Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: October 14, 2018 04:32PM
They did not engage the enemy, mostly because by the time they marched to San Diego, the war was over.
Fun fact: the trail guide for the Mormon Battalion was Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. He accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-6 as an infant. Pompeys Pillar, a rock formation on the banks of the Yellowstone River 25 miles east of Billings, was named in his honor by William Clark. (Pompey (pronounced POM-pea) or Pomp were his nicknames on the expedition)
From his wikipedia article:
In October 1846, Charbonneau, Antoine Leroux and Pauline Weaver were hired as scouts by General Stephen W. Kearny. Charbonneau's experience with military marches, such as with James William Abert[7]:128 in August 1845, along the Canadian River, and his fluency in Indian languages qualified him for the position. Kearny directed him to join Colonel Philip St. George Cooke on an arduous march from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to San Diego, California, a distance of 1,100 miles (1,800 km). Their mission was to build the first wagon road to Southern California and to guide some 20 huge Murphy supply wagons to the west coast for the military during the Mexican–American War.[7]:136
A contingent of soldiers made up of some 339 Mormon men and four Mormon women, known as the Mormon Battalion, were the builders of that new road over the uncharted southwest from Santa Fe to San Diego and Los Angeles. A memorial to the historic trek of the Mormon Battalion and their guide Charbonneau has been erected at the San Pedro River, one mile (1.6 km) north of the U.S.–Mexico border near the present-day town of Palominas, Arizona. Other monuments or historic markers are in Tucson, Arizona and in California at Box Canyon near Warner Springs, at Temecula, at Old Town San Diego and at Fort Moore in Los Angeles. Colonel Cooke's diary mentions Charbonneau some 29 times from November 16, 1846, to January 21, 1847.[7]:150 Eight of the twenty wagons reached Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, four miles (6 km) from today's Oceanside, California, and the leaders counted the expedition as a success.
Cooke wrote of the Mormon Battalion, "History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry."[20] Known as Cooke's Trail or the Gila Trail but more currently known as the Mormon Battalion Trail, the wagon road was used by settlers, miners, stagecoaches of the Butterfield Stage line and cattlemen driving longhorns to feed the gold camps. Parts of the route became the Southern Pacific Railroad and U.S. Route 66. Currently, the Boy Scouts of America gives an award for those who hike sections of this historic trail. In February 1848, knowledge gained about the region was used as the basis of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which established the United States-Mexico border in December 1853, following the Mexican-American War.[7]:151