Abstract
In 1847 Congress and President James K. Polk assigned a Missouri militia to build military forts along the Platte River Road. Their first project was the construction of New Fort Kearny near present -day Grand Island, Nebraska. Col. Ledwell Powell's Missouri Volunteers undertook and completed the fort by late spring and early summer of 1848. Utilizing Boston artist and traveler William Henry Tappan's 1848 diary, as well as other primary sources including letters home from a Volunteers' infantry soldier, this essay aims to expand our social memories of events long forgotten. Highlighted here is the presence of the Pawnee Nation, owners of the New Fort Kearny building site. In turn hostile toward and admiring of the Pawnee, Tappan recorded detailed aspects of Pawnee material culture, customs, tribal leaders, and religious rites. Tappan's diary also offers glimpses of the deeply embedded racial animosity and bellicosity of the Volunteers' officers, as well as the complex culture of militia life among the Missouri Volunteers' rank and file. In addition, Tappan's interactions with several other Platte River Road-located nations, including the Ioway, Lakhota Sioux, and Cheyenne, offer us a wider-ranging and more comprehensive picture of the Great Plains Platte region of 1848.