The mountain howitzer quickly entered active service with the small Army of the United States. In 1843, Philip St. George Cooke's 1st Dragoons used two Mountain Howitzers to end the rampage of a group of Texans along the Santa Fe Trail. "Colonel" Jacob Snively and a force of Texas Militiamen were raiding the Santa Fe Trail for goods which would aid the cause of the Texas Republic. Cooke cornered the Texans and induced their surrender by aiming the howitzers at them. Snively and his men quickly gave in to a superior force with two cannons. The light-weight howitzers had been able to keep up with a fast-moving force of cavalry through areas where heavier guns, which required more horses to move them, would have been unable to go.(1) "The Pathfinder" John C. Fremont took a Mountain Howitzer with his expedition from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to the Northwest Territory (Oregon and Washington) in 1843. The howitzer was intended to impress the Sioux and keep them from interfering with the expedition. He ended up losing the gun in a high mountain pass.(2) The U. S. army decided to use howitzers in demonstrations for various Indian tribes to show them the might of America. In the spring of 1844 Major John A. Wharton and five companies of Dragoons demonstrated the howitzers for the Pawnees, Otoes and Sauks. Stephen Kearny had one to impress the Arapahos with in 1855. According to witnesses the Arapahos ran away and were very scared of the cannons and the exploding case shot they were firing.(3)
1. William A. Kupke, The Indian and The Thunderwagon: A History of the Mountain Howitzer (Tyrone, NM: Printed by the author, 1996), p. 9.