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Historical Background

Toward the Setting Sun—The Westward Movement, 1783-1828 (continued)

THE CHALLENGE OF EMPIRE

During the period 1803-14 Americans became increasingly interested in the trans-Mississippi West. The Louisiana Purchase and the expeditions of Lewis and Clark and of Zebulon Pike helped to arouse public interest. Trappers and mountain men then penetrated the region and began to gather detailed knowledge of it. East of the Mississippi, settlement of the Great Lakes region and the Gulf Plains continued, and new States gained admission to the Union. Settlement in Kentucky and Tennessee approached the Mississippi River and would soon spill over into Missouri and Arkansas. The press of westward expansion continued to bring clashes with the Indians and Spanish. The War of 1812 slowed the movement temporarily, but it removed obstacles to settlement. The result was a postwar wave of migration. The American people were fast developing the spirit that would carry them to the Pacific.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 provided awesome challenge and immense promise. For across the Mississippi was a rich and varied land. Immediately west of the river were the familiar forests. But west of the 98th meridian, the land became arid and treeless. Settlers would have to learn new ways to live with the land and the climate before the Plains country could fulfill its promise. This would take time. Explorers and mountain men would pave the way.

Hardly a person in the United States had a deeper interest in the West than Thomas Jefferson. As early as 1786 he had encouraged John Ledyard of Connecticut to attempt an exploratory west-east journey on foot from Paris across Siberia, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest to the United States. Ledyard failed when the Czarina of Russia stopped his trek, but Jefferson's fascination with the unknown reaches of the continent persisted. In January 1803—before the consummation of the Louisiana Purchase—Jefferson secretly asked Congress for $2,500 to send a Government military expedition to develop trade with the trans-Mississippi Indian tribes, and to explore "even to the Western Ocean." He hoped that the expedition would bring back detailed information about the geography, geology, and flora and fauna. Congress authorized the funds, even though the expedition would undoubtedly trespass on Spanish territory.

To lead the expedition, Jefferson chose his personal secretary, 32-year-old Meriwether Lewis. To share the leadership, Lewis, with Jefferson's permission, invited along William Clark, brother of frontier fighter George Rogers Clark. On May 14, 1804, the two men and their party set out from the mouth of the Missouri River. After many adventures and hardships, on November 7, in 1805, they finally reached the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia River. They built winter quarters nearby and named them Fort Clatsop, for the local Indian tribe. The men began the return trip in the spring of 1806 and arrived at St. Louis on September 23. [The Lewis and Clark Expedition, including the sites involved, are treated in detail in the volume of this series dealing with the great explorers of the West and the mountain men.]

The journey of Lewis and Clark is an exciting story of adventure and courage. Hearing it, Americans, young and old, were fired with the desire to see for themselves this land of tall mountains and wide plains and rushing water. The private publication of the journals of Lewis and Clark in 1814 was a significant event in the history of westward expansion.

William Henry Harrison, as Governor of Indiana Territory. In 1811 he and his army fought the Battle of Tippecanoe, which won him national recognition and influenced his election to the Presidency. From a lithograph by N. Currier. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Even before Lewis and Clark had returned from their journey, other explorers set out under Jefferson's aegis. In 1804 and again in 1806, expeditions sought the source of the Red River. In 1805-6, 26-year-old Lt. Zebulon Pike reached Leech Lake, Minn., in his search for the source of the Mississippi River. A second expedition, in 1806-7, took him into the Colorado country, where he discovered the peak that bears his name, and the Southwest. Continuing his exploration, he and his companions fell into the hands of the Spanish authorities. Before releasing him, in Chihuahua, the Spaniards confiscated his papers, but Pike was able to write a report of his expedition from memory. Published in 1810, it stimulated interest in the Southwest. Jefferson said that the purpose of these explorations was to gather scientific data. Unquestionably they did so. But they often violated Spanish territorial claims. Spanish diplomats remonstrated, but to no avail. Spanish colonial Governors tried their best to intercept or halt the expeditions. Except in the case of Pike, they had little success.

As Lewis and Clark made their way back down the Missouri River toward St. Louis in 1806, they encountered American fur traders headed upriver. Individualistic and daring men such as these—the traders, trappers, and mountain men—were also explorers of the West. In their search for profit and adventure, they blazed the trails, wandered into the remote byways, lived among the Indians, and accumulated a priceless store of detailed information about remote regions. Often the trappers banded together in small groups to market their furs or worked for other men. Some of the leaders of the companies were themselves mountain men. One was Manuel Lisa, the Spaniard who during the period 1808-12 led the St. Louis Missouri Fur Co. in its efforts to found the fur trade along the upper reaches of the Missouri. Other leaders were Eastern entrepreneurs. One of the most influential was John Jacob Astor. In 1810 the Pacific Fur Co., subsidiary of Astor's American Fur Co., sent groups of traders overland from St. Louis and by sea around Cape Horn to set up a far western headquarters. In 1811 they founded a base at Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River, a few miles from the site of Fort Clatsop. But the War of 1812 made supply and defense of such a remote post untenable, and in 1813 the British North West Co. took over Astoria. In much of the West, during the War of 1812, British influence over the Indians made it difficult and dangerous for American fur traders to operate. After the war the trade would revive.

During the years 1803-14, while soldiers, trappers, and mountain men explored the trans-Mississippi West, farmers continued to move into the vacant lands east of the Mississippi. In 1805 the Indiana Territory had sufficient population to elect a Territorial legislature. In 1809 Illinois became a Territory. Caught between the advancing settlers and aggressive Sioux and the Chippewas, the Ohio country tribes made a major effort to save their hunting grounds. Two half-brothers, Tecumseh and "The Prophet," were northern Indian leaders. Tecumseh dreamed of a confederation of tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico that would stand together, with British help, against the settlers. In 1810 Tecumseh visited William Henry Harrison, Governor of Indiana Territory, at Grouseland to protest the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809), by which other Indian leaders had surrendered 3 million acres of land for less than 1 cent per acre. The protest fell on deaf ears. Tecumseh wanted to avoid all-out war with the whites, but the dispute flared into a border war along the Northwest frontier in the winter of 1810. The next year, Tecumseh traveled to the South to try to persuade the Creeks to join his confederation. While he was gone, Harrison advanced into the disputed territory. At the Battle of Tippecanoe, in November 1811, Harrison's men drove the Indians off and destroyed "Prophet's Town." It was a crucial but not decisive victory for the settlers. After Tecumseh's return from the South, the Indians sent out raiding parties that caused remotely situated settlers to seek the protection of the stockades, but the Americans had the initiative. The Western phase of the War of 1812 brought the end of Tecumseh and the defeat of his British allies.

Settlement in the old Southwest continued. Spain still held Florida and control of the mouths of rivers that many Southwestern settlers depended upon to market their crops. The extended legal controversy over the sale of lands in the Yazoo strip dragged on. As usual, international boundaries had little significance to the pioneers when it came to finding good land. By 1810 enough Americans had settled in West Florida, where Spanish rule was weak, that President Madison gave the U.S. Governor of Louisiana Territory permission to seize Florida as far east as the Pearl River. The Spanish could no more than protest; they were losing their hold in North America.