Exploring Iowa in 1844

Captain James Allen (1806-1846) graduated from West Point in the same year as Robert E. Lee.  Trained as an engineer, Allen was posted at Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan Territory.  In 1832, he was part of an expedition along the upper reaches of the Mississippi River.  Attached to the First Dragoons, he saw duty throughout the west, from St. Louis to Chicago to Fort Leavenworth.  In 1842, he was posted in Iowa, Captain of Company I.  In 1843, he established and commanded Fort Des Moines.  The following year, he set out to explore north and west.

The details of his 2-month expedition (August to October 1844) are available here.  Often, such documents are mostly an account of daily tasks, the lay of the land, notable flora and fauna, and the occasional bit of excitement.  This one certainly has most of these but lacks the excitement.  Indeed, the most exciting parts are when the men are stuck in the mud during a heavy rain or one of the wagons breakdown.  On several occasions, the column - Allen's command consisted of approximately 70 men - encountered Souix warriors, but nothing came of it.  The Souix monitored the soldiers but there were no hostilities.  Allen's account was submitted to the House of Representatives in March of 1846.

There are multiple maps and even an additional account of the expedition from an anonymous soldier in his command.  Having lived in Iowa for many years, it is interesting to see it as a wilderness to be explored.

In 1844, Joseph Smith - founder of the Mormon Religion - was murdered in Illinois and his followers fled.  Many were encamped in Iowa with plans to migrate further west.  In 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico.  Troops were needed.  Captain James Allen recruited 500 Mormons from among those in Iowa; thus the Mormon Battalion was formed.  The battalion set out from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to rendezvous with the Army of the West in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  N.B. Neither Iowa nor Kansas were states yet.  Lt. Col. Allen fell ill and was unable to depart with his troops, remaining at Fort Leavenworth with the intention of catching up later.  He died on August 23, 1846.

Iowa became the 29th State on December 28, 1846.

The Conquest of New Mexico and California

In 1878, Brigadier General Philip St. George Cooke penned The Conquest of New Mexico and California: An Historical and Personal Narrative.  It opens in July of 1846, when Cooke was a lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons.  Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny had been given command of the Army of the West and set out to conquer New Mexico and California.  Shortly after arriving in New Mexico, Kearny ordered Cooke to ride ahead and demand the surrender of Santa Fe.  After a refusal, he departed with the witty comment, "I'll call again in a week."  Indeed, when he came back with the rest of the army, Santa Fe fell without a shot fired.  The army spent the next month securing the territory before Kearny set out for California.  He had not gone far when word of the Mormon Battalion arrived.  Its original commander, Colonel James Allen, had died.  Kearny placed Cooke in charge of the battalion and ordered him to make a road to California.  And here follows a rather dreary accounting of a trek across the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona via the Gila River.  There are the occasional bits of excitement (battle with wild bulls, Charboneaux's encounter with bears, the capture of Tucson), but it is mostly a bland narrative of thirst and starvation.  Upon his arrival in California, Cooke abandons his personal chronicle and relates the reports of others.  Thus, he details Kearny's disastrous battle as San Pasqual, squabbles with Fremont and Stockton, and the successful campaign to recapture Los Angeles.  He also outlines some battles in the bay area.  The allocation of his battalion is only vaguely discussed.

Mostly disappointing.  Being a first-person account, I had expected a lot more.  Not surprisingly, his desert crossing sounds like a balance sheet; 6 mules died today, acquired 11 mules from local Indians, no water in 2 days, etc.  That was surely important information, but it makes for very dry reading.  Of note, he did detail Fremont's march south, which saw multiple encounters with Californios who managed to delay the California Battalions' arrival in Los Angeles.  I do not recall reading that before.  Of course, Kearny captured Los Angeles without Fremont but his coming from the north while Kearny was approaching from the south would surely have made defending the city more difficult.  Here was a rare success for the Californios.

Cooke resigned his position as the Lt. Colonel of the Mormon Battalion in May 1847 and, once again just a lieutenant, joined Kearny on the march back to Fort Leavenworth.

This is a book only for the diehard historian.  Skip.

Kearny's March

In 1846, both military forces and civilian wagon trains crossed the Missouri River and set out for the West.  Winston Groom, author of Forest Gump, details the various movements and shows how they formed the American West.

Stephen Watts Kearny was the commander on the western frontier, based in Fort Levenworth.  Father of the American Cavalry, he was ordered by President Polk to march his 300 dragoons, a regiment of mounted Missouri Volunteers, and a battalion of Mormons west and capture Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Once secured, he was to continue on to California and claim it for the United States.  Having captured New Mexico without firing a shot, most likely thanks to bribing the territorial governor, Kearny spent a month in the area to make sure all was well before moving on to California.  At this point, he dispatched the mounted Missouri Volunteers - commanded by Colonel Alexander Doniphan - to make his way south for the planned rendezvous with General Wool and his army at Chihuahua.  Kearny would take his dragoons directly to California while Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke would build a road to California with the Mormon Battalion.  Kearny had hardly begun when he met Kit Carson, who was returning from California.  The state was already conquered!

Kit Carson had set out for California in 1845 with John C. Fremont the Pathfinder.  Fremont had a force of 60 heavily armed men who had been traipsing through California.  Even though he could not have known the war had begun, he aided local American settlers in the Bear Flag Revolt.  With the help of the US Navy, the state was captured in short order.  Fremont had enlisted the California Brigade of 300 men and worked hand in glove with Commodore Stockton.  Fremont had sent Kit Carson with the news.  When Kearny arrived, Fremont - who was part of the army - chose to follow Stockton's orders rather than those of an army general.  This did not end well for him and led to his court martial.

Meanwhile, Doniphan and his Missourians headed down the Rio Grande and, north of El Paso, had a battle with a Mexican Army.  Despite their unkempt appearance and lax discipline, they soundly trounced their opponents.  Doniphan waited in El Paso for news from General Wool, eventually learning that he had been redirected to Saltillo to fortify General Taylor's position.  Though it was never intended that the volunteer regiment would act alone against Chihuahua, Doniphan boldly struck into the desert to capture the city.  At the end of February 1847, Doniphan attacked a much larger Mexican Army, where his ragamuffin army once again trounced the Mexicans.

The Mormons had had a difficult time in the American Midwest.  Bounced from state to state on account of growing discrimination, the Mormons finally fled west with plans of leaving the United States altogether.  They were camped on the banks of the Missouri River.  As chance would have it, President Polk requested that the Mormons raise a battalion from their ranks and join the war.  Brigham Young saw this as an income stream and a way to get many of the Saints beyond the intolerance of the Midwest.  Soon, 500 Mormons were enlisted at Fort Levenworth and marched to New Mexico.  Too slow to keep pace with Kearny, they also had to take an alternative route to accommodate their wagons.  On the way, the Mormon Battalion fought wild bulls and captured Tucson.

Leaving from Independence, MO, the Donner-Reed Party joined a large wagon train on the Oregon Trail.  However, they had California in mind and left the larger train to take the untried Hastings Cutoff which was said to save 300 miles.  Of course, the route was impractical for wagons.  They tried to race through the pass before the snows arrived but instead got trapped when snows arrived before they were through.  With nowhere near enough food to survive winter in the mountains, starvation and cannibalism followed.  In the spring, after the survivors were rescued, General Kearny went through the pass and saw the carnage.

Where most of the books that cover the Mexican-American War focus on the campaigns of Taylor and Scott, this one is almost exclusively concerned with the western theater of the war, though there is a chapter detailing the Battle of Monterrey, which was part of Taylor's Campaign in Northern Mexico.  Here is an outstanding account of the various westward movements that took place in 1846 and 1847, opening the American West to a flood of immigrants.

Highly recommended.