[1] General Stephen Watts Kearney's Force consisted of two batteries of artillery (Major Clark commanding), three squadrons of dragoons (Major, afterward General, Sumner), Doniphan's and Price's (afterward General C. S. A.) Missouri regiments, and the Mormon Battalion (Colonel P. St. George Cooke). It was called the Army of the West.
[2] Bent's Fort (two hundred miles south-east of Denver) was all-important to the success of this campaign. It was a large quadrangle with adobe walls and bastions, similar to Fort Laramie (refer to [description of Fort Laramie]). Named for Charles Bent, its founder.
[3] New Mexico annexed. General Kearney's act was premature. This could be done only by Act of Congress.
[4] No Outbreak expected. But a general one began at Taos, January, 1847, with a massacre of Americans, Governor Bent being one of the victims. It was quelled by Colonel Price, who took Taos. The old church of Taos was occupied by insurgents, who were driven out by Kit Carson and St. Vrain.
THE TAKING OF CALIFORNIA.
The courier who had been stopped by General Kearney was Kit Carson, Fremont's old guide. Carson[1] was on his way to Washington with despatches from Commodore Stockton and Captain Fremont.
A few words will explain how Fremont came to be in California at so critical a time. While trying to make his way back to the States, through the Sierras, he had been forced to recross their snows into the Sacramento Valley, and had descended this valley, which was found uninhabited, save by Indians, to Sutter's Fort,[2] where means were furnished him to continue his journey homeward.
Delighted with the country, he had made so favorable a report of it that he was again sent out (1845) for the purpose of finding the shortest route for a railroad to the Pacific, and especially to the neighborhood of San Francisco Bay.
When Fremont set out, war with Mexico was thought to be near at hand. Our Government coveted California for several reasons. For one thing, our whale-fishery in the Pacific had grown to be a great business, in which twenty thousand sailors and two hundred thousand tons of shipping were employed. This interest therefore wanted California, because the port of San Francisco was the only one in the North Pacific not blocked up by a sand-bar, like that which renders the mouth of the Columbia so difficult of access.