Deployed to posts from the Missouri River to the Pacific in 1848, the United States Army undertook an old mission on frontiers new to the United States: occupying the western territories; suppressing
From the War of 1812 to the end of the nineteenth century, U.S. Army officers were instrumental in shaping the American West. They helped explore uncharted places and survey and engineer its far-flu
In 1849, the Corps of Topographical Engineers commissioned Lieutenant James H. Simpson to undertake the first survey of what he termed Navaho country in present-day New Mexico. Accompanying Simpson wa
