United States. Army. Camel Corps

In 1836, Major George H. Crosman, United States Army, who was convinced from his experiences in the Indian wars in Florida that camels would be useful as beasts of burden, encouraged the War Department to use camels for transportation. In 1848 or earlier, Major Henry C. Wayne conducted a more detailed study and recommended importation of camels to the War Department. Wayne's opinions agreed with those of then Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Davis was unsuccessful until he was appointed as Secretary of War in 1853. When US forces were required to operate in arid and desert regions, the President and Congress began to take the idea seriously. Newly appointed as Secretary of War by President Franklin Pierce, Davis found the Army needed to improve transportation in the southwestern US, which he and most observers thought a great desert. In his annual report for 1854, Davis wrote, "I again invite attention to the advantages to be anticipated from the use of camels and dromedaries for military and other purposes...." On March 3, 1855, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 for the project;
Major Wayne was assigned to procure the camels. On June 4, 1855, Wayne departed New York City on board the USS Supply, under the command of then Lieutenant David Dixon Porter. After arriving in the Mediterranean Sea, Wayne and Porter began procuring camels. Stops included Goletta (Tunisia), Malta, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. They acquired 33 animals (19 females and 14 males), including two Bactrian, 29 dromedary, one dromedary calf, and one booghdee (a cross between a male Bactrian and a female dromedary). The two officers also acquired pack saddles and covers, being certain that proper saddles could not be purchased in the United States. Wayne and Porter hired five camel drivers, some Arab and some Turkish, and on February 15, 1856, USS Supply set sail for Texas. On May 14, 1856, 34 camels (a net gain of one) were safely unloaded at Indianola, Texas. All the animals were in better health than when the vessel sailed for the United States. On Davis's orders, Porter sailed again for Egypt to acquire more camels. While Porter was on the second voyage, Wayne marched the camels from the first voyage to Camp Verde, Texas, by way of San Antonio, Texas. On February 10, 1857, USS Supply returned with a herd of 41 camels. During the second expedition, Porter hired "nine men and a boy," including Hiogo Alli. The Army had seventy camels; 1857, James Buchanan became President, John B. Floyd succeeded Davis as Secretary of War, and Wayne, who was reassigned to duties with the Quartermaster General in Washington, DC, was replaced by Captain Innis N. Palmer; 1857, in response to a citizen petition to establish a road connecting the East and West, Congress authorized a contract to survey a wagon road along the 35th parallel from Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory, to the Colorado River on what is now the Arizona/California border. Former Navy lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale won the contract and learned afterward that Secretary Floyd required him to take 25 camels with him. The first part of the trip required traveling from Camp Verde through San Antonio; Fort Davis, Texas; El Paso, Texas; and Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory, to Fort Defiance. The expedition left San Antonio on June 25, 1857, and 25 pack camels accompanied a train of mule-drawn wagons. Each camel carried a load of 600 pounds. Beale wrote very favorably about the camels' endurance and packing abilities. Among his comments was that he would rather have one camel than four mules; Early in the Civil War, an attempt was made to use the camels to carry mail between Fort Mohave, New Mexico Territory, on the Colorado River and New San Pedro, California, but the attempt was unsuccessful after the commanders of both posts objected. Later in the war, the Army had no further interest in the animals and they were sold at auction in 1864. The last of the animals from California was reportedly seen in Arizona in 1891; In 1866, the Government was able to round up 66 camels, which it sold to Bethel Coopwood. The U.S. Army's camel experiment was complete. The last year a camel was seen in the vicinity of Camp Verde was 1875; the animal's fate is unknown; Among the reasons the camel experiment failed was that it was supported by Jefferson Davis, who left the United States to become President of the Confederate States of America. The U.S. Army was a horse-and-mule organization whose soldiers did not have the skills to control a foreign asset; one of the male animals at Fort Tejon was killed by another male during rutting season. Lieutenant Sylvester Mowry forwarded the dead animal's bones to the Smithsonian Institution, where they were placed on display