Off The Record: A tale of two forts

So I Googled FortAtkinsonOnline.com the other day, only to be asked if I meant FortAtkinsonOnline.org. 

No, I didn’t. 

But I went there anyway, just to satisfy my curiosity.

One click whisked me all the way to Nebraska, and a nonprofit called Fort Atkinson State Historical Park.

It appears to be similar to Old World Wisconsin, the living history museum in Eagle run by the State Historical Society. Only this site focuses on military life in the 1820s rather than homesteaders of varying ethnicities settling Wisconsin a couple decades later. 

Admittedly, it was an interesting read because it provided a glimpse of Henry Atkinson before he became the general who led his troops through our area during the Blackhawk War of 1832.

A decade-plus before chasing Black Sparrow Hawk and his small band of Sauk and Fox women, children and elderly men up the Rock River, Atkinson was a colonel commanding the 6^th Infantry, stationed at Plattsburgh, New York, on the U.S.-Canada border. In the fall of 1818, he was ordered to rendezvous his troops with the Rifle Regiment by the Missouri River near St. Louis … a 2,700-mile trek by land and water.

The assignment’s result was Fort Atkinson, Nebraska, which existed from 1819-27 to protect the American fur trade from the British by guarding the “gateway to the west.” At its height, the fort housed nearly one-fourth of the standing United States army — about 1,200 soldiers — with the same number of civilians residing just outside its log walls.

The first fort west of the Missouri River, Fort Atkinson was the starting point for the Yellowstone Expedition of 1819-20, co-led by then-Colonel Atkinson.

Its mission was to establish a military outpost or fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone River in what today is North Dakota. It marked the first scientific expedition of U.S. government-funded “army engineers” charged with mapping, studying, documenting and exploring the vast uncharted land between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains.

Likely, this was the genesis of the Army Corps of Engineers. 

Unfortunately, the expedition essentially ended up a pricey failure. Problems ranged from a Congressional budget deficit that followed the economic expansion after the War of 1812, a shortfall of government contractors and steamboats, and insufficient supplies to river flooding, scurvy and a severely harsh winter that claimed a couple-hundred soldiers and perhaps twice as many civilians. 

Henry Atkinson did lead another expedition to reach the Yellowstone River in 1825, signing treaties with members of eight Native American tribes. 

He was promoted to brevet brigadier general and transferred to St. Louis and district military headquarters. By 1832, Atkinson was in overall command of Western Department of the Army during the Black Hawk War that brought him here to what would become Jefferson County, Wisconsin.

It was in April that that year when a homesick Black Hawk and his followers crossed back into Illinois in violation of a treaty. General Atkinson, then 50, and his forces were ordered to make them return to west of the Mississippi River.

The Hoard Historical Museum tells us that when the soldiers followed the Native Americans into this region, they were stymied by the swamps along the Bark River. By July 10, they were short on supplies and not really certain where Black Hawk was, so Atkinson ordered that a fort be built in what today is downtown Fort Atkinson.

The fort was more of a stockade and called Fort Koshkonong. In May of 1841, an Act of Congress declared it be renamed Fort Atkinson … even though the early settlers had dismantled it to build their log cabins. 

Historians say Atkinson was criticized for mishandling the operations of the Black Hawk War and his reputation did not prosper as did those of his subordinates, Zachary Taylor and Henry Dodge. In fact, folks in our namesake community traditionally align themselves more with Black Hawk than Atkinson.

He did go on to help found the Infantry School of the Army and Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, where the 6^th Infantry Regiment was restationed in March of 1827.

I should mention that Wisconsin and Nebraska are not the only states with a Fort Atkinson. Iowa and Kansas had army posts named after the same general in the 1840s and 1850s, respectively. 

Now you know all about Fort Atkinson, Nebraska, so you can ignore its story should it pop up in error when Googling FortAtkinsonOnline.com.

Meanwhile, the best way to be sure to find our free local news website is by being certain the URL contains “.com” and then clicking “follow” to read it every day.

Editor’s note: Chris Spangler is a contributor and editorial consultant for FortAtkinsonOnline.com.