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Show -J-With Sitgreaves tothe^acific, ISJI IN AUGUST 185 1, an opportunity arose for Richard Kern ro join another government survey party, this time under Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. With Sitgreaves, Kern would leave New Mexico at government expense and finally reach the Pacific-the destination that had eluded him when he started west with Fremont two years before. From the Pacific, Kern planned to return to Philadelphia by sea. First, however, he had to make his way across a poorly charted region of canyons, deserts, mesas, and mountains, inhabited by hostile Indians. For a person of Kern's tastes, the prospect of such an adventure must have been as exciting as thoughts of returning home. Kern left Santa Fe, his friend Horace Dickinson reported, "charging in buckram or buckskin rather, with the prospect of an agreeable time."1 Dickinson's playful reference to buckram, a cloth used commonly to bind books, might have been a reference to the volumes that the studious Kern was taking along. Like three of Kern's previous bosses, Simpson, Judd, and Parke, Lorenzo Sitgreaves had studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He had graduated in 1832 (twenty-fifth in a class of forty-five) and entered the newly created Topographical Corps six years later, as a second lieutenant. With other topographers, Sitgreaves had seen action in Mexico during the recent war. He had marched with troops under Gen. John E. Wool from San Antonio into northeastern Mexico in the fall of 1846, and helped map the route and the region. In February 1847, he had fought at the pivotal battle of Buena Vista, where American forces defeated Santa Anna, and had been promoted to brevet captain for gallantry and meritorious conduct. Following the war, Sit-greaves's service in the Corps included 143 |
