DRAGOONS FOR DRAGOONS

persistent myth concerning the vaunted U.S. Army Dragoons, founded in 1833 as an elite mounted regiment, is that its troopers were always equipped with the most modern firearms of their period. In reality—a reality that would persist through the 1850s—the Dragoons who served out West were for the most part armed with inferior weapons.

That’s not to say any of their firearms were out of date. Rather, their weapons were what the War Department, controlled by a penny-pinching Congress, could afford to issue. In the wake of the 1846–48 Mexican War federal arsenals were filled with surplus weapons and immense inventories of ammunition. Acquisition of the