Fort Dodge, Kansas, reports and journals of scouts and marches

Abstract: Reports, journals, and memoranda (1 in. ; 1 v.) by officers in charge, scouts, and soldiers reporting to Fort Dodge (Fort Dodge, Kan.) and superiors in compliance with special orders. The records primarily relate to scouts, marches, and expeditions from Fort Dodge against Indians. The reports document the scouts' or soldiers' activities concerning scouting lands, locating Indian tribes, pursuing train robbers, pursuing supply thieves, and other American Indian encounters. One order documents the killing of [Edward?] Chambers by the Osage. A good source documenting westward expansion, the "wild West," and the Indian wars.

Administrative History:

The establishment of Fort Dodge was a direct outgrowth of the Plains campaigns of 1865. By January 1865, the Plains Indians had been driven from the area between the Platte and the Arkansas Rivers, but the tribes that had fled north of the Platte and south of the Arkansas continued to threaten the settlements of western Kansas and the immigrant routes west. Therefore, Maj. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, the commander of the Department of the Missouri, devised a two-pronged campaign to take place in the spring of 1865 against the northern and southern Plains Indians. The campaign against the Kiowas, Apaches, and Arrapahoes to the south of the Arkansas River was to be led by Bvt. Brig. Gen. James H. Ford, the commanding officer of the District of the Upper Arkansas.

On March 17, Ford received word that large bands of Comanches, Apaches, and Kiowas were encamped on the Cimarron and on Crooked Creek. When this report was relayed to General Dodge, he ordered Ford "to make arrangements to put a post at or near" the site of old Fort Atkinson, an abandoned army post near the Cimarron Crossing of the Arkansas River. On April 5, Capt. Henry Pearce left Fort Lamed, Kans., with a company of Kansas volunteers to establish the new post. He selected a site located 6 miles east of Fort Atkinson that both guarded the Santa Fe Trail and stood midway between the two major Indian crossings on the Arkansas River, the Cimarron and the Mulberry. Captain Pearce officially established the post on April 10, 1865, and named it in honor of the departmental commander, General Dodge.

Although the Plains Campaigns of 1865 ended with the signing of the Treaty of the Little Arkansas on October 17, 1865, Fort Dodge remained an important factor in the settlement of the West. Because of its location in western Kansas, the garrison of Fort Dodge was assigned the duty of guarding the Arkansas River from central Kansas into the Colorado Territory. From 1865 to 1878, troops stationed at Fort Dodge were almost continually involved in scouts and marches and played major roles in the campaigns of Gen. Winfield S. Hancock in 1867, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan in 1868 and 1869, and Gen. Nelson A. Miles in 1874 and 1875.

After the Miles campaign in 1875, the troops at Fort Dodge were mainly occupied with routine garrison duties and were only occasionally involved in skirmishes with Indians. As early as 1878, Maj. Gen. John Pope, commander of the Department of the Missouri, believing that Fort Dodge no longer had any military
value, petitioned the War Department to close the post and transfer its garrison to either Fort Riley or Fort Leavenworth. Pope's proposal received strong support from people throughout Kansas who wanted the fort's 43,000 acre reservation opened for settlement. On December 15, 1880, the Secretary of the Interior
was directed to open approximately two-thirds of the reservation to settlers. On April 5, 1882, the garrison at Fort Dodge received orders to prepare to abandon the post. Although the last company was transferred from Fort Dodge to Camp Supply, Indian Territory, on October 2, 1882, the post quartermaster
and several enlisted men remained until December 1 in order to complete the removal of equipment and supplies.

Following the closing of Fort Dodge, the War Department appointed a civilian to serve as caretaker of the buildings and equipment remaining there. In 1889 the part of the reservation containing the fort's buildings was transferred to the Department of the Interior, and the remaining reservation lands were opened to settlers. The Kansas Legislature then petitioned Congress to sell the post buildings and grounds to the State of Kansas. Congress agreed, and the post barracks, hospital, and storehouses
were converted into a State soldiers' home that opened in February 1890 and is still in operation.

After the abandonment of Fort Dodge, its records were sent to the Adjutant General's Office in Washington, D.C. Clerks in that office numbered the volumes and prepared lists of the numbered books. The number assigned to each volume by the Adjutant General's Office appears in parentheses in the table of contents to this microfilm publication. These numbers are useful only as a more precise method of identifying the volume. For several volumes whose numbers have been lost due to decaying bindings,
an "n.n." for "no number" is given.

Scope and content: The several small series relating to Indians in general and to scouts, marches, and expeditions against Indians include a bound volume of narrative reports, journals, and memorandums of scouts and marches. The bound volume contains copies of reports, journals, and memorandums dated 1873-79, about three-fourths of which were submitted between April and December 1874. Written by the officer in charge of the march or the scout, most were submitted to either the commanding officer or the post adjutant at Fort Dodge; a few were forwarded through the post commander to the Department of the Missouri or to officers commanding field units. The volume is arranged chronologically and contains occasional cross-references to related endorsements.

Related materials: The correspondence of the quartermaster at Fort Dodge and the records of the Department of the Missouri and its subordinate districts to which much of the post correspondence was forwarded are also in Record Group 393 at the National Archives (U.S.) The quartermaster's consolidated correspondence file in Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, contains correspondence and blueprints relating to the cemetery and to the construction and repair of buildings at Fort Dodge. Inspection reports of Fort Dodge for 1875 and 1879-85 are filed with the letters received by the Inspector General in Records of the Office of the Inspector General, Record Group 159.

In Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917, Record Group 94, are post returns for Fort
Dodge, January 1866-October 1882. The returns are monthly reports that were submitted to the Adjutant General by the post commander. They show the names of organizations and officers stationed at Fort Dodge and statistical information, such as the number of enlisted men present, the total number of officers present, and the number of sick on post. These returns are reproduced on roll 319 of NARS Microfilm
Publication M617, Returns From U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916.

Other related records in Record Group 94 include a military reservation file, containing several letters relating to Fort Dodge and references to other War Department documents or to secondary sources, and two volumes of Fort Dodge medical histories for the period 1868-82. These volumes contain the monthly sanitary reports submitted by the post surgeon to the Surgeon General. The first volume also contains a brief history and description of the post.

Finding Aid Bibliography: United States, National Archives and Records Service. Headquarters Records of Fort Dodge, Kansas, 1866-1882. Washington : National Archives Trust Fund Board, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1977.

Use and reproduction: Public record

Reproduction: Microfilm. Washington [D.C.] : The National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1960. Kansas Historical Society microfilm roll MS 151, available for research or inter-library loan.

Holder of originals: Originals at the National Archives (U.S.) (Washington, D.C.)

General Note: Similar to part of roll 25 of the Headquarters records of Fort Dodge, Kansas, 1866-1882 (National Archives (U.S.) microfilm publication M989, Kansas Historical Society roll MS 1005).