Forts in the Iowa Country

Vintage monograph originally published in 1914. Details the history of forts in early Iowa country.

Forts mentioned include -

. Fort Beauharnois
. Fort Marin
. Des Moines Factory
. Fort Madison
. Fort Des Moines 1
. Fort Des Moines 2
. Fort Des Moines 3
. Camp Kearney
. Fort Atkinson
. Fort Croghan
. Fort Sanford
. Fort Dodge
. Fort Defiance

read excerpt -


FORT SANFORD

While troops were stationed at Fort Des Moines near the present town of Montrose and plans were being formulated with regard to a fort on the Des Moines River near the Sac and Fox villages, considerable discussion took place in military circles as to the advisability of a military road to Fort Leavenworth. Some persons advocated a highway from Fort Des Moines via the Raccoon Forks as "a route of travel and communication between the several and various parts of our immense western frontier", at the expense of cutting down timber for a reasonable width, bridging streams, and causewaying marshy places. The Indians of course objected to such improvements as roads and forts because they would frighten away the remnant of game animals, their only means of sustenance in that region."

But the Sacs and Foxes were given no choice in the matter. Events so shaped themselves that the United States Indian Agent at the Sac and Fox Agency reported as follows in the year 1842:

I know of no point upon our Indian frontier where the permanent presence of a military force is more essentially requisite than at this. Within a period of less than two years it has been necessary three times to call for a detachment, whose march on each occasion has been attended with much expense and inconvenience, while requisition for another to attend the approaching payment has been sent. No obstructions, no means of prevention, here exist to the continual passage to and fro in the Indian country of the most lawless and desperate characters, who can at any time commit outrages against order, morality, and the laws, with perfect impunity; and many of whom, feeling themselves aggrieved by their recent expulsions from the Indian country, are the more ready to avenge themselves by acts of violence.

To prevent the lawless and destructive acts of persons who eagerly coveted farms in the Indian reservation, Governor Chambers called upon the government to keep a small force ready near the Indian agency: a slight intrusion might be enough "to irritate the Indians and induce them to act rashly." Early in the year 1842 Fort Atkinson troops expelled some squatters and returned to their post. In September their services were again enlisted in the Sac and Fox country, and so by permission of John Sanford of the American Fur Company a force of dragoons took up their abode in eight log cabins on the left bank of the Des Moines River and built two officers' huts and stables, some twenty miles west of Fairfield, the nearest post-office. Captain James Allen called this temporary post Fort Sanford: the War Department preferred the name "Sac and Fox Agency". Here in October, 1842, Governor John Chambers effected a treaty with the Indians. Of this event, so important in the history of the settlement of Iowa, there has been preserved an interesting contemporaneous news¬paper account in which the editor took exception to the Governor's "most ridiculous and most reprehensible" insistence upon the presence of troops:

The treaty was conducted with great dignity and propriety, if we may except the introduction of dragoons to keep out citizens beyond hearing distance. Capt. Allen and Lt. Ruff, of the Dragoons are talented and gentlemanly officers, and were present in obedience to orders - but Gov. Chambers certainly believes too much in show, or greatly mistakes the character of our citizens, if he deems all this flummery and metal-button authority necessary to the order, dignity or success of a treaty.