James Allen Polk And Indians

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Mormon Battalion Monument, El Presidio Park, near Pima County ...

The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in American military history, serving from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of about 500 Latter-day Saint men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular army officers. The battalion eventually made a grueling march from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego, California.

The battalion’s march and service was instrumental in helping secure new lands in several Western states, especially the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 of much of southern Arizona. The march also opened a southern wagon route to California. Veterans of the battalion played significant roles in America’s westward expansion in California, Utah, Arizona and other parts of the West.

At the time they enlisted, members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were seeking U.S. government aid for their migration west to the Rocky Mountains and Salt Lake Valley. Under continued religious persecution, they had fled Nauvoo, Illinois on 4 February 1846 across the Mississippi River and were camped among the Potawatomi Indians, where they expected to spend the winter.

Brigham Young, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, sent Elder Jesse C. Little to Washington, D.C. to seek assistance from the federal government for the Mormon trek west. Little arrived in Washington D.C. on 21 May 1846, only eight days after Congress had declared war on Mexico.[1] After several interviews with President James Polk in early June 1846, President Polk agreed to Little’s offer if "five hundred to one thousand" men enlisted.

On 1 July 1846 Captain James Allen, dispatched by Colonel (later Brigadier General) Stephen Kearny, arrived in the Mormon’s Mosquito Creek camp with a request from President Polk to enlist a battalion of 500 volunteers to fight in the Mexican War.[2] Most members of the Church were extremely suspicious of this request, suspecting that the Federal government which had thus far entirely ignored the persecutions suffered by the Saints were now set on continuing that persecution.

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