Kearney, consisted of
two batteries of artillery, commanded by Major Clark; three squadrons
of the First United States Dragoons, commanded by Major Sumner;
the First Regiment of Missouri Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Doniphan,
and two companies of infantry, commanded by Captain Aubrey.
This force marched in detached columns from Fort Leavenworth, and
on the 1st of August, 1846, concentrated in camp on the Santa Fe
Trail, nine miles below Bent's Fort.
Accompanying the expedition was a party of the United States
topographical engineers, under command of Lieutenant W. H. Emory.[25]
In writing of this expedition, so far as its march relates to the
Old Santa Fe Trail, I shall quote freely from Emory's report and
Doniphan's historian.[26]
The practicability of marching a large army over the waste,
uncultivated, uninhabited prairie regions of the West was universally
regarded as problematical, but the expedition proved completely
successful. Provisions were conveyed in wagons, and beef-cattle
driven along for the use of the men. These animals subsisted
entirely by grazing. To secure them from straying off at night,
they were driven into corrals formed of the wagons, or tethered to
an iron picket-pin driven into the ground about fifteen inches.
At the outset of the expedition many laughable scenes took place.
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