PC-SIG: World of Education/PC-SiG's World of Education.iso/run/2298/exus1.com

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                     THE AMERICAN EXPLORERS


                     ┌─────────────────────┐
                     │  F1 - Introduction  │
                     │  F2 - Boone         │
                     │  F3 - Gray          │
                     │  F4 - Jefferson's:  │
                     │       Lewis & Clark │
                     │  F5 - Pike          │
                     │  F6 - Hunt          │
                     └─────────────────────┘

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~#1
               Introduction

         The early colonists who came to the eastern shores of America
    were ill-prepared for what lay before them, but for the poor and war-
    weary European there was the promise of a new beginning.  As if by
    God's command, they wanted to bring the land under the control of
    "civilized" people.

         During the early years of the first American frontier, no one
    realized how wide the continent really was.  As a result, the various
    charters issued to many colonies were from coast to coast.  But as
    long as the French dominated the Great Lakes, Mississippi and Ohio
    valleys and Spain the southern boundaries and beyond the Mississippi
    these titles were meaningless.  But there seemed an abundance of land
    between the Mississippi and the Alleghenies and few were concerned
    initially by the apparent conflicts of ownership

         Many of the States had bills to pay for various services.  One
    way to do so was to grant land in the unsettled territories in place
    of cash or other goods.  Land speculators quickly bought up great
    tracts of property at depressed prices from individuals who wanted
    cash rather than distant unproven land and had no desire to open new
    frontiers or confront Indians who vigorously contested the rights of
    ownership.  Yet there were many who were unhappy with their current
    condition. New immigrants from overseas were also in quest for land if
    only someone would show the way.

         The French wished to keep the area free of settlement for their
    fur interests and their Indian colleagues.  And British traders such
    as Irish James Adair and Scot Lachlan McGillivray who opened trade
    routes to the midwest in the mid-1700s also added their voices to
    those opposed to settlement of the region.  Mal-treatment of the
    Indian population was so prevalent that at the close of the French and
    Indian Wars (1763) the British sought to impose a ban on the purchase
    of Indian lands and ordered that settlement must not pass beyond the
    crest of the Alleghenies.  This was to be a temporary measure designed
    to protect Indian interests (and the valuable British fur trade.)  But
    irate State representatives, squatters and real estate speculators
    continued to claim Indian acreage.  State governments were especially
    active in Virginia and Pennsylvania - their grants frequently con-
    flicting.  Virginia alone issued land warrants for almost 3 million
    acres.  Woodsmen were needed to survey and map the land.  Dr. Thomas
    Walker while working for the Loyal Land Company explored the upper
    Roanoke River [1748-50] and discovered the Cumberland Gap in 1750.
    Christopher Gist was one who explored western Pennsylvania, the Ohio
    River and eastern Kentucky in 1750 and mapped western Virginia a year
    later for the Ohio Company formed by Virginia speculators.  George
    Washington also worked as a surveyor for the Ohio Company and was
    himself a land speculator in 1767 as were Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
    Washington even spoke out against the English ban against settlement
    in Indian territory.

         A number of attempts were made to establish legal claims but the
    most effective procedure was just to ignore the British proclamation
    and Indian rights - though cynical methods were made to 'buy' the land
    from one tribe or another.  Richard Henderson was one property specu-
    lator who decided to skirt the British law. He dreamed of an enormous
    tract of western land but he needed help.

~#2
    DANIEL BOONE [1734-1820]:

         Daniel's father, Squire Boone, blocked by the mountains to the
    west, moved south in 1750 with 6 of his children and several grand-
    children and settled in Yadkin Valley of northwestern, North Carolina
    when Daniel was 16.  Poor but dreaming of land - a common sign of
    wealth and social status - he and others like him settled the land
    with little more than an ax, rifle, kettle and bag of salt.

         Daniel Boone bought a farm in 1759 in Yadkin Valley which his
    wife and children usually worked while he was away.  He was a 'long-
    hunter' which took him away for extended periods of time hunting and
    selling deer skins.  (Our word "buck" comes from the $1 price of a
    deer skin.)  He, too, wished to have a place of wealth and dignity.
    He had been a teamster during Braddock's fateful 1755 expedition
    against Fort Duquesne - one of the few to escape the massacre.  When
    he was approached by Henderson to explore the land over the
    Alleghenies, he thought it would give him his chance especially as he
    would be the first on the scene and could pick and choose his land
    from the best.

         John Findlay (Finley) had lived in Kentucky with the Shawnees for
    a while in 1752 and had explored the Falls of the Ohio and Warriors
    Pass.  As a fellow survivor of Braddock's campaign and bothered by
    debts he showed up at Boone's door for a companion to go to Kentucky.
    Boone had made on attempt in 1767 to hunt there but failed.  This
    time, outfitted by Henderson, Boone set out on May 1, 1769 guided by
    John Findlay, with John Stewart, a brother-in-law and 3 others.  The
    party soon reached the Indian trail called Warrior's Trace and moved
    through Cumberland Gap north to the bluegrass country of Kentucky.
    They stayed until 1771 exploring the area for good land, streams and
    salt (needed by every settler for curing meat).  Boone returned in the
    spring with tales of a wonderful, rich land.  He collected his family
    and a small group of settlers and returned in 1773 but was stopped by
    the Indians.  Boone's eldest son was killed in the fray.  Henderson
    obtained a huge parcel of land - about 20 million acres - between
    Kentucky and Cumberland rivers from the Cherokees in March 1775 and
    established the Transylvania Company - one of the many land companies
    springing up to take advantage of western land grabbing.  His title
    was questionable, to say the least, but he again turned to Boone for
    help.  In March of that year Boone and a group of axmen cleared a
    trail through Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River and by April they
    were building cabins in Boonsborough.  But the greediness and high-
    handed demands of Transylvania caused resentment.  One group led by
    George Rogers Clark protested in June 1776.  When Kentucky became a
    county of Virginia Henderson lost his holdings but received some
    200,000 acres from the State for his efforts.

         Boone had trouble all his life establishing legal claims to his
    land.  Virginia and North Carolina voided most of these land con-
    tracts.  But, through the efforts of Boone and others like him, the
    land between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi were opened up.  In
    1785 the Continental Congress passed a bill to survey the "Western
    Lands" to resolve conflicts of interest and claims of ownership.
    Thomas Hutchins was sent out to examine the area west of the Ohio.  He
    not only resolved many claims but established the use of astronomical
    observation for the accurate surveying and plotting of land.

         Elsewhere the British were especially active.  James Cook was
    surveying the Northwest coast by sea in search of the Northwest
    passage and reporting on the rich furs to be found there.  George
    Vancouver was exploring the North Pacific coast by ship in 1792-95.
    Alexander Mackenzie was searching for a river route by land to the
    west coast from the east.  David Thompson was exploring the headwaters
    of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in 1797-98, and he built the
    first trading post on the Columbia River (1811).

         With the establishment of her Republic in 1792 the French, too,
    retain an interest in regaining her lost lands.  Dreaming of an ever
    expanding empire Napoleon sent soldier cartographer Victor Collet and
    Joseph Warin in 1796 to spy the land and map the Ohio and Mississippi
    rivers.

~#3
    ROBERT GRAY [1755-1806]:

         Robert Gray was an American merchant captain who pioneered in the
    American China fur trade in exchange for tea and silk.  He became the
    first American to circle the globe (1787-90 & 1793).  He was the
    captain on one of the 2 ships financed by Boston merchants to tap the
    sea otter trade.  In his search for products on the West coast he met
    Vancouver and Peter Puget sailing the same area.  He directed them
    north; he turned south.  In May 1792 he discovered and named the
    Columbia River (after his ship) and Gray's Harbor in Oregon.  His
    efforts, while largely commercial, provided support for US claims to
    the Northwest area.

         Yet American activity was limited to the coast.  By 1800 the new
    country still contained less than 5½ million people (not including
    Indians), and 1/5 of these were black slaves.  Due to the difficulty
    of transportation and communication settlers still hugged the narrow
    coastal region along the Atlantic.  Seldom did settlement extend more
    than 50 miles inland, and 2/3 of the population resided there.  The
    remaining 1/3, the backwoodsmen or frontier people, lived in isolation
    somewhere in the Appalachians in hidden mountain valleys separated by
    100 miles or so of wilderness.  The pressure was endless to move
    westward by these and newcomers to escape poverty, criminal acts,
    demanding labor, debt, unreasoning government or just boredom and the
    search for 'greener grass'.

         President Thomas Jefferson conceived of a West that stretched
    thousands of miles beyond the Mississippi to the Pacific.  When he
    spoke to the Nation having "room enough for our descendants to the
    thousandth and ten thousandth generation" he envisioned American
    settlement of the entire vast area.  As early as 1783 while Secretary
    of State he had expressed such an interest to George R. Clark.  In
    1786 while Minister to France he asked John Ledyard to reach the
    Northwest by way of Asia and Eastern Siberia.  Ledyard managed 3,000
    miles before being turned back.  French botanist (and French spy?)
    Andre Michoux applied to the America Philosophical Society for finan-
    cial aid "to find the shortest ... route ... to the Pacific."  In 1792
    he received $128.25 - $12.50 from Jefferson.  Michoux, not surprising-
    ly, got no further than Illinois.  But Jefferson was struggling
    against international intrigues from France, from England's inter-
    minable support for the Indian allies on the northern borders and
    Spanish intentions to the south.  Would his country be hemmed in at
    the Allegheny Mountains?  He was aware of the 1801 published accounts
    of the Mackenzie explorations and the discoveries of merchantmen but
    he needed more direct information concerning the interior.

         Jefferson achieved success with Lewis & Clark, who started up the
    Missouri River in 1804 to explore the northern portion of the
    Louisiana Purchase.  Later, he also sent men up the Ouchita and Red
    rivers in the Louisiana-Arkansas-Oklahoma-Texas region.  Zebulon Pike
    searched for the Mississippi's ultimate source (which he failed to
    find) and subsequently went west to the central Rockies.  A lull
    followed the War of 1812, but in 1820, during President Monroe's
    administration, Stephen H. Long explored Colorado from the Platte
    south to the Arkansas.  In 1842 John Charles Fremont began his great
    explorations of the American West.

         More information about the west came from private trappers and
    traders such as Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith, artists such as George
    Catlin and Alfred Jacob Miller, and scientists such as botanist Thomas
    Nuttall, geologist John S. Newberry, ornithologist Dr. John K. Towns-
    end and painter-naturalist John James Audubon.  So alluring was the
    region that European sportsmen such as Sir William Drummond Stewart
    and Prince Maximilian of Wied came to hunt and see the new country.

         While thousands were making homes in the West, others were lured
    by the promise of gold and silver.  California beckoned in 1849 and
    Pike's Peak in 1859, and through the middle decades of the century
    many other regions were opened up to mining.

         Before the Civil War, a dynamic booster named William Gilpin was
    busy ridiculing Stephen Long's judgment that the Great Plains was a
    "Great American Desert," insisting that the area could support a
    substantial population devoted to pastoral pursuits.  With the war
    over and railroads pushing westward and a strong demand existing for
    beef in the growing cities of the East, the years of the open cattle
    industry began in 1866 and would continue until 1886.

         The 19th century exploration of the trans-Mississippi West was
    America's greatest adventure.  When President Jefferson bought the
    Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, neither he nor Napoleon, nor
    the Spaniards who lived on its fringes, knew exactly what the U.S. had
    acquired.  The width of the continent was known, thanks to Alexander
    MacKensie's trek across Canada in 1793.  Spanish and English mariners
    had charted the Pacific Coast with some accuracy.  California was
    dotted with Spanish missions as far north as San Francisco Bay.
    Conquistadors and missionaries had penetrated the Southwest.

         Coronado had crossed the Great Plains as early as 1540.  By 1800,
    however, only a few Spaniards had ventured out across those same Great
    Plains to the Mississippi in his footsteps.  And to the north only a
    few daring French traders had ventured down from Canada to the upper
    Missouri that, for all one knew, coursed straight from the Pacific in
    a northwest passage.  Information about the interior was sparse and
    often fanciful.  Jedediah Morse's 1797 map in the first American
    geography book was a typical summary of the white man's knowledge of
    the West; it contained mostly blank spaces or else mythical rivers and
    apocryphal kingdoms.  There was talk of a clan of Welsh speaking
    Indians, a band of 18 inch devils and a tribe of Amazons each with the
    left breast removed to facilitate the use of the bow.  To most Ameri-
    cans America started over again at the Mississippi River.

         Unknown to Americans in 1800, the country that stretched west -
    the "great prairie ocean" - was everything but "The Great American
    Desert".  In both summer and winter it teemed with game of all kinds,
    dominated by the vast herds of buffalo.

         It was not uninhabited.  The Plains Indians - Sioux, Cheyenne,
    Arapaho, Pawnee, Osage, Comanche and Kiowa - followed the buffalo
    herds on horseback.  The river tributaries were the homes of the more
    sedentary tribes: the Omaha, Arikara, Mandan, Otoe, and Kansa to name
    a few.  In the mountains dwelt the Crow, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre,
    Flathead, Snake, Bannock, Ute, and Paiute.  To the south Apache and
    Navajo waged continual war on the Pueblo whose stacked up apartment
    houses along the river valleys were among the largest man-made struc-
    tures on the continent.  The southwestern river tribes - Papago, Pima,
    Mohave, Chemhuevi, and Yaqui - were ever present.

         The Indians were, of course, the first known explorers of the
    West.  They knew the rivers and the passes through the Rockies and
    they knew the trails across the plains on either side.  Nearly every
    exploring party depended upon the Indian knowledge of the West, and
    the earliest explorers of the Rockies saw the logic of turning Indian
    themselves if they were to survive in the unknown wilderness.


~#4
                           Jeffersonian Pathfinders

         At the turn of the century the American government feared that
    control of the Mississippi would choke off the growing American
    commerce in the interior.  Rivers were the key to communication and
    transport until the era of the railroad.  The difference in cost of
    traveling 30 or 3000 miles was not that great.  Spain, still in
    residence in the city of New Orleans actually suspended the right of
    Americans to tranship cargoes there.  Jefferson decided to offer to
    buy the territory of New Orleans from France to protect American
    interests.  Fortunately, Napoleon needed cash to finance his military
    conquests and offered the whole Louisiana Territory up to the Con-
    tinental Divide (wherever that was) for $15 million much to Jeffer-
    son's surprise and joy.  [Spain believed the transaction was illegal.]
    The purchase of Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 provided the
    spur to move Congress to support western exploration.  The acquisition
    more than doubled the size of the country.  It was still largely
    unknown and uncharted but control of the Mississippi River provided a
    highway to the interior.

         President Jefferson had planned and proposed the exploration of
    the West even before the purchase of Louisiana.  In 1802 he had tried
    unsuccessfully to persuade the Spanish ambassador to grant the U.S.
    permission to send an expedition into the West (to which Spain laid
    claim).  Jefferson, nevertheless, was determined to go ahead with the
    expedition and Lewis and Clark were already in Pittsburgh preparing
    for the trip.  When the news of the purchase reached them the two were
    overjoyed that the trip was now "legal".  On February 23, 1803,
    Congress voted funds of $2,500 to support the project as a scientific
    and commercial venture.  The cost eventually reached almost $40,000.

         Jefferson, a lover of science, had both scientific and economic
    objectives in mind.  He was as interested as anyone in making contact
    with the western tribes and securing the potentially rich fur trade
    for the U.S.  But he also had much broader objectives.  One of these
    was a lingering hope that the expedition would discover a river
    passage across the continent.  To this end he directed it to travel
    the Missouri and Columbia rivers in an effort to find "the most direct
    and practical water communication across the continent for purposes of
    commerce."  If Americans could locate and somehow control such a
    passage along the rivers, then the U.S. could dominate not only the
    western half of the continent but the growing trade with China as
    well.  Politically, the expedition must notify any British/Canadian
    traders in the area that they were exploiting the new American land.

         The key to such control, however, was knowledge of and good
    relations with the numerous Indian tribes who inhabited the region.
    Jefferson instructed the explorers to deal with the Indians very
    carefully and to study them in all their ways, whether war or peace.
    In fact, the largest initial bulk cost of supplies was almost $700 for
    presents for the Indians.  Beyond this they were to take due note of
    all "animals, plants, and minerals that might provide commercial
    advantage".

~#4
    MERIWETHER LEWIS [1774-1809] & WILLIAM CLARK [1770-1838]:

         Meriwether Lewis had spent his youth on the Georgia frontier and
    had acquired the skills need to live in the wilderness.  As early as
    1792 he had become excited by Jefferson's wish to send explorers into
    the West and had volunteered.  To prepare himself he learned celestial
    navigation, natural history, botany, anatomy, medicine and sociology.
    He redesigned the Kentucky rifle at the Harper's Ferry Armory.  So
    well did he achieve his goal that his rifle became the first mass-
    produced infantry weapon for the U.S. Army.   When the decision to go
    was made, Lewis, Jefferson's secretary since 1801, was appointed to
    lead the expedition.  William Clark, a soldier, experienced woodsman
    and younger brother of George R. Clark, and friend was offered joint
    command of the "Corps of Discovery" as the band was called.  Before
    the journey was over each officer had mastered the skills of the other
    and their remarkable cooperation made the success of the journey
    possible.

         In May 1804, the 43-man team left Camp Wood by boat on the Wood
    River near St Louis.  For 7 months the Corps of Discovery toiled up
    the winding Missouri, often hauling their heavy keelboat upstream by
    rope while rain turned the footing along the banks to mud and swarms
    of gnats and mosquitoes made their lives miserable.  Along the way
    they had little trouble with Indians, and only one man fell a casual-
    ty.  Sgt Charles Floyd died of what was probably appendicitis and was
    buried on a bluff overlooking the river near Sioux City.  Wherever
    they could, Lewis & Clark held councils with the Missouri River tribes
    in an effort to win their allegiance to the U.S.

         Winter quarters were established far upriver 4 miles below the
    Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota.  Up to now,
    the country was known to a degree as they had English maps provided by
    James Mackay and John Evans (who had visited the area for Spain), but
    now they were moving into the unknown.  Here Lewis & Clark hired fur
    trader Toussaint Charbonneau to serve as cook and translator and who
    prevailed upon them to bring along his young Shoshoni Indian wife,
    Sacajawea, for possible assistance in translating.  She turned out to
    be the much more valuable addition.  Here also they met wary agents of
    the Canadian North West Company of fur traders who inquired as to
    their intentions.  Already a trading frontier or national sphere of
    influence had begun to be established.

         On May 14, 1804, a small party was sent downstream on the keel-
    boat with scientific specimens and notebooks while the 29 remaining
    members of the party continued up the Missouri in canoes.  They
    traveled around the great bend of the Missouri, past the mouth of the
    Yellowstone and the 80 foot high, 300 yard wide Great Falls (it took
    18 miles and 24 days portage to get around it) to the Three Forks of
    the Missouri River.  After some discussion and trial runs they finally
    followed the western, or Jefferson, fork.  Then, after crossing The
    Continental Divide on Aug 12 at Lemhi Pass (7,373 ft elevation) with
    the help of Sacajawea who recognized landmarks, they met Sacajawea's
    Shoshoni relatives, who helped them get horses and guide for the
    difficult mountain ranges of Idaho to the Salmon River and the Bitter-
    root Valley.  From a point which they called "Travellers Rest," near
    present-day Missoula, Montana, they crossed over, via 5233 ft Lolo
    Pass, to the Clearwater which flowed into the Snake and in October to
    the Columbia.  In December 1805, the final group reached the shores of
    the Pacific and they camped on the south bank of the river.  They
    became the first to cross the western part of North America south of
    Canada.  As if to document the presence of the U.S. on that remote
    coast, Clark carved on a tall yellow pine: "William Clark December
    3rd, 1805.  By land from the U. States in 1804 and 1805."  Then they
    built the first American station in the region, Fort Clatsop, and went
    into winter quarters.  During the 5 months spent on the coast they
    experienced only 12 days without rain.

         On the return trip in the spring of 1806 the party divided after
    crossing Lolo Pass into Idaho.  Lewis continued over what is now
    called "Lewis & Clark Pass" (at 6,323 ft) in Montana and reached the
    Missouri above the Great Falls via the Sun River.  He then explored
    the Marias River to learn that the route could not be used to trans-
    port furs south.  During that time the expedition suffered its only
    hostile encounter.  On July 27, 1806, eight Blackfeet tried to steal
    their horses and guns.  Two were killed.  This was the first in a long
    history of bloodshed that was to provide a continual threat to western
    operations.  Clark generally retraced the outbound route, reached the
    Three Forks of the Missouri River, and crossed over to the Yellow-
    stone, which he followed northeast to its juncture with the Missouri.
    There on August 12, 1806, he was reunited with Lewis, who had been
    wounded in the buttock in a hunting accident the day before , and the
    united expedition proceeded down the Missouri (Lewis in a stretcher
    for weeks) to St Louis were they were greeted with what fanfare the
    frontier settlement could muster having completed a journey of over
    7,600 miles and 2 years, 4 months and 10 days.

         The importance of the Lewis & Clark expedition was monumental.
    Joe Walker (see below) was the only explorer who came close to these
    accomplishments in covering new terrain and returning with important
    information.  The maps and journals even in draft form revealed the
    geography of the Missouri River, the northern Rockies, and the lower
    Columbia to trappers, entrepreneurs and officials of the U.S.  It also
    inspired the public.  And it established at Fort Clatsop a foothold on
    the Pacific Coast that would be useful in later diplomatic maneuvering
    with the British over the control of Washington and Oregon terri-
    tories.  Their maps became the most authentic source of information of
    the West.  One copy reached Canada and one even to Russia.  Another
    went to John J. Astor.  Lewis & Clark had made a special effort to
    establish friendly relations with the some 500 tribes they had en-
    countered and had returned with almost 200 botanical specimens and 122
    previously unknown birds and animals.

         In 1807 Lewis was made governor of Louisiana Territory.  Unfor-
    tunately, on the way to Washington in 1809 to prepare the journals for
    publication, he died mysteriously of gunshot wounds on the Natchez
    Trace.  It was not until 1814 that Lewis & Clark's official version of
    the expedition was published.  Clark was appointed superintendent of
    Indian Affairs [1807-13, 1821-24] and governor of Missouri Territory
    [1813-21].  He was a friend to many of the future mountain men who
    returned with often verbal reports of their travels.  This information
    helped Clark fill in many of the blanks on his maps.

         Throughout his presidency Jefferson's curiosity about the West
    continued unabated.  He was, of course, particularly concerned about
    the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase.  He sent repeated expedi-
    tions up the Red River of Louisiana (which provided the southern
    boundary of Oklahoma and dies in mid-New Mexico).  One by William
    Dunbar and George Hunter in 1804 was thwarted by Osage Indians.
    Another led by Capt. Thomas Sparks in 1806 went nearly 700 miles
    upstream before it was turned back by a detachment of Spanish cavalry.
    Spain looked upon the Great Plains as a buffer between its North
    American possessions and the aggressive new nation.  Questioning the
    legality of his purchase, the Spanish maintained that Jefferson had
    acquired nothing from Napoleon.

~#5
    ZEBULON M. PIKE [1779-1813]:

         Ironically, it was left to the co-conspirator of Jefferson's
    political rival, Aaron Burr, to test Spain's intentions in the South-
    west.  Unwittingly, Jefferson had appointed Gen. James Wilkinson as
    governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1805.  Wilkinson was in the
    sometime pay of Spain, which sought to detach the trans-Appalachian
    country from the U.S.  He was also conspiring with Burr to carve out
    an independent southwestern empire at the expense of both Spain and
    the U.S.  But if he were to accomplish this he needed to know every-
    thing possible about Spanish strength in New Mexico and Texas.

         In 1805, Pike had explored the upper Mississippi.  In August with
    20 men he went to Bellefontain, Dubuque and Prairie du Chine.  He
    camped at the present Little Falls, MN, and built a stockade.  One
    half stayed and the remainder walked to the headwaters of the Missis-
    sippi.  With the help of British traders they reached Cass Lake and
    turned back mistakenly taking it to be the source.  The return party
    reached St Louis on April 1806.

         Almost immediately Pike was sent out by Wilkinson across the
    prairies in July, 1806 with orders to locate the headwaters of the Red
    River, which was considered by Spain to be the northern boundary of
    New Spain.  Pike's real mission was to reach Santa Fe and spy on the
    Spaniards.  Dunbar and Freeman had already failed in their efforts.

         Only partially aware of the devious plot that underlay his
    mission, Pike left Belle Fontaine near St Louis with 22 men and
    crossed the Great Plains, stopping to cement alliances with the Osage
    and the Pawnee.  Far out on the plains he struck the trail of a
    Spanish party under Lt. Don Facundo Malgares sent from Santa Fe to
    intercept him.  Pike followed it backwards towards Santa Fe.  When he
    reached the Arkansas River, he sent his lieutenant (James Wilkinson's
    son) with 5 men downriver with maps and dispatches for the general.
    Then he turned west toward the Rockies which he first sighted on
    November 15, 1806.  He explored the southern Rockies for two months,
    discovered Pike's Peak, and climbed Cheyenne Peak from which he could
    see the whole of the southern Rockies.

         Pike crossed the mountains and went into winter encampment near
    the Colorado-New Mexico border on a tributary of the Upper Rio Grande,
    where he was found and taken into custody by Don Malgares on February
    26, 1807.  Knowing his mission was to reach Santa Fe, Pike nonetheless
    feigned surprise when captured.  "What!  Is this not the Red River?"
    he exclaimed.

         Pike's capture and subsequent release in Texas July 1, 1807 gave
    him the chance to reconnoiter practically all of upper New Spain,
    which he did with great perception.  Eventually he produced an exten-
    sive set of journal notes and one of the major maps of the whole
    Southwest.  Perhaps the most influential observation that Pike made,
    however, was his unfortunate characterization of the southwestern
    plains as a "Great American Desert" unfit for civilized inhabitants.
    This assessment - whether designed to camouflage the Burr-Wilkinson
    scheme or not - stamped an image of a desolate Southwest on the public
    mind for most of the 19th century.  Pike's description of the Great
    Plains was seemingly confirmed by Maj Stephen H. Long's expedition of
    1819-20 (see ahead).

         Congress refused to support additional explorations for some
    time.  Events in Europe and Great Britain were drawing its attention
    until after the War of 1812.  Russia continued to expand its Siberian
    Colonies, established herself in Alaska and pushed down the Pacific
    Coast as far as 70 miles north of San Francisco where they built Fort
    Ross in 1811.  England was also sending her ships into the region and
    the Canadian North West company was expanding westward.  Spain feared
    this attention in an area she considered hers and belatedly and with
    too little support sent ships to investigate and stop the southern
    movement.

~#6
    WILSON PRICE HUNT [C1782-1842]

         Jefferson's interest in the West continued even after he left the
    presidency.  With his strong encouragement German immigrant [1784]
    John Jacob Astor [1763-1884], an enterprising New York - China trader,
    land investor and fur merchant moved his attention west.  In 1807 he
    initiated plans to set up a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia
    River.  In 1808 he set up the American Fur Company and in 1811 with
    the establishment of the Pacific Fur Company launched what could only
    be called a major commercial venture to the Northwest coast in order
    to corner the U.S. fur market.  He was fully aware and challenged by
    the Canadian North West Fur Company and aware of its moves in the
    northwest toward domination of the sea otter trade.  Unable to find
    Americans he recruited experienced men from Canada.  In 1811 he sent a
    party overland via the Missouri, the Snake and the Columbia to the
    Pacific.  In Sept 1810, Astor also sent a support ship, the Tonquin,
    loaded with trade goods, around Cape Horn to rendezvous with the
    overland explorers at the mouth of the Columbia.  His plan was to tap
    the fur trade of the Northwest (which Cook had announced 40 years
    earlier) in competition with he Canadians and Russians and ship the
    product to China aboard the Tonquin.  This plan was perhaps too
    intricate and grandiose but it achieved several important results.

         The overland expedition, led by St Louis merchant and partner,
    Wilson Price Hunt, Donald Mackenzie (see previous) and accompanied by
    botanist Thomas Nuttall, left St Louis in March 1811, ascended the
    Missouri as far as the Arikara villages and, switching to horses, set
    out across the Dakotas in July.  In so doing, Hunt and his men, in
    order to escape the attention of the Blackfeet to their north, broke a
    new trail across the West.  They negotiated the Dakota Badlands,
    penetrated the northern Rockies, marched up the Wyoming Wind River
    Valley, crossed the Continental Divide at 9310 ft Union Pass near the
    head of the Wind River Range parallel the Continental Divide, and
    trekked through Jackson's Hole, Pierre's Hole, and across the waste-
    land of southern Idaho to the Snake River, which they followed to the
    Columbia.  The overland crossing, however, had not been an easy one.
    Game was scarce along the route; the Snake River proved not to be
    navigable; the morale of the party suffered; and they became split and
    lost.  In fact, not until the spring of 1812 did the final elements of
    the party reach the mouth of the Columbia.  Hunt's expedition had
    discovered an overland route south of that taken by Lewis & Clark, but
    the country through which it passed seemed a mountainous wasteland
    rather than a western paradise.

         The Tonquin was under the command of Capt Thorne who had made his
    reputation in the Navy against the Barbary pirates.  The trappers were
    under the direction of Alexander Mckay.  (Mckay's son Tom was part of
    the team and he was to stay in Oregon and become an advisor to future
    settlers.  While Hunt and his band struggled overland, the Tonquin and
    its crew reached the Columbia, entered it by passing over the dif-
    ficult bar at its mouth, and in April 1811 set up Fort Astoria on the
    south bank.   Mckay died while it was being built.  (His Indian widow
    later married Dr. John McLaughlin who was placed in charge of Hudson's
    Bay posts on the Columbia River for 20 years.)   Astoria represented
    still another claim to the Northwest Territory, though not, as it
    turned out, a permanent one.  Leaving the fort in the hands of an
    acting resident agent, the Tonquin sailed north to trade with the
    tribes of Vancouver Island.  Here, in June 1811, trouble with the
    Indians developed due to the cruelty of the ship's captain, Jonathan
    Thorn.  A tribe of Indians overwhelmed the ship and killed its entire
    crew save one.  A mortally wounded seaman named Thomas Lewis was
    reported to have managed to fire the powder magazine while marauders
    swarmed aboard and the explosion blew the Tonquin and several hundred
    Salish Indians to smithereens.  Astoria's main link to the outside
    world was gone.

         But Astoria was not destined to be isolated for long.  The first
    contingent of Hunt's party arrived in January and Hunt himself in
    February 1812 and by May trading activity had begun in earnest.  The
    War of 1812 intervened.  In the spring of 1813 John George McTavish
    led a band of Canadian North West Company men up to the gates of the
    fort, informed its inhabitants of the war that existed between Britain
    and the U.S., and demanded its surrender.  McTavish and his men were
    soon backed up by the British man of war HMS Raccoon but such force
    was not necessary.  Astor's men quickly agreed to haul down the flag
    and sell out to the British.  Some even joined them.  It was clear
    that Astor's objectives were economic rather than political, and
    Jefferson himself was known to favor only the establishment of "sister
    republics" in the far west rather than an imperial extension of the
    United States.

         Before Astoria surrendered, however, Astor employee Robert Stuart
    [1785-1848] and six men (one of whom went insane) set our eastward
    across the mountains to St Louis.  Their march was full of hardships,
    and the possibility of starvation always confronted them.  The Blue
    Mountains and Snake River country proved especially difficult, and a
    detour far north to Jackson's Hole to avoid Indians nearly destroyed
    them.  They finally arrived in St Louis on April 30, 1813, having
    conquered the Rockies in the dead of winter.  More importantly, with
    the exception of the detour to Jackson's Hole, they had located and
    traversed what would become the Oregon Trail.  The most important
    features they had discovered were South Pass (at 7550 ft) across the
    mountains at the south end of the Wind River Range and the Sweetwater
    River route to the Platte, which they followed across the plains.
    South Pass would become the funnel through which hundreds of thousands
    of immigrants would pour on their way west.

         The War of 1812 effectively ended Astor's efforts in the North-
    west.  After the war Astor, with Stuart in charge [1820-24], moved in
    to dominate the Great Lakes fur industry as the British influence
    waned and Indian opposition diminished.  By 1827 Astor had a U.S. fur
    monopoly and created what may have been the largest personal fortune
    of the day.  All subsequent American efforts on the Columbia River in
    competition with the British failed.  The Rendezvous became the
    American pattern of trade to supply the trappers and pick up the
    skins.  In contrast the British built permanent year around trading
    posts in the hunting area.

         Originally sent [1820] by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun as
    part of a plan designed to frighten the British traders out of U.S.
    territory, Stephen H. Long's [1784-1864] contingent was diverted out
    across the southwestern plains to the Rocky Mountains.  A seasoned
    explorer and man of science, and accompanied by a corps of scholars,
    Long surveyed the Great Plains and carefully mapped the whole region.
    He climbed Pike's Peak and measured its altitude, and his artist,
    Samuel Seymour, drew the first views of the Front Range of the Rock-
    ies.  Then Long divided his forces, sending one party down the Arkan-
    sas River (where several of the men deserted with all the maps and
    notes), while he continued in search of the sources of the Red River.
    Finally, so he thought, he found them and embarked downstream, his
    mission completed, only to find to his embarrassment that he had
    picked the wrong river.  He had cruised down the Canadian, not the Red
    River.  This was an important error because even as Long searched for
    that elusive river, John Quincy Adams was concluding the Transcon-
    tinental Boundary Treaty with Spain in which the exact location of the
    river figured importantly.  Nonetheless, for the vast region he did
    cover, Long's work was important.  His map of 1821 was among the most
    significant the country had produced in that it was based on the
    accurate fixing of geographical points.  Unfortunately, his work was
    overshadowed by that of the more dramatic Zebulon Pike.

         Three of Pike's concepts dominated American's thinking about the
    Southwest for several generations.  Most believed that the plains were
    a "Great American Desert" fit only for Indians and unsuitable for
    white agricultural settlement.  Most also believed that the southern
    Rockies and the Upper Missouri country were adjoining neighbors,
    ignoring the existence of what came to be Colorado.  And finally a
    whole succession of explorers, geographers, and map makers agreed with
    Pike that somewhere in the heart of the Rockies must be "a grand
    reservoir of snows and fountains" from which rivers flowed towards all
    points of the compass.  If the source could be found, then a navigable
    river flowing west to the Pacific was also certain to be found.
    *************************  The End  *************************