More Long Marches in the Trans-Mississippi

As mentioned in some older posts, there were some notable long marches in the trans-Mississippi. Wiley Britton’s, The Union Indian Brigade In The Civil War (1922) documented two lengthy marches that took place during the summer of 1863. A skirmish was fought at Cabin Creek in the Indian Territory on 1 July 1863; when General James G. Blunt received word of this fight, he took a small force of cavalry and artillery from Fort Scott, Kansas, to Cabin Creek. The men were able to travel “one hundred and twenty miles in three days” (p. 268). In late August, Colonel W. F. Cloud’s brigade consisting of “…the Second Kansas Cavalry, the First Arkansas Infantry, and two sections of Rabb’s Second Indiana Battery” (p. 286) marched from “…Perryville [Indian Territory] to the vicinity of Fort Smith, a distance of upwards of one hundred miles in four days, the men and horses of Colonel Cloud’s brigade were put to the severest test of physical endurance, for they had been constantly marching for three weeks, and a good deal of the time day and night…” (p. 291).