Western frontier forts functioned as instruments of Native land conquest.

Evidence

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson announced his “Indian removal policy,” aimed at forcing all native groups to give up their lands east of the Mississippi River and relocate to the west. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was initially supposed to mark the “very western edge of civilization” and the “permanent Indian frontier.” However, by protecting the start of the Santa Fe and Oregon trails, it only furthered the westward migration of Euro-American settlers, miners, traders, and farmers. The Army soon became what one historian has called the “advance agent” and “pry bar” of U.S. conquest. A rapidly growing collection of western forts beyond Fort Leavenworth provided more iron for that pry bar and marked the line of westward expansion. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were sixty major forts west of the Mississippi River and 138 army posts in the western territories. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 59

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s theme of infrastructure as quiet power: forts here are the ‘pry bar’ of conquest, infrastructure doing political work.