REPORT OF LIEUT. COL. P. ST. GEORGE COOKE OF HIS MARCH FROM SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, TO SAN DIEGO, UPPER CALIFORNIA EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY HAMILTON GARDNER*
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for the first time in 106 years a republication of the "forgotten" source record on the history of the Mormon Battalion. It is the Report1 made by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke to Brigadier General Stephen W a t t s Kearny, commanding the Army of the W e s t , shortly after the Battalion arrived in California. Originally issued as a government document in 1848, it has been allowed to gather dust for more than a century. W h y subsequent writers on the Battalion and the Kearny expedition have so universally overlooked it remains inexplicable. Yet a careful search reveals that only one historian has quoted it on insignificant matters, and few have even cited it. ERE IS PRESENTED
Much better known to students is the official daily Journal2 kept by Colonel Cooke during the Battalion's march. This was published one year after the Report and later writers have made liberal use of it. His second book, The Conquest of New Mexico and California,3 is equally familiar to investigators in this field. Cooke prepared a very readable map of that portion of his * Colonel Gardner has contributed previously to this journal. He has published several studies on social and military history. He is preparing a full-scale biography of P. St. George Cooke. 1 House Executive Document No. 41, 30 Congress, 1 session, 551-63. 2 Journal of the march of the Mormon Battalion of infantry volunteers under the command Lieut. Col. P. St. Geo. Cooke, also captain of dragoons, from Santa Fe, New Mexico to San Diego, Cal.—kept by himself by direction of the comd'g. General Army of the West, in Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 2, 31 Cong., special sess., and hereafter cited as Cooke, Journal. It was reprinted in Ralph P. Bieber, ed., Exploring Southwestern Trails 1846-1854 (The Southwestern Historical Series, VII [Glendale, 1938]), 65-240. Cooke says on October 23, 1846: "I am directed to keep a journal. I have not one minute of time unoccupied and am unwell." 3 Philip St. George Cooke, The Conquest of New Mexico and California; an Historical and Personal Narrative (New York, 1878). Hereafter cited as Cooke, Conquest.
