![1836 [Untitled] Map of Indian Territory from the Col. Henry Dodge Expedition](http://nwcartographic.com/cdn/shop/files/12987a_{width}x.jpg?v=1757025933)
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1836 [Untitled] Map of Indian Territory from the Col. Henry Dodge Expedition
DESCRIPTION
This rare U.S. government map is Plate “B” from a report on the First U.S. Dragoons, compiled in the field by Lieutenant Enoch (Enoch G.) Steen under the command of Colonel Henry Dodge. It depicts the “Western Territory” at the height of Indian Removal, when the federal government was pushing eastern tribes onto lands west of Missouri and surveying the routes and posts needed to control the Plains.
The engraving stretches from the Missouri frontier to the Rockies, with the Platte, Arkansas, and Canadian rivers as organizing spines. Reservations and treaty cessions are picked out in outline color for the Omahas, Otoes, Kickapoos, Delawares, Kanzas, Shawnees, Osage, Cherokees, and Creeks, while the ranges of Pawnees, Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Blackfeet are noted across the open plains. Fort Leavenworth and Fort Gibson anchor the line of posts; the Santa Fe Trail runs past Council Grove toward Bent’s Trading House, Spanish Peaks, Pike’s Peak, and Taos; and a penciled itinerary labels the “Route of the Dragoons under the command of Col. Dodge in 1835,” with an “Estimated distance 1645 miles by Lieut. Steen” and a scale of 20 miles to the inch.
The 1835 Expedition of Colonel Dodge and the U.S. Dragoons
In the summer of 1835 Colonel Henry Dodge led a column of U.S. Dragoons from Fort Leavenworth on a sweeping reconnaissance of the central Plains and the Rocky Mountain front. Following the Platte and South Platte westward, the force contacted Pawnee, Otoe, Omaha, and other nations, then crossed to the Arkansas, visited trading posts such as Bent’s, and returned east along the Santa Fe Trail; an itinerary the map traces and that Lieutenant Enoch Steen measured at roughly 1,645 miles.
The expedition’s aims were part diplomacy and part demonstration of federal presence: to open dialogue with Plains peoples, calm intertribal raiding, gather intelligence on rivers, passes, and grazing, and evaluate routes and sites for future posts. It produced one of the earliest government surveys to knit together the reservation blocks and travel corridors of what would soon be called Indian Territory, while signaling Washington’s growing interest in policing commerce and migration across the trans-Mississippi West.
Historical Context and Significance of the Map
The map captures the federal reconnaissance that followed the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the creation of “Indian Territory.” Dodge’s 1834–35 expeditions aimed to contact Plains nations, police the Santa Fe trade, and evaluate sites for forts and agency stations. Issued to accompany a congressional/War Department report, Steen’s plate is one of the earliest printed maps to show, in a single view, the new reservation blocks in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma alongside the major travel corridors to the Southwest. It is a highly important document for both cartography of the Plains and the history of removal-era policy.
CONDITION
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