Remembering Our Civil
War Heritage and Heroes:
1861-1865
Henry Kennerly: From the Upper
Missouri to the Missouri Confederacy
By Ken Robison
For The River Press
April 24, 2014
This is the twenty-fifth
installment of a monthly series commemorating Union and Confederate veterans of
the Civil War who came to Montana after the war. This month features the
adventures of a young man who had lived on the Upper Missouri before the Civil
War, returned to “The States” to fight for the Confederacy, and then came back
to leave his mark in frontier Montana. Descendants of Montana Civil War
veterans are encouraged to send their stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com
When the
Civil War erupted in April 1861 the Upper Missouri region that became Montana
was a vast land of many cultures. In addition to the thousands of Native
Americans populating the dozen tribes, just a small number of American,
Canadian, French, Metis, Spanish, and Mexicans were present, primarily involved
in the fur and robe trade.
One of the
Americans on the Upper Missouri in 1861 was Henry Atkinson Kennerly who was
born at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis December 2, 1835, the son of George H.
and Alziere Menard Kinnerly. His father had served as U. S. Army
quartermaster-general before becoming a prominent merchant, while his mother
came from the fur trading Menard family related through marriage to explorer
William Clark. The Kennerlys were friends of another important fur trade
family, the Chouteaus.
Nineteen
year-old Henry Kennerly first came to the Upper Missouri in 1855 as private
secretary and clerk for senior Indian Commissioner Alfred Cumming as Cumming
and Governor Isaac I. Stevens of Washington Territory negotiated a treaty with
the Blackfoot Nation, Gros Ventre, Flathead Nation, and Nez Perce. This treaty
began a new era for Native Indian-American relations in the Upper Missouri
region. The treaty council culminated American efforts to impose peace and
order among the Indian nations along both the east and west slopes of the
northern Rocky Mountains.
Commissioner
Cumming and his party departed St. Louis on June 6, 1855 on the steamboat St. Mary, commencing the long trip up
the Missouri River. Accompanying Cumming were Kennerly, Charles P. Chouteau,
son of Pierre Chouteau, Jr. and director of operations for the American Fur
Company, owners of the St. Mary, and
Major Alexander Culbertson, supervisor of company operations on the Upper
Missouri. St. Mary also carried
American Fur Company trade goods as well as treaty annuity goods for the
various tribes. In this early steamboat era, goods were off-loaded at Fort
Union to proceed laboriously up river to Fort Benton by mackinaw boats.
The Cumming
party proceeded by the Northern Overland route, arriving at Fort Benton on
August 19th. There, couriers were dispatched to summon the tribes to
a treaty council. Kennerly, with a guide, was detailed to search for the tribes
of the Blackfoot Nation including chiefs Little Dog and Lame Bull. The council
was finally convened near the mouth of the Judith River on October 16th,
and the Lame Bull Treaty was concluded and dated the next day although the
distribution of presents and annuities continued until October 20th.
Two days later Cumming and Kennerly departed to return to St. Louis.
In the
spring of 1856, Kennerly again ascended the Missouri to Fort Benton, this time
employed by the American Fur Company. In the fall of that year he descended the
Missouri to northern Nebraska Territory (which became Dakota Territory in
1861). By late May 1857, a new fur trade coalition was formed in opposition to
Chouteau’s American Fur Company. Robert Campbell joined forces with Frost, Todd
and Company. Daniel M. Frost and John Blair Todd established a trading post at
Vermillion and hired Henry Kennerly to operate their post serving both the Army
at Fort Randall and nearby Indian tribes. Kennerly was also named register of
land with his office in Vermillion. Henry was reunited with his brother Lewis
Hancock Kennerly was also working for Frost and Todd in the area.
As the dark
clouds of the Civil War began to form in Missouri in 1859-60, both Frost and
Lewis Kennerly returned to become leaders in the pro-secession Missouri
Volunteer Militia. That brigade deployed to the Kansas border on the Southwest
Expedition in November 1860 with both Lewis and another brother Samuel Kennerly
in their ranks.
When the
Civil War began in Missouri in May 1861 with the Camp Jackson Affair, Brigadier
General Daniel M. Frost commanded the secessionist Missouri Volunteer Militia
that included Lewis and Samuel Kennerly as well as their teenage third brother,
James Amadee Kennerly. After the surrender of the Militia to Captain Nathaniel
Lyon’s loyal Union regiments on May 10th, Frost and the three
Kennerlys broke their paroles to join the Confederate-aligned Missouri State
Guard under General Sterling Price.
The
Kennerlys all became commissioned officers with the 1st Missouri
Infantry Regiment, one of the most effective regiments in Price’s Army. The 1st
Missouri was composed largely of the young men who had been captured at Camp
Jackson. The 1st Missouri fought in nine pitched battles including
Shiloh, Corinth, Tuscumbia Bridge, Altoona, and Franklin. Commanding the 1st
Missouri was Colonel John Stevens Bowen, married to Mary Kennerly, sister to
the Kennerly brothers.
All of the
Kennerlys, Sam, Jim, and Lew, served as officers in the hard fighting 1st
Missouri Infantry Regiment. Eighteen-year-old James enlisted as a drummer boy,
but soon became bandmaster of the regimental band. Later in the war, he commanded
Company A. Following the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on November 30, 1864,
one of Lieut. Kennerly’s men in Company A wrote: “Our appalling loss was not
generally realized until the next morning, when a ghastly sight was revealed to
those still living. . . . Our regiment had but three officers left
for duty, Capt. James Wickersham and Lieuts. James Kennerly and Patrick
Collins. Our army was a wreck. Our comrades were lying in the embrace of death.
So many young hearts were stilled forever which a few hours ago beat high in
the prospect of soon being at home in Missouri.” On April 9, 1865 Lieut. James
Kennerly and most his men of Company A were captured at the conclusion of the
siege of Fort Blakely, Alabama. He was held at Ship Island, a desolate barrier
island in the Gulf of Mexico, and at Parish Prison, New Orleans, before being
paroled at the end of the war.
Lieut. Lewis
Kennerly of Company D served as adjutant for General Bowen. Lewis was severely
wounded in the hip and thigh in the Peach Orchard at the battle of Shiloh.
Promoted to Captain, he was wounded again a year later during the 1st
Missouri Brigade’s action at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. Despite his wounds, Lewis
was promoted to Major, appointed Judge Advocate, and ordered to staff duty. He
served to the end of the war.
Lieut.
Samuel Augustin Kennerly of Company C mustered in to the 1st
Missouri Infantry at Memphis on June 22, 1861. He participated in battles of
Shiloh, Corinth, and Baker Creek, South Carolina where on May 16, 1863, he was
wounded and left for dead until found on the battlefield by his sister, Mary Kennerly
Bowen. Captured by Union troops, Major General Ulysses Grant ordered that 445
wounded rebel soldiers be paroled including Sam Kennerly. Sam was promoted to
Captain and remained on sick leave from May through October 1863 and spent
another six months in and out of military hospitals. Captain Samuel Kennerly
rejoined the 1st Missouri and took command of Company A in time for
skirmishes at Lovejoy’s Station, Clayton, Georgia during Sherman’s Atlanta
Campaign. There, on the final day of fighting on September 5th, he
was killed and buried on the battlefield close to where he fell.
After John
Bowen’s capture at Camp Jackson, his wife Mary Kennerly smuggled his unit’s
flag out of camp by wrapping it around her waist as a sash. He then broke
parole to secure a commission as a Confederate colonel and raised the 1st
Missouri Infantry Regiment. A brigadier general, in March 1862 he was severely
wounded at Shiloh. Recovering, Bowen took command of the 1st
Missouri Brigade, when he distinguishing himself early in the Vicksburg
campaign and was promoted to major general. He fell gravely ill during the
siege of Vicksburg, and died nine days after the Confederate fortress
surrendered July 4th. Wife Mary endured the long siege at Vicksburg
to be with her husband and saved two 1st Missouri battle flags from
capture by hiding them in her husband’s ambulance.
In September
1862, Henry Kennerly was elected to the Dakota territorial House of
Representatives that met at Yankton on December 12th. After
adjournment of the legislature January 9, 1863, Kennerly returned to St. Louis
to join his three fighting brothers in the 1st Missouri Infantry of
the Confederate Army. Little is known of Henry’s service except for the fact
that he served as a staff officer for at least one year and suffered a wound
below the knee before accepting a discharge.
In the
spring of 1864, Kennerly returned to the Upper Missouri disembarking on the
Fort Benton levee where he was engaged as clerk for the American Fur Company
until it sold out the next year.
The mid 1860s began the wild and wooly days of
Fort Benton, the head of navigation on the Missouri River. Dozens of steamboats
with vast quantities of cargo landed at the levee each summer. The rough
streets of the town were roamed by the rich and famous, scoundrels and killers,
fur and robe traders, merchants and gamblers, Native Indians and soldiers,
Irish Fenians and exiled Metis, and, eventually by women and children. Henry
Kennerly was in his element.
In November 1865, Acting Governor Thomas
Francis Meagher and Gad Upson, Indian agent to the Blackfeet, arranged a peace
treaty. Thousands of Blackfeet assembled at Fort Benton for the ceremony,
camping out along the Fort Benton bottom. Two decades later the Fort Benton River Press of December 24, 1884 gave
this account.
A large train of the Diamond R transportation company was also camped on
the flats. They had transported a four-pound howitzer on the back of a faithful
mule from the steamer Shreveport that
had unloaded her cargo at Cow Island. The howitzer had been left for the
protection of the freight and came with the last of the supplies.
The
men in charge of the ‘little gun’ conceived the idea of showing the immense
congregation of Indians its strength by discharging it from the back of a mule.
The howitzer, loaded with grapeshot, was securely fastened upon the back of a
large, sleepy looking train mule with the muzzle pointed toward the tail, and
the patient, unsuspecting animal was led to the bank of the river near the
present site of T. C. Power & Bro.’s store, and a target set up across the
river. The rear of the mule was aligned with the target, and the train men,
officers, curious old timers, and wondering Indians were arranged in a
semi-circle around the mule.
The
appointed chief of ceremonies advanced and when all was in readiness inserted a
time fuse in the touch-hole of the howitzer and then retired. In a short time
the quiet, unruffled mule heard a fizzing just back of his ears, which made him
uneasy, and he immediately began to turn his head to investigate. As he did so
his body turned and the howitzer began to take in other points of the compass.
The mule became more excited as his curiosity became more and more intense, and
in a few seconds he either had his four feet in a bunch, making more
revolutions a minute than the bystanders dared to count, with the howitzer
threatening destruction to everybody within a radius of a quarter of a mile, or
he suddenly would try standing on his head with his heels and howitzer at a
remarkable angle in the air. The train men and Indians scattered pell mell over
the flat toward the bluffs, running as if they thought that in flight lay their
only safety, and that, too, at a rate of speed much greater than grapeshot.
Judging from the alacrity with which Col. Broadwater, H. A. Kennerly, Joe Healy
and Mose Solomon slid over the bank of the river, they were not opposed to
immersion; Matt Carroll, George Steell and James Arnoux sprinted toward the
store, Hi Upham, John J. Healy and Bill Hamilton began to throw up breastworks
with their sheath knives, while I. G. Baker and one or two of the peace
commissioners were turning back-springs toward the fort.
While the mule, with his heels in mid-air, was shaken with the most
violent agitation, there was a puff of smoke, a thud, and the mule—oh, where
was he? Ask of the winds, for not a soul saw him, and they will tell you a
lonely, forlorn mule might have been seen turning over and over until he
tumbled over the bank with his howitzer and cast anchor in the river. The shot
went toward the fort, striking the figure of a buffalo [weather vane] that was
used as an advertisement at the fort, and which hung there until the last two
or three years, and which many of the citizens of Fort Benton will remember was
well perforated with balls. Further investigation has brought to light the fact
that X. Beidler was the commander in chief elected, and that it was his first
buffalo. [X. Beidler being the famed vigilante hangman and U.S. Marshall in the
new territory.]
Most
other accounts have the Native Indian guests sitting stoically in their circle,
wondering about the antics of the white man.
Henry
Kennerly began as a clerk and over time became a trader in the Blackfeet trade,
the agent for a succession of T. C. Power & Bro.-owned trading post in
Blackfeet Country. Tom C. Power and his younger brother John arrived on the
Upper Missouri in 1867 to form a powerful trading company. Kennerly operated
Power’s Willow Rounds post on the Marias River. In 1872 Kennerly moved to
Power’s Fort Maginnis on Badger Creek to capture more of the Canadian Blackfoot
trade. About 1874 Kennerly married Mary Successful Kill or Good Killing, a
Blackfoot woman, and raised their children Bertia, Perry, Hattie, Agnes, and
Jerome, and adopted child Sarah Wright. Kennerly remained at the Maginnis post
until 1880.
From his
arrival in the new Montana Territory, Henry Kennerly took an active interest in
politics and served as a Democrat in the territorial House of Representatives
for three terms (1867, 1869, 1880). He continued his political years serving
two years as Choteau County treasurer, four years as assessor, and a short
tenure as sheriff. While holding county offices, Kennerly lived with his family
on a ranch at the mouth of Kennerly Coulee on the Teton River, about
thirty-five miles west of Fort Benton.
After his
political years, Kennerly ranched on Birch Creek, a tributary of the Two
Medicine River on the Blackfeet Reservation. In 1896 he remarried another
Piegan woman, Marguerite “Maggie” Gobert., daughter of (Old) Mountain Chief
“Neat-A-Sin-Ne.” To this union were born two sons James Otis and Leo Menard.
Kennerly keenly
felt the responsibility to educate his children. In March 1890 he arrived in
Great Falls with 39 multiracial children from the Piegan Agency including his
two oldest sons. He put the children on the eastbound train destined for
Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the first native children to attend Carlisle
from this region. Kennerly then placed his younger children at Holy Family
Mission on the Two Medicine River on the reservation. To finance the education
of his children, Kennerly secured a position (1890-1891) as Issue Agent on the
Blackfeet Reservation, serving from the office at Piegan. From 1894 on he
served as deputy U.S. Customs Officer, stationed at the Blackfeet Agency, then
just east of Browning, where he also operated a trading post.
By 1899
Kennerly had lost his eyesight forcing his retirement. A letter of April 22,
1899 reported to the Great Falls Tribune:
“Henry A. Kennerly, well known throughout
the state, now resides at Blackfoot station; he is totally blind but is
enjoying good health. Mr. Kennerly is an old confederate soldier who
participated in several battles and was on the staff of one of the southern
generals at the capture of Vicksburg, where General [Ulysses] Grant, upon
seeing him, shook hands very cordially, as they were intimate friends before
the war, the general having met his wife at the home of Mr. Kennerly’s sister.”
[Henry Kennerly’s oldest sister Eliza Clark Kennerly Stevenson was one year
younger than Julia Dent Grant and the two were prominent in St. Louis society.]
The aging
Henry Kennerly moved to the home of adopted daughter, Mrs. Sarah Wright
Allison, in Cut Bank. The Allisons cared for Kennerly for more than a decade,
and during the winter of 1912-1913 they assisted him in recording his
recollections of life on the Upper Missouri. Tragically, most of this
manuscript later was destroyed by fire, with only his account of the Blackfeet
Council of 1855 surviving.
On Tuesday,
July 8, 1913, the old Confederate soldier, fur trader, legislator, and pioneer
on the Upper Missouri, Henry Atkinson Kennerly died at the Allison home, at the
age of seventy-three.
Ken Robison is a local historian and
author of Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the
Battlefield.
Photo: 1. A scene at the Blackfeet
Treaty Council of 1855 where Kennerly served as secretary for Commissioner
Cumming.
Photo: 2. Kennerly with other Fort Benton
traders at Sioux City in 1866. Back row left to right: Mose Solomon; African
American Bob Mills; John Largent. Seated left is Joe Kipp; right is Henry
Kennerly.
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