NO. 7 SOIION S I'ORTRAITS OF INDIANS — EWERS 7 



ammunition from Fort Benton and pressed on as quickly and as 

 quietly as possible, 'llic party crossed the Coeur d'Alene range of 

 mountains in deep snow in late November, passed through the country 

 of the hostiles, and reached Fort Dalles safely by the end of the year 



1855- 



Private Sohon remained on detached duty under Governor Stevens' 

 command until April of 1856. During that period he may have worked 

 over his sketches and assisted in the preparation of maps and meteor- 

 ological data obtained in the previous years. When Governor Stevens' 

 reports of his explorations and surveys of the northern railway route 

 were published in i860, the greater part of the colored lithographs 

 used as illustrations were reproduced from original drawings by John 

 Mix Stanley, the official artist of the expedition, who returned east 

 in 1854. However, this publication also contains 10 illustrations 

 after Gustavus Sohon's sketches, and 2 others redrawn by Stanley 

 from Sohon's original work. The Sohon illustrations were a portion 

 of those made during his service under Lieutenant Mullan in the 

 valley in 1853-54, and with Governor Stevens' treaty-making expe- 

 dition of 1855. (They are listed in the Appendix, p. 67.) 



On April 19, 1856, Private Sohon was ordered to detached duty 

 at Fort Steilacooms, Washington Territory. Six months later he 

 was transferred to duty in the office of Captain Cram, of the Topo- 

 graphical Engineers, at the Headquarters of the Department of the 

 Pacific, Benicia, Calif., where he served as a draughtsman in the 

 preparation of maps of the western portion of the United States for 

 the remainder of his period of military service. Private Sohon was 

 honorably discharged from the Army at the expiration of his 5-year 

 enlistment, at Fort Walla Walla, July 2, 1857. 



The small-scale map, reproduced as plate 3, was drawn on tracing 

 cloth by Gustavus Sohon in 1857. Although its original purpose is 

 not known, it serves to indicate the knowledge of the country between 

 Fort Benton on the Missouri River and Fort W^alla Walla on the 

 Columbia at that time. It also portrays the area in which Sohon 

 traveled and made extensive detailed explorations and surveys during 

 the decade 1853-62. 



In March 1854 Lieutenant Mullan had been successful in taking 

 a wagon train over the Rockies by way of Mullan Pass from Fort 

 Benton to the Bitterroot \'alley. Thus he suggested the possibility 

 of a wagon road over the Northern Rockies. In 1855 Congress 

 appropriated $30,000 for the construction of a military wagon road 



