the top by his father-in-law. In 1842 Lt Fremont
- of the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers led the expedition
- of 39 men to South Pass, the Green River, and the Wind River
- range.
-
- When Fremont set out from Independence, MO, in May 1843, he
- was part of a cavalcade of emigrants heading west over the Oregon
- Trail. Joseph B. Chiles's party had left for California ahead of
- him, as had Elijah White's caravan bound for Oregon. Sir William
- Drummond Steward headed a large entourage bound for one last hunt
- on the Green River, while William Gilpin was traveling across the
- mountains with visions of a transcontinental railroad dancing in
- his head. Fremont's party was guided by the veteran mountain man
- Tom "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick (he had shot his own left wrist
- during a wild escape from Blackfeet). They were soon joined by 5
- foot 4 inch Kit Carson and Alexis Godey. In an effort to locate
- a new trail, Fremont marched out along the Kansas rather than the
- Platte River, crossed over the Front Range of the Rockies at the
- head of the Cache de la Poudre River, then trekked over the
- barren Laramie Plain to the Sweetwater and South Pass. From
- there, despite his orders, he and his men crossed the Wasatch
- Mountains and gazed upon the Great Salt Lake. "The Pathfinder",
- described the area in such glowing terms that Brigham Young and
- his Mormons may have been influenced to settle this area in years
- to come.
-
- Fremont pushed on, past the British outpost at Fort Hall in
- Idaho to the Columbia River where he paused at the Dalles
- November 8. He sent a party on to the mouth of the Columbia and
- thus technically linked up with the Wilkes expedition, but his
- mind really was set on turning southward in search of the elusive
- east-west river route. On November 23, 1843, he did just that.
- He and his men followed the Des Chutes River for two days, coming
- out on the northern edge of what Fremont was the first to
- recognize as the Great Basin. (In fact he gave it that name.)
- The rest of the journey took them south along the Sierra. In the
- middle of winter, almost in despair of their lives, he and his
- men crossed over the Sierra above Lake Tahoe Feb 6, 1844. They
- finally struggled down from the peaks and followed the American
- River to Capt Johann Sutter's new 50,000 acre ranch, which
- Chiles' emigrant party had already reached over an easier route.
- In crossing the Sierra and descending the American River, Fremont
- and his men had, of course, walked right over California's main
- gold region, which in 6 years would be crowded with gold seekers
- of every description. But the Pathfinder and his men were not
- exploring for gold; they were primarily interested in
- California's possibilities for agricultural settlement by
- Americans. On this account Fremont wrote glowing reports about
- California as a pastoral paradise.
-
- His return march took him across Tehachapi Pass and over the
- Old Spanish Trail across the Great Basin desert to within sight
- of where the modern city of Las Vegas stands today. There he was
- joined by ex-mountain man Joe Walker, who showed him a short cut
- across the Colorado River plateau. Then he traveled along the
- White and Duchesne rivers just below the Uinta Mountains to the
- Bayou Salade or great South Park of Colorado. This stretch
- included some of the wildest and least known parts of the western
- wilderness.
-
- From the parks of Colorado the return journey was over a
- familiar route via the head of the Arkansas River and Bent's Fort
- on the Arkansas near the junction of the Purgatory River. On his
- expedition of 1843-44, Fremont had, in effect, circumnavigated
- the whole West. Clearly, he had not been a pathfinder, but
- rather a political and scientific explorer. He was searching out
- the possibilities for an American occupation of the West. With
- this in mind, and with the substantial aid of Charles Preuss, his
- Prussian cartographer, he made the first overall map of the West
- based on accurate astronomical sightings. He also refused to
- include portions of the West he had not seen, though he made an
- error in connecting Great Salt Lake with the freshwater Utah
- Lake. He did, however, correctly define and label the immense
- Great Basin for the first time. This was perhaps the greatest
- geographical achievement of the trip. He also followed up his
- large comprehensive map with an emigrant map drawn in seven
- sections by Charles Preuss. This became one of the most
- important of all maps of the Oregon and California trails because
- it gave precise distances and detailed information on landmarks,
- river crossings, grazing lands and Indian tribes. In Washington,
- Fremont had difficulty writing his reported and ended up
- dictating it to his wife who added her own promotional prose.
- When Fremont submitted his report and maps to Congress they
- created a sensation and 10,000 copies were reprinted and widely
- distributed. The impression given was that going west was easy
- and exciting. He was the explorer-as-propagandist without equal.
-
- Fremont did not rest on his laurels, however. In the spring
- of 1845 he headed west again (with Walker who had little regard
- for The Pathfinder), ostensibly to explore the US-Mexican border
- country at the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers. After
- journeying to the Upper Arkansas, he sent his second-in command,
- Lt James W Abert, down the Canadian River with his report. Then,
- with a tough crew of seasoned mountain men, he headed west across
- the mountains and the Salt Lake Desert to California. Once in
- California he bid defiance to Mexican and American authorities
- alike and put his men to the service of the Bear Flag Revolution.
-
- For his part in the California Revolt, Fremont was court-
- martialed but pardoned by President Polk. He returned to the
- field in 1848 looking for a route for a transcontinental
- railroad. Despite his failure he claimed it was a successful
- enterprise. Fortune smiled on him when gold was discovered his
- California land value soared and he became wealthy. He served as
- one of the first Senators from California and in 1856 ran in a
- failed attempt for President. Life after that went down hill.
- During the Civil War he was a bungling general. He ended up in
- New York being supported by his wife.
-
- The war with Mexico introduced a greatly increased number of
- army explorers into the West. Virtually all of these military
- explorers were commissioned officers in the Corps of
- Topographical Engineers, now commanded by Col John James Abert
- who had previously been Fremont's assistant. Every main element
- of the invading armies under Generals Zachary Taylor, John E.
- Wool, Stephen Watts Kearny, and Winfield Scott carried a
- complement of Topographical Engineers who aspired to match
- Fremont's spectacular success. The most competent was William H.
- Emory.
-
- ~#4
- WILLIAM H. EMORY [1811-1887]:
-
- The most important work to come out of the war was done by
- Maryland born Lt William H. Emory, who had accompanied General
- Kearny's command [1846] to Santa Fe and then west via the Gila
- River and the Mojave Desert to California. Emory published a
- detailed report of the march, complete with the first accurate
- map of the Southwest. In his report [1848] he made two
- observations that were to have major importance in western and
- American history. First, he decided that much of the Southwest
- was too arid for individual settlement: no enterprise could
- survive without cooperation in the distribution of water.
- Secondly, he declared that "No one who has ever visited this
- country and who is acquainted with the character and value of
- slave labor in the U.S. would ever think of bringing slaves here
- with any view to profit...." The latter sentiment, since Emory
- was a fellow Whig, undoubtedly influenced Daniel Webster's speech
- on the Compromise of 1850 concerning "the imaginary Negro in an
- impossible place."
-
- Emory's war experiences made him probably the country's
- leading expert on the Southwest, and this expertise was soon
- needed. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [1848] ending the
- Mexican War had drawn a boundary based on geographical ideas that
- were vague at best, and in some places completely wrong. To
- correct this, Emory, between 1848 and 1855, was called upon to
- supervise the demarcation of the 1500 mile US-Mexican Boundary
- line from Brownsville on the Rio Grande to San Diego on the
- Pacific. This was a new kind of exploration - regional
- exploration on a vast scale. It resulted in the actual laying
- down of the astronomically determined boundary upon the earth by
- a system of markers. Most important, it resulted in maps and an
- extensive regional survey of geology, flora, fauna, archeology
- and Indian tribes. It also pointed out the only reasonable route
- for a future railroad to Southern California. When this land was
- given up by Congress Emory's protest led to the Gadsden Purchase
- in 1855 for $10 million. His report provided a model for all
- future exploration. Thus Emory was a pathfinder for the new age
- of locomotion and steam.
-
- ~#5
- Railroad Surveys
-
- The most spectacular Army exploration of the period came in
- 1853, when Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ordered the
- Topographical Corps into the field to conduct a series of
- explorations and surveys across the West to determine the most
- feasible route for a transcontinental railroad. Isaac I.
- Stephens, seconded by Capt George B. McClellan, led a northern
- survey between the 47th and 49th parallels that sought to connect
- the Great Lakes with the Pacific Coast. Lt John W. Gunnison led
- another party out along the 38th parallel below the Uinta
- Mountains and far south of the Great Salt Lake. Lt Amiel Weeks
- Whipple traversed the 35th parallel west from Santa Fe. And Lts.
- John G. Parke and John B. Pope each worked from each end of a
- southwestern or 32nd parallel route. Park and Lt Henry L. Abbott
- also explored north and south along the Pacific Coast for a route
- that would link up the coastal ports with whatever railroads
- might be built. There were also other parties in the field.
- Fremont, now resigned from the army, led a party along a line
- close to his march of 1845, and they almost perished in the deep
- snows of the southern Rockies. (The great mountain man Bill
- Williams did perish trying to retrieve their gear.) Also, the
- Texas engineer, Andrew B. Gray, led a State-sponsored survey out
- across the Pecos River that he hoped would connect up with any
- line moving west from El Paso del Norte.
-
- Only one great tragedy occurred on the surveys: Lt Gunnison
- and most of his men were massacred by the Ute Indians on the
- Sevier River in Utah. Thereupon Lt Edward G. Beckwith assumed
- command and traced out a route from Great Salt Lake across to
- California. He was aided by Capt Howard Stansbury's careful
- survey and map of Great Salt Lake in 1849-50.
-
- The result of the Pacific Railroad Surveys in immediate
- practical terms was nil. Each of the expedition leaders
- proclaimed his route to the Pacific the "most practicable" one,
- which left the whole question deadlocked by sectional politics in
- Congress. Secretary Davis clearly favored the southern route in
- his final report, but factions split the South as would-be
- terminal cities all up and down the Mississippi argued for the
- honor. It was not until the summer of 1866 that James T. Evans,
- working under the command of Col. Grenville M. Dodge, discovered
- Lone Tree (now Evans) Pass over the Rocky Mountains and made the
- Union Pacific portion of a transcontinental railroad possible. A
- Republican-Unionist Administration under Abraham Lincoln had long
- since decreed that the route would be a northern one, with its
- eastern terminus at Omaha across the Mississippi from Council
- Bluffs. As early as 1860 Californians had determined the Donner
- Pass was suitable for a railroad over the Sierra, and by July 1,
- 1862, when the Pacific Railroad Bill was signed into law,
- Sacramento had been chosen for the western or Central Pacific
- terminus.
-
- The transcontinental railroad was finally completed on May
- 10, 1869, when construction crews and dignitaries of the Central
- Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met and joined track at
- Promontary, Utah. Over a thousand miles long, and scaling two
- immense mountain ranges and the vast stretches of the Great
- Basin, it was the engineering wonder of the age. It was also a
- significant achievement in the history of exploration - one that
- has often been overlooked because it was conducted by teams of
- surveyors and engineers rather than individual military heroes
- like Fremont. It also brought the death of the buffalo and much
- of the Indian plains culture.
-
- In addition to the railroad surveys, throughout the 1840s
- and 50s army explorers conducted what amounted to a "great
- reconnaissance " of the American West. Many expeditions crossed
- the Southwest, for example. In 1849 Lt James Hervey Simpson led
- the first expedition since the days of the Spaniards into the
- Navajo stronghold at Canyon de Chelly. High up on the canyon
- walls he and his men discovered the lost cliff dwelling of the
- Anasazi. In 1851 Capt Lorenzo Sitgreaves trekked across the
- Southwest just below the Grand Canyon in an early search for a
- wagon or railroad route. Six years later aboard a prefabricated
- steamboat Lt Joseph Christmas Ives chugged up the Colorado River
- to Black Canyon, then marched overland and down into the Grand
- Canyon at Diamond Creek. He and his party were the first white
- man ever to reach the floor of the Canyon. Along with his party
- was the geologist John Strong Newberry who saw the possibilities
- of such a deep descent into the earth and traced out the first
- important stratigraphic column in the West. His description of
- the different layers of earth that he could observe from the
- canyon floor provided a measuring stick for all future geologists
- in the West. Ives' report on the expedition was a masterpiece in
- both literary and scientific terms. Not the least of its
- contributions, besides Newberry's column, was the first relief
- map of the West drawn by the Prussian, F.W. von Egloffsten.
- Hardly had Ives finished his expedition at the Hopi Villages of
- Oraibi and Moenkipi than Capt John N. Macomb discovered and
- described the junction of the Green and the Grand Rivers in
- western Colorado, thus fitting a key piece into the puzzle of
- western geography. Macomb and his men also saw abundant remains
- of the lost Anasazi civilization as they marched along the San
- Juan River, though they missed the grandest ruin of them all -
- Mesa Verde.
-
- Farther north, Lt Simpson crossed the Great Basin once again
- in search of a railroad route while Capt William F. Raynolds
- explored the Dakota Badlands and the Upper Missouri. Along with
- Raynolds were two paleontologists, Fielding Bradford Meek and
- Ferdinand V. Hayden. Together they worked out the cretaceous
- geological horizon of the Dakota country and discovered great
- caches of extinct animal bones. When they brought their
- collections back to Philadelphia they provided Dr. Joseph Leidy
- with the material for the first important book on Western
- American paleontology (The Ancient Fauna of Nebraska). Leidy
- also found the remains of tiny primitive horses among the
- collections and published a paper showing how the horse had
- evolved though time. (This came out just before Charles Darwin
- published his revolutionary work on evolution.) And finally, as
- if to close out exploration in the continental U.S. just on the
- eve of the Civil War, Lt John G. Park, working with the British
- Royal Engineers, laid out through the Northwest wilderness the
- last boundary between the U.S. and Canada.
-
- All of these expeditions were described in lavishly
- illustrated reports published by Congress. Taken together the
- reports represent the most comprehensive body of information
- about the West up to that time. They included reports on
- geology, plants, animals, birds, ethnography and demonstrated the
- value of teamwork in exploration. They also included ecological
- studies with the aim of populating the land. And finally each
- expedition produced a detailed map of the country it traversed.
- All of these were published but in addition Lt Gov Kemble Warren
- compiled all the data from these maps and those of all the other
- Army expeditions into the first accurate comprehension map of the
- West. After the pioneering work of Lewis and Clark it was
- perhaps the most important map of the West ever drawn.
-
- ~#6
- Post Civil War Surveys
-
- While explorations remained, the period of great discovery
- was coming to a close. Federal or state surveys dominate the
- post Civil War period. California hired Josia Dwight Whitney as
- early as 1860 to lead a survey team that was to explore the whole
- State in search of mineral resources, completed in 1870. In 1869
- and 1871 Maj John Wesley Powell set off down the Green River in
- an effort to explore the mighty Colorado. One result of his
- efforts was a publication which called for restraint on the
- headlong settlement of the West. Clarence King explored the West
- (1867) from the Sierra to the Front Range of the Rockies along
- the 40th parallel (and took time off to expose The Great Diamond
- Hoax). Still to come was the exploration of the Yellowstone by
- Langford, Washburn and others; Wheelers exploration of the
- deserts of the Great Basin and the Grand Canyon by boat up the
- Colorado River; Hayden who explored the Rockies for coal and
- other minerals (and promoted a Yellowstone Park bill - passed
- 1872); Jackson and Holmes who discovered ancient cliff dwellings
- of the Anasazi in Mancos Canyon; and cowboys Wetherill and Mason
- who discovered the Cliff Dwellings of Mesa Verde in 1888. These
- and others continued the exiting story of the explorer in America.
- ************************* The End *************************
-