Fort Kearny’s history as a military site is well documented and generally understood by the Buffalo and Kearney County public. A comprehensive overview of the history of the fort can be found in Buffalo Tales, dated June of 1988 (vol. 11, no. 6), written by Beverly Murray Kimball. There remain, however, several areas of confusion concerning the site. The purpose of this article is to clarify three of these misunderstandings.
The first of these confusing issues concerns the spelling of Fort Kearny, as opposed to the city of Kearney, Nebraska and the county of Kearney, as well as a number of organizations who also use the extra “e” in their use of the word. Although located in Kearney County and only a few miles south and east of the city of Kearney, Fort Kearny retains the family spelling of its namesake, Stephen Watts Kearny. Presently, the historical consensus is that the contrast in spelling can be traced to the earliest days of the military fort when application was made for a post office at the site, in 1849. The need for a central and permanent location to receive and send mail in the mid 1800s frontier was so great that requirements for a postmaster and office were little more than literary proficiency. It is easy to understand how the post office application may have had the extra “e” in error. Even some of the official military documents are spelled incorrectly, due to the local clerk’s reliance on the post office address to be correct. A standardization of American spellings for names and generally used words was in its infancy during the mid 1800s. A survey of various logs and journals kept by travelers on the overland trails indicate common spellings ranged from Carny to Krney with many variations in between. The spelling with the extra “e” became accepted by the surrounding community and the town of Kearney. The use of the military site was terminated in 1871, and the source of the original spelling was easily forgotten. Community, regional and city governments continued to use the extra “e” in all their correspondence and records. County maps and surveys showed the area of the old fort reservation as ‘Fort Kearney’ and local newspapers discussed the proper spelling in editorials well into the 1930s. Even local and regional historians used the extra “e” in their references to the fort.
 |
A notable exception to this public practice was the Nebraska State Historical Society (NSHS). The society recognized the proper spelling due to the origination of the name in honor of Stephen Watts Kearny, and used that spelling in their many references and articles. NSHS dedicated nearly an entire publication to the history of Fort Kearny in 1911, written and edited by Albert Watkins. While NSHS publication used the official spelling of Fort Kearny, local groups that formed to preserve the site as a memorial used the additional “e” in their title. A thesis on the fort, written in 1928 by Lillian Willman, used the accepted community spelling of Kearney, but a reprint in 1930 by the NSHS edited it out. In 1934, Dr. Lyle Mantor wrote his dissertation on the history of Fort Kearny and his original, hand typed, manuscript uses the extra “e” consistently. As the editor of such a well-documented and revered manuscript, Mantor may have bowed to community influence in leaving the extra “e” in the manuscript version. The NSHS publications that contained articles by Mantor continued to edit out the extra “e”. This confusion has continued over the years, and even today, State employees occasionally refer to ‘Fort Kearney’ on highway signs and publish articles with the extra “e”. The common rule to remember is that the city and county are spelled as Kearney, while anything having to do with the military fort and the historical park spell it after its namesake, Stephen Watts Kearny. A well- informed traveler will find it interesting to discover incorrect spellings posted on roadways throughout the state as well as in various publications concerning the fort.
The second point of misunderstanding about Fort Kearny on the Platte concerns the actual involvement of Stephen Watts Kearny. Details of his distinguished military career can be found in an early issue of Buffalo Tales dated January, 1979 (vol. 2, no. 1) written by Phyllis Roberts. Although Kearny’s accomplishments for the American government are detailed and impressive, he did not establish nor was he ever stationed at Fort Kearny on the Platte. In 1842, Capt. John C. Fremont led a military expedition through the area of the “Grand Isle”. He recommended a site near the Platte as an excellent position for a fort. Three years later, Stephen Watts Kearny led a second military expedition from Fort Leavenworth to the South Pass in the Rockies through the same area. Kearny was accompanied by a number of soldiers who later distinguished themselves in the Civil War, including his nephew Philip Kearny. Also travelling with this expedition was a scout named Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone’s son. Perhaps the fort should have been named Fort Fremont or even camp Boone; would we leave the e on the name then?
General Stephen Watts Kearny had been given orders early in 1838 to establish a fort to protect the settlers and peaceful Indians along the westward trails and had established and served briefly at a site on the Table Creek near today’s Nebraska City. Kearny’s original recommendation was for a roving mounted patrol rather than a stationary base to show an organized and powerful military presence to the various Indian tribes. The Army engineer that actually surveyed and established Fort Kearny on the Platte in 1848, was Lt. Daniel P. Woodbury who informally named the new camp after his father-in-law, Brevet Brigadier General Thomas Childs, a distinguished war hero from the Seminole Wars as well as the Mexican War. General Stephen Watts Kearny also distinguished himself in the Mexican War before his death from illness in October of 1848. Shortly thereafter, in December of 1848, the War Department issued General Order #66, directing the new fort to be known as Fort Kearny in his honor.
 |
There were actually three Forts named Kearny; the first, established in 1846 on Table Creek or Fort Kearny on the Missouri; the second, Fort Kearny on the Platte, established in 1848; and a third fort, Fort Phil Kearny established in 1866. The Bozeman trail location in Wyoming carries the family name, in honor of Major General Phil Kearny, the nephew of Stephen Watts Kearny. He was killed in 1862 in the battle of Chantillly in Virginia, a distinguished hero of the Civil War.
The third point of controversy is the issue of the design and use of the stockade. The word “fort” brings to mind an image of a fortress, which is enclosed by an impressive wall. That image may also include a band of “savage” Indians storming the walls for the purpose of scalping, raping and massacring the defenseless settlers protected within the walls. While these images may have been the reality in early, eastern settlements, it is inappropriate for the forts of the Great Plains. Fort Kearny on the Platte was the first fort established along the overland trails to aid and protect the travelers, with Fort Laramie to follow in 1849. The scare of a savage attack by Pawnee Indians was more in the minds of the travelers than the reality. Treaties were agreed to by all four of the Pawnee tribes who were ravaged by disease and other Indian tribes by the 1850s. In 1833 they had signed a treaty with the United States government to cede all of the area South of the Platte for a $4,600 annual fee for 12 years, divided among the four tribes. A second treaty in 1848 ceded the site of the fort to the United States military, as well as all rights to timber and grazing on the Grand Island. The area surrounding the site of the new fort was given in exchange for $3,000 worth of merchandise and goods along with a promise that the Pawnee could continue to hunt in the area as they had in the past..
 |
The forts of the Plains were set up as open areas with few buildings and were described as desolate and barren. The giant Cottonwood trees memorialized in photos and essays of later times, were merely transplanted saplings from the nearby Platte river in the 1850s, and proved to be a poor building material. Cedar and Ash for building purposes was brought in by freight wagons, and was not plentiful enough for a large walled fortress. Many of the original buildings were built of sun-dried bricks or sod and referred to as adobe. The civilian community that developed adjacent to the Fort was formally called Kearney City but was more often referred to as Doby town [shortened version of adobe] due to the material that made up many of the buildings.
Plains Indians seldom stormed an area where they knew soldiers and guns were waiting for them. Indians of the Plains waged guerilla warfare. Most of the soldier’s fighting experiences with the Indians was in leaving the fort to search for roving bands or Indian campsites. On occasions when uprisings and hostile incidents were reported in the area, military escorts and roving patrols were sent from the Fort. The military at Fort Kearny did much more in the way of assisting the travelers with humanitarian type aid by providing supplies and repairs to equipment and wagons. The blacksmith-carpentry shop and Post Office and telegraph station saw much more activity than the stockade and powder magazine.
However, the fear of Indians was exaggerated in the minds of the settlers, especially in 1864 when Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked freighters and individual travelers on the trails west of the Fort. At that time a stockade was erected but in a rapid and haphazard fashion. Dr. Mantor’s dissertation states that a 200 square foot stockade was erected in 1864 by order of Col. Robert R Livingston, in an area East of the parade grounds, and made of split ash. A conflicting, local source, however, claims six wagons of settlers pulled onto the Fort Kearny military site, and with the help of the few soldiers available, built the stockade with what ever lumber they could find, wagons included. But no attack was ever made on the fort and more soldiers were killed by accidental gun discharging than by attacking Indians. At the time of the abandonment of the fort in 1871, the only visible remnants of the fortress attempts were the earthen works in an area referred to as Fort Mitchell or East Fort. Archeological digs in 1960 and 1961 identified the footings and the dimensions of the 1864 wooden stockade, which was probably later used to corral livestock to protect them from Indian raids.
Controversy about the reconstruction of the stockade arose in 1967 when the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission made it a priority in the development of the site as a historical park. The issue was never about the existence of the stockade, but rather how it was presented and the relevance of such an enclosure to the total picture presented to the visitor to Fort Kearny Historical Park. Even today, out- of- state visitors point to the stockade and inquire, “is that where the original fort was?” The uninformed visitors are usually disappointed when entering the reconstructed stockade walls and find little beyond the grassy acres and information placards. The intent to attract visitors is real; the idea that Fort Kearny was a fortress is imaginary.
As a follow up to these three confusing issues, Part II of Fort Kearny, The Rest of the Story will be given in the March- April issue of the Buffalo Tales. The upcoming issue will explore community involvement in establishing Fort Kearny as a public history site. Information concerning a project to make resource information available to the general public will also be shared.(Sources used for information will be listed at the end of Part II.)
Back to Buffalo Tales Homepage
Back to Buffalo County Historical Society home page
Edited 3/14/2003