destined for the New Mexico trade. From that time Kansas City and Westport continued to acquire more and more of this overland commerce, so that by 1850 they had secured its complete monopoly.
According to the record kept by Messrs. Hays & Co. at Council Grove, there were engaged in the New Mexico trade in 1860, 5,984 men; 2,170 wagons; 464 horses; 5,933 mules; 17,836 oxen. The wagons were loaded with fifty-five hundred pounds each on an average, making an aggregate of six thousand tons! The capital employed in carrying on this transportation for this season alone was not far from two million dollars!
To protect this trade and the western frontier from the depredations of the Indians the Government in 1827 posted a portion of the Third Regiment of United States troops, numbering about 200 men, where Fort Leavenworth now stands, under command of Major Baker. This post was named after the Colonel of this regiment, Henry H. Leavenworth. It was at first called a cantonment and the title of Fort was not applied until 1832. For several years after its establishment the troops were so greatly afflicted by disease that in 1829 it was temporarily reduced—the most of the troops being sent upon the prairies. In 1830 the Sixth Regiment of Infantry superseded the Third; and in 1835 it was commanded by the Third Division of Dragoons under Colonel Dodge, who, in 1845, made an expedition to Pike's Peak and back, in which he cultivated the friendship of the Prairie Indians.[1] Fort Leavenworth attracted but little attention until the breaking out of the war with Mexico and the gold excitement in California when it became a great outfitting post for western travel and trade.
Soon after the admission of Missouri as a State into the Union, large cessions of land were secured to the United States from the natives west of that State. The Government then conceived the design and perfected a plan for the transfer
- ↑ American State Papers.
