Editing Des Moines, Iowa (section)

===Origin of Fort Des Moines===
{{For timeline}}
Des Moines traces its origins to May 1843, when Captain [[James Allen (Army engineer)|James Allen]] supervised the construction of a fort on the site where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers merge. Allen wanted to use the name Fort Raccoon; however, the [[U.S. War Department]] preferred Fort Des Moines. The fort was built to control the [[Sauk people|Sauk]] and [[Meskwaki]]  peoples, whom the government had moved to the area from their traditional lands in eastern Iowa. The fort was abandoned in 1846 after the Sauk and Meskwaki were removed from the state and shifted to the Indian Territory.<ref name="Forts">{{Cite book |last1=Schoen |first1=Christopher M. |url=http://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/2009-fall/whittaker.htm |title=Frontier Forts of Iowa: Indians, Traders, and Soldiers, 1682–1862 |last2=W.E. Whittaker |last3=K.E.M. Gourley |publisher=University of Iowa Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-58729-831-8 |editor-last=William E. Whittaker |location=Iowa City |pages=161–177 |chapter=Fort Des Moines No. 2, 1843–1846 |access-date=August 31, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090805200748/http://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/2009-fall/whittaker.htm |archive-date=August 5, 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The Sauk and Meskwaki did not fare well in Des Moines. The illegal whiskey trade, combined with the destruction of traditional lifeways, led to severe problems for their society. One newspaper reported:
<blockquote>"It is a fact that the location of Fort Des Moines among the Sac and Fox Indians (under its present commander) for the last two years, had corrupted them more and lowered them deeper in the scale of vice and degradation, than all their intercourse with the whites for the ten years previous".<ref name="Forts" /></blockquote>After official [[Indian Removal|removal]], the Meskwaki continued to return to Des Moines until around 1857.<ref name="DMIndians" />

Archaeological excavations have shown that many fort-related features survived under what is now [[Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway (Des Moines)|Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway]] and First Street.<ref name="Forts" /><ref>Mather, David and Ginalie Swaim (2005) "The Heart of the Best Part: Fort Des Moines No. 2 and the Archaeology of a City", ''Iowa Heritage Illustrated'' 86(1):12–21.</ref> Soldiers stationed at Fort Des Moines opened the first coal mines in the area, mining coal from the riverbank for the fort's blacksmith.<ref>James H. Lees, "History of Coal Mining in Iowa", Chapter III of [https://books.google.com/books?id=1BUMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA566 ''Annual Report, 1908'']. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160117093152/https://books.google.com/books?id=1BUMAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA415&pg=PA566 |date=January 17, 2016 }}. Iowa Geological Survey. 1909. p. 566.</ref>