1800. John Adams is president of the United States and America has just begun to grow. The population was estimated at 5.3 million; the barrier that the Appalachian Mountains represented had been overcome. The British still controlled large portions of the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and declared them off limits to all but the Indian Tribes. But as the American government no longer formally recognized British sovereignty over these lands, settlement continued near unabated.
Thomas Jefferson won the election of 1800 and succeeded John Adams, setting the stage for a new chapter in western expansion. Eli Whitney’s “cotton gin”, invented in 1793 was already making cotton a cost effective cash crop in Tennessee further driving settlement. An overland route to Santa Fe was pioneered by the French explorer Pedro Vial in 1792. Lands west of the Mississippi were held by Spain, but the pressure continued to build as the population crossed the Appalachian range and spread to the limits of the Mississippi. A bottleneck was developing due to the lack of knowledge of the land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.
The flow that started as a trickle now became a flood, Ohio became a state in 1803 and other territories were being settled. Others would follow in short order as the land hungry populace spread out further and further from the “Blue Ridge”.
A revolt in Haiti coupled with the deaths by Yellow Fever that devastated an entire French Army would serve as the impetus for Napoleon to sell its claim to the Louisiana Territory to the United States for the sum of 68 million Francs. On the 30th of April, 1803 the United States assumed possession of the Louisiana Purchase.
The country’s appetite for a Continental United States was beginning to take shape. It would be this unknown from the Mississippi to the Pacific that was the mystery. After Capt. Robert Gray sailed his ship across the Bar into the mouth of the Columbia in May 1792, people began to surmise that the Columbia and the Missouri very well be that fabled water route to the Pacific. It was that long held belief that a water route (a landlocked NorthWest Passage) must exist across the continent that would propel the formation of the Corps of Discovery.
The president wanted an expedition to explore and define the primary drainage of the Missouri River and whether there was a direct route to the Columbia River. Capt. Meriwether Lewis was joined by Lt. William Clark at the falls of the Ohio in October of 1803. The expedition would spend the winter of 1803-04 at Camp Dubois training for the trek to come. It would depart the fringe of US territory May 14, 1804 crossing the Mississippi into the mouth of the Missouri River. Lewis and Clark would take the Corps of Discovery into that western wilderness to ascertain whether Mr. Jefferson’s purchase was a steal or folly. The adventure had begun.
Sergeant Charles Floyd died of a ruptured appendix August 20, 1804 he is the only casualty during the entire expedition. Meanwhile the Corps of Discovery’s Commander in Chief, President Jefferson would be re-elected in the fall of 1804.
Late October 1804 and the Corps of Discovery arrived in the Mandan villages of present day North Dakota. The captains decide to erect the Corps’ quarters across the river from the Mandan villages. They spend the winter preparing for the journey they hope will lead them to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. Fortune smiles on the Corps as it has the good fortune to hire a French Canadian, Toussaint Charbonneau whose wife is Sacajawea, a Shoshone Indian.
The Corps left the quarters at Fort Mandan April 7, 1805, heading up the Missouri River while the keel boat would return to St. Louis, cutting all communication with the Corps of Discovery as an uncharted continent swallowed them up.
President Thomas Jefferson was determined to know the extent of his purchase and accordingly ordered another exploration to the southern and western portions of the Louisiana Purchase. Lt. Zebulon Pike was sent to find and map the headwaters of the Red River. Departing Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1806, Pike would explore much of the front range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, having one peak that can be seen from plains named for him. Misfortune follows as Pike makes a mistake that will send him into Mexico under military guard. He has mistaken the upper reaches of the Rio Grande River for The Red River and has strayed into land claimed by Spain.
Jubilation!! The Corps of Discovery have returned to the safety of civilization arriving in St. Louis September 23rd, 1806. Their discoveries would fuel the American fur trade and allow the US to compete with British fur interests. It was good news indeed for the country and the president. The realization that no water route existed across the American continent did little to dampen the spirits of Americans as the dream of a Continental United States became even more entrenched in the minds of the American public.
The Pike expedition as it is marched into Chihuahua Mexico is shown respect and deference. Pike was able to pinpoint the majority of Spain’s forts, military strength and population down the center of present day New Mexico. His “Capture” allowed him to accurately access more information than he would have had he found the Red River and charted its head waters. Most of his command was returned to US territory at Natchitoches, Louisiana July 1st, 1807. All his officers were released but a number of his men would languish in Mexican jails for years.
Two other notable events would further America’s western expansion in 1807. First was Robert Fulton’s first Commercial steamboat, the second being construction began on the Erie Canal.
President Jefferson granted John Jacob Astor rights to establish the American Fur Company April 6, 1808. It was Jefferson’s intent that an American presence be on the Columbia River.
March 4, 1809 James Madison becomes the fifth President of the United States. Construction on the National Road began in 1811. It would replace Nemacolin’s Path as the major route over the Appalachian Mountains. April 30, 1812, Louisiana became the 18th State.
Astor would open his subsidiary, the Pacific Fur Company in April 1810. The overland expedition that was to supply Fort Astoria would encounter a number of obstacles from its inception, making overland re-supply a dicey operation. A party was formed to return to St. Louis to report to Mr. Astor. Robert Stuart was chosen to lead the return party. In June of 1812, Stuart and six members of the Pacific Fur Company left Ft. Astoria headed for St. Louis. Indian unrest made the return journey over the outbound trek untenable and the party drifted south along the spine of the Rockies. Unbeknownst to them, they crossed the Continental Divide at South Pass in November 1812. They would arrive in St. Louis in April of 1812.
June 18, 1812 the United States declares war on Great Britain; despite a dismal beginning the end of the war opened even more land for settlement. The British defeat at New Orleans January 1815 ended British efforts to create an Indian barrier to further settlement.
The time of the mountain men was at hand, beginning in 1810, company and freelance trappers began plying the rivers of the Rocky Mountains to satisfy a thirst for beaver pelts. It was they who became the true pathfinders of the American West, but it was beaver that brought the first non-Indian men to explore large parts of the frontier. By 1820 the American fur trade was well established. The American population stood at 9.64 million.
The Santa Fe Trail became another viable western route in 1821 when William Becknell began freight service between Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Not much attention was paid to the discovery of South Pass until 1823 when a St. Louis merchant, W. H. Ashley trapped the area; returning the following year and going as far as the Great Salt Lake and establishing a trading post there. The first wagon train over South Pass occurred in 1832 when Capt. Benjamin Bonneville crossed the Continental Divide with a train of 20 wagons.
Missionary Marcus Whitman would cross South Pass in 1835, return to New York and marry Narcissa Prentice. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman would join Henry and Eliza Spaulding and a company of fur trappers led by mountain men Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick.
By 1837, eight additional states were added, now 26 states that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast with two states west of the Mississippi. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 would push the Indian population out of the southeastern states and territories creating even more land for settlement. Beginning in November 1831 and culminating in March 1839. The Trail of Tears would bring about the deaths of 12 to 16 thousand Indians.
The population of the United States stood at 17 million people, many of the routes west were set and the population was still looking to the western horizon. Westward, ever westward.
Ed. Note, The story of America’s westward expansion continues next Monday.