[176] General Henry Leavenworth was a native of Connecticut (1783); entering the army (1812), he passed through all the grades until brevetted a brigadier-general in 1824. He won distinction for service at Chippewa and Niagara in the War of 1812-15, and afterwards for many years served on the Western frontier, where he died in Indian Territory (1834) while leading an expedition of troops to overawe the turbulent tribesmen. See account of this expedition in P. St. G. Cooke, Scenes and Adventures in the Army, pp. 225-227.—Ed.
[177] General Ashley started with a party of traders March 10, 1823, arriving at the Arikkara villages May 30. He was received with apparent friendliness, but early in the morning of the second of June was attacked by the Indians who killed a number of his land party, the boats escaping with great difficulty. Ashley immediately notified the military authorities, and Colonel Leavenworth, then in command at Fort Atkinson, near Council Bluffs, at once determined to organize a punitive expedition. Pilcher, of the Missouri Fur Company, joined forces with him, and secured a band of Sioux auxiliaries. For many reasons the expedition was, as Maximilian implies, but slightly successful. For a full account of this campaign, gathered from many sources, consult Chittenden, Fur-Trade, i, pp. 264-269; ii, pp. 588-607. The expedition was notable as the first of a long series of trans-Mississippi Indian wars.—Ed.
[178] The Arikkara (for whom see our volume v, p. 113, note 76) were the most treacherous of the village Indians upon the Missouri. After friendly treaties with Lewis and Clark (1804), they attacked the escort for the Mandan chief Shahake (1807); but two years later permitted his passage with a large fur-trade caravan, and in 1811 were friendly to the Astoria party. In 1816 or 1817 they attacked a party and killed one man, and again (1820) robbed the trading houses of the Missouri Fur Company. Early in the year of the campaign of 1823, they made an unsuccessful attack upon a small post down the river among the Sioux.—Ed.
[179] In his outward journey, Maximilian found that the Arikkara villages had been abandoned for about a year. They had therefore re-occupied them after Leavenworth's expedition, but were never again permanently settled therein. See our volume xxii, p. 336, note 300.—Ed.
[180] For the French Fur Company see our volume xxii, p. 232, note 160.
It is evident that Maximilian's knowledge of these events was obtained from Kipp, who had been a participant. For the Columbia Fur Company see our volume xxii, p. 233, note 161. Tilton would appear to have been a proprietor in this company, whose legal name was Tilton & Company; he was sutler at Fort Gibson in 1836. See Lawrence Taliaferro, "Autobiography," in Minnesota Historical Collections, vi, p. 202. The main fort of this company was at Lake Traverse, on the boundary between the present states of Minnesota and South Dakota. For a visit to this place see op. cit., vi, p. 91.—Ed.
[181] For William Laidlaw see our volume xxii, p. 316, note 279.—Ed.
[182] This was Atkinson's Yellowstone Expedition of 1825. After the Arikkara troubles of 1823, President Monroe appointed General Henry Atkinson and Major Benjamin O'Fallon to conduct a military expedition into the Indian country to overawe the tribesmen, and impress them with the power of the national government. The commissioners left St. Louis in the spring of 1825. Organized at Council Bluffs, the expedition, consisting of nearly five hundred enlisted men, embarked on eight keel-boats, with a cavalry escort by land. They met with no opposition and advanced a hundred and twenty miles above the Yellowstone, reaching Council Bluffs on the return the nineteenth of September. For the official report, see 19 Cong., 1 sess., House Doc. No. 117, in vol. vi. The difficulty with the Crows is described by Washington Irving, Rocky Mountains, i, pp. 216, 217, in which the white renegade Edward Rose figures as the hero who chastised the troublesome chiefs into obedience.—Ed.
[183] Peter Wilson of Maryland was sub-agent for the Mandan with a salary of eight hundred dollars. He died after about one year's service.—Ed.
[184] This date should be April, 1826. Maximilian has his dates one year behind, as is proved by the known time of Atkinson's Yellowstone Expedition.—Ed.