Scenes Beyond the Western Border

1. June 1851

2. September 1851

3. December 1851

4. January 1852

5. April 1852

6. May 1852

7. June 1852

8. July 1852

9. August 1852

10. September 1852

11. March 1853

12. May 1853

13. August 1853 In Parts 1-4, the narrative is imaginatively adapted from Philip St George Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe journal.  For the text and a taste of Cooke's real style of writing "on the prairie," see William E. Connelley, ed., "A Journal of the Santa Fe Trail." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 12, No. 1 (June 1925) pages 72-98. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1891786> and "A Journal of the Santa Fe Trail--(Concluded." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 (September 1925), pages 227-255. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1886514> Captain Cooke's 1843 journal of the summer expedition (not including his report of the the fall march) was also published in J. M. Lowe, The National Old Trails Road (Kansas City, 1925) as "An Interesting Military Excursion" Now accessible online via the great Internet Archive: Otis E. Young, Dragoons on the Santa Fe Trail in the Autumn of 1843, Chronicles of Oklahoma Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring 1954), pages 42-51. The manuscript of Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe journal is held by the National Archives and accessible at fold3.  For the summer expedition, see Letters to the Adjutant General 1822-1860: 1843/C/ Cooke, P St G (C252).  For the fall 1843 march, see Cooke's report dated October 26, 1843 in Letters to the Adjutant General 1822-1860: 1843/C/Cooke, P St G (C307). Philip St. George Cooke supplemented the matter of 1843 with an account of the Snively affair in One Day's Work of a Captain of Dragoons, The Magazine of American History, Vol. 18 No. 1 (July 1887), pages 35-44. Part 5 (April 1852) begins the matter of the 1845 dragoon expedition to the Rocky Mountains.  The April 1852 number incorporates a significantly revised  version of "Oregon Ho!" by "St. George," which was first printed in the Washington National Intelligencer on July 15, 1845; and reprinted in the August 1845 issue of  Littell's Living Age. Like the 1843 material, the 1845 story is also a rewrite.  Main sources for the rewrite besides "Oregon, Ho!" are J. Henry Carleton's "Occidental Reminiscences" and "Occidental Reminiscences / Farther West," serialized accounts of two different dragoon expeditions in 1844 and 1845 which originally ran in the New York Spirit of the Times.  Carleton's writings in the New York Spirit of the Times have been edited by Louis Pelzer under the attractive but inaccurate title Prairie Logbooks (University of Nebraska Press, 1983). Digitized volume of The Prairie Logbooks from the Wisconsin Historical Society is now available in the Hathi Trust Digital Library. The 1845 story also relies on Cooke's newspaper "Sketches of the Great West," originally published in the Washington Daily Union, October 6, 1845 (534); and reprinted in  Niles' National Register on October 25, 1845. Other important sources for the matter of 1845 are manuscript journals by William B. Franklin and Henry S. Turner.  Franklin's journal has been edited by Frank N. Schubert and published as March to the South Pass:  Lieutenant William B. Franklin's Journal of the Kearny Expedition of 1845.  Engineer Historical Studies 1.  Washington, D.C.:  Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1979.  Turner's account remains unpublished.  For that you have to go the National Archives, Record Group 94 and see Henry S. Turner, "Journal of an Expedition Performed in the Summer of 1845 by 5 Companies of the 1st Dragoons under the Command of Colonel S. W. Kearny."  Letters Received, Adjutant General's Office, 1822-1860: 1845/K/Kearny, S W (K113). Now accessible online at fold3 I have a hunch one of the buffalo-hunting scenes is borrowed from Francis Parkman's California and Oregon Trail, which Herman Melville reviewed anonymously for the New York Literary World (31 March 1849). The magazine series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border (1851-1853) was later revised and published in book form as Part II of Philip St George Cooke's 1857 memoir, Scenes and Adventures in the Army.