( In 1824 Brig. Gen. Henry Atkinson and Indian Agent Benj...)
In 1824 Brig. Gen. Henry Atkinson and Indian Agent Benjamin O'Fallon traveled up the Missouri River, along with 475 soldiers of the First and Sixth Infantry regiments. Their mission: to negotiate peace treaties with tribes along the Missouri River, and to secure their promise to trade exclusively with American citizens. It was hoped this combination of military power and proffered friendship would put an end to Indian attacks on American fur trappers and traders. The full record of this early military expedition is now available. The diaries of General Atkinson and Maj. Stephen Watts Kearny describe the trip from St. Louis to Fort Atkinson in the fall of 1824, the expedition from the fort to the Yellowstone River and back in 1825, and the return of a portion of the troops to St. Louis in 1826, while the diary of Angus Lewis Langham, the expedition's secretary, describes the passage of the wheel boat Antelope from St. Louis to Fort Atkinson in early spring of 1825. This fully annotated volume also includes a discussion of the early use of the wheel boat to travel the Missouri and the expedition's financial records.
https://www.amazon.com/Wheel-Boats-Missouri-Henry-Atkinson/dp/0917298691?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0917298691
Henry Atkinson was born in 1782 in Person County, North Carolina, United States to John Atkinson and Sarah Batt.
His father received land grants from the colonial government in 1748 and 1750. By 1785, his landholdings totaled 6, 100 acres in the present Person and Caswell counties. When John Atkinson died in 1792, he left 3, 665 acres and seventeen slaves.
At the age of eighteen, Henry Atkinson inherited a thousand acres in Caswell County.
He was among the ten trustees who obtained the charter for Caswell Academy, a local free school. He became clerk and then treasurer of the school's board of trustees.
In 1804 - 1805 Atkinson ventured into commerce, establishing a small store, but the business failed. Whether his agricultural enterprises failed similarly or whether he merely felt disinclined to continue the life of a planter is uncertain, but in either case, Atkinson entered the U. S. Army on 1 July 1808 as a captain in the Third Infantry.
On the reorganization of the army after the War of 1812 he was appointed (May 17, 1815) colonel of the 6th Infantry.
In 1818, Atkinson was placed in command of the military district consisting of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Missouri Territory, and he and the Sixth moved west. Although the territory underwent frequent nominal changes and his own supervision varied from a de jure to a de facto one, this vast frontier area was to be Atkinson's predominant domain until his death.
In 1819 he was assigned to the command of the Yellowstone expedition, a grandiose project, fathered by the secretary of war, John C. Calhoun, for taking an army of 1, 100 men to the mouth of the Yellowstone, as a warning to the Indians and the British fur traders.
Nothing further came of the project except the exploratory journeys, in the summer of 1820, of Maj. Stephen H. Long to Pike's Peak and of Capt. Matthew J. Magee to the mouth of the Minnesota.
On the authorization by Congress in 1824 of another expedition to the upper Missouri he was assigned to the command and was also appointed one of two commissioners (his colleague being Benjamin O'Fallon, the Indian agent) to make treaties with the Indians.
With a force of 476 men he left St. Louis on March 20, 1825, held councils with a number of tribes, and arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 17, where he met Gen. Ashley, returning from the Rockies with his first cargo of furs.
A few days later, giving safe escort to Ashley, he started for home, and after halting at several points to make treaties, arrived in St. Louis on Oct. 20, without the loss of a boat or a man.
He selected the site for the historic post of Jefferson Barracks, ten miles south of St. Louis, which was occupied July 10, 1826, and which subsequently became his home.
In July, on the news of a serious outbreak among the Winnebagos, he hurried to Prairie du Chien, and by a swift concentration of troops, restored peace.
The last ten years of Atkinson's life were frustrating ones. Young officers superseded him in the actual command of the expanding frontier. He became chiefly a paper-shuffling intermediary. He grew irascible and evinced signs of approaching senility. In 1838, President Martin Van Buren offered him the first governorship of the new Iowa Territory, but the colonel immediately spurned the appointment without specifying reasons. His last important military achievement was the supervision of the westward removal of the Winnebago Indians to northern Iowa in 1840. In the process, he established the last of three Fort Atkinsons, this one built for the protection of the Sauks and Foxes about thirty-five miles west of Prairie du Chien.
His remaining days were spent at Jefferson Barracks, where he died of dysentery.
( In 1824 Brig. Gen. Henry Atkinson and Indian Agent Benj...)
Atkinson took a balanced approach to the problem of white-Native American conflict in the West. He often criticized white settlers and traders for causing problems and tried to ensure that allegations of wrongdoing were investigated prior to engaging in operations to punish Native Americans. He also tried to limit and even prohibit the sale or trade of alcohol to the Native Americans.
Atkinson was a brave man who was highly regarded by those who knew him.
He married Mary Ann Bullitt Steuart on January 16, 1826 in Louisville, and they had a son, Edward.
During the Revolution, John served as a delegate to the Hillsborough provincial congress (August 1775), a member of the Hillsborough Committee of Safety, and, at three different times, a member of the House of Commons. In addition, he was a justice of the peace in Orange County from 1776 to 1788. He married Francis Dickens after his first wife's death.
Little is known about her. She died shortly after Atkinson's birth, leaving six children.
She was married twice. After Atkinson's death she married Major Adam Duncan Steuart on Mar 5, 1844. Both of her husbands had military career in the United States Army. She had two children, Edward Graham Atkinson and Adam Steuart (died young).
Edward was involved in the Fur Trade in Upper Missouri and the Territories. He was also a member of the firm, D. G. FOWLER & CO., of Paducah, Kentucky.
