Fort Union National Monument
| Fort Union National Monument | |||
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| Location: | New Mexico , United States | ||
| Specialty: | Historic U.S. Army Fort on the Santa Fe Trail | ||
| Next city: | Las Vegas , New Mexico | ||
| Surface: | 2.9 km² | ||
| Founding: | April 5th 1956 | ||
| Visitors: | 11,600 (2005) | ||
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Fort Union National Monument is a memorial of the type of a National Monument in northeastern US -Bundesstaats New Mexico . It preserves a historic military base that was laid out in 1851 to control the New Mexico territory conquered in the Mexican-American War of 1846/48 and to protect the trade trains on the Santa Fe Trail from Indian raids.
Erected under difficult conditions with the simplest of means, the fort was expanded several times before a new fortified position was moved about one and a half kilometers away during the American Civil War . This was expanded and rebuilt after the civil war and played an important role in the Indian Wars of the 1870s. The fort was abandoned in 1891 when the railroad made the site obsolete and the Indian threat was a thing of the past.
history
The Santa Fe Trail was the most important trade route from the populated regions of the United States on the Missouri River through the steppes and deserts of what later became Kansas and Colorado to Santa Fe , the capital of the Mexican province of Nuevo Mexico . The trade did not begin until 1822 after Mexico gained independence from Spain and experienced a significant boom until the 1840s. The Mexican-American War, which Mexico lost in 1848, began in 1846 through conflicts between the Republic of Texas , Mexico and the USA, which had been independent since 1836 . In the following Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico had to cede the territories of today's US states of California , Arizona , Nevada , Utah , parts of Colorado and Wyoming and also New Mexico to the United States.
New Mexico belonged to the Ninth Military Department (from 1853 then New Mexico Military Department ), to which 10% of the total manpower of the US Army had been assigned since the war. After the war, the US Army initially distributed eleven small bases throughout the southwest, which in 1850/51 proved impractical; individually they were too weak against the Apache and Comanche , they were too far apart for coordinated actions. In a remote region with an extreme climate, the posts were not considered attractive. This had negative consequences for the discipline and effectiveness of the troops.
Thereupon the army, under the coordination of Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner, built two new forts at the junctions of the Santa Fe Trail: 1850 Fort Atkinson (later Fort Dodge ) at the northeastern junction and 1851 Fort Union , where the two alternative routes reunited.
As an outpost on the border of civilization, the Military Department and its main fort were largely independent. Since orders from Washington would have traveled for months, the commanders had to make their own decisions. Fort Union was an early command in the careers of some officers who later rose to high positions. These included James Henry Carleton , Brevet Brigadier General and author of military textbooks, at Fort Union 1852, William TH Brooks , Major General, at Fort Union 1852, George Bibb Crittenden , Major General, at Fort Union 1860-61, John R. Brooke , Major General , at Fort Union 1867-68, John Irvin Gregg , Brevet Brigadier General, at Fort Union 1870-73.
The fort over time
Fort Union is located at about 2000 m above sea level on the slopes of the up to 3000 m high mountains of the Sangre-de-Cristo chain , about 150 km south of the Raton Pass and about 175 km northeast of Santa Fe. Sumner, who knew the area from the Mexican-American War, chose the location personally.
From the beginning regiments of infantry and dragoons were stationed in Fort Union , from 1852 a battery of light artillery was added, from 1856 also mounted rifleman ( mounted infantry ). The first in command was Captain Edmond B. Alexander of the 3rd Infantry Regiment.
The first fort, built in 1851, was an open construction made of individual wooden huts, it was expanded several times and in 1861, with a maximum of 1669 soldiers, it was the largest base west of the Mississippi River and an important economic factor for the region because of the soldiers' salaries and lucrative supply contracts. Initially, the fort was only planned as a temporary facility and was built by the soldiers even with the simplest means from log houses . The buildings were soon in a bad condition, an attempt by Sumner to self-sufficiency through a farm operated by soldiers failed under the climatic conditions of New Mexico.
Nonetheless, Fort Union did its job. The troops organized patrols on the Santa Fe Trail and escorted individual trains of covered wagons. Merchant and author William Davis gave his delighted impression of the fort in 1857 when he reached the base after the deserted steppes, which was responsible for the security of his business.
Fort Union, 175 kilometers from Santa Fe, is located in the lovely valley of the Moro stream. It is an open post, without any palisades or parapets, and if you did not see the officers and soldiers, it would appear more like a quiet border village than a military station. It is laid out with wide, straight streets that intersect at right angles. The huts are made of pine, which was felled in the neighboring mountains, and the accommodations of both officers and men make a neat and pleasant impression.
Civil war
After the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the old location was converted into a depot and one and a half kilometers away a fortress secured against light artillery fire with large star-shaped earthen walls was built according to the Tenaill system. The central depot of military supplies (weapons, ammunition, food) for the southwest was established at Fort Union . Until the end of the war, volunteer units and militias were also stationed at Fort Union. Most of them came from New Mexico and neighboring Colorado, and towards the end of the war even from California.
In 1862, after the defeat of the Union Army at the Battle of Valverde , the fort was the only obstacle between the Confederate forces and the military gold fields in Colorado. Ironically, Henry Hopkins Sibley , commander of the Confederate invading army before joining the Confederation , had himself temporarily commanded the fort in 1861. The fort's garrison was reinforced by Colorado militias under Colonel John Potts Slough . Slough marched with the bulk of his troops towards the Confederates and defeated their vanguard about 100 km south of the fort in the battle of Glorieta Pass . The Confederates then withdrew, the New Mexico campaign had failed.
The maintenance of the earth walls was soon seen as too expensive in peacetime. The third fort was built right next to the ramparts with simple, typical walls made of adobe bricks. It was expanded several times, including a military hospital from 1867. Construction costs and the stationing of troops brought orders for the local population and contributed significantly to the region's economic upswing.
Indian Wars
If there were individual campaigns against the Indian peoples in the immediate vicinity of the fort before the civil war , Fort Union started out in the late phase of the Civil War and then several campaigns as part of the Indian wars . For this purpose, Kit Carson briefly as in 1866, Brevet - Brigadier committed in Fort Union, in order to provide his knowledge of the country and its inhabitants the army available. Carson was one of the most famous trappers and scouts , honored for his role in the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, and he had experience in military campaigns against Indians since he led the campaign against the Navaho in 1864 , which resulted in a " Langer Marsch ”led to forced relocation. In Fort Union he led a campaign against the Mescalero Apaches .
The Cheyenne , Arapaho , Kiowa and Komantschen were forcibly resettled in 1867 from their traditional hunting grounds in Indian reservations in Indian territory , today's Oklahoma . The occasion was a few attacks on white settlers, farms, traders and, last but not least, on the railroad that was advancing further and further into the prairies of Kansas . The peoples only partially adhered to the contracts forced upon them, they could not or would not give up their hunting grounds and the only way of life they knew.
The army responded with smaller campaigns across the southwest and against almost all peoples in the region. From 1871 the soldiers of Fort Union were also used to prevent illegal trade between residents of New Mexico, predominantly of Indian descent from the Pueblo peoples , and the Indians of the prairie , especially the Comanches. On the one hand, the prairie Indians were to be protected from the alcohol that was forbidden for them, on the other hand it was in the interest of the US government to keep the peoples dependent on the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its agencies.
The conflicts escalated in the summer of 1874, when the army intervened after several Kiowa raids and conflicting reports of attacks by a group believed to be Southern Cheyenne on settlers in New Mexico and Texas. Troops from Fort Union also took part in a campaign against the Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne on the Red River between Texas and the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, which, as the Red River War, was one of the largest military actions against the Native Americans . In the following years there were repeated reports of Indians on the way to raids, but the army could find no trace. There is evidence that the threat of Indian raids by the settlers was systematically exaggerated in order to bring troops into the region to supply the settlers with good business.
Further tasks
The army was also called in against outlaws among the white population. After minor gold discoveries, conflicts arose in 1869 in Cimarron , about 60 km north of the fort, between the Ute , settlers who had previously peacefully shared the land with the Indians, and a company called the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company , which provided British funds with funds and Dutch financiers and considerable political backing claimed the entire floor for themselves. A pastor who supported the settlers was murdered by gunslingers , and a constable suspected of being involved in the first murder was tortured and murdered. The judiciary was powerless as all sides got the backing. The Indians were completely defenseless. Officers from Fort Union tried to investigate, but achieved nothing when the only suspect was snatched from them and lynched by a supposedly spontaneous mob after a partial confession on the way between court and prison.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached Fort Union in 1879, and the depot became obsolete and closed. At this point, Fort Union and the other forts that had been built against the Indians were already controversial. However, it was not until February 21, 1891 that the site was completely abandoned. Coincidentally on the same day, General William T. Sherman was buried in New York City , hero of the Civil War and later responsible for the Indian Wars as Commander in Chief of the US Army. The time of the “ Wild West ” was over: the settlement of the American prairies had progressed so far that the frontier , the border of civilization, no longer existed.
Fort Union today
After World War II , interest in settlement history in the western United States increased, and in 1955 the Union Land and Grazing Company donated the fort's soil to the federal government for the construction of a National Monument , which opened the following year. Today it belongs to the small protected areas of the National Park Service according to area and number of visitors and consists of a visitor information center and a circular route through the ruins of the third fort with some historical exhibits, such as covered wagons and cannons . Even after 150 years in the area , tracks called Ruts of the large covered wagons of the Santa Fe Trail can be seen in several places .
The ruins stand on a short grass prairie with a strikingly small-scale mosaic of different plant communities . The small protected area owes its diversity to the lack of pasture use for five decades. Neighboring areas that are grazed by a cattle farm are much poorer in species and plant communities. A total of 142 plant species and sixteen plant communities were identified, as well as 33 species of reptiles and amphibians and 16 species of mammals (shrews and bats could not be recorded with the methods used, but are present in the area). Cottontail rabbits , silver badger , coyote and pronghorn are typical of the structures .
literature
- David Dary: The Santa Fe Trail - Its History, Legends, and Lore. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2001, ISBN 0-375-40361-2 .
- Leo E. Oliva: Fort Union and the Frontier Army in the Southwest - A Historic Resource Study. Division of History - National Park Service, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1993 (also online: Fort Union and the Frontier Army )
Web links
- National Park Service: Fort Union National Monument (official site; English)
- List of units in Fort Union
- List of commanding officers
- List of manpower
swell
- ^ William H. Davis, El Gringo - or New Mexico and Her People , Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York 1857 (also online in full text: El Gringo ), p. 51
- ↑ Leo E. Oliva, Chapter 7
- ↑ Oliva, Chapter 7a
- ↑ Richard White, Context of Settler Communities , US Department of Defense DENIX, paper from June 28, 1993 (online ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to instructions and then remove this note. , Link dead)
- ↑ Oliva, Chapter 7a
- ↑ A Vegetation Survey and Map ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 808 kB) of Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico, 2004
- ↑ Fort Union - Reptile, Amphibian, and Mammal Inventory ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 172 kB), 2003
