Vanguard of Expansion Army Engineers in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1819-1879

When Lieutenant Warren reported for duty with the Office of Pacific Railroad Explorations and Surveys in 1854, he already carried a reputation for uncommon intelligence and ability. Only a year after he had graduated second in the West Point class of 1850, rumors circulated regarding his return to the Academy as a mathematics instructor. But the strikingly handsome black-haired and moustached officer longed for adventure instead of the classroom, "I would rather rough it," he told his father, "than be sent there before hard service had made me above reproach." [1] He spent the next three years on the western rivers, first on the Mississippi Delta survey under Captain Humphreys, then on the board for improvement of the Louisville and Portland Canal on the Ohio, and finally on an examination of the Rock Island and Des Moines rapids. [2] The poise and self-assurance gained during this apprenticeship showed in his letters to his Cold Springs, New York, home. His early missives had been signed "Gouverneur K. Warren, U.S.A.," but later correspondence was inscribed by a more confident "Gouv." Warren was ready for his important assignment of compiling the map of the trans-Mississippi West.

As Warren assembled the data for his map, the blank spaces in knowledge of the West became apparent. In addition to the Yellowstone and Colorado wonderlands, much of the vast new Nebraska Territory, which included the modern states of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Wyoming and Montana, was largely unexplored. Nicollet had examined much of the region north of the Missouri River, and untold numbers of travelers had crossed along the Platte. Only traders and trappers knew much about the region between the rivers, the Nebraska sandhills, the Black Hills homeland of the Sioux, and the tributaries Loup, Niobrara, and Yellowstone. These major gaps in geographical knowledge, if left unfilled, would mean large white spaces on the map.

Far from Warren's Capitol Hill office, on the North Platte near Fort Laramie, other events underscored the need for information on Nebraska Territory. In August, 1854, after a Miniconjou Sioux warrior living with a Brule band stole a Mormon emigrant's cow, Lieutenant John L. Grattan and a detachment of soldiers entered the Indian camp, set up artillery, and demanded the surrender of the culprit. When the Brule chief Conquering Bear stalled, Grattan opened fire. Conquering Bear fell in the first volley. Then the Sioux attacked the soldiers, killing Grattan and thirty-one of his men. Only one trooper managed to flee to Fort Laramie. Thus did 1854 become known among the Sioux as Mato wayuhi ktepi ("the year in which Conquering Bear was killed"). [3]

Gouverneur K. Warren as a West Point cadet. U.S. Military Academy Archives.

The whites called the affair the Grattan Massacre and sent an expedition under Colonel William S. Harney to punish the Indians for the incident and for their raids on Platte River emigrant parties. Because little was known about the Sioux hunting grounds on the northern plains, Harney needed the services of a topographical Engineer. The initial choice was Captain Thomas J. Lee, but he resigned to avoid the disagreeable duty of chastising Indians. The task then fell to Lieutenant Warren. In the summer of 1855, with his map scarcely begun, he left Washington. Inaugurating a period of Army exploration on the high plains, Warren would get the opportunity to fill some of the spaces on his map. [4]

Warren prepared for his assignment in St. Louis. He studied the maps of Frémont and Stansbury and talked to frontier-wise traders about the Sioux. He also folded into his journal a copy of "Instructions for Astronomical & Magnetic Party," which Lieutenant Whipple had originally prepared for use by Lieutenant Ives. Warren also penned reminders to himself on the care of his equipment: "All instruments should be handled lightly and delicately. No clamp screws should be tightly pressed. Every part of an instrument not absolutely necessary should be dispensed with...." [5] On 7 June 1855, well primed for his first frontier assignment, he boarded a Missouri River steamer bound for Fort Pierre. [6]

Warren started upriver before Harney and the main force left St. Louis. The two officers planned to meet later in the summer at Fort Kearny on the North Platte. Meanwhile, Warren would mark off and survey a military reservation for Fort Pierre, just purchased from the American Fur Company, in preparation for Harney's campaign. On his way upriver, Warren started a sketch map but, discovering that his drawings agreed with Nicollet's map, gave up the endeavor. Once at Fort Pierre, he surveyed the military reservation under a July sun that burned so bright the soldier who carried his theodolite collapsed with sunstroke. With the work completed in early August, Warren made ready to join Harney on the Platte. [7]

Because the 300-mile stretch between Fort Pierre and the Fort Kearny rendezvous was barely known and unmapped, Warren planned carefully before setting out on the trek. He closely questioned the beavermen at Pierre regarding the terrain, purchased animals, and hired six of the trappers as guides and escort. Then he slipped quietly out of the fort with his party, south across the White River, which was Smoky Earth to the Sioux. Then came a stream of many names: Niobrara the Anglo-Americans called it, but the French voyageurs said L'eau qui Court and the Sioux Running Water. South of the river, which raced east to the Missouri, were the sandhills, "exceedingly solitary, silent and desolate and depressing," Warren said. [8] The mules sank to their forelocks as they plodded through the dune country, which the Sioux and their Pawnee enemies crossed when they raided each other's villages for horses. Fortunately, the party met neither tribe. After two weeks spent making a topographical sketch and noting the locations of the travelers' essentials—wood, water, and grass—Warren sighted Fort Kearny, where the trails from the jumping off places on the Missouri merged into the main trunkline of the Platte River road. Warren's appearance delighted Harney, who served champagne to celebrate the young officer's safe arrival. [9]

Established in 1849 by Engineer Lieutenant Daniel P. Woodbury to protect travelers on the Oregon Trail, Fort Kearny served as the staging area for Harney's swift and overpowering thrust at the Brule tribe. In late August, 1855, with Warren and his small corps of guides and interpreters, Harney assembled his expedition. About 600 soldiers, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, stirred up a huge dustcloud as they left the fort to avenge the death of Lieutenant Grattan and halt the Indian raids along the Platte. [10]

In just a few days, Harney located his foe and got his fight. On September 2, while camped near Ash Hollow on the North Platte, Warren sighted Little Thunder's camp. Wasting no time, Harney deployed his forces for an attack on the following morning. When the Indians began to flee at the sight of the troops, Harney lured them back with a request for a parley. The ploy worked, and the soldiers struck. The Brules tried to escape their overwhelming enemy, but Harney pursued them relentlessly. While Warren watched from a hilltop, the troops scattered the Sioux and killed more than eighty of them. [11]

Although the thorough rout ended the day's labor for most of the soldiers, Warren's work had just begun. He tried to make a topographical sketch of the scene, but soon turned his attention instead to the wounded women and children, crying and moaning all around him. After carrying to safety a little Indian girl who had been injured in the battle, he joined others in a search for more of the wounded. He found another young girl, shot through both feet, and a boy with multiple leg wounds. Another soldier helped him carry the children to a stream, where they made a shelter to protect them from the sun and bathed their wounds. While Warren aided the survivors, others boasted of their heroism in the one-sided fight. "I was," Warren wrote, "disgusted with the tales of valor in the field, for there were but few who killed anything but a flying foe." [12] Untroubled by such thoughts, the soldiers sang as they left Ash Hollow:

We did not make a blunder,
We rubbed out Little Thunder
And we sent him to the other side of Jordan. [13]

At the end of the summer, after accompanying Harney to Fort Laramie and into the Sioux hunting grounds north of the Platte, Warren turned to his report and map. Back at the office in Washington, he organized his notes on the journey and prepared a map of his route. With meteorologist J. Hudson Snowden, Warren spent long hours arranging his data on the weather. In mid-March, 1856, he finished his report on his travels. While draftsmen Edwin Freyhold and F. W. Egloffstein added his findings to the general map of the trans-Mississippi West, he turned to organizing a party for a second trip to the northern plains. Before the end of April, Warren was again in St. Louis, waiting for a riverboat with Snowden, topographer W. H. Hutton, and geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden. [14]

Although the journey to Fort Pierre began on the steamer Genoa, it ended as a long hike. Warren enjoyed riverboat travel but grew impatient as the Genoa struggled against wind and current. Finally, when the vessel ran aground on a sandbar in the shallows near the mouth of Running Water, he, the Fort Pierre sutler, and three others set out overland for the post. They walked 160 miles, subsisting mainly on birds brought down with shotguns. Although the journey was hard, Warren welcomed the chance to examine the terrain away from the river. On 21 May 1856, the lieutenant reported to Colonel Harney at Fort Pierre. He and his companions had beaten the Genoa by three days. [15]

After the fight at Ash Hollow, Warren drew this plan for a sod fort, which was built by Harney's men and named Fort Grattan. New York State Library.

Upon his arrival, Warren found the colonel in council with most of the important Sioux chiefs. Harney, whose show of force in the previous year had put a stop to the raids, introduced Warren to the assembled headmen and told them the topog would spend the summer reconnoitering the upper Missouri. Mindful of the devastating blow dealt Little Thunder, the chiefs agreed to allow Warren to go unmolested. [16]

These pages from William Hutton's 1856 journal show his notes and his drawing of the Missouri River near the mouth of the Yellowstone. New York State Library.

Reunited with the members of his party who arrived on the Genoa, Warren boarded the American Fur Company steamer St. Mary for the rest of the journey up the Missouri. Reinforced by seventeen men of Harney's Second Infantry and equipped with the usual scientific instruments—astronomical transit, sextant, chronometers, barometers, odometers, and compasses—he went far up river, past the fur-trading post at Fort Union into present-day Montana. Hutton sketched the Missouri almost as far as the site of modern Fort Peck dam, then turned back to Fort Union. Jim Bridger joined the expedition and led the way down uncharted portions of the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Powder. Warren kept an eye out for potential fort sites while gathering data for his map. [17] Living off the land was easy. He and his men "enjoyed the greatest abundance of large game of all kinds while on the ..." [18] With the completion of his reconnaissance of this river, another blank space was filled.

Accompanied by his assistants and escort, Warren began the month-long trip back to Fort Pierre on the first of September. Most of the party paddled down the Missouri in a bullboat, a flat-bottomed craft made of Buffalo skins stretched over a cottonwood frame, while a shore party of seven herded the animals. Warren stopped at the mouths of tributaries to take readings on their positions and examine the country. His progress was uneventful until the eighteen-foot-long boat struck a sandbar near Fort Pierre and spun broadside against the current. The men quickly leaped into the 40° water and freed the craft before it became uncontrollable. With an eye on the Indians who watched from shore, Hutton noted that the party "presented an appearance much more interesting to our enemies than agreeable to our friends." [19] Warren reached Pierre safely, released his escort, and continued downriver to Sioux City. From there travel became easier and more comfortable, as he took a steamboat to St. Louis and finished the journey to Washington by rail. [20]

Back at his desk, Warren returned to the complex task of assembling data for the great map. In the topographical memoir that accompanied the map, he explained his method: "The plan . . . has been to represent only such portions as have been actually explored, and of which our information may be considered reliable." [21] To accomplish this, Warren had to be as much historian as cartographer. He studied the maps and records of the Pacific Railroad Surveys, the United States Land Office, Coast Survey, and Mexican Boundary Commission, as well as the large map file in the Topographical Bureau. The Indian Bureau and the Smithsonian Institution also contributed books and maps. From all of this overlapping and sometimes conflicting material, he had to select the best data.

Although Warren's standards were sensible, his choice of authorities proved a major problem. When maps showed different locations for a town or topographical feature, he used "the work of those explorers who were best provided with instruments, and who possessed the largest share of that experience which is so necessary in attaining accuracy, taking the evidence of these advantages from their own reports." [22] Sometimes, when he was unable to choose from the results of several able explorers, he opted for an average reading. In the case of Fort Smith, for example, Warren had to take an average of five longitudinal readings made by able and reliable explorers from Long in 1820 to Whipple in 1853. [23] Thus the map lacked real precision, although the deviations between findings of conflicting authorities were usually trivial.

Nevertheless, blatant inaccuracies and guesses were absent. The history of western cartography was filled with myth, rumor, and fantasy, but Warren stuck to reliable data. Where the facts were unknown, the map sheet was left blank: "In some large sections," he explained, "we possess no information, except from uncertain sources. In these parts the rule was adopted to leave the map blank, or to faintly indicate such information as is probably correct." [24]

Warren's reduction of Lieutenant Joseph Webster's map of the mouth of the Rio Grande. National Archives.

With all the determinations made, Warren turned the map over to draftsmen Freyhold and Egloffstein, and once again returned to Nebraska. This probe, up the Loup to the sandhills and then along the Niobrara to Fort Laramie and back through the Black Hills, proved to be the most difficult and dangerous of his three northern plains expeditions. His troubles included Loup River quicksand, the ubiquitous Platte valley mosquitoes, the Sioux, and even his military escort. Before he set out for the mouth of the Loup, most of his twenty-seven-man escort became drunk and insubordinate. Twelve of the soldiers, "tempted," Warren said, "by the high price of labor in this vicinity, and tired of the toils and privations of campaigning," deserted, and thieves stole two of the party's horses. Still near Sioux City, Warren wondered what might befall him in less hospitable surroundings: "These losses occuring in a civilized community, where we supposed ourselves among friends, were quite annoying, and gave rather unpleasant forebodings of what might occur to us when we should come among our enemies, the Indians." [25]

Quicksand, rain, and plain hard work marked the journey into the sandhills. The bed of the North Loup was so treacherous that a wagon sank clear to its bed as the party tried to cross the river. The men had to wade into the muck and haul the baggage ashore, then extricate the vehicle. Later, they bridged several streams on their way northwest. One man became seriously ill and had to ride in a wagon, which was fine until a jackrabbit stampeded the herd and sent the ambulance careening down a steep hill. Fortunately the conveyance remained upright, and the party finished the journey to the head of the Loup safely. [26] The reconnaissance filled a small white space on the map, but Warren wondered if the effort was worthwhile:

We have now traced the river from end to end and found its impracticability for almost any purpose so marked that it seems like a great waste of time to have made the exertions we have. Our greatest wish is to get away from it as soon as possible and never return. [27]

The trip up the Loup had been hard but at least there had been water. For their first two days in the dune country, the party failed to find a drop of the precious fluid. On August 9, Warren sighted a lake in the distance, and the men rushed forward, only to find it "so salt and bitter that a mule would not drink it." [28] They managed to get some palatable water by digging a hole in the sand. Two days later a driving rain came to their rescue. They collected the water in barrels for the remainder of the trek to the Niobrara, which was only a short distance away but difficult to reach because the sandhills forced them to take a southwesterly course away from the river. They took more than a week to cross the short distance between the head of the Loup and Running Water.

The bone-weary travelers found the remainder of the journey to Fort Laramie much easier. The striking wind-cut formations of the upper reaches of Running Water, which reminded Snowden of ruins of ancient forts and castles, did not impede their progress. On August 18, they looked down on the valley of the North Platte, and "the prospect of reaching Laramie cheered everyone." [29] On the next day, Warren's exhausted party arrived at the post for a well-earned rest.

Warren laid over at Fort Laramie for two weeks, planning a reconnaissance into the Black Hills. The hills were sacred to the Sioux, who called the region Pa Sapa ("Black Heads"), for in the distance the dense pines indeed looked black, but Warren had reason to believe that they would let him pass in peace. When he had met Little Thunder's band on the way up Running Water, they had fled in terror. Moreover, Major Thomas Twiss, the Indian agent at Fort Laramie, also thought the Sioux would not trouble Warren. They had complained to Twiss, but appeared satisfied with assurance that Warren would not make a road through Pa Sapa. [30]

A page from Warren's 1857 journal, showing the canyon of the Niobrara. New York State Library.

While Warren outfitted a packtrain for the expedition, P. M. Engel of his party scaled Laramie Peak. The massive mountain, about thirty miles west of the fort, towered 6,000 feet above the surrounding plateau. Engel climbed past the timberline to the rocky crest, from which he looked south on the beautiful valley of the Laramie River. "The most splendid grass" covered the Laramie plain, one day to become excellent grazing country. [31]

Engel's safe passage may have helped assure Warren of an unmolested journey through the Black Hills. The day before he set out, he wrote his father that the great display of force then in progress "completely overawed" the Indians. And, indeed, the North Platte was the scene of a great deal of military activity. Troops bound for Utah, where war with the Mormons was imminent, passed Fort Laramie, as did a column operating against the Cheyennes. In addition to these and Warren's own party, a fellow topog, Lieutenant Francis T. Bryan, was in the field exploring a potential railroad route south of Fort Laramie, up Lodgepole Creek to Bridger Pass. Supposing that all this activity impressed and puzzled the Sioux, Warren set out for the Black Hills, expecting a hard but fruitful journey. [32]

Snowden and a portion of the expedition remained at Laramie preparing to examine the Niobrara before meeting Warren downstream, east of the hills in mid-October. Those who stayed got more than enough trader whiskey, a rank mixture sometimes spiked with chewing tobacco, red peppers, and even rattlesnake heads, and discipline began to weaken. Ten days, one desertion, and two horsethefts after Warren left, Snowden led his party toward the source of Running Water, east of the modern Nebraska-Wyoming line near the yet undiscovered deposits of dinosaur bones at Agate Springs. Once cheered by the sight of Laramie's adobe walls, Snowden now was happy to put the post behind him. [33]

Contrary to Warren's expectations, the Sioux blocked his path through the Black Hills. Shortly after his entrance near the peak known as Inyan Kara to the Sioux, a large force of warriors under the Huncpapa Bear's Rib demanded that Warren turn back. Bear's Rib was very persuasive. He feared that Warren would spook the buffalo, but dreaded even more the potential military value of the reconnaissance. The angry warriors with him were even more convincing. Bear's Rib granted permission for Warren to leave by a northern route, and the lieutenant wisely accepted. He cut across what is now the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, camping on Wounded Knee Creek before following the Keya Paha to its junction with Running Water. He found Snowden on October 15, making his way downstream along the northern fringe of the sandhills. [34]

Snowden, who endured "a very tortuous and fatiguing march, as bad if not worse than any of our sandhills experience," also confronted an angry Sioux party. [35] On October 11, Brule warriors stopped him and complained that Harney had assured them no whites would pass through their lands without a license from him (they did not know—and probably would not have cared if they did—that Congress had repudiated Harney's agreements). The Indians protested Snowden's profligate consumption of the resources along Running Water, the plums and chokecherries, wood and grass. Moreover, they angrily accused the whites of frightening the wild game for a hundred miles in every direction. Snowden had to threaten to open fire before the Sioux finally withdrew from his camp. [36]

Reunited on October 15, Warren and Snowden traveled to Fort Randall while Engel followed the Niobrara to its confluence with the Missouri. The trip from Laramie had been hazardous for both divisions, but Warren had obtained important information about the river. His reconnaissance convinced him of the impossibility of road construction in the Niobrara valley. The upper two-thirds of the stream ran swift and shallow through deep-cut canyons. The lower portion, wider than the Missouri, was almost impossible to cross due to the treacherous bottom. Warren discouraged consideration of a proposed road from Lake Superior southwestward across Minnesota, Dakota, and Nebraska to the Platte and South Pass. Such a trail would have to cross Running Water three times. Besides, the Sioux would oppose such an effort. Anyone bold enough to attempt a road survey through their hunting grounds would need at least two hundred tried men. Warren was convinced "the Sioux are in earnest about stopping white men from coming there anymore." [37]

Carefully Lieutenant Warren pondered the difficulties confronting the Sioux and their options. He had developed great respect for the seven tribes—the Oglala, Brule, Huncpapa, Sans Arc, Miniconjou, Blackfoot, and Two Kettle—of the Teton Sioux. Like most whites he erred in calling the seven autonomous tribes, each in turn divided into seven bands, a nation. But he made no mistake about their military skill and determination to defend their homeland. They were superb horsemen, "numerous, independent, warlike, and powerful...." and had the strength and will for "prolonged and able resistance to further encroachment of the western settlers." [38]

While he knew that efforts to dislodge the Sioux would bring war, he also recognized that the attempt would nonetheless be made. The incessant pressure of white pioneers, combined with the process of Indian dispossession to the east of the Sioux domains, hastened war. Indians evicted from their land and forced west ultimately exerted pressure on the resources available to plains natives. This, in turn, caused poverty and disease, while the government exacerbated these ills by its failure to protect and support the dispossessed. Concluding this sophisticated analysis, Warren said there were "so many inevitable causes at work to produce a war with the Dakotas before many years, that I regard the greatest fruit of the explorations I have conducted to be the knowledge of the proper routes by which to invade their country and conquer them." [39] He was not particularly proud of this accomplishment: "I almost feel guilty of crime in being a pioneer to the white men who will ere long drive the red man from his last niche of hunting ground." [40]

Warren also laid bare the dilemma that faced Sioux leaders who understood the inevitable result of the process then underway. Bear's Rib, for example, a man with "fine mental powers and proper appreciation of the relative power of his people and the whites . . ." trod a very narrow and dangerous path, knowing that surrender would make him an outcast but that advocacy of resistance would make him responsible for the destruction of the tribe. [41] Ultimately the Huncpapa chief's personal dilemma was resolved by Sioux enemies, who assassinated him in July, 1862. But the problem of providing his people appropriate guidance in this crucial period would torment many a Sioux leader. [42]

The Civil War delayed publication of Warren's reports. The narratives of all three expeditions appeared in a single volume in 1875. The year of publication was significant. The existence of paying quantities of gold in the Black Hills had been verified in the previous year. A year after the appearance of his reports, the climactic battles of the Sioux war would be fought. The slim volume carried a dual message to those eager to seek their fortunes in the Sioux homeland. While it contained the maps and data that travelers to the region so badly needed, it also delineated the potential consequences for those willing to take the risks. Captain Humphreys's introduction to Warren's 1857 report, pertinent when written in 1858, was even more meaningful in 1875: Warren's narrative, Humphreys wrote, gave "the objections urged by the Dakotas against the passage . . . through the territory. This may prove valuable to any white man that may travel there." [43]

Warren's map ot the northern plains. National Archives.

At the end of 1858, with the map just published and three western explorations under his belt, Warren could have rested on his well-earned laurels. As he told his father, he had "every reason to believe I have gained for myself a good reputation as a Topographical Engineer." [44] But the frontier had found its way into Warren's blood. His discussions with Jim Bridger and other mountainmen whetted his appetite for the Yellowstone country, the fabulous wonderland of bubbling mud and hot water spouts first visited by John Colter after he left the Lewis and Clark expedition for the life of a trapper in the northern Rockies. After Colter, most of the stories about the strange region came from Bridger. Few people accepted his tales: either the Yellowstone was the most bizarre place in the country or—as many people believed—Bridger was the nation's biggest liar. Warren wanted to see for himself. He presented Captain Humphreys with a detailed proposal for the exploration, which Warren hoped might reveal connections between Utah and navigable portions of the upper Missouri. Bridger, Warren knew, would accompany any party into the area to regain his reputation for truth. Humphreys recommended approval of the project. With his experience and ability, Warren was the right man to fill this blank space on the map. [45]

Yet when the Yellowstone expedition set out in the spring of 1859, Warren was not at its head. Earlier in the year, his father died. Then Warren accepted a position as assistant professor of mathematics at West Point to be near his younger brothers and sisters at the family home in Cold Springs. [46]

While Warren packed his books and papers for the trip to New York, Captain William F. Raynolds left Fort Pierre for the Yellowstone. This was his first expedition, but several members of his party were veterans. Along with topographers Snowden and Hutton and geologist Hayden was Bridger, still eager for the opportunity to silence skeptics. [47]

On the way westward over the high plains and along the western slopes of the Big Horns to the Oregon Trail on the Sweetwater, Raynolds took careful note of the herds of buffalo. The wholesale slaughter of the females for their hides distressed him. Ten years earlier, Captain Stansbury had placed the bison on his personal list of endangered species, Raynolds agreed: "I think it is more than probable that another generation will witness almost the entire extinction of this noble animal." Another member of Raynolds's party, an obvious tenderfoot, reacted differently to the shaggy beasts. Startled by three bulls charging at the party, the soldier dropped his rifle in terror and exclaimed, "Elephants! Elephants! My God! I did not know there were elephants in this country!" [48]

While the affair of the elephants and a feud with a grizzly bear for control of a plum patch entertained Raynolds, he was not amused by his conference with the Crow Indians at Fort Sarpy. The alleged theft of a Crow chief's horse by Blackfeet disrupted the meeting, and the Crows refused to continue the discussion until the animal was recovered. They finally found the horse browsing in a nearby wood. Raynolds cooled his heels until the Indians returned for what the topog called "the discussion of such secondary questions as the relations of the Crows and the President." [49]

Crow manners had irritated Raynolds, but he confronted a much greater problem as the party settled into winter quarters at an abandoned Mormon village near the Sweetwater and the Upper Platte Indian Agency. Here the soldiers of the escort became uncontrollably drunk and deserted. So the greatly reduced exploring party spent the winter unprotected.

For the men snowbound with the devoutly religious Raynolds, the winter was an involuntary religious retreat. Raynolds held services every Sunday and even during the week, reading scripture and sermonizing to the unkempt and uninterested audience. Even in the summer months he consistently halted operations for Sabbath observances. On one occasion, when the urgent need to reach a prearranged rendezvous with Lieutenant Henry Maynadier forced him to march on Sunday, at least one soldier became confused and refused to believe it was Sunday. "Don't you know," he told another, "the Captain never moves on Sunday!" [50]

When spring came, Bridger thought he finally had his chance to lead a government explorer to the Yellowstone and prove the existence of the geysers and other strange phenomena. But he and Raynolds were thwarted at every turn by the terrain and the deep snows. They went up the Wind River to its headwaters, only to confront a huge basaltic ridge between them and the sources of the Yellowstone. Although Bridger claimed "a bird can't fly over that without taking a supply of grub along," Raynolds persisted. [51] Finally, Raynolds led the party southwestward around the fabled region. With Grand Teton visible on their right, they tried every possible path north to the Yellowstone. Unable to penetrate any of the snow-covered approaches, Raynolds finally conceded defeat and circled the region by way of Jackson's Hole, Teton Pass, and Pierre's Hole. On 12 July 1860, the party arrived at the Great Falls of the Missouri, after passing almost completely around their objective.

Although Raynolds and Bridger were sorely disappointed, some writers have suggested that their failure was a happy one. The Engineer and historian Hiram Chittenden believed "the Yellowstone wonderland was spared the misfortune of being discovered at so early a day—a fact quite as fortunate as any in its history." [52] A more recent student of the area, David J. Saylor, has credited Raynolds with discouraging railroad construction across the continental divide to Jackson's Hole and the Yellowstone. Thus, he unwittingly contributed to later efforts by conservationists to protect the natural grandeur. [53]

In addition to this accidental achievement, Raynolds made substantial contributions to knowledge of the area. Prior to his reconnaissance, so little accurate information was available that Warren had wisely left the Upper Yellowstone blank on his map, rather than fill it with conjecture. Raynolds brought back data with which some of the unknown area could be depicted. His maps, which placed Bridger's knowledge of the mountains on the record, became basic guides for the Army during the Sioux wars of the mid-1870's. [54] The heart of the wonderland, at the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, and the bubbling mudpots, would remain a blank space until after the Civil War, when other Engineers completed the exploration of the region. [55]

Raynolds's expedition ended an era in western exploration. Since Frémont's first reconnaissance in 1842, officers of the Topographical Engineers had probed, surveyed and mapped portions of the trans-Mississippi West. Raynolds was the last topog to lead an exploring party: during the Civil War his corps again merged with the Corps of Engineers, and the Topographical Bureau was abolished. [56] In the post-Civil War West, the Army and the Corps of Engineers would continue to play an important role. But the topogs were no more.