PC-SIG: World of Education/PC-SiG's World of Education.iso/run/2298/exeng.com

Graham's TXT2COM | 1989-09-12 | 41.7 KB | 636 lines

                    THE DUTCH, THE SWEDES & ENGLISH

                 ┌───────────────────────────────────────┐
                 │     F1 - Introduction                 │
                 │     F2 - The Dutch - Hudson           │
                 │     F3 - The English Claim - Cabot    │
                 │     F4 - Harrising Spain - Drake      │
                 │     F5 - First Settlement - Smith     │
                 │     F6 - Cook                         │
                 │     F7 - Mackenzie                    │
                 │     F8 - Thompson                     │
                 │     F9 - Mckenzie                     │
                 │     F10 -Ogden                        │
                 └───────────────────────────────────────┘

                    Press a Function Key (F1 - F10)





~#1
      INTRODUCTION

         Other Europeans were not to be denied a share of the New World
    wealth.  Holland (the Netherlands) was almost as quick as Britain and
    France to seize the opportunities in North America.  Dutchmen as well
    as Englishmen, however, clashed before long with the newly arrived
    Swedes, whom they felt were encroaching on their territory.  New
    Netherlands soon conquered New Sweden, only to fall itself to Britain,
    whose settlers surrounded it on all sides.  Though the Dutch and
    Swedish phases of colonial history were short-lived (from about 1614-
    1664) the settlers of the two nations contributed substantially to
    U.S. national heritage.

~#2
                                  DUTCH
    HENRY HUDSON [?-c1611]:

          Henry Hudson was a British born navigator who twice sailed for
    the English Muscovy Company (1607 & 1608) north and east over Scan-
    dinavia to discover a Northeast Passage to Cathay (China).  He failed
    but his desire to continue remained strong.  The merchants of Amster-
    dam soon began to seek a share in the trade of both the East Indies
    and the New World.  In 1602, the States General (or Parliament)
    chartered the Dutch East India Company and authorized it to capture
    what it could of the Eastern trade from other nations.  In 1609, the
    company employed Henry Hudson to sail west and probe the North Ameri-
    can Continent.  On the HALF MOON with a Dutch crew, he struck the
    coast of Newfoundland, turned south as far as Virginia, and then
    returned up the coast to Delaware and Chesapeake bays.  He continued
    northward and entered New York Harbor first sighted by the Italian
    Verrazano (1524) while in the service of France.  When Hudson first
    sighted the "Great River of the Mountains," the crew thought the
    passage to the East had been found.  The HALF MOON moved 150 miles
    upstream for 11 days, to the site of Albany, before Hudson, observing
    the narrow channel and shallow fresh water, decided that he had not
    found the passage to the East and returned to Holland.

         The next year, sponsored by a group of English adventurers, he
    returned to pursued the passage. This time he sailed north of Canada.
    But his crew mutinied and set him adrift with a few others to perish
    on the cold waters of the great northern bay that now bears his name.
    The Dutch and English could now lay claim to the land explored by
    Hudson.

         Although the Dutch East India Company was disappointed that
    Hudson had not found a trade route to China, other Dutchmen grasped
    the opportunities presented by the discovery of the Hudson River.  The
    year after Hudson's voyage, in 1610, Dutch traders began voyaging to
    the Hudson Valley.  They did not come to stay, but to trade with the
    Indians, who usually welcomed them and exchanged furs for European
    goods.  In repeated visits between 1610 and 1613 the traders familiar-
    ized themselves with the Hudson Valley from its mouth to the juncture
    of the Mohawk River.  A few of them pushed westward to the Delaware.

         In 1613, Adriaen Block discovered Hells Gate, explored Long
    Island Sound and the Connecticut River, gave his name to Block Island,
    rounded Cape Cod, and traveled along the Massachusetts coast past the
    site of Boston.  The same year, Cornelius May circled the southern
    shore of Long Island and explored Delaware Bay and the Delaware River
    as far as the mouth of the Schuylkill River.  The next year, 1614, the
    merchants who had financed these explorations organized the New
    Netherlands Company and obtained from the States General a monopoly on
    the fur trade in the region between the 40th and 45th Parallels.

         In 1618, the States General did not renew the charter of the New
    Netherlands Company.  The last significant act of the company, that
    same year, was the cementing of friendship with the Iroquois by a
    formal treaty, which insured their continued hostility toward the
    French and provided a buffer for the Dutch colonists.  In all likeli-
    hood, the friendship between the Dutch and Iroquois prevented the
    French from occupying the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys and confined them
    to the lake region to the north and west.

         The success of these independent traders alone did not provoke
    the organization of the company that was to guide the future destinies
    of New Netherlands.  The lucrative possibility of harrying the com-
    merce of Spain (a nation all Dutchmen hated) was the basic reason for
    the next charter issued by the States General in 1621 that authorized
    the formation of the Dutch West India Company, a vast and wealthy
    corporation which was given a monopolistic control over New Nether-
    lands.

         Director Generals were assigned by the Dutch Government to rule
    the new territories.  Peter Minuit was the first of these.  He arrived
    in May 1625 with more settlers.  Among his instructions were orders to
    purchase the island which he did for 60 guilders worth of trinkets -
    the traditional $24.  He established a new settlement called Nieuw
    (New) Amsterdam in 1626 which consisted of a small fort and a cluster
    of homes at the southern tip of Manhattan.

         Peter Stuyvesant arrived in 1647 to take up leadership of New
    Amsterdam.  During the remainder of the Dutch stay the small group of
    immigrants was involved with settlement of land, and struggles with
    the Indians, Swedish and English claims.

                            FOUNDING OF NEW SWEDEN

         Sweden's great King, Gustavus Adolphus, who raised his nation to
    a powerful position in Europe, was also interested in the potential of
    American fur trade to be followed at his death by his daughter's
    regent.  In 1637, the Swedish Government chartered the New Sweden
    Company, one of the directors of which was none other than Peter
    Minuit, late governor of New Netherlands.

         The most serious problem of New Sweden was that both the English
    and Dutch looked upon it as an intrusion on land that each of them
    claimed.  Perhaps because of the alliance of the three nations in the
    Thirty Year's War against their common enemy, Spain, the Swedes were
    not molested until the war ended, in 1648.  In 1655 Stuyvesant
    appeared in Delaware Bay with 3 ships of men and proclaimed Dutch
    sovereignty.  The Swedes soon relinquished all rights to the
    territory.

~#3
                         THE BRITISH: Colonists

         Haunting all the Dutch administrators was the fact that their
    small colony sat in the midst of vigorous British settlements which
    had a far greater population.  Secondly, Dutch merchant ships had
    begun to carry cargoes, especially the profitable tobacco, in the New
    World trade - in direct violation of Britain's Navigation Acts.  As
    long as New Amsterdam was open to Dutch ships, the Acts could not be
    enforced.  Even Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut had
    rejected the mercantile theory to the point of opening their harbors
    to Dutch vessels.

         In March 1664, the restored King Charles II acted.  He granted
    all the region embraced by New Netherlands to his brother, James, Duke
    of York.  He appointed Col Richard Nicolls as Lieutenant Governor of
    the province and ordered him to prepare an invasion.  In August 1664,
    he led an English fleet of 4 vessels and several hundred fighting men
    into New York Harbor.  He offered liberal terms of surrender.
    Stuyvesant blustered and raged but the citizens rebelled and refused
    to support him.  With hardly a shot fired, on August 26, 1664, New
    Amsterdam capitulated and welcomed the English.  Soon thereafter, the
    rest of the territory also surrendered.

         Of all the European influences on the United States, those of the
    English were the most substantial and enduring.  British colonials
    were the basic progenitors of the new Nation.  Many of them were
    escaping from the religious persecution that convulsed England in the
    17th century.  Indeed, the desire for religious freedom was a major
    factor in colonization.  However, proprietors or companies, whose
    motives included the desire for profit, founded many of the colonies.
    At the same time, they also provided the outlet that many believed
    England needed for her surplus population.

         Despite the claim in the New World provided by John Cabot's
    voyage in 1497, and Hudson in 1609 the British were the last of the
    three major European powers to attempt to settle.  Yet, by 1700, they
    had established substantial colonies all along the Atlantic coast.
    The English colonies lacked the gold and silver of New Spain and the
    wealth in furs of New France.  But, based on trade, agriculture, and
    fisheries, colonial wealth steadily increased.  New settlers arrived
    to take advantage of the opportunities, and the population soon
    surpassed that of the French and Spanish colonies.

                             Establishing a Claim

         England became unified late in the 15th century.  On Bosworth
    Field, in 1485 (7 years before Columbus' trip), Henry Tudor put an end
    to the civil strife of the Wars of the Roses and crowned himself Henry
    VII.  Forcefully bringing recalcitrant nobles to heel, he strengthened
    his authority.  For the first time in nearly a century, England had
    stability in government and a considerable degree of peace and pros-
    perity.  Henry, therefore, could devote his attention to the  promo-
    tion of commerce.  He encouraged English merchants to enter foreign
    trade, supported the formation of trading companies, and restricted
    the activities of the foreign merchants in London and Bristol, who had
    monopolized trade.  Columbus even sent his brother to England when he
    failed to obtain support from the Portuguese or Spanish Kings for his
    proposal that Cathay could be reached by sailing west across the
    Atlantic.  Henry VII agreed to finance the voyage and urged Columbus
    to come at once to England.  But, before the latter left Spain, the
    Spanish monarchs experienced a change of heart and supported the
    voyage that was to give Spain an empire.

    JOHN CABOT [c1450-1498]

         Meanwhile, Henry VII never gave up his hope of obtaining for
    England a share of the rich Eastern trade.  British merchants
    established a trade link with Iceland about 1490.  And, encouraged by
    news of Columbus' voyage, on March 5, 1496, Henry VII granted letters-
    patent to the "well-beloved John Cabot" and his three sons to sail
    west across the Atlantic to Asia.  An Italian-born navigator, Cabot
    had lived in England since 1484.  As a youth, he had visited the East,
    and when he arrived in London he had already decided that an all-water
    route could be found to the trading centers there.  He may have made a
    few trips to Iceland before the King commissioned his trans-Atlantic
    voyage.

         In May of 1497, Cabot left Bristol with a crew of 18 and, after a
    voyage of 52 days across the North Atlantic, landed on Cape Breton
    Island and took possession of the land for Henry VII.  From there, he
    explored several islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence and in August
    returned to England and the praise of Henry VII, who granted him new
    letters-patent.  When Cabot sailed again, in 1498, he had perhaps 5 or
    6 ships, whose crews totaled some 300 men.  The King personally
    financed a substantial portion of the expedition's cost.  On his
    second voyage, Cabot probably explored the North American coast from
    Newfoundland south to the Delaware or Chesapeake Bays but his ship
    never returned to report.

         Henry Hudson sailed from England in 1607 in an effort to reach
    Cathay by the Northern route.  He explored the coast of Greenland,
    found his way barred by ice and returned to England.  Maps of the day
    and later showed a clear path on the northern route and efforts
    continued for centuries to find it.  Martin Frobisher [c1535-1594]
    failed in 1576, John Davis [c1550-1605] in 1585 and Hudson again in
    1610 on his last and fourth attempt.  But no serious exploration of
    the North American coast occurred after Cabot until the French
    appeared on the scene of Newfoundland in 1534.

         Having failed to find the shores of China or Japan (Cipango), the
    English turned in the opposite direction.  Henry VII's son, Henry VIII
    enthusiastically began to build "a fleet the like of which the world
    has never seen."  John Cabot's son, Sebastian, became a renowned
    navigator.  After serving Spain for a number of years, he returned to
    England and opened the northern sea-land route to Moscow.  He also
    helped found the company of Merchants-Adventurers, predecessor of the
    Muscovy Company, and became its president for life.

         Thus, for nearly a century, England's interest was diverted from
    the New World, and her energies were concentrated on the development
    of a commercial empire and a merchant fleet that became second to none
    in Europe.  But John Cabot had given England a claim to the northern
    shores of the New World, and in the course of time the "sea dogs" and
    other English mariners were to breathe new life into it.

~#4
                             Harassing the Spanish

         When Henry VIII died, in 1547, he left his throne to his sickly
    son, Edward.  After Edward died, in 1553, while yet a minor, rule
    passed to Mary.  "Bloody" Queen Mary tried with fire and sword to
    return England to the papal fold until her death in 1558.  But under
    Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, England entered a golden age of
    exploration and expansion.  The Queen promptly restored the Church of
    England as the state religion and embarked upon a policy of ecclesias-
    tical compromise and domestic tranquillity.  Abroad, she coyly flirted
    with Phillip II of Spain, while secretly encouraging her admiring sea
    captains to enrich themselves - and her - by raiding and harassing
    Spanish commerce.  It was a delightful game.

    FRANCIS DRAKE [c1540-1596]:

         Shortly after Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, John Hawkins
    began illicitly smuggling slaves into Hispaniola.  He then shifted to
    the plundering of Spanish treasure galleons, and ultimately to the
    raiding of coastal towns in Spain's colonial empire.  By about 1570,
    usually with royal connivance, English sea rovers were regularly
    attacking the Spanish treasure fleets.  The Queen knighted both
    Hawkins and Francis Drake, whose exploits are better known.  Drake
    pillaged towns and ships in the Caribbean.  In 1577, he also passed
    through the Straight of Magellan and, in a series of surprise attacks,
    looted Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast.  While on this
    incredible escapade, in 1579 he became the first Englishman to reach
    the Pacific Northwest.  He landed at San Francisco Bay on the Califor-
    nia coast to careen his ship.  He named the land New Albion.  Then, so
    laden with plunder that he feared Spanish men-of-war might wrest them
    from him if he returned through the strait, he boldly struck out
    across the Pacific.  He completed his circumnavigation of the globe
    landing in England in 1580.  His hold bore treasure that repaid his
    financial backers some 5,000 percent on their investment, added more
    than a quarter of a million pounds to the Queen's coffers, and esta-
    blished England's claim to the West Coast.

                         Seeking the Northwest Passage

         About this time, during the period 1576-78, Martin Frobisher made
    three voyages to the northernmost part of the New World.  Michael Lok,
    Governor of the Company, was convinced that a black rock brought back
    by Frobisher contained gold. Excitement also was raised that Frobisher
    had found the allusive Northwest Passage to the Orient.  After his
    first exploring expedition, he and his associates organized the
    Company of Cathay, which went bankrupt after the failure of two subse-
    quent expeditions.  A few years later, John Davis revived his project
    of seeking a Northwest Passage.  He, too, made three voyages into the
    icy waters beyond the Hudson Strait, between 1585 and 1587, the
    results of which were as disappointing as Frobisher's.  Later, in
    1596, Lok met Juan de Fuca who told him that he had in fact sailed
    into a northwest passage at 47° & 84 north latitude; and furthermore,
    that the land was covered with gold, silver and pearls.  His efforts
    to obtain support continued to advertise this hidden prize.

         As late as 1737, Arther Dobbs was similarly convinced and was
    able to get Hudson's Bay Co [1737] and the English Admiralty [1742] to
    search for it.  When the voyages returned with negative findings Dobbs
    was convinced that they reports were lying and that people had been
    bribed to hide the truth.  When he was made Governor of North Carolina
    he met Maj Robert Rogers.  Their discussions led Rogers to develope
    his conviction which he broadcast that a river route existed to the
    west coast.

~#5
                           First Settlement Attempts

         An ardent advocate of the existence of a Northwest Passage and a
    shareholder in Frobisher's Company of Cathay, Sir Humphrey Gilbert
    [c1537-1583] turned the Queen's attention to colonization projects.
    He was a soldier/explorer who was convinced that the Northwest Passage
    existed.  His words motivated the voyages of Frobisher, John Davis and
    others.  Gilbert received a patent from Elizabeth I to colonize
    America.  His first expedition that same year [1578] failed but in
    1583 he reached Penobscot Bay (named Norumbega).  The ship's captain
    went ashore and took possession of Maine for England.  But the colony
    that he established in Newfoundland ended disastrously, and on the
    return trip he was lost at sea.

         The following year, Elizabeth renewed Gilbert's grant in the name
    of his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh.  Raleigh first sent out an
    expedition, led by Philip Amandas and Arthur Barlowe, to make a
    reconnaissance of the North American coast.  In 1584, sailing by way
    of the Canaries and the West Indies, it traveled up the coast to
    present North Carolina, explored the region, and returned to recommend
    it enthusiastically for a colony.  Raleigh christened the new land
    "Virginia" - for the "Virgin Queen" - and appointed Sir Richard
    Grenville to establish a settlement.

         Obsessed with the dream that they might discover gold in the New
    World as the Spanish had done, the colonists were little inclined to
    labor at clearing the fields and planting crops.  By summer of the
    following year, they were constantly quarreling and fighting with the
    Indians, from whom they had initially obtained supplies, and were now
    nearly out of provisions.  In June a fleet approached - not Grenville
    but Drake, returning from a triumphant raid in the West Indies.
    Discouraged, the colonists returned to England with Drake.  They had
    missed Grenville and the supply expedition by only a few weeks.  After
    a brief and futile search, being "unwilling to loose possession of the
    country which Englishmen had so long held," Grenville stationed 15 of
    his men at the post on Roanoke Island and hastened southward to cruise
    for Spanish prizes.  The 15 were never heard from again.  But Raleigh
    persisted.

                    Jamestown and the Founding of Virginia

         The defeat of the Spanish Armada [1588] made the New World safer
    for the English.  Though the Raleigh ventures failed, they excited
    interest in colonization.  Between 1602 and 1605, a few expeditions,
    including those led by Bartholomew Gosnold (who explored the coast of
    New England to Maine and was one of the Jamestown leaders) were
    attempted.  Capt George Weymouth returned with 5 Indians in the summer
    of 1605 which excited the interest of traders.  (Samoset, the English
    speaking Indian who later greeted the Pilgrims when they landed at
    Plymouth, had been tutored by one of the returning natives.)

         The next British attempts were to be made by joint stock com-
    panies, which had emerged in the 16th century.  Early successes of the
    Muscovy and Levant companies in Europe had led to the organization of
    the highly profitable East India Company, and a number of others.
    Chartered and loosely supervised by the Crown, these companies began
    to lead in the expansion of the British Empire.

         In 1606, a group of merchant investors founded the Virginia
    Company and obtained a charter from James I that authorized coloniza-
    tion of the lands claimed for England by James Cabot.  From the first,
    the company consisted of two groups: The London Company, whose domain
    was the southern coast or "South Virginia"; and the Plymouth Company,
    "North Virginia".  Ferdinando Gorges [1566-1647] and John Popham were
    interested in the New World.  Raleigh had been killed so they sought
    out John Smith and Martin Pring for information.  In 1606 Weymouth was
    sent back with Pring and Thomas Hanham to select a colony site.  In
    August they arrived at Monhegan Island and found the area thick with
    fish.  Raleigh Gilbert led a boat party ashore and they selected a
    site near the mouth of the Kennebec.  There the colonists built Fort
    St George, a church and 15 small huts.  In spring 1608 ships arrived
    with news of the death of Popham taking away their chief financial
    support.  Gilbert decided to go home leaving the settlement leader-
    less.  The remaining men, dissatisfied with the harsh winters, no gold
    and no support decided to join the exodus.  In his next effort the
    ship was seized by the Spanish at Puerto Rico.  During the following
    years the disappointed Gorges satisfied himself by directing many
    fishing and trading expeditions along the New England coast and
    fighting legal battles over his perceived rights to all of New
    England.  Three successive trips under the command of John Smith also
    failed soon after leaving harbor.  In 1616, the optimistic Gorges sent
    Capt Richard Vines and 16 men.  They sailed to the Saco River up to
    Biddeford Pool, built cabins and spent the winter proving that it
    could be done.

         Meantime, in 1607, the London Company had established a success-
    ful settlement in Virginia.  On May 13, the colonists selected a site
    and named it James-forte, or Jamestown.  A swampy, wooded peninsula
    about 30 miles from the sea, it provided good docking facilities and
    satisfactory defense against the Indians.  More settlers arrived in
    June of 1607 to find that only 38 of the original settlers had sur-
    vived disease and Indian ambuscade.

    JOHN SMITH [c1580-1631]:

         Capt John Smith was an adventurer who had fought in wars in
    Hungary and Turkey even spending time as a Turkish slave.  He invest
    in the new Virginia Company and sailed for the New World in 1606.
    Smith explored the surrounding area and drew up a rough map of Vir-
    ginia.  By 1608 he gained the leadership role in the Jamestown council
    succeeding Ratcliffe as Governor.  Initiating rigid discipline, he
    directed the erection of a blockhouse fort, a score of cabins, a
    storehouse and a well.  The colonists, who preferred trading with the
    Indians then farming, had to be forced to raise livestock and plant
    crops.  In December 1607 he was captured by Indians and threatened
    with death.  He was saved, it is said, by the chief's 12 year old
    daughter, Pocahontas.  In Jan 1608 almost a month after returning from
    captivity, Jamestown was burned to the ground.  Many of the settlers
    owed their lives to food brought by the Indians.  Even so, half died
    during that winter.  Newport and his crew, living on the ship ignored
    the settler's plight and spent time filling the ship with fool's gold
    in the form of iron pyrites.

         In April Capt Samuel Argall arrived on his way to fish at Mon-
    hegan with supplies and Smith ordered the men back to work building
    shelter and planting food with the dictum that "He who works not, eats
    not."   The ship also brought news of reorganization in London and the
    coming of a new governor, Lord De la Warr, additional supplies and
    settlers.  Three hundred new settlers arrived in 1609.  Constantly
    beset by difficulties, attempts against his life and unrealistic
    orders from London, Smith left.  The remaining settlers without strong
    leadership succumbed to their lazy habits.  By 1610 only 59 remained
    (about 430 died).  They decided to leave but as they abandoned James
    Towne Lord de la Warr arrived who ordered them to turn back.  Though
    they continued to sicken and die the Virginia Company somehow stag-
    gered on finding more settlers and money to keep Jamestown alive.
    When John Rolfe introduced tobacco seed from Trinidad and Venezuela to
    replace the bitter Virginia weed in 1612, the success of the colony
    was assured.  The golden weed sold for six times the price of wheat on
    the London market.

         In 1614 Smith spent the summer on Monhegan, planted a garden and
    explored the shores between Cape Cod and Penobscot Bay.  He published
    a map of the coast to which he was first to give the name of New
    England and, on his return to England provided much information for
    those to follow.  In 1620 the Pilgrims reached Massachusetts and
    founded New Plymouth.  Much of their knowledge came from information
    supplied by Smith.

         From New Brunswick to Georgia English colonies were being founded
    but little was known by the British of the interior beyond the
    Alleghanies.  The French who were aggressively established trading
    posts in the north were hemming in the English and Dutch colonies.
    For more than a century little serious effort was made to explore the
    west until the mid-1700s when men like Daniel Boone led settlers over
    the mountains into Kentucky.


         Elsewhere, other events were taking place.  On the west coast the
    Russians were active.  Bering had sighted Alaska on his second voyage
    in 1741.  He died but the survivors of the trip returned with sea
    otter skins which could be sold for fortunes in China.  The stampede
    was on.  One Cassock sergeant returned with pelts valued today at
    almost $1 million.  The ravagement of the native people and the life
    of Aleutians by adventurers from Siberia is a story of horror that
    rivals the worst Europeans visited on native Americans.  In the mid-
    1750s Russian expansion beyond Siberia led to settlements in Alaska to
    make it easier to control the natives and harvest the fur bearing
    crop.

~#6
    JAMES COOK [1728-1779]

         James Cook as early as 1759 was making a name for himself in the
    Royal Navy.  In 1755 and 1760 he was surveying the St Lawrence Channel
    and the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1763-67.  Later he
    circumnavigated the globe and explored New Zealand and East Australia,
    and in 1772-75 he was back exploring the American northwest coast and
    Bering sea in search of a river passage through the American land
    mass.  While exploring and mapping the Oregon, Canadian and Alaskan
    waters he discovered the Russian activities and the trade in sea
    otters.  His sailors found sea otter pelts traded for iron nails could
    be sold for $60 each in China.  Cook was killed in Hawaii but his
    information quickly spread throughout Europe.  Once again furs were to
    provide the goad to western migration.

~#7
    ALEXANDER MACKENZIE [c1764-1820]:

         In Canada the English continued active and were almost predomi-
    nant in the fur trade.  Alexander Mackenzie was born in Scotland but
    brought to New York in 1774 by his family.  He soon made his way to
    Canada where he became a partner in the North West Company.  He was
    interested in improving the cost of transporting furs and goods along
    the breadth of the land to the Pacific.  He decided to try to find a
    better water route.  In 1789 he explored the Mackenzie River to the
    Arctic Ocean which was disappointing.  He set out again in May 1793
    with Alexander McKay and 8 others in a 25 foot birchbark canoe via the
    Peace River to the Canadian Rockies. He reached the Continental Divide
    June 12.  A path only 817 steps long led to another lake whose outlet
    flowed west and he discovered the Fraser River and eventually reached
    the Pacific just north of Vancouver Island.  He was the first to cross
    the continent north of Mexico and established for the first time the
    breadth of North America.  He shortly returned to England to find
    support for his search.  His reports was published in 1801 and made
    available to the world.

~#8
    DAVID THOMPSON [1770-1857]:

         David Thompson was from a poor family in England but was able to
    go to school.  He was apprenticed as a clerk to Hudson's Bay Company
    for 7 years at the age of 14 [1784].  In Canada he was assigned to
    help construct trading posts on Hudson Bay and Saskatchewan River.  He
    wanted to do more exploring and left the company in 1797 and joined
    the rival North West Company which assigned him to study the relation-
    ship of its posts to the new boundary with the U.S.  Thompson made
    extensive journeys around the headwaters of the Missouri and Missis-
    sippi rivers in 1797-98.  In 1807 he crossed the Rockies through Howse
    Pass and built Kootenae House, the first trading post on the Columbia
    River.  In 1811 he made an exploratory trip down the Columbia and
    became the first to travel from its source to its mouth.  He left the
    Columbia in 1812 and spent 2 years preparing a map of the routes
    between Lake Winnipeg and the Pacific.  From 1816-26 he was employed
    by the International Boundary Commission to make a survey from the St
    Lawrence River to Lake of the Woods.  He is considered by many to be
    the finest geographer of the north.

~#9
    DONALD MCKENZIE [1783-1851]:

         The imposing, 300 lb figure of Donald McKenzie, courageous,
    daring, was one of the real heroes of western exploration.  Donald
    joined his cousin Alexander in Canada from Scotland and enlisted in
    the North West Company.  When John Jacob Astor needed experience men
    for his Pacific Fur Company he attracted men from the Canadian fur
    companies.  Donald joined in 1810 and traveled with Hunt to the
    Columbia River arriving in Jan 1812.  After his return from Astoria,
    McKenzie was rejected by Astor who was furious over what he considered
    the duplicity of McKenzie and Astor's Columbia partners in turning
    Astoria over to the British.  McKenzie therefore returned to Canada
    sought employment with the North West Company.  In 1816 he returned to
    Astoria, or Fort George as it was called under British occupation.  At
    first, because of his physical appearance and his previous work for
    the opposition, he was not taken seriously; but in a year's time he
    revitalized all of the company's posts in the Northwest - primarily by
    constantly making friends with the Indians.  Ever since his overland
    trek with the Astorians, however, McKenzie had been struck by the
    possibilities of the Snake River country.  He saw that it led straight
    to the heart of the Rocky Mountain beaver country.  Therefore, in 1818
    he led the first of the North West Company's Snake River brigades to
    the junction of the Snake and the Columbia, where he built a trading
    fort.  Then he set off across the Blue Mountains toward the Skamnaugh,
    or Boise, River in western Idaho.  He continued east, trapping the
    tributaries of the Snake until he reached the country between the
    Snake and the Green rivers.  He also trekked north to Jackson's Hole.

         The next year, 1819, in experimenting with supplying his field
    parties by water, McKenzie became the first man to traverse Hell's
    Canyon of the Snake River.  He led his men as far east as Bear Lake in
    eastern Utah but he never bothered to follow Bear River, which flows
    out of the lake into the Great Salt Lake; hence he never saw that
    great inland sea.

~#0
    PETER SKENE OGDEN [1794-1854]:

         After McKenzie left the Northwest in 1821, the year the North
    West and Hudson's Bay companies merged, he had several successors but
    only Peter Ogden could match him.  The son of a Revolutionary War
    loyalist, Ogden was known as a troublemaker and hellion in the North
    West Company.  Aside from attempting to burn up a companion for the
    sport of it, he had also assaulted a Hudson's Bay official, nearly
    killing him; and he imprisoned a whole company outpost in what amount-
    ed to a mutiny in the wilderness.  In 1824 Ogden, banished from the
    center of most Hudson's Bay Company activity, led his men southwest
    into the Bear River country, where in December they first glimpsed,
    without realizing what they were seeing, the Great Salt Lake.  [It is
    hotly debated but Bridger is generally given credit for his 1825
    sighting.] In the spring of 1825 Ogden and his Canadians made contact
    with American mountain men at Mountain Green, just east of the Great
    Salt Lake.  Here most of his men deserted to the Americans, and Ogden
    made his way back to Fort Nez Perce only with difficulty.

         Between 1825 and 1830 Ogden made five more trips into the western
    interior traveling through many untouched areas of the Northwest U.S.
    and Southwest Canada especially along the major rivers.  He marched
    south into California via the Willamette Valley, named Mt Shasta c1827
    and opened up a new route to Mexican territory.  He discovered the
    Humboldt River that flows across northern Nevada.  (This became a
    vital link in the trail to California followed by American emigrants a
    decade later.)  He explored the northern shores of the Great Salt
    Lake.  And he made a remarkable journey south from the Humboldt Sinks
    in Nevada to the Colorado River near Needles, California, and thence
    to the mouth of the Colorado at the Gulf of California.  He had
    crossed the Great Basin from north to south and, along with Jedediah
    Smith (see following), was perhaps the only explorer of the era to
    traverse the entire West from north to south.  By 1830 he knew more
    about the West beyond the Wasatch Mountains than any other man except
    Smith.  His knowledge was recorded on the latest French and British
    maps.  This information thus became available to Americans and,
    ironically, helped to speed the collapse of the British in the North-
    west.

         During 1845 to 54 he was headquartered at Ft. Vancouver.  News
    came of the Cayuse Indian massacre of the Whitman Mission [1847] in
    the Willamette Valley.  Dr. Whitman, his wife and others were killed;
    47 were captured and held hostage.  Ogden with 16 Hudson's Bay men
    rushed to the Cayuse camp and paid $500 worth of goods for the prison-
    ers. (Neither he nor the company were ever repaid for his generosity.)
    This act calmed the desire for a general massacre of all Indians in
    the region, the obvious Indian response and the end of the profitable
    trade relations.  Ogden was no fool.

         The English were late 16th century entrants to North America
    though ship captains sailed the coast.  They, too, were lured by gold,
    the Northwest Passage and trade.  Hope for plunder outweighed geogra-
    phic exploitation or settlements; but they soon learned that furs and
    fish, too, could be rewarding. The success of John Rolfe's tobacco
    seed introduce a complication.  Tobacco cultivation exhausts the soil.
    This forced the farmers to leapfrog westward seeking ever fresher land
    to the west.  The same was true of the fur trade as supplies became
    depleted.  New opportunities were always westward.
    *************************  The End  *************************