Colonel Dodge's Journal.

Washington: Government Printing Office (?), 1836. 24th Congress, 1st Session, House Doc. No. 181. 37pp, 2 folding maps. Minor browning text and maps, separation on one map fold repaired, else very good. (I'm listing this under the document title and commander. The bibliographies cite Lt. Gaines P. Kingsbury as author and the title Journal of the March of a detachment of Dragoons, under the command of Colonel Dodge, during the summer of 1835.) In 1835 Col. Henry Dodge led 120 mounted soldiers of the newly created First Dragoon Regiment onto the plains to awe the natives into submission. The column ascended the Platte to the front range, dropped south to the Arkansas, and returned via the Santa Fe Trail. The expedition was the most extensive military campaign yet undertaken in the West. Their mission was to impress the Indians, to make peace among the tribes and establish friendly relations between them and the United States, and to investigate conditions along the Mexican border, which was then the Arkansas River. The route of the expedition duplicated in part that of Stephen H. Long in 1820, but Dodge's party was much more successful in the achievement of its objectives, and it demonstrated the effectivenss of mounted forces on the western prairies. The two folding maps that accompany the document illustrate the policy implemented during the 1820's and '30's to peacefully relocate eastern Indians into the trans-Mississippi west. One is titled Map Showing the Lands assigned to Emigrant Indians West of Arkansas & Missouri. Its author is not named, but Wheat attributes it to Lt. Washington Hood and says it is "an important historical map." It shows more than 20 various sized allotments made to the tribes in what was thought to be worthless land in the future states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma. Statistical tables to one side list population and land holding of groups both east and west of the Mississippi. The other map is unnamed and shows the route taken by Dodge's expedition northwest from Fort Leavenworth through the territory of the Kickapoos and Otoes, past the "Medicine Lodge of the Rees" and the "Snakes and Crows War Ground." There is an early cartographic mention of Pike's Peak, in the southwest is Santa Fe and the "Waggon Road to St. Louis." On this map is the legend, "Estimated distance 1645 miles, by Lieut. (Enoch) Steen, United States Dragoons." Wheat calls it a "very well executed map." The report and maps are disbound, one map has repaired fold separations. Laid in a clamshell box. Wheat 418, 421, W-C-B 63, Howes K161. Item #20559

Price: $1,800.00

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