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1818 Yellowstone Expedition


The Yellowstone expedition was an expedition to the American frontier in 1819 and 1820 authorized by United States Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, with the goal of establishing a military fort or outpost at the mouth of the Yellowstone River in present-day North Dakota. Sometimes called the Atkinson–Long Expedition after its two principal leaders, Colonel Henry Atkinson and Major Stephen Harriman Long, it led to the creation of Fort Atkinson in present-day Nebraska, the first United States Army post established west of the Missouri River, but was otherwise a costly failure, stalling near Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Secretary Calhoun stated the expedition was a "part of a system of measures" to maintain northwestern trade, describing its objects as "the protection of our northwestern frontier and the greater extension of our fur trade." The economic condition had halted in the states due to growing dissent over state issues that were to lead up to the American Civil War, and this gave the expedition military as well as economic purpose.

Starting from St. Louis, Missouri, the expedition aimed to establish a series of forts along the Missouri River on the way upstream to the Yellowstone River, the principal tributary of the upper Missouri, which meets the Missouri in what is now western North Dakota. These forts were intended to increase the American presence in the fur trade and to counteract British influence on the northern plains. The first fort was to be at the Council Bluff (not to be confused with Council Bluffs, Iowa, 20 miles to the south), the site previously used for an 1804 council between the Lewis and Clark Expedition and members of the Oto and Missouria Native American tribes. William Clark had recommended the high bluff overlooking the Missouri River to the U.S. government as a suitable location to build a fort.


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