The Army of the Early West

As tension mounted before the Civil War, bitter feuds erupted in the West between free-states and pro-slavers but the war did little to stem the tide of miners and farmers going west.  To make way for the whites, the government tried to confine the increasingly restive Indians on reservations run by Indian Affairs agents.  The agents were often dishonest and usually ignored treaty boundaries, so Indian uprisings kept the US Army busy in the West for 30 years.

In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the Army forces in the West numbered only about 10,000 men to cover 2 1/2 million square miles. They operated from isolated army forts with communication and coordination made even more difficult by the vast region's division into six military departments, each directed by a different commander.  (After the war these departments were reorganized into two).  Usually poorly equipped and badly fed, the soldiers had to defend settlers, most of whom  came by the Oregon Trail and California Trail.  They had to protect miners and ranchers, help survey new routes, deter Indian raids, and engage in occasional battles with hostile tribesmen.  During the civil war many of the western soldiers were called back east where most of them wanted to be anyway!

Next time...The Great Pow-Wow
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 21,  1806, after nearly two-and-a-half years spent exploring the western wilderness, the Corps of Discovery arrived at the frontier village of La Charette, the first white settlement they had seen since leaving behind the outposts of eastern civilization in 1804."