Chapter III: The Oregon Trail (1)

THE TRAPPER, THE BACKWOODSMAN, AND THE EMIGRANT.

Ever since the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, the head waters of the Missouri had been frequented by hunters, trappers, and traders. These men threaded every nook and corner of the wilderness in pursuit of a livelihood, and, rude geographers as they were, the remotest mountain solitudes were fast yielding up to them the secrets they had held since the creation of the world.

Let us begin with a portrait of the trapper as drawn from life by Mr. Irving:—

"When the trade in furs was chiefly pursued about the lakes
and rivers, the expeditions were carried on in bateaux and
canoes. The voyageurs or boatmen were the rank and file in
the service of the trader, and even the hardy men of the
North were fain to be paddled from point to point of their
migrations.

"A totally different class has now sprung up,—the
'mountaineers,' the traders and trappers that scale the
vast mountain chains, and pursue their hazardous vocations
amidst their wild recesses. They move from place to place
on horseback. The equestrian exercises, therefore, in which
they are engaged, the nature of the countries they traverse,
vast plains and mountains, seem to make them physically
and mentally a more lively race than the fur-traders and
trappers of former days. A man who bestrides a horse must be
essentially different from a man who cowers in a canoe. We
find them, accordingly, hardy, lithe, vigorous and active;
extravagant in word, in thought, and deed; heedless of
hardship, daring of danger, prodigal of the present, and
thoughtless of the future.

"The American trapper stands by himself, and is peerless for
the service of the wilderness. Drop him in the midst of the
prairie, or in the heart of the mountains, and he is never
at a loss. He notices every landmark, can retrace his route
through the most monotonous plains or the most perplexed
labyrinths of the mountains. No danger nor difficulty can
appal him, and he scorns to complain under any privation."

Behind the trapper, though it might be at a great distance, came the backwoodsman. This man was a product of American growth, of continued expansion of territory, but never the voluntary agent of civilization. He was more like the foam blown from the crest of its ever-advancing wave.

The true backwoodsman was one, who, like Daniel Boone, fled at the approach of his fellow-men. He was a recluse from choice. He has always hung on to the skirts of civilization, though he scorned to become part of it, or profit by its advantages or comforts.

This man made a little clearing, built himself a rude cabin of logs, and lived by hunting. When he first heard of a new purchase he hastened to it, but as soon as another was made he shouldered his rifle and his pack, and without regret turned his back upon the home he had scarcely made habitable when this new fit of restlessness sent him forth in search of another. In this manner, his lonely clearing made smooth the way for the coming settler. Thus the backwoodsman's life was passed far from the haunts of men. Free from all desire to better his condition in any ennobling sense, he had no higher aspiration than to live apart, no thought of becoming an instrumentality in the hand of progress. In his habits and way of life he was more like an Indian than a civilized being, for the only school he had been educated in was nature's, and his tastes or instincts led him rather downward than upward in the scale of human effort.

Behind the backwoodsman, like the vanguard of an army taking the field, came the emigrant. The tread of his oxen, and print of his wagon-wheels, followed close in the blazed footpath of the departing pioneer. On foot he trudged at the head of his worldly possessions, as light of heart as the birds singing in the forest around him. In the wagon his household utensils would be stowed away, with wife and little ones, while his bronzed and barefooted boys, on foot and in homespun, drove the cows and hogs along the road behind it. At nightfall the wagon would be drawn up by the side of some limpid brook, the animals turned loose to crop the tender grass, while with an armful of fagots, gathered close at hand, the goodwife was soon busy cooking a frugal supper of bacon and potatoes, over the embers of their camp-fire. In this way the emigrant sometimes travelled week after week, and month after month, before finding a place of abode to suit him.

This man had come to stay. When he had found a situation to his mind, he set about felling trees for his cabin. On the Missouri, where the first settlers chiefly came from Tennessee and Kentucky, this dwelling was usually two houses, built a little apart from each other, each containing but one room, and joined together only by the roof, so leaving an opening in the centre, where the family usually sat in the heat of the day. The chimneys were built of sticks, plastered with clay, and stood at the outside of the building, as the fashion is in the Southern States. There was little difference between the dwellings of rich and poor. In these humble abodes the first generation grew up to man's estate to find themselves to-day the founders of an empire.

Unlike the backwoodsman, the settler had come to better his condition,—to grow up with the country, not abandon it with the first token of progress. Here he lived content. He broke up his forty acres of prairie land, fenced and planted it, and from its fertility soon reaped an abundant harvest of corn and potatoes, which with his swine and poultry, furnished more than food enough for his wants. Though the comforts of life were scarcely attainable in a wilderness, he had the necessaries, and could say, with our gracious poet, to the dweller in cities,—

"How canst thou walk in these streets, who hast trod the green
turf of the prairies?
How canst thou breathe in this air, who hast breathed the sweet
air of the mountains?"

LONG EXPLORES THE PLATTE VALLEY.

From the summit of Pike's Peak, Pike, the explorer, had looked down upon regions watered by four great rivers,—the Platte,[1] Arkansas, Rio Grande and Colorado. Into those dark gorges he had recklessly plunged. But he had scarcely done more than confirm the position of the great landmark, which nature has placed at the head of these great rivers.

War with England had put a stop to exploration for a time, but with peace it was determined to know if the Platte would not afford a better route than the roundabout one Lewis and Clarke had followed to the Pacific. It was thought depressions might exist where this river issued from the mountains, so giving access to the country on the other side, by a way less formidable to the traveller than had yet been found.

With this object in view, Major Long[2] was sent to the Missouri in 1819 by President Monroe. As he was a man of scientific attainments, a more thorough and critical report was expected from him than his predecessors had so far furnished.

Long's journey marks a distinct era in the ways of travel; for while Pike had used row-boats, Long ascended the Missouri in a steamboat built for the purpose at Pittsburg, and named the "Western Engineer." In this vessel he made the voyage to Council Bluffs.

In going up the Missouri, Long found the most populous settlements growing up in the neighborhood of St. Charles, in what is now Callaway County, and in that part lying between the Osage and Chariton. Above the Chariton only a horse-path, called a trace, led northward to Council Bluffs.

In all these primitive settlements superior wealth would be indicated by the number and size of the corn-cribs, smoke-houses, etc., but nothing resembling the barn found on every farm in the Northern States entered into the make-up of these frontier homesteads.

After spending the winter in camp near Council Bluffs, Long passed on his way into the Platte, to the village of the Otoe nation, situated about forty miles above the confluence of the Platte with the Missouri. Going thence he entered the Pawnee country, finding there a more friendly welcome than Pike had met with, but, like him, getting an impression of savage chivalry and independence, the like of which he had found nowhere else. The braves of this nation hung out their war-shields in the village streets, as the cavaliers of old were accustomed to display theirs before their tents, so that every passerby might know who the occupant was by his device.

Long's party turned down the South Fork of the Platte, and reached the mountains in July, 1820, after making a journey of nearly a thousand miles since leaving the Missouri.

In one place this traveller has noted down how they had passed by a large and uncommonly beautiful village of the prairie marmot, covering a grassy plain of about a mile square. As they came toward it, this spot happened to be covered with a herd of some thousands of bisons. On the left were a number of wild horses, and immediately in front twenty or thirty antelopes, and about half as many deer. As it was near sunset the light fell obliquely upon the grass, giving an additional brilliancy to its dark verdure. The little inhabitants of the village were seen running playfully about in all directions, and when the travellers got near them, they sat erect on their burrows, and gave a short, sharp bark of alarm.

A scene of this kind comprised most of what was beautiful and interesting to the passing traveller in the wide unvaried plains of the Missouri and Arkansas.

Before leaving this interesting region, Dr. James, the botanist and historian of the expedition, ascended the high mountain now known as Long's Peak (July 13). Turning south, Long's party soon struck the waters of the Arkansas, near Pike's Peak, from whose summits they saw the great plain they had crossed, "rising as it receded until it appeared to mingle with the sky."

From this point, the explorers descended the valleys of the Arkansas and its largest tributary, the Canadian, to Fort Smith, and from thence through the growing settlements of the territory,[3] to the Mississippi, visiting, by the way, the famous Hot Springs of the Washita. The upper waters of the Arkansas and Platte were reported by them to lie in sandy wastes unfit for occupation by civilized man. Often the explorers would have to dig in the bed of the river to get water, while the arid appearance of every thing around, caused by the disappearance of the rivers[4] beneath their own sands, the want of wood and absence of game, stamped the whole region as one on which nature had set the seal of perpetual barrenness and desolation.

The sum of these discoveries had traced out, as it were, the larger veins through which emigration, the life-blood of the country, was ultimately to flow.

FOOTNOTES

[1] THE PLATTE was called Nebraska by the Otoes, whence
comes the name of the State in which it chiefly lies. Some
authorities make the Indian word mean the same thing as the
French, or flat and shallow, which describes it well.

[2] MAJOR STEPHEN HARRIMAN LONG had been assistant professor
of mathematics at West Point. He afterwards (1823-24) explored
the Upper Mississippi. Journal of the first expedition
published in 1823, of the second 1824.

[3] ARKANSAS TERRITORY was formed in 1819, capital LITTLE
ROCK, then a village built on a bluff near the beginning of
the hilly region. The name comes from a rock in the river
exposed at low water. FORT SMITH was a new military post.
Other settlements were scattered along the Arkansas from the
White River Cut-off to Belle Point, and on Red River as far
as the Kiamesha. Though numerous, Long says all were small.
Besides these, the CHEROKEES were also forming settlements on
the Arkansas about Cadron, which Long often found superior, in
respect of the comforts of life, to those of the whites. These
people were the vanguard of their nation, to which Government
had ceded lands in Arkansas Territory, and was removing from
Georgia beyond the Mississippi. They owned black slaves, the
same as the whites. They raised considerable cotton, which
they wove into cloth for their own use.

[4] DISAPPEARANCE OF THE RIVERS. Long's party travelled
more than a hundred miles along the dry bed of the Arkansas
without once seeing water. Of course they hastened on through
this desert with all speed.

MISSOURI, AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1821.

Far back, when the original States were yet colonies, and while the people of Massachusetts were solemnly deliberating how to deliver themselves from oppression, a letter was read to the body to whom this grave question had been committed, asking it to consider the state of the negro slaves in the province.

These men had just said they were called rebels because they would not be slaves. The dilemma was thus presented to them, either to make good their declaration, or limit its application to themselves. After some debate the matter was dropped, but the plea for a principle had been uttered, the appeal to men's consciences taken, and as some secret cause, working beneath the waters, gives notice of the agitation below by sending up bubbles to the surface, so this question of slavery continued at intervals to prick the conscience of the people, and confront them at every turn with its warning.

The North had got rid of slavery. It had done more. Its voice had excluded slavery from the great North-West. But the South owed its growth to slave labor, and wherever her people went to found new States they carried their slaves with them. It was inevitable, that, whenever free and slave labor should meet on the same ground, a conflict must arise between them, though statesmen were anxious to avert the coming on of strife as long as possible.

It is hard to stay the march of events, or confute the logic of time. Even as far back as the beginning of the Union, men had foreseen the coming storm, with foreboding, yet these men were no wiser than the Massachusetts men of 1774; for at the time of the Union slavery might have been so restricted that it would eventually have died out in the land, or a way provided for the gradual emancipation of the blacks. Such steps were indeed talked of, but not consummated. So the nation was allowed to drift on, and the two opposing systems were left to work out their own results.

In 1819 Missouri asked for admission into the Union. Her doing so, with a constitution recognizing slavery, proved a rock of danger to the Republic, the wisest statesmen found it hard to steer clear of. It provoked violent opposition at the North, and equally vehement support in the South. Under French rule the people of the nascent State held slaves. Those who had since come in were mostly from slaveholding States, and wanted to have slavery recognized as part of their social and political system.

They demanded this, not as a privilege, but as a right guaranteed to them by the Constitution itself, in which property in slaves was distinctly recognized. So they stood firm for what they considered their rights, defending slavery from the charge of immorality, or inhumanity of man to man, as men would the most righteous cause.

The North contended, broadly, that slavery was a crime, discountenanced by Christian people and enlightened thought everywhere, of which the nation should purge itself. It was said that the idea of a nation being free, when it countenanced holding men in bondage, was a mockery of freedom. Many construed the ordinance of 1787 to have forbidden, if not in its letter, at least in spirit, the formation of slave States out of newly acquired territory. But these men did not propose to interfere with slavery in the States where it already existed.

Around these two differing ideas the men of the North and South clustered themselves. Underlying all, and governing all, was the conviction that a check to the extension of slavery meant a check to the political power of the South itself. This view made the South a unit, while in the North public sentiment was divided, for many there deprecated agitation of the question, as the entering wedge which should split the Republic asunder.

When, therefore, Congress took up the bill for the admission of Missouri, the opponents of slavery met it with the condition that no slaves should afterward be brought into the new State, while all children, born in it subsequent to its admission, should be free at the age of twenty-five years. In time this condition would have made Missouri a free State.

The matter was hotly debated. Of the twenty-two States then constituting the Union, ten were slave States. Two ominous phrases began to be heard. One was "State rights," the other "Balance of power." In the violence of party strife, patriotism was lost sight of.

The House of Representatives refused to admit Missouri without the condition; the Senate refused to do so with it. So Missouri was not admitted at this time.

With the two houses thus divided, it was apparent that no new State could be admitted, since the Southern party, having control of the Senate, would not vote to admit a free State so long as Missouri was kept out, and Maine was then ready to come in as a free State.

As neither party would yield, the more moderate, or timid, men of each tried to find some intermediate ground where the factions could come together, each giving up something for the sake of restoring harmony to the country. Finally a settlement was reached. Maine came in a free State. Missouri was admitted with slavery, but with the restriction attached that her southern boundary should thenceforward be the limit north of which no new slave States should be formed. Thus the line between freedom and slavery was first strictly drawn on the parallel of 36° 30´, but with a slave State above it. The first battle between the two warring systems had been fought, and slavery had won. The North had got a line, but the South had won a State.

ARKANSAS ADMITTED 1836.

Arkansas was admitted into the Union in 1836, as a slave State, retaining the name it had been given as a Territory, when formed from the Louisiana purchase,—a name originating with the once powerful nation Marquette found seated on the banks of the Mississippi. Thus three slave States had been made out of French Louisiana.

THOMAS H. BENTON'S IDEA.

"_There is the East! There lies the road to India._"

Lawyer, soldier and politician, but not yet a statesman, Thomas H. Benton went from Tennessee to Missouri after the war with England was over. Though St. Louis was yet only a large village, it was the focus of the activities of the Great West. Mr. Benton saw it was the place for a rising man to grow up in, and accordingly he settled there.

In St. Louis Mr. Benton found an aristocracy of fur-traders, whose attachment for their own usages and old form of government bound them together. They kept their own language and manners. With many it was a point of honor never to learn English at all. In all things they were as distinctively French as the French people of Canada are to-day. Thus this scion of refinement had been grafted on a rude frontier life, but would not assimilate with the coarser elements thrown upon it by emigration from the States.

By the side of this middle-class (_bourgeois_) aristocracy stood the Catholic clergy, with its traditions of the old _régime_ in Canada, its proud record of discovery and missionary work among the barbarians of these Western wilds, whose every stream and fountain had its story of zeal and heroism to tell.

This was society at the core. The clergy was its rock of support. Boys were taught in the parish school, and girls in a nunnery. So education was as much in the keeping of the Church as religion itself. Nations may change, but the Roman Church never abandons its people or its objects.

Around this foundation was grouped the community of French Creoles, whom the great fur companies employed and who were their dependants. And around them clustered again an increasing population of American adventurers, coming mostly from the Southern States in search of a living, for whom St. Louis was the magnet which attracts to itself the scattered atoms of society far and near.

Outside of St. Louis, Missouri owed her rapid growth to the in-coming of actual settlers. In 1816 only thirty families were found on the left bank of the Missouri, above Callaway County. In three years the number had increased to eight hundred families. Here was the real bone and sinew of the State.

Mr. Benton found the American Fur-Trading Company sending forth its yearly caravans over the great plains to the mountains, and from the mountains, through passes known only to the Indians and fur-traders, into Sonora, New Mexico and Oregon. Since the way was beset by hostile Indians, these caravans went armed to the teeth. The same Indians might fight them one day and trade the next. In time, the passing to and fro of these traders had marked out well-beaten paths up the Arkansas and the Platte, which presently came to be known on the frontier as the Santa Fé Trail and Oregon Trail.[1]

At bottom the St. Louis fur-traders were not more friendly to colonization than the English fur-traders, but they were quite as eager to push their business into Oregon, conceiving they had the best right there, as the English companies were to keep them out of it so that they themselves might reap all the profit; and so there was rivalry and ill blood between them.

Mr. Benton was energetic, ambitious and self-reliant, qualities which soon identified him with the thought and interests of the people among whom he had cast in his lot in life. Thoroughly Southern in his feelings, he had borne an active part in making Missouri a slave State, and when that result was accomplished the people sent him to the United States Senate as a reward for his zeal in their behalf.

When the war with England was over, our Government wished to have the boundary between our own and the British possessions defined and settled. Though proposed to be run on the forty-ninth parallel it had never been done, and in buying Louisiana we inherited a dispute which, so long as that vast region was unexplored and unknown, had slept, but was now become a source of irritation and danger between England and the United States. The Columbia River and its basin[2] were the bone of contention. Both wanted them. Neither would give them up. Since Astoria[3] had been sold, the Hudson's Bay and North-west Companies had held uninterrupted possession of the whole country, to the exclusion of our own ships and traders, whose interests had suffered in consequence; but as England would not yield her pretensions peaceably, the people of the Atlantic coast were unwilling to go to war about a region so remote, the more so because they were just recovering from the effects of the one lately ended, and felt that they would be the greatest sufferers if war again broke out between the two nations.

So the two countries compromised their differences by agreeing to hold Oregon in common, first for ten years (1818-1828), and afterward from year to year. All this time England was growing stronger in Oregon, and the United States losing the hold her citizens had first obtained there, for though it was neutral ground on paper, the English with their free access by land and sea were able to shut out our traders, and did so.

This state of things was humiliating to the West. It was as though the nation were eating humble-pie rather than offend England. Continual agitation of the question served to keep up a feverish feeling about Oregon, but since Major Long had said it was of no use to think of cultivating the land between the meridian of Council Bluffs and the Rocky Mountains, it seemed settled that nobody but fur-traders would want to cross this desert while so much fertile land remained vacant in the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys. If settlement must stop at the edge of this desert, then the idea of geographical unity vanished, and Oregon would, in truth, be worth little to us. Mr. Benton, himself, was at one time of this opinion.

So when Mr. Benton wanted the Government to take Oregon with an armed force, he was told it was not worth the trouble, for Oregon could never become a State if we did.

There was another element to the dispute, which found much favor in the West. This was Mr. Monroe's declaration that no European power would be allowed to subdue or overturn the independent governments of our continent. This was a notice to England that she could not have Oregon. It has since been known as the Monroe Doctrine,[4] and so Mr. Monroe became the author of a national policy.

Mr. Benton mastered all the details of the vexatious Oregon question. The interests of his constituents were at stake. His patriotism was aroused. He felt equal disgust with the artifices by which England kept us out of Oregon, as with the cautious spirit of the East, which counted the cost of every thing beforehand, less, it seemed to him, in the spirit of statesmanship, than for what it would be worth at the present moment.

It should not be forgotten, however, that New England enterprise had first made known the resources of our possessions on the Pacific.

In fine, Mr. Benton made himself the champion of the growing West. He had already become, in a sense, the trustee of Mr. Jefferson's pet scheme of a great overland highway to India, which, indeed, proved too great for the time that wise man lived in, but only waited for the people to grow up to it. Mr. Benton knew from Mr. Jefferson's own lips what results had been hoped for, but not realized,—how the best-laid plans had been thwarted, or suffered to sleep the sleep of oblivion,—and the Missouri senator had gone away from his memorable interview more than ever impressed with the greatness of the mission he was henceforth to take upon himself as Mr. Jefferson's disciple.

England managed, in one or another way, to delay a settlement just forty-nine years. A few Americans had gone into Oregon, but as yet they were only a handful. In 1832 Captain Bonneville[5] took the first wagon train across the Wind River chain into the Green River Valley, thus proving the mountains were practicable for vehicles. The same year Nathaniel J. Wyeth[6] led a party all the way from New England to Fort Vancouver, after a journey lasting seven months, in which some of his men were killed by the Blackfeet. In 1834 and 1835 some American missionaries[7] were sent out to Oregon, one of whom, Marcus Whitman, was to figure largely in its history. In the following year Dr. Whitman went through to Fort Walla Walla with a wagon, thus doing what had been declared impossible. Yet up to the close of 1841 not quite a hundred and fifty Americans, in all, had settled in Oregon, though the Oregon Trail was largely shorn of its terrors by the intrepidity of these real pathfinders. For his part, Dr. Whitman saw clearly, that, since diplomacy was purposely hindering it, emigration must step in and settle the question who should have Oregon. And Dr. Whitman was not only a man of clear sight, but of action.

FOOTNOTES

[1] SANTA FÉ TRAIL and OREGON TRAIL. Independence was long
the farthest white settlement in Missouri, and consequently
became the starting point. So far the Missouri River could be
followed. See map. Westport, and finally Kansas City, grew
from this cause. As settlements extended up the river, the
main trails were struck from many points, as Fort Leavenworth,
St. Joseph, Council Bluffs, etc.,—like trunk roads with many
branches.

[2] THE COLUMBIA AND ITS BASIN. England claimed that Drake
and Cook had first discovered and taken possession of Oregon,
which then included the present Oregon, Idaho, Washington and
part of Montana. In 1671 Saint Lusson, at Sault Ste. Marie,
had taken possession of all the country west to the South Sea
for France. (See preceding chapters.) Whatever rights France
acquired became ours by purchase from her. But Spain had the
better title on the Pacific. She, however, relinquished to
us, on the cession of the Floridas, in 1819, all north of
42°, the present north line of California. We thus became
possessed of all rights either power had laid claim to north
of that parallel. The north boundary, between Louisiana and
the British Possessions, was supposed to be fixed by the
Treaty of Utrecht (1713) at the forty-ninth degree.

[3] ASTORIA was restored to us (1818), after much wrangling,
but the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver,
ninety miles up the Columbia, so cutting off Astoria from the
upper valleys. It was burnt to the ground in 1821, except a
few huts.

[4] THE MONROE DOCTRINE. "The American Continents, by the
free and independent condition they have assumed and maintain,
are not to be considered as subjects for colonization by
European powers."

[5] CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE'S adventures are related by
Washington Irving.

[6] NATHANIEL J. WYETH established Fort Hall on Lewis River,
in what is now Idaho. The Hudson's Bay Company at once set up
a rival post called Fort Boisé below it, so compelling Wyeth
to sell out to it or be ruined by its competition.

[7] THESE MISSIONARIES were Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee
sent by the Methodist denomination, and Revs. Samuel Parker
and Marcus Whitman sent by the American Board. The Methodist
mission was at the Dalles, the other at Walla Walla. This was
the first introduction of Protestant missions among the Oregon
tribes.

WITH THE VANGUARD TO OREGON.

"_This army does not retreat!_"

Emigration was to be our army of occupation in Oregon. In this conviction Mr. Benton was looking about him for the means to set it in motion, when he chanced to meet Lieutenant John C. Fremont, of the topographical engineers, who had just returned from surveying the Upper Mississippi, with Nicollet.[1]

Mr. Benton wanted the Oregon route surveyed in aid of emigration to the Lower Columbia. The subject led to an intimacy between the two men, in the course of which Fremont fell in love with Mr. Benton's daughter Jessie, whom a little later he married, so uniting his fortunes with the distinguished senator's family, as well as his plans.

It resulted in sending Fremont (1842) to find out whether the South Pass[2] of the Rocky Mountains, the usual crossing-place, would best accommodate the coming emigration.

This was the very first step taken by our Government in aid of emigration to Oregon. Hitherto it had reflected the prevailing belief in the worthlessness of Oregon for any such purpose. We were, at this time, thick in the dispute with England about the boundary, and so the expedition was rather assented to, in deference to Western men, than authorized as a Government measure.

St. Louis is no longer to be considered as a starting-point for the mountains. Already this had gone three hundred and fifty miles west. Fremont's journey therefore began at the little village of Kansas,[3] now a city larger than any then existing west of the Alleghanies, but then only a landing for Chouteau's trading-post, ten miles up the Kansas River. From this place, early in June, Fremont's party set out for the mountains. Kit Carson of Taos, a famous hunter, was their guide.

For most of the way Fremont's wagons only followed in the track of those that had gone before them, sometimes with guides, but oftener without them. The road was plain, and led over ground where vehicles pass everywhere with ease, except when gullies or streams cross their path. So Fremont's men journeyed on quite at their ease. At nightfall the wagons were drawn together in a circle, thus forming an enclosed and barricaded camp, in which the travellers pitched their tents.

Fremont went up the Kansas valley as far as the Big Blue, crossing thence over to the Platte, which was now to be his guide for the rest of his journey.

Now and then Fremont would come across the abandoned camp of some Oregon emigrants, who thus seemed piloting him on, instead of he them.

At the forks of the Platte the party was divided, Fremont himself going down the South Fork, to St. Vrain's Fort,[4] while the rest kept on up the North Fork, to Fort Laramie,[5] where Fremont presently joined them again.

When firewood grew scarce the men would have to make their fires of dried buffalo-dung, as the Arabs of the desert do with that of the camel.

At Laramie, Fremont learned that the mountains beyond swarmed with Indians, who were out on the war-path, and had declared the road shut to the whites. But Fremont went on to the South Pass, which was found to rise by so gradual an ascent that the exploring party hardly knew when they had reached its summit.

In the valley beyond this pass, the explorers rested. Before turning back, Fremont himself, with a few others, made their way into the mountains and up to the summit of the high peak now known by his name, which rose, the monarch of all in this region, 13,570 feet above the sea. In this way the three greatest landmarks of the Rockies make memorable the names of three explorers, Pike, Long and Fremont.

While Fremont did little that had not been done already, his careful record of distances, fords, camping-places where grass, wood and water could be had, was just what outgoing emigrants needed to know, and so, immediately, they began to go forward with confidence. It was besides a token that Government had taken hold of the matter at last, and would, it was thought, now foster and protect the emigration.

Fremont said it would be necessary to have permanent military posts at Laramie, St. Vrain's and Bent's Fort, to keep the Indians from killing our people, as they passed through their country. Until this should be done the road could not be called safe. But he did the most for emigration in correcting the popular error about the barrenness of the great plains, to which Major Long gave currency, and which everybody to this time had believed. He showed that where the buffalo roamed in such vast herds, and found food, could not be a desert, for the wild grass they lived on would certainly keep the emigrants' cattle, while no man need starve in the midst of such abundance of wild game as constantly roved these plains before their eyes. It was much to have all these things set down in an orderly manner by some friendly hand, and with the seal of Government authority. Fremont did this as it had not been done before.

Fremont's first expedition met with such favor that he was immediately sent on a second (1843), and much more important one. This time he was to begin at the South Pass, and go through the Lower Columbia country. He was well on his way when the War Department suddenly recalled him to Washington, but Mrs. Fremont took the responsibility of suppressing the order until the explorer was too far off for it to reach him.

At the moment of starting from the Missouri, Fremont met a large party of emigrants who were going to California under the lead of J. B. Childs. This party took with them that modern civilizing engine, a saw-mill, ready to be put up on reaching the Sacramento. As Fremont moved west, trains of wagons were seldom out of sight. The great march had begun in earnest.

Fremont decided to explore the mountains in the neighborhood of St. Vrain's Fort to see if they would afford a practicable passage on a more direct east-and-west line than the old way up the Platte. He therefore struck into them, north of Long's Peak, and by following the Cache-à-la-Poudre[6] River came out on the other side, where his journey of the previous year had ended. From here he passed on into the valley of Bear River, and so on to the Great Salt Lake,[7] which he also explored.

From Salt Lake, Fremont went north to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Fort Hall, striking the Oregon Trail again by the way. The explorers divided here, part going back to the States and part down the river with Fremont. Fort Boisé[8] they found was only an ordinary dwelling-house. Going on they next came to the mission Dr. Whitman had founded among the Nez Percés, near Walla Walla. It then consisted of but one adobe house, though more were going up around it. Its cornfields and potato-patches, which Dr. Whitman had cleared and planted, were a pleasant sight to men worn down with travel and fasting, but not more so to Fremont than the little colony of emigrants now collected here after their long march of two thousand miles,—men, women and children,—all in robust health, and all regaling themselves with Dr. Whitman's potatoes.

Fort Walla Walla marks an important strategic point in the early movement of emigration to Oregon. Situated only nine miles below the junction of the two great branches of the Columbia, it was thus also planted at the meeting of two great trans-continental routes of travel, one coming from the United States by way of the South Pass, the other from Hudson's Bay by way of Lake Athabasca and the mountain passes near it. For such of the emigrants as chose to go on by water, Walla Walla was the end of their long overland journey. Fremont found a large body of emigrants, under the lead of Mr. Jesse Applegate, building bateaux here to go down the river in.

But the British trading-post lay on a sandy plain, where scarce a blade of grass or a shrub grew. Dr. Whitman had chosen a pleasant and fertile nook, not far from the fort, where emigrants might recruit themselves among friends; for at the fort itself every effort was made to turn them back or send them into California. Thus everywhere, except at the missions, emigrants found this Oregon Trail a hard road to travel, for our Government left them to the mercy of the Hudson's Bay Company's agents, who hindered them in every way, or failing to stop them, charged exorbitantly for every thing furnished.

Finding emigration would increase in spite of them, this company chose to save itself by bringing in British emigrants from the Red River of the North. It meant to occupy the best lands, as it had the best trading sites. The first colony was on the Upper Columbia when Dr. Whitman heard of it. If Oregon were to be saved to us, there was not a moment to lose. He instantly started for Washington with the news of this threatened invasion.

Dr. Whitman's ride to St. Louis, by way of Santa Fé, will ever be memorable in the annals of Oregon, as well for its perils as for what it accomplished. He found our Government had just signed the Ashburton Treaty,[9] by which Oregon was still left out in the cold, without a boundary or the protection of our laws or flag. His great energy, however, enabled him to get together on the frontier an emigrants' train of two hundred wagons with which, as the leader of an army, he started back in the spring. It was these people whom Fremont had seen setting out, had tracked a thousand miles on their way, and finally come up with at their journey's end. As the Government would not lead, it now had to follow the people's grand march for the Pacific.

With fresh horses Fremont pushed on down the left bank of the Columbia to the Dalles, Mount Hood towering in the distance. Here the whole river rushes through a long and narrow trough of rock, with so swift a tide that in the season of high water boats cannot stem it.

A few miles below, Fremont emerged from the sterile and inhospitable region through which he had been travelling, upon a green spot in the valley, where, among groves of noble forest-trees, the Methodist mission had reared its two dwellings, its one schoolhouse, and its barn, cleared ground for planting, gathered to it a colony of Indians for instruction in the ways and religion of the whites, and so dropped in the wilderness the seed of Christian civilization.

From the Dalles, Fremont sailed down the river to Vancouver, finding here still more emigrants, most of whom were waiting to cross over into the fertile Willamette Valley, which was then their land of promise.

At this point Fremont's journey ended. His explorations had now connected with surveys conducted by Captain Wilkes from the Pacific coast. Fremont therefore turned homeward again, taking with him the most exact knowledge of the country traversed, so far obtained.

FOOTNOTES

[1] J. NICOLAS NICOLLET had first established the sources of
the Mississippi. He had returned from exploring a considerable
part of Minnesota and Dakota.

[2] THE SOUTH PASS cuts the south part of the Wind River
chain.

[3] KANSAS CITY took its name thus early from its
neighborhood to the Kansas River (though in Missouri), which
has led many to suppose it is in Kansas.

[4] ST. VRAIN'S FORT, a fur-trading post, in communication
with Santa Fé by way of Taos. Under the mountains, seventeen
miles east of Long's Peak.

[5] FORT LARAMIE, first called Fort William (Sublette),
built by Robert Campbell about 1835, since named from the
Laramie Fork, near which it stands. Its walls were ranges
of adobe houses, in the Spanish style, with bastions at the
corners. The house tops or roof formed a banquette, on which,
again, was set a row of palisades.

BENT'S FORT, on the Arkansas, established by Charles Bent,
was the third of these remote posts, for which the above
description will suffice.

[6] CACHE-À-LA-POUDRE. French, hiding-place for the powder.

[7] SALT LAKE was known to early Spanish explorers (see
p. 37); had been often visited, but not explored. Ashley
of Missouri, who led a party of trappers to the heads of
the Colorado in 1823, built the next year a trading-house
near Salt Lake. See also Bonneville's account. Fremont's
explorations disclosed the existence of a great interior
basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, whose waters fall
into Utah and Salt Lakes instead of reaching the Columbia or
Colorado.

[8] FORT BOISÉ. French, meaning wooded.

[9] ASHBURTON TREATY settled our north-eastern boundary with
England, and carried the parallel 49° to the Rocky Mountains,
but not beyond. In 1846 a second treaty carried it to the
Pacific.

TEXAS ADMITTED.

Mexico threw off her allegiance to Spain in 1821. Not till then did the Spaniards in Mexico abandon their policy of excluding all foreigners from their soil; but the example set them by the United States, with the feeling born of freedom from the Spanish yoke, brought about a change of policy in this regard, and Americans were invited to settle in Texas on the most generous terms. No stronger instance is found of the influence exerted by free institutions from without upon the hereditary prejudices of a whole people. It confessed a failure nobly.

When Texas was thus thrown open to emigration her settlements were few and scattered. Habitual timidity or indolence had restricted them to the neighborhood of fortified posts or missions.[1] The chief ones were San Antonio, Goliad, Refugio and Nacodoches, and around these small parcels of land had been brought under cultivation. But the missions themselves, which had formed the groundwork of Spanish occupation, were fallen into irremediable decay. The Indians who had been gathered into them by the monks had dwindled away until the missions were mostly depopulated. Here, as in California, experience had shown that the natives could not exist under the shadow of the whites. Civilization wasted them away.

To induce settlers to come into Texas, they were offered exemption from all taxes for the space of ten years.

Among the first to avail themselves of these offers was Stephen F. Austin, of Durham, Conn. Acting under a grant of lands made by the Mexican authorities to his father, Austin began a settlement on the Brazos in 1821, which later became the capital of the State, of which he was the foremost founder.

Emigration poured in from the Lower Mississippi Valley,—from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi,—and even the older States contributed to swell the tide. The law forbade slavery, but many brought negroes with them and held them in spite of it. Many were adventurers who held law in little estimation, or found in Texas a convenient asylum from the pursuit of their creditors. Others were poor people whom the liberal offers of the Mexican Government lured from their homes in the hope of bettering their condition. Though sound at the heart, in no long time Texas had won for itself an unenviable name throughout the Union as the chosen home of lawless men, through its worst elements rising to the top.

Our Government had long coveted Texas, and had made two unsuccessful attempts to buy it of Mexico, considering it as an integral part of Old Louisiana, to which we had a sort of right by the prior discovery of La Salle.

Texas, which the Spaniards had weakly settled and feebly governed, declared herself independent of Mexico in 1835. When this revolt took place there were more Americans than people of Spanish blood in Texas, so bringing over to the Texan cause the warm sympathy and active aid of a large part of the American people.

The conflict was short and bloody. After meeting reverses at Goliad and the Alamo,[2] the Texans won their independence by defeating the Mexican army at San Jacinto,[3] in 1836. General Samuel Houston, the Texan leader, was subsequently made president of the Republic of Texas, which then set up for itself upon the model of the United States.

In no long time Texas applied for admission to the Union. Too weak to maintain herself as an independent power, her interests were now at one with the South. Her soil, climate, and productions were much the same. Her population was largely derived from that source, and owned to like feelings and prejudices with their brethren of that section. The South, therefore, favored the admission of Texas, not only for these general reasons, but because it would add a slave State to the Union, as, since Missouri and Arkansas had come in, there was no more territory, except Florida, open to slavery under the interdicted line of 36° 30´.

For this very reason the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North strongly opposed the admission of Texas. It was further opposed on the ground that as Mexico had not yet acknowledged the independence of Texas, so unfriendly an act toward Mexico would lead to war. Moreover, Texas was of such vast extent, compared with other States, that the bill for its admission allowed the making of four more new States out of it, so opening the door of the Union not to one, but several slave States in the future.

But the North and South did not separate themselves into two distinct political factions, or their citizens stand wholly together, on this Texas question. With many it was simply a question of national policy or expediency. It was championed by the Democratic party, which believed in the "manifest destiny" of the Union to control the whole continent, while the Whig party was conservative, and its opposition was based on the grounds already given, which many thought equivalent to national dishonor. Southern men were in both parties, and Northern men in both. Each party nominated a Southern man for President upon this issue. This question was carried to the people in the next national election (1844), when Clay, the Whig candidate, and opponent of annexation, was defeated, and Polk,[4] the Democratic candidate and its advocate, elected. The Congress therefore admitted Texas to the Union, Dec. 29, 1845.

FOOTNOTES

[1] TEXAS MISSIONS were established by Franciscan monks
as follows: In 1690, that of San Francisco on the Lavaca
River, at Fort St. Louis (see "La Salle's Colony"); St. John
the Baptist was founded on the Rio Grande, same year. In
1714, those of San Bernard and Adaes, fifteen miles west of
Natchitoches. In 1715, Mission Dolores, west of the Sabine;
one near Nacodoches, and another near the present town of
San Augustine. The mission and fortress of San Antonio de
Valero was soon after founded near the present city of San
Antonio. In 1721, one was located at the crossing of the
Neches; another on the Bay of St. Bernard, called Our Lady
of Loretto; and a third, called La Bahia (the Bay), at the
lower crossing of River San Antonio. In 1730, the Church of
San Fernando, San Antonio, was founded; in 1731, the mission
of La Purissima Concepcion, near the same place. All these
missions were secularized in the latter part of the eighteenth
century.—_Baker, Texas Scrap-Book._

[2] THE ALAMO (Spanish for poplar-tree), was a chapel used
in connection with the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Here one
hundred and forty-four Texan revolutionists, under W. Barrett
Travis, were besieged (1836) by superior Mexican forces under
Santa Anna. The insurgents held out ten days, when the Alamo
was stormed, and all of its brave defenders put to death.
David Crockett of Tennessee was among the slain. The event has
been commemorated by a shaft bearing the legend: "Thermopylæ
had its messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none."

[3] SAN JACINTO is a small village near Galveston Bay. The
decisive battle was fought April 21, 1836.

[4] JAMES K. POLK, of Tennessee. His nomination was the
first public news ever sent by telegraph in the United States.
Morse's new line was just completed between Baltimore and
Washington.

INTERLUDE.—NEW POLITICAL IDEAS.

"_Truth crushed to earth will rise again._"—_Bryant._

As yet any direct attack upon slavery was unpopular in the North. The two antagonistic ideas of limiting or extending it were now running a neck-and-neck race for controlling power; but attachment for the Union itself was stronger at the North than at the South, whose people had been taught to consider it a compact to be kept only during the pleasure of the several States, or so long as their interests were promoted by it. This doctrine was never taught in the North. The prevailing sentiment there was attachment for the Union, "one and indivisible;" while the South, under different teachings, was weighing its worth in the balance with slavery.

One new and potent element, however, had come into the controversy. At the North a little band of men pledged to work for the immediate emancipation of the slave, and deeply in earnest, had begun a warfare that ere long was to shake the Union to its foundations. Though few in numbers, they were both hated and feared. At the North they were called fanatics, at the South abolitionists. At the North they were mobbed, at the South a reward offered for their heads. The North apologized for them, the South demanded they should be put down. But though they were thus held up to public detestation, as enemies of the Union, by both sections, these men felt that they stood for a great and holy principle, which surely must triumph in the end. It made them strong. It made them respected. They were led by William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts, whose name is now spoken in the land with as much honor as it once was with bitter scorn and hatred.

Slavery was to be openly attacked through the printing-press, the platform, and the right of petition. The two first agencies would reach the people, and the last their representatives in Congress. Garrison declared in his paper "The Liberator," that he would be heard; and he was heard, though not till he had been dragged through the streets of Boston with a halter round his neck. In Congress, as the outcome of this agitation, John Quincy Adams presented many petitions, praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the nation's capital, the District of Columbia. He was assailed with a storm of indignation. Congress would not receive the petitions. They continued to come in by the hundred, some bearing thousands of names. All were refused a hearing. The venerable Adams,—"the Old Man Eloquent,"—then in his sixty-fifth year, was declared an incendiary unworthy of a seat in the Capitol, and a resolution to expel him was even introduced; but his brave stand for the right of petition made a hundred friends for the anti-slavery cause where one had been before.

IOWA ADMITTED.