Nebraskaland

April 2023 • Nebraskaland 39 it to Cow Island. Field and a party of soldiers in a keelboat accompanied Long as he continued north, setting up winter camp, Engineer Cantonment, just north Manuel Lisa's Post. The rest of the soldiers continued north, arriving between late September and early October at what would be their winter camp, Cantonment Missouri, on the banks of the river two miles north of Council Bluff . This was well short of their intended goal of reaching the Mandan Indian Villages in central North Dakota. The excruciating work took its toll on the troops. "Nearly every man had suff ered severely from sickness, and many experienced relapses, before arriving at our point of destination; nor did we then cease to suff er from dysentery, catarrh and rheumatism," Gale wrote in his journals. While the exhausted troops took to building winter quarters, Field was given another assignment. With his background as a surveyor, he was to plot a course from Council Bluff to the location of the nearest post offi ce near present day Brunswick, Missouri. With 10 enlisted men on horseback, he completed the task in 28 days, crossing what Field estimated to be 340 miles of what was then the Missouri Territory. Field described the route, which he dubbed Field's Trace, in his journal, the original copy of which now resides in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In it, he writes often of the expansive prairie that stretched for miles, the woodlands and rich soil they traversed. He mentions several times crossing trails made by Native Americans that had been recently traveled and meeting a band of Iowa Indians. He named each of the 60 streams they crossed, including Elk Creek, where their hunter killed the fi rst elk on the route. "The Country here is more abundant in game than any we have passed through, which is in consequence of their having more shelters to cover them from pursuit," Field wrote. Surveying the route was a diffi cult task, but things didn't get easier when the party returned to Camp Missouri. It would be January before the quarters were nearly completed, and it was a cold winter. The expedition wasn't suffi ciently supplied, and many of the food supplies had spoiled. Subsisting on salted and smoke-dried meat, and lacking vegetables and fruit and vitamin C, scurvy fi rst appeared in the camp in late January. By February, most were aff ected, and it wasn't until April, when natives showed them wild vegetables, such as wild onion, that had begun to sprout that the troops recovered. The malady had taken its toll, though, claiming more than 160 soldiers. Studies of Field's remains showed he was one of hundreds who survived scurvy. Due to the lack of progress and high cost, congress halted the Yellowstone Expedition, and instead ordered Long to explore the Platte River west to the Rocky Mountains. Atkinson's troops remained, but fl ooding inundated Camp Missouri, forcing them to relocate to high ground on Council Bluff . There, they built a fort that in 1821 would be named for their commander, Atkinson, who had been promoted to general and moved on, replaced by Col. Henry Leavenworth. That fall, Field went to back to work on the Trace, making some corrections in the course to make it easier for wagons and to reduce the number of bridges and crossings soldiers would build on the rivers and streams it crossed. He kept a second journal, but the original and one known copy have been lost. It may have contained the true distance he measured by surveyor's chain of 257 miles. The trace would become more than a mail route. Staff with History Nebraska and other historians found settlers used it when they arrived in the 1850s, and mills and towns were built at some of the crossings. Further budget cuts to the military in 1821 reduced the troop strength at Fort Atkinson by half to 548. Field was retained and transferred to the Sixth Infantry, showing his value as an offi cer. He became quartermaster, a position he resigned a year later when Leavenworth refused his request to build a new storage facility. He remained at the fort, however, completing other signifi cant assignments. Amputation and Death The details surrounding Gabriel Field's untimely death are few. According to a paper by Carlson, Field was injured March The fragment of Field's headstone found by John "Jack" Rathjen in 1954 now resides in the Washington County Museum in Fort Calhoun. ERIC FOWLER, NEBRASKALAND

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