Colonel Dodge 1834

Colonel Dodge 1834 by George Catlin

The illustration above is of Colonel Henry Dodge and is the work of George Catlin.  It is an excellent sketch and shows the colonel in the typical dress of this period of an active man on the frontier. 

Dodge was born 12 October 1782 and died in 19 June 1867.  He lived large and he was well known in his life an times.  He was a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, a member of the US Senate, and was the Territorial Governor of Wisconsin.  Dodge was also a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Black Hawk War.  His son was Augustus C Dodge, who also served in the US Senate with his father. 

Dodge was a captain in a mounted company in the Missouri State Volunteers in the War of 1812.  He rose to the rank of major general of the Missouri militia by the war’s end.  He was a fierce Indian fighter against hostile Indians, but also showed great mercy to defeated Indians.  He saved a band of Miami Indians from certain death after a unsuccessful raid the Indians made on Boone’s Lick settlement in the summer of 1814.

Dodge later served as Colonel in the Michigan Mounted Volunteers of the western Michigan Territory during the Black Hawk War (1832).  His Michigan Mounted Volunteers were in the battles of Horseshoe Bend, Wisconsin Heights, and Bad Axe, as well as numerous smaller skirmishes. 

In the sketch above, Henry Dodge is seen in the typical dress Anglo-Celtic man on the frontier, wearing a ‘hunter’s frock.’   This is the archetypal dress on the frontier from early Colonial times well into the late 1800s.  It evolved from similar frocks in use in Ireland and Great Britain prior to Colonial times.

In 1833 Dodge’s militia command was replaced by the United States Regiment of Dragoons with Dodge as a colonel.  One of his captains was Nathan Boone, the youngest son of Daniel Boone.  In the summer of 1834 Colonel Dodge and his dragoons conducted the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition into the southwest Great Plains.  The expedition was the first official contact between the southern Plains Indians and the United States government. 

Catlin's painting of Dodge and his Dragoons at a Comanche village on the plains

Dodge City is named after Henry Dodge, though there is a small faction that holds the city was named after Grenville Dodge, who was a Union officer in the WBTS and Indian Wars.  

Mountain of Rock, Comanche Chief, by George Catlin 

George Catlin (26 July 1796 – 23 December 1872) was an American artist and writer. He is known for his portraits of American Indians and Anglo-Celtic hunters and explorers in the Old West.  Catlin made five extended trips to the American west in the 1830s.  Catlin was the first white artist to portray the Plains Indians in their territory.

© 2018 Barry R McCain