In July 1877, 60 black troopers from Company “A”, 10th Calvary under the Command of Captain Nolan from fort Concho were in pursuit of enemy hostiles in a region of west Texas known as the llano Estacado;  a vast featureless high plateau comprising 32,000 square miles of tree-less expanse with little running water and sparse vegetation.  The men of Company “A” became infamous as “the Lost Nolan Expedition” with four men listed as  dead, dying of thirst,  30  horses  and mules dying  or being killed. and  the  remaining  troopers having to resort to drinking their own urine and  the blood of their dead horses. to survive.  Buffalo Soldier Hill or “Nigger Hill” as it was historically called, is the slight elevation, which marked their western most point of travel for 86 hours, before reaching  double lakes near the middle of their fourth day.

THE BLACK ROUTE WEST:             Manifesting Destiny

An Illustrated History Of Lesser Known Facts And Occurrences Utilizing Text and Landscapes    Chronicling The African Diaspora  In The Territories West of the 96 Meridian 

(In The Sovereign Lands of Mexico, The United States and the Dominion of Canada)

From The Years 1528 To 1918

     Dakota Territory, May 14. 1876,  Special Order No. 2, Article IV directed Isaiah Dorman,  to proceed to Fort Abraham  Lincoln for duty as military interpreter under the command of Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer.  Dorman was Black, he had come west some time in the mid part of the century, worked first as a woodhawk for the railroad, then as a guide but he would die  with Custer and 262 members of the 7th. Calvary at the  Little Big Horn, one of the last armed efforts of the Northern Plains Indians to preserve their way of life,

     Isaiah Dorman’s  commemorative  marker now stands alone  in a fallow field.   He had not been a stranger to the Lakota whom he had fought that day, he had lived with them, his wife was  Santee.  In battle that day warriors  had called out to him not with his Christian name but by the names that he had been known to them by,  “wasicun sapa”” and “azinpi”.

     A Sioux chief talked about Isaiah Dorman’s death without animosity, almost indifferently.  “We passed a black man in a soldiers uniform and we had him.   He turned on his horse and shot an Indian right through the heart.  And then the Indians fired at this one man and riddled his horse with bullets.  His horse fell over on his back and the black man was not able to get up.  I saw him as I rode by.”

In the latter years of the American Civil War the Costal packet ship “Brother Jonathan” previously known as the Steamship “Commodore  hit a submerged reef in the middle of the night 10 miles off Pt St George and sunk with a great loss of life. Ten Years earlier At the conclusion of the legal case concerning  Archie Lee .....................................................Black men from the Gold fields of California  to seek their fortunes  in a more amenable  judicial climate. ........................................ of British Columbia , ...............................................status as immigrants to Canada and access to new mining opportunities in the Frazier River Gold Mines.

Point St George Reef, Crescent City, California

Buffalo Soldier Hill, Off of Farm Road 114, Roosevelt County, NM

Little Big Horn National Battlefield Monument,Crow Agency, MT

----------------------------------A Work In Progress--------------------------------