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CHAPTER THIRTEEN Westward Once More
- University of North Texas Press
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106 On May 13, 1846, a Congress caught up in the fever for westward expansion declared war on Mexico, and Baptiste Charbonneau found himself enlisted in a mission that was to change his life. As an adult as he had been as a child, he was to be in the vanguard of one of the great westward movements of nineteenth century America. Baptiste signed on as a guide to General Stephen W. Kearny on an expedition to occupy New Mexico and California, and Kearny assigned him to the Mormon Battalion.1 Members of the rapidly growing Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) church had not much wanted to join the U.S. Army. As they saw it, the army had failed to protect them from persecution and mob action that had driven them from Illinois and Missouri to Iowa. Their leaders, however, had a different view. One, former Postmaster General Amos Kendall, urged President James Knox Polk to “assist our emigration by enlisting one thousand of our men, arming, equipping and establishing them in California to defend the country.”2 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Westward Once More Westward Once More 107 At the White House, other advantages were seen. Polk’s cabinet ordered Kearny to enlist a few hundred Saints “to conciliate them, attach them to our country, and prevent them from taking part against us.” At the urging of Brigham Young and other leaders , reluctant Mormons agreed to enlist, and a battalion of about 500 was formed. All but six soldiers, their commander and a few regular army officers were members of the church.3 Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, the Virginia-born son of a Revolutionary War surgeon and a veteran of frontierArmy posts, was named to command the battalion. Cooke reached Santa Fe on October 7, assumed command and received orders from Kearny to “open a wagon road to the Pacific.”4 Kearny had gone on west ahead of him, taking Baptiste and the other guides. A few days out of Santa Fe, Colonel W. H. Emery spotted what he thought were cedar trees, so far away that they looked like shrubs. Baptiste knew better. “Indians! They are Apache,” he called out. Emery acknowledged that the guide’s “more practical eye” detected human figures in what he thought was shrubbery.5 Kearny told Cooke he would have his guides reconnoiter and return to Santa Fe to advise him on the best route to follow. He seemed also to have a pretty firm idea what route this would be— the one he had chosen, following the Rio Grande to somewhere near present-day Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and then cutting west overland to the Gila River.6 When Baptiste, dispatched by Kearny, joined the battalion near Albuquerque on October 24, he told Cooke that he and the other guides disagreed with the general. They favored a longer route that would take them south of the present Mexican border and then to the San Pedro River and downstream to its confluence with the Gila southeast of today’s Phoenix, Arizona. Cooke was skeptical. “They did not make a thorough examination by any means , and the practicability of the route . . . is still a problem.” [18.205.114.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:35 GMT) Chapter Thirteen 108 His doubts aside, the members of the battalion knew their mission was clear: they must get to the Pacific.7 Their commander, a full-bearded man with a stern gaze and a beak-like nose, was a strict disciplinarian who sprinkled his commands with “a rare combination of swear words.” But he gave Baptiste his due. No less than twenty-nine times, Cooke mentioned his services in his journal—selecting routes, trapping beaver, finding water, establishing camps, discovering passes, scouting and, more successfully than his father, hunting grizzlies. He may also have been conversant with Indian sign language. Captain Henry S. Turner, acting adjutant-general of the Army of the West, informing Cooke that an Apache chief had promised to send “some of his young men to conduct you to a good route,” added that the Apaches would not know Spanish but “it is probable that Charboneaux will understand [and] make himself understood by them by signs.”8 As they began their trek though rough, broken country dotted here and there with ancient ruins, Baptiste and the other guides “were fearful and quite downcast” at rumors that Mexicans in the area might attack them. Cooke, seeking to dispel their fears, “maintained an air...