// fpn source for The Way to the West, by Emerson Hough
// last edit: 23-May-2014

.dt The Way to the West, by Emerson Hough

.il fn=illus-fpc.jpg w=525 link=illus-fpc-lg.jpg
.ca RED RIVER CARTS FROM PEMBINA.

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<xl>THE WAY TO THE WEST</xl>

<l>AND THE LIVES
OF THREE EARLY AMERICANS</l>

<l>BOONE—CROCKETT—CARSON</l>

BY
<l>EMERSON HOUGH</l>

AUTHOR OF
THE COVERED WAGON, Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY
<l>FREDERIC REMINGTON</l>
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.il fn=illus-emb.png w=100
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[Illustration]
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GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS—NEW YORK

<s>Made in the United States of America</s>
.nf-

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Copyright, 1903
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

October
.nf-

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TO
J. B. H.
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<l>CONTENTS</l>
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.ta r:5 l:42 r:5
BOOK I
THE WAY ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES

    I. | THE AMERICAN AX |#7:bk1ch01#
   II. | THE AMERICAN RIFLE |#11:bk1ch02#
  III. | THE AMERICAN BOAT |#19:bk1ch03#
   IV. | THE AMERICAN HORSE |#25:bk1ch04#
    V. | THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS |#32:bk1ch05#
   VI. | THE MISSISSIPPI, AND |
       | INDEPENDENCE |#58:bk1ch06#
  VII. | ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER |#73:bk1ch07#
 VIII. | DANIEL BOONE |#87:bk1ch08#
   IX. | A FRONTIER REPUBLIC |#122:bk1ch09#

BOOK II
THE WAY TO THE ROCKIES

    I. | DAVY CROCKETT |#143:bk2ch01#
   II. | AGAINST THE WATERS |#185:bk2ch02#

BOOK III
THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC

    I. | KIT CARSON |#223:bk3ch01#
   II. | THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL |#260:bk3ch02#
  III. | THE OREGON TRAIL |#287:bk3ch03#
   IV. | EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE |
       | TRANS-MISSOURI |#311:bk3ch04#
    V. | ACROSS THE WATERS |#343:bk3ch05#

BOOK IV
THE WAY ACROSS THE PACIFIC

    I. | THE IRON TRAILS |#381:bk4ch01#
   II. | THE PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE |#413:bk4ch02#
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<l><B>1834</B></l>

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.nf b
IN THE YEAR 1834 IT BECAME NO LONGER
PROFITABLE TO TRAP THE BEAVER
.nf-

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.pn 1
.ce
<l>PREFACE</l>

The customary method in writing history is to
rely on chronological sequence as the only connecting
thread in the narrative. For this reason
many books of history are but little more than
loosely bound masses of dates and events that bear
no philosophical connection with one another, and
therefore are not easily retained in the grasp of the
average mind. History, to be of service, must be
remembered.

A merely circumstantial mind may grasp and retain
for a time a series of disconnected dates and
events, but such facts do not appeal to that more
common yet not less able type of intellect that asks
not only when, but why, such and such a thing happened;
that instinctively relates a given event to
some other event, and thus goes on to a certain
solidity and permanency in conclusions. Perhaps to
this latter type of mind there may be appeal in a
series of loosely connected yet really interlocking
monographs upon certain phases of the splendid
.pn +1
and stirring history of the settlement of the American
West.

Not concerned so much with a sequence of dates,
or with a story of martial or political triumphs, so
called, the writer has sought to show somewhat of
the genesis of the Western man; that is to say, the
American man; for the history of America is but a
history of the West.

Whence came this Western man, why came he,
in what fashion, under what limitations? What
are the reasons for the American or Western type?
Is that type permanent? Have we actual cause for
self-congratulation at the present stage of our national
development? These are some of the questions
that present themselves in this series of studies of
the manner in which the settlement of the West was
brought about.

The history of the occupation of the West is the
story of a great pilgrimage. It is the record of a
people always outstripping its leaders in wisdom, in
energy and in foresight. A slave of politics, the
American citizen has none the less always proved
himself greater than politics or politicians. The
American, the Westerner, if you please, has been a
splendid individual. We shall have no hope as a
nation when the day of the individual shall be no
more. Then ultimately we shall demand Magna
.pn +1
Charta over again; shall repeat in parallel the history
of France in ’93; shall perhaps see the streets
run red in our America. There are those who believe
that the day of the individual in America is
passing all too swiftly, that we are making history
over-fast. There is scant space for speculation
when the facts come crowding down so rapidly on
us as is the case to-day. Yet there may perhaps be
some interest attached to conclusions herein, which
appear logical as based upon a study of the manner
in which the American country was settled.

As to dates, we shall need but few. Indeed, it
will suffice if the reader shall remember but one date
out of all given in this book—that when it became
no longer profitable to trap the beaver in the West.
This date, remembered and understood logically, may
prove of considerable service in the study of the
movements of the American people.

As to the apparently disconnected nature of the
studies here presented, it is matter, as one may again
indicate, not of accident. On the contrary, the
arrangement of the material is thought to constitute
the chief claim of the work for a tolerant consideration.

I shall ask my reader to consider the movements
of the American population as grouped under four
great epochs. There was a time when the
.pn +1
west-bound men were crossing the Alleghanies; a time
when they crossed the Mississippi; a time when they
crossed the Rocky Mountains. Now they cross the
Pacific Ocean. Roughly coincident with these great
epochs we may consider, first, the period of down-stream
transportation; second, of up-stream transportation;
and lastly, of transportation not parallel
to the great watercourses, but directly across them
on the way to the West. These latter groupings were
employed in a series of articles printed in the Century
Magazine in the year 1901-1902, the use of this
material herein being by courtesy of the Century
Company.

I have not hesitated to employ the medium of
biography where that seemed the best vehicle for conveying
the idea of a great and daring people led by
a few great and daring pilots, prophets of adventurings:
hence the sketches of the lives of the great
frontiersmen, Boone, Crockett, and Carson,—all
great and significant lives, whose story is useful in
illustrative quality.

I am indebted for many facts obtained from special
study by Mr. Horace Kephart, an authority on
early Western history, illustrating thoroughly
the part that the state of Pennsylvania played
in the movement of the early west-bound population.
Mr. Warren S. Ely, a resident of
.pn +1
historic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, supplements Mr.
Kephart’s material with results of local investigations
of his own. Mr. Alexander Hynds of Tennessee assists
in telling the story of that Frontier Republic
whose history blends itself so closely with Western
affairs of a hundred years ago. I have quoted freely
from Mr. N. P. Langford, a man of the early trans-Missouri,
an Argonaut of the Rockies, who has placed
at my disposal much valuable material. Mr. Hiram
M. Chittenden’s splendid work on the history of the
American fur trade has proved of great value.

I am indebted to many books and periodicals for
data regarding the modern American industrial development.
I am indebted also to many early authors
who wrote of the old West, and am under obligations
to very many unknown friends, the unnamed
but able writers of the daily press.

In regard to the classification of this material,
varied and apparently heterogeneous, yet really interdependent,
under the four epochs or volume-heads
mentioned, I refer to the table given on another page.

As justification of what might be called presumption
on the part of the writer in undertaking a work
of this nature, he has only to plead a sincere interest
in the West, which was his own native land; a love
for that free American life now all too rapidly fading
away; and a deep admiration for the accomplishments
.pn +1
of that American civilization which never was
and never will be any better than the man that made
it. It has not been the intention herein to write a
history of the American people, but a history of the
American man.

.ll -2
.in +2
.rj
EMERSON HOUGH.
<i>Chicago, Illinois, June,</i> 1903.
.in
.ll

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.h1 nobreak pn=+1
THE WAY TO THE WEST

.sp 2

.h2 id=bk1ch01 nobreak
CHAPTER I||THE AMERICAN AX
.sp 2

I ask you to look at this splendid tool, the American
ax, not more an implement of labor than an
instrument of civilization. If you can not use it,
you are not American. If you do not understand it,
you can not understand America.

This tool is so simple and so perfect that it has
scarcely seen change in the course of a hundred years.
It lacks decoration, as do the tools and the weapons
of all strong peoples. It has no fantastic lines, no
deviations from simplicity of outline, no ornamentations,
no irregularities. It is simple, severe, perfect.
Its beauty is the beauty of utility.

In the shaft of the ax there is a curve. This
curve is there for a reason, a reason of usefulness.
The simple swelling head is made thus not for motives
of beauty, but for the purpose of effectiveness.
The shaft, an even yard in length, polished, curved,
.pn +1
of a formation that shall give the greatest strength
to a downright blow in combination with the greatest
security to the hand-grasp, has been made thus for a
century of American life. This shaft is made of
hickory, the sternest of American woods, the one
most capable of withstanding the hardest use. It
has always been made thus and of this material.

The metal head or blade of the American ax is
to-day as it has always been. The makers of axes
will tell you that they scarcely know of any other
model. The face of the blade is of the most highly
tempered steel for a third or half of its extent.
The blade or bitt is about eight inches in length,
the cutting edge four and seven-eighths to five inches
in width. The curve of this edge could not, by the
highest science, be made more perfect for the purpose
of biting deepest at the least outlay of human
strength. The poll or back of the ax is about four
inches in width, square or roughly rounded into
such form that it is capable of delivering a pounding,
crushing or directing blow. The weight of the
ax-head is about four pounds, that is to say from
three and one-half to five pounds.

With the ax one can do many things. With it
the early American blazed his way through the trackless
forests. With it he felled the wood whereby
was fed the home fire, or the blaze by which he kept
.pn +1
his distant and solitary bivouac. With it he built
his home, framing a fortress capable of withstanding
all the weaponry of his time. With it he not
only made the walls, but fabricated the floors and
roof for his little castle. He built chairs, tables,
beds, therewith. By its means he hewed out his
homestead from the heart of the primeval forest,
and fenced it round about. Without it he had been
lost.

At times it served him not only as tool, but as
weapon; nor did more terrible weapon ever fit the
hand of man. Against its downright blow wielded
by a sinewy arm the steel casques of the Crusaders
had proved indeed poor fending. Even the early
womankind of America had acquaintance with this
weapon. There is record of a woman of early Kentucky
who with an ax once despatched five Indians,
who assailed the cabin where for the time she had
been left alone.

It was a tremendous thing, this ax of the early
American. It cleared away paths over hundreds of
miles, or marked the portages between the heads of
the Western waterways, which the early government
declared should be held as public pathways forever.
In time it became an agent of desolation and destruction,
as well as an agent of upbuilding and construction.
Misguided, it leveled all too soon and
.pn +1
wastefully the magnificent forests of this country, whose
superior was never seen on any portion of the
earth. Stern, simple, severe, tremendous, wasteful—truly
this was the typical American implement.

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch02 pn=+1
CHAPTER II||THE AMERICAN RIFLE
.sp 2

Witness this sweet ancient weapon of our fathers,
the American rifle, maker of states, empire builder.
Useful as its cousin, the ax, it is in design simple as
the ax; in outline severe, practicable, purposeful in
every regard. It is devoid of ornamentation. The
brass that binds the foot of the stock is there to
protect the wood. The metal guard below the lock
is to preserve from injury the light set-triggers.
The serrated edges of the lock plate may show rude
file marks of a certain pattern, but they are done
more in careless strength than in cunning or in delicacy.
This is no belonging of a weak or savage man.
It is the weapon of the Anglo-Saxon; that is to say,
the Anglo-Saxon in America, who invented it because
he had need for it.

This arm was born of the conditions that surrounded
our forefathers in the densely covered slopes of
the Appalachian Divide, in whose virgin forests
there was for the most part small opportunity for
extended vision, hence little necessity for a weapon
of long range. The game or the enemy with which
.pn +1
the early frontiersman was concerned was apt to be
met at distances of not more than a hundred or two
hundred yards, and the early rifle was perfect for
such ranges.

Moreover, it was only with great difficulty that the
frontiersman transported any weighty articles on
his Western pilgrimage. Lead was heavy, powder
was precious, the paths back to the land of such
commodities long and arduous. A marvel of adaptation,
the American rifle swiftly grew to a practical
perfection. Never in the history of the arms of nations
has there been produced a weapon whose results
have been more tremendous in comparison to the
visible expenditure of energy; never has there been
a more economical engine, or an environment where
economy was more imperative.

The ball of the American rifle was small, forty,
sixty or perhaps one hundred of them weighing
scarcely more than a pound. The little, curving horn,
filled with the precious powder grains, carried enough
to furnish many shots. The stock of the rifle itself
gave housing to the little squares of linen or fine
leather with which the bullet was patched in loading.
With this tiny store of powder and lead, easily
portable food for this providentially contrived
weapon, the American frontiersman passed on silently
through the forest, a master, an arbiter, ruler
.pn +1
of savage beast or savage foeman, and in time master
of the civilized antagonist that said him nay.

We shall observe that the state of Pennsylvania
was the starting point of the westward movement
of our frontiersmen. We shall find also that the first
American small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles were
made in Pennsylvania. The principle of the rifle,
the twist in the bore, is thought to have originated
in the German states of the Palatinate, but it was
left for America to improve it and to perfect its use.

At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a riflemaker,
probably a German by birth, by name Decherd or
Dechert, who began to outline the type of the American
squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had
an apprentice, one Mills, with ideas of his own.
We see this apprentice and his improved rifle
presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter
riflemakers spring up all over the east slope of the
Alleghanies, so that as though by magic all our
hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with this
long rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it
with an accuracy hitherto deemed impossible in the
achievements of firearms.

Withal we may call this a Southern arm, since New
England was later in taking up its use, clinging to
the Queen Anne musket when the men of North Carolina
and Virginia scorned to shoot a squirrel
.pn +1
anywhere except in the head. The first riflemen of the
Revolutionary War were Pennsylvanians, Virginians
and Marylanders, all Southerners; and deadly
enough was their skill with what the English officers
called their “cursed widow and orphan makers.”

The barrel of the typical rifle of those days was
about four feet in length, the stock slender, short
and strongly curved, so that the sights came easily
and directly up to the level of the eye in aiming.
The sights were low and close to the barrel, some
pieces being provided with two hind sights, a foot
or so apart, so that the marksman might not draw
either too fine or too coarse a bead with the low
silver or bone crescent of the fore sight. Usually
the rear sight was a simple, flat bar, finely notched,
and placed a foot or fifteen inches in front of the
breech of the barrel, so that the eye should focus
easily and sharply at the notch of the rear sight.
Such was the care with which the sights were adjusted
that the rifleman sometimes put the finishing
touches on the notch with so soft a cutting tool
as a common pin, working away patiently, a little at
a time, lest he should by too great haste go too deep
into the rear sight, and so cause the piece to shoot
otherwise than “true.”

The delicately arranged set-triggers made possible
an instantaneous discharge without any
.pn +1
appreciable disturbance of the aim when once obtained;
and the long distance between the hind sight and
fore sight, the steadiness of the piece, owing to its
length and weight, the closeness of the line of sight
to the line of the trajectory of a ball driven with
a relatively heavy powder charge, all conspired to
render extreme accuracy possible with this arm,
and this accuracy became so general throughout the
American frontier that to be a poor rifle shot was
to be an object of contempt.

Each rifle was provided with its own bullet mold,
which cast a round ball of such size that when properly
“patched” it fitted the bore of the piece tightly,
so tightly that in some cases a “starter” or section
of false barrel was used, into which the ball was
forced, sometimes being swaged in with a mallet
and a short starting rod. The ramrod proper was
carried in pipes attached to the long wooden stock,
which extended to the muzzle of the barrel underneath
the piece. One end of this rod was protected
with a brass ferrule, and the other was provided
with a screw, into which was twisted the “worm”
used in cleaning the arm.

The pouch of the hunter always carried some flax
or tow for use in cleaning the piece. The rifleman
would wind a wisp of this tow about the end of the
“worm,” moisten it by passing it between his lips,
.pn +1
and then pass the tightly fitting wad of tow up and
down the barrel until the latter was perfectly free
from powder residue. Then the little ball, nicely
patched, was forced down on the powder charge by
the slender ramrod, made with great care from the
toughest straight-grained hickory wood.

Powder and ball were precious in those early days,
and though strong men ever love the sports of
weapons, waste could not be tolerated even in sport.
Sometimes at night the frontiersmen would gather
for the pastime of “snuffing the candle,” and he
was considered a clumsy rifleman who but fanned
the flame with his bullet, or cut too deeply into the
base of the candle-wick, and so extinguished the
light. Again the riflemen would engage in “driving
the nail” with the rifle ball, or would shoot at a
tiny spot of black on a board or a blazed tree-trunk,
firing a number of balls into the same mark.
In nearly all such cases the balls were dug out of
the tree or plank into which they had been fired, and
were run over again into fresh bullets for use at
another time. Thus grew the skill of the American
rifleman, with whose weapon most of the feats of
latter day short-range marksmanship could be duplicated.[#]

.pn +1

The early American depended upon his rifle in
supporting and defending his family. Without it he
had not dared to move across the Alleghanies. With
it he dared to go anywhere, knowing that it would
furnish him food and fending. When the deer and
turkey became less numerous near him, he moved
his home farther westward, where game was more
abundant.

His progress was bitterly contested by the Indian
savages all the way cross the American continent,
but they perished before this engine of civilization,
which served its purpose across the timbered Appalachians,
down the watershed to the Mississippi,
up the long and winding streams of the western
lands, over the Rockies, and down the slopes of
the Sierras to the farther sea. Had it never
known change it had not been American. An ax is an
ax, because a tree is a tree, whether in the Alleghanies
or the Rockies; but the rifle met in time
different conditions. The great plains furnished
larger game animals, and demanded longer range
in arms, so that in time the rifle shot a heavier ball.

When the feverish intensity of American life had
.pn +1
asked yet more haste, there came the repeating rifle,
firing rapidly a number of shots, an invention now
used all over the earth. In time there came also
the revolving pistol, rapid, destructive, American.
These things had not to do with the early west-bound
man, this wilderness traveler, himself perforce
almost savage, shod with moccasins, wearing
the fringed hide tunic that was never in the
designs of Providence intended for any unmanly
man, and that fits ill to-day the figure of any round-paunched
city dweller. Feather or plume he did not
wear in his hat, for such things pertained rather
to the hired voyager than to the independent home
builder. Ornamentation was foreign to his garb
and to his weaponry. He had much to do. The
way was hard. No matter how he must travel, this
long rifle was with him. At his belt, in the little
bag of buckskin, were the bullets in their stoppered
pouch, the cleaning worm, the extra flint or two, the
awl for mending shoon or clothing.

So were equipped the early Americans, gaunt,
keen, tireless, that marched to meet the invading
forces at the battle of New Orleans; and when the
officers of the British army, on the day after that
stricken field, found half their dead shot between the
eyes, they knew they could lead their troops no more
against such weaponry and such weapon bearers.
The rifle had won the West, and it would hold it fast.

.fm

.fn #
In a careful test an old squirrel-rifle, for three generations
in the author’s family, and now nearly one hundred years old,
was fired five times, at a distance of 60 yards, and the point of
the finger would cover all five of the balls, which made practically
but one ragged hole. The author’s father handled the old weapon
on this occasion. Again, in the author’s hands, it shot out in
succession the spots or pips of a playing card, the ten of clubs,
at such distance as left the spots only clearly distinguishable.
This piece was altered from flint lock to pill-percussion lock, and
later to the percussion cap lock.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch03 pn=+1
CHAPTER III||THE AMERICAN BOAT
.sp 2

Here is that fairy ship of the wilderness, the birch-bark
canoe, the first craft of America, antedating
even the arrival of the white man. It is the ship of
risk and of adventure, belonging by right to him who
goes far and travels light, who is careless of his home
coming. It is a boat that now carries the voyager,
and now is carried by him. It is a great-hearted
craft. You shall take it upon your shoulders, and
carry it a mile across the land trail, without needing
to set it down; but when you place it on the
water it in turn will carry you and your fellow, and
yet another, and your household goods of the wilderness
up to five times your weight.

Freakish as a woman, as easily unsettled, yet if
you be master it shall take you over combing waves,
and down yeasty rapids and against steady current,
until finally you shall find yourself utterly apart from
the familiar haunts of man, about you only the wilderness,
the unadventured. This is the ship of the
wilderness, the fairy ship, the ship of heroes. To-day
it is passing away. With it goes great store of
romance and adventure.
.pn +1

The red man taught the white man how to build
and how to use this boat. He taught how to cut the
long strips of toughest bark from the birch-tree,
prying it off with sharpened pole or driven wooden
wedge. He showed how to build the frame of the
boat on the ground, or in a long hole dug in the
ground, where stakes hold fast the curves of the
gunwales, between which are later forced the steamed
splints that serve as ribs and as protection for the
fragile skin, soaked soft and pliable, which is presently
laid on the frame of gunwale and rib and
bottom splint. This covering of bark is sewn together
with the thread of the forest, fiber of swamp
conifers—“wautp,” the Indians of the North call
this thread.

Then over the seams is run the melted pitch and
resin taken from the woods. The edges of the bark
skin are made fast at the gunwales, the sharply bent
bows are guarded carefully from cracks where the
straining comes, and the narrow thwarts, wide as your
three fingers, are lashed in, serving as brace and as
all the seat you shall find when weary from kneeling.
The fresh bark is clean and sweet upon the new-made
ship, the smell of the resin is clean. Each line of the
boat is full of spirit and grace and beauty.

The builder turns it over, and where he finds a bubble
in the pitching of a seam he bends down and puts
.pn +1
his lips to it, sucking in his breath, to find if air comes
through. So he tests it, well and thoroughly, mending
and patching slowly and carefully, until at last
it pleases him throughout. And then he places his
new-made ship on the water, where it sits high and
light, spinning and turning at its tether, never still
for an instant, but shifting like a wild duck under
the willows, responsive to the least breath of the
passing airs. It is eager to go on. It will go far,
in its life of a year or two. If it gets a wound from
the rocks, or from the clumsiness of the tyro that
drives it upon the beach instead of anchoring it
free, then it is easily mended by a strip of bark and
some forest pitch. When at last it loses its youth, and
cracks or soaks in water so freely that it takes too
long to dry it at the noonday pipe-smoking, then it
is not so difficult to build another in the forest.

The canoe is as the ax and the rifle, an agent
economical, capable of great results in return for
small expenditure of energy. It is American. There
was much to do, far to go. It was thus because
America existed as it did.

No craft has been found easier of propulsion to
one knowing the art of the paddle. The voyager
makes his paddle about as long as his rifle, up to his
chin in length. He paddles with the blade always
on one side of the canoe. As the blade is
.pn +1
withdrawn from the backward stroke, it is turned slightly
in the water, so that the course of the bow is still
held straight. If he would approach a landing sidewise
with his boat, he makes his paddle describe short
half curves, back and forth, and the little boat follows
the paddle obediently. The advance of the
canoe is light, silent, spirit-like. It is full of mystery,
this boat. Yet it is kind to those who know
it, as is the wilderness and as are all its creatures.

This is the boat of the northern traveler, the voyager
of the upper ways. In the South, where the
birch does not grow in proper dimensions, the bark
of the elm has on occasion served to make a small
craft. In different parts of the North, too, the
birch canoe takes different shapes. In the northeast
the Abenakis made it long and with little rake, with
low bow and stern and with bottom swelling outward
safely under the tumble-home,—this stable model
serving for the strong streams of the forested regions
of the North. Far to the west, where roll the
great inland lakes, the Ojibways made their boats
higher at bow and stern, wider of beam, shorter,
rounder of bottom, all the better fitted for short
and choppy waves.

Then, under the white fur traders’ tutelage, there
were made great ships of birch-bark, the <i>canot du
Nord</i> of the Hudson Bay trade, such as came down
.pn +1
with rich burdens of furs when the brigades started
down-stream to the markets; or yet the greater <i>canot
du maitre</i> once used on the Great Lakes, a craft that
needed a dozen to a dozen and a half paddles for its
propulsion. Again, at the heads of the far off Northwestern
streams there were canoes so small as to carry
but a single person, propelled by a pair of sticks, one
in each hand of the occupant, the points of these
hand-sticks pushing against the bottom of the stream.
But ever this ship of the wilderness was so contrived
that its crew could drive it by water or carry it by
land.

Thus were the portages mastered, thus did the man
with small gear to hinder him get out from home,
westward into the wilderness. Down stream or up
stream, this boat went far. Paddle or sail or shodden
pole served for the wanderer before the trails
were made, and before the boats of the white settlers
followed where the savage red men and scarcely less
savage white adventurers had found the way.

There were other boats for the early traveler, and
these were employed by those that had crossed the
Alleghanies on foot and would fare farther westward.
The dugout, made of the sycamore or sassafras
log, ten to twenty feet in length, narrow, unstable,
thick-skinned and a bit clumsy, was good
enough for one pushing on down-stream, or
.pn +1
prowling about in sluggish, silent bayous. This was
the boat of the South in the early days. Soon the
great flat-boat succeeded it for those that traveled
with family goods or in large parties. The wooden
boats came later, the flat-boat after the dugout, the
keel-boat but following the far trail of the birch-bark
to the upper ways, or perchance passing, slipping
down-stream, the frail hide coracle of the hunter
that had ventured unaccompanied far into unknown
lands.

Above all things in these early days must compactness
and lightness be studied. This American
traveler was poor in the goods of this world; his
possessions made small bulk. This ax made him
bivouac or castle, or helped him make raft or canoe.
This rifle gave him food and clothing. He walked
westward to the westward flowing streams, and there
this light craft, dancing, beckoning, alluring, invited
him yet on and on, proffering him carriage for
his scanty store, offering obedience to him who was
the master of the wilderness, of its alluring secrets
and its immeasurable resources.

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch04 pn=+1
CHAPTER IV||THE AMERICAN HORSE
.sp 2

Observe here a creature, a dumb brute, that has
saved some centuries of time. Indeed, without this
American horse, the American civilization perhaps
could never have been. Without the ax, the rifle,
the boat and the horse there could have been no
West.

To-day we would in some measure dispense with
the horse, but in the early times no part of man’s
possessions was more indispensable. This animal
was not then quite as we find him to-day in the older
settled portions of the country. In some of our
wilder regions we can still see him somewhat as he
once was, rough, wiry, hardy, capable of great endeavor,
easily supported upon the country over
which he passed.

Naturally the early west-bound traveler could not
take with him food for his horse, and the latter
must be quite independent of grain. Corn, exceedingly
difficult to raise, was for the master
alone. The horse must live on grass food, and
.pn +1
find it where he stopped at night. During the
day he must carry the traveler and his weapons,
another horse perhaps serving as transportation for
food or household goods; or, if there was a family
with the traveler, perhaps one horse sufficed for the
mother and a child or two. The weak might ride,
the strong could trudge alongside. Many women
have so traveled out into the West—women as sweet
as any of to-day.

We have here, then, one more simple, economical
and effective factor in the resources of the early
American. Beauty, finish, elegance, were not imperative.
Strength, stamina, hardihood, these things
must be possessed. The horse must be durable; and
so he was. The early settlers on the Atlantic
coast brought from over the seas horses of good
blood. Virginia was noted as a breeding ground
before the yet more famous Blue Grass Region of
Kentucky began to produce horses of great quality.
The use of the horse in the New World went on as it
did in the Old. The French in the North, the English
at the mid-continent, the Spanish in the South,
all brought over horses; and even to-day the types of
the three sections are distinct.

The horse with which we are concerned was the
hardy animal, able to find food in the forest glades or
laurel thickets of the Appalachians; that served as
.pn +1
pack-horse in the hunt near home, as baggage horse in
the journey away from home. In those days the horse
was rather a luxury than a necessity. All earlier or
Eastern America was at short range. The rifle was
short in range; the man himself was a footman, and
did not travel very far in actual leagues.

For a generation he could walk, or at least travel
by boat. But when he came to the edge of the open
country of the plains, when he saw above him the vast
bow of the great River of the West, across whose arc
he needed to travel direct, then there stood waiting
for him, as though by providential appointment, this
humble creature, this coward, this hero of an animal,
now afraid of its own shadow, now willing to face
steel and powder-smoke, patient, dauntless, capable of
great exertion and great accomplishment. So in the
land of great distances the traveler became a
mounted man; the horse became part of him, no
longer a luxury, but a necessity.

The Spanish contributed most largely to the American
holding of that vast indefinite West of ours that
they once claimed, when they allowed to straggle northward
across the plains, into the hand of Indian or
white man, this same lean and wiry horse, carrying to
the deserts of America the courage of his far-off
Moorish blood, his African adaptability to long journeys
.pn +1
on short fare.[#] The man that followed the
Ohio and Missouri to the edge of the plains, the
trapper, the hunter, the adventurer of the fur trade,
had been wholly helpless without the horse. For a
time the trading posts might cling to the streams,
but there was a call to a vast empire between the
streams, where one could not walk, where no boat
could go, nor any wheeled vehicle whatever. Here,
then, came the horse, the thing needed.

The white adventurer may have brought his horse
with him by certain slow generations of advance, or
he may have met him as he moved West; at times
he captured and tamed him for himself, again he
bought him of the Indian, or took him without purchase.
Certainly in the great open reaches of the
farther West the horse became man’s most valuable
property, the unit of all recognized current values.
The most serious, the most unforgivable crime was
that of horse stealing. To kill a man in war, man
to man, was a matter of man and man, and to be
.pn +1
regarded at times with philosophy; but to take away
without quarrel and by stealth what was most essential
to man’s life or welfare was held equivalent
to murder unprovoked and of a despicable nature. To
be “set afoot” was one of the horrors long preserved
in memory by the idiom of Western speech.

The food of this horse, then, was generally what
he might gain by forage. In furnishings, his bridle
was sometimes a hide lariat, his saddle the buckskin
pad of the Indians. Stirrups the half-wild white man
sometimes discarded, after the fashion of the Indian,
who rode by the clinging of his legs turned back, or by
purchase of his toes thrust in between the foreleg and
the body of his mount. A fleet horse, one much valued
in the chase or in war, might be his master’s
pet, tied close to his house of skin at night, or picketed
near-by at the lonesome bivouac. He might
have braided in his forelock the eagle feather that
his white master himself would have disdained to
wear as ornament. Of grooming the horse knew
nothing, neither did he ever know a day of shelter.

His stable was the heart of a willow thicket if the
storm blew fierce. In winter-time his hay was the bark
of the cottonwood, under whose gnarled arms the
hunter had pitched his winter tepee or built his
rough war-house of crooked logs. When all the wide
plain was a sheet of white, covered again by the
.pn +1
driven blinding snows of the prairie storm, then this
hardy animal must paw down through the snow and
find his own food, the dried grass curled close to the
ground. Where the ox would perish the horse could
survive. He was simple, practicable, durable, even
under the hardest conditions. The horse of the American
West ought to have place on the American coat
of arms.

The horse might be a riding animal, or at times a
beast of burden. In the earliest days he was packed
simply, sometimes with hide pockets or panniers
after the Indian fashion, with a lash rope perhaps
holding the load together roughly. Later on in the
story of the West there came a day when it was necessary
to utilize all energies more exactly, and then
the loading of the horse became an interesting and
intricate science. The carry-all or pannier was no
longer essential, and the packs were made up of all
manner of things transported. The pack saddle, a
pair of X’s connected with side bars, the “saw buck”
pack-saddle of the West, which was an idea perhaps
taken from the Indians, was the immediate aid of
the packer. The horse and the lash rope in combination
were born of necessity, the necessity of long
trails across the mountains and the plains.

Thus the horse trebled the independence of the
Western man, made it possible for him to travel as
.pn +1
far as he liked across unknown lands, made him
soldier, settler, trader, merchant; enabled him indeed
to build a West that had grown into giant stature
even before the day of steam.

.fm

.fn #
“Wherever pictographs of the horse appear the representations
must have been done subsequent to the advent of Coronado, or
the conquistadors of Florida. There are no horse portraits in
Arizona and vicinity, nor up the Pacific coast, but they are frequent
in Texas and in the trans-Mississippi region. The domestic
horse (not Eohippus, the diminutive quaternary animal which
was indigenous) was introduced into Florida from Santo Domingo
by the Spaniards early in the 15th century, as well as into
South America, where it spread in fifteen years as far south as
Patagonia.”—Chas. Hallock, the “American Antiquarian,” January,
1902.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch05 pn=+1
CHAPTER V||THE PATHWAY OF THE WATERS[#]
.sp 2

On a busy street of a certain Western city there
appeared, not long ago, a figure whose peculiarities
attracted the curious attention of the throng through
which he passed. It was a man, tall, thin, bronzed,
wide-hatted, long-haired, clad in the garb of a day
gone by. How he came to the city, whence he came,
or why, it boots little to ask. There he was, one of
the old-time “long-haired men” of the West. His
face, furrowed with the winds of the high plains and
of the mountains, and bearing still the lines of boldness
and confidence, had in these new surroundings
taken on a shade of timorous anxiety. His eye was
disturbed. At his temples the hair was gray, and
the long locks that dropped to his shoulders were
thin and pitiful. A man of another day, of a bygone
country, he babbled of scoutings, of warfare with
savages, of the chase of the buffalo. None knew
what he spoke. He babbled, grieved, and vanished.

Into the same city there wandered, from a somewhat
more recent West, another man grown swiftly
.pn +1
old. Ten years earlier this figure might have been
seen over all the farming-lands of the West, most
numerous near the boom towns and the land-offices.
He was here transplanted, set down in the greatest
boom town of them all, but, alas! too old and too
alien to take root.

He wore the same long-tailed coat, the same white
hat that marked him years ago—tall-crowned, not
wide-rimmed; the hat that swept across the Missouri
River in the early eighties. His beard was now grown
gray, his eye watery, his expression subdued, and no
longer buoyantly and irresistibly hopeful. His pencil,
as ready as ever to explain the price of lots or land,
had lost its erstwhile convincing logic. From his soul
had departed that strange, irrational, adorable belief,
birthright of the American that was, by which he was
once sure that the opportunities of the land that bore
him were perennial and inexhaustible. This man
sought now no greatness and no glory. He wanted
only the chance to make a living. And, think you,
he came of a time when a man might be a carpenter
at dawn, merchant at noon, lawyer by night, and yet
be respected every hour of the day, if he deserved it
as a man.

It was exceeding sweet to be a savage. It is pleasant
to dwell upon the independent character of Western
life, and to go back to the glories of that land and
.pn +1
day when a man who had a rifle and a saddle-blanket
was sure of a living, and need ask neither advice nor
permission of any living soul. Those days, vivid, adventurous,
heroic, will have no counterpart on the
earth again. Those early Americans, who raged and
roared across the West, how unspeakably swift was
the play in which they had their part! There,
surely, was a drama done under the strictest law of
the unities, under the sun of a single day.

No fiction can ever surpass in vividness the vast,
heroic drama of the West. The clang of steel, the
shoutings of the captains, the stimulus of wild adventure—of
these things, certainly, there has been
no lack. There has been close about us for two hundred
years the sweeping action of a story keyed
higher than any fiction, more unbelievably bold, more
incredibly keen in spirit. And now we come upon
the tame and tranquil sequel of that vivid play of
human action. “Anticlimax!” cries all that humanity
that cares to think, that dares to regret, that
once dared to hope. “Tell us of the West that was,”
demands that humanity, and with the best of warrant;
“play for us again the glorious drama of the past,
and let us see again the America that once was
ours.”

Historian, artist, novelist, poet, must all in some
measure fail to answer this demand, for each
.pn +1
generation buries its own dead, and each epoch, to be understood,
must be seen in connection with its own
living causes and effects and interwoven surroundings.
Yet it is pleasant sometimes to seek among
causes, and I conceive that a certain interest may attach
to a quest that goes farther than a mere summons
for the spurred and booted Western dead to
rise. Let us ask, What was the West? What caused
its growth and its changes? What was the Western
man, and why did his character become what it was?
What future is there for the West to-day? We shall
find that the answers to these questions run wider
than the West, and, indeed, wider than America.

In the pursuit of this line of thought we need ask
only a few broad premises. These premises may
leave us not so much of self-vaunting as we might
wish, and may tend to diminish our esteem of the importance
of individual as well as national accomplishment;
for, after all and before all, we are but flecks
on the surface of the broad, moving ribbon of fate.
We are all,—Easterner and Westerner, dweller of
the Old World or the New, bond or free, of to-day or
of yesterday,—but the result of the mandate that
bade mankind to increase and multiply, that bade
mankind to take possession of the earth. We have
each of us taken over temporarily that portion of
the earth and its fullness allotted or made possible to
.pn +1
us by that Providence to which all things belong.
We have each of us done this along the lines of the
least possible resistance, for this is the law of organic
life.

The story of the taking over of the earth into possession
has been but a story of travel. Aryan, Cymri,
Goth, Vandal, Westerner—they are all one. The question
of occupying the unoccupied world has been only
a question of transportation, of invasion, and of occupation
along the lines of least resistance. Hence
we have at hand, in a study of transportation of the
West at different epochs, a clue that will take us
very near to the heart of things.

We read to-day of forgotten Phenicia and of ancient
Britain. They were unlike, because they were
far apart. The ancient captains who directed the
ships that brought them approximately together were
great men in their day, fateful men. The captains of
transportation that made all America one land are
still within our reach, great men, fateful men; and
they hold a romantic interest under their grim tale
of material things. You and I live where they said
we must live. It was they who marked out the very
spot where the fire was to rise upon your hearth-stone.
You have married a certain Phenician because they
said that this must be your fate. Your children
were born because some captain said they should be.
.pn +1
You are here not of your own volition. The day
of volitions, let us remember, is gone.

The West was sown by a race of giants, and reaped
by a race far different and in a day dissimilar. Though
the day of rifle and ax, of linsey-woolsey and hand-ground
meal, went before the time of trolley-cars and
self-binders, of purple and fine linen, it must be observed
that in the one day or the other the same
causes were at work, and back of all these causes
were the original law and the original mandate. The
force of this primeval impulse was behind all those
early actors, and Roundhead Cavalier, praying man
and fighting man, who had this continent for a stage.
It was behind the men that followed inland from
the sea the first prophets of adventure. It is behind
us to-day. The Iliad of the West is only the story
of a mighty pilgrimage.

When the Spaniard held the mouth of the Great
River, the Frenchman the upper sources, the American
only the thin line of coast whose West was the
Alleghanies, how then did the west-bound adventurers
travel, these folk who established half a dozen homes
for every generation? The answer would seem easy.
They traveled as did the Cimri, the Goths—in the
easiest way they could. It was a day of raft and
boat, of saddle-horse and pack-horse, of ax and rifle,
.pn +1
and little other luggage. Mankind followed the pathways
of the waters.

Bishop Berkeley, prophetic soul, wrote his line:
“Westward the course of empire takes its way.” The
public has always edited it to read the “star” of
empire that “takes it way” to the West. If one
will read this poem in connection with a government
census map, he can not fail to see how excellent is
the amendment. Excellent census map, that holds
between its covers the greatest poem, the greatest
drama ever written! Excellent census map, that
marks the center of population of America with a
literal star, and, at the curtain of each act, the
lapse of each ten years, advances this star with
the progress of the drama, westward, westward, ever
westward! Excellent scenario, its scheme done in
red and yellow and brown, patched each ten years,
ragged, blurred, until, after a hundred years, the
scheme is finished, and the color is solid all across
the page, showing that the end has come, and that
the land has yielded to the law!

The first step of this star of empire, that concluded
in 1800, barely removed it from its initial
point on the Chesapeake. The direction was toward
the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The
government at Washington, young as it was, knew
that the Ohio River, reached from the North by a
.pn +1
dozen trails from the Great Lakes, and running out
into that West which even then was coveted by three
nations, was of itself a priceless possession. The
restless tide of humanity spread from that point according
to principles as old as the world. Having
a world before them from which to choose their
homes, the men of that time sought out those homes
along the easiest lines.

The first thrust of the out-bound population was
not along the parallels of latitude westward, as is
supposed to be the rule, but to the south and southeast,
into the valleys of the Appalachians, where the
hills would raise corn, and the streams would carry
it. The early emigrants learned that a raft would
eat nothing, that a boat runs well down-stream. Men
still clung to the seaboard region, though even then
they exemplified the great law of population that
designates the river valleys to be the earliest and most
permanent centers of population. The first trails of
the Appalachians were the waterways.

Dear old New England, the land sought out as the
home of religious freedom, and really perhaps the
most intolerant land the earth ever knew, sometimes
flatters herself that she is the mother of the
West. Not so. New England holds mortgages only
on the future of the West, not on its past. The
first outshoots of the seaboard civilization to run
.pn +1
forth into the West did not trace back to the stern
and rock-bound shore where the tolerants were punishing
those who did not agree with them.

New York, then, was perhaps the parent of the
West? By no means, however blandly pleasant that
belief might be to many for whom New York must
be ever the first cause and center of the American civilization,
not the reflection-point of that civilization.
The rabid Westerner may enjoy the thought that
neither New England nor New York was the actual
ancestor. Perhaps he may say that the West had no
parent, but was born Minerva-like. In this he would
be wrong. The real mother of the West was the South.
It was she who bore this child, and it has been much
at her expense that it has grown so large and matured
so swiftly. If you sing “arms and the man”
for the West, you must sing Southerner and not Puritan,
knight-errant and not psalmodist. The path
of empire had its head on the Chesapeake. There
was the American Ararat.

.tb

“The great American journeyings were far under
way before New England appeared to realize that
there was a greater America toward the West. The
musket bearers of the New England states, the fighting
men of the South, and the riflemen of what
might already have been called the West, had
.pn +1
finished the Revolutionary War long before New England
had turned her eyes westward. The pilgrimage
over the Appalachians was made, the new provinces
of Kentucky and Tennessee were fighting for
a commerce and a commercial highway of their own,
while yet the most that New England, huddled
along her stern and rock-bound shore, could do was
to talk of shutting off these Westerners from their
highway of the Mississippi, and compelling them to
trade back with the tidewater provinces of what was
not yet an America.

“Canny and cautious, New York and New England
were ready to fear this new country in which they refused
to believe; were ready to cripple it, although
they declined to credit its future. The pioneers of
the South fought their way into the West. New
England bought her way, and that after all the serious
problems of pioneering had been solved. The ‘Ohio
Land Company’ of Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tucker
and their none too honest associate, the New Bedford
preacher, Manasseh Cutler, were engaged in the first
great land steal ever known in the West. They did
not fight the Indians for their holdings, but went to
Congress, and with practical methods secured five
million acres of land at a price of about eight or nine
cents an acre; the first offer to Congress being a
million dollars for a million and a half acres of what
.pn +1
is now the state of Ohio, the payment to be in soldiers’
scrip, worth twelve cents on the dollar.

“The Ohio company took its settlers out to its new
land as a railway does its colonists to-day. Reaching
the Ohio River, they descended it in a bullet-proof
barge, called ‘with strange irony’ the ‘Mayflower.’
They entered the mouth of the Muskingum and
anchored under the guns of a United States fort.”[#]

This is how New England got into the West.
There is no hero story there. The men of the
South, men of North Carolina and Virginia, most
of whom had come from Pennsylvania and dropped
down along the east slope of the Appalachians, as
it were sparring these mountain ranges for an opening
until at length they had found the ways of the
game trails and Indian trails from headwater to
headwater, and so had reached the west-bound streams—these
actual adventurers had built Harrodsburg
and Boonesborough seventeen years before the Ohio
company entered the Muskingum. Already there
was a West; even a West far beyond Boonesborough
and its adjacent corn grounds.

This actual record of the upper states in the exploration
of the West is to-day not generally remembered
nor understood. Sometimes an ardent New
Englander will explain that the Puritans would have
.pn +1
earlier pressed out westward had it not been for the
barrier of the Iroquois on their western borders.
They read their history but ill who do not know
that the Iroquois trafficked always with the English
as against the French; whereas Kentucky, the land
opened by the Southern pioneers, was occupied by
a more dangerous red population, made up of many
tribes, having no policy but that of war, and no
friends outside of each separate motley hunting party,
sure to be at knife’s point with either white or red
strangers. The most difficult and most dangerous
frontier was that of the South; yet it was the South
that won through.

There are two explanations of this incontrovertible
historical fact. One lies perhaps in the general
truth that early pioneers nearly always cling to the
river valleys, perhaps not more for purposes of transportation
by water than in obedience to a certain instinct
that seems to hold the pathways of the
streams as foreordained guidance. The man that is
lost in the wilderness hails with delight the appearance
of a stream. It will lead him somewhere; it
will guide him back again. Near it will be game,
near it, too, rich soil. The man that enters the wilderness
deliberately does so along the waterways.

All the great initial explorations have been made in
this way. The men of Kentucky and Tennessee having
.pn +1
reached the headwaters of the Kentucky, the Tennessee,
the Holston or kindred riverways, moved out into
their promised land along paths, as it were, foreordained.
The rivers of the North did not run out into
the West, but pointed ever toward the sea. This is one
explanation of the somewhat inglorious part of New
England in the discovery of the West. It does not
explain her narrowness of view in regard to that
West after it had been discovered by others; neither
does this geographical explanation, in the opinion of
many, cover the main phenomena of her timid
attitude in regard to Western exploration.

The true reason, in the belief of these students, is
to be found in the character of the New England
population, as compared to the bolder breed of men
who overran the western sections of Pennsylvania
and for two generations were in continuous touch
with the wilderness and its savagery. This subject
is taken up interestingly by Horace Kephart, a
scholar of much acquaintance with early American
history, in the course of an able paper. It is very
much worth while for any one who wishes an actual
picture of the march across the Appalachians to read
his conclusions.

“In a vague way we think of all the East as old,”
says this writer, “and all the West as new. We
picture civilization as advancing westward from the
.pn +1
Atlantic in a long, straight front, like a wave or a
line of battle. But in point of fact it was not so.
There was a permanent settlement of Europeans a
thousand miles to the west of us before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth. Cahokia and Kaskaskia were
thriving villages before Baltimore was founded; and
our own city of St. Louis was building in the same
year that New Jersey became a British possession.
At a time when Daniel Boone was hunting beaver
on the Osage and the Missouri, Fenimore Cooper was
drawing the types for future ‘Leatherstocking Tales’
from his neighbors in a ‘wilderness’ only a hundred
and fifty miles from New York City.

“American settlement advanced toward the Mississippi
in the shape of a wedge, of which the entering
edge was first Lancaster, in Pennsylvania,
then the Shenandoah valley, then Louisville, and
finally St. Louis. When the second census of the
United States was taken, in 1800, nearly all the
white inhabitants of our country lived in a triangle
formed by a diagonal southwestward from
Portland, Maine, to the mouth of the Tennessee
River, here meeting another diagonal running northwestward
from Savannah, with the Atlantic for a
base. Central and western New York, northern
Pennsylvania, and all the territory north of the
Ohio River, save in its immediate vicinity, were
.pn +1
almost uninhabited by whites, and so were Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi. Yet the state of Kentucky
had half as many people as Massachusetts,
and Tennessee had already been admitted into the
Union.

“As a rule, geographical expansion proceeds along
the lines of least resistance, following the natural
highways afforded by navigable rivers and open
plains. It is easily turned aside by mountain chains,
dense forests, and hostile natives. Especially was
this true in the days before railroads. But the development
of our older West shows a striking exception
to this rule; for the entering wedge was actually
driven through one of the most rugged, difficult,
and inhospitable regions to be found along the
whole frontier of the British possessions.

“This fact is strange enough to fix our attention;
but it is doubly strange when we consider that there
was no climatic, political nor economic necessity for
such defiance of nature’s laws. We can see why the
Mississippi should have been explored from the north,
rather than from its mouth, because Canada was settled
before Louisiana, and it is easier to float downstream
than to pole or cordelle against the current.
But why was not the West entered and settled
through the obviously easy course of the Mohawk
Valley?
.pn +1

“Beyond this valley were gentle slopes, and many
a route practicable for settlers into the rich country
of Ohio. The central trail of the Iroquois, beaten
smoother than a wagon-road, ran straight west from
Albany, through the fairest portion of New York,
to the present site of Buffalo, and thence followed
the southern shore of Lake Erie into Ohio. Where
it crossed the Genesee, the old war-trail of the Senecas
branched off to the south, passing behind the
farthermost ramparts of the Alleghanies, to the forks
of the Ohio. Moccasined feet traveling over these
trails for centuries had worn them from three to
twelve inches into the ground, so that they were easy
to follow on the darkest night. These were only
two of several well-marked routes from ancient Albany
to the new West. It was to this easy communication
with the country beyond the Appalachians
that the Iroquois owed their commanding position
on the continent.

“These Iroquois were in the way, to be sure; but
with them New York had every advantage over her
sister provinces. Her policy toward these powerful
Indians was conciliatory. She was allied with them
against the French. The Six Nations ravaged the
frontiers of all the other colonies, from Massachusetts
to Carolina, and carried their conquests to the
Mississippi, but they spared New York and even
.pn +1
invited her to build forts on their border as outposts
against the French. New York had the most influential
Indian agent of his time in Sir William Johnson,
who had married the sister of the Mohawk chief
Brant, and by her had several sons who were war-chiefs
of the Iroquois. In 1745 the Iroquois even
ceded to New York a strip of land sixty miles wide,
along the southern shores of lakes Ontario and Erie,
extending to the modern Cleveland. It should have
been easy for the Knickerbockers to secure passage
for their emigrants into the western country had
they chosen to ask it.

“On the other hand, the southern colonies had no
easy access to the West. Nature herself had bidden
these people to rest content in their tidewater regions,
and frowned upon any westward expansion
by interposing the mighty barriers of the Blue Ridge
and the Alleghanies, rising tier beyond tier in parallel
chains from northern Pennsylvania to Alabama.
Few trails crossed these mountains. From base to
summit they were clad in dense forest, matted into
jungle by luxuriant undergrowth. No one knew
what lay beyond them, nor how far through this
‘forest, savage, harsh, impregnable,’ the traveler must
bore until he reached land fit for settlement.

“It was well known, however, that the trans-Alleghany
region, whatever might be its economic
.pn +1
features, was dangerous ground. The Indians themselves
could not occupy it, for it had been for ages the common
battle-ground of opposing tribes. Any savage
met within its confines was sure to be on the war-path
against any and all comers. He that entered took
his life in his hand.

“Thus the chances of success in any westward
movement were in favor of New York and New
England, and against Pennsylvania. Yet it was the
latter that did the work. Central and western New
York remained a wilderness until Missouri was settling
with Americans. New England took little or
no part in Western affairs until, the West having been
won, Massachusetts and Connecticut, calmly overstepping
New York and Pennsylvania, laid thrifty
hand upon the public domain north of Pittsburg and
west to the Mississippi.

“We have seen that the West was actually entered
by the most difficult and hostile route, and this in
spite of political and economic reasons for choosing
a more northerly and easier line of advance. I do
not remember that this has ever before been pointed
out; but it is a fact of deep significance, for it determined
what should be the temper of the great
West, and what should be its course of development.

“The wedge of settlement was driven through the
heart of the Alleghanies because there dwelt at the
.pn +1
foot of the mountains a people more aggressive, more
daring, and more independent than the tidewater
stock. This people acted on its own initiative, not
only without government aid, but sometimes in defiance
of government. It won to the American flag
not only the central West, but the Northwest and
Southwest as well; and it was, for the most part,
the lineal descendants of these men that first, of
Americans, explored the far West, and subdued it for
future settlement.

“This explains why Missouri, rather than the northern
tier of new states, became in its turn the vanguard
and outpost of civilization, as Kentucky and Tennessee
had been before her, and Virginia and Pennsylvania
before them. It explains why, when mountain
and forest barriers had been left behind, and the vast
Western plain offered countless parallel routes of
travel to the Rockies, such routes were not used, but
all the great transcontinental trails, whether to
Santa Fé, California, or Oregon, focused for half
a century at St. Louis or Independence. It explains
why the majority of our famous scouts and explorers
and Indian fighters were men whose strain went back
to the Shenandoah valley or the Yadkin, and why
most of them could trace their descent still farther
back to Pennsylvania, mother of Western pioneers.”

There is much that is convincing in this study of
.pn +1
facts and motives; yet perhaps the gentler and
broader view is not that of personnel but of geography.
I myself am more disposed to believe that
St. Louis became great by reason of her situation
on the great interior pathways of the waters; though
all this may be said with no jot of abatement in
admiration for the magnificent daring and determination
of those men of the lower slopes of the
Appalachians who, as history shows simply and unmistakably,
were really the pioneers of the eastern,
the middle and the most western portions of the
splendid empire of the West. Let us reserve for a
later chapter the more specific study of this typical
adventurer and his origin, and pass for the present
to the general consideration of the figure that we
may call the American west-bound man.

.tb

We must remember that there had been two or three
full American generations to produce him, this man
that first dared turn away from the seaboard and set
his face toward the sinking of the sun, toward the
dark and mysterious mountains and forests, which
then encompassed the least remote land fairly to be
called the West. Two generations had produced a
man different from the Old-World type. Free air
and good food had given him abundant brawn. He
was tall, with Anak in his frame. Little fat cloyed
.pn +1
the free play of his muscles, and there belonged
to him the heritage of the courage that comes of good
heart and lungs. He was a splendid man to have for
an ancestor, this tall and florid athlete that never
heard of athletics. His face was thin and aquiline,
his look high and confident, his eye blue, his speech
reserved. You may see this same man yet in those restricted
parts of this country which remain fit to be
called American. You may see him sometimes in the
mountains of Tennessee, the brakes of Arkansas or
Missouri, where the old strain has remained most
pure. You might have seen him over all the West
in the generation preceding our own.

In time this early outbound man learned that there
were rivers that ran, not to the southwest and into
the sea, but outward, beyond the mountains and toward
the setting sun. The winding trails of the
Alleghanies led one finally to rivers that ran toward
Kentucky, Tennessee, even farther out into that
unknown, tempting land which still was called the
West. Thus it came that the American genius broke
entirely away from salt-water traditions, asked no
longer “What cheer?” from the ships that came from
across the seas, clung no longer to the customs, the
costumes, the precedents or standards of the past.

There came the day of buckskin and woolsey, of
rifle and ax, of men curious for adventures, of homes
.pn +1
built of logs and slabs, with puncheons for floors,
with little fields about them, and tiny paths that led
out into the immeasurable preserves of the primeval
forests. A few things held intrinsic value at that
time—powder, lead, salt, maize, cow-bells, women
that dared. It was a simple but not an ill ancestry,
this that turned away from the sea-coast forever and
began the making of another world. It was the
strong-limbed, the bold-hearted that traveled, the
weak that stayed at home.

Thus began the true American aristocracy, the aristocracy
of ability. The dashing Cavalier, your high-churchman
from England, was not the first over the
Appalachians. It was the Protestant, the Quaker,
the dissenter, the independent who led the way into
another world and into another order of things.

Of this hardy folk who left home when yet there
was no need of so doing, and who purposed never to
come back from the land they were to discover,—types
of that later proverb-making Western man who “came
to stay,”—let us seek out one where there were many,
some distant Phenician, some master of ways and
means, some captain of his time. One man and one
community may serve as typical of this epoch.

In 1779 one James Robertson, of the Watauga settlements
of North Carolina, a steadfast man, heard
certain voices that called him to the West. James
.pn +1
Robertson, the steadfast, forming his company for
this uncertain, perilous enterprise, said: “We are
the advance guard of a civilization, and our way
is across the continent.” Simple words,—yet that
was in 1779!

Now, for the building of this one town, the town
that is now the city of Nashville, and the capital
of Tennessee, this leader had gathered three hundred
and eighty persons, men, women, and children.
All the women and children, one hundred and thirty
in number, in charge of a few men, went by boat,
scow, pirogue, and canoe, in the winter-time, down
the bold waters of the Holston and Tennessee rivers.
The rest traveled as best they might over the five hundred
miles of “trace” across Kentucky. Of this
whole party two hundred and twenty-six got through
alive.

The boat party had many hundreds of miles
of unknown and dangerous waters to travel, and the
journey took them three months, a time longer than
it now requires to travel around the world. They
ran thirty miles of rapids on the shoals of the Tennessee,
pursued and fired upon by Cherokees. Of
this division of the party only ninety-seven got
through alive, and nine of these were wounded. One
was drowned, one died of natural causes and was
buried, and the rest were killed by the Indians.

.il fn=illus-055.jpg w=600 link=illus-055-lg.jpg
.ca THE DOWN-RIVER MEN.

.pn +1
Their voyage was indeed “without a parallel in modern
history.” Among those who survived the hardships
of the journey was Rachel Donelson, later the
wife of Andrew Jackson.

The path of empire in America, the path of corn
and venison, was a highway that never ran backward.
These men would never leave this country now
that they had taken it. But what a tax was this that
the barbaric land demanded of them! In November
of 1780, less than a year after the party was first organized,
there were only one hundred and thirty-four
persons left alive out of the original three hundred
and eighty, but in the settlement itself there had
not been a natural death. The Indians killed these
settlers, and the settlers killed the Indians. Death
and wounds meant nothing to the adults. The very
infants learned a stoic hardihood. Out of two hundred
and fifty-six survivors, thirty-nine were killed
in sixty days. Out of two hundred and seventeen
survivors, the next season saw but one hundred and
thirty-four left.

The spring of 1781 found only seventy persons left
alive. But when the vote was cast whether to stay
or return, not one man voted to give up the fight.
In that West corn was worth one hundred and sixty-five
dollars a bushel, and in its raising the rifle was
as essential as the plow. Powder and lead were
.pn +1
priceless. Man and woman together, fearless, changeless,
they held the land, giving back not one inch of the
west-bound distance they had gained!

In 1791 there were only fifteen persons left alive
out of the three hundred and eighty that made this
American migration. There had been only one natural
death among them. In such a settlement there
was no such thing as a hero, because all were heroes.
Each man was a master of weapons, and incapable of
fear. No fiction ever painted a hero like to any one
of these. One man, after having been shot and stabbed
many times, was scalped alive, and jested at it.
A little girl was scalped alive, and lived to forget it.
An army of Indians assaulted the settlement, and
fifteen men and thirty women beat them off. Mrs.
Sally Buchanan, a forgotten heroine, molded bullets
all one night during an Indian attack, and on the
next morning gave birth to a son.

This was the ancestral fiber of the West. What
time had folk like these for powder-puff or ruffle, for
fan or jeweled snuff-box? Their garb was made from
the skin of the deer, the fox, the wolf. Their shoes
were of hide, their beds were made of the robes of the
bear and buffalo. They laid the land under tribute.
Yet, so far from mere savagery was the spirit that
animated these men that in ten years after they had
first cut away the forest they were founding a college
.pn +1
and establishing a court of law. Read this forgotten
history, one chapter and a little one, in the history of
the West, and then turn, if you like, to the chapters
of fiction in an older world. You have your choice
of lace or elkskin.

.fm

.fn #
The Century Magazine, November, 1901.
.fn-

.fn #
Kephart.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch06 pn=+1
CHAPTER VI||THE MISSISSIPPI, AND INDEPENDENCE[#]
.sp 2

There was a generation of this down-stream
transportation, and it built up the first splendid, aggressive
population of the West—a population that
continued to edge farther outward and farther down-stream.
The settlement at Nashville, the settlements
of Kentucky, were at touch with the Ohio River, the
broad highway that led easily down to the yet broader
highway of the Mississippi, that great, mysterious
stream so intimately connected with American history
and American progress. It was easy to get to
New Orleans, but hard to get back over the Alleghanies.
Therefore, out of the mere fact that water
runs downhill, arose one of the earliest and most dangerous
political problems this country ever knew.

The riflemen of Sevier and Robertson saved Tennessee
and Kentucky to the Union only that they
might well-nigh be lost again to Spain. The Indian
fighters of the West knew little how the scales
trembled in the balance for the weak young government
of the United States of America, lately come
.pn +1
into place as an independent power. The authorities
at Washington dared not be too firm with France or
Spain, or even, with England. Diplomacy juggled
across seas, while the riflemen of the West fought for
the opening of that Great River which meant everything
for them.

The league of Spain and the Cherokees kept up covert
warfare against these early Westerners. The
stark, staunch men of Robertson and Sevier hunted
down the red fighters and killed them one by one
over all the Western hunting-grounds and corn-grounds;
and then they rebelled against Washington,
and were for setting up a world of their own.
They sent in a petition, a veritable prayer from the
wilderness, the first words of complaint ever wrung
from those hardy men.

“We endured almost unconquerable difficulties in
settling this Western country,” they said, “in full
confidence that we should be enabled to send our
products to the market through the rivers that
water the country; but we have the mortification not
only to be excluded from that channel of commerce
by a foreign nation, but the Indians are rendered
more hostile through the influence of that nation.”

To add to the intricacy of this situation, now came
one General James Wilkinson, late of a quasi-connection
with the Continental army, who early discovered
.pn +1
the profit of the trade to the mouth of the Mississippi.
Discovering, likewise, the discontent of the West,
which was almost wholly dependent upon that river
for its transportation, he conceived the pretty idea
of handing over this land to Spain, believing that in
the confusion consequent upon such change his own
personal fortunes must necessarily be largely bettered.
The archives show the double dealings of Wilkinson
with Spain, Great Britain, and the United States.
He played fast and loose with friend and foe, until at
length he found his own level and met in part his
just deserts.

Meantime the stout little government at Washington,
knowing well enough all the dangers that
threatened it, continued to work out the problems
crowding upon it. Some breathless, trembling years
passed by—years full of wars and treaties in Europe
as well as in America. Then came the end of
all doubts and tremblings. The lying intrigues
at the mouth of America’s great roadway ceased by
virtue of that purchase of territory which gave to
America forever this mighty Mississippi, solemn, majestic,
and mysterious stream, perpetual highway,
and henceforth to be included wholly within the borders
of the West.

The acquisition of this territory was due not so
much to American statesmanship or foresight as to
.pn +1
either the freakishness or wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte,
then much disturbed by the native revolts in
the West Indies, and harassed by the impending war
with England. Whether England or France would
land troops at New Orleans was long a question. The
year that saw the Mississippi made wholly American
was one mighty in the history of America and of the
world.

The date of the Louisiana Purchase is significant
not more in virtue of the vast domain added to the
West than because of the fact that with this territory
came the means of building it up and holding it together.
It was now that for the first time the
solidarity of this New World was forever assured.
We gained a million uninhabited miles—a million
miles of country that will one day support its thousands
to the mile. But still more important, we
gained the right and the ability to travel into it and
across it and through it. France had failed to build
roads into that country, and thereafter neither France
nor any other foreign power might ever do so.

We who have the advantage of the retrospect understand
the Mississippi and its tributaries far better
than did the statesmen of a hundred years ago.
Indeed, it was then the belief of many of the ablest
minds that we ought not to accept this Louisiana Purchase
even as a gift. Josiah Adams, in discussing
.pn +1
the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a state,
said: “I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate
opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this
Union are virtually dissolved; that the states which
compose it are free from their moral obligations;
and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be
the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation,
amicably if they can, violently if they must.”

This from Massachusetts, later to be the home of
abolition and of centralization! It may sit ill with
the sons of Massachusetts to reflect that their own
state was the first one deliberately to propose secession.
Still more advanced was the attitude of
James White, who painted the following dismal picture
of that West which was to be:

“Louisiana must and will be settled if we hold it,
and with the very population that would otherwise
occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citizens
will be removed to the immense distance of two
or three thousand miles from the capital of the
Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays
of the general government; their affections will become
alienated; they will gradually begin to view us
as strangers; they will form other commercial connections,
and our interests will become distinct.
These, with other causes that human wisdom may
not now foresee, will in time effect a separation, and
.pn +1
I fear our bounds will be fixed nearer to our houses
than the waters of the Mississippi. We have already
territory enough, and when I contemplate the
evils that may arise to these States from this intended
incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would
rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any
other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition
that no citizen of the United States should ever settle
within its limits, than to see the territory sold for
a hundred million of dollars and we retain the sovereignty. . . .
And I do say that, under existing
circumstances, even supposing that this extent of
territory was a valuable acquisition, fifteen million
dollars was a most enormous sum to give.”

How feeble is our grasp upon the future may be
seen from the last utterance. The sum of fifteen
million dollars seemed “enormous.” To-day, less than
a century from that time, one American citizen has
in his lifetime made from the raw resources of this
land a fortune held to be two hundred and sixty-six
million dollars.

One Western city, located in that despised territory,
during the year just past showed sales of
grain alone amounting to one hundred and twenty-three
million three hundred thousand dollars; of
live stock alone, two hundred and sixty-eight million
dollars; of wholesale trade, seven hundred and
.pn +1
eighty-six million two hundred and five thousand
dollars; of manufactures—where manufactures were
once held impossible—the total of seven hundred and
forty-one million and ninety-seven thousand dollars.

It was once four weeks from Maine to Washington;
it is now four days from Oregon. The total wealth
of all the cities, all the lands, all the individuals of
that once despised West, runs into figures that surpass
all belief and all comprehension. And this has
grown up within less than a hundred years. The
people have outrun all the wisdom of their leaders.
What would Daniel Webster, famous New Englander,
doubter and discreditor of the West, say, were he to
know the West to-day?

Yet the men of that day were not so much to
blame, for they were in the infancy of transportation,
and as no army is better than its commissary
trains, so is no nation better than its transportation.
We were still in the crude, primitive, down-stream
days. Steam had not yet come upon the great interior
waterways. The west-bound mountain roads
across the Alleghanies were still only narrow tracks
worn by the feet of pack-horses that carried mostly
salt and bullets. The turnpikes fit for wagon traffic
were Eastern affairs only. The National Road, from
Wheeling to the westward, was restricted in its staging
possibilities.
.pn +1

Between the hardy Western population and its
earlier home there rose the high barrier of the Appalachians,
to ascend whose streams meant a long,
grievous and dangerous journey, a Journey commercially
impracticable. The first traffic of the
old mountain road was in salt and bullets, and it
was a traffic that all went one way. The difficulties
of even this crude commerce led to the
establishment, as the very first manufacture ever
begun in the West, of works for the production of
salt. Bullitt’s Lick, on Salt Creek, was one of the
earliest, if not the earliest, manufacturing community
west of the Alleghanies, and part of the downstream
trade of the day was in carrying kettles from
Louisville down the Ohio and up Salt Creek to the
lick. This route was in hostile Indian country, and
every voyage held its own terrors.

We may note, then, the beginning of the commercial
West in the local necessities of that West.
For the first west-bound generation the problem
of transportation had been largely a personal
one. The first adventurers, with little baggage but
the rifle and the ax, able to live on parched corn and
jerked venison, with women almost as hardy as men,
neither possessed nor cared for the surplus things
of life. They subsisted on what nature gave them,
.pn +1
seeking but little to add to the productiveness of nature
in any way.

But now we must, presently, conceive of our
Western man as already shorn of a trifle of his
fringes. His dress was not now so near a parallel
to that of the savage whom he had overcome.
There was falling into his mien somewhat more of
staidness and sobriety. This man had so used the
ax that he had a farm, and on this farm he raised
more than he himself could use—first step in the
great future of the West as storehouse for the world.
This extra produce could certainly not be taken back
over the Alleghanies, nor could it be traded on the
spot for aught else than merely similar commodities.

Here, then, was a turning-point in Western history.
There is no need to assign to it an exact date.
We have the pleasant fashion of learning history
through dates of battles and assassinations. We
might do better in some cases did we learn the time
of certain great and significant happenings.

It was an important time when this first Western
farmer, somewhat shorn of fringe, sought to find
market for his crude produce, and found that the
pack-horse would not serve him so well as the broad-horned
flat-boat that supplanted his canoe. The
flat-boat ran altogether down-stream. Hence it led
altogether away from home and from the East. The
.pn +1
Western man was relying upon himself, cutting loose
from traditions, asking help of no man; sacrificing,
perhaps, a little of sentiment, but doing so out of
necessity, and only because of the one great fact that
the waters would not run back uphill, would not
carry him back to the East that was once his home.

So the homes and the graves in the West grew, and
there arose a civilization distinct and different from
that which kept hold upon the sea and upon the
Old World. The Westerner had forgotten the oysters
and shad, the duck and terrapin of the seaboard.
He still lived on venison and corn, the best portable
food ever known for hard marching and hard work.
The more dainty Easterners, the timid ones, the stay-at-homes,
said that this new man of the Western territory
was a creature “half horse and half alligator.”
It were perhaps more just to accord to him a certain
manhood, either then or now. He prevailed, he conquered,
he survived, and therefore he was right.
There grew the aristocracy of ability.

The government at Washington saw this growing
up of a separate kingdom, and sought to shorten
the arc of this common but far-reaching sky; it
sought to mitigate the swiftness of these streams, to
soften the steepness of these eternal hills. Witness
Washington’s forgotten canal from the headwaters
of the James River—a canal whose beginning or
.pn +1
end would puzzle the average American of to-day
to define without special study. Witness many other
canal and turnpike schemes, feeble efforts at the
solution of the one imperishable problem of a
land vast in its geography.

Prior to the Louisiana Purchase no man could
think of a civilization west of the Mississippi; but
there were certain weak attempts made by the government
to bind to itself that part of the new lands
that lay in the eastern half of the Mississippi valley.
The “Ordinance of the Northwest,” done by the hand
of Thomas Jefferson himself, makes interesting reading
to-day. This ordinance sought to establish a
number of states in the great valley “as soon as the
lands should have been purchased from the Indians.”

It was proposed that each state should comprehend,
from north to south, “two degrees of latitude,
beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one
degrees north of the equator, but any state northwardly
of the forty-seventh degree shall make part of
that state next below; and eastwardly and westwardly
they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that
river on one side, and the meridian of the lowest
point on the rapids of the Ohio on the other; those
adjoining on the east by the same meridian on their
western side, and on their eastern by the meridian
of the western cape of the mouth of the Great
.pn +1
Kanawha; and the territory eastward of this last
meridian between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pennsylvania
shall be one state.”

The Ordinance even went so far as to propose
names for these future states, and quaint enough
were some of the names suggested for those that
are now Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan.
“Sylvania,” “Cherronesus,” “Asenesipia,” “Metropotamia,”
“Pelesipia”—these are names of Western
states that never were born, and in this there is
proof enough of the fact that, though the government
at Washington had its eye on the West, it
had established no control over the West, and under
the existing nature of things had no right ever to
expect such control. As a matter of fact, the government
never did catch this truant province until
the latter, in its own good time, saw fit to come
back home. This was after the West had solved its
own problems of commercial intercourse.

It may now prove of interest to take a glance
at the crude geography of this Western land at that
time when it first began to produce a surplus, and
the time when it had permanently set its face away
from the land east of the Alleghanies. The census
map (see Map No. 1) will prove of the best service,
and its little blotches of color will tell much in brief
regarding the West of 1800.
.pn +1

For forty years before this time the fur trade had
had its depot at the city of St. Louis. For a hundred
years there had been a settlement on the Great Lakes.
For nearly a hundred years the town of New Orleans
had been established. Here and there, between these
foci of adventurers, there were odd, seemingly unaccountable
little dots and specks of population scattered
over all the map, product of that first uncertain
hundred years. Ohio, directly west of the original
Pennsylvania hotbed, was left blank for a long time,
and indeed received her first population from the
southward, and not from the East, though the New
Englander, Moses Cleveland, founded the town of
Cleveland as early as 1796.

Lower down in the great valley of the Mississippi
was a curious, illogical, and now forgotten little band
of settlers who had formed what was known as the
“Mississippi Territory.” Smaller yet, and more inexplicable,
did we not know the story of the old water-trail
from Green Bay to the Mississippi, there was a
dot, a smear, a tiny speck of population high up on
the east bank of the Mississippi, where the Wisconsin
emptied.

These valley settlements far outnumbered all the
population of the state of Ohio, which had lain
directly in the latitudinal path of the star. The
West was beginning to be the West. The seed sown
.pn +1
by Marquette the Good, by Hennepin the Bad, by
La Salle the Bold, by Tonty the Faithful, seed cultivated
by Boone and Kenton, by Sevier and Robertson
and scores and hundreds of stalwart early Westerners—seed
despised by an ancient and corrupt
monarchy—had now begun to grow.

Yet, beyond the farthest settlements of the West of
that day, there was still a land so great that no one
tried to measure it, or sought to include it in the
plans of family or nation. It was all a matter for
the future, for generations much later. Compared
with the movements of the past, it must be centuries
before the West—whatever that term might
mean—could ever be overrun. That it could ever
be exhausted was, to be sure, an utterly unthinkable
thing.

There were vague stories among the hardy settlers
about new lands incredibly distant, mythically rich
in interest. But who dreamed the import of the
journey of strong-legged Zebulon Pike into the
lands of the Sioux, and who believed all his story
of a march from Santa Fé to Chihuahua, and thence
back to the Sabine? What enthusiasm was aroused
for the peaceful settler of the Middle West, whose
neighbor was fifty miles away, by that ancient saga,
that heroically done, Homerically misspelled story
of Lewis and Clark? There was still to be room
.pn +1
enough and chance enough in the West for any and
all men.

The progress of civilization, accelerated with the
passing of each century, was none the less slow at
this epoch. There was an ictus here in the pilgrimage
of humanity. It was as though the Fates wished
that for a brief time the world might see the spectacle
of a land of help and hope, of personal initiative
and personal ambition. The slow-moving star of the
West trembled and quivered with a new and unknown
light, caught from these noble lakes and
rivers, reflected from these mountains and these
skies.

The stars of a new heaven looked down on another
king, a king in linsey-woolsey. France kicked
him forth a peasant, and, born again, he scorned
the petty limitations of her seigniories, and stood
on her rejected empire, the emperor of himself.
England rotted him in her mines and ditches, but
before the reversed flags of England were borne
home from her war which did not subjugate, this
same man, under another sky, was offering hospitality,
and not obeisance, to her belted earls.

.fm

.fn #
The Century Magazine; Continued.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch07 pn=+1
CHAPTER VII||ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER
.sp 2

“If we call the roll of American scouts, explorers,
trappers, Indian fighters of the Far West; of men
like John Colter, Robert McClellan, John Day, Jim
Bridger, Bill Williams, Joe Meek, Kit Carson and
their ilk, who trapped and fought over every nook
and cranny of the Far West, from the Canadian
divide to the ‘starving Gila,’ we shall find that most
of them were of the old Shenandoah-Kentucky
stock that made the first devious trail from Pennsylvania
along and across the Appalachians.”

This statement of a well-advised writer is curious
and interesting to any student of the real West. It
applies, also, of course, and much more closely, to
those earlier pioneers that explored the first West,
that of the Mississippi valley; the Boones, Kentons,
Harrods, Finleys, Bryans, Stuarts and hundreds of
others of the fighting breed of Virginia and North
Carolina, the families of nearly all of whom had
made one or more pilgrimages to the south or even
to the southeastward before the great trek westward
over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies.
.pn +1

America owes much of her national character and
a vast part of her national territory to the individual
initiative of these bold souls, who waited for no policies,
no purchases, no leaderships, but pressed on, rifle
and ax at hand, to find and hold our West for us. To-day
we forget these men. The names of the captains
of enterprise are lost in the tawdry modern lists of
our so-called captains of industry. To-day, in a time
that is fast becoming one of American serfdom,
we lose in the haze of a national carelessness the
figures of that earlier and more glorious day when
the magnificent American West offered free scope
and opportunity to a population wholly made up of
men of daring, of individuality, of initiative, of self-leadership.

That was the day of the founding of the American
aristocracy, of the birth of the American type,
of the beginning of the American character. If
we would study an actual American history, we
can not leave out the American pioneer; and before,
in our humble effort to approach the real
genius of our America, we follow the strong sweep
of the west-bound beyond the mighty Mississippi
and toward the western sea, we shall do best to pause
for a space and to make some inquiry into the origin
and character of these early apostles of the creed
of adventure.
.pn +1

If we ask chapter and verse in the study of the
origin of this American frontiersman, this pioneer
whose ambition was an indisputable personal independence,
we shall not find the details of his ancestry
among the records of wealthy and aristocratic
dwellers of the seaboard region. The bone and
brawn of the early frontier did not come from the
Cavaliers, properly so-called; though it were doing
the Cavaliers, the aristocrats, an injustice to say
that they were deaf to the summons of adventure.

The man that dared life and fortune in moving to
America would dare life and fortune west of the
Alleghanies; and the history of many a colony and
land grant in the early West is proof enough of
this. The Cavalier or aristocrat, however, was not
our typical axman or rifleman. The man of accomplished
fortune, of stable social connections, dwelt
farther back in that East that offered the most
settled society of the American continent. The man
in linsey-woolsey, the woodsman, the rifleman, was
the man at the front, and it is in regard to his
origin that we may profitably be somewhat curious.
We shall, therefore, for a time be more concerned
with the mountains of Pennsylvania than with the
shores of Chesapeake Bay or the rich valleys of Maryland
and the Old Dominion.

A student of the history of the early settlement
.pn +1
of Pennsylvania[#] furnishes data regarding the two
great stems of the pioneer stock, the Quaker and
the Scotch-Irish, which were most prominent among
the many nationalities that flocked to the kindly
kingdom of William Penn, where each man was
treated as a man, and where independence in thought
and action was the portion each claimed as his own.

“In the first half of the eighteenth century,” says
this writer, “many thousands of Scotch-Irish, Germans
and Welsh landed at Philadelphia and New
Castle, and a large majority of them found homes
in Pennsylvania. A number of the former turned
to the westward from New Castle and established
themselves in Maryland and Virginia. Among
them were the ancestors of Meriwether Lewis, whose
grandfather was born in Ulster, Ireland; and a
number of other noted pathfinders of the West.

“A few isolated settlements were also formed in
New Jersey and Delaware, but as before stated, the
majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. They
swarmed up the valleys of the Delaware, Schuylkill
and Susquehanna and their tributaries, and became
at once the vanguard of frontier settlement; and they
and their progeny continued to merit this distinction
until the descendants of the Atlantic seaboard
.pn +1
settlements looked down from the summit of the
Rockies on the Pacific slope.

“In the last half of the eighteenth century many
hundreds of families migrated from Pennsylvania
southward into the valleys of the Shenandoah and
the south branch of the Potomac, whence numbers
of them continued their journey into North and
South Carolina. The records of the Society of
Friends in Bucks, Lancaster and Chester counties
show that hundreds of certificates of removal were
granted their members during this period, to remove
to Virginia and the Carolinas; and many of these
sturdy Quakers eventually found homes west of the
Alleghanies, though not a few of them, like Daniel
Boone, the great king of frontiersmen, found the
exigencies of life on the frontier incompatible with
peace principles, one of the cardinal tenets of their
faith, and drifted out of the Society.

“During the same period hordes of people of other
religious denominations removed from Pennsylvania
over the same route. The counties of Augusta and
Rockingham, in Virginia, were settled almost exclusively
by Pennsylvanians from Bucks and Berks
and the Cumberland valley, many of whom found
homes farther west or left their bones to bleach in the
savage-tenanted wilderness of the frontier.

“Boone himself was a native of Berks County and
.pn +1
removed in 1750, when a lad of sixteen, with his family
and a host of others, among whom were the
Hankses, Hentons, Lincolns and many others whose
names became familiar in the drama of the West, first
to Virginia and later to North Carolina. William
Stewart, a companion of Boone in Kentucky who
was killed at Blue Licks, in 1785, was a native of
Bucks County, and, it is claimed by relatives of both
Boone and Stewart, was also a schoolmate of Boone’s.

“If this be true, it must have been in Virginia, as
Boone never lived in Bucks County, though his
father was a resident of New Britain township prior
to the birth of Daniel. Soon after the death of
Stewart, his sister, Hannah Harris, of Newtown,
made an overland trip from Newtown, Bucks County,
to Danville, Kentucky, to look after the estate bequeathed
by Stewart to his sisters, Mary Hunter
and Hannah Harris of Bucks County, and after her
return made a report of the cost of the trip, which
is on record at Doylestown.

“The power of attorney of Mary Hunter to Hannah
Harris to proceed to ‘Kaintuckee’ to collect her
share of the Estate of William Stewart is dated
May seventh, 1787; and the power of attorney given
by Hannah Harris to John Dormer Murray to transact
her business in Bucks County, dated July twenty-fifth,
1787, states that she is ‘about setting out for
.pn +1
Kaintuckee’ and therefore fixes approximately the
date of the beginning of her journey.

“Dr. Hugh Shiells, of Philadelphia, who had married
Ann, the daughter of Hannah Harris, May thirtieth,
1782, preceded her to Kentucky and took up his
residence near Frankfort. He died in 1785, leaving
an infant daughter Kitty, who on arriving at womanhood
married Thomas Bodley, one of the trustees
of Transylvania University.

“Archibald Finley, who, we believe, was the emigrant
ancestor of the John Finley who led an
exploring party into southern Kentucky from North
Carolina in 1767, died in New Britain township,
Bucks County, in March, 1749, leaving at least
three sons, Henry, John and Alexander, of whom the
two former removed to Virginia and later to Kentucky.
They are believed to have been members of a
party of a score or more families who left Bucks
County about 1760 and journeyed to Loudoun County,
Virginia, whence a number of them removed soon
after to Orange County, North Carolina. Of this
party were Robert Jamison and his family and the
Fergusons of Plumstead.

“William, James and Morgan Bryan, brothers-in-law
of Daniel Boone, who accompanied him from
North Carolina to Kentucky, were also natives of
Pennsylvania. They were the sons of Morgan Bryan,
.pn +1
who came from Ireland prior to 1719, at which date
his name appears on the tax list of Birmingham
township, Chester County, as a ‘single man.’ He married
the following year Martha Strode, and in the
year 1734 with fifteen others obtained a grant of a
large tract of land on the Opeckon and Potomac
rivers near Winchester, Virginia, and removed thereon.
From this point he removed with his family to
the Yadkin, where Daniel Boone met and married his
daughter, Rebecca, in 1755.

“There is an abundance of documentary evidence
in Bucks County and in possession of her sons elsewhere,
showing that many of the pioneers of Kentucky
were natives of Bucks. The wills of many
Bucks-countians devise estates to brothers, sisters,
sons and daughters, ‘now or late of Virginia,’ or ‘in
the county called Kaintuckee, Province of Virginia.’

“Rev. J. W. Wallace, of Independence, Missouri,
has in his possession an old account book and diary
combined, kept by his great-grandfather, John Wallace,
who was born in Warrington, Bucks County, in
1748, and who served with distinction as a lieutenant
in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary
War, some of the entries having been made in this
book while the owner was in camp with Washington
at Valley Forge in the dark winter of 1777-8. Lieutenant
John Wallace married into the Finley family
.pn +1
and joining them in Loudoun County, removed with
them into Kentucky in 1788.

“This remarkable book contains the record of the
birth of John Wallace and his eight brothers and sisters,
several of whom accompanied him to Kentucky,
as well as an account of the journey of the emigrants
from Virginia to Kentucky, which was made
in wagons from Loudoun County to the Ohio River;
from which point a portion of the party went in boats
down the Ohio River to Limestone, now Maysville,
then overland to Frankfort, while the remainder
crossed over the mountains on pack-horses. They
had doubtless been preceded by their relative, John
Finley, of North Carolina.

“A similar book is in possession of W. W. Flack,
of Davenport, Iowa, the great-great-grandson of the
first owner. On the fly leaf is endorsed the following:
‘Receipt Book of William Flack, May 20, 1789.’
This William Flack was born in Buckingham
township, Bucks County, on May eleventh, 1746, and
died at Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, in
1824. He was a son of James and Ann (Baxter)
Flack, Scotch-Irish emigrants who came to Bucks
County about 1730 and settled near Bushington.
William Flack was captain of the Buckingham
company of militia during the Revolution, and is
said to have been in active service at the battle of
.pn +1
Brandywine and at other points. After the close of
the war, accompanied by his brother Benjamin and
a nephew of the same name, he removed to Kentucky,
by way of Virginia.

“One of the memoranda in the old book is as follows:
‘Benjamin Flack was killed by the Indians
at the Mouth of Salt River the 1st Day of March
1786.’ William Flack married Susannah Callison
in Kentucky, March twenty-first, 1797, and the
‘Receipt Book’ records that event and the births of
their six children, two of whom died in infancy. On
hearing of the death of his father, which occurred
September second, 1802, Captain Flack started for
Bucks County, and it is related that his long absence
on this tedious journey led his family to believe that
he had been captured by the Indians.

“While these Pennsylvanians were wending their
way southward, their brethren in the Cumberland
and Juniata valleys, augmented by recruits from
settlements farther east, were pushing their way
westward into Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland
counties, whence they migrated to Kentucky
and the Northwest Territory.”[#]

.pn +1
As to that war-like breed, the Scotch-Irish, famous
in American frontiering, the same historian first
quoted goes on in detailed description from which
we may take the following:

“History has touched lightly upon the home life
of the little colony of Ulster Scots, who settled on
the banks of the Neshaminy in the townships of
Warwick, Warrington and New Britain, in Bucks
County, Pa.; but these people were none the less
worthy of a prominent place in the records of the
.pn +1
past. Driven by religious persecution from their
native Highlands in the seventeenth century, the
remnants of many a noble clan sought temporary
refuge in the province of Ulster, Ireland, whence,
between the years 1720 and 1740, thousands of them
migrated to America, and peopled the hills and valleys
of Pennsylvania’s frontier with a sturdy, rugged
race that was destined to play an important part in
the formation of our national character.

“Clannish by nature and tradition, they clung
together in small communities of two score or more
families, a majority of them related by ties of blood
or marriage. They took up the unsettled portions
of the new province. Accustomed for generations to
the rugged mountain sides of their own native land,
the roughness of the new territory did not discourage
them. In fact, the steep hillsides on the banks of
our rivers and smaller streams, shunned or neglected
by the early English settlers, seem to have had an
especial attraction for them.

“Possessed of a character as stern and uncompromising
as the granite of their native mountains,
this little colony did not concern itself in the affairs
of its neighbors. Indeed there was no occasion to
do so. They had brought with them the things they
needed, and had inherent in their nature that which
made them a people separate and apart from the
.pn +1
communities by which they were surrounded. In
their lives and characters was a declaration of independence
that in itself nourished the spirit of freedom,
which was to carry these people into the thick
of the fight when the time arrived to bid defiance to
the mother country.

“This spirit was further augmented by their independence
and resources in the development of the material
affairs of the colony. As previously stated, there
were among the first settlers men of every trade and
calling calculated to make the colony self-sustaining.
There were husbandmen, weavers, smiths, masons,
joiners, cord-wainers, millers and tradesmen, whose
industry and thrift made it possible for the schoolmaster
and preacher to devote himself exclusively
to the intellectual and spiritual needs of the community.
But with true Scotch economy, the teacher
and preacher were often one and the same. As an
illustration may be cited the founding of Tennent’s
famous Log College as an adjunct to the Neshaminy
Church, of which he was pastor.

“The stimulus given to civil and religious freedom
by the uninterrupted exercise of these liberties, in
strong contrast to the repression and persecution in
the old country, cannot be overestimated. Princeton,
as well as like institutions elsewhere, had its inception
in our own Log College; and Finley, its first
.pn +1
president, was akin to those of the same name in
Warrington.

“The sons of Bucks County’s sturdy pioneers were
constantly pushing on beyond our frontiers, carrying
with them the lessons of frugality, piety and
independence learned in this primitive community.
They formed new colonies and engendered therein
the love of freedom, which, when the Revolutionary
War broke out, easily made the Scotch-Irish element
the dominant party in the struggle for national
independence in our state. Independence accomplished,
they returned to their homes and again
took up the business of self-government, broadened
and refined by contact with the outside world, the
primitive characteristics of their early life gone,
but retaining the independence and courage of their
forebears which had developed in them the best elements
of citizenship.”

.fm

.fn #
Warren S. Ely, of Doylestown, Pa.
.fn-

.fn #
The Pennsylvania historian might also have given us some
word of that Col. George Morgan, some of whose descendants
reside even now at Morganza, in Pennsylvania. Col. George
Morgan had passed westward over the Alleghanies some years
in advance of Daniel Boone’s first visit to Kentucky. Mr.
James Morris Morgan, of Washington, D. C., in correspondence
has this to say in regard to certain early voyagings of his ancestor,
which were undertaken while the Quakers of Pennsylvania
were still quietly dropping down from the hills of Pennsylvania
into the eastern portions of Virginia and the Carolinas:

“Col. George Morgan embarked at the village of Kaskaskia,
on the Kaskaskia River, for his voyage down the Mississippi on
the 21st of November, 1766. Butler, in his history of Kentucky,
gives the credit of being the first American citizen to descend the
Mississippi to Col. Taylor, in 1769. Col. Morgan was the first
American citizen to found a colony in the Territory of Louisiana.
Under a grant of King Carlos IV, he built the city of New Madrid,
March, 1789. The grant embraced some 15,000,000 acres of
land. (Gayarré; ‘History of Louisiana.’) On June 20, 1788, Congress
ordered the annulment of Col. Morgan’s Indian claim to a
greater portion of the state of Illinois, ‘claiming the land bordering
on the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to a determined
station on the Mississippi that shall be sixty or eighty
miles north from the mouth of the Illinois River, and extending
from the Mississippi as far eastward as may.’ The treaty meeting
held under the auspices of Sir William Johnson at Fort Stanwix,
when the Indians deeded the territory of Indiana to George Morgan,
his father-in-law John Boynton, and his partner Samuel
Wharton, (Boynton, Wharton & Morgan) and several other
minor traders whose goods had been despoiled, was held on November
3, 1768. The state of Virginia claimed the territory after
the Revolutionary War, and bullied the national government
into compliance with her claims, the United States accepting the
property as a present from Virginia, immediately after deciding
in her favor. (See Journal of Congress, 1784, Feb. 26.)”
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch08 pn=+1
CHAPTER VIII||DANIEL BOONE
.sp 2

In preceding chapters we have taken up in general
and in particular the origin, the purpose and
the progress of the early American frontiersman.
We have seen how this man, impelled by one reason
or another, began to push outward on his way
over the Appalachian range into the valley of the
Mississippi. We have seen that the course of west-bound
civilization was at first not wholly along the
easiest way, but over barriers that had apparently
been established by nature as insurmountable.

From headwater to headwater, among these rugged
hills, from one valley into another, ever and ever westward,
the early American had won his way, until
he struck the waters running into the lower Gulf
by way of that great highway of the interior floods,
the Mississippi River. We have seen that for a space
the early population did not head directly westward,
but dropped down from Pennsylvania into Maryland
and Virginia, and from Maryland and Virginia into
the Carolinas.

Many of the early adventurers seem to have made
.pn +1
their halting and rallying ground in North Carolina.
Here were some of the men of Watauga,
men who were to people Tennessee, men who were
to discover and settle the grand state of Kentucky,
that steadfast portion of our Western empire whose
fidelity was to thwart all of those early efforts at
Western sedition and secession that once threatened
the unity of the American people.

Having thus dealt in generalizations, we shall
perhaps now do well to study some type, some product,
of this early civilization, some character that
shall indicate the general characteristics of the land
and people of that early time. In this desire we fall
naturally on the romantic yet pertinent story of that
typical and historical frontiersman, Daniel Boone.

Among the great sayings of great men there is one
that rings like a trumpet voice through all the
press of years. “Here stand I,” said Martin Luther.
“Here I stand. I can not otherwise. God help me!”
If we should come to comparisons, we might perhaps
call Daniel Boone the Luther of frontiering, the
evangel of adventure, the prophet of early west-bound
daring. Certainly he was the most forward,
the most present, the most instant man of his place
and time.

If we endeavor to see Daniel Boone, the man, as
he actually was, we find ourselves at the outset
.pn +1
dealing with a character already approaching the mythical
in quality. Thus, in regard to his personality,
certain folk imagine him as tall, thin, angular, uncouth.
Others will portray to you a man with voice
like thunder in the hills, with gore ever in his eye,
in his voice perpetually the breathings of insatiate
hate and rage. They will insist that Boone was
bloody minded, overbearing, a man delighting in
slaughters and riotings. Such pictures are utterly
wrong; so much we may discover to be absolutely
sure from the scant record of Boone’s real life.

He was Quaker-bred, as we have seen. A sweeter
soul than his we shall not find though we search all
the pages of history. Meeting every species of danger,
he remained undaunted. Meeting every manner
of adversity, he remained unsoured. With every reason
for conceit, he remained unbitten of any personal
vanity. To the end of his life it was his belief that
he was “an instrument ordained by Providence to
settle the wilderness;” yet he lost no time in posing
himself in any supposititious sainthood. Nor must
we imagine him crude or ignorant in his simplicity,
for those who knew him best state that he was “a
man of ambition, shrewdness and energy, as well as
of fine social qualities and an extreme sagacity.”

He was learned in the knowledge useful at his time,
although of books he wist not at all. Deeply
.pn +1
religious in the true sense of religion, a worshiper of
the Great Maker as evidenced in His works, he was
not a church member. There was no vaunting in
his soul of his own righteousness; yet never was he
irritable even in old age, when the blood grows cold,
and the thwarted ambitions come trooping home to
roost in the lives of most of us. “God gave me a
work to perform,” said he, “and I have done my
best.” With this feeling he lived and died content.

Regarding the Boone of early years, we find it
difficult to frame a clear picture, but there is more
information obtainable regarding his later life, and
we can see him then clearly. A man reaching the
ripe age of eighty-six, with five generations of his
family living at the same time; a man snowy haired,
yet still of ruddy complexion, of frame still unbent,
with kindly and gentle personal habits—this is the
real Daniel Boone: no swearer of oaths, no swashbuckler,
no roisterer, but a self-respecting, fearless
gentleman, steadfast, immovable from his fixed purpose,
inalienable from the mission which he conceived
to be his own.

A writer who knew him late in life says that on
his introduction to Colonel Boone his impressions
were those of “surprise, admiration and delight.”
In boyhood he had read of Daniel Boone, the
pioneer of Kentucky, the celebrated hunter and
.pn +1
Indian fighter, and in imagination he portrayed
a “rough, uncouth looking specimen of humanity,
and, of course, at this period of life,
an irritable and intractable old man. But in every
respect,” says this biographer, “the reverse appeared.
His high bold forehead was slightly bald, and his
silver locks were combed smooth. His countenance
was ruddy and fair, and exhibited the simplicity of
a child. His voice was soft and melodious, and a
smile frequently played over his face in conversation.
His clothing was of the plain, coarse manufacture of
the family. Everything about him indicated that
kind of comfort that was congenial to his habits
and feelings, and he evinced a happy old age. Boone
was a fair specimen of the better class of Western
pioneers, honest of heart and liberal—in short, one
of nature’s noblemen. He abhorred a mean action
and delighted in honesty and truth. He never delighted
in the shedding of human blood, even that
of his enemies in war. His remarkable quality was
an unwavering and invincible fortitude.”

As to personal description, Boone was neither a
tall nor a thin man. He was not angular nor bony.
His frame was covered not with cloying fat but with
firm and easily playing muscles, and he carried none
of the useless tissue of the man of civilization.
His weight was “about one hundred and
.pn +1
seventy-five pounds.” Audubon, who met him late in his
life, says: “He approached the gigantic in stature.
His chest was broad and prominent, and his
muscular powers were visible in every limb. His
countenance gave indication of his great courage,
enterprise and perseverance.”

Yet in person Boone did not quite reach the six-foot
mark, but was just below five feet and ten inches
in stature, some say five feet eight inches, being
therefore of exactly that build which good
judges of men esteem to be most desirable for combined
strength, activity and endurance. He was
rather broad shouldered: that is to say, his shoulders
nicely overhung his hips. All agree that he was of
“robust and powerful proportions.” One historian
speaks of his “piercing hazel eye”; yet this is but
romancing.

Most portraits of Daniel Boone are the products of
imagination. The most authentic, perhaps the only
authentic portrait of him, is that painted in 1820 by
Chester Harding, “who,” says an early writer, “of
American artists is the one most celebrated for
his likenesses.” When Harding made his portrait of
Boone, the latter was very feeble, and had to be
supported during the sittings. This portrait shows
a face thin and pale, with hair of snowy whiteness
and eye “bright blue, mild and pleasant.” This blue
.pn +1
eye is of the best color in all the world for keenness of
vision, for quickness and accuracy with the rifle. The
Harding portrait does not show the square chin that
some writers give to Boone; and certainly it portrays
no ferocious looking ruffian, but a man mild,
gentle and contemplative, “not frivolous, thoughtless
or agitated.”

As to Boone’s appearance early in life, we must
to some extent join the others who imagine or presume.
It is fair to suppose that in complexion he
was florid, with the clear skin, sometimes marked
with freckles, that you may see to-day in the mountains
of the Cumberland, in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky,
sometimes in North Carolina and Mississippi.
The color of his hair was never that of “raven
blackness.” Perhaps it was brown, but not a finely
filamented brown. It was more likely blond, and
perhaps indeed carried a shade of red. Certainly the
ends of his hair were bleached a tawny yellow, that
splendid yellow that you may see even to-day in the
hair and beard and mustaches of the outdoor men
of the American West.

In his younger days he often wore the half savage
garb of the early American hunters—the buckskin
or linsey hunting shirt, the fringed leggings of the
same material, with moccasins made of the skin of
.pn +1
the deer or buffalo. His hat was as chance would
have it. Perhaps sometimes he wore a cap of fur.

His weaponry we may know exactly, for his rifle
can be seen to-day, preserved by his descendants.
It is the typical long-barreled, crooked-stocked,
small-bore American rifle, with the wooden stock
or fore end extending along the full length of
the barrel. There are a few rude attempts at
ornamentation on this historic arm. The sights
lie close to the barrel, after the fashion of those
deadly ancient weapons. The wood is rotting
a little bit where the oil of long-ago cleaning
operations has touched it. Perhaps the spring
of the lock is a trifle weak. Yet we may not
doubt that, were Daniel Boone alive to-day, he could
teach the old piece to voice its music and could show
again its ancient deadly art.

In chronology Boone’s time runs back to that of
Washington. He was born November second, 1734,
the date of Washington’s birth being 1732. His older
brother was called Squire Boone, after the first American
Boone, who was himself an Englishman, but who
came to America early in the history of the lower
colonies. The Boone homestead was once located in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but Daniel was born
after his parents had moved into Berks County,
.pn +1
Pennsylvania, near the town that is now Reading.
Some historians say he was born in Bucks County.

In his youth Daniel did not seek knowledge
through the medium of books.[#] His mind was “not
of the most ardent nature.” Before him lay the
great book of the Wilderness. Thus he became well
acquainted with the habits of wild game animals,
not ascribing to these creatures, we may be sure,
any of those fanciful qualities which are accorded
them in the silly fashion of these days, but knowing
them as they actually were, and betimes using them,
as was planned in the scheme of nature.

When Boone was eighteen years of age his family
heard many stories about the Yadkin River country
of North Carolina. Forthwith they moved through
the Shenandoah valley into what was then a yet
wilder country than that of Pennsylvania. Here
we have mythical tales of a fire hunt at night in
which Daniel Boone “shined the eyes” of a certain
maiden; of a deadly aim miraculously stayed, and
a subsequent marriage unceremoniously sped. As
to the fire hunt we may doubt, but as to the marriage
there is no question. Boone married Rebecca
Bryan in 1755. Therefore Daniel must move once
.pn +1
more, this time farther up the Yadkin, where the
forests were yet more quiet, and neighbors still more
distant.

Previously to his marriage Boone had been a
hunter,—what we would now call a professional
hunter. He sometimes took hides and furs to the
more distant Eastern settlements, and so saw some
of the Virginia towns. He was, however, not merely
a half-savage woods wanderer, although a past master
in all woodcraft. The year before his marriage he
was with the Pennsylvania militia, who fought the
Indians along the border after the French had defeated
George Washington and his Virginians at
Great Meadows. In the fatal Braddock fight Daniel
Boone was a wagoner in the baggage train, and
barely escaped with his life in the panic flight.

At twenty-one he was a man grown, matured, acquainted
with all the duties and dangers of frontier
life, physically fit for feats of strength, activity and
endurance, and both mentally and physically a perfect
machine for the purposes of vanguard work in
the wilderness. His imagination painted him no
gloomy picture of peril, but only scenes of things
delectable a little farther to the west, across the
hills that faced him. His emotions did not prevent
his walking forthwith into what might be peril; and
having entered perils, he was content if each day
.pn +1
found him yet alive, nor did his mind entertain
forebodings as to the morrow. The creed of the
wilderness, the creed of wild things had entered into
his soul.

They call Daniel Boone explorer, hunter, Indian
fighter. Let us figure him as philosopher. Temperament
and training gave footing for that part of his
philosophy that embodied his permanent personal
conviction that “God had appointed him as an instrument
for the settlement of the wilderness.”

Boone, after his marriage, and after his edging
out westward toward the head of the Yadkin, lived
much as he had done before. His cabin was no
better than his neighbor’s, his little corn farm was
much as theirs, albeit his table always had wild meat
enough and to spare, and there were hides and furs
in abundance. By this time two generations of white
men had held this slope of the Appalachians. The
buffalo had in all likelihood crossed the mountains
to the westward, though one writer says they
were “abundant” on the Yadkin at this time. Boone
may perhaps have seen an elk now and then along the
Yadkin, but even this is not certain. Bear, deer,
turkey, small furred animals, he took in numbers.
He was content, nor did he differ much from his
fellows. He must have been about thirty years of
age before he began to evince traits distinctly
.pn +1
different from those of his scattered wilderness neighbors;
before he began to hear the Voices, whispering
yet irresistible, that called him on; those Voices of
the West, which for a hundred years called our best
and boldest to come out into the unknown and the
alluring; those Voices which to-day are perforce
stilled forever.

It was in the year 1769, in the month of May,
that Boone started out for his first determined
exploration of “the far-famed but little-known land
of Kentucky.” He had before this time been eager
to cross the range and see for himself; indeed, he had
made one short hunting trip into what is now the
eastern edge of the state of Kentucky. Now, in the
prime of life, at thirty-five years of age, he felt that
the time had come for him to cross the range and
make his abiding place in the West.

We are accustomed to think that Boone was the
first explorer of Kentucky, but such was by no means
the case. Boone’s first trip across the mountains, to
the headwaters of the Holston, was in 1761. John
Peter Salling, a West Virginian, crossed Kentucky
and Illinois as early as 1738. Doctor Thomas Walker
and a party of Virginians had long before deliberately
explored a part of Kentucky; and in 1751 Boone’s
Yadkin neighbor, Christopher Gist,—the same Gist
that accompanied Washington in his dangerous
.pn +1
winter trip to the French forts on the Ohio,—made
yet fuller explorations.

Some of these early voyagings were not made of intent.
Salling crossed Kentucky as a captive of the
Indians, who took him as far west as Kaskaskia; and
Mary Draper Ingles, “the first American bride west
of the mountains,” whose father established the first
actual settlement west of the Alleghanies, was in
1755 taken captive by the savages, and carried across
Kentucky and parts of Ohio and Indiana, thus being
an explorer quite against her will.

Two hunters from Pittsburg, James Harrod and
Michael Steiner or Stoner, after pushing out into
the Illinois country, crossed the Ohio and traveled
quite across Kentucky, as far south as the present
city of Nashville, Tennessee. Steiner and Harrod
were friends of Boone’s, and Harrod built his stockade
of Harrodsburg a year before Boonesborough
was begun, his journey with Steiner having been
made two years before Boone made his pilgrimage
across the Divide.

Kasper Mansker or Mansco, later a famous scout
and Indian fighter, went with the Virginian “Long
Hunters” into Kentucky in 1769. John Finley or
Finlay had traded with the Indians on the Red River
of Kentucky in 1752, some years before Boone saw
that region. Finley was an associate of Boone’s in the
.pn +1
border wars before Boone was married, and it was
Finley, in all likelihood, that first set Boone aflame
with the desire to see and settle in Kentucky. Yet
he might have had the counsel of James McBride,
who in 1754 visited the mouth of the Kentucky River,
and came back to say that he “had found the best
tract of land in North America, and probably in the
world.” Finley added to these stories, and clinched
it all by saying that game of all kinds was abundant,
that the mountains were beautiful beyond description,
and that, moreover, salt could be manufactured
on the spot.

This last argument had very much to do with
the settlement of Kentucky. Salt and lead
were essentials. Salt was very heavy. The transportation
across these grim mountains was very difficult.
If one could have salt in Kentucky, it would not be
necessary for one to come back. To-day we can
scarcely understand this reasoning, once so cogent.

To strengthen the grasp upon historical facts and
dates it is sometimes well to begin at the time
close at hand, and go backward. We may therefore
make a reversed recapitulation of the explorations
of Kentucky, this dark and bloody hunting and
fighting ground of many tribes of strong-legged and
peppery-headed savages.

In 1770 the “Long Hunters” of Joseph Drake and
.pn +1
Henry Skaggs were in Kentucky—indeed, ran across
Daniel Boone there; yet Kentucky was then an oldish
land. In 1766 James Smith and five others explored
much of west Tennessee, and worked north as
far as Illinois. The Virginian, John McCullough,
with one white companion, saw Kentucky in the summer
of 1769, pushed on northward as far as the point
where Terre Haute, Indiana, now stands, and later
descended the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
Uriah Stone took a party of twenty hunters over the
Cumberland Gap into Kentucky in the month of
June, 1769, one month later than Boone’s journey
thither; but Stone had been in Kentucky in 1766.

George Washington was on the Ohio River in 1770
and 1767; John Finley in 1752; Christopher Gist in
1750; Doctor Thomas Walker in 1748; John Peter
Salling and John Howard, in 1742, we have noted.
Before all these was the French expedition of 1735.
Indeed, just one hundred years before Boone’s journey
into Kentucky, John Lederer, a Virginian,
crossed the Alleghanies and fared westward for some
distance; and ninety-nine years previous to Boone’s
first glimpse of the delectable land, Thomas Batts
and party had “taken possession” of the headwaters
of the Great Kanawha in the name of Charles II.

We therefore see, with what will be a certain
surprise to the average reader of American history,
.pn +1
that Kentucky and the trans-Appalachian land was
not wholly unknown but indeed fairly well understood
and accurately forecast in possibilities, more
than a generation before Daniel Boone ever saw it.
Where, then, is Boone’s fame as an explorer? Upon
what does his reputation as an adventurer rest?
What claim had he to hold himself as an “instrument
for the settlement of the wilderness”?

The answer to all these doubts is read in the record
of the holding of Kentucky. It is found in the
inefficacy of a “taking possession” by means of the
temporary planting of a flag and the empty claiming
of a territory extending from sea to sea. The flag of
Boonesborough was planted never to come down. The
stockade of the homebuilders was defended by an
“unwavering fortitude.” Kentucky discovered Daniel
Boone, not Daniel Boone discovered Kentucky.
Read it in this way and all shall be plain.

The birth of a new man in the world, the American,
had now taken place. The Old World explorers
took possession with a flag, furled it and carried it
away again. The new man, the American, flung out
a flag that has never yet come down in all the world,
and which, please God! never shall so long as we remain
like to the first Americans. John Finley guided
Daniel Boone across the Cumberland Gap; but he
.pn +1
guided him into a land now ready for a Daniel Boone—into
a West now ready for the American man.

It was, then, in the month of May, 1769, that
Boone left the Yadkin settlements and started westward.
He had as companions John Finley, Joseph
Holden, James Monay or Mooney, William Coole or
Cooley, and John Stewart or Stuart. Of all the
different expeditions into the region west of the
Appalachians this was the most important. Following
its doings, you shall see the long spur of
the Anglo-Saxon civilization thrusting out and out
into the West—to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the
Rockies, the Pacific—and never setting backward
foot.

The journey over the mountains was not rapid
and not continuous, it being necessary for the party
to hunt as well as to explore. The rifle, the ax, the
horse, the boat, were their aids and agents, their
argument and answer to the wilderness. Evolution
had gone on. The American was born.

Boone and his friends seem to have camped on the
east side of the Cumberland Mountains, where they
remained for “some days.” It was from this camp
that they made expeditions, and at length climbed to
a certain ridge whence they could see the glorious
realm of Kentucky. On this day they saw their first
herd of buffalo, the first trail-makers over the
.pn +1
Appalachians, of which they killed some numbers. They
saw, also, elk, deer and other animals. Boone was
delighted. There thrilled in his heart all the joy of
the hunter and explorer. Now the little party moved
over to the Red River, where Finley had formerly
been located. “Here,” said Boone, “both man and
beast may grow to their full size.” That was good
American prophecy.

For six months this adventurous little party lived
and hunted in their new empire. Then, swiftly and
without warning, there came a taste of some of the
disadvantages of this wild residence. Stewart and
Boone were taken captive by the Indians and were
carried to the north, a march of seven days. On the
seventh night they made their escape and came back
to their bivouac on the Red River, only to find that
their friends had left them and returned to the
settlements. As offset to this unpleasant news came
their present discovery by Squire Boone and one
companion, Alexander Neeley, who had followed the
adventurers all the way into Kentucky. Daniel’s
older brother had brought with him some needful
supplies, chief of these powder and lead, worth far
more than gold and silver.

“Soon after this period,” goes on the simple and
businesslike chronicle, “John Stewart was killed by
the Indians.” Hence the two Boone brothers were
.pn +1
left alone, Squire Boone’s companion having met his
fate in some mysterious manner, perhaps at the hands
of the Indians, though others state that he was devoured
by wolves,—a very unlikely story. The two
brothers built themselves a rude cabin of poles and
bark, and there they spent the fall and summer of
1769. In May of the following year Squire Boone
returned to North Carolina.[#]

It is now that for the first time we may accord
justice to the picture that shows us the pioneer,
Daniel Boone, alone in the wilderness of Kentucky.
He was at this time, so far as he knew, the only
white man in that entire section of country. Fearless,
adventurous and self-reliant, he extended his
wanderings farther to the west, and visited the site
of what is now the city of Louisville. His life
depended entirely upon his own vigilance. He was
without bread or salt, without even a dog to keep
him company or serve as guard. Naturally he met
.pn +1
the savages. Once when pursued by the Indians, he
escaped by the clever artifice of swinging himself far
to one side of his trail by means of a depending
grape-vine—a stratagem not recorded of any other
Western adventurer.

He seems to have been happy, alone in a
solitude whose nature one can not understand
who has never found himself under conditions
at least mildly similar. His consolation came in his
communings with the wild things about him, in his
readings in the great book of nature. His gallery
was the magnificent one of wood and stream and
hill. “He stood upon an eminence, whence, looking
about in astonishment, he beheld the ample plain and
beauteous upland, and saw the river rolling in silent
dignity. The chirp of the birds solaced his cares
with music. The numerous deer and elk which
passed him gave him assurance that he was in the
midst of plenty. Cheerfulness possessed his mind.
He was a second Adam—if the figure be not too
strong—giving names to springs and rivers and
places all unknown to civilized man.” Such was the
kingdom of the West.

Now came again the faithful Squire Boone, all
the way from the far-off Yadkin. These two discovered
country of such fertility and such abundance
in game that they no longer had any heart
.pn +1
left for the more barren region of North Carolina.
They determined to bring thither their families, and
the fall of that year saw them both back at the old
home, making plans for the pilgrimage into the
new world beyond the Alleghanies. Restless and ill-content
we may suppose Daniel to have been, for it
was not until the fall of 1773 that he was able to
sell his farm and get together his effects.

Five families left the Yadkin with him for Kentucky,
these being joined later by forty men, all of
whom traveled under the guidance of Boone. They
proceeded westward in pastoral cavalcade, driving
their herds and carrying their effects with them. So
far, very well, until the tenth of October, when came
the first ambuscade of the savage Indians. Six men of
the party were killed, among these a son of Daniel
Boone. The cattle were scattered or destroyed. No
wonder that all lost heart except the steadfast leader.
He was content to remain with the retreating party
in the settlements of the Clinch River only until June
of the following year.

Now, biding his time, and longing for greater
adventures, Boone receives a message from the governor
of Virginia. It seems there are certain surveyors
who have gone down the Ohio River and
have lost themselves in the wilderness. Could Daniel
Boone discover these surveyors for the governor?
.pn +1
Assuredly. And hence he undertakes his first real
mission of independent leadership. He has but one
companion, Michael Stoner or Steiner, and before
them lie many hundred miles of trackless forest, with
no road, no path, no trail. Yet the surveyors are
found and led safely back to their own.

This act seems to inspire confidence in Boone,
and Colonel Henderson, a famous land speculator,
employs him as his agent for the purchase from the
Southern Indians of certain lands lying south of the
Kentucky River. Boone is successful in these negotiations.
It is necessary now that there should be a
road established between these outlying lands and the
door of civilization. Who better than Boone to establish
this wilderness trail? He lays out the way from
the Holston to the Kentucky River. We are told,
without unnecessary flourish, that “in this work four
of his party were killed and five wounded.”

It was in April, 1775, that Boone erected a station
or palisade on the Kentucky River near a salt
lick. We are told that the stockade was built “sixty
yards from the south bank of the stream.” This
was close to the present site of the town of Frankfort,
Kentucky. Another writer says the date of the
foundation of Boonesborough—as the station was
called—was June fourteenth, 1775. Dates are unimportant.
The fact is that Boone during that
.pn +1
spring attained his immediate and most cherished
ambition. He established his home in the heart of
this beautiful land of Kentucky.

Thither he moved his family, his wife and
daughter being the first white women willingly
and of intent to set foot on the soil of Kentucky.
Boone was now in the heyday of life,
strong, fearless, tireless, a keen hunter, a cool-headed
warrior. The ways of the wilderness were known to
him. The imprint on the moss, the discolored water
at the fountain, the broken bough, the abraded bark
on the tree-trunk—all these things were an open
book. No Indian could imitate the chatter of the
squirrel, the calling of the crow, the gobbling of the
wild turkey in his signals to his fellow savage, so
closely that the acute ear of this master hunter did
not detect the deceit. If savages crossed the country
within a score of miles of his station, Boone knew
of them, knew how they were armed, knew what
was their purpose in that land. None could have
been better equipped than he as “an instrument for
the settlement of the wilderness.”

Life went on in Kentucky much as on the Yadkin,
on the Clinch or on the Holston. White men began to
gather in at the station of Boonesborough, or at one
of the two or three other posts that now were established
in the land. These white men, shoulder to
.pn +1
shoulder, fought the savages cheerfully, continuously,
never for a moment thinking of surrendering their
hold. The leader of this wild warfare was Daniel
Boone, the man of “unwavering fortitude.”

The war of the rebellion against the Old World
was now going on apace. Great Britain had given
the red savages below the Great Lakes better arms
and had deliberately incited a more insatiate enmity
against the white man. Whereas the Indians had
at first adopted prisoners into their tribe, they now
became more savage and implacable, in many more
instances killing such prisoners as fell into their
hands.

Here we find ourselves again to some extent
in the realms of imagination as to the adventures of
Daniel Boone. We meet the ancient anecdote of the
capture by the Indians of Boone’s daughter, in company
with two daughters of the neighboring Calloway
family. Some say that the children were out
hunting up the cows, others that they were in a
canoe on the river, and that the canoe was taken
away by a savage who swam out and made them
prisoners. We may be sure that Boone and Calloway
raised a party in pursuit, and it may be deemed historical
fact that they rescued their daughters;
though some state that the rescue was effected within
a few miles of the post, whereas others place it after
.pn +1
a long journey, and state that Boone and Calloway
were themselves taken prisoners by the savages, and
in turn rescued by their surviving companions only
after a bitter struggle. One may suit himself in
these matters, yet he must believe that the settlement
of Boonesborough was the center of a most
savage and relentless warfare.

The civilized necessity for salt was one of the chief
causes of danger for these Kentuckians. In 1778
Boone, with twenty-seven companions, was engaged
in salt-making at the Blue Licks, when they were
surrounded by a large band of Indians. Boone was
made captive, with others, and taken north across
the Ohio River. These savages were Shawanese, from
the Pickaway Plain. Eventually they took Boone as
far north as Detroit, where the commandant, Hamilton,
pleased with Boone’s manly character, undertook
to ransom him from the savages. The latter,
however, would not hear to this, and after some
parleying concluded to make Boone one of their
tribe.

He lived with them for some months, his fate
meantime quite unknown to his friends at Boonesborough.
At length, discovering a war party of more
than four hundred savages preparing to invade the
Kentucky frontier, he escaped from his captors,
journeyed two hundred miles to the southward, and
.pn +1
saved not only Boonesborough but all the infant posts
of this new commonwealth beyond the Alleghanies.
This, were there naught else to commend him,
should establish Boone’s place as one of the great
pillars of the west-bound civilization.

After the savages were at last beaten away in this
attack, Boone found that he was a man not without
a country, but without a family. His wife, supposing
him dead, had returned to the old home on the
Yadkin. There is a wide hiatus here in the Boone
history, regarding which Boone himself is reticent.

It is probable that at this time there began those
legal difficulties that later caused the pioneer to leave
his chosen land. He had been given a grant of land
by the governor of Virginia, but the state of Kentucky
had never been surveyed, and it was the fashion and
privilege of every holder of one of these loose titles
to locate his land as he pleased, and to record it in
the simplest and most primitive fashion. Thus there
came to be many claimants for the best of the lands,
the desirable tracts being sometimes deeply covered
by these old-time “shingle titles.”

The courts swiftly followed into these crude little
Kentucky communities. It may have been the legal
complications in which Boone now found himself
that made him unwilling to speak of this period of
his career. It is also known that at one time he was
.pn +1
custodian of some twenty thousand dollars of money,
which he intended to take eastward across the Alleghanies
for the purchase of lands. He was robbed,
and hence carried to his grave the bitter sense that
he had, through no fault of his own, been unable to
carry out a trust that had been imposed on him.
Yet, be these things as they may, the fact remains
that he did again bring his family to his chosen settlement
on the Kentucky River.

Meantime the Northern savages, under their own
leaders, under the leadership of British officers, under
the leadership of the dangerous renegades, Girty and
McKee, came down time and again on the Kentucky
settlements. The salt parties must go out as
before, and in one of these excursions Squire Boone,
Daniel’s beloved older brother, fell a victim to the
savages. In the celebrated and ill-fated McGary
fight—the blackest battle of all Kentucky—a son
of Daniel Boone’s fell with the flower of the frontier.
Again and again the tribes came raging down, the
Cherokees, the Pottawatamies, the Shawanese, all
joining hands to wipe these settlements from the face
of the earth. In the fight at Bryant’s Station, little
as it was, thirty of the savages were left on the field.

The year 1781 was one of wrath for the thin firing
line on the western side of the Divide. All the fights
and the fighters centered about or came from the
.pn +1
“Dark and Bloody Ground.” Clark, Hardin, Harmar—all
these started from Kentucky, and by reason
of Kentucky. It was General Scott with one thousand
Kentuckians that avenged the horrible defeat of
St. Clair, killed two hundred of the victorious
savages, and took back from them their booty. In
the seven years from 1783 to 1790 there were fifteen
hundred whites killed or taken captive in the state
of Kentucky. In all these affairs, we may be sure,
Daniel Boone held his full and manly part. He had
drunk the war-drink of the savages during his captivity,
and the spirit of the savage had entered into
him.

Yet Boone was simple and unpretentious as any
leader that ever lived. Once Simon Kenton, himself
a hardy soul, set out with some friends on a
little hunt from the station at Boonesborough. They
were fired upon by Indians from ambush. One man
was shot down by the Indians within seventy yards
of the stockade. His murderer would have scalped
him had not Kenton dropped him, a corpse beside
a corpse. Then it was general mêlée until Daniel
Boone and ten others came out from the stockade to
assist their fighting comrades. Kenton killed another
Indian, and then there came a rush. Boone
directed a charge upon the savages, but was shot
.pn +1
down, a ball breaking his leg. Kenton, brave fellow
that he was, shot down Boone’s assailant and carried
Boone safely into the fort. As he lay on the couch
receiving attention for the leg broken by the ball,
Boone sent for Kenton and said: “Well, Simon,
you have behaved like a man to-day. Indeed you are
a fine fellow.” That was all there was to it. They
made no great parade in those days. There was
no proclamation in the public places. There were no
illustrated newspapers, no gifted war correspondents
to describe the heroism of that time. A similar act
to-day would have made both participants famous,
would perhaps have won for both a Victoria Cross,
and would have afforded imaginative correspondents
excellent opportunity. The West had no Victoria
Crosses, nor needed any.

In times of such continual excitement and danger
it is small wonder that there has been but scant
record kept of individual deeds of daring. Boone
himself was not wont to boast of his own prowess,
and regarding his deeds of arms there are not many
authentic anecdotes.

One of the best known of his adventures was that
in which he met two savages in the forest while he
himself was alone. Those were flint-lock days, and
Boone was, according to the story, able, by watching
the flash of the first savage’s rifle, to throw
.pn +1
himself out of the way of the bullet. This manœuver
he repeated with the second Indian. Then he calmly
shot one Indian dead with his rifle, closed with the
other, received a blow of his tomahawk on his own
rifle barrel, and killed the savage with his knife. A
statue commemorating this feat was later placed
above the south door of the rotunda in the Capitol
at Washington.

There was need in Boone’s case of fortitude, not
only of the physical but of the moral sort. In 1792
Kentucky, which had formerly been a county of the
state of Virginia, was set up as a state by itself,
with courts, jails, judges, lawyers and all the appurtenances
of the artificial civilization that Boone
had hoped to leave forever behind him.

Then came lawsuits regarding the lapping titles.
Daniel Boone, his blue eyes troubled and bewildered,
found himself among the haggling officials of the
law courts. It broke his heart. Stunned but not
protesting, he gave up that beautiful land he had enabled
all these others to find and to hold. He was
old now, and had fought the main fight of his life
only to find himself the loser.

He left now for the mouth of the great Kanawha,
but found the hunting poor. A son of
his had crossed the Mississippi River and sent
back word that there was still a West, still a
.pn +1
country where were buffalo and elk, where were
otter and beaver in the streams. There was to
be one more pilgrimage for Daniel Boone, a pilgrimage
down the Ohio River, ending in the region,
still wilderness, not far from the point that is
now the city of St. Louis. Bear in mind that this
latter point was not within the United States. Daniel
Boone was an emigrant from the land he had
founded. He was going now out from under the
infant Stars and Stripes.

In token of his character, the Spanish governor of
Louisiana gave Boone some sort of trifling commission.
He was made commandant or syndic, an
official with about the same importance as a country
justice of the peace to-day. By the terms of his settlement
in that country Boone was entitled to a tract
of something like ten thousand acres of land. He
was wrongly informed that, as he was an officer of the
state, he need not settle nor improve his land. Once
more a fatal mistake for the man who knew the book
of nature better than the printed page.

Late in his life we find the American government,
now reaching its control over this trans-Missouri
country, taking up the question of Boone’s tract
of land and allowing him, with extreme generosity,
one-tenth of that which by every right and
title of justice ought to have been his own in fee
.pn +1
simple in return for what he had done for the civilization
of America. This was the poor pittance that
Daniel Boone, one of the great Americans, was able
to hand down to his posterity.

With this poor heritage go the few incidents of a
meager and in some cases uncertain personal history,
the main facts of which have been given above.
There is even uncertainty, or rather discrepancy, regarding
the date of his death. One writer states that
he died at the age of eighty-four, in the year 1818.
The date of his death was really September twenty-sixth,
1820, he being at that time eighty-six years of
age.

In his later years Boone kept up those practices
that had endeared themselves to him in his earlier
lifetime. In a mild way he was a trapper, and always
he was a hunter. Even when he had passed his
eightieth year he went regularly each fall in pursuit
of the deer, the turkey, the elk or the furred
animals, or followed his simple pastime of squirrel
hunting, in which he was very expert. It was his
custom on these excursions to exact a promise from
his attendant that, in case of his death, his body
should be properly cared for. He long kept his
coffin under his bed at his home, near Charette,
Missouri. Once, taken sick in camp, he marked out
the place for his grave, and told his negro servant
.pn +1
(some say his Indian friend or servant) what should
be done with his body.

From this indisposition, however, he recovered, and
went on several other hunts later. Failing gradually,
though not from any specific disease, Boone met
the great and final enemy with the same fortitude
that had been with him all his life. He had said
farewell to all earthly ambitions, and was ready to
die when the time might come. He kept the coffin
under his bed not in any bravado, but in a simple
wish for complete preparedness. His personal habits
remained sweet and simple as of old.

Boone seems to have wandered a little farther
to the West than his home near St. Louis. It is
said that he “saw the mouth of the Kansas River,”
and that he noted, with the impatient longing of
an old man, the passing up-stream, into the mysterious
Northwest, of those early parties of fur
traders, the voyagers who were now heading the
far Western American migration. It was now too
late in the closing years. It is said that he trapped
on the Kaw and the Osage, and he is said to have
made one journey “up the Missouri, and to have
reached the mouth of the Yellowstone”, whence he
was driven back by savages.

His sons and grandsons were figures in Western
.pn +1
history, always frontiersmen, travelers. A granddaughter
became the wife of a governor of Oregon.
His grandson, Kit Carson, was to hold fast the family
traditions on many a Western trail; but there
were to be no more trails for Daniel Boone. Overtaken
once more by America, once more surrounded
by the civilization from which he had by choice always
alienated himself, he at length lay down peacefully
to his final sleep beneath the trees.

Some twenty-five years after his death, the legislature
of Kentucky awakened to a sense of the greatness
of this man, and to the onerous nature of that
debt of gratitude under which he had placed his
commonwealth. By virtue of a special enactment,
the bodies of Boone and his faithful wife were moved
from their Missouri home, eastward across the Mississippi
River, and laid at rest in the cemetery of
Frankfort, close to that original stockade where, supported
by an “unwavering fortitude”, there first flew
the hard beset flag of the west-bound. These coffins
came garlanded with flowers, heralded with
music, surrounded with tardy honors. They were laid
away on September thirteenth, 1845. There were effusive
speeches in abundance, the chief oration being
pronounced by Mr. Crittenden, “the leading orator
of his time,” as he is called in the chronicle. Thus
.pn +1
at last this primeval patriarch, this Father of the
Frontier, this leader of the Western home-builders,
came home to sleep on the soil that was by right his
own.

.fm

.fn #
There was long known a tree near the Cumberland which
bore this quaint inscription: “D. Boon Cilled A Bar on this tree,
year 1760.”
.fn-

.fn #
There is continual discrepancy among the historians regarding
these incidents. Thus another writer states that Boone and
Stewart were twice taken prisoners by the savages, but that no
northward journey was made by the Indians, who simply kept the
prisoners at their camps, and at length dismissed them with a
warning to leave Kentucky, as it was their own hunting ground
and belonged to the Indians only. Again there seems confusion
in the stories of the death of Neeley and Stewart. One account
is that Boone saw Stewart shot down and scalped; another states
that Stewart disappeared, and that no idea of his fate was obtained
until years afterward, when in a hollow tree Boone found a skeleton,
near which was Stewart’s powder horn, which had his name
inscribed upon it.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk1ch09 pn=+1
CHAPTER IX||A FRONTIER REPUBLIC
.sp 2

If we have been successful in the first of our undertakings,
that of investigating the first stage of
the American transcontinental pilgrimage, which
brought the Anglo-Saxon civilization permanently
into the Mississippi valley, we must have gained in
our earlier chapters some knowledge of the characteristics
of the west-bound men, and of the motives
that actuated them.

We shall also have noticed the beginning of a new
type of man,—a man born of new problems, new
necessities. Obliged to think and act for himself,
it was natural that this man should
learn to be restive when others thought for
him. It was not to be expected that the men of New
England and New York should understand this new
man. We do not understand the Asiatics to-day;
and at the time Daniel Boone reached the Mississippi
it was farther from the Mississippi to New
York than it is from New York to the Philippines
to-day.

The American pilgrimage, whether at times
.pn +1
painful, halting, broken, or at other times rapid, feverish,
insane, has at the one time or the other
been no better than the transportation at hand.
The long, hard roads, the slow travel of those early
trans-Appalachian days were at the bottom of the
greatest national problem of those days.

The men of the East could not believe that loyalty
might be expected of the men of the West; and the
latter, feeling the force of their geographical position,
and feeling also their own ability to take care of
themselves, openly talked of all manner of schisms,
sectionalisms and governmental speculations. The
West talked secession almost before it was a West.
Under the conditions of those days it was small crime
that it did so; the fact proved no disloyalty of the old
type, but the strength and vigor of the new type
of American that had now been born, which declared
itself able to hold and govern its own new-found
world.

It may profit us at this stage of our study to turn for
a time from the individual frontiersman and settler,
and to take up in more concrete form some of the
things that these frontiersmen and settlers did in
combination—some of the phases of the Western
civilization as affected by the ever present problems
of transportation.

The question of geography, which is the same
.pn +1
as to say the question of transportation, led to
more than one attempt to set up entirely independent
governments west of the Allegheny
Divide, just as it also much affected the destinies
of the unborn states of the Northwest
Territory—Asenesipia, Pelesipia, Cherronesus, and
others. Of these divers attempts at secession, some
were honestly based upon a wish for commercial development
that did not seem possible in connection
with a government situated far to the east, at the end
of impassable mountain roads. Other attempts were
mere personal intrigues, carried on with a view to
personal advantage, as was the effort of the unspeakable
Wilkinson to alienate the population of the
Mississippi valley from the standards of the government
at Washington. There were other attempts,
honest attempts at secession, or more properly speaking,
segregation, on the part of considerable communities
whose interests, under the conditions of
the time, seemed far from identical with those of
the tidewater population.

Chief among the records of these movements for
an honest Western secession stands the story of the
famous Free State of Franklin—the story of an enterprise
that to-day we ignorantly call a chimera, an
absurdity or worse, though to the men concerned in
it the project seemed not less than necessary, just and
.pn +1
right. The history of this state, which was born of
bad roads and populated by a new breed of Americans,
fits nicely with our theme at this stage of its
progress.

As to the extent of this state that once was, but
is no more, we discover that it once included fifteen
counties of Virginia, six of West Virginia, one-third
of the state of Kentucky, one-half of Tennessee,
two-thirds of Alabama and one-quarter of Georgia,
as those states exist to-day. Wherefore it may seem
that John Sevier and his friends were dealing with
a considerable empire of their own, one much larger
than most folk of to-day realize or understand.

It was one of those first republics west of the Alleghanies,
one of those first instances of spontaneous
self-government that have so often proved the vital
strength of the restless yet self-respecting and law-abiding
American character. How the men of the
Free State of Franklin loved their little empire, how
they defended it against the savages that pressed
upon its borders, how they held the soil on which
they had set the standard of west-bound civilization—all
that is a legitimate part of the birth-history of
the West.

Tennessee to-day honors John Sevier, founder of
the Free State of Franklin, with a shaft recording
thirty-five battles and thirty-five victories. This
.pn +1
shaft perpetuates the memory of a population that
“in fifteen years engaged in three revolutions, organized
and lived under five different governments,
established and administered the first independent
government in America, founded the first church and
the first college in the West, put in operation the
first newspaper west of the Alleghanies, met and
fought the soldiers of King George in half a dozen
battles from King’s Mountain to the gates of Charleston,
checked and beat back four of the most powerful
tribes of America, and left to Tennessee the
heritage of a fame founded upon courage and steadfastness.”

In the times just preceding and following the
Revolutionary War, the American colonies, even
though bold enough to encounter successfully the
forces of the mother country, were none the less
timid and lacking in self confidence. There was
no strong centralized government, nor was the loyalty
of the different colonies or the different men
of each colony a thing grounded upon reason or
even an imperative self interest.

In no thing was America so rich as in big men, by
which I do not mean “great” men as the term commonly
goes. The characters of those early days stand
out clearly and distinctly before us now. It was
still the day of individualism. The men of the
.pn +1
Free State were the boldest of those bold individuals
who headed out from the secure settlements
of the seaboard, through gloomy forests, into the unknown
wilderness, west of what was then the backbone
of the United States, the rugged Alleghany
range.

These men made their own trails, and they were
more careful with the trails that led westward
than with those that connected them with the East
that they had left behind. It was no act of disloyalty
that caused souls bold as these to cast
about them in matters of organization and of government.
The day of kings was gone for them. The
day of Liberty was dawning. They carried with
them, as have their west-bound fellows ever since,
the principles of self-government. Where the community
was, there arose the Law, there began the
state.

With them the community was not the population
they had left far behind, but that population
close at hand, banded together, experiencing a common
danger, and entertaining a common ambition,—the
population that had come West and intended to
remain. The branches of the Law no longer sheltered
them. They were alone. There was no Law. What,
then, was to be done except to plant anew the seeds
.pn +1
of the Law, and let it blossom here, as it had done
before, and has since, on the soil of America?

Yet, poor as was the hold that these people now
retained upon the country that bore them, they
were not lacking in active loyalty. When they heard
of the first battles of the Revolution, the first thought
of the men of the “Washington District” was how
they might best prove of service in the conflict
that was to ensue. So much might be expected,
for the name of Washington District was
given by reason of Sevier’s friendship with Washington,
later to be the first president of the States;
and the District had sent from its scanty numbers
fifty riflemen, under Captain Evan Shelby, who took
part on the Indian battlefield of Point Pleasant,
in Virginia, in the fall of 1774.

These men of Washington District were always in
the front when the fighting began, and had it seemed
practicable to their leaders, they had liked nothing
better than to join their forces always with those of
the state of North Carolina. There was not one
coward in the one hundred and thirteen men that
signed Sevier’s petition to the legislature of North
Carolina. Yet no formal annexation was made by
North Carolina, though John Sevier, Charles Robertson,
John Carter and John Hall were seated as
delegates in the North Carolina legislature.
.pn +1

At this time North Carolina’s state constitution
was formed (November, 1776), fixing the western
boundary of the state as that named by King
Charles, which reached to “the South Seas.” No
one knew what so indefinite a description might
mean, but John Sevier was wise enough to know
that so far from getting the benefit of a stable
government and the protection of the laws, his companions
west of the Appalachians would be in a land
practically without law save of their own making.
Therefore, having in view all the time this possibility
of a breaking away of a considerable body
of West-American population by its own sheer
weight, he succeeded in passing a resolution in the
North Carolina legislature, stating that the above
mentioned limits should not operate as a bar to the
“later establishment of one or more governments
west of North Carolina, by consent of the legislature
of that state.” We might call Sevier another
of those great prophets of the West, a prophet
who possessed not only personal courage and daring
of his own, but a calm and sober intellect that
foresaw the growing up in the West of not only
one but many governments; albeit not his nor any
other mind might at that time see those changes that
were to unite all these component parts into one effective
whole.
.pn +1

There may be interest in tracing from its inception
the growth of this little Western republic. We
shall find its history lovingly written, and as though
to hand, by an inhabitant of the state of Tennessee
who has given care in research along those lines.[#]
“This lovely mountain section of the old Watauga
settlements,” writes he, “being the cradle of Tennessee
and in some respects also, of the vast valley of the
Mississippi, is rich in historical interest. Here in
the month of May, 1772, there was formulated by
Sevier, Robertson and others the first written compact
of civil government on American soil. It was
then they drew up the celebrated Watauga Articles
of Association, and set up a government west of the
long line of the Blue Ridge and apart from colonial
influence.

“These articles set on foot all the machinery of
the new state, the future Tennessee; they established
courts to be presided over by five commissioners,
who had entire control in matters affecting
the common good; they provided a government,
paternal but simple and moderate, albeit
summary and firm. This form of government proved
satisfactory and sufficient for a number of years,
Sevier and Robertson continuing leading spirits.
.pn +1
At this time they probably believed themselves to
be on Virginia territory, for there was great question
as to the location of the northern boundary
line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, thence west
to the South Seas—the vague demarcations of
Charles II which were accepted in the legislature of
North Carolina.

“It was in 1776 that Sevier drew up his able petition
to North Carolina asking to be annexed thereto.
Of the one hundred and thirteen signers, all
but two wrote their own names, which speaks not
so badly for these hardy frontiersmen. Their request
was granted, and about April, 1777, Watauga
became a part of North Carolina. It still continued
to be known as the Washington District, largely on
account of geographical situation. At that time it
embraced practically all of the present Tennessee.

“To show the rapid progress of civilization in
that remote region, it may be stated that in 1778
or 1779 Reverend Samuel Doan, a young graduate
of Princeton, came into the Watauga country, organized
Salem Presbyterian church, and in 1780
erected a log cabin school-building, the first literary
institution in Tennessee, if not the first one in the
Mississippi valley, as has been frequently asserted.
In the year 1783 this institution was chartered by
.pn +1
North Carolina as Martin Academy, and is known
now as Washington College.

“The events leading to the formation of the state
of Franklin grew out of the effort of the state of
North Carolina to pay her share of the thirty-eight
millions of the Revolutionary War debt. Congress
proposed to sell all the vacant lands in the several
states, against the <i>pro rata</i> indebtedness of such
states. Therefore, in June, 1784, the (North Carolina)
legislature passed an act giving all of Washington
District to the United States. This gift was
conditioned upon an acceptance within two years,
otherwise the act was to be null and void.”

This transfer of the sturdy population of the district
brought up questions somewhat in advance of
those we argue to-day regarding government without
the consent of the governed, and the transfer
of territory without the consent of the inhabitants.
At first the frontiersmen seemed not to object
to the change, but reflection showed them that the
act failed to give them any sort of civil or military
government during the two years Congress
might elect to employ before accepting the gift.

This contingency justly alarmed the population of
Washington District. They found themselves inhabitants
of a No-Man’s-Land, an outlaw’s land,
living neither under a government of their own
.pn +1
establishing, nor any other whatsoever. In these unusual
and perplexing circumstances it was no wonder
that the people of the District called a convention.
This meeting was held at Jonesboro, August, 1784,
John Sevier himself presiding. Witness now the
wisdom of his proviso in the session of the North
Carolina legislature, which, in short, contemplated
precisely the act that was now taken. It was resolved
to set up another government, and these
hardy citizens, so capable of self-government, greeted
with applause the establishment of a free and independent
state. The convention adjourned to meet
again in November, to ratify the constitution and
further to complete the organization of the state
government.

“Meantime,” continues our historian, “North Carolina,
becoming alarmed at the state of affairs, repealed
the act of cession of Washington District,
gave to the secessionists a superior court of their
own, and made Sevier brigadier-general of the organized
militia. All of this was most probably misunderstood
by the people, who proceeded to elect
delegates to another convention, over which Sevier
presided, though he steadily protested against a separation.
A constitution was, however, adopted, an
election for representatives was ordered, and when
.pn +1
that body met, Sevier was elected governor and all
the machinery of the new state set in motion.”

This little Western republic certainly seemed to
have trouble in finding itself. Its very name is even
to-day a matter of discussion. One writer[#] says:
“The Washington District declared itself independent,
and organized a government under the name of
Frankland. The name was afterward changed to
Franklin.” The writer just quoted[#] states: “There
was considerable discussion as to the spelling of the
name, many insisting in convention that ‘Frankland,’
that is to say ‘Freeland,’ should be the name.
Others were for following the name of Benjamin
Franklin. The latter spelling carried by a very
small majority in the convention, as cited by Ramsey.
There is, however, yet extant one letter written
by General William Cocke from Frankland.”

The name Franklin was the one officially accepted.
Franklin himself did not know of the honor he had
received until some eighteen months after it had
been conferred. He declined to be caught by this
compliment, did not commit himself in favor of the
new commonwealth, but advised the citizens of this
pseudo-state to submit their claims to Congress,
and indeed outlined to them the virtue of that
.pn +1
centralized government which was later to be felt on
both sides of the Alleghanies.

This new population now had a government and
a scheme of education, and indeed a general plan
of living and growth and progress, yet it lacked
many of the advantages of an older civilization.
There must, of course, be revenue, and hence taxes;
and since a currency was not forthcoming, the legislature
passed an act authorizing the payment of
taxes and salaries in articles of trade. Legal tender
were beaver, otter and deer skins, each at six shillings;
raccoon and fox skins, worth one shilling
and three pence each. Beeswax, at one shilling a
pound, was also legal tender; and, most remarkable
of all, though there were those who wondered not
at the precedent, it was provided that taxes and
official salaries might also be paid in rye whisky,
at three shillings six pence a gallon, or in peach
brandy at three shillings a gallon! As to the extent
of the reward of practical politics in that day,
we may cite an act passed by that same legislature.

“Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the
State of Franklin, and it is hereby enacted by the
authority of same, that from and after the first day
of January next, the salaries of this commonwealth
shall be as follows:
.pn +1

“His Excellency, the Governor, per annum, a hundred
deer skins.

“His Honor, the Chief Justice, five hundred deer
skins.

“The Secretary to His Excellency, the Governor,
five hundred raccoon skins.

“County Clerk, three hundred beaver skins.

“Clerk of the House of Commons, two hundred
raccoon skins.

“Members of the Assembly, per diem, three raccoon
skins.

“Justice fees for serving a warrant, one mink skin.”

Crude enough seem such devices to us to-day,
yet we must remember that we are in close chronological
touch with those very times. Nor did the
new state seem to do ill with its self-established
machinery of government. Just as the people of
America retained something of the vital and useful
customs and standards of old England, discarding
the ancient and outworn, so did the people of the
state of Franklin cling to the standards of their
mother state of North Carolina. The constitution
of North Carolina was adopted without very great
change.

“For some time,” goes on our writer, “the state
of Franklin moved on serenely, until Governor Sevier
officially notified Governor Martin of North
.pn +1
Carolina that his people would no longer recognize
the authority of that state. Governor Martin replied
explaining the cession act, and threatening the
‘revolters’ with armed invasion unless they returned
to their allegiance. This letter, largely circulated,
was not without effect, though in the main the people
adhered to the new state.

“North Carolina then passed an act of amnesty
for those that cared to avail themselves of it, which
provided for the election of members to her own legislature.
The same act appointed civil and military
officers for the district. Thus there was to be seen
the strange spectacle of two sets of officers over one
and the same set of people, ‘Hurrah for Franklin!’
being the battle cry of one, and ‘Hurrah for North
Carolina!’ the watchword of the other. Great confusion
followed. Franklin held courts at Jonesboro,
and North Carolina held hers near by, each denying
the authority of the other. The rival officials quarreled
and fought over their supposed rights. The
victors turned the vanquished neck and crop out of
doors, and retained possession of the records, such as
they were.

“Failing to obtain recognition from North Carolina
and an admission of the independence of the
state of Franklin, Sevier laid the matter before Congress.
Here he failed. He turned to Georgia, and
.pn +1
was told by that state that Franklin and the old
state of North Carolina must settle their own affairs
themselves. Day by day the Franklin party
became weaker, and on the expiration of Sevier’s
term as governor no election was held, and the
state of Franklin therefore ceased to exist. Indeed
it is a matter of surprise that it survived four years
of such constant and irritating opposition. The explanation,
lies in the fact that no other man in
Tennessee before or since has had so firm a hold upon
the popular heart as did John Sevier. In one instance
at least the fickle multitude was constant.

“Soon after Franklin’s downfall, Sevier was arrested
by North Carolina officers on the charge of
treason, the warrant having been granted by Judge
Spencer of the old state, and he was taken over
the mountains for trial at Morganton. There he
was at once surrounded by many of his old King’s
Mountain comrades, and after a short sojourn returned
home without trial and without interference.
He was soon elected to the North Carolina senate,
where he took his seat, that section of the legislature
restoring to him all his old-time privileges.
Almost immediately thereafter he was elected to
Congress (in 1789) from the ‘Washington District
of North Carolina,’ thus becoming the first member
of that body from the valley of the Mississippi.”
.pn +1

All this turmoil as to the bestowal of governmental
allegiance was going forward at the same
time that the settlers of Kentucky were raising their
corn under rifle guard, and constantly fighting back
the savage population that hemmed them in. They
too were clamoring for national support, or individual
independence. Meantime, too, the intrigues of Wilkinson
in the Mississippi valley were continuing, and
the men of the Free State of Franklin even looked
southward for an alliance with the nation holding
control of the mouth of the great Mississippi highway.

The formation of the new state was a blow
not so much at the government at Washington as
at the mother state of North Carolina; and the latter
was at first willing enough to have the separation
take place, for she was tired of paying war
debts for fighting the Indians on her far-off frontier.

The times being so far out of joint, we can scarcely
wonder that the hardy Indian fighters under Sevier
at one time (September twelfth, 1788) sent word to
the Spanish minister Gardoquoi that they wished to
put themselves under the protection of Spain—a
thing to-day difficult to believe of any part of the
American population, yet not wholly irrational for
those times and conditions. Nor is this all of the
story of these little splits and schisms and secessions,
.pn +1
which for a time took place on the Western slope
of the Alleghanies.

Another writer[#] describes some of these early
transactions. “The settlers of the district of the
Columbia River,” says he, “who were under the
jurisdiction of North Carolina, gave the name
of Miro to the district they had formed; this
as evidence of their partiality for the Spanish
government. The promise of protection the inhabitants
received from Gardoquoi was so modified by
Miro that the scheme, though prosecuted for a time
with vigor, finally failed from inability of the
secessionists to comply with the conditions of recognition.
Yet another center of sedition was located
in the valley of the Mississippi. A company
composed of Alexander Moultrie, Isaac Huger,
Major William Snipes, Colonel Washington and
other distinguished South Carolinians was formed
at Charleston in 1789, which purchased from the
state of Georgia fifty-two thousand nine hundred
square miles of territory, extending from the Yazoo
to the banks of the Mississippi near Natchez, the
Choctaws, Chicasaws and Spain each claiming a portion
of this territory. The ulterior designs of the
company in the purchase and settlement of the country
were carefully concealed for some time.”

.pn +1
The arch conspirator Wilkinson did his best to
assume a position of importance with this little body
of malcontents, and freely promised Miro that
he would unite all this population under the flag of
Spain. He naïvely stirred up the Indian savages
of the Mississippi valley to renew their attacks on
the Western frontier, in order that the Western
settlers might the more quickly realize the inefficiency
of the government at Washington to afford
them the protection they needed. Meantime also
it was quite possible that Great Britain might make
an invasion of Louisiana, by way of the water trail
from Canada to the Mississippi valley. Assuredly the
times were troublous, and fortunate indeed was it
that the government at Washington still lived, that
good fortune favored the minds and hands in control.

It was not the wisdom of the government, not
the ability of the political leaders that solved these
perplexing problems. Presently they went far toward
solving themselves, as do most American problems
to-day. By this time all the mountain roads and
water trails were becoming more defined and more
frequented; the fighting white men were slowly
beating off their savage foes.

Then at last came the time when the frontier, held
fast by many braided trails, looked back across the
mountains, and resolved to pin fast its allegiance
.pn +1
then and forever to the government that had been
left behind, the government of Americans under
principles established and fully proved on the American
soil. The threads that bound fast the new settlements
with the old, the threads that grew and
strengthened into indissoluble bonds, which in spite
of the fears of those who dreaded the accession of
any more large territory, held firm the whole wide
realm of the West to the mother colonies on the East,
were simply the natural and artificial trails, later to
be blended into a vast network, intermingling and
inextricable, weaving and making permanent the web
of a common and unsectionalized civilization.

Such was the still pure Anglo-Saxon civilization,
changed, purified and strengthened by some generations
of tenure of the American soil, at the time
when it reached the great central highway, the
mighty Mississippi, there to pause for a time, facing
new problems attendant upon the next great journey
onward and outward in the pathway of the sun.

.fm

.fn #
Alexander Hynds, of Dandridge, Tenn.
.fn-

.fn #
N. P. Langford.
.fn-

.fn #
Alexander Hynds.
.fn-

.fn #
N. P. Langford.
.fn-

.pb
.pn +1

.ce
<l>THE WAY TO THE ROCKIES</l>

.h2 id=bk2ch01 nobreak
CHAPTER I||DAVY CROCKETT
.sp 2

There is no figure of speech that so exactly
describes the westward advance of the American
population as that which compares it to the feeding
of a vast flock of wild pigeons. These, when they
fall on a forest rich with their chosen food, advance
rapidly, rank after rank. As those in the
front pause for a moment to feed, others behind
rise and fly on beyond them, settling for a time to
resume their own feeding operations. Thus the
progress of the hosts resembles a series of rolling
waves, one passing ever on beyond the other, each
wave changing its own relative position rapidly, yet
ever going forward.

It was so with the American people. The Alleghanies
could not stop them in their west-bound
march, nor the terrors of a relentless Indian warfare,
which endangered lives dearer to the rugged
frontiersman than his own. Nothing would do
.pn +1
until the pathway of the waters had brought the
American settler to the Mississippi River, the great
highway that, whether by whim, chance, or design,
had now become wholly the property of the growing
American government. Having arrived at the
Mississippi River, the population could not rest.
Those behind pressed ever on.

Once across the Alleghanies the pathways had been
pointed out by nature; beyond the Mississippi these
pathways were reversed. Man had not wings like
the wild bird. His pilgrimage must still be slow,
his methods of locomotion clumsy. The paths no
longer lay even with the currents of the streams. The
adventurer into the West must, for the most part,
follow the reversed pathways of the waters. Briefly,
the journey of the frontiersman from Pennsylvania
to the Mississippi was one of angles, the first leg running
to the southwest, thence northwest, thence southwest.
The pilgrimage profile from the Mississippi to
the Rockies was equally angular. The line of travel
did not, for the most part, run directly to the west.
It angled out and upward, wherever water transportation
led, and where the streams showed the
way.

In the story of Daniel Boone we have seen how
he moved again and again, seeking ever to edge a
little farther to the west than his nearest neighbors.
.pn +1
Still another great frontiersman, Davy Crockett,
beloved of the American people, gives us instance of
this patient progress of the west-bound, halting,
advancing, but never tiring. The life of Crockett
will afford in itself a good view of the profile of
the population movement, and will give as well a
notion of the life and customs of those early times.

Davy Crockett, backwoodsman and bear hunter,
magistrate, legislator and congressman; a man who
at the time of his marriage scarcely knew one letter
of the alphabet from the other, yet at middle age
was one of the best-known figures of the American
political world, and who was even mentioned as a
possibility for the presidency of the United States;
a man that lived like a savage and died like a hero—one
of the uncouthest gentlemen that ever breathed—such
a man as this could have been the product of
none but an extraordinary day. We shall do well to
note the story of his life, for his is one of those
colossal figures now rapidly passing into the haze of
forgetfulness or the mirage of mere conjecture.

In some fashion the names of Boone and Crockett
are often loosely connected. They were in part
contemporaneous though not coincident. Showing
in common the rugged traits of the typical man of
their time, they were yet distinctly unlike in many
qualities. A writer who knew both men states that
.pn +1
he considered Crockett the mental superior of
Boone. After weighing carefully all the evidence
obtainable—and there is much more information
available concerning Crockett than in regard to
Boone—one would be disposed to differ from such
an opinion.

Boone was the simpler and sincerer soul, the
graver and more dignified figure; Crockett the more
magnetic personality, the more plausible, if at times
less candid, man. One man was practically as
ignorant as the other. Boone had no taste for
political life, and his sole wish was to live ever
a little beyond that civilization of which he was
the pioneer and guide. Crockett, built also of
good, common, human clay, for two-thirds of his
life seemed animated by no greater ambition.

Then all at once we see him turned politician. He
succeeds, and his name grows larger than his neighborhood
and country. Not knowing the basis of the
tariff, ignorant of the text of the Constitution,
master of the practice, but unable to explain the
theory, of a caucus or a town meeting, he finds
himself owner of a seat in the United States Congress,
fairly the central figure of that Congress, the
cynosure not only of the South but of the East
and North.

He is at this time nothing but a great,
.pn +1
good-humored boy, the very type alike of an open-handed
generosity, and an open-mouthed and sometimes
ill-timed levity. He is the product of political
accident. Yet, wonder of wonders, we find this man,
quite past the time usually assigned as the limit
for the development and fixing of a man’s character,
suddenly blossoming out into a second development,
a second manhood, more thoughtful and more dignified
than that of his early days. Without education
when he started for the halls of Congress, he
gains that education more rapidly than did ever
man before.

Crockett returned to his home a graver and broader
man. Even his speech had gained freedom, ease
and clarity, though still he delighted, perhaps more
in jest than otherwise, to bring in the crudities of
expression, the quips and quirks of that language
through which he had, to his own surprise and
without his own plan, won his sudden notoriety—a
notoriety that was later to turn to fame.

There is not to be found in all the history of
American statesmanship so swift and sound a ripening
into mature thought as that of this backwoodsman,
the first political “mugwump” or independent;
who engaged in politics for reasons of self-interest,
and then all at once grew big enough to set self-interest
aside and to do what seemed to him wise
.pn +1
and right—a type of statesmanship now well-nigh
defunct in America. And yet we see him, in the
pang of his first decisive political defeat, growing
bitter at his reverses, losing the genial philosophy
of his earlier years, even renouncing his country,
and forthwith turning away from family, friends
and commonwealth to seek a new fortune in an
alien land.

Some biographers of Crockett accord to him in
this act the motives of bold knight-errantry; yet
impartial review of known facts leads one to believe
that Crockett’s abandonment of his family
and his somewhat erratic journey into Texas were
most easily explicable by reasons of a plausible self-interest.
He was seeking political advancement
along lines of less resistance. Then, finding himself
a member of a party of souls as adventurous as
himself, souls reckless and unrestrained, ardent,
eager, fearless, yet without a leader and without a
definite plan, Crockett the backwoodsman, Crockett
the thinker, the orator, the statesman, if you please,
flings himself with the others into a needless and
fatal fight, rages with them in the most glorious
struggle yet chronicled in the pages of American
history, fights like a Titan, dies like a gallant
gentleman, helps write the shining history of that
squalid hut in old San Antonio, and makes possible
.pn +1
one of the most burning sentences that ever adorned
monument above hero’s grave: “Thermopylæ had
three messengers of defeat; the Alamo had not one!”

Here are contradictions that might be thought
sufficient to give us pause; yet not contradictions
large or conclusive enough to rob Davy Crockett of
aught of the fame that has been accorded him
by the American people. In order to reconcile or
explain these contrarieties, and hence to understand
this strange early American, we shall do well to
review the better known and most authentic incidents
of his peculiar career.

Crockett does not go so far back in the history
of the west-bound American as does Daniel Boone.
The latter died at the age of eighty-six. Crockett,
who died about ten years later than Boone, was
but fifty years of age. His life falls in the trans-Mississippi
period of the Western population movement.
He was born August seventeenth, 1786, in
Greene County, Tennessee. His grandfather was an
Irishman who came to Pennsylvania, thence moved
west in order to avail himself of the settlers’ right
of four hundred acres of land, which carried the preemption
right of an additional one thousand acres.
A goodly portion of a goodly earth lay ready to
every man’s hand in that day of American opportunity.
.pn +1

The second Crockett homestead, on the Holston
River, was broken up by the Indians, who killed the
parents and several of the children, John Crockett,
David’s father, being one of the few that escaped.
John Crockett became a Revolutionary soldier, and
after the Revolutionary War moved to North Carolina,
just as did the father of Daniel Boone.

Following the path of the earlier Argonaut, Boone,
John Crockett in 1783 crossed the Alleghanies, but
settled in eastern Tennessee, instead of Kentucky. In
this wilderness David was born. It was a land without
religion, without schools, without civilization.
In such an environment the weaker children died.
Naked as a little Indian, David Crockett ran about
the rude cabin, and lived because he was fit to survive.
One of his earliest recollections is that of an
incident in which his uncle, Joseph Hawkins, figured.
Hawkins accidentally shot one of the neighbors,
the ball passing through his body. There was
no surgical skill possible, and it was considered the
proper thing in the treatment of this wound to pass
a silk handkerchief, carried on the end of a ramrod,
from one end to the other of the wound.
Crockett appears to have seen his father pull a silk
handkerchief entirely through the body of this
wounded neighbor. It was a strong breed, that of
Tennessee a hundred years ago!
.pn +1

Of course this settler must move west, and again
west. At the fourth move of his life he located on
Cove Creek, the boy Davy being now about eight
years of age. About this time Crockett’s father lost
his grist-mill by fire. Naturally the remedy for this
was to move, and he again took up his journey,
settling this time on the road between Abingdon
and Knowlton, where he opened a rude tavern,
patronized mostly by teamsters of the roughest sort,—certainly
a hard enough environment for the coming
statesman.

The earliest description of Crockett represents
him to be “a wiry little fellow, athletic, with nerves
of steel.” Even in childhood he was given to fierce
encounters, yet he was of an open and generous disposition.
He grew up practically without care, his
father, if truth be told, being a man of somewhat
gross and drunken habits. Davy finally, at the mature
age of thirteen, forsook the paternal roof and
set out in the world for himself.

He chanced fortune with drovers, driving cattle to
the eastward, and learned to be hostler and general
utility man, becoming acquainted with the trail that
ran between Abingdon, Witheville and Charlottesville,
Orange Court House and other points in Virginia.
He worked for a few months as a farm hand
.pn +1
in Virginia. He wandered into Baltimore, with
wonder noticed the shipping there, and came near
becoming a sailor, but was rescued from that fate.
Buffeted by fortune from pillar to post, he worked
one month for a farmer at a wage of five dollars. He
went apprentice to a hatter and worked for eighteen
months for nothing, at the end of which time the
hatter unfortunately failed in business.

Poor Davy spent two years in these wanderings,
and was fifteen years old when all at once he again
dawned upon the paternal grounds in eastern Tennessee.
These two years had been spent in considerable
physical discomfort and anguish of spirit, and
the journey home was accomplished only after many
dangers and difficulties. Crockett admits that at this
time he did not know the letters of the alphabet. His
father, shiftless as ever, had been lavish with his
promissory notes. He offered Davy his “freedom” if
he would work six months for a neighbor to whom he
had given a note for forty dollars. Davy generously
did so, and capped it off by working another six
months and taking up another one of his father’s
notes, for thirty-six dollars. This last he was not
obliged to do, yet in spite of these bitter surroundings,
there had flowered in the young savage’s heart
a certain feeling of family honor.

Now all at once the boy backwoodsman became
.pn +1
conscious of his own infirmities. He went to school
six months, the only schooling he ever had in his
life. He learned to write his name, to spell to
some extent, to perform a few simple sums in arithmetic.
Twice blighted in love at eighteen years of
age, he married a pretty little Irish girl, a daughter
of a neighboring family. “I know’d I would get
her,” says he, “if no one else did before next Thursday.”

Crockett was married in his moccasins, leggings
and hunting shirt. His bride was dressed in linsey-woolsey.
There was no jewelry. The table on which
the wedding feast was spread was made of a
single slab. The platters were of wood, the spoons
of pewter and of horn. In his own abode, as he
first entered it, there was no bed and not a chair,
a knife or a fork. Yet, after the expenditure of
fifteen dollars, which he borrowed, Crockett and his
wife “fixed the place up pretty grand,” and found it
good enough for them for some years. Here two
boys were born to them.

At the ripe age of twenty years, that is to say
in the year 1806, Crockett considered it necessary
for the betterment of his fortunes that he should
remove farther toward the West, this having been
the universal practice of his kind. He journeyed
for four hundred miles through the Western
.pn +1
wilderness, taking his family and household goods with
him. Their transportation, as we are advised, consisted
of one old horse and two colts. These animals
were packed with the household goods. In the wild
journey down the Holston the family, children and
all, camped out, enduring the weather as best they
might. At last they came to a halt on Mulberry
Creek, in Lincoln County, in what they took to be
the Promised Land. The soil was generously rich,
game and fish were abundant, the climate was all
that could be asked. Crockett built him a cabin,
and here he lived for two years, much as he had lived
in eastern Tennessee. Then, in the easy fashion of
the time, he moved once more, this time settling
in Franklin County, on Bear Creek, still in the wilderness.

Here we find him living in 1813, at which time
the call went out for volunteers to serve in
the Creek War under General Jackson. Without
much ado, Crockett said good-by to his family,
joining those wild irregular troops who, amid countless
hardships, plodded up and down the region of
Alabama and Georgia, meeting the southern Indians,
destroying them wholesale or piecemeal as
the case might be. Crockett marched, counter-marched,
acted as spy and hunter, doing his full
share of the work.
.pn +1

All the time he was rising in the esteem of his
fellow men. He was now a tall, large-boned,
muscular man. His hair, we are told, was sandy,
his eyes blue, his nose straight, his mouth wide
and merry; and so we see Davy Crockett the
grown man. Never having known anything but
hardship all his life, he has none the less never known
anything but cheerfulness and content. The apt
jest and catching story are always ready on his lips.
He is the life of the camp-fire. Gradually he forges
to the front. The qualities of leadership begin to
appear.

In all these rude military experiences, although
Crockett does not fancy the revolting scenes which
in some instances he witnesses at the Indian killings,
he shows the ardent nature, the fighting soul. Hence
he respects the fighting man and pays his obedience
to General Jackson. There is no hint of that fatal
falling out between the two men that later is so
suddenly to terminate Crockett’s ambitions.

In 1822, after his return from this petty war,
Crockett’s fortunes once more needed mending, and
the remedy, of course, was to move again. He had
previously explored nearly all of Alabama, and
later investigated southern Tennessee, finally locating
on Shoal Creek, in Giles County. Crockett’s
.pn +1
faithful wife, the little Irish woman, had died, and
he, ever ready to console himself, now married a
widow of the neighborhood, an estimable woman, who
added two children to his already growing family.
This second wife appears to have been a dignified
and able woman. Little is known of her, and she
seems to have lived the life of the average frontier
woman, patiently and uncomplainingly following
her lord and master in all his enterprises and his
wanderings. Two pack-horses still served to transport
all the family goods on this latest journey.

The greed for land had rapidly sent a turbulent
population into the Cherokee country of the “New
Purchase” where Crockett now resided, and among
these lawless souls restrictions were needed, although
the country knew no law and had no courts. Crockett
was elected judge, without any commission and
without any formal process of law. He served wisely,
and although unable to write a warrant, he sometimes
issued verbal warrants. He claimed that his
decisions were always just and that they “stuck like
wax.”

Meantime he had been elected colonel of militia
over a bumptious rival. Now, all at once, and
perhaps originally more as a matter of jest than
anything else, as was the case in his second
.pn +1
candidacy, his name came up for the legislature. Crockett
inaugurated a canvass on lines of his own. In
brief, he talked little of politics, for he knew nothing
of such matters. He told a brief story, traded a
’coon skin for a bottle of liquor, treated the crowd,
promised to sell a wolf scalp and treat them again,
and so passed on to the next gathering. He was
elected without difficulty.

But of course misfortune once more must overtake
our hero, and he must move again, this time as far
as he can go and not cross the Mississippi River.
This next home, and the last one he established,
was made in the northwestern corner of Tennessee,
on the Obion River, near the Mississippi River, not
far from what is now known as Reel Foot Lake,
and in the heart of that wild country then known
as the “Shakes.”

This was near the submerged lands affected by the
New Madrid earthquakes, a country naturally rich in
many ways. It was a cane-brake country, a heavily
timbered but somewhat broken region, crossed now
and again by terrific windfalls locally known as
“hurricanes.” You may see such country in the
Mississippi Delta to-day, two hundred miles south of
Crockett’s home. Crockett’s neighbors on the Obion
were three in number, respectively seven, fifteen and
twenty miles distant.
.pn +1

On his trip of exploration he planted his first crop
of corn by means of a sharp stick, just as he had
broken the earth at each of his earlier homes. He was
rejoiced to find that the corn grew excellently, and
yet more rejoiced to know that he had found a superb
hunting ground. In his early life his game
consisted chiefly of deer and turkey. Here bear,
deer and turkey were very numerous, and there were
also elk occasionally to be seen. The buffalo is
never mentioned up to this time in Crockett’s life,
and that animal had probably by this time, 1822,
become practically extinct in Kentucky and Missouri.

Mr. J. S. C. Abbott, in his biography of Crockett,
writes of his station at this time: “Most men,
most women, gazing upon a scene so wild, lonely
and cheerless, would say, ‘Let me sink into the grave
rather than be doomed to such a home as this.’”
Such is the point of view of the narrow observer that
never knew his America. Not so Davy Crockett.
He did not find this region lonely or cheerless.
On the contrary, we find him fraternizing with the
rude boatmen from points lower down on the
Mississippi River, and making himself very comfortable.
Presently he goes back after his family,
bringing them on to his new home in October of that
year. They and their belongings are transported
.pn +1
by two horses, this limited cavalcade being still sufficient
to carry all the worldly belongings of David
Crockett, hunter, warrior, magistrate and legislator.
Davy is still poor, but he does not wish to “sink into
the grave.” On the contrary, as he journeys along
the wild woodland path he sings, jests and whistles,
happy as the birds about him, content among the
sweet mysteries of the untracked forests. He is
the product of wild nature, as savage as the most
savage, a man primeval, unfettered, free. He is the
new man, the man of the west, the new-American.

As an example of Crockett’s early electioneering
methods, we may cite his procedure in his first canvass
for the legislature. He says:

“I didn’t know what the government was. I
didn’t know but General Jackson was the government;”
a statement not wholly the product of sarcasm.
He met Colonel Polk, later President Polk,
and according to his own story the colonel remarked:

“It is possible we may have some changes in the
judiciary.”

“Very likely,” replied Davy, “very likely,” and
discreetly withdrew.

“Well,” he comments, “if I know’d what he meant
by ‘judiciary,’ I wish I may be shot. I never heard
there was such a thing in all nature.”

Yet another electioneering story attributed to
.pn +1
Crockett, perhaps authentic as many of those told regarding
him, shows well enough the rude temper of
his region, if we do not go further, and accord to it a
certain hint of that native humor that was later to
see its growth in America.

“I had taken old Betsy,” says he, referring to
his rifle, “and straggled off to the banks of the
Mississippi River, and meeting no game, I didn’t like
it. I felt mighty wolfish about the head and ears,
and thought I’d spile if I wasn’t kivvered in salt,
for I hadn’t had a fight in ten days. I cum acrost
a fellow who was floatin’ down-stream, settin’ in the
stern of his boat, fast asleep. Said I, ‘Hello,
stranger, if you don’t take care your boat will get
away from you;’ and he looked up and said he, ‘I
don’t value you.’ He looked up at me slantendicular,
and I looked down at him slantendicular; and
he took a chaw of turbaccur, and said he, ‘I don’t
value you that much.’ Said I, ‘Come ashore. I can
whip you. I’ve been tryin’ to get a fight all the
mornin’;’ and the varmint flapped his wings like a
chicken. I ris up, shook my mane, and neighed like a
horse.

“He run his boat plump head foremost ashore. I
stood still and sot my triggers—that is, I took off
my shirt, and tied my gallusses tight around my
waist—and at it we went. He was a right smart
.pn +1
’coon, but hardly a bait fer a feller like me. I put
it to him mighty droll. In ten minutes he yelled
enough, and swore I was a ripstaver. Said I, ‘Ain’t
I the yaller flower of the forest? I’m all brimstone
but the head and ears, and that’s aquafortis.’ Said
he, ‘You’re a beauty, and if I know’d yore name
I’d vote for you next election.’ Said I, ‘I’m that
same Davy Crockett. You know what I am made
of. I’ve got the closest shootin’ rifle, the best ’coon
dog, the biggest bear tickler and the ruffest rackin’
horse in the district. I can kill more likker, cool
out more men, and fool more varmints than any
man you can find in all Tennessee!’ Said he, ‘Good
morning, stranger, I’m satisfied.’ Said I, ‘Good
morning, sir; I feel much better since our meeting—don’t
forget about that vote.’”

Congressmen to-day do not employ language quite
so picturesque, or methods of vote-getting quite so
crude. The story is a trifle apochryphal; yet Crockett
himself, in what is called his autobiography, a work
which he no doubt dictated, or at least authorized,
gives the following account of one of his speeches
to a stranger, at Raleigh, while Crockett was en
route to Washington to take his first seat in Congress.

“Said he, ‘Hurrah for Adams!’ and said I, ‘Hurrah
for hell, and praise your own country!’ And
.pn +1
he said, ‘Who are you?’ Said I, ‘I’m that same
Davy Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half
horse, half alligator, a little touched with snapping
turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride
a streak of lightning, slide down a honey locust and
not get scratched. I can whip my weight in wildcats,
hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any
man opposed to Jackson.’” Which last remark he
fain would qualify largely later in his political career!
An innate shrewdness that told him how
to avoid committing himself was Crockett’s original
capital in politics, as it was in life. His native wit,
his good fellowship, his rollicking good humor, his
courage and strength, his skill with weapons brought
him success. He was fitted for success in those surroundings.

Crockett is always chronicled as one of the great
American hunters, and this name he deserves. He
was a good rifle-shot. In his cane-brake country he
hunted the black bear just as it is hunted to-day in
the similar country of the Mississippi Delta, by
means of dogs, without which the hunter would only
by the remotest chance ever get sight of an animal
so shy as the black bear.

Abbott, who seems to apologize for Crockett, needs
for himself an apologist, for he displays a lamentable
ignorance of the environment of which he writes, as
.pn +1
well as of many common facts in natural history. As
a matter of fact there was no risk whatever in the
pursuit of the black bear, even when the hunter was
not accompanied by his dogs, whose presence eliminated
the last possible danger of the chase. In those
days the rifle was a single-shot muzzle-loader, in
no wise so effective as the modern hunting arm,
but even thus early in the history of American wild
game, the black bear had ceased to be a formidable
animal, if indeed he ever was such.[#]

Abbott, with gross and indeed singular inaccuracy,
repeatedly speaks of Crockett as killing the “grizzly
bear” and he mentions the “shaggy skins” of these
“ferocious animals.” In reality Davy Crockett saw
nothing but the flat, smooth hides of the common
black bear of the South, one of the most cowardly animals
that ever lived. He killed numbers of them,
and enjoyed the vociferous chase with his hounds.
Sometimes he did not need to use the rifle, but
killed the bear with the knife, a feat often repeated
by men of the present generation in the cane-brake
hunting of the South.

Crockett mentions killing one bear that weighed
six hundred and seventeen pounds, and he speaks of
.pn +1
another that he thinks weighed six hundred pounds.
In one hunt of two weeks he killed fifteen bears. Once
he killed three bears in half an hour, and at another
time six in one day, with an additional four on the
following day. In one week the total was seventeen
bears, and in the next hunt he speaks of killing ten
of the same animals. He states that he killed fifty-eight
bears in the fall and winter of that year, and in
one month of the following spring he added forty-seven
bears to his score, a total of a hundred and five
killed in less than one year. In all he killed several
hundred bears, very many deer and countless small
game. He was a benefactor to all the poor laboring
folk that lived anywhere near him, and speaks of
giving one poverty-stricken neighbor a thousand
pounds of meat, the product of his rifle during a few
hours of one afternoon.[#]

There never was a land more fruitful in animal
life than this South which supported the early Westerners.
In such surroundings life was a simple matter.
The chase and the rude field of corn offered
sufficient returns to satisfy the frontiersman.

.pn +1
One day as Crockett happened to be in a settlement,
some forty miles from his home, it was suggested
that he run once more for the legislature.
He agreed, and forthwith announced himself as candidate.
His early methods were again successful.
Discovering in himself now certain latent powers
whose existence he had not suspected, he later agreed
to run for Congress, but was defeated by his late
supporter and friend, Colonel Alexander, by the
scant margin of two votes. Cotton was high, and
Alexander said it was because of the 1824 tariff.
Davy did not know what the tariff was, and could
not answer!

Crockett at this time is described as a “finely proportioned
man, about six feet high, forty-five years
of age, of very frank, pleasing and open countenance.”
He was dressed in homespun and wore
a black fur cap on his head, when seen by a traveler
who met him at his house. He now began to show
“an unusual strength of mind and a memory almost
miraculous.” Uncultured, ignorant, terribly handicapped
by lack of training and opportunity, he overcame
it all. He got his ammunition from the
enemy. He received his sole political education
from his opponent’s political speeches, as witness
his second campaign for Congress. Cotton dropped
in price. Davy promptly found that the tariff
.pn +1
argument would work both ways, and he took his advantage.
He was elected to Congress, and re-elected, the
second victory showing a majority of three thousand
five hundred votes.

It is at this stage of his career that we may speak
of the birth of the second or real David Crockett.
These wild surroundings have now begotten in him a
rugged sense of self-reliance and a personal independence
that henceforth manifest themselves unmistakably.
He is a politician, but an independent politician.
“I would as soon be a ’coon dog as to be obliged
to do what any man or set of men told me to do,”
he says. “I will pledge myself to support no administration.”
“I would rather be politically dead than
hypocritically immortalized,” he declares; and in yet
another instance he says that he “will not submit
to the party gee-whoa-haw;” that he will be “no
man’s man, and no party’s man.”

In spite of all these personal dicta he is elected.
His election costs one hundred and fifty dollars, all
in borrowed money. It costs David Crockett, congressman,
an additional one hundred dollars, also
borrowed, to get to the national Capitol at Washington,
where he arrives perhaps the most unique specimen
of Congressman ever produced in this broad
land of ours. His first act is to pay his debts—which
not all Congressmen since then have done so
.pn +1
promptly. It is hard for the backwoods congressman at
Washington, yet he has good sense, good tact, good-nature
and a magnetic temperament. His motto,
“Be sure you are right, then go ahead,” wins for him
sudden fame. Perhaps it is fame too sudden. Now
we must bid good-by to Davy Crockett, bear hunter.
He is bitten of the fatal poison of political ambition.
From this time on the record of his life is for a while
public, plain and well known.

Crockett was a Southerner and, as has been stated,
at first a friend of the Jacksonian Democracy.
Naturally he should have been expected to prove
loyal to the doctrines of the South, and the South
at that time was held in the hollow of Old Hickory’s
hand. Note now a sudden sternness of fiber in
the bear hunter’s character that entitles him to a
better name than that of time-serving politician.
As a matter of conviction and principle he differs
from the autocratic leader then sitting in the president’s
chair. He opposes President Jackson’s Indian
bill, and the proposition to withdraw the deposits
from the United States banks. Indeed, instead
of being a follower of Jackson, he comes out
boldly as an opponent of his former leader.

The North hails him joyously as a Southerner with
a Whig heart. Let Davy make the most of it; none the
less he loses the next contest for Congress in his
.pn +1
district. Yet he fights again, gets the nomination
for the next term, wins once more and hastens rapidly
toward the height of a national popularity. Realizing
his own ignorance of the North and East, in
1834 he undertakes a journey to those sections. At
Baltimore he sees a railroad for the first time in
his life, and witnesses the tremendous feat of seventeen
miles made by a railway train in the time of
fifty-five minutes! At Philadelphia crowds meet him
at the wharf and cheer him to the echo. He is
banqueted repeatedly, wined and dined times without
number, and made the recipient of countless
attentions. The young Whigs of Philadelphia come
close to his heart when they make him a present
of a fine rifle, the very rifle that took the place of
“Old Betsy” and was with Crockett in his last fight
at the Alamo.

In New York, in Boston and the larger manufacturing
towns of Massachusetts, Crockett repeats
his Philadelphia triumphs. He is now a national
figure. His sayings and doings are quoted throughout
the land. If his Northern speeches are correctly
reported, he has at this time suddenly become
the possessor of an easy and not undignified
oratorical style, though all his speeches are still
well sprinkled with quaint epigrams and homely illustrations.
.pn +1

We see in the Crockett of 1834 a figure not approached
by any other American statesman so nearly
as by that other rugged Westerner, Abraham Lincoln.
These crude, virile, tremendous, human men, product
of the soil, born of the hard ground and the blue sky—how
they do appeal, how they do grow, how they
do succeed.

Crockett is asked to visit Harvard College, but
refuses for quaint reasons of his own. Andrew Jackson
has been made an LL. D. by Harvard, and
Crockett says that “one LL. D. is enough for Tennessee.”
He is the guest of Lieutenant-governor Armstrong,
and chronicles naïve surprise that Mr. Armstrong
“did not charge him anything,” for entertaining
him. He states that in New England he
found “more liberality than the Yankee generally
gets credit for.” He expresses his gratitude for the
kindly reception accorded him in New England and
chronicles his admiration for the thrift and industry
of that country, which seems to have made a vivid
impression on his mind, different as these scenes
were from the wild surroundings in which he himself
had grown up.

This trip into the North wrought epochal change
for our bear hunter. He learns now about the tariff,
studies and approves the doctrines of protection—rank
heresy for a Southerner. Deep water for Davy
.pn +1
now! He seems to have had no counsel of prudence,
for now he loses no opportunity to chronicle his animosity
toward General Jackson.

“Hero—that is a name that ought to be first in
war and last in peace,” says he. Commenting on
the faithlessness of the government, he flames out:
“I had considered a treaty as the sovereign law of
the land, and now I hear it considered as a matter
of expedience.” This was in reference to the treatment
accorded the southern Indians by the United
States government.

“This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to,”
says he, with personal allusion, of course, to Jackson.
In all these sayings he is, it may naturally be
supposed, heartily applauded by the Northerners,
who rejoice in this notable accession to their own
ranks.

Davy Crockett, bear hunter and congressman,
has now had his chance. He takes himself seriously,
even when he jokes about his being the next
president of the United States. Crockett represents
now the success of perfect digestion, of the
perfectly normal nervous system. Nothing irritates
him. The world to him runs smoothly, as it does
to any hardy animal. He cares not for the past
and has no concern for the physical future. His
big brain, so long fallow, so long unstirred, begins
.pn +1
now to fill up with thoughts and ideas and comparisons
and conclusions. His reason is clear and
bright. He presents to the world the startling spectacle
of a middle-aged man educating himself to the
point of an intelligent statesmanship, and that within
the space of a few brief months or years. He displays
a clarity of vision nothing short of marvelous. His
memory of names, of dates and data is something
startling. The world of books remains closed to him,
so that he learns by ear, like a child, but he surprises
friends and foes alike. The husk of the chrysalis
has been broken. The Westerner has been born into
the American!

Davy Crockett had thus far never met any danger
of a nature to inspire fear, any difficulty he
could not overcome, any hardship he could not
lightly endure. He now encountered one enemy
greater than any to be met with in the wilderness—that
great and menacing foe, the political machine.
He found to his sorrow that honor and manhood will
not always serve, and at the summit of his success he
met his first and irremediable defeat.

Crockett, once the politician, now grown into Crockett
the eager student, the earnest statesman, had
stirred up animosities too great for him to overcome.
The relentless hand of Jackson smote hard upon
Crockett’s district. There was talk of money, and of
.pn +1
votes influenced by its use. Poor Davy, who went into
this last campaign of Congress as blithely and as sure
of success as ever in his life, learned that he had been
defeated by a total of two hundred and thirty votes!
Then there arose from the honest and generous soul
of this strange child of the wilderness a great and
bitter cry. He was among the first to exclaim against
the creed of politics pursued as politics, of statesmanship
that is not statesmanship—the creed of party
and not of manhood.

“As my country no longer requires my services,”
he writes, “I have made up my mind to leave it.”
Expressing his determination forthwith to leave Tennessee
and to start for the distant land of Texas, he
says, “I have a new row to hoe, a long and rough
one; but I will go ahead.” He adds as quaintly as
ever, “I told my constituents they might all go to
hell, and I would go to Texas.”

We come now to the third and closing stage of
the life of David Crockett, and in order to understand
it we must bear in mind the nature of the
opinions then current concerning the new land that
to the Southerners of that time was “The Great
West,” the land beyond the Mississippi. Texas, a
magnificent realm eight hundred and twenty-five by
seven hundred and forty-five miles in extent, already
had an American population of nearly forty
.pn +1
thousand; and of all wild populations ever gathered
together at any place or time of the world, this
was perhaps the wildest and the most indomitable.
There was hardly a soul within the borders of that
great land who was not a fighting man and who had
not come to take his fighting chance. It was fate
that Davy Crockett should drift into this far Southwest
and take his chances also.

As to the chances of it, they were not so bad.
It was almost sure that Texas would ultimately be
won from Mexico. In 1813 an expedition of Americans
had fought Spain and killed some hundreds of
Spaniards, on the strength of the general claim that
the territory of Louisiana extended westward as far
as the Rio Grande, and not merely to the neighborhood
of the Sabine River, as was claimed by Spain. The
latter river was in 1819 generally accepted as the
boundary line, but this fact did not serve to stop
the Americans.

In 1823 Stephen A. Austin was settling his Mexican
grant with his new colony. These families drew after
them the inevitable train of relatives and friends, so
that the great River Road to the South and Southwest
soon began to be pressed by the feet of many
pilgrims. In 1821 Lafitte made his rough settlement
at Galveston, and the pirates of Lafitte were no worse
than the average Texas population of that time.
.pn +1
There were no schools, no courts, no law. One writer
states that he sat at breakfast with eleven men, each
of whom had pending against him in another state
a charge of murder. Then originated the etiquette
of the wild West that demanded that no one should
inquire into his neighbor’s past, nor ask his earlier
name.

In 1833 there were twenty thousand Americans that
wished Texas to have an organization separate from
the state of Coahuila. They were not so particular
as to what government claimed their state, but
they wished to organize and run it for themselves.
Meeting a natural opposition from Mexico in this
enterprise, in the year 1835 they banded their
forces, overturned the Mexican government, and
set up a provisional government of their own. Henry
Smith was chosen provisional governor and Sam
Houston commander-in-chief of this wildest of all
American republics.

On December twentieth, 1835, these Texans issued
their proclamation of independence, some sixty
years after the Declaration of the American Independence.
This meant but one thing. Santa
Anna, then as much as anybody governor of affairs
in Mexico, marched with an army, stated to have
numbered seven thousand five hundred men, to besiege
the Texans, whose main body was located at
.pn +1
San Antonio. No American doubted the ultimate
issue. All the South knew that the wild and hardy
population of this new region would beat back the
weak Latin tenants of the soil. The matter was well
discussed and well understood. It was not knight-errantry,
therefore, so much as politics, that led Davy
Crockett southward into this wild hornets’ nest.
Rather should we say that all this movement was part
of the mighty, inexplicable, fateful, irresistible Anglo-Saxon
pilgrimage across this continent. It was a
New World. These new men were those fitted to
occupy and hold it.

At this time the historian of Crockett falls on
a curious difficulty. There is published what purports
to be an autobiography of David Crockett’s
life, a linsey-woolsey affair, made up partly of good
English and partly of rough backwoods idiom such
as we are accustomed to associate with the speech
of this singular man. This “autobiography” purports
to be continued after Crockett leaves his Tennessee
home for far-off Texas. Yet at this point its
style and subject matter assume such shape as to
lead one inevitably to conclude that Crockett did
not write it. There are many contradictions and
discrepancies, and much of the detailed story of
Crockett’s wanderings in the Southwest is denied by
practically the only eye-witness of the time qualified
.pn +1
to tell of his experiences—that Jonathan H. Greene
(the “Harrington” of Crockett’s correspondence),
once gambler and later reformed man, who was with
Crockett for a time before the Alamo fight. Greene’s
story does not in all points tally with the so-called
autobiography of Crockett, nor with many of
the popular histories of his life.

In general it may be determined that, with some
feeling but without much ado, Crockett said farewell
to his wife and family. He had no longer heart for
bear hunting. He wished a wider field of life. His
journey was down the Mississippi and up the Arkansas
River to Little Rock. There he encountered many
hail-fellows-well-met, and had several experiences,
which are set forth at length in his autobiography.
He journeyed then horseback to Fulton, descended
the Red River to Natchitoches and thence made his
way westward across Texas.

The so-called autobiography of Crockett describes
two or three strange characters: the “Bee Hunter,”
who might have been the hero of an English melodrama
of the time; “Thimblerig,” the sharper whom
Crockett reforms and leads on to die a hero’s death;
the “Pirate,” who dies in front of the Alamo gate;
and so on. There is something strangely unreal in
much of this. It does not ring true. Yet we are
further told that Crockett crossed the Sabine, that he
.pn +1
met the Comanches, that he saw for the first time
the tremendous herds of buffalo, that he encountered
bands of wild horses, that he saw much wild game,
and in a knife fight killed a panther. The feeling
is irresistible that many of these pictures are made
to order.

At last, however, without much ado and without
any adequate explanation of Crockett’s real motives,
we find him inside the gates of the San Antonio
barracks, one of that little party whose heroic death
was to set the whole American nation a-throb, first
with vengeful fire, and then with a passionate love
and admiration.

The situation was thus: Travis in San Antonio,
practically hemmed in at the adobe building known
as the Alamo; Fannin at Goliad, with other noble
fellows later to fall victims to Mexican treachery;
at a distance Sam Houston, apparently irresolute
and non-committal. Austin, Fannin, Travis, Rush,
James Bowie, the Whartons, Archer of Virginia—what
a list of strong names was here, these fighting
men, some of whom had come for politics, some
for sport, some for sheer love of danger and adventure.
Of these, Bowie, Crockett, Fannin and Travis
might have been declared opposed to the party of
Houston and Austin. Crockett’s authentic letter
bitterly accuses Houston, the leader of the Texans.
.pn +1
Houston, mysterious, vain, enigmatical, as able as
he was erratic, might perhaps, had his followers
been less tempestuous and independent, have united
them into a harmonious and powerful whole. He
could not, or did not. Hence came the Alamo fight.

Of this wild army, half ruffian, half adventurous,
most of the men were poor, although they came
in many cases from good families. They had behind
them an undeniable sentiment in favor of the independence
of Texas, and were backed by money raised
for that purpose. General Jackson openly and notoriously
favored the annexation of Texas, and perhaps
even of Mexico, and went so far as to suggest
a few practical though unauthorized plans of his
own as to how the army might be used to bring
about a conflict and later a <i>pax Jacksonii</i>. Thus
we find our hero, Davy Crockett, once more falling
into the plans of his former chief, his recently
victorious antagonist, Old Hickory.

It is possible that Crockett was deceived in his
pilgrimage to Texas. There is more than a suspicion
that he was used as a cat’s paw in a political movement.
He says that “Houston is enjoying the support
of the Government, while others are left to do the
fighting.” He continues, “Houston has dealt with us
in prevarications.” He calls Houston the “agent” and
Jackson the “manufacturer.” Yet certainly Crockett
.pn +1
was backed by a prevalent and strongly growing sentiment.
The records are too vague and insufficient.
We shall never fully understand all these complications
of early and adventurous politics.

Be all these things as they may, Crockett was one
of the devoted little band of a hundred and eighty-three
Texans, who in time found themselves besieged
by an army of Mexicans from five thousand to eight
thousand strong. The peons of Santa Anna’s worthless
army came on day after day, the bands playing
the <i>Dequelo</i>, which meant “no quarter.” For
eleven days the Texans held the Alamo, in that historic
fight whose details are so generally and so uncertainly
known. These one hundred and eighty-three
men killed of the enemy more than one thousand.
Worn out by loss of sleep and continuous
muscular exertion, their arms simply grew weary
from much slaying. Their hands could no longer
push down the ladders weighted with the struggling
peons goaded forward by the swords of their officers.

At length an assault was lodged. The swart Mexicans,
more in terror than in exultation, poured across
the broken wall. In the hospital lay forty helpless
men, each with his rifle at his side. These, sick and
crippled, broken-bodied, iron-hearted, poured their
last volley into their assailants as they came in. A
cannon was discharged down the room and nearly a
.pn +1
score of the crippled and sick were blown to pieces.
Outside, in the open space, the lances of the Mexicans
reached farther than the clubbed rifles or the
bitter, biting knives of the stalwart Americans, now
raging in their last tremendous, magnificent and
awful Baresark rage.

No one knows the story of the end. Even the
number of the victims is matter of dispute to-day.
Some say there were a hundred and eighty-three defenders,
some say a hundred and eighty-six. Some
say one woman escaped; some say two. Some
declare that one negro servant got away; some say
two. The state of Texas adopted the “Alamo baby,”
but the Alamo baby did not see Crockett fall. There
are different reports. Some state that there were
six Americans left hemmed up against the wall,
and that the Mexican general, Castrillon, called
upon them to surrender. They did so, Crockett
being one of the six. Confronting the Mexican
commander, they were treacherously ordered to be
shot down. It is said that Crockett, bowie knife
in hand, sprang with all his force for the throat
of the Mexican general, but was cut down or shot
down with the others, “his face even in death
wreathed in an expression of contempt and scorn
at such treachery.”

All this is but imagination; and there is all reason
.pn +1
to suppose that there never was any surrender of these
six last survivors. The commoner story is that Crockett
fought to the last with his broken rifle, and was
killed against the wall, before him lying the bodies of
some twenty Mexicans. The usual impression is that
he killed these twenty Mexicans himself before he
was cut down, but this is perhaps the result of
emotional writing. No one knows how many foes
had fallen to his arm. No one can tell how many
Mexicans each of these raging, fighting men destroyed
before he himself went down. Earlier in
the siege Crockett recounts picking off five cannoneers
one after the other. He tells how the Bee
Hunter and Thimblerig did their sharpshooting, how
the Pirate died of wounds received in a sortie, how
the Bee Hunter—a most unlikely thing—burst into
poesy and song at the hoisting of the Texas flag.
Some of these things have too unreal a sound. There
is something not quite Crockett, though à la Crockett,
in the conclusion of Crockett’s so-called, or rather
alleged, diary:

“March 5.—Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom!
throughout the day. No time for memorandums
now. Go ahead. Liberty and independence forever!”

These are the last recorded words of dear Davy
Crockett. It is probable in the extreme that he
.pn +1
never wrote them. It is unlikely to an equal degree
that, in all the turmoil of the Alamo fight, he could
deliberately have kept a diary, or that it could have
been preserved after all the horrible details of that
bloody and disastrous conflict. As to the end of
Davy Crockett, there is and has been no living human
being who could speak with absolute accuracy
and authenticity. Bloody San Jacinto, the field
where the cry “Remember the Alamo!” was the
watchword of a dire and just revenge, left but few
Mexican eye-witnesses of the Alamo.

Be that as it may, we know that Davy Crockett died
fighting, that he died with his face to the enemy, like
the brave man that he was, undaunted, unafraid. No
politics now, no statesmanship, no little ambitions
now for Davy Crockett. He was once more the child
of the wilderness, stark, savage, exultant, dreadful,
one more of those Titanic characters that swept away
a weaker population, beat down all opposition, conquered
the American wilderness and made way for an
American civilization.

.tb

The study of Crockett’s life shows us an America
yet loose and scattered, not knit together into a national
whole; and the political problems of that day
were still those arising from geography. Backwoods
Davy was after all not so poor a thinker, nor so far
.pn +1
from getting to the marrow of things. After his
visit to the North, and his reconciliation to the doctrines
of a protective tariff, he makes one comment
which, while it may not settle political argument,
ought to teach a national courtesy and a human
tolerance on both sides in any national difference.

“If Southerners would visit the North,” he says,
“it would give different ideas to them who have been
deluded and spoken in strong terms of dissolving the
Union.” A trifle ungrammatical this, perhaps, but
startling reading, when one remembers that it was
recorded in 1834. Again we find our independent
thinker discussing freely the questions of transportation,
which were then and always have been so important
in this country. He was opposed to Jackson
in the first place because Jackson “vetoed the bill for
the Maysville road.” He was opposed to Van Buren
because he “voted against the continuance of the national
road through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and
against appropriations for its preservation.” He opposed
Van Buren further because he “voted in favor
of toll gates on the national road, demanding a
tribute from the West for the right to pass on her own
highways, constructed out of her own money,—a
thing never heard of before.”

Crockett’s changes of residence, ever drifting farther
to the westward in his native state, and his
.pn +1
final long pilgrimage to the Southwest, where he
certainly, though his autobiography does not so state,
visited different parts of Texas and the Indian nations,
is index of the tendency of the times. The
West of that day is the South of to-day. Thus, a
writer of 1834 states, “The West is settled by representatives
from every country, but it is very largely
indebted for its inhabitants to Virginia, Georgia and
the two Carolinas.” History and our census maps
show us that the day of the upper West was yet
to come. Boone and his like had led across the
Appalachians. Crockett and his like had crossed
the Mississippi. The march toward the Rockies was
now steadily and determinedly begun, under what
difficulties and with what results we shall presently
observe.

.fm

.fn #
The black bears which fed on the corpses left on the field of
Braddock’s Defeat became for a time bold and somewhat fearless
of man.
.fn-

.fn #
These stories are not to be doubted, and are not especially
wonderful. The writer has often hunted in Mississippi with a
planter, Colonel R. E. Bobo, who more than equalled all of
Crockett’s records. In one year, soon after his first arrival in
Coahoma County, Mississippi, Colonel Bobo killed two hundred
and six bears. The writer was present when ten bears were
killed in eight days.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk2ch02 pn=+1
CHAPTER II||AGAINST THE WATERS[#]
.sp 2

In 1810 the Western frontier of the United
States slanted like the roof of a house from Maine
to Louisiana. The center of population was almost
exactly on the site of the city of Washington.
The West was a distinct section, and it was a section
that had begun to develop an aristocracy. We
still wore linsey-woolsey in Kentucky; still pounded
our corn in a hollow stump in Ohio; still killed our
Indians with the ancient weapon of our fathers;
still took our produce to New Orleans in flat-boats;
still were primitive in many ways.

None the less we had among us an aristocrat, a man
who classified himself as better than his fellow men.
There had been born that early captain of transportation,
the keel-boatman, the man that could go up-stream.
The latter had for the stationary or semi-stationary
man a vast and genuine contempt, as
nomad man has ever had for the man of anchored
habit. There was warrant for this feeling of
superiority, for the keel-boat epoch was a great one
.pn +1
in American history. Had this clumsy craft never
been supplanted by the steamboat, its victories would
have been of greater value to America than all the
triumphs she ever won on the seas.

As for the keel-boatmen themselves, they were
a hardy, wild, and reckless breed. They spent their
days in the blazing sun, their heads drooping over
the setting-pole, their feet steadily trudging the
walking-boards of their great vessels from morning
until night and day after day. A wild life, a merry
one, and a brief, was that lived by this peculiar
class of men, who made characters for one of the
vivid chapters in the tale of the early West.

The men of the West had solved in some rude
way the problem of getting up-stream, though
still they clung to the highways of nature, the water-courses.
The men of the ax and rifle had once
more broken over the ultimate barriers assigned to
them by the men of book and gown. That mysterious
land beyond the Mississippi was even then
receiving more and more of that adventurous population
that the statesmen of the Louisiana Purchase
feared would leave the East and never would
return.

The fur traders of St. Louis had found a way
to reach the Rockies. The adventurous West was
once more blazing a trail for the commercial and
.pn +1
industrial West to follow. This was the second
outward setting of the tide of west-bound travel.
We had used up all our down-stream transportation,
and we had taken over, and were beginning to use,
all the trails that led into the West, all the old
French trails, the old Spanish trails, the trails that
led out with the sun. No more war parties now
from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, from the Great
Lakes to the Mississippi. This was our country.
We held the roads.

But now there were happening yet other strange
and startling things. In 1806, at Pittsburg, some
persons built the first steamboat ever seen on the
Ohio River. Its first trip was the occasion of much
rejoicing, and was celebrated with fervor, which,
however, must have received a certain dampening
by the outcome of the experiment. The boat,
crowded with excited spectators, ran very handsomely
down-stream, but when it essayed to return
the current proved too strong, and only setting-poles
and rowboats saved the day. This, then, was the
precursor of an aristocracy in transportation before
which even the haughty keel-boatmen were obliged
to abase themselves. In 1811 the steamer New
Orleans was built at Pittsburg, and following the
guidance of “Mr. Roosevelt of New York,” who had
previously investigated the matter, successfully ran
.pn +1
the riverway to New Orleans.[#] More than that, she
proved able to return up-stream.[#] What fate then
was left for the keel-boats?

In 1819 a steamboat had appeared as far west on
the Great Lakes as Mackinaw. In 1826 a steamboat
reached Lake Michigan. In 1828 the first steamboat
of the American Fur Company mastered the turbid
flood of the Missouri, and ascended that stream as
far as the Great Falls.[#] In 1832 a steamboat
.pn +1
arrived at the city of Chicago. The West was now
becoming very much a country of itself.

The curious fact continued to be fact—that it
was the South that was to open, the North and
the East that were to occupy. Of the two essential
tools, the Southern man might have left at home his
ax, the Northern man his rifle. But it was as yet
no time for a North or a South. The Northerners
and the Southerners both became Westerners, and
if the ax followed the rifle, the plow as swiftly came
behind the ax.

Thanks to the man that could go up-stream, corn
was no longer worth one hundred and sixty-five dollars
a bushel anywhere in America. Corn was worth
fifty cents a bushel, and calico was worth fifty cents
a yard, at the city of Kaskaskia, in the heart of the
Mississippi valley. Kaskaskia, the ancient, was queen
of the down-stream trade in her day. She was important
enough to command a visit from General
Lafayette, early in this century; and the governor of
Illinois addressed the distinguished visitor with an
oratory not without interest, since it was alike full
of bombast, of error, of truth, and of prophecy:

“Sir, when the waters of the Mississippi, generations
hence, are traversed by carriers of commerce
from all parts of the world; when there shall live
west of the Father of Waters a people greater in
.pn +1
numbers than the present population of the United
States; when, sir, the power of England, always
malevolent, shall have waned to nothing, and the
eagles and stars of our national arms be recognized
and honored in all parts of the globe; when the old
men and the children of to-day shall have been
gathered to their fathers, and their graves have been
obliterated from the face of the earth, Kaskaskia
will still remember and honor your name. Sir, as
the commercial queen of the West, she welcomes
you to a place within her portals. So long as Kaskaskia
exists, your name and praises shall be sung
by her.”

To-day Kaskaskia is forgotten. The conditions
that produced her have long since disappeared.
The waters, in pity, have literally washed her away
and buried her far in the southern sea. Yet Kaskaskia
serves admirably as a measuring point for
the West of that day. She stood at the edge of
civilization on the one hand, of barbarism on the
other. Beyond her lay a land as unknown as the
surface of the moon, a land that offered alike
temptation and promise. Calico was worth fifty
cents a yard at Kaskaskia; it was worth three dollars
a yard in Santa Fé. A beaver skin was worth three
dollars in New York; it was worth fifty cents at
the head of the Missouri.
.pn +1

There you have the problems of the men of 1810,
and that, in a nutshell, is the West of 1810, 1820,
1830. The problem was then, as now, how to transport
a finished product into a new country, a raw
product back into an old country, and a population
between the two countries. There sprang up then,
in this second era of American transportation, that
mighty commerce of the prairies, which, carried on
under the name of trade, furnished one of the boldest
commercial romances of the earth. Fostered by merchants,
it was captained and carried on by heroes, and
was dependent upon a daily heroism such as commerce
has never seen anywhere except in the American
West. The Kit Carsons now took the place of
the Simon Kentons, the Bill Williamses, of the Daniel
Boones. The Western scout, the trapper, the hunter,
wild and solitary figures, took prominent place on the
nation’s canvas.

This Western commerce, the wagon freighting,
steamboating, and packing, of the first half of this
century, was to run in three great channels, each
distinct from the other. First there was the fur
trade, whose birth was in the North. Next there
was the trade of mercantile ventures to the far
Southwest. Lastly there was to grow up the freighting
trade to the mining regions of the West. The
.pn +1
cattle-growing, farming, or commercial West of
to-day was still a thing undreamed.

In every one of these three great lines of activity
we may still note what we may call the curiously
individual quality of the West. The conditions of
life, of trade, of any endurance on the soil, made
heavy demands upon the physical man. There must,
above all things, be strength, hardihood, courage.
There were great companies in commerce, it is true,
but there were no great corporations to safeguard
the persons of those transported. Each man must
“take care of himself,” as the peculiar and significant
phrase went. “Good-by; take care of yourself,” was
the last word for the man departing to the West.[#]

The strong legs of himself and his horse, the strong
.pn +1
arms of himself and his fellow laborers, these must
furnish his transportation. The muscles tried and
proved, the mind calm amid peril, the heart unwearied
by reverses or hardships—these were the
items of the capital, universal and indispensable, of
the West. We may trace here the development of
a type as surely as we may by reading the storied
rocks of geology. This time of boat and horse, of
pack and cordelle and travois, of strenuous personal
effort, of individual initiative, left its imprint forever
and indelibly on the character of the American,
and made him what he is to-day among the
nations of the globe.

There was still a West when Kaskaskia was queen.
Major Long’s expedition up the Platte brought back
the “important fact” that the “whole division of
North America drained by the Missouri and the
Platte, and their tributaries between the meridians
of the mouth of the Platte and the Rockies, is almost
entirely unfit for cultivation, and therefore uninhabitable
for an agricultural people.” There are
many thousands of farmers to-day who can not quite
agree with Major Long’s dictum, but in that day
the dictum was accepted carelessly or eagerly. No
one west of the Mississippi yet cared for farms.
There were swifter ways to wealth than farming,
and the wild men of the West of that day had only
.pn +1
scorn and distrust for the whole theory of agriculture.

“As soon as you thrust the plow into the earth,”
said one adventurer who had left the East for
the wilder lands of the West, “it teems with worms
and useless weeds. Agriculture increases population
to an unnatural extent.” For such men
there was still a vast world without weeds, where
the soil was virgin, where one might be uncrowded
by the touch of home-building man. Let the farmers
have Ohio and Kentucky; there was still a West.

There was, in the first place, then, the West of
the fur trade, the trade that had come down through
so many vicissitudes, legacy of Louis the Grand
Monarch and his covetous intriguers. For generations
the <i>coureurs du bois</i>, wild peddlers of the
woods, had traced the ultimate waterways of the
far Northwest, sometimes absent for one, two, or
more years from the place they loosely called home,
sometimes never returning at all from the savagery
that offered so great a fascination, often too strong
even for men reared in the lap of luxury and
refinement.

Steam was but an infant, after all, in spite of the
little steamboat triumphs of the day. The waters
offered roadway for the steamboats, and water
transportation by steam was much less expensive
.pn +1
than transportation by railway; but the head of navigation
by steamboats was only the point of departure
of a wilder and cruder transportation. Beyond the
natural reach of the <i>canot du Nord</i>, the lesser craft
of the natives, the smaller birch-barks, took up the
trail, and passed even farther up into the unknown
countries; and beyond the head of the ultimate
thread of the waters the pack-horse, or the travois
and the dog, took up the burden of the day, until the
trails were lost in the forest, and the traveler carried
his pack on his own back.[#]

It is a curious fact, and one perhaps not commonly
known, that the Indian sign of the “cutthroat” (the
forefinger drawn across the throat), which is the universal
name for “Sioux” among all other American
tribes, is, in all likelihood, a misnomer. The Sioux
were dog Indians of old, before they got horses from
the West, and they worked the dog as a draft animal,
with a collar about the neck, just as it is now worked
over much of the sub-arctic country. The sign of
the two fingers across the neck once indicated “dog”
as plainly as the single finger across the neck now
.pn +1
signifies “cutthroat.” Not only did the native and
early white wanderers of the wilderness use the dog
as a draft animal, but they packed him as they later
packed the horse in the wagonless lands of the
West.

This fact is still quite within the memory or practice
of man. A dog could draw more on a travois,
or pole-frame, than he could carry on his back.
It was not unusual to see a great copper kettle lashed
to the poles of a travois drawn by a dog, and in the
kettle piled indiscriminately moccasins, babies, puppies,
and other loose personal property. Hitched to
the proper sledge, six dogs could draw a thousand
pounds over the snow. Thus ran the earliest stagecoach
in the West.

The great canoe, the travois, and the sledge were
inventions of the early French fur trade, but we
used them as we needed them when the fur country
became our own. France ceded her trading posts
to England in 1763, and England transferred them
to us in 1796. The great Northwest Company had
by 1783 extended its posts all along our Northern
border, not being too particular about crossing the
line; but by 1812 we had made our authority felt,
and by 1816 had passed a law excluding foreigners
from our fur trade. The old Northwest Company
.pn +1
handed over to the younger American Fur Company
all the posts found to be within our marches. We
heard, for the time, of the Pacific Fur Company, the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the Missouri Fur
Company, of the “free trappers” and “free traders”
of the West.

It matters not what form or name that trade assumed.
The important fact is that we now, by means
of this wild commerce, began to hear of such lands
as Oregon, of that region now known as Montana,
of a thousand remote and unmapped localities, which
might ultimately prove inhabitable. Summer or
winter, over all these new lands the wild new travel
of the West went on, and after fashions it determined
for itself. Thus, in the country of the Missouri, the
left fork of our great American waterway, there was
no birch-bark for the making of the <i>canot du Nord</i>.
Hence the keel-boat, the setting pole and the sweep,
the sail and the tracking line. Yet the great craft,
like the Northern birch-bark ship, must at last reach
a land of waterways too small for its bulk. The Montana
adventurers had not birch-bark, but they had the
buffalo. They made “bull boats” out of the sun-dried
hides, and these rude craft served to carry
many a million dollars’ worth of furs over gaps that
would have seemed full long to a walking man.
.pn +1

The outlying posts[#] at the head of the far-off
streams received their supplies from the annual
caravan of keel-boats, or the later great Mackinaw
boats, square-sterned craft fifty feet long, of twelve-foot
beam, of four-foot freeboard, and a carrying
capacity of fourteen tons.[#] Each of these boats
.pn +1
required a crew of twelve men, and it took six months
of the hardest labor towing, tracking, poling, and
rowing to get the clumsy craft from St. Louis to
such a spot as old Fort Benton. The run downstream
required only about thirty days, and it was
commonly believed that the square stern of the
Mackinaw caused it to run faster than the current
in taking the rapids of the Missouri.

The labor of this primitive transportation, this
wading for hundreds of miles each spring against an
icy torrent, was not work for children. It was not
children that this wild trade begot, but men. The
Titanic region demanded Titanic methods. It made
its own laws and customs, struck out for itself new
methods. The world beyond never asked the world
behind what or how to do. This vast, rude land
asked no other country how to perform the tasks
that lay before it. Of the wildness and rudeness of
.pn +1
this new world there could be no question, but its
savagery was met by a savage determination more
fearless and indomitable than its own.

The mountain trapper, the prairie freighter and
trader, the California miner were great men, tremendous
men, fit successors of those that fought their way
across the Alleghanies. The fur trade was practically
over by 1834, and the Santa Fé trade lasted, roughly
speaking, only about twenty years, being practically
terminated in 1843 by the edict of Santa Anna.
These difficulties in our Western commerce all came
to an end with the Mexican War, and with the
second and third great additions to our Western
territory, which gave us the region on the south as
well as the north, from ocean to ocean.

This time was one of great activity in all the
West, and the restless population that had gained
a taste of the adventurous life of that region was
soon to have yet greater opportunities. The discovery
of gold in California unsettled not only all
the West, but all America, and hastened immeasurably
the development of the West, not merely as to
the Pacific coast, but also in regard to the mountain
regions between the great plains and the coast.

The turbulent population of the mines spread from
California into every accessible portion of the Rockies.
The trapper and hunter of the remotest range
.pn +1
found that he had a companion in the wilderness,
the prospector, as hardy as himself, and animated
by a feverish energy that rendered him even more
determined and unconquerable than himself. Love
of excitement and change invited the trapper to the
mountains. It was love of gain that drove the
prospector thither. Commercial man was to do in
a short time what the adventurer would never have
done. California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana,—how
swiftly, when we come to counting decades, these
names followed upon those of Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Ohio!

In the new demands for locomotion and transportation,
which now arose from these new armies of
moving men, the best thinkers of the country could
for a long time suggest nothing better than the sea
and the rivers as the great highways. Steamboats
ran regularly on every Western river where such
navigation was possible. Yet at the head of the
waters there still existed, and in greater degree than
ever before, long gaps between the abodes of the
mountain population and their bases of supplies.
The demand, moreover, was for transportation of
heavy goods.

The trapper that started out into the mountains
might take only two or three extra horses. He did
not use more than half a dozen traps in those
.pn +1
days, and counted always upon living upon wild
game. The new population of the mining camps,
which spread all through the mountains with incredible
rapidity, was made up of an entirely different
class of men, and was surrounded by an environment
less bountiful. They did not come to hunt, but to
dig or to riot; and they must be fed. At this time
the necessity brought forth the man. It was the
American packer that now saved the day.

The pack-horse idea is as old as America, but in its
perfection it is the product of the Spanish Southwest.
We read in history of the progresses of royal
personages in ancient times in the Old World, where
frequent mention is made of the number of sumpter-mules
that attended the caravans in those roadless
days. The sumpter-mule was the forerunner of the
pack-mule, though it is to be doubted if any servant
of an old-time king ever learned to do such impossible
things with the sumpter-mule as the American
packer did as a matter of course with his beasts of
burden.

Gradual changes were taking place, about midway
of the last century, in the characteristics of
Western commerce. The trapper and the hunter
had trafficked as individuals. The Santa Fé trade
was in control of men who remained at home and
sent their goods into another country, just as did
.pn +1
the early Phenician merchants. In the trade of the
mining towns, the merchant had come to be a resident
and not a non-resident, and the transportation
of his supplies was in the hands of companies or
individuals who had not any ownership in the goods
they handled.

The greatest drama of the common carrier had
its scene in the Rocky Mountains. The price of
staples in any mountain town was something that
not even the merchant himself could predict in
advance, dependent as it was upon the thousand
contingencies of freighting in rude regions and
among hostile tribes. Prices that would stagger
the consumer of to-day were frequently paid for the
simplest necessaries. As in the days of the trappers’
rendezvous everything was sold by the pint, so now
the standard of measure became the pound. A common
price for sugar in a mining camp was thirty-five
to fifty cents a pound. In the San Juan mining
camps, as late as 1875, potatoes sold for twenty-five
cents a pound. A mule or burro would earn its
own cost in a single trip, for there were occasions
under certain conditions, such as the packing from
Florence into the more remote placer districts, when
the pack-master charged as much as eighty cents a
pound from the supply point to the camps.

New cities began to be heard of in this mountain
.pn +1
trade, just as there had been in the wagon days of the
overland trail to Santa Fé: Pueblo, Cañon City,
Denver. All were outfitting and freighting points in
turn, while from the other side of the range there
were as many towns,—Florence, Walla Walla, Portland,—which
sent out the long trains of laden mules
and horses. The pack-train was as common and as
useful as the stage-line in developing the Black Hills
region, and many another still less accessible.

Commonly a horse or a mule would carry two
hundred to three hundred pounds of freight, a burro
one hundred to two hundred, and the price for
packing averaged somewhere about five to ten cents
a pound per hundred miles of distance, often very
much more. It was astonishing what flexibility this
old system of carriage had. A good pack-master
would undertake to transport any article that might
be demanded at the end of his route. It is well
known that much heavy mining machinery was
packed into the mountains; but this was not really
very wonderful, for such machinery was made purposely
in suitable sections for such transport.

Somewhat more difficult were other articles, such as
cook-stoves and the like, shipped not “knocked down.”
A piano was one of the odd articles that went into
the earliest of the Cœur d’Alene mining camps more
than a score of years ago. It was packed on four
.pn +1
mules, the piano resting on a sling of poles, which
virtually bound the mules together as well as gave
support to their burden, two mules going in front
and two behind. When the animals became too
tired to climb farther, the weight was temporarily
lightened by resting the piano on forked sticks
thrust up beneath the load. The strange package
was taken through in safety, though at a cost of
about a thousand dollars. All sorts of articles were
shipped in the same fashion, and packages of glassware,
cases of eggs, and many such goods customarily
made the long and rough journeys in
safety.

The charges were made on the weight of the
package, including the case or cover in which it
was shipped, and it was poor policy on the part
of the shipper to pack his goods too flimsily,
for the grip of the “diamond hitch” was never
a sparer of things beneath it. The hardest article
to pack in the mountains was quicksilver.
This commodity was shipped in iron flasks, and the
first thing the packer did was to unscrew the tops
of these flasks and fill the remaining interior space
completely with water, in order to prevent the heavy
blow of the shifting liquid contents, which was distressing
to the pack-horse. A flask of quicksilver
weighed about ninety pounds, and it was customary
.pn +1
to pack two flasks on each side of a horse or mule,
each pair of flasks being fastened in a board frame,
which gave facility for lashing all fast, and prevented
the wear of the condensed weight against the
back of the animal.

Wood, hay, boxes, trunks, indeed almost anything
that could be imagined, were common articles of
transport in the mountains, and it was at times a bit
odd to see a little burro almost hidden under a couple
of Saratoga trunks so big that he could neither lie
down nor roll over under them. The pack-train might
comprise a score or a hundred horses, and the conduct
of such a train was no small matter of skill and generalship.

Oxen were often used as pack-animals, the burden
frequently being lashed to the horns. An ox could
carry a fifty-pound sack of flour on top of its head,
though special saddles were sometimes used for ox-packing.
On the overland trail to California, cows
were sometimes employed as pack-animals, and were
often used in harness as draft-animals. Every one
knows the story of the carts and hand-barrows of
the great Mormon emigration. Under the old
Western conditions of transportation, is it any wonder
that horse-stealing was regarded as the worst
crime of the calendar?

The transportation of paddle and portage, of
.pn +1
sawbuck saddle and panniers, however, could not
forever serve except in the roughest of the mountain
chains. The demand for wheeled vehicles was
urgent, and the supply for that demand was forthcoming
in so far as human ingenuity and resourcefulness
could meet it. There arose masters in
transportation, common carriers of world-wide fame.

The pony express was a wonderful thing in its way,
and some of the old-time stage-lines that first
began to run out into the West were hardly less
wonderful. For instance, there was an overland
stage-line that ran from Atchison, on the Missouri
River, across the plains, and up into Montana by way
of Denver and Salt Lake City. It made the trip
from Atchison to Helena, nearly two thousand miles,
in twenty-two days.[#] Down the old waterways
.pn +1
from the placers of Alder Gulch to the same town of
Atchison was a distance of about three thousand
miles. The stage-line began to shorten distances
and lay out straight lines, so that now the West
was visited by vast numbers of sight-seers, tourists,
investigators, and the like, in addition to the actual
population of the land, the men that called the West
their home.

We should find it difficult now to return to stage-coach
travel, yet in its time it was thought luxurious.
One of the United States bank examiners of that
time, whose duties took him into the Western regions,
in the course of fourteen years traveled over
seventy-four thousand miles by stage-coach alone.
It is the strange part of this vivid history of the
West that many men who were prominent and active
in its wildest and crudest days are living to-day, fully
adapted to the present conditions, and apparently
almost forgetful that there ever was a different time.
Thus one of the more prominent early wagon-train
.pn +1
freighters of Montana, now a prosperous banker of
his state, gives a brief description of the old-time
industry, which is interesting because at first hand.
The freighter-banker goes on to say:

“The wagons were large prairie schooners, usually
three or four trailed together, pulled by sixteen to
twenty head of the largest oxen you ever saw. It
cost one cent a pound per one hundred miles to
transport freight. Sometimes, of course, we would
get five times this. The danger was from Indians
(Sioux and Blackfeet) attacking the trains and the
drivers. The herders and wagon boss went armed.
The earliest freighting point was from Fort Benton,
Montana, to the mines in the Rockies.[#] When boats
failed to reach Benton, owing to low water, then the
teams went below, three to four hundred miles, to
haul the freight up. In later times (after the junction
of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
.pn +1
Railways) we transported freight from Corinne, Utah.
There were probably one million dollars invested by
individuals and companies in Montana. The largest
companies were the ‘Diamond R’ Transportation
Company, established by Colonel Charles A. Broadwater
and three others, and I. G. Baker & Company.
The latter company was owned and managed by the
writer, and in the summer of 1879 transported over
twenty million pounds of freight on wagons for the
United States government, Canadian government,
and the merchants of Montana.”

A study of the market reports of the old “Montana
Post,” published 1864 to 1868, affords much insight
into the life and conditions of that time. Commenting
upon these facts, our early western resident, Mr.
N. P. Langford, remarks:

“The high prices of merchandise in Montana were
the natural outcome of great cost of transportation,
combined with large profits, owing to the great risks
.pn +1
incurred in taking goods through a hostile Indian
country. As population increased, the necessity of
procuring from the states a sure supply of the
necessities of life was uppermost in the minds of
the people. With the fortune of Midas, they feared
soon to share his fate, and have nothing but gold to
eat. But there was no lack of adventurous traders
in the states, who were ready to incur the risks
incident to a long overland journey, whose successful
termination was certain greatly to enrich them.[#]

“The supplies were brought into the mining camps
of Montana by three different routes: the overland
route from Omaha or St. Joseph, Missouri, by
way of Denver and Salt Lake, a distance of nineteen
hundred miles; from St. Louis by way of the Missouri
river to Fort Benton; and by pack-train from
the Pacific slope, starting from Portland or Walla
Walla, Oregon, crossing the Cœur d’Alenes and the
main ranges of the Rockies, and coming over the
Bitter Root valley.

“The larger part of the merchandise brought to
Montana came by the first-named route. The
.pn +1
vehicles used in transportation were, for the most part,
what were known as ‘Murphy wagons’—vehicles with
large wheels and strong bodies, capable of holding
eight thousand pounds of general merchandise, and
drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, or by as many
spans of mules. During the rainy season, and for
many weeks after a storm, it was frequently the case
that not more than five miles a day of progress could
be made with such a wagon train over the alkali
plains or along the valley of such a stream as Bitter
Creek. An average journey was about one hundred
miles a week, and thus an entire season, commencing
at the time when the grass of the plains was
sufficiently grown to furnish food for oxen and
mules, and lasting from eighteen to twenty weeks,
was consumed in making the journey.

“One who has never seen the plains, rivers, rocks,
cañons, and mountains of the portion of the country
traversed by these caravans, can form but a faint
idea from any description given of them of the innumerable
and formidable difficulties with which
every mile of this weary march was encumbered.
History has assigned a foremost place among its
glorified deeds to the passage of the Alps by Napoleon,
and to the long and discouraging march of the
French army under the same great conqueror to
Russia. If it be not invidious to compare small
.pn +1
things with great, we may assuredly claim for these
early pioneers greater conquests over nature than
were made by either of the great military expeditions
of Napoleon. A successful completion of the journey
was simply an escape from death.”

The nature of the transportation of passengers
over the overland route may be inferred from a trip
once made by the above writer by stage from
Atchison, on the Missouri River, to Helena, Montana,
which is thus described:

“The journey required thirty-one days of continuous
staging, and was prolonged by delays occasioned
by the incursions of the hostile Sioux, who
had killed several stock-tenders at different stations,
burned the buildings, and stolen the horses. From
their frequent attacks upon the coaches it was
necessary for us to be on the constant outlook. On
the second day after leaving Atchison, the eastern-bound
coach met us, having on board one wounded
passenger, the next day with one dead, and the next
with another wounded. At Sand Hill station the
body of the station keeper was lying by the side of
the smoking ruins of the log cabin. As there was
no stock to be found for a change of horses, we
drove on with our worn-out team, at a slow pace, to
the next station. The reports of passengers eastern-bound
were also very discouraging. Yet this risk of
.pn +1
life did not lessen travel. The coaches were generally
full. The fare from Atchison to Helena was
four hundred and fifty dollars, and our meals cost
each of us upward of one hundred and fifty dollars
more.”

These preliminary statements as to the difficulties
and dangers of the early transportation will make
plainer the somewhat extraordinary prices of merchandise
that often ruled. Thus, on December thirty-first,
1864, one will see coal oil quoted in the market
reports of Virginia City, Montana, at nine to ten
dollars per gallon. On January twenty-eighth, 1865,
we read: “<i>Candles</i>: less active in consequence of the
decline in coal oil.” Then comes, “Coal oil, nine
dollars; linseed oil, ten dollars.” At the head we read
that these market quotations are wholesale prices for
gold, and that ten per cent. should be added for
retail prices. At the bottom we have greenback
quotations for gold dust and gold coin, showing that
greenbacks were worth not quite forty-five cents on
the dollar for gold coin. Even this was more than
they were worth in the States, with gold at two twenty-five.
Coal oil at nine dollars a gallon in gold, with
greenbacks at forty-five cents, would cost twenty
dollars a gallon in greenbacks, at wholesale. Add
ten per cent., and we have twenty-two dollars as the
retail price. Linseed oil at ten dollars a gallon
in gold would be twenty-four dollars and twenty
cents a gallon in greenbacks, at retail.

.il fn=illus-215.jpg w=292 link=illus-215-lg.jpg
.ca A VOYAGEUR.

.pn +1
In the issue of the <i>Post</i> of April twenty-second,
1865, flour was quoted at eighty-five dollars a sack of
one hundred pounds on April seventeenth, and it is
stated that on April nineteenth, within a few hundred
miles, it had sold for five dollars a pound. This was
just after the surrender of Lee’s army, when greenbacks
were selling for ninety cents for gold dust, and
at eighty-two (eight per cent. less) for coin. This
was over six dollars a pound for flour, or twelve hundred
dollars for a barrel!

On April twenty-ninth, 1865, potatoes were worth
forty to fifty cents a pound in gold. At an average
price of forty-five cents a pound, a bushel (seventy
pounds) cost thirty-eight dollars in greenbacks. On
May sixth we read: “<i>Potatoes</i>. Several large loads
have arrived, . . . causing a decline of five cents
a pound.” So potatoes dropped off in price, in one
day, four dollars in greenbacks per bushel.

“On May thirteenth,” comments Mr. Langford
further, regarding this interesting commercial situation,
“we note that the principal restaurant, ‘in consequence
of the recent fall in flour,’ reduced day board
to twenty dollars per week for gold. The food of this
restaurant was very plain, and dried-apple pies were
considered a luxury. At that time I was collector
.pn +1
of internal revenue, and received my salary in greenbacks.
I paid thirty-six dollars per week for day
board at the Gibson House, at Helena. During the
period of the greatest scarcity of flour, the more
common boarding houses posted the following signs:
‘Board with bread at meals, $32; board without
bread, $22; board with bread <i>at dinner</i>, $25.’ Those
who took bread at each meal paid about ten dollars
per week more than those who took none.”

Here is the story of an incipient bread riot in the
ancient West of thirty-five years ago, taken from
the columns of the journal previously mentioned:

.ce
“<sc>Virginia City, Montana</sc>, April 22, 1865.

“April 16. The flour market opened at an advance
of ten dollars per sack, and by eleven o’clock
A. M. had reached the nominal price of sixty-five
dollars per ninety-eight-pound sack. The day closing,
holders asked a further advance of five dollars
per sack.

“April 17. The demand for flour is increasing.
The market opened firm at yesterday’s prices. Before
ten o’clock it had advanced to seventy-five
dollars per sack. Eleven o’clock rolls round and
finds dealers in this staple asking eighty dollars per
ninety-eight-pound sack. A few transactions were
made at these figures. Before twelve o’clock
.pn +1
transfers were made at eighty-five dollars per sack, and
some few dealers were asking a further advance of
five dollars per sack. Consumers, having no other
resource, were compelled to concede to the nominal
price of holders, and paid ninety dollars per sack in
gold.

“April 18. Flour is truly on the rampage, no
concession from dealers’ prices on the part of the
very few holders of considerable quantities, with a
still further advance of five dollars per sack, which
brings the price of an average lot of flour to the
unprecedented figures, in this market, of one dollar
per pound.

“April 19. The flour market weakened under the
excitement of ‘current reports’ from some new speculators
in the market, transfers of small lots being
made at eighty dollars per sack.

“Eleven o’clock. Our city is thrown into a state
of excitement. Rumors of a bread riot are heard
from all quarters.

“Twelve o’clock. Our principal streets are well
lined and coated with men, avowedly on the raid
for flour.

“Later. Flour is seized wherever found, in large
or small quantities, and taken to a common depot.
On the pretext under which several lots of flour
were confiscated, we do not think that any one would
.pn +1
consider it wrong or objectionable to store flour,
under the present circumstances, in fire-proof cellars
or warehouses.

“We, however, do not indorse the concealing of
flour under floors or haystacks when the article is
up to the present price. We know of no parties
that were holders of flour that could not have realized
a handsome profit at seventy-five dollars per
sack; but in favor of merchants that have invested
in this staple at high figures, we should state that
we have known flour to be sold within a circumference
of a few hundred miles at the rate of five
dollars per pound, and no raiders in the market.”

.ce
“<sc>Virginia City</sc>, M. T., May 6, 1865.

“The business of the week is a slight improvement
over many weeks past, owing to the fine weather
sending miners all to work.

“<i>Flour.</i> Still continues very scarce, three small
lots, only one hundred and twenty-one sacks in all,
having arrived from over the range, and were rapidly
sold at seventy-five dollars per sack. The want of
this staple is very much felt, as all substitutes for
this article are about exhausted.”

These curious and rapidly forgotten records of
another day show us clearly that, even as late as the
Civil War, there was a vast land beyond the Missouri
.pn +1
whose people and whose customs were different from
those of the East; which had earned its own right
to be different; which was as strong and self-reliant
and resourceful as though it were part of another
sphere; and which might claim that it had solved
its own problems for itself and asked no aid. Yet
it was this very aloofness and independence that
had always threatened, in one way or another, the
secession of the West in fact or in sympathy from
the East. Therefore we count that a great day—a
day fatal for the West, but glorious for America—when
the heads of the streams were reached and
the mountains overrun. It was a great day, an
important date—though unrecorded in any history
of this land—when the West had gone as far away
as it could, and at last had turned and begun to
come back home!

At the end of the Civil War the West had exhausted
all the possibilities of down-stream and
up-stream transportation. It had developed its resources
to a remarkable degree. But now the
time was come for newer, more rapid, and more
revolutionary methods. The West was at the beginning
of another and not less interesting era, a time
of swift and startling change.

If our theory regarding Western transportation
and Western emigration has been correct, we should
.pn +1
now be able to check back on the census map,
and expect to find a certain verification of our conclusions.
It is curious to observe that the path of
the star, which marks on the census charts the
center of population, in reality has followed much
the same line as the early west-bound movement
with which we have been principally concerned.
The star moves slowly westward, across the Alleghanies,
as did the first pioneers. Then it follows
down the valley of the Ohio, as did the early
down-stream population under our theory of the
transportation of that day.

In 1860 the center of population is situated on the
Ohio River, perhaps a hundred miles east of the city
of Cincinnati. In 1860 the colors thicken deeply
along the river valleys; and far up the streams, even
toward the heads of the Mississippi and the Missouri,
the map tells us that the population is denser than it
is in regions remote from any waterways. In 1870 the
face of the map remains, for the most part, bare west
of the Missouri, except where the Indian reservations
lie.

On the Pacific coast, in California and Oregon,
there is a population in some districts of forty-five
to ninety persons to the square mile. Around Helena,
Deer Lodge, and other mining towns of Montana,
there is a faint dash of color showing a population
.pn +1
of two to six souls to the square mile, which is
beyond the average of all but a few localities west
of the Missouri River. At Salt Lake, at Denver, at
Santa Fé, termini of transportation in their day, as
we have seen, there are bands of a similar color.
The total population of America, which in 1810
was 7,239,881, and in 1820, the beginning of our
up-stream days, was 9,633,822, is in 1860 31,443,321
and in 1870 38,558,371.[#] Nearly all of this population
shows on the census map as east of the
Missouri River. Out in the unsettled and unknown
region west of the Missouri there still lay the land
that to the present generation means the West,
appealing, fascinating, mysterious, inscrutable; and
for that West there was to come another day.

.fm

.fn #
The Century Magazine, December, 1901.
.fn-

.fn #
Nicholas J. Roosevelt, a great-uncle of President Theodore
Roosevelt, was one of the owners of the New Orleans, and commanded
her on the historic voyage down the Mississippi, it being
the honeymoon trip for Mr. Roosevelt and his bride. Eventful
enough it proved, this early voyage. As though in protest at
this invasion of its sanctity, the wilderness broke out in cataclysmic
revolt. The great New Madrid earthquake, which changed
the contour of hundreds of miles of Mississippi valley lands,
greeted the vessel upon its first night on the great river. “A
strange, weird, thrilling moan or high keyed sigh swept tremulously
across the forest and cane-brakes, ending in a tremendous
shriek, which again dropped to a long, low moan.” This tremendous
warning was followed by the quaking, the upheaval
and the subsidence of the earth in such fashion that the course
of the mighty Mississippi itself was for the time reversed, and
afterward forever altered, while vast forests were sunk like
so many ranks of toys. A great tidal wave swept the New Orleans
from her moorings, and Roosevelt and his wife barely escaped
with life. The end of an older world and the beginning of
a new had indeed come.

This first river-steamer was 116 feet over all, with twenty-feet
beam, and was of only 400 tons burden; strange precursor
of the swift and beautiful river-racers that were soon to follow,
whose keen, trim hulls and dazzlingly ornamented superstructures
were ere long to house another phase of transportation.
.fn-

.fn #
Naturally, the down-stream and up-stream eras overlapped.
Thus the cypress rafting of the Mississippi Delta, down the Sunflower
and Yazoo rivers and to the port of New Orleans, was at
its height in the years 1842-44. The rivers will ever remain the
great downhill highways for heavy freight.
.fn-

.fn #
The Independence, of Louisville, Ky., ascended the Missouri
as high as Booneville, Mo., in 1814.
.fn-

.fn #
As witness the following from the record of an early prairie
journey: “Our route lay through all that vast extent of country
then known as Dakota, including the territories, since formed,
of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and a portion left, still bearing
the original name. The greater part of the distance had
never been traveled, and we were obliged to pick our way as
best we could. There was not even an Indian trail to guide us.
We were twenty days in crossing the state of Minnesota to Fort
Abercrombie, on the Red River of the North, at that time the
last outpost of civilization. Remaining there a few days for
repairs, we resumed our journey early in July over the trackless
plains, certain of our point of destination, but uncertain as to
the distance between us and it, the time to be consumed in getting
there, and all the difficulties of the long and tedious travel.
Conscious of our exposure to attacks from savages, we were on
the lookout every moment. A trip that is now completed in
five days and is continuously a pleasure-trip consumed five
months of time, every moment filled with care and anxiety.”—(N.
P. Langford.)
.fn-

.fn #
The pack of the “timber-cruiser,” or “land-looker,” of the
lumber trade is made of stout canvas, with shoulder-straps. When
the cruiser starts out on his lonely woods voyage, his pack,
with its contents of tent, blankets, flour, and bacon, weighs about
eighty pounds, exclusive of the rifle and ax which he also carries.
He may be absent for a month at a time, and he crosses country
impenetrable to any but the footman.
.fn-

.fn #
There were in all scores of these rude trading posts, whose history
is in some cases obscure. Fort Union was one of the famous
early stations, and was built in 1828, near the mouth of the
Yellowstone, being known for the first year or so as Fort Floyd.
Kipp’s Fort, or Fort Piegan, was erected in 1831 at the mouth of
Marias River. Campbell and Sublette’s Fort, or Fort William, was
built on the Missouri, at or near the site of the later Fort Buford,
in 1833. Fort F. A. Chardon was built in 1842 or 1843 at the mouth
of the Judith; it was removed to the north bank of the Missouri
in 1844 or 1845, and was rechristened Fort Lewis, in honor of
Meriwether Lewis. In 1846 this post was torn down and rebuilt
on the south bank of the Missouri, somewhat farther down stream.
In 1850 it was wholly rebuilt, this time of adobe and not of logs,
and this was the beginning of the famous Old Fort Benton, so
long associated with all early memories of the upper Missouri.
Fort Van Buren was on the right bank of the Yellowstone, and
was built probably in 1835, some say in 1832. Fort Cass was
erected in 1832, on the Yellowstone, near the mouth of the Bighorn.
Fort Alexander, also on the Yellowstone, was built about 1840,
possibly in 1839. It was most flourishing in 1849, and was abandoned
in 1850. It was located opposite the mouth of the Rosebud.
Fort Sarpy was on the right bank of the Yellowstone, twenty-five
miles above the mouth of the Bighorn. It was the last of the
important posts to be built (probably about 1850), and was abandoned
about 1859. (v. Chittenden, “American Fur Trade;” who,
however, differs from others in certain dates; as v. Rocky Mountain
Magazine.)
.fn-

.fn #
“The principal articles of trade were alcohol, blankets, blue
and scarlet cloth, sheeting (domestics), ticking, tobacco, knives,
fire-steels, arrow-points, files, brass wire (different sizes), beads,
brass tacks, leather belts (from four to ten inches wide), silver
ornaments for hair, shells, axes, hatchets. Alcohol was the
principal article of trade, until after the passing of an act of Congress
(June 30, 1843) prohibiting it under severe penalties. . . .
There was a bitter rivalry between the Hudson Bay Company and
the American Fur Company. The Hudson Bay Company often sent
men to induce the confederated Blackfeet to go north and trade,
and the Indians said they were offered large rewards to kill all
the traders on the Missouri River and destroy the trading-posts.
\. \. \. When the Blackfeet commenced to trade on the Missouri,
they did not have any robes to trade; they saved only what they
wanted for their own use. The Hudson Bay Company only wanted
furs of different kinds. The first season the Americans did not
get any robes, but traded for a large quantity of beaver, otter,
marten, etc. They told the Indians they wanted robes, and from
that time the Indians made them their principal article of trade.
The company did not trade provisions of any kind to the Indians,
but when an Indian made a good trade he would get a spoonful
of sugar, which he would put in his medicine-bag to use in sickness
when all other remedies failed.” (“The Rocky Mountain
Magazine.”)
.fn-

.fn #
In the “Montana Post” for February 11, 1865, there
appeared the following advertisement:

.nf c
OVERLAND
STAGE LINE.
Ben. Holladay, Proprietor.
Carrying the Great Through Mail between
the Atlantic and Pacific States.
———
This line is now running in connection with the daily coaches
between Atchison, Kansas & Placerville, Cal.

Tri-weekly Coaches between Salt Lake City and Walla Walla,
via Boise City, West Bannack, and
Tri-weekly Coaches between Great Salt Lake City and Virginia City,
Montana, via Bannack City.

Carrying the U. S. Mail,
Passengers, and Express Matter.

Also tri-weekly coaches between Virginia City and Bannack City.

Coaches for Great Salt Lake City and Bannack City leave Virginia City
every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday Morning,
connecting at Fort Hall; and coaches to Boise and Walla Walla,
and at Great Salt Lake City, with the daily lines to the
Atlantic States, Nevada, and California.

Express matter carried in charge of competent and trustworthy messengers.
.nf-

.nf r
For further particulars apply at office.
Nat Stein, Agent,
Virginia City, Montana Territory.
.nf-
.fn-  # ends footnote

.fn #
A large advance over the capabilities of the old Mackinaw
boats may be seen recorded in the log of a Missouri River Steamboat:

.rj
“Fort Benton, July 14, 1866.

“First trip of steamer Deer Lodge, Captain Lawrence Ohlman,
Clerk H. A. Dohrman, Engineer S. G. Hill.

“Left St. Louis March 20, at 6½ o’clock p. m., for Fort Benton,
lost 12 days by ice, and arrived at Fort Union May 1, where we
laid 4 hours and then started on our way up the river. Reached
Fort Benton May 18, at 4½ p. m. Discharged 200 tons of freight,
and started on return to St. Louis May 21, and arrived there June
3, having made the trip down in 13 days and 15 hours.

“Trip No. 2. Left St. Louis for Fort Benton Wednesday, June
6, at 6½ p. m., with 210 tons of freight, 60 tons for Randall, Rice,
and Sully, 150 tons for Benton. Running time from St. Louis to
Fort Sully 16 days; to Fort Rice 21 days; to Fort Union 27 days
and 6 hours; to Milk River 29½ days; to the mouth of Judith, or
Camp Cook, 35 days 10 hours. Discharged 147 tons of freight and
laid there 12 hours, and started again for Benton. Passed Drowned
Man’s Rapids in 2½ minutes without laying a line or working a
full head of steam. Laid up at Eagle Creek 3 hours, and arrived
at Fort Benton July 13, at 4 p. m. Time from St. Louis 36 days
and 21 hours.

“The round trip from Benton to St. Louis in 53 days and 12
hours, without setting a spar or rubbing the bottom.” (The
“Montana Post.”)
.fn-

.fn #
In the sixties the price of wheat was at times so low in Iowa
that farmers could not pay their taxes. Many men engaged in
freighting flour and bacon from Iowa to Denver, Colorado, via
Council Bluffs and the route up the Platte valley, then a part of
the buffalo range and a favorite hunting-ground of the Sioux and
Pawnees. The father of the writer made such a trading-trip
in 1860.
.fn-

.fn #
The average density of settlement of the United States was, in
1810, 17.7 persons to the square mile; in 1820, 18.9 persons; in
1860, 26.3; in 1870, 30.3.
.fn-

.pb
.pn +2
.ce
<l>THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC</l>

.h2 id=bk3ch01 nobreak
CHAPTER I||KIT CARSON
.sp 2

In reviewing the life of Christopher Carson, another
of our Western leaders in exploration, we come
upon the transition period between the time of
up-stream transportation and that which led across
the waters; the epoch wherein fell the closing days
of Western adventure properly so called, and the
opening days of a Western civilization fitly so named.
Kit Carson, as he was always called, was born in
Madison County, Kentucky, on December twenty-fourth,
1809. Thus it may be seen that his time
lapped over that of Crockett and even of Boone. It
is not generally known, yet it is the case, that Kit
Carson was a grandson of Daniel Boone.

Carson’s life, therefore, rounds out the time of the
great Westerners. He comes down to the railroad-building
day. His was the time of the long-haired
men of the American West. John Colter, Jim
Bridger, Bill Williams, the mulatto Beckwith or
.pn +1
Beckworth; the great generals of the fur trade, Lisa,
Ashley, Henry, Smith, Sublette, Fitzpatrick, all that
company of the great captains of hazard—these were
the men of his day; and among them all, not one has
come down to us in more distinct figure or with
memory carrying greater respect.

We call Frémont “The Great Pathfinder,” and
credit him with the exploration of the Rockies, the
Pacific slope, and the great tramontane interior
basins. Yet Frémont did not begin his explorations
until 1842, and by that time the West of the adventurers
was practically an outlived thing. For
ten years the fur trade had been virtually defunct.
For more than a decade the early commerce of the
prairies had been waning. The West had been
tramped across from one end to the other by a race
of men peerless in their daring, chief among whom
might be named this little, gentle, blue-eyed man,
of whom that genially supercilious and generally
ignorant biographer, J. S. C. Abbott, is good enough
to write: “It is strange that the wilderness could
have formed so estimable a character!”

This little man—he is described by one who knew
him as a small man, not over five feet six inches in
height—had, long before he ever heard of Frémont,
ridden and walked along every important stream of
the Rocky Mountains; had journeyed across the
.pn +1
“American Desert” a dozen times, back and forth;
had seen every foot of the Rockies from the Forks of
the Missouri to the Bayou Salade; had seen all of
New Mexico; had visited old Mexico, Arizona,
Nevada, and California as we now know them; had
camped at every resting ground along the Arkansas
and Platte; had fought and traded with every Indian
tribe from the Apaches up through the Navajos,
Cheyennes, Comanches, Sioux, and Crows; had even
fought the Blackfeet, redoubtable Northern warriors.

In short, Kit Carson and his kind had really explored
the West, and by 1842 had rendered it
safe for the so-called “exploration” that was to
make its wonders public. It is Kit Carson who
might better have the title of “pathfinder.” Yet
this was something to which he himself would not
have listened, for well enough he knew that he was
not the first. Ahead of him were other apostles of
the fur trade, so that even Kit Carson took the
West at second hand, as later we shall see. He
would not have vaunted himself as knowing very
much of the West. Yet even to-day men of the East
are exploring the West, and writing gravely of their
“discoveries.”

Five feet six, with twinkling blue-gray eyes, a
large and well-developed head, with hair sandy and
.pn +1
well brushed back, Kit Carson at his best was the
reverse of impressive. He was simple, peaceable
and quiet in disposition, temperate and strictly moral
in a time and place where these qualities made one
a marked man. Yet throughout the length and
breadth of the Indian country this little man was
more feared, single and alone, than any other trapper
or Indian fighter in all the West. He was respected as
well as feared. One who knew him well said: “Carson
and truth mean the same thing. He is always the
same, gallant and disinterested. He is kind-hearted
and averse to all quarrelsome and turbulent scenes.
He is known far and wide for his sober habits, strict
honor, and great regard for truth.”

One of Carson’s historians describes him as five
feet nine inches in height, as weighing one hundred
and sixty pounds, and as having a “dark and piercing
eye.” This “dark and piercing eye” is something
that, as we have noted, the average writer on
Western themes and Western adventures will not
willingly let die. As a matter of fact, however, we
are to believe that our hero was a much smaller man
than this description makes him out to be, and that,
though of well-developed and compact frame, he was
by no means of imposing presence.

We shall do better with his raiment, for here we
take hold upon the characteristics of the West at its
.pn +1
most romantic time. In the garb habitual with him
for more than half his life, Carson was clad in a
fringed buckskin shirt, with leggings of the same material,
also befringed. The shirt was handsomely embroidered
with quills of the porcupine, and as much
might be said for the moccasins that protected his
feet. His cap was of fur, sometimes of fox skin,
sometimes of ’coon skin, mayhap in days of great prosperity,
of otter.

His rifle was that of Boone or Crockett, improved
only to a limited extent, though carrying a ball somewhat
larger than that needed in the forests of Kentucky.
Otherwise he might have been the typical
early American rifleman of the Alleghanies. Under
his right arm rested his powder horn and bullet
pouch. A heavy knife for butchering hung at his
belt, as well as a whetstone to keep it in good condition.
At a certain time in his career Carson wore an
ornamented belt, with heavy silver buckle, which supported
two revolvers and a knife.

He took on in modest sort the picturesque fashions
of the wilderness, and, uniting as he did the mountains
and the plains in his habitat, at times showed
something of the Spanish love of display in the trappings
of his horse. His saddle and bridle had trace
of Mexico in their gold and silver ornamentation.
His horse, be sure, was a good one; for those were
.pn +1
times when a man’s safety much depended on the
fleetness and soundness of his mount, and the horse
was the means of transportation for Carson and his
kind.

As to the career of this Western man, if we come
to follow it out as it occurred in sequence, we shall
arrive at but one conclusion, to wit: that, conditions
considered, Kit Carson was the greatest of all American
travelers. It is almost unbelievable, the distances
he traversed along with his wild fellows during
those vivid years in which he forced the wild West to
yield him a living. We can not do better than to
trace some of his wanderings, more especially those
that occurred before the day of the so-called exploration
of the West.

Frémont, who knew Carson well, speaks of him
as a native of Boone’s Lick County, Missouri; but
Doctor Peters, his biographer, states, apparently with
Carson’s authority, that Carson was born in Madison
County, Kentucky, as above stated, and while but
one year of age was brought to Howard County,
Missouri, by his parents. The father of Carson was
a good farmer, according to the lights of his time,
and a good hunter, the life of Missouri during those
early times being practically that known by the
blockhouse farmers of Kentucky in the time of
Boone. Kit grew up sturdy, quiet, self-contained,
.pn +1
self-reliant. In his boyhood he was a steady rifle
shot, and early acquired a reputation. He “hunted
with the Sioux Indians,” we are told, when yet a
boy; which means he must have gone north up the
Missouri.

At fifteen years of age he was called “old for his
age;” he was known to be plucky, prompt, and
tenacious of his rights, though not in the least
quarrelsome. Just as well-meaning parents tried to
send Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone to school, so
did the kind parents in this case undertake to instil
commercial principles into the mind of Kit Carson.
To his father it seemed important that he should be
apprenticed to a saddler. From the saddler’s stool
Kit promptly fell off. It was the out-of-doors that
appealed to him; the West that spoke to him, just
as it had to Boone and Crockett. He broke his heart
for two years at the saddler’s bench, and that ended
both his commercial and scholastic education. In
1826, while still but a boy, he was off and away
across the plains, having, without his parents’ consent,
joined a party bound for Santa Fé. Thus
would the youth seek his fortune.

Carson reached Santa Fé in the month of November,
1826, and went thence to Fernandez de
Taos, eighty miles northeast of Santa Fé, and spent
the winter with an old mountaineer named Kincaid,
.pn +1
or Kin Cade, who taught him something of the lore of
the mountains. Perhaps a little homesick, in the
spring of 1827 he started back for the East, without a
penny in his buckskin pockets. He worked back
homeward on the long journey down the Arkansas to
a point about four hundred and fifty miles east of
Santa Fé, and there, at the ford of the Arkansas, met
another band of traders, west-bound, to whom he
hired out as a teamster.

He again reached Santa Fé, still without a dollar,
and went as teamster thence as far south as El Paso,
returned to Santa Fé, and again to Taos. He was
learning Spanish and learning New Mexico all this
time. He now hired out as cook to Ewing Young,
and continued in this interesting capacity until the
spring of 1828. Again he started East, again failed
to win farther than before, and joined another west-bound
party, to reach Santa Fé a third time. Now
he could do a bit in Spanish, and hence engaged as
interpreter for Colonel Tramell, and wagoned it as
far south as Chihuahua, in old Mexico. All this
sounds full easy, yet even these few journeyings
hitherto covered many, many weary, blistering miles.

In far-off Chihuahua young Carson hired out as a
teamster, serving in the employ of Robert McKnight.
He went to the Copper Mines, on the Gila River, and
thence back once more to Taos, which latter place
.pn +1
was to serve as his headquarters all his life. All
this time it was Carson’s ambition to be something
better than a cook, or a teamster, or even an interpreter.
The adventurer’s blood was in his veins. It
was April of 1829 when he joined Young’s party of
trappers, and soon thereafter he saw his first fight,
in which the white men killed some fifteen Indians.
It is not known whether or not Carson distinguished
himself in this fight, but certainly he remained with
the party, and it was no coward’s company.

This band now worked toward the West, trapped
down the Salt River, and reached the head of the San
Francisco River. They concluded to go over to the
Sacramento River of California, then reported to
abound in fur. On the seventh day’s journey to
the west and southwest, they reached the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado, now admitted to be one of
the wonders of the world. These trappers always
remembered the Grand Cañon of the Colorado; for
it was near there that they bought a horse of some
wandering Indians, and ate it. They were very
hungry.

There were no trails across the interior desert in
those days. Hence, although these were not the first
adventurers to cross to California, they were in effect
pioneers. In some way they succeeded in reaching
San Gabriel Mission of California, and thence—by
.pn +1
some very wonderful geography on the part of one
or two biographers—they reached the Sacramento
River. In the San Joaquin valley they met Peter
Ogden’s party of Hudson Bay trappers. So we may
see that the West was far from being an unexploited
country when Kit Carson began his travels.

This early transcontinental party was successful in
its trapping, and the leader, Ewing Young, visited
San Rafael with the catch of furs and sold it out in
entirety to the captain of a trading schooner. He
then bought horses for the return East. The Indians
of the Sierra foothills promptly stole certain numbers
of these horses. Witness augury of the future
of Kit Carson, when we read that he was detailed
as the leader of a little party sent out in pursuit of
the horse thieves. This was his first independent
scouting trip. He and his party killed eight Indians
and retook the horses. Already his hand was acquiring
cunning in the stern trade of Western life.

September of 1829 found Kit Carson back again
in New Mexico. It took the party nine days to ride
from Los Angeles to the Colorado River. Thence
they seem to have descended the Colorado to tidewater,
to have crossed over to the Gila, and to have
ascended the Gila to San Pedro. There was some
more horse stealing, a little exchange on both sides
between the whites and Indians in this line. The
.pn +1
whites needed horses, for they had no other meat.
Yet in some fashion they won up the Gila River to
the copper mines of New Mexico; which, we may
see, was ground already known to Carson. Here
they <i>cached</i> their furs, since these would be contraband
under the Spanish law, nearly all of
these wanderings having taken place in the Spanish
territory that was the western goal of the early
commerce of the prairies.

In time the party turned up at Santa Fé, reaching
that city in April, 1830, where the leader, Young,
disposed of his furs, the net result for eighteen men
during a term of one year being twenty-four thousand
dollars. Kit Carson was now twenty-one years
of age, and he was fully initiated in his calling.
We can not appreciate these journeyings except by
taking an accurate map of the great Western country,
and following, finger by finger, along stream and
across mountain, the course of the early voyagers.

This, however, is but the beginning. In the fall
of 1830 the noted Western fur trader, Fitzpatrick,
organized a strong party, and it was matter of course
that Carson would find his way into it. This band
visited the Platte River, whose long southern arm
reaches so deep down into the heart of the Rockies.
Thence, along good beaver waters, they moved over
to the Green River, Pacific waters, also historic in the
.pn +1
fur trade. We find them later in Jackson’s Hole,
east of the range, even today the center of a great
game country. Thence they moved west to the
Salmon River, into a country still one of the wildest
parts of America; and there, much as a matter of
fact, they joined others of their party, who had
started out slightly in advance of them, and “for
whom they had been looking,” as one chronicler
naïvely advises us. It was a search and a meeting in
the heart of a wilderness many hundreds of miles in
extent.

The winter of 1830-1831 was spent by Carson on
the Salmon River. Now enter those stern warriors
of the North, the Blackfeet. Kit saw four of his
companions killed. He was inured to such scenes,
and the incident gave him no pause. April of
1831 found him on the Bear River. Moving,
always moving, we see him now on the Green
River, again in the “New Park” of Colorado, on the
plains of Laramie, again on the long South Fork of
the Platte, and presently on the Arkansas. Beseech
you, let your finger ever follow on the map;
and accept warrant that if your following has been
honest, your eyes shall stare in wonder at these
journeyings. Let one seek to duplicate it himself,
even in these civilized days when towns and ranches
crowd the West; and then, having restored that
.pn +1
West to the day of beaver and Blackfeet, ask himself
how had it been with him had he been in Carson’s
company!

This winter camp on the Arkansas River furnished
a certain amount of interest. A party of fifty Crow
Indians raided the camp and stole a number of
horses. It was Carson once more, we may be sure,
who was elected to lead the pursuit. Twelve Indians
were killed by the young leader and his hardy riflemen.
Carson was now accepted as one of the captains
of the trails. He had fully learned his bold
and difficult trade.

In the spring of 1832 Carson’s party moved to the
Laramie River; moved again to the headwaters of
the South Fork of the Platte, and caught beaver
and fought Indians for a few months; from the
Laramie to the Bayou Salade, or Ballo Salade, as it
was sometimes spelled in those days. These operations
were carried on in the heart of the most
dangerous Indian country of the West. Heretofore
it had been the custom of the trappers to go in
parties of considerable size, so that they might successfully
meet the Indians, who even thus made
affairs dangerous enough. The quality of Carson’s
spirit may therefore be seen when we discover him,
with only two companions, breaking away for a
solitary beaver hunt in the mountains in the heart
.pn +1
of the range. Yet these three were fortunate, and
returned to Taos in the fall of 1832 well laden with
furs.

At Taos, Carson met Captain Lee of the United
States Army, a partner of that Bent who founded
Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas. Captain Lee had a
cargo of goods that he wished to take to the rendezvous
of the trapping bands for that year. Kit joined
him for the time, and in October of 1832 they pushed
on, traveling part of the time on the old Spanish
trail to California. They reached the White River,
the Green River, the “Windy” River, and here, as
though by special plan, they met their band of
trappers, erected their skin lodges, and passed the
winter. Kit joined the Fitzpatrick party for a time
in the next spring, but after his own restless fashion
broke away again, with only three companions.

In the summer of 1833 we find the four on the
Laramie River, doing independent trapping and taking
their chances as to Indians. It was about this
time that Kit had his historic adventure with two
bears, which chased him up a tree, and which he
repelled by beating them over the noses with a branch
broken from the tree. The ever-wise biographer Abbott,
who gravely informs us that Crockett killed
“voracious grizzly bears” in the cane-brakes of Tennessee,
with equal accuracy advises us that the “grizzly
.pn +1
bear can climb a tree as well as a man.” Herein we
find some mystery about Carson’s bear adventure.
Carson as a hunter would have been the first to know
that a grizzly bear can not climb a tree unless it be a
horizontal one. There is no doubt, however, that
some such adventure took place with some sort of
bears, and that Carson saved his leggings if not his
life by a knowledge of the tenderness of a bear’s nose.

All this time our Westerner, our trapper, is fitting
himself for his work in the West as guide for
“explorers.” We find him with fifty men, pushing
up quite to the headwaters of the Missouri River,
and later he and some companions turn up along
the historic Yellowstone River, a country then well
known in the organized fur trade of St. Louis. We
do not discover that he ever went into the regular
employ of any of the fur traders. No <i>engagé</i> or
ordinary “pork eater” he, but a companion nearly
always of these independent fur traders, the individual
gentry of the wilderness. We find him now
becoming acquainted with the Big Horn. He knows
also the three forks of the Missouri; and he visits
the “Big Snake” River and the Humboldt River, then
called Mary’s River, since scientists still were scarce
in the Rockies.

He wanders continually back and forth across the
upper Rockies. Brown’s Hole, Jackson’s Hole, Henry
.pn +1
Lake, the Black Hills, all the upper waters of the
great rivers, the Columbia, the Snake, the Green, the
Colorado, the Platte, the Missouri, the Yellowstone,
the Arkansas,—you shall hardly name any well-known
Western region, any remote mountain park, any accurately
mapped Western stream which you shall not,
providing you have faithfully followed the wanderings
of Kit Carson, discover to have been familiar to this
man even before geographies were dreamed of west
of the Missouri River.

It would be but wearying to go on with the monotonous
chronicle of repeated journeys back and forth,
of hardships, of toils and dangers, of the round of the
trapper’s employment, of the wild life at those
wild, strange annual markets of the mountains, the
trappers’ rendezvous. It will suffice us and serve us
to remember that Carson practically closed his life
as a trapper in 1834,[#] this date marking the end of
eight years steadily employed by him in trapping
and trading and in learning the West. In 1834 he
and such companions as Bill Williams, William New,
Mitchell, Frederick, and scores of others of his old-time
friends, found themselves practically without
a calling. When, after one long expedition west
.pn +1
of the range, they readied Fort Roubidoux, it was
only to discover that furs had gone very low in price.

The advent of the silk hat had caused terror in St.
Louis, and gloom throughout the Rockies. The day
of the beaver trade was at an end. That animal, of
so monstrous an importance in the history of the
American continent, was now to assume a place far
lower in estimation. Our bold, befringed mountaineers
learned that it would no longer pay to pursue it
into the remote fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains.
Yet the beaver had served its purpose. Following
its tooth-marks on the trees, there had pressed on to
the head of every Western river a man qualifying
for office as guide of the west-bound civilization
beyond the Missouri. Kit Carson, type of the graduated
trapper and adventurer, had had his schooling.

Yet a man must live, and if there be no price
for beaver peltry he must turn his hand to something
else for occupation. For eight years Kit Carson
served as hunter for the post, well-known as Bent’s
Fort, on the Arkansas River. There he fed forty
men on the wild meat of the plains, and during
his eight years of hunting killed thousands of buffalo,
elk, and deer. He saw the plains in all their
ancient undimmed splendor, and whether he most
loved the mountains or the plains he himself never
could tell. Carson at an earlier time had married
.pn +1
an Indian girl, and during his engagement at Fort
Bent he sent his one child, a daughter, to St. Louis
for the purpose of acquiring an education. There
the daughter married, went to California, and apparently
passes from the scene. Carson’s later
marriage was with a Mexican woman very much
younger than himself.[#]

If in the year 1834 Carson terminated the first
term of his <i>Wanderschaft</i>, in 1842, when he closed
his first engagement as hunter for Bent’s Fort, he
completed the second season of his Western life and
was ready for the third. In that year he joined a
wagon train bound eastward, having determined to
revisit his old home in Missouri, which he had not
seen for sixteen years. The visit was sad and cheerless
enough. He returned to find his parents dead
and forgotten, the old homestead in ruins, and not
a friend left to take him by the hand.

He hastened thence to St. Louis, but ten days of
even the capital of the fur trade proved sufficient for
him. Soon afterward, as is stated by his most reliable
biographer, he by mere chance met young Frémont,
then bound West to “explore” the Rocky
Mountains, more especially that part of the Rockies
in the vicinity of the South Pass. Frémont’s guide
.pn +1
did not materialize at the time, and Carson’s modestly
proffered services were engaged by the army officer,
who needed a guide across country, which to many a
Western man was as familiar as his own dooryard.[#]

During his first expedition Carson does not seem
to have been much valued by Frémont. Basil
Lajeunesse was the favorite, and it was always Basil
Lajeunesse here, there, and everywhere; Carson, a
man of much greater experience and reliability,
having not as yet come into his own as a guide,
though forsooth there was small need of guiding on
this journey. Frémont engaged Carson at one hundred
dollars a month, and he was the twenty-eighth
man in the party, which also included two boys, young
relatives, who after all were not in so very dangerous
an enterprise.

Little of the eventful occurred in the long journey
across Kansas to Fort Laramie, and so at last they
arrived at the South Pass, having met no Indians at
all, although they had feared the Sioux. Frémont
rode across the gentle summit so long known to the
fur traders, climbed the mountain that was later
named for him, and returned to Fort Laramie in
September, 1842. Thus ended his first expedition,
which began his reputation as a “pathfinder.” Let
.pn +1
him who has followed the travels of Kit Carson in
the trapping trade state who was the real finder of
the paths.

After the first Frémont expedition, Carson returned
to Bent’s Fort, and in February of 1843
married the young Mexican woman who remained
his faithful companion throughout his life. Carson
was sent with a message to Governor Armijo with a
warning for the latter, but one hundred of the Mexicans
connected with Armijo’s wagon train were killed
by the Texans on the historic wagon road up the
Arkansas River; we being thus now in touch with
the strong and warlike population that, led by
Houston, Travis, Fannin, Crockett, had been fighting
the Spanish arms to the southward of Carson’s
hunting grounds.

Up to this time Kit Carson had been more
savage than civilized. He had never cast a vote
for any office. He had lived on the product
of his rifle. He had learned the habits of the wild
men and wild animals of the West. Yet he seems
to have gained something of that forcefulness and
self-confidence which sooner or later is bound to
impress itself upon others; for on May twenty-ninth
of 1843 we find Frémont again sending for him, and
asking his services as guide for his second expedition.

This time it was Frémont’s purpose to connect his
.pn +1
last year’s work with the Pacific Coast surveys which
had been begun by Wilkes. All know how Frémont
exceeded his orders, how his wife pluckily held back
from him the knowledge of his recall, and how this
transcontinental expedition, by no means the first,
though one of the most widely acclaimed, made its
way over grounds new to Frémont but old to Carson.
The first part of the journey was among the old
trapping grounds along the North Fork of the Platte
and on the Sweetwater, thence to Salt Lake—all
points fully known to the fur trade many years
before. The journey thence ran to Fort Hall and
along the perfectly determined trail northwest to the
Columbia River. Frémont then pushed on to Tlamath
Lake, Oregon, heading thence for California.

This country between the Tlamath Lake and the
Sacramento valley was new even to Carson. Everybody
supposed[#] that there was a great river, known
as the Buena Ventura, which rose on the west side
of the Rocky Mountains at a point directly opposite
the headwaters of the Arkansas, and flowed westward
directly into the Pacific ocean. The little fact of
the Sierra Nevada mountain range was wholly overlooked.

Carson honestly did his best, but he was in the
.pn +1
hands of a leader who undertook to cross the Sierras
with a pack-train where there was six feet of
snow, and with a party the total number of which
counted only two men that had ever before worn
snowshoes in all their lives! Never was there poorer
mountaineering or worse leadership than this. But
it was not Kit Carson that was responsible.

After very many hardships, the expedition worked
to the south and southeast of the Tlamath country,
and got down near to what is now known as Pyramid
Lake. Then they started across for the Sacramento,
not having discovered the fabled Buena Ventura.
Carson, quiet, not boasting, openly confessing his
ignorance of a country he had never seen, none the
less in these hard conditions proved serviceable as a
guide. He pushed on ahead, and from a peak of
the Sierras got a glimpse of the Coast Range. He
had not seen this Coast Range chain for seventeen
years, but now he noted two little mountains that
seemed familiar to him. He told his leader that if
only they could win across the Sierras, they would
presently be in a country of warmth and plenty.

The men by that time were eating their saddle
leathers, the mules were eating each other’s tails. It
was a starving, freezing time, this foolish bit of
mountain work, such as in all his trapping experience
Carson never saw equalled. Yet at last they did reach
.pn +1
Sutter’s Fort, on March sixth, 1844, two thousand
miles from Fort Hall. Some of the men were physically
ruined and mentally deranged from their sufferings.
It was military and not mountain leadership
that was responsible for all this.

But our continually traveling man, this little man,
Kit Carson, was not to have any rest even in the
pleasant valley of the Sacramento. We find the
expedition soon starting East again, now by way
of the San José valley, over the Sierras to the
Mojave River, country long known to the traveling
trappers. Here Carson and his friend Godey conducted
a little enterprise of their own, undertaken
in sheer knight-errantry, in behalf of a party of
Mexicans that had been nearly annihilated by the
Indians. These two men rode a hundred miles in
thirty hours, and alone attacked a large camp of
Indians, killing two of them and stampeding the
remainder.

The Frémont party arrived at Bent’s Fort on the
Arkansas July second, 1844. They had traveled
somewhere between thirty-five hundred and four thousand
miles, had circumnavigated the mysterious
“Great Desert,” and for eight months had never been
out of sight of ice and snow. Frémont was able to
report upon the great Columbia River, and he and
his contemporaries did not hesitate to extol the value
.pn +1
of Oregon as a gateway of the Asiatic trade—a line
of commerce which for half a century did little to
establish the truth of their prophecy.

This, then, was the end of the first exploration
of the Rockies accompanied by thermometer and
barometer rather than by trap sack and “possible
bag.” It was of value. If we were asked what was
the most valuable result of this second expedition of
Frémont, we should be obliged to answer that it
was his mention of the great value of the Western
grasses. Frémont was an observer, a chronicler, a
writer. It was he that first began to bring back accurate
story of the resources of the West.

The mineral wealth of the West, over which the
trappers had tramped for a quarter of a century,
was as yet unsought and unsuspected by Frémont
or any one else. It was to be first the fur trade,
then the mining trade, then the cattle trade in
the trans-Mississippi West; and after that the agricultural
life, followed by the days of swift transportation,
of change, of transition and expansion and
gourd-like growth in all visible ways.

We are now well forward in the third era of Kit
Carson’s career. If at first he was a trapper and hunter
in order that he might become fit guide, during
the third stage of his life he was to be accepted as
the authorized guide of the most important
.pn +1
preliminaries for the west-bound movement of the trans-Mississippi
population. After the close of the second
Frémont expedition, and during the year 1845,
Carson tried to be a ranchman or farmer, pitching
his tents for the time about fifty miles east of Taos.
It was of no avail. Frémont called for him once more.
The farm was sold for half its value, and once
more Carson set his face toward the West, in company
with a Frémont now older, better seasoned and
of better judgment. A more direct trail across
the Great Basin and into California was desired than
that taken either in going or returning on the second
expedition.

Carson was the one to go ahead. He traveled
alone for sixty miles west of the Great Salt Lake,
directly into the desert, and the rest of the
party came up to his signal smoke. Thence they
pushed on to the Carson River, searching still for
a new pass over the Sierras into the valley of the
San Joaquin. At last they won across, as did the
earlier trappers, and again they reached Sutter’s Fort
in due time. A branch of the main party, that headed
by Talbott, did not appear at the appointed meeting
place. It was Carson, of course, Carson the traveler,
who was despatched down the San Joaquin valley to
discover the truth of a rumor that Talbott and his
.pn +1
party had appeared in that locality. Needless to
say the wanderers were found.

Now there broke out the Mexican imbroglio, in
which the part of Frémont is well known. For a
time Frémont’s party moved north, along the Sacramento,
thence toward the Columbia River. They did
not know that war had been declared between the
United States and Mexico. Lieutenant Gillespie,
hot on their trail, brought the message that hostilities
had broken out. In Oregon, in the Tlamath
country, came the night attack in which Basil Lajeunesse
and three others of the party were killed.
Carson saw his companion, a brave Delaware Indian,
stand up and receive a half-dozen arrows from unseen
foes. He joined the pursuit in the dark; and later,
on the backward trail to California with Gillespie,
helped execute the stern mountain vengeance on
the Tlamaths, leading the mountaineers in all their
desperate little fights.

The exploring party had now become military, and
so the flag, led and backed by American mountaineers,
went up above a Western empire. As to
the services of this far-traveling mountain man
to his leader and to his country, we can
scarcely overestimate them. Some idea of the
confidence in which he was now held may
.pn +1
be gathered from the fact that, after the Frémont
operations in California, Carson was sent
with despatches to Washington, in order that the
government might know what was happening on the
far-away Pacific slope.

He started on September fifteenth, 1846, and it
was asked of him that he make the entire trip
to Washington inside of sixty days; this at a
time when there was not a foot of railway west
of the Missouri, and when all the country from the
Pacific to the Missouri was more or less occupied with
hostile savages. None the less Carson started, the
first overland rider to bear despatches on a continuous
journey of this nature.

By October sixth he was far toward the eastward,
across the Rockies, when he met General Kearney’s
column. Kearney ordered Carson to turn back and
guide him westward to California. Without a murmur
the little blue-eyed man remarked: “As the
General pleases.” He did not stop to visit his
own family at Taos, but went back once more
to lead the west-bound flag. By December third
the slow column had reached California, and here
it met more warlike experiences than it liked or
had believed possible. The California Mexicans that
fell upon Kearney’s column were fighters. They
killed fifty of the Americans, surrounded the
.pn +1
remainder, and bade fair to exterminate the entire expedition.

Witness again the service of the scout and guide.
Carson and Lieutenant Beale of the Navy were
sent out as special messengers to San Diego.
In some way they got through the beleaguering lines,
and after a perilous journey arrived at San Diego
and secured the desired help. This sort of thing
was nothing new to Carson. It was so severe for
Beale that he went deranged, and it took him two
years to recover from his journey, brave man and
bold as he was. The Army and Navy had not the
seasoning of the American mountain men, the hardiest
breed ever grown on the face of the globe.

At Los Angeles Carson finally rejoined Frémont,
in time for that tempest in a teapot wherein Frémont
and Kearney fell at swords’ points. These things
are of no moment, yet it is significant that in March,
1847, Carson was sent once more as despatch bearer
to Washington. He went light and speedy as before,
met the Indians on the Gila, fought them and won
through. This time he reached Washington, after
his long and steady ride across New Mexico and
down the Arkansas River to the Missouri, arriving
in the month of June, after having made four thousand
miles in three months. We make it in about
three days to-day.
.pn +1

In Washington Carson met Jessie Benton Frémont,
wife of the “Pathfinder” and daughter of the
arch-protector of the fur traders and of Frémont,
Thomas Benton. Carson was now appointed lieutenant
of the rifle corps of the United States Army; a
commission which, by the way, was never ratified,
although he did not know this for some months.
He was sent back, four thousand miles, to bear
despatches in return. He crossed the Missouri River,
fought the Comanches at the Point of Rocks, got
through them, pushed on west as steadily as ever, and
reached the Virgin River, in the dry Southwest, before
he met his next Indian fight. He and fifteen
comrades here stood off three hundred Indians. In
due time he reached Monterey, and after this he took
service against the Mexicans on the border for a time.

So energetic a man cannot be allowed to rest, and
in the spring of 1848 he is sent back once more to
Washington. The physical frame of any other man
except Kit Carson had been by all these journeyings
too far racked to enable him to make this long and
hazardous trip. The souls of most men would have
failed them long ere this. Yet this hardy, tough
little man, just big enough for steady riding, cheerfully
undertakes his third journey across the mountains
as despatch bearer for the United States Army.

This time he meets Utes and Apaches, fights them,
.pn +1
wins through them, and goes on. He stops on this
trip just for a day to see his family at Taos, averaging
a visit home about once in three years. It is
here that he learns that he is not a lieutenant, after
all; but that does not check his loyalty to the flag.
He goes east now up the Bijou, and down the Platte
to the Republican Fork, in order to dodge certain Indians,
who, he hears, are numerous and bad along the
Arkansas.

He reaches Washington safe and sound, of course;
starts back for New Mexico; and arrives there
in October, 1848. Figure yourself, if you like,
as chief actor in a quarter of a century of such traveling
as was done by Kit Carson. His travels are
given thus in detail that we may have just estimate
of the man of those days, of the tremendous demands
upon his courage and endurance. Only the West
could produce such a man.

Now we may picture Kit Carson in the fourth
stage of his career, as settler and rancher. He was
at home now, but he knew no rest. He fought the
Apaches, and guided Colonel Beall against that tribe
and the Comanches, in an endeavor to round up
all the Mexican prisoners in the hands of the Indians,
who were to be returned to their own firesides.
After this little expedition Carson was once
more a man without an occupation. There was a lull
.pn +1
in fighting and scouting. Having no profession
except that of trapper and of guide, he cast about
him and once more determined to be a ranchman.
He and his friend Maxwell established a ranch fifty
miles west of Taos, at what is known as Rayado or
Rezado. Again he joined an expedition against the
Apaches, a day and a half to the southeast, a disastrous
expedition, in which he was not leader, but
might better have been. At another time he helped
chase some Apache thieves, and assisted in the killing
of five of them, being always desired in these
errands of swift punishment. Our army could never
catch the Apaches, the Nez Percés, the Comanches,
the Crows, the Blackfeet. Kit Carson always could
and did.

This Indian fighting, however, did not bring money
to his coffers; therefore in 1850 we find him and a
partner taking a band of horses from New Mexico up
to Fort Laramie, a journey of five hundred miles.[#]
After this followed some more horse stealing on the
part of the Indians, yet more punitive expeditions,
and considerable amateur sheriffing, for which service
Carson had become a necessity in the district.
He was not afraid. He could read the signs of the
trails. He could ride.

.pn +1

In 1851 Carson and Maxwell tried their hands at
a bit of the Santa Fé trade themselves, although this
was long after the glory of the old-time wagon trade
had departed. They got a train load of goods at St.
Louis, and started westward up the Arkansas, after
the old-fashioned way. They met the Cheyennes,
always ambitious to acquire tax title of the plains to
such valuable property as this. Carson knew that
the protestations of these Cheyennes were not to
be believed, and told the Indians that they could
neither deceive him nor frighten him; yet with diplomacy
equal to his courage, he edged on and on for
three doubtful days, farther and farther to the westward,
and so at last came safe. Kit Carson was no
blusterer and no swashbuckler, but was first and last
of all a good business man. He knew that it was
good judgment to keep out of a fight whenever possible,
which he did.

And now comes one of the most romantic, indeed
one of the most pathetic pages in the whole history
of this brave man, if not in all Western history. Rebelling
at the tameness of ranching and horse trading
and wagon trafficking, longing once more for the
freedom of the trapping trail, Kit sent word about
among his old friends, the free traders of the
Rockies. A party of eighteen old-time long-haired
men was made up; and thus they sallied forth, with
.pn +1
rifle and ax and pack and jingling trap chains, in
the fashion of the past, making once more deep
into the heart of the Rockies. They visited the Arkansas,
the Green, the Grand, all the loved and lovable
parks of the mountains. They came back through
the Raton Mountains, bearing with them abundant
fur. They said that it was their last trail; that they
had seen the old streams they loved, in order that
they might “shake hands with them and say good-by!”
This expedition was made for sheer love of the
old life, which they knew had now gone by forever.
The settlement of the West was at hand, and this they
knew very well. No wonder that it brought them
sadness! We to-day may grieve in some measure
over the dignity and glory of those days gone by.

We might believe that by this Kit Carson would
have had enough traveling, and would have been
content to bound his ambitions by the little mountain
valleys that lay about him in New Mexico.
Not so, however; for we find his next exploit to
be the unusual one of a sheep drive to far-off California.
He assembled a band of six thousand five
hundred sheep, and following by easy stages along
the old mountain trails with which he was so familiar,
at length arrived with his herd, in August, 1853,
at his far-off destination. He sold his sheep at the
.pn +1
good price of five dollars and a half a head, this
being the most considerable and most profitable
speculation in which he had ever engaged in all
his life.

He remained for a time in California and looked
about him, but he found California no longer a wilderness
occupied by wandering and infrequent trappers,
but a land overflowing with gold, and tenanted
with a restless and swiftly increasing population.
He saw a San Francisco of fifty thousand souls
spring up as by magic within sight of those two little
hills of the Coast Range that had marked the land
of salvation for Frémont and his party in their starving
journey across the Sierras. He found himself
a hero in this new and busy San Francisco; but he
was ever unfamiliar with the art of heroing, so presently
he left the town and returned again to New
Mexico, traveling this time by the old trail to the
copper mines, by which he had led Frémont in his
first journey east from southern California.

Carson was now living in a West experiencing sudden
and general change. The old West was nearly
gone, and all its ancient ways. The government at
Washington was familiar with the doings of this
quiet little man of New Mexico, and it was suggested
that he would make a good Indian agent for the district
of New Mexico. Witness, therefore, the last
.pn +1
stage of Kit Carson’s career, that of counselor and
guide to those savage peoples whose enemy and conqueror
he had been.

At this time the Utes and the Jicarilla Apaches
were rebellious, and one of Carson’s first acts was
to ride two hundred and fifty miles into the Ute
country. He led the forces that broke up the
coalition between the Utes and the Apaches. It was
Carson, old Indian fighter, who was one of the first to
say that the Indians must be “rounded up and taught
to till the soil.” This was his belief even at the time
when he acted as guide for Colonel St. Vrain and
his New Mexican volunteers, in the expedition that
routed the Indians at the Saugache Pass.

The Indians that had feared Carson in the past
came at length to trust him, and indeed to love him.
He was known as “father” by many a warlike tribe.
Thus he became the friend of the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes
and the Kiowas, peoples scattered over a
wide range of country. Behold now, therefore, our
trapper, guide and scout fairly settled in life. Remember
also that he was not the guide of Frémont
in that last fatal, starving expedition when, blundering
foolishly once more into the wilderness of
the Rockies in the winter-time, and undertaking the
wild project of crossing eight feet of snow with a
pack-train, that officer once more came near
.pn +1
paying the penalty of his ignorance by his own life
and the lives of all his party.

It was Bill Williams who was guide this time,
a Bill Williams that had not been trapping
on the Del Norte for years, and who might have been
forgiven memory less keen than had been Carson’s
when he saw the two little peaks, far away in the
Coast Range, in that other starving march of this
same leader. It was to Taos that the enfeebled survivors
of Frémont’s disastrous expedition found their
way in search of help. If Kit Carson reproached his
former “leader” it is not on record. Never was there
a leader whose follies won him greater praise.

Later in his life, leaving the United States service
as Indian agent, Carson was made colonel of a
regiment of New Mexican volunteers, during the
War of the Rebellion. He was brevetted brigadier-general
of volunteers. In the closing years of his
life he was known as “the general” among his
friends, just as he was always known as “father”
among the Indians who dwelt about him.

Kit Carson’s death occurred at Fort Lyon, Colorado,
May twenty-third, 1869, the immediate cause
being an aneurism of the aorta. Eight years before,
Carson had sustained a bad fall, and had been dragged
for a distance by his horse. From this hurt he never
fully recovered. “Were it not for this,” said he,
.pn +1
meaning his mishap, “I might live to be one hundred
years of age.” Yet, knowing that he was doomed,
he lived bravely and sweetly as ever, and to the end
remained as unpretentious as during his early days.

“It was wonderful,” says the chronicler who saw his
last hours and who heard most of the biography of Kit
Carson read in the presence of the hero himself, “it
was wonderful to read of the thrilling deeds and
narrow escapes of this man, and then look at the
quiet, modest, retiring but dignified little man who
had done so much. He was one of nature’s noblemen,
a true man in all that constitutes manhood,
pure, honorable, truthful and sincere, of noble impulses;
a knight-errant, ever ready to defend the
weak against the strong without reward other than
his own conscience. His was a great contempt for
noisy braggarts of every sort.”

So, surrounded by his friends, facing the impending
end with his customary bravery, Kit Carson
passed away. There was a struggle and a fatal hemorrhage.
“Doctor—<i>compadre</i>,—<i>adios</i>!” he cried.
“This is the last of the general,” said his friend.
So passed one of the last of the great Westerners.

It was nearly time now for all the old mountain
men to put up the rifle. The day of the plow was
following hard upon them.

.fm

.fn #
Pray remember always this date of 1834. It is writ in few
histories. It marks the closing scenes of the fur trade, the waning
of the wild West, the beginning of the new day. In 1834 the preliminary
survey of civilization had been practically completed.
.fn-

.fn #
One of Carson’s daughters, after a sad life story, is said to
have died in New Mexico, in an insane asylum, in 1902.
.fn-

.fn #
V. Chapter III, Vol. III; Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri.
The Oregon trail was then a plain highway.
.fn-

.fn #
In spite of the Gallatin map, two years earlier. V. Chapter
IV, Vol. III; “Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri.”
.fn-

.fn #
The beginning of the New Mexican branch of the Long Trail,
later to become famous in the cattle trade.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk3ch02 pn=+1
CHAPTER II||THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL
.sp 2

To-day we think in straight lines. We believe, ignorantly,
that our forefathers moved directly westward
from their former homes. We do not ask how
they did it, but think that in some way they must
have done so. Dwellers in Chicago think of New
York, and it means New York in a straight line due
east. They think of California, and it implies a
straight line due west. To us of to-day all railroads
run without curves, and are governed only by time-schedules,
which annually grow shorter. Geography is
well-nigh a lost art. Indeed, there is but little use for
it, since the time-tables of the great railways answer
all our questions so conclusively. To-day it matters
not to us what may be the course of a journey;
the sole question is as to the time that journey will
require. The railroad men do our thinking for us.
We do not concern ourselves with how those good,
but somewhat old-fashioned folk, our ancestors, got
about in a country that once was large. We care
not at all for matters of down-stream or up-stream.

In a general way, therefore, we are prone to
.pn +1
believe that the way from the Alleghanies to the Missouri
was in a straight line. It was not so. We
think that the way to the Rockies and across them
was equally straight, because the railways now make
it so easy. Yet as a matter of fact the railways
proceeded, without much difficulty as to exploration,
to lie sure, for nothing new was left for them to discover,
yet in hesitating and halting steps westward,
shortening the old trails, destroying the old history,
wiping out the old geography of the West.

All America can remember the days when we were
agitated by the tremendous problem of a line of rails
across the American continent, a feat so long regarded
as chimerical. We knew of California and
we wished for a road thither, had long wished for it.
But many years before we had begun to dream of
an iron road, and many years after we had dreamed
of it, we made our way from the Missouri to the
Rockies, over the Rockies to the Pacific, by the
same methods that had brought us to the heads
of all our Western rivers. We used the pack-horse
and the wagon train. Those were the days of the
heroically great transcontinental trails. It is interesting
to study these ancient land routes; and for our
purposes we shall start the wagon roads at the Missouri
River, and shall speak chiefly of the two historic
.pn +1
and great Western pathways, that by the Arkansas
and that by the Platte.

Of these two great land trails west of the Missouri,
one, broken midway, does not deserve actually the
name of transcontinental trail. This was the old
Santa Fé trail, which could be called continuous
only as far as the Spanish province of New Mexico.
Commerce got westward even so far as California
in some fashion, now and again, from Taos and the
old city of Santa Fé, but Spanish trails and the old
trapping roads west of New Mexico were commonly
concerned with the pack-train and not the wagon.

The other overland trail, and the greatest of all
American roads, if we measure length and importance
as well, was the ancient Oregon trail up the
Platte, over the South Pass and down the Columbia;
a trail forgotten by most of the young men of to-day,
and existing no more to terrify the young women
whom young men marry, as they did in the times of
our fathers, when moving West meant tearing out
the heart.

As to the theory of straight lines, Lieutenant Pike
tells us that the first men to reach Santa Fé did not
go straight westward, but also wandered up the
aboriginal highway of the Platte valley, over what
was later to be the course of the Oregon trail, turning
to the southward when far up the stream, and
.pn +1
following the South Fork of the Platte down into
the Rockies, which would bring the traveler within
wilderness-touch of the Spanish settlements. La
Lande, the perfidious trader, who so sadly left in the
lurch his patron, the merchant Morrison of Kaskaskia,
and took up his permanent abode in Santa
Fé, is thought to have reached that city, in the year
1804, by this route; and it is known that James
Purcell (or James Pursley, as Pike has the spelling)
was directed to Santa Fé in the year 1805 by some
Indians whom he met on the upper Platte.

This route by the Platte was not, however, either
the permanent or the original one. Indeed, the first
expedition between the Spanish and the American
settlements came, strangely enough, from the west,
and not from the east, and was undertaken by the
Spaniards as early as 1720. Then, in 1739, the
Mallet brothers, Frenchmen from the settlements
along the Mississippi, started for New Mexico by
the strange route of the upper Missouri River, getting
far up into the big bend of the Missouri before they
discovered that they were going quite the wrong way!
Their belief that the Spanish settlements could be
reached by way of the head streams of the Missouri
is strange confirmation of our doctrine that early
traveling man ever clung to the waterways. The
river—it would lead anywhere! The Mallet party
.pn +1
returned in 1740, some of them by way of the
Arkansas River, which presently brought them out
at New Orleans!

We may therefore discover that neither the Missouri
nor the Platte could have been called the accepted
highway into the lower West at the time Lieutenant
Pike set out to find the headwaters of the Red
River. There is a shrewd doubt as to Pike’s innocence
in getting over on the head of the Rio Grande instead
of the Red River. It was at least a lucky mistake;
and his captivity among the Spaniards was productive
of very good results to the United States later
on, one of its most important results being his suggesting
the route along the Arkansas, instead of
the Platte, for the west-bound travelers. It was
strong-legged, stout-hearted Zebulon who told of the
profits of the possible Spanish trade, and credit is
usually given him for first outlining the historic
trail along the Arkansas.

It grew shorter and shorter, this wagon trail to the
West, as the traders came to know the country.
The government surveyed a fine way for the caravans,
which took them around the dangerous Cimarron
desert, and clung to the waters a trifle longer;
yet the travelers would have none of it, but built
their trail so direct from Independence to Santa Fé
that not even those air-line lovers, the railway
.pn +1
engineers, could so very much improve it when they came
to make their iron trail between those two points.

One finds something uncanny when he reflects
upon the discoveries of these Western regions. The
ancient ways seem to have lain ready and waiting,
the lines of travel simply falling into the foreordained
plan, so that there remains no extraordinary
credit to any venturer, no matter how early.
For instance, we know that our hardy young soldiers,
Lewis and Clark, to whom we habitually ascribe the
credit of being the first white men up the great
waterway of the Missouri, were preceded by half a
century by the Frenchman, Sieur de la Verendrye,
who took his two sons and started west by way of
the Great Lakes in 1742, jumped from the Red River
of the North to the Mandan villages on the Missouri,
and explored the region along the Missouri, the Yellowstone
and the Bighorn rivers, just one hundred
years before Frémont “discovered” the Rockies!

De la Verendrye is thought to have been the first
man of the North to see the Rockies; yet back of him
we have Nicollet and Champlain, and all those hardy
ancients who sought cheerfully and hopefully for the
China Sea by way of the Green Bay portage, and the
Wisconsin and Minnesota rivers, in search of the
fabled “Asian Strait,” which later was practically
.pn +1
materialized in the interlocking Western rivers of
America.

As to Pike’s journey across the plains, we must
know that the Spaniards had sent out an expedition,
under Malgares, to meet him or anticipate
him. The Spanish leader who thus ventured
boldly so far to the east to head off this dreaded
invasion of the Northern whites, and to set the
Indians against them, must have traveled somewhat
along this same pre-ordained trail of the Arkansas.
Not all Spain could keep the feet of the
young Anglo-Saxons out of that trail. There were
always the adventurers; and there were always the
trails there, ready, waiting, expectant, prepared for
them. There is no reading so thrilling as the bare
truth about our West; and the most thrilling part of
it is the awesome feeling that our venturers were
after all themselves but puppets in a grim and awful
game. There lay the Missouri, the Platte, the Arkansas;
and stretching out to meet them reached the
Columbia and the Colorado. It was appointed, it
was foregone!

Among those to go out early into the unknown
Southwest, after Lieutenant Pike had told us some
few things regarding the pueblos of old Spain among
the mountains of the Rockies, were the fur trader
Phillibert, and the traders Chouteau and De Munn,
.pn +1
of St. Louis, who bought out Phillibert’s goods and
men in the Rockies. Phillibert had planned a
rendezvous on Huerfano Creek. This was in 1815,
the year following that in which Phillibert had
made his first trip into that Western region.

These St. Louis men met the officials of Santa
Fé, and were warned out of the country. Naïvely,
since they could not trade in New Mexico, they
started for the Columbia River, by way of the high
mountains of Colorado; and the mountains, of course,
stopped them. They fell back on the Arkansas, were
caught by the Spaniards, had their goods confiscated,
and so lost three years of time as well. Not even this
pointed advice as to Spanish preferences served to
hold back the west-bound men, and no doubt they
sent out some party for Santa Fé every year thereafter,
until they had their way, and until the Anglo-Saxon
grasp was fixed upon that sleepy old Southwest,
which lay winking in the sun a couple of centuries
belated by the way.

The Spaniards were suspicious, as are ever the
slothful, and they made a practice of imprisoning
the whites that got down into their country. They
imprisoned Pike, they imprisoned Merriwether, an
intrepid trader who reached that country in 1819;
and history tells us how, in 1812, they imprisoned
the first party of the white traders to venture into
.pn +1
New Mexico after the return of Lieutenant Pike,
the twelve men who made up the party of Baird,
McKnight and Chambers, commonly called the
party of McKnight, Beard and Chambers. This
gallant little company they kept in the fearsome
penitentiary at Chihuahua for nine long and weary
years,—a fate terrible enough, one would certainly
think, to warn away all other adventurers from a
neighborhood so hostile.

As to this first and most unfortunate of the early
trading expeditions to the Southwest, that of Baird,
McKnight and Chambers, there is first-hand information
in the form of a personal letter from J.
M. Baird, of Louisville, Kentucky, a grandson of the
early trader that helped to lead the way of commerce
across the plains. Mr. Baird writes:

“As to the expedition of Baird, Chambers and
McKnight, it is often spoken of as that of
‘McKnight, Beard and Chambers.’ Gregg, in his
book ‘The Commerce of the Prairies,’ published in
1846 (I think), first mentioned the matter. He
derived his information from James Baird’s sons,
and they were much disgusted to have him print the
name ‘Beard.’ All other writers seem to have derived
their particulars from him. James Baird was
my grandfather. He was personally known to Lieut.
Zebulon Pike, had known him at Fort Duquesne and
.pn +1
at Erie. Baird went to St. Louis in 1810, where he
again met Lieutenant Pike upon his return from
Mexico, and learned from him the possibilities of
trade with that country.

“Upon hearing of the success of the Hidalgo revolution,
and believing the embargo upon trade with
the United States raised, he organized a venture with
Chambers and McKnight, left St. Charles, Mo., May
1, 1812, and reached Santa Fé in regular course, to
find the embargo rigorously enforced. He was arrested
and imprisoned in Chihuahua prison for nine
years and three months, until released by Iturbide in
1821. Chambers and McKnight started back at once.
McKnight was killed by the Indians on the Arkansas
River. Chambers succeeded in getting back to St.
Louis. Baird started back two months later, could
find no company, and rode alone from Santa Fé to
St. Louis. This ride has been credited to Bicknell
and one Kennedy or Kendall, but James Baird was
the man that did it.

“Baird and Chambers organized a second expedition
in 1822. They started too late, and were caught
in a blizzard at the crossing of the Arkansas, where
their animals froze to death. They were compelled
to remain the entire winter upon the island at that
place. It was Baird and Chambers’ second expedition
that made the <i>caches</i> near there (in 1822),
.pn +1
and near where Dodge City now stands. Inman in
his ‘Old Santa Fé Trail,’ chapter 3, says Bicknell[#]
crossed the river at the Caches in 1812. No other
<i>caches</i> were made in that vicinity. Bicknell was a
trader with the Iatan Indians and did not go into
Mexico until after Baird and Chambers’ second venture,
which was made in 1822. However, it was
through some of Bicknell’s men writing from Franklin,
Mo., to my grandmother, in 1816, that she
learned of grandfather’s fate, they saying that they
heard of it from the Indians.

“Baird, Chambers and McKnight followed the
course marked for them by Lieutenant Pike, and
that course became the great Santa Fé trail. The
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé R. R. follows practically
the same course. If any one is entitled to credit for the
selection of the route, Lieutenant Pike ought to
have it. However, my purpose is to ask you to correct
the name Beard to read Baird. If one will
refer to ‘American State Papers,’ Vol. 4, folio 207,
and Executive Papers, p. 197, 8th Vol., 15th Congress,
he will see that it is <i>Baird</i>.”

This communication would seem to a certain extent
to discount the claims on reputation of William
Becknell, generally known as the “father of the
.pn +1
Santa Fé trail.” It ascribes the credit for the
original selection of the Arkansas River route to
Pike, with what justice we may ourselves determine
as well as any. Our venturesome Southerners, of the
Baird, McKnight and Chambers party, had lain in
jail for nine years before John McKnight, the
brother of Robert McKnight, in the year 1821, undertook
the long journey to Chihuahua, which seems to
have resulted in the setting free of all these Americans.
Coming back to the United States over the
Arkansas River trail, Baird and the two McKnights
met the Ohio man, Hugh Glenn, and his associate or
friend, Jacob Fowler, who were already at Taos,
regardless of the ill-fortune of their predecessors in
the hazardous game of prairie commerce. Becknell
himself did not start out until 1821, and he did not
intend to trade in Santa Fé, but only went thence
after he had met some Mexicans on the headwaters
of the Arkansas, who persuaded him to take his
goods to Santa Fé instead of trading them among the
Indians. Hugh Glenn and Becknell were thus both
at Santa Fé during the winter of 1821-22.

That following summer Braxton Cooper and his
sons, as well as Becknell, made trips to Santa Fé, and it
seems to have been on this second trip that Becknell
attained the distinction commonly accorded him.
He took three wagons through to Santa Fé, and
.pn +1
instead of hugging the Arkansas clear out to the
mountains, he struck off southwest toward San
Miguel, by way of the Cimarron desert, the risky but
shorter route to which the later traders adhered ever
after, in spite of surveys and all else. It is really
only upon the ground of his wagons and this cutoff
angle that Becknell is entitled to the glory of
his title as “father of the Santa Fé trail.”

Our prisoners, who nine years before had taken
the chance of the far-off Southwestern trade, were
willing to take another chance, for no sooner had
they reached the States than they outfitted and
started back again for the Mexican trade. Their
second party, that which made the famous <i>caches</i>
referred to in the grandson’s letter above, was made
in 1822. By that time there was little glory left
for any one; and indeed, when we come to sift it,
there was never very much glory in any part of the
history of the Santa Fé trail. It was not a pathway
of heroes. The true hero trail lay farther to the
north, as we shall presently see.

The first mergers, the first combinations of capital
ever made in the commerce of America began here
on the far-off prairies, when the traders of the
Arkansas began to band up and pool their
outfits for mutual protection. The strength of
these great companies rendered the danger of
.pn +1
attack by Indians very slight, and it is a fact
that but few lives were ever lost on the Santa
Fé trail, scarce a dozen in a dozen years. It
was indeed irony of fate that splendid Jedediah
Smith, the hero of such tremendous undertakings in
the mountains of the Northwest, should meet his fate
while hunting for a water hole in the hated desert
of the Cimarron, afar down in the dry Southwest.[#]

By 1824 the Santa Fé trade was well organized.
The route was proved feasible, and the business assured
of profit, wherefore many went into it, and
presently the old trail became a great road, later to
be very prominent in the history of the West. The
Spaniards did their best to keep on both sides of
the fence in this matter. They wanted the goods
of the Americans, but hated the Americans themselves.
They tried to kill the trade with excessive
frontier duties, yet allowed smuggling and bribery
to any limit; and these latter two industries were
accepted as part of the conditions of the trade. The
greatest loss of life began to occur when the fighting
Texans from below, actuated by a desire for revenge
and pillage, began to push up and to harass the
commerce which was proving so profitable to Mexico,
in spite of Mexico’s vacillation.
.pn +1

These fighting Texans traveled far to the north of
the trail, indeed, and followed the Mexicans into
their villages, where they killed them in numbers.
Texas, we must remember, was not yet a state, and
little answer was made to the wail of the thrifty
traders, who besought the United States government
to give them protection against the Texans. The
latter did some things not altogether pleasant to
recount, but were for the most part serving nearly
right the government of the United States, which
could so long hesitate in accepting Houston’s gift
of Texas, the “bride adorned for her espousal;”
which, indeed, so long hesitated to believe that there
was or could be a West really great. Small indeed
were some of the “great” men of that time; and
small are some of our great men to-day.

The common belief is that all the capital engaged
in this trade toward the Southwest was American capital,
and that the enterprises ran all one way. This
was not the case, for by 1843 the Mexican capital
embarked in the commerce to the Spanish colonies
was about equal to that of the Americans. The
trade grew steadily, even subject as it was to the
caprice of Mexican governments, and of Texas
privateers on the high seas of the prairies.

We learn that in 1831 a party of two hundred persons,
with one hundred wagons and two hundred
.pn +1
thousand dollars’ worth of goods, started for Santa
Fé. This party was notable in that one of its members
was Josiah Gregg, a level-headed, shrewd man,
who was later to become famous as the historian
of the Santa Fé trail. Nearly all the later
histories of that highway and its peculiarities
are based upon Gregg’s able work; which fact
he himself points out with a certain plaintiveness in
his later years (1846), stating that pillagers of his
papers did not always stop to give him credit. Gregg
was a big man, a thinker, a man whose sound sense
would succeed in any time. One likens him to the
good, sensible business man of to-day, the mainstay
of our republic, the practical conductor of affairs.

One detail will serve to show how much in advance
he was of his time. In 1846 we find the
Easterner, Francis Parkman, and his friend Shaw,
killing scores of the great bisons of the plains for
no better purpose than the securing of the tail for a
trophy. It makes one blush to read of such wasteful
barbarity as this, which could kill tons and tons
of such creatures and leave the meat to rot on the
ground. Our sensitive Eastern writer Parkman,
keen mind and able pen as were his, was a very savage
in his lust for “sport;” indeed worse than any
savage, for the latter never killed for sport alone.
Gregg was neither a Parkman nor a modern “lover
.pn +1
of nature,” but something much better, a man of
forethought and of good sense. His protest at the
waste of life and food in the wanton killing of buffalo
is one of the most worthy things of his worthy book.
He prophesied what Parkman could not see with all
his florid pictures of the West that was to be—a
West soon to be barren of the great game that did
so much to win that West from savagery. The
wicked wastefulness of the killing of the buffalo was
one of the American national crimes. Stout
Josiah Gregg saw it and deplored it, knowing as he
did that much of the success of the Southwest trade
ever depended upon the buffalo.

As to the distances and the direction of the ancient
trail, we may consider it as starting at the old Western
town of Independence, on the Missouri River,
and extending properly no farther than the town of
Santa Fé, in New Mexico. Many traders went on
down into Old Mexico, as far as Chihuahua, which
city so many of the first adventurers knew against
their will. We have heard of Kit Carson, as a teamster,
as far to the south as Chihuahua, and know that
in 1828 he hired out there to Robert McKnight, one
of the long-time prisoners in that city, later prominently
identified with the history of the trail. Different
Missouri towns outfitted parties for the trading
to the Southwest, among these prominently St.
.pn +1
Louis, and the less important point of Franklin. We
may consider the Missouri River as our frontier at
this epoch, and find most of our traders among
those who lived near the border or were concerned
in business ventures in that neighborhood. Assuredly
this talk of the Santa Fé trade was the first
Western bee in the Kit Carson bonnet, while he was
yet a boy in Missouri.

The course of the old trail was astonishingly direct.
It left little to be gained in distance saving,
or in the essential qualities of grass and water,
except along the cut-off over the Cimarron desert,
which the travelers would not forego. The first section
of the trail, that from Independence to Council
Grove, the place where the wagon trains usually
organized and went into semi-military formation,
was over a pleasant, safe and easy country, a distance
of one hundred and forty-three miles, according to
Gregg.

Thence the next stage was to the Great Bend of the
Arkansas, in the line of such modern towns as Galva,
McPherson and Great Bend, although probably it
touched the Arkansas at the top of the bend, near the
village of Ellinwood, the first railway station east of
Great Bend. This lies in a region now tamed into a
wheat country and settled with contented farmers,
raising crops that have, by the education of the years
.pn +1
themselves, grown fit to endure that high, dry air, on
the edge of the once rainless region. It was two hundred
and seventy miles out to the Bend of the Arkansas,
and two hundred and ninety-three miles to
the noted Pawnee Rock, which to-day has a town
named for it. Not crossing the Arkansas as yet, the
trail kept down the western leg of the Great Bend,
passed the islands known as the Caches, kept up-stream
for a time to a point twenty miles west of the
town now known as Dodge City—the same “Dodge”
so famous in the cattle days—and reached then the
ford of the Arkansas, which Gregg says was three
hundred and eighty-seven miles west of Independence.[#]

This was about half way on the journey, and on
the border line between the United States and the
Spanish provinces. Gregg makes the jump from
the safe Arkansas to the risky Cimarron a distance
of fifty-eight miles, two or three days’ travel, and
without water, as well as without landmarks. The
erstwhile boom town of Ivanhoe, of which one remembers
talk in county-seat wars as far back as
1886, a little town far down in the dry country, is
near the line of the old trail. Reaching the Cimarron,
the trail bent up that doubtful waterway to Cold
.pn +1
Spring, five hundred and thirty-five miles from Independence.
There it took another leap to the southwest,
over a country then fairly well known from the
Spanish end of the line, and over a well defined road,
which could not be mistaken.

.il fn=illus-278.jpg w=392 link=illus-278-lg.jpg
.ca A RETREAT TO THE BLOCKHOUSE.

The Wagon Mound was a point of note, situated
about six hundred and sixty-two miles west of the
starting point. One might depart thence for Bent’s
Fort on the Arkansas, located in a country very
profitable for traders to keep in view; for above Bent’s
famous hostelry on the mountain branch of the trail
lay the yet wilder pack-horse commerce of the mountain
trappers’ rendezvous, far more romantic and
profitable, if less safe and steady than the wagon commerce
of the prairies. From the Wagon Mound to
the first settlements of the Mexicans, on the Rio Gallinas,
was an easy stage, and to Santa Fé by this time
all roads of the mountains thereabout pointed. It
was seven hundred and eighty miles to Santa Fé, according
to Gregg, the more modern chronicles making
it seven hundred and seventy-five miles, the latter
figures being for a part of the time above, and part
of the time under the old Gregg estimates, which
are singularly correct in view of Gregg’s facilities.
The present Santa Fé railway follows the upper or
mountain leg of the old trail, which went on up the
Arkansas to Bent’s Fort, and did not take the leap
.pn +1
into the desert. From the Wagon Mound on into
Santa Fé the railway route is practically identical
with the old wagon way.

Thus we may see that this great highway, broken
midway and deflected to the southward, was less than
one thousand miles in length. There was no connection,
except a rude sort of pack route by way of Taos
and the Colorado River country, between the end of
the Santa Fé trail and the California country. The
wagons did not go that way. The later railway
drops down along the Rio Grande valley, just as did
the Chihuahua wagon road; and bends westward far
below the old trails of Walker and Jedediah Smith,
who started on their transcontinental voyagings from
points higher up in the mountains than Santa Fé or
Taos.

The way from Santa Fé to California seems to
have been well known, but the trade did not dare
to attempt a commerce so distant, and so unprofitable
as it must have been, consumed by such necessarily
heavy transportation charges. We speak of the Santa
Fé trail as one of the great Western highways, but it
was a halting and broken and arrested highway. It
was not yet quite time for the straight leap across the
rivers. The trail clung to the rivers as far as it might,
and the attempts to cut loose from the streams, and
.pn +1
go straight across from the Red River to Chihuahua,
proved to be unprofitable or impracticable.

The total amount of merchandise carried in these
picturesque caravans of the prairies was perhaps not
so great as we should imagine, though we must remember
that a dollar was larger then than it is
to-day. The extent of the trade varied from year
to year, and did not regularly increase; for though
we note one caravan in 1831 taking out two hundred
thousand dollars’ worth of goods, we find that in
1841, ten years later, the whole annual trade was but
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The climax
was in 1843, when goods to the value of four
hundred and fifty thousand dollars were transported.

The pay for this came back partly in specie, partly
in furs, sometimes largely in horses and mules,
the trade thus bearing a double profit and a
double risk. The Indians did not care for
gold or silver so much as they did for horses and
mules, and diligent enough were their efforts to
stampede the live stock of the traders. Upon occasion
the United States Army was asked to escort a
caravan, but this aid was not generally to be expected,
especially since the worst part of the route, that
infested by the Comanches, lay west of the then accepted
western border of the United States. The
average value of the trade was about one hundred and
.pn +1
fifty thousand dollars yearly, and the total sum for
the duration of this strange branch of American commerce
was only about three million dollars.

The goods carried were at first largely prints
and drillings, for the Mexicans got such goods
from Vera Cruz on the coast, and only at great
expense. Later silks, velvets, hardware and the
general line of American goods began its first westward
way across the American borders. Sometimes
the stocks were retailed, sometimes sold at wholesale,
the latter more often when the trader was in a
hurry. It was a wild, peculiar and fascinating sort
of commerce, and strong was the hold it naturally
took upon the people of the Western border.

This trade was carried on mostly by our Southern-Western
men, our new-Americans, as we may see by
the letter of the grandson of James Baird, written
from Kentucky. Glenn came from Cincinnati, Fowler
from Covington, Kentucky, most of the other familiar
figures from St. Louis, Franklin and other Missouri
points. Morrison, the merchant of Kaskaskia,
was a man who came down-stream. The Northern
man, the man of New England or New York, had
not yet become very much of a Westerner. The
West was not yet safe enough for him. Nor indeed
was he to lead the vanguard of the men who, far to
the north of the old Santa Fé trail, were building
.pn +1
another, a greater and more significant trail, one
whose end we do not see even to-day; the men that
were tapping all the secrets of the upper Rockies,
that were to lead us to the brink of the Western
sea and even to point beyond that sea. But for politics,
the Southerners of to-day, the sons of the old
daring ones, would admit the virtue of that finger
pointing over seas.

There is still in New England something of
the old timidity, the old unwillingness to see the
pointing finger, the same un-American tardiness
to recognize the challenge of the West. Had it
not been for the fascinations of this upper country,
for the allurements of the great trail that
was to run across the continent to the far Northwest,
there had been more competition in the
Southwest trade, and mayhap a swifter crowding
of events toward that state of affairs that Parkman
saw when he visited the Santa Fé trail on his
way home from the Rockies in 1846—the volunteers
of Missouri, kindred to the men of Doniphan, who
were straggling on out toward Mexico on an errand
of justice that had long been overdue. Shuffling,
angular, awkward, uncouth we may, with Parkman,
admit these Southern-Western men to have
been; each man his own commander, reluctant to
admit a superior officer, as had been the fathers of
.pn +1
these men from the time they left the Atlantic
coast; but they did the work in Mexico. They
opened the trail forever, and saw to it that the
borders stretched and spread and gave us room. It
is of no use to talk politics in questions like these, nor
is there need to speak of the moralities. It is for the
most part a matter of transportation. It was the
Arkansas River trail that conquered Mexico.

This, then, was the great thing that the Santa Fé
trail did for us, although we have forgotten it. It
taught the people of New Mexico that the Americans
were a greater and stronger people, a more just and
steadfast people, than those to the south, who had
done naught in all their lives but butcher and hesitate,
butcher again and vacillate. They were not
sad to take on the institutions of the United States
in exchange for those of Spain. The Old World
had not established its ways on the soil of the
New World. The greatest of all Monroe doctrines
still prevailed, the doctrine of the fit, the doctrine
of evolution, of endurance by right, of hardihood
got by a sane dwelling close to the great things
of nature.

Far to the north, the Oregon trail led to California
and the Orient. The Santa Fé trail, broken as it
was in its transcontinental flight, points now in the
same direction. The only ignoble part of the
.pn +1
American story is the history of American politics. All
politics aside, is it not easy to see that the old broken
trail is a fate-finger pointing to Mexico and the
trans-Isthmian canal; to an America wholly American;
and to an Orient that again and by another
trail is destined to be our West? We may spill our
oratory, may deplore utterly and sincerely, yet we
shall not prevail to build any wall high enough to
stop this thing. The Old World might combine for
the time against the New, might for a term of years
conspire to put our venturers in prison; but at last
it all were futile. Much of the temperate zone of
the world belongs to a people whose history is but
the history of a West; it will always so belong while
the character of that people shall retain the dignity
and force of those men who “could not otherwise.”

This people is concerned to-day, as it has always
been, not with sentiment but with self interest. Its
great movements have been based not on theories but
on common sense. Its great policies have been founded
on geography and not on polemics. Its great adversities
have been those of transportation; its great successes
have been those built on transportation problems
ably mastered. To-day this American people
waxes somewhat flamboyantly boastful, according
lightly and cheerfully to itself the title of the greatest
nation of the world. It may indeed be such, or
.pn +1
potentially such; but it will retain better claim upon
that greatness if in all humility it shall remember
the slow days wherein that greatness was founded,
wherefrom that greatness grew. Therein lies the import
of the early Western trails.

.fm

.fn #
The spelling of this name is by most authorities given as
“Becknell,” which is thought to be correct.
.fn-

.fn #
V. Chapter IV, Vol. III; “Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri.”
.fn-

.fn #
Other authorities, as for instance Chittenden, make it 392
miles.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk3ch03 pn=+1
CHAPTER III||THE OREGON TRAIL
.sp 2

In the distribution of the population of Western
America, the mouths of many great Western rivers,
the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Columbia, the Colorado,
the Red, the Sacramento, the Arkansas, perhaps
even the Ohio, were known before their sources
were fully explored. The journey over the Appalachians,
and the down-stream movements that followed
the Mississippi and its greater tributaries,
were the first concerns of our new-American emigrants.
The lower reaches of the great Western rivers
having been utilized, the first two decades of the
century last past were spent in the search for the
head waters of these same streams.

Lewis and Clark followed up the tortuous Missouri
until they reached at least a practical conclusion as to
its sources. Lieutenant Pike mistook the upper Rio
Grande for the head of the Red River, and it cost
him a long walk to Chihuahua. Yet he was as accurate
as the famous Baron von Humboldt, who thought
the Pecos River was a tributary of the Red. Major
Long, in 1820, dropped down from the South Fork
of the Platte to the head waters of the Cimarron,
.pn +1
which he traced to the Canadian, also missing the
Red River which he sought, and taking the Canadian
river to be the Red.

Scores of similar errors were made in those days
before the maps, but still the explorations went
on. The head waters of the Columbia, of the Green,
of the Sacramento or “Buena Ventura,” offered challenge
to many bold men, the story of whose exploits
forms one of the most glowing chapters of American
hero history. These divers pursuits, these evidences
of an up-stream travel and traffic, more properly
group themselves under our second general head of
up-stream transportation. Next there was to come
the day of transportation across the waters, from
stream to stream.

Among those men who early in the past century
pressed out most boldly in the quest for the heads
of the upper Western waters, we continue to find our
men of the South very prominent, the sons of the
men that moved west from Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee into Missouri and other parts of the trans-Mississippi.
Many of these made the old town of St.
Louis their general starting point, and St. Louis was,
in those days, much more a Southern or Western
town than it is to-day. As in the time of the Santa
Fé trail, the Western man was still what we should
call to-day a Southerner.
.pn +1

The greater number of the leaders of the fur trade
were properly to be called Western-born citizens. A
few exceptions to this rule are worthy of note. John
Jacob Astor was the first of the Eastern merchants
to send out a commercial expedition into the far West;
but really the first notable Eastern explorer personally
to engage in exploring the head waters of distant
Western rivers was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Massachusetts,
who, in 1832, led the first continuous expedition
from New England to the mouth of the Columbia,
a man whose pluck and energy deserved a better fate
than he encountered. It was this same Wyeth who,
in 1834, founded one of the first establishments west
of the Rockies, that Fort Hall, often mentioned in
the story of the fur trade, which was afterward sold
to the Hudson Bay Company. Fort Hall was a
trading post of much note in earlier times, and it is
of interest to us at this juncture, in view of the fact
that it was located on that great roadway later to be
trod by thousands of feet that had begun their journey
farther to the eastward than the valley of the
Mississippi—the roadway to be known as the Oregon
trail.

There was early need for a trail to Oregon. The
first of the hardy trappers of the Northwest told us
about Oregon; and had we heeded them, we might
to-day have an Oregon of continuous American
.pn +1
territory running north to Alaska. Our trappers offered
us this empire. Our “leaders” lost it for us. As it
was, we nearly lost what Oregon we have to Great
Britain and her own hardy trappers. Wyeth and
his friends brought back word to the East, which at
last the ever hesitating, ever doubting Eastern men
believed. At last we summoned together our senses,
our halting diplomacy, with the result that we kept
our marches intact to the Western sea. This we
were able to do simply because of the individual
search that had been going on for the head waters
of the Western streams, because the Western men
had already made for us that Oregon trail, which
gave us touch with the far-off American provinces
beyond the Rockies.

To-day, to the average resident of the Middle West,
Oregon seems farther away than California; but up
to the middle of the last century it was much nearer
and much better known; and it was so solely because,
under the existing conditions of travel, it was more
accessible. The Santa Fé trail did not go to California.
The Oregon trail did go to Oregon, and over
a plain and easy route.

The Oregon trail left the Missouri River, as did
the Santa Fé trail, at that early citadel of the trade
of the West, the town of Independence. It followed
up the ancient valley of the Platte, immemorial
.pn +1
highway of the tribes, and led to the head waters
of many streams now historic, even then long
familiar to many of our early trappers and traders.

We have heard of Andrew Henry, whose name was
given to a beautiful lake of the Rockies, as well as
to a once famous trading post across the range, the
lieutenant whose man, Etienne Provost, probably discovered
the South Pass. We know of the trader
Jackson, one of General Ashley’s bold mountain
family, whose name was left to the beautiful valley
below the Yellowstone Park, called even to-day Jackson’s
Hole. We have heard of the wanderings of
Campbell, Fitzpatrick, Sublette, of Jim Bridger,
and of General Ashley himself, prince of early mountain
traders, father of a bold crew of young successors.
We shall presently speak of Bonneville and
his northern wagons, and of Bonneville’s man
Walker, bigger than himself. We must also trace
a part of the march of the first land party to cross
this continent, the Astorians, whose broken journeyings
down the Snake and Columbia made part of
the earliest trail-history of the West.

All these different leaders and individuals had
much to do with the Oregon trail; the trail that was
the road of the adventurers, and also the first real road
to the Pacific for that traveler properly to be called
the home-seeking man. The Missouri River would do
.pn +1
for Manuel Lisa and General Ashley and Major
Henry, and the Sublettes, and the Chouteaus, and
all those others that held the scores of trading posts
which dotted the upper waters of the Missouri and
the Yellowstone. The Missouri River and its tributaries
gave them their natural roadways; but all these
scattered posts, all this devious ancient roadway of
the waters, lay far to the northward, on the upper
curve of a great arc, the winding way traced out by
Lewis and Clark, the way of the up-stream wanderers.
The streams ever appealed to explorers. Any
man going into unknown country instinctively clings
to the waterways, near which he always feels safer.
Yet it was the way between and across the streams
that spoke most loudly to those settlers that came
to stay, to till the soil, who brought with them
household goods, who brought ax and plow as well as
trap and rifle. The ancient highway for footmen
and horsemen, which ran up the valley of the Platte
River, extended out along the chord of this great
Missouri River arc, along the string of this vast
bended bow.

The string of this great bow ran four degrees of
latitude to the south of the upper curve of the Missouri.
Evidently the line of the bow-string was the
better way to the Pacific; the more especially since
itself followed for so great a distance another
.pn +1
preordained pathway of the waters—that of the river
Platte, ancient road of the Indian tribes. It was within
natural reason, therefore, that the travelers should
break away, should leave the upper waterway and
start directly overland. This came to pass because
there were now horses to be obtained in the West.
We are now come to the time of horse transportation;
which was the beginning of the day of travel across
the streams.

Along this great trail crossing the waters men
bent their steps toward Oregon and California,
men from the banks of the Missouri, from Illinois,
and now even from far-off New England—where at
last they had learned the “easy way West” and had
begun to travel, as their friends to the southward had
been doing for so many years. Thus, then, began
the great Oregon trail, this road that might, with
justice, have been called an open highway when Frémont
“explored” the Rockies, albeit a highway almost
unsettled, as it is to-day over much of its length,
though peopled thick with mighty memories. The
Mormons, the Missourians, the men bound for the
placers of Montana, the valleys of California, or the
warm slopes of the Oregon ranges—all these helped
wear deep into the earth the old roadway, once
clear-cut and unmistakable for more than two
.pn +1
thousand miles west of that Missouri River which was the
first route out into the ulterior West.

It may profit us to fix in sequence a few simple
facts in the study of the development of this great
trail. At the start, of course, we come to our Frenchman
De la Verendrye, who may perhaps have been
the first to tread a portion of the later Oregon trail;
since we know he forsook the Missouri and started
overland, possibly up the Platte, crossing some of the
country which the Astorians later saw. We hear
also of the trapper Ezekiel Williams[#] in 1807, and
some of the advance guards of the Missouri Fur
Company, who were cutting loose from the Missouri
River, and who were naturally looking for the easiest
land routes. Then came Wilson Price Hunt, with
his overland Astorians, seeking a way from the mid-Missouri
River to the Columbia River.

These established the course of the Oregon trail
west of the Rockies, but did not trace it so distinctly
on the east of that range. Later Robert Stuart and
the returning Astorians were to mark out, east of the
Divide, the route of the Oregon trail for much of
its length. Then came Ashley, who went up the
Platte and across the South Pass; and after Ashley
came scores of other flap-hatted trappers and traders,
.pn +1
all of whom rode, we may be sure, along the easiest
ways; which meant the Sweetwater and the South
Pass after the Platte was left behind. These followed
the route of the Oregon trail for the compelling
reason of topography. Now came Bonneville and
his wagons to deepen the trail, in 1832; and two
years later than that, in 1834, Robert Campbell and
William Sublette built old Fort Laramie, on Laramie
Creek, a branch of the Platte.[#] This establishment
went far toward developing the Oregon trail
into a regular route. It became a well known trading
center, so that all the trappers and many Indians
rounded up there; and in the days of the emigrants,
soon to come, thousands of weary travelers aided in
marking deeply the now unmistakable and open roadway
that lay across the Rockies.

So practicable was this post of Fort Laramie, and
so practicable also the route on which it was located,
that in 1849 the United States government bought the
old post, and used it as a military establishment, so
adding to its long and exciting history. Eight years
after the building of Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger was
built by Jim Bridger, on a branch of the Green River,
over the Divide, farther out to the west, along what
had now come to be a universally accepted highway.

.pn +1
Jim Bridger, possibly the first discoverer of Great
Salt Lake, was, by the year 1842, ready to admit
that the old days were over and done with. No more
trapping for Jim Bridger. The West was gone.
He must thenceforth feed Mormons, or guide government
officers in their “explorations.” Bridger
gave up the West as a squeezed orange at just the
time Frémont was starting out to make his name as
the “Pathfinder” of the Rockies. Frémont, and all
the other explorers of so late a period, went west as
far as the head waters of the Green River over the
Oregon trail,—a road a man could have followed in
the dark.

The Mormons took over Fort Bridger in 1853, not
liking so stable a Gentile institution thus near to
their realm; but the Mormons forgot that they could
not wipe out the trail that led to Bridger’s old log
fortress. The trail brought on an ever-growing
stream of travel. In time Fort Bridger, too, became
an army post, and remained such from 1857 till
1890. Since the latter date it has been abandoned.
We go to Europe to seek for interesting ruins, forgetting
Laramie and Bridger and Benton, all spots
with significant and thrilling histories.

As to the great trail of the Northwest, considered
as a transcontinental trail properly so called, its
.pn +1
second stage might be said to begin in 1834,[#] when
it was first used as a route straight through to Oregon.
After that date the parties of emigrants steadily
grew in numbers, among them not only men from
Missouri, but farther to the east.

In 1836 there occurred a great and wonderful
thing. Two women moved out into the West along
the Oregon trail. We keep record of the times when
wagons first went up the Platte, and we shall
do well also to note this date of 1836, when
women of the white race first went over the national
road of the West. These two were
the wives of Whitman and Spalding, missionaries
bound for Oregon. Father de Smet, great
man and good, a missionary also, followed in 1840;
then more missionaries from New England—always
prolific of missionaries; and two years later Frémont,
as far at least as the South Pass. Then came the
Mormons in 1847, bound for their kingdom of Deseret,
and the Oregon Battalion in the same year;
these followed soon thereafter by a continuous
stream made up of thousands of trappers and
.pn +1
explorers and visitors and gold seekers, who began to
crowd West after ’49 and the discovery of gold.
Those were busy times in the West, we may be
sure. The Oregon trail grew deep and wide. No
traveler on the north and south line could cross it
without being aware of that fact. It was the plain,
main-traveled road.

The first agricultural invasion along the old trail
might be said to be that of the Mormons, who
sent delegations from their settlements to occupy
the Green River valley, and who used the trail for a
short way. General Albert Sidney Johnston used it
for many more miles, when he went out to take care
of some of these Mormons, now grown obstreperous.

Even so late as this we are many years in advance
of the railways; which indeed do not even to-day occupy
the old Oregon trail throughout its entire length,
though using much of it on both sides of that easy
South Pass country, once so useful to the trappers
and wagon travelers, but not so essential to railway
engineers looking for more direct lines across the
wastes. Perhaps we shall some day see a line of rails
follow throughout the two thousand miles of this ancient
trail. Even so, our American tourists would
still go to Europe in search of ruins and history and
memories! We know and care all too little now for
this old trail, whose earliest travelers were called by
.pn +1
the California Indians the “Whoa-haws”—that being
the word most used by the aforesaid emigrants,
who had pushed their ox-teams across half a continent.
Significant term, this “Whoa-haw” title,
though we have now forgotten it.

The emigrants of to-day do not go by the
“Whoa-haw” route. On February twelfth of the year
1902, between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred
land hunters left the city of Chicago for
the country of the Northwest. Two-thirds of these
came from the crowded East, the remaining third,
for the most part, from the crowded West of
Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, now grown very
old.

A common carrier, responsible as such for the
life and goods of these emigrants, agreed to
take them from Chicago to the city of Portland, on
the extreme western end of that Oregon trail, for the
price per head of thirty dollars. The old “Whoa-haw”
route once demanded a year of time and a
heart of steel, as part of the essential capital of the
traveler, and demanded also that he take his own
chances and foot his own losses, which, in the nature
of things, might be considerable.

It was expected by one railroad in the year 1902
that it would, within the term of twelve months, carry
out fifty thousand persons to settle in the Northwest
.pn +1
coast country. There you have the old way and the
new. There you have a part of the history of a
country two thousand miles west of the Mississippi
valley, which even Thomas Jefferson accepted as the
very farthest edge of the region that could ever be
called America! This is the story of a land that
even Thomas Benton, a big man, and always a friend
of the West, really in his own conscience thought
could never, by any possibility, extend its national
and civilized limits west of the Rockies! This is the
record of a region which, in the beginnings of the
Oregon trail, our ablest men of letters and of statecraft
thought could never be aught but the home of
wandering tribes of savages! Truly the great men
of to-day might profitably learn humility from a
study of the things which the American people have
done in spite of leaders. Ah! Daniel Webster, and
many other Daniels of the little East, could you
come to life to-day, what would be your oratory?

Francis Parkman, sometimes querulous, often supercilious,
but ever beautiful and splendidly accurate
historian of the beginnings of the American West,
visited the Oregon trail in 1846, twelve years after
Kit Carson had practically ceased to trap beaver,
and four years after the first Frémont
.pn +1
expedition.[#] He says: “Emigrants from every part of the country
were preparing for the journey to Oregon and California;”
and adds, “An unusual number of traders
were outfitting for the Northwest;” as well as many
Mormons. This was before the discovery of gold in
California. Independence, the outfitting point, was
at the threshold of the later West, the beginning of
the way to the Pacific.[#]

Parkman states in the preface to a later edition of
his work (1872): “We knew that a few fanatical
outcasts were groping their way across the plains to
seek an asylum from Gentile persecution, but we did
not dream that the polygamous hordes of Mormon
would rear a swarming Jerusalem in the bosom of
solitude itself. We knew that, more and more, year
after year, the trains of the emigrant wagons would
creep in slow procession toward barbarous Oregon or
wild California, but we did not dream, how Commerce
and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific, the
disenchanting screech of locomotives break the spell
of weird mysterious mountains. . . . The wild
cavalcade that defiled with me down the gorges of
the Black Hills, with its paint and war plumes, fluttering
trophies and savage embroidery, bows, arrows,
lances and shields, will never be seen again.”

In no way could Parkman have been more just or
.pn +1
thoughtful than in one of his chance statements.
“All things are relative,” said he. “The West is
either very old or very new, according as we look at
it.” From the one point of view he might feel a
superiority of his own, for as he traveled over the
country a few days’ march west of Leavenworth he
saw many antlers of elk and skulls of buffalo, “reminders
of the animals once swarming over this now
deserted region.” This intervening country between
the Missouri River and the plains proper he
considers to serve the popular notion of the “prairie.”
“For this it is,” he writes, “from which tourists,
painters, poets and novelists, who have seldom penetrated
farther, derived their conception of the whole
region.” There was fell stroke of unwitting justice!
Even to-day there are artists and novelists that deal
with the West, but have “seldom penetrated farther”
than the edge of the real West.

Parkman himself saw the old trail fairly well dotted
with the outfits of the west-bound emigrants.
He describes the difficulties then existing between
the Mormons and their enemies, and the suspicions
of the one party against the other. He saw one
party of fifty wagons, with “hundreds of cattle,” on
his way up the Platte. Far out to the West, on that
Horse Creek so frequently mentioned in the history
of the mountain trappers’ rendezvous, he
.pn +1
witnessed a party of Indian women and children bathing
in the stream, while meantime “a long train of
emigrants with their heavy wagons was crossing the
creek, and dragging on in slow procession by the encampment
of the people whom they and their descendants,
in the space of a century, are to sweep
from the face of the earth.” This was toward the
headwaters of the Platte, of course, not far from
that Fort Laramie where he met the grandsons of
Daniel Boone, still going West, even unto the third
and fourth generation. “Great changes are at
hand,” says he, “great changes are at hand in all
that region. With the stream of emigration to Oregon
and California the buffalo will dwindle away.
. . . In a few years the traveler will pass in
tolerable security.” This was the utmost prophecy
of one of the most intelligent and philosophical
travelers that ever went from the East into the West!

Yet one of the most vivid conceptions possible of
the history of that day, as bearing on the strange
impulse that seemed to drive these wanderers west
and ever westward, may be gained from a passage
of Parkman’s “Oregon Trail.” “It is worth noticing,”
says he, “that on the Platte one may sometimes
see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed
tables, well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus
of carved oak. These, some of them no doubt the
.pn +1
relics of ancestral prosperity in colonial times, must
have encountered strange vicissitudes. Brought,
perhaps, originally from England; then, with the declining
fortunes of their owners, borne across the
Alleghanies to the wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky;
then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly
stowed away for the interminable journey to Oregon.
But the stern privations of the way are little
anticipated. The cherished relic is thrown out to
scorch and crack on the hot prairie.” What a
world of suggestion there lies in this chance picture
of the desert—what a world of American history it
covers! Perhaps one day the American people will
come to take interest in a past so curious and so
striking as its own.

There was a time when every Western man, still
restless, still unsettled, still under the mysterious
west-bound impulse, thought in terms of Oregon and
California. No wall could have stopped these men.
No political doctrine could have restrained them.
As well try to regulate the sweep of the tides of
ocean, equally mysterious, equally irresistible. This
great road of the prairies and the mountains, more
than two thousand miles long, and level, smooth and
easy, even though it crossed a continental divide—this
unengineered triumph of engineering—lay directly
at hand as the natural pathway of the American
.pn +1
people. It was the longest highway of the world, unless
that may be the trail of the convicts of Siberia, to
reach whose terminus in the fullness of time this
great trail of the American freemen seems to have
been devised. It was the route of a national movement—the
emigration of a people “seeking to avail
itself of opportunities that have come but rarely
in the history of the world, and will never come
again.”

As has been stated, the overland trail to Oregon
began, as did the Santa Fé trail, at the town of Independence,
on the Missouri River. The two trails
were the same for forty-one miles, when, as the able
historian of the fur trade remarks, a simple sign
board was seen which carried the words, “Road to
Oregon.”[#] The methods of these old men were very
direct and simple. There was small flourish about
this little board, whose mission was to point the way
across these miles of wild and uninhabited country!
There were branch trails that came into the road
from Leavenworth and St. Joseph, striking it above
the point of departure from the Santa Fé trail; but
the Oregon trail proper swung off from this fork,
running steadily to the northwest, part of the time
along the Little Blue River, until at length it struck
.pn +1
the valley of the Platte, which was so essential to
its welfare. The distance from Independence to the
Platte was three hundred and sixteen miles, the trail
reaching the Platte “about twenty miles below the
head of Grand Island.” The course thence lay up the
Platte valley to the two fords, about at the Forks of
the Platte, four hundred and thirty-three or four
hundred and ninety-three miles.

Here at the Forks was a point of departure in the
old days. If one chose to follow the South Fork of
the Platte, he might bring up in the Bayou Salade,
within reach of the Spanish settlements and the head
of the Arkansas, as we may see in reading of La
Lande and of Purcell and of Ashley, and of the later
traders; or he might take the other arm and come
out on the edge of the continental Divide much
higher up to the north.

The Oregon trail followed the South Fork for a
time, then swung over to the North Fork, at
Ash Creek, five hundred and thirteen miles from
Independence. It was six hundred and sixty-seven
miles to Fort Laramie, which was the
last post on the eastern side of the Rockies.
Thence the trail struggled on up the Platte, keeping
close as it might to the stream, till it reached the
Ford of the Platte, well up toward the mountains,
and seven hundred and ninety-four miles out from
.pn +1
Independence—nearly the same distance from that
point as was the city of Santa Fé on the lower trail.

Yet a little farther on and the trail forsook the
Platte and swung across, eight hundred and seven
miles out from the Missouri, to the valley of the
Sweetwater, now an essential feature of the highway.
The famous Independence Rock, eight hundred and
thirty-eight miles from Independence, was one of
the most noteworthy features along the trail. It
marked the entrance into the Sweetwater district,
and was a sort of register of the wilderness,
holding the rudely carved names of many of the
greatest Western venturers, as well as many of no
consequence. The Sweetwater takes us below the
foot of the Bighorns, through the Devil’s Gate, and
leads us gently up to that remarkable crossing of the
Rockies known as the South Pass, a spot of great
associations. This is nine hundred and forty-seven
miles from the Missouri River. Here all the west-bound
voyagers felt that their journey to the Pacific
was well-nigh completed, though as a matter of fact
it was not yet half done. This Western geography,
of which most of us know so little, was a tremendous
thing in the times before the railways came.

Starting now down the Pacific side of the Great
Divide, the traveler passed over a hundred and
twenty-five miles of somewhat forbidding country,
.pn +1
crossing the Green River before he came to Fort
Bridger, the first resting point west of the Rockies,
ten hundred and seventy miles from the Missouri.
This was a delightful spot in every way, and the
station was always welcomed by the travelers. The
Bear River was eleven hundred and thirty-six miles
from Independence, and to the Soda Springs, on the
big bend of the Bear, was twelve hundred and six
miles. Thence one crossed over the height of land
between the Bear and the Port Neuf rivers, the
latter being Columbia water; and, at a distance of
twelve hundred and eighty-eight miles from Independence,
reached the very important point of Fort
Hall, the post established and abandoned by the Easterner,
Nathaniel Wyeth. This was the first point
at which the trail struck the Snake River, that great
lower arm of the Columbia, which came dropping
down from its source opposite the headwaters of the
Missouri, as though especially to point out the way
to travelers, just as the South Fork of the Platte led
to the Spanish Southwest. There lay our pathways,
waiting ready for us!

At the Raft River was another point of great interest;
for here turned aside the arm of the transcontinental
trail that led to California. This fork
of the road was thirteen hundred and thirty-four
.pn +1
miles from the Missouri.[#] Working as best it might
from the Raft River, down the Great Snake valley,
touching and crossing and paralleling several different
streams, the trail ran until it reached the Grande
Ronde valley, at the eastern edge of the difficult
Blue Mountains, and seventeen hundred and thirty-six
miles from the starting point. The railway to-day
crosses the Blues where the old trail did. Then the
route struck the Umatilla, and shortly thereafter the
mighty Columbia, the “Oregon” of the poet, and a
stream concerning which we were not always so
placid as we are to-day. It was nineteen hundred
and thirty-four miles to the Dalles, nineteen hundred
and seventy-seven miles to the Cascades, two thousand
and twenty miles to Fort Vancouver, and
twenty-one hundred and thirty-four miles to the
mouth of the Columbia; though the trail proper
terminated at Fort Vancouver—the same post, as
we shall see, for which the hero Jedediah Smith
headed when he was in such dire distress, in the
mountains of southwest Oregon.[#]

This was the way to the Pacific, the trail across
the Rockies, the appointed path of the heroes that
.pn +1
ventured forth into the unknown lands, as well as of
the men that followed them safely in later days. It
was but a continuation of the way to the Missouri,
of the way across the Alleghanies, a part of the path
of the strange appointed pilgrimage of the white race
in America.

.fm

.fn #
Said to have been the first white man to cross the borders of
what is now Wyoming.
.fn-

.fn #
Again our useful date of 1834.
.fn-

.fn #
Pray you yet again, remember this great American date of
1834, and you shall be quit of all others, all those telling of wars
and politics. That was the year when the beaver trapping ceased
to be profitable, when the trappers came in, when the wild West
began to become the civilized West. This date, remembered
philosophically, will prove of the utmost service in retaining a
connected idea of the settlement of the West. It has bearings
both upon the past and upon the future. It is a milestone
marking the parting of the ways.
.fn-

.fn #
One of Parkman’s men, the hunter Raymond, perished in the
ill-fated Frémont third expedition, among the snows of the lofty
mountains far below the South Pass.
.fn-

.fn #
V. also Chapter II, Vol. III; “The Santa Fé Trail.”
.fn-

.fn #
Chittenden.
.fn-

.fn #
The later California trail passed farther to the south, along
the upper end of the Great Salt Lake, leaving the main trail
at the upper bend of the Bear, to the east of Fort Hall.
.fn-

.fn #
V. Chapter IV, Vol. III; “Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri.”
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk3ch04 pn=+1
CHAPTER IV||EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE TRANS-MISSOURI
.sp 2

It is customary to read and to teach history in the
time-honored fashion which begins at the beginning
and comes on down until to-day, not skipping the
battles and not forgetting the tables of dynasties,
royal or political. Without wishing to be eccentric or
iconoclastic, none the less one may venture to suggest
that there may be a certain virtue in beginning
with events well within our reach and comprehension,
and then going backward, which is to say going
forward, in our knowledge of our field. This is especially
useful as a method in studying the history
of the West of the trans-Missouri.

We have seen that the first Frémont expedition
had no feature of discovery attached to it beyond the
climbing to the top of a mountain that had been
known by many for years, but which no one else had
wanted to climb, because of the general knowledge of
the fact that buffalo and beaver did not reside on
the mountain tops. We know that Frémont, when
he stood at the South Pass, was in the middle of a
country that had been well known when he was a
.pn +1
child. We have seen that his journey across the
plains was over a country perfectly understood and
fully charted. There were hostile Indians on the
plains in those days, to be sure, yet Indians are far
simpler as a problem if you yourself know the exact
distances between grass and watering places and cover
and good game country. All this information Frémont
received ready prepared. Frémont commanded;
Kit Carson led.

For Kit Carson we may feel a certain reverence
as a man of the real West; but shall we believe that
even Kit Carson divided with Frémont the experience
of setting foot in a new and virgin world? Not
so. Kit Carson himself, great man as he was, never
claimed to be a great explorer. He is properly to be
called a great traveler, not a great discoverer. He
perhaps found some beaver streams at first hand, but
he himself would have been the first to admit that he
got all the great features of the Rockies at second
hand. Before him there were discoverers and
pseudo-discoverers, actual as well as false prophets
of adventure.

If we go by dates alone we shall find ourselves
presently concerned with Captain Bonneville, sometime
famous as an “explorer” of the Rocky Mountains.
Him we may class as one of the pseudo-discoverers.
He was an army officer, who discovered
.pn +1
nothing, but who obtained a great reputation
through the chronicling of his deeds in the Rocky
Mountains; so great that, having grossly exceeded
his leave of absence, he was eventually reinstated in
the Army after he had lost his commission, the
president of the United States remarking that he
“could not fail so to reward one who had contributed
so much to the welfare of his country”!
Bonneville was a lucky man. He lost but few
mules and but few men. He brought back a map
on which was founded the greater part of his
reputation, maps and scientific nomenclature having
been ever, in the estimation of some, held to surpass
any original discoveries in geography and
natural history.

Bonneville’s map had a certain value at the time,
yet it held little actual first hand information, because
it was built upon knowledge derived from
Gallatin, from that big man, General Ashley,
the fur trader, and from the latter’s gallant
associate, Jedediah Smith.[#] As to Bonneville himself,
he was, unless we shall except Frémont, the
first great example of the class later to be known
.pn +1
as “tenderfoot.” A certain glory attaches to him,
because he was the first man to take a wagon train
through the South Pass, which he did ten years
before Frémont “discovered” that country.

Bonneville went West in 1832, two years before Kit
Carson stopped trapping beaver for the reason that it
no longer paid him. The lucky captain traveled up
the Platte valley to Fort Laramie, then broke across
on the old mountain road of the West, up the Sweetwater,
to the South Pass, thence getting upon the Pacific
waters, the headwaters of the Green River; one
of the two great arms of the Colorado, and an important
stream in fur trading days. Obviously,
Bonneville wanted to grow rich quickly in the
fur trade, being more intent on that than on
exploration for geographical purposes. He discovered
that there was already a West beyond him,
even then a distinct region, with ways of its own
and men of its own. He continued to move
about in the mountains for a couple of years more,
the South Pass serving as the center of his operations;
but really it is of little concern what Bonneville
did during the remainder of his long stay in
the West. We may, none the less, after a fashion,
call Bonneville one of the predecessors of Carson, if
we shall date Carson’s earthly existence only from
his connection with Frémont. How, then, did the
.pn +1
lucky captain indirectly serve as predecessor of quiet
and valid Kit Carson?

It was in this way. Bonneville had with him an
old Santa Fé trail man named J. R. Walker;
for we must remember that in 1832 the Santa
Fé trail had really seen its best days. Walker
wanted to go to California, and Bonneville was
eager to have him do so, for the worthy captain
was far more concerned about beaver than about
geography; and there was, as we shall presently
discover, a very good reason to foresee an abundance
of beaver in California. Bonneville and his
lieutenant, when these plans first matured, were
still on the Green River, this being the year after
they had first reached the Rockies. The fur trade
was not prosperous; even thus early they found
competition in the Rocky Mountains. The country
was not new enough. The West, as viewed from
the headwaters of the Green River, lay still farther
forward in the course of the setting sun. Walker
must go to California and bring back from it its
beaver peltry.

Walker, therefore, on July twenty-seventh, 1833,
left Bonneville on the Green River and started on the
tremendous journey toward the Pacific Ocean. He
took with him forty men, and perhaps later picked up
a dozen wandering trappers or so, who desired to join
.pn +1
the California venture. Here, then, was a discoverer
who started for California more than a decade
before Frémont did; more than sixteen years before
any one suspected California to be a land
of gold. The trapping of beaver, and not the digging
of gold, was the first cause of Californian
exploration by the Americans of the upper West.
The beaver was a fateful animal.

Walker dropped down the Green River into the
valley of the Great Salt Lake, which was at that
time a perfectly well known country, though it had
not been described in any official reports. Thence
he headed westward across the Great Basin, whose
terrors had so long held back even the hardy trappers
of the mountain region. He gave the name Barren
River to the stream now called the Humboldt. He
gave his own name to another stream. After some
fashion he won across the great desert, and crossed
also the Sierra range, accomplishing this latter feat
about October twenty-fifth. He was, perhaps, the first
man to see the Yosemite valley, though as to that we
can not be certain. By the end of November, 1833,
he was within view of the Pacific Ocean.

After all, then, it did not seem to be so hard to
get across the country in those early times. Nor
was it so difficult to return. Walker had fifty-two
men and three hundred and sixty-five horses when
.pn +1
he started eastward in February, 1834. He had, of
course, met that Spanish civilization which first
explored the Colorado River and first settled the
Pacific slope. Walker now had guides, Indians of
the land, who led him eastward across the Sierras,
somewhat south of the place where he crossed going
west.

Once over the mountains, he headed northward
along the eastern edge of the range, until he
intercepted his own west-bound trail, which he followed
back until he reached what is now known as
the Humboldt River. Thence he went north to the
Snake River, and so on back to the rendezvous on
the Bear River. At the rendezvous he made public
what information he could add to the general store.
Thus it was, perhaps, that Carson and his confrères
learned more than they had known before of the
beaver country beyond the Sierras. That rendezvous
of the old mountain men—ah! who will one
day understand it and immortalize it? That was a
great market, a great journal, a great college!
There indeed maps were made! There indeed
geography grew! That was where the West was
really learned <i>ab initio</i>.

This mountain market, this map-making college
of a primeval West, was first established in 1824;
hence we may say that Walker, in 1834, had no
.pn +1
license to be called an old-timer in the West. In
1834 the old West of the adventurers was done.[#] He
was before Frémont, before Carson’s leadership of
Frémont; but there was some one else before him,
a man who had crossed the continent and had seen
the western sea even before Kit Carson made his
first journey thither with the men of Taos and
Bent’s Fort neighborhood; even before Walker’s
successful expedition was conceived.

Who was this earlier man, this first man to cross
to the Pacific by the land trail? No less than one
Smith, Jedediah Smith, a man of no rank nor title,
and all too little station in American history. This
was the man that first led the trappers from the Rockies
west to California. This man, Jedediah Smith,
is indeed a hero. Not a boaster but an adventurer;
not a talker but a doer of deeds; the very man fit
to be type of the Western man to come. Smith
himself was the product of a generation of the
American West, and though we search all the
annals of that West, we shall find no more satisfying
record, no more eye-filling picture, nor any
greater figure than his own. He is worthy of a
place by the side of that other Smith, the John
Smith who explored Virginia, near the starting
place of the American star of empire. What pity
that Washington Irving did not find Jedediah Smith
.pn +1
rather than the inconsequent Bonneville, and so
immortalize the right man with his beautifying pen!
There is a great hero story left untold!

Our Smith was a member of that firm of young
men, Smith, Sublette and Jackson, who bought out
the business of that first great fur trader, General
Ashley. It goes without saying that Smith knew
all the upper country of the Yellowstone, the Missouri,
the South Pass region, the Sweetwater, the
Green, the Bear, long before he first resolved to
gratify his love of initial adventure and to head out
across that unknown country of the far Southwest.

We are getting close to the first of new-American
things when we come to the story of his journey.
There had been early Spaniards, there had been Indians
perhaps, who knew the way across, but there
was none to pilot Smith. He started of his own resolve
and traveled under his own guidance. They had
not told him, as they had told Kit Carson, of the excellent
beaver country of the Sacramento. The vast
country beyond the Great Salt Lake had been too
forbidding for even that later hardy soul to undertake
as yet; and the reaches of the Rockies above and
below the eastern edge of that desert had contented
all of Bridger’s hardy companions. The more reason,
therefore, thought Smith, that he and his little
party of fifteen men should cross the desert; and
.pn +1
he did so, quite as though it were a matter of
course.

Having no guide, he simply went west as well as
he could, clinging to grass and water as he went. He
left the rendezvous near Salt Lake in 1826, crossed
the Sevier valley, struck the Virgin or Adams River,
followed the Colorado for a time, and at length broke
boldly away over the awful California desert, until,
in such way as we can but imagine, he reached at
length the Spanish settlements of San Diego. This
was in the month of October. Smith crossed the
Sierras near the point where runs to-day the Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad. He was somewhat in
advance of the engineers.

Although we do not learn that Smith had any
guide or any advance information, it seems that the
Spaniards did not appreciate the difficulties under
which he had visited them. They bade him leave
the country at once. Perhaps Smith was not quite
candid with the Spaniards, for, though he promised
compliance, instead of starting directly back to the
eastward, he went north four hundred miles, put out
his traps and wintered on the San Joaquin and
Merced rivers. He found there a trapper’s El Dorado.

This information, of course, would be more valuable
when imparted to his friends eastward in the
Rockies. Hence we observe Smith leaving his party,
.pn +1
and taking with him only two men, seven horses and
two mules, calmly starting back again to the
Rockies, which by this time must have seemed to
him an old and well settled country. In the incredible
time of twenty-eight days he was back again
at the southwest corner of Salt Lake. We can not
tell just how he made this journey. Perhaps he
crossed the Sierras near the Sonora Pass, thence
went east, far to the south of the Humboldt River,
and south also of what is now called Walker Lake.
We must remember that neither this river nor lake
had any name when Smith was there. Jedediah
Smith antedated all names, all maps, all geography!
Yet all this was not so very long ago, if we reflect
that it took three hundred years to find the source
of the Mississippi River after its mouth had been
discovered. It is not yet one hundred years back
to Smith.

Jedediah Smith was no man to waste time. He
told his friends what he had found beyond the snowy
range. By July thirteenth, 1827, he was ready with
eighteen men of a new party to start back for California.
Now he began to meet the first of his extraordinarily
bad luck, the first of a series of misfortunes
that must have stopped any man but himself.
The Spaniards seem to have had some notion of
Smith’s intentions, and they set Indians to watch
.pn +1
the trails down the Virgin and the Colorado. These
met Smith near the Colorado River and killed
ten of his men. Almost destitute, Smith reached
the Spanish settlements of San Gabriel and San
Diego only to meet with further misfortune. His
native guides—for now he had learned how to secure
Indian guides—were imprisoned, and he himself was
thrown into jail at San José. He was released on
condition that he leave the country; which he
proceeded to do after a fashion peculiarly his
own. He traveled three hundred miles to the north
and wintered on a stream now called, from that fact,
the American Fork.

All this time he was finding good beaver country,
and the packs of the little party grew heavier and
heavier. Why he did not now cross the Sierras and
get back home again we do not know; but instead of
going east, he struck northwest, until he nearly
reached the Pacific Ocean. Thence he turned inland,
and headed due north,—which meant Oregon. It is
easy to-day, but Smith had no map, no trail, no transportation
save that of the horse and mule train. All
the time he and his party continued to pick up a
greater store of beaver.

At last, on July twenty-fourth, 1828, somewhere
near the Umpqua River, they established a temporary
camp. On that day Smith left camp for a time, and
.pn +1
as he returned he met Indians, who fired upon him.
He got back to the bivouac, only to find it the scene
of one of those horrible Indian butcheries with which
the trapper of that day was all too familiar. Ten
men out of his new party had been killed on the
Colorado. Here, about the camp in Oregon, lay
fifteen more of his men, dead, scalped and mutilated.
The horses were gone. Three of his companions had
escaped, but these had fled in a panic, each on his
own account. The discoverer, Smith, was there alone
in the mountains, without map, without guide, without
counsel. There was a situation, simple, primeval,
Titanic! There indeed was the West!

Smith was a religious man, a Christian. His was an
inner and unfailing courage not surpassed by that
of any known Western man. Perhaps he sought
Divine counsel in this his extremity; at least he
lost neither courage nor calmness. He knew, of
course, that there was a Columbia River somewhere;
for this was in 1828, and by that time the Columbia
was an old story. He knew that this great river was
north of him, and knew that there were settlements
near its mouth, as we shall presently understand.
He further knew that the North Star pointed out the
north. Alone, with his rifle as reliance, he made
that tremendous journey northward which Frémont,
with his full party, made in an opposite direction,
.pn +1
on a parallel line farther to the eastward, only
after untold hardship, though Frémont had
men and animals and supplies. Sustained by Providence,
as he believed, Smith at length accomplished
his journey and reached the Hudson Bay post at
Fort Vancouver.

We may now see the strange commercial conditions
of that time. We say that Jedediah Smith was
the first to cross from the Rockies to the Pacific;
but this, of course, means only that he was the first
to cross at mid-continent. There had been others
on the Columbia before Smith. The Hudson Bay
factor, Doctor McLaughlin, a great and noble man, a
gentleman of the wilderness, meets the wanderer as
a friend, although he is in the employ of a rival
company. He sends out a party to recover Smith’s
lost packs of beaver at the abandoned camp far to
the southward. Almost incredible to say, these men
do find the furs.

McLaughlin gives Smith a draft on London for
twenty thousand dollars, it is said, in payment for
these furs! Strange contrast to the treatment
Ashley and his men accorded the Hudson Bay
trapper, Ogden, some years earlier, when the
latter was in adversity in the Rockies! Strange story
indeed, this of the adventures of Jedediah Smith!
Survivor of thirty of his men, escaped from a Spanish
.pn +1
prison, robbed, nearly killed, after one of the most
perilous journeys ever undertaken in the West, Smith
emerges from this desperate trip across an unmapped
country with twenty thousand dollars, and none of
his men left to share it!

In March, 1829, Smith started east from Fort
Vancouver to find his partners, Sublette and Jackson.
When he reached the Flathead country he was
much at home, for he had been there before. Thence
he headed to the Snake River, where he met Jackson,
“who,” says our historian, naïvely, “was looking for
him!” The ways of that time were, after all, of a
certain sufficiency. Sublette he finds on the Henry
Fork on August fifth, also much as a matter of course.
Strange lands, strange calling, strange restoration
after unusual and wild experiences—so strange that
we find nothing in the life of Crockett to parallel it
in valor and initiative, nothing in Boone’s to surpass
it, nothing in Carson’s to equal it, and nothing in the
story of any adventurer’s life to cast it in the shade.

This was indeed authentic traveling, authentic discovering,
and upon this was based the first map of a
vast region in what was really the West. After all
this was done, the knowledge spread rapidly, we
may suppose. This was how Carson’s friends learned
of the Sacramento. This is how the discoveries of
Frémont were forerun; for the latter, under
.pn +1
Carson’s guidance, simply circumnavigated the vast
region which Smith both circumnavigated and
crossed direct. Readers would not receive the plain
story of Jedediah Smith as fit for fiction. It would
be too impossible.

We might pause to tell the end of so great a man
as this. At last Smith and his historic partners
found the fur trade too much divided to be longer
profitable. In 1830 the three went to St. Louis to
take a venture in the Santa Fé trade, this being
two years before Captain Bonneville sallied out into
the West. Contemptuous of the dangers of the prairies,
after facing so long those of the mountains,
these three hardy Westerners started across the
plains with a small outfit of their own. Far out on
the Arkansas they were beset by the Comanches.
Fighting like a man and destroying a certain number
of his enemies before he himself fell, Jedediah
Smith was killed. He met thus the logical though
long deferred end of a life that had always been
careless of danger.

Gregg, in his “Scenes and Incidents in the Western
Prairies” (the book later known as “The
Commerce of the Prairies”), mentions the death
of Smith, but of his life and character he seemed
to have had but little knowledge. The historian
of the Santa Fé trade was just starting West
.pn +1
when Smith closed his own career. Smith was dead
before Bonneville saw the Rockies. We see that he
antedated Walker and Carson and Frémont. The
fatal prairie expedition of these great fur traders,
Smith, Sublette and Jackson, went on westward up
the Arkansas with the mountain trader, Fitzpatrick,
who was bound for a rendezvous far to the north of
Bent’s Fort—the same Fitzpatrick whom Carson met
above Bent’s Fort in one of his own expeditions.
Now we may begin to see the trails of our trappers
and adventurers interlacing and crossing, and can
understand who were the real adventurers, who the
actual explorers.

Great and satisfying a figure as Jedediah Smith
makes, we may not pause with him too long, and
may not believe him to have been at the very first of
things. He was the first to cross over the Rockies
and the Sierras in mid-America, yet he was not
the first white man to stand on the soil of the
dry Southwest. Examine the older maps and you
shall see along the Virgin and the Colorado the line
of the old Spanish trail from California to the mission
settlements of New Mexico.

It can not accurately be told who first made this
trail, crossing the valley of the Colorado, whose flood
drains two hundred and twenty-five thousand square
miles of mountain and desert. In 1781 Father Garcés
.pn +1
built a mission on the Colorado near the mouth of the
Gila. But he was not the first. Cardenas, a fellow-soldier
with Coronado, is perhaps the first man to
write of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado; but he was
not the first to discover it nor the first to see that
stream. Alarcon, a member of the party of the sea
captain Uloa, was the first man to reach the Colorado.
This was in the year 1540, the ship of Uloa reaching
the Gulf of California in 1539.

This was a small matter of three hundred years before
Frémont saw the South Pass, some three hundred
years before Jedediah Smith crossed the desert to California,
and something like three hundred years before
the upper sources of the Mississippi River were
known! So thus we may leave this portion of the
West to await the Gadsden Purchase, and the addition
of the land won by Houston and Crockett and Fannin
and Travis and other hero friends to the south and
east of the purchased territory.

As for the transportation employed during these
early times, we may repeat a few facts by way of
insistence. The Santa Fé trade began with pack
trains, but saw wagons used in 1822. In 1826 General
Ashley took his little wheeled cannon through
the South Pass to his fort on Utah Lake. In 1830
Smith, Sublette and Jackson made the journey from
the Missouri River with mule teams and wagons
.pn +1
as far as the Wind River; and they said they could
have gone on over the South Pass with their wagons
had they wished to do so. Poor Bonneville! His
distinction of taking the first wagon through the
South Pass is as empty as that of Frémont in
climbing his mountain peak near that same South
Pass. Both accomplishments had been left undone
by earlier visitors simply because they did not want
to do these things. We see that, before Carson or
Walker or Smith, the courses and headwaters of the
Yellowstone and the Missouri and the Columbia
rivers were all very well known. We have noted that
Smith knew of the Columbia settlements. This he
knew because he had learned it at the rendezvous.
How came these settlements on the Columbia? We
shall have to go to New York to find the answer to
that question.

Everybody knows the story of Astoria and the
beginning of the American Fur Company. John
Jacob Astor of New York secured a New York
charter for that company April sixth, 1808, very soon
after hearing the results of the Lewis and Clark
expedition. He had a great purpose in his mind.
He had fought out and bought out competitors in
the fur trade all along the Great Lakes; had met
and gaged the resources of the Northwest Company,
then beginning to rival the ancient Hudson
.pn +1
Bay Company in the wild race across the continent.

It was Astor’s idea to beat the Northwest Fur Company
to the mouth of the Columbia, and hence
command what was supposed to be the rich fur
trade of that new and unknown region. He intended
to send ships laden with trading supplies to the
mouth of the Columbia River, there to take on the
cargoes of furs caught by his own men or secured
in trade with the Indians. These ships, laden with
furs, were to go thence across the Pacific to China,
and were to return from China to New York, laden
with the products of the Orient, which our old-time
historian, Henry Howe, thought must some time come
across the American continent by rail. Here, then,
was a commercial undertaking of no small dimensions.

Mr. Astor attached two strings to his bow. He
fitted out one expedition by sea, and one by land, the
objective point of each being the mouth of the
Columbia River. He relied largely upon men he had
known in the fur trade of the Great Lakes for the
leadership of his land party, but he made the great
mistake of placing three men in practically equal
command. Unfortunately, he made another mistake
in establishing the leadership of his sea expedition.
There was but one leader there, the captain of the
ship Tonquin, Thorne by name, a man by no means
.pn +1
fitted to command any company of adventurers. The
Tonquin left New York September sixth, 1810. It
reached the mouth of the Columbia River March
twenty-second, 1811. A party was soon thereafter
detached for the erection of the proposed post to be
known as Astoria. The Tonquin then proceeded
northward up the coast. Its commander, domineering,
overbearing, not fitted to trade with the Indians,
succeeded in exciting the wrath of the Coast Indians.
The latter attacked his ship and practically destroyed
his crew, one of whom, an unknown fighting man,
whose name is lost by reason of events, blew up the
ship, killing many savages and destroying all vestige
of the encounter. This was about June thirteenth,
1811.

As to the land party under its three leaders, we
may say that the winter was spent near St. Joseph,
Missouri, but on April twenty-first, 1811, about a
month after the ship Tonquin had reached the mouth
of the Columbia, this land party started out on its
long and arduous western journey. By June twelfth
they had traveled thirteen hundred and twenty-five
miles up the Missouri River, being then in the neighborhood
of the Arickaree villages. There they bought
horses and started boldly westward, leaving the
waterway of the Missouri, the first of the great
.pn +1
companies of transcontinental travelers to proceed along
the cord of the great bow of the Missouri.

There were sixty-four of these Astorians, and they
had with them eighty-two horses. They must have
passed to the north of the Black Hills. They crossed
the Big Horns and on September twenty-ninth were
on the Wind River, a stream later to be so well known
by trappers and traders. They ascended the Wind
River about eighty miles, seeking for a place to cross
the Rocky Mountains. They had Crow Indians as
guides through the Big Horns, and west of the Big
Horns the Shoshones had guided them. These Indians
detected signs of other Indians on ahead, and hence
did not present to these travelers the natural and
easy way, through the South Pass,—an ascent so
gentle that one can scarcely tell when he has reached
the actual summit. The Astorians crossed the
mountains probably at what is now known as the
Union Pass, a little to the north of the South Pass.

On September twenty-fourth they started from the
Green River to the Snake River, and on October
eighth, 1811, reached Fort Henry, which, at the
time the Astorians reached it, was an abandoned post.
It seems that even these early travelers found a West
in which there had been some one before them!
Thence, scattered and disorganized, on foot and by
boat, this party undertook to go down the Snake
.pn +1
River to the Columbia. By January first, 1812, they
reached the valley known as the Grande Ronde. By
January eighth some of them were on the Umatilla
River, and some of them reached the Columbia by
January twenty-first. Here they met Indians, who
told them of the destruction of the Tonquin and the
loss of a great number of their associates—an incident
that shows well enough the strange fashion in
which news travels in the wilderness.

Some parties under Mackenzie, McLellan and
Reed separated, came down the Clearwater to the
Lewis or Snake River, and thence voyaged on down-stream
as best they could. Some of these reached
Astoria January eighteenth, 1812, ahead of others of
their scattered companions, who seem to have wandered
aimlessly about the upper tributaries of the Columbia.
The party under Hunt reached Astoria
February fifteenth, 1812. Crooks and Day, others of
the expedition, did not come in until May eleventh.
A party of thirteen trappers, who had been left behind
to pursue their calling, did not reach the post
until January fifteenth, 1813. The trip, measuring
by the time of the first arrivals at the mouth of the
Columbia, had required three hundred and forty days.
Thirty-five hundred miles of country had been covered.
The Northwestern Company had been beaten
in the race to the mouth of the Columbia by just
.pn +1
three months. It was beaten by a gait of about ten
miles a day! We build railroads almost as rapidly
as that to-day.

Discovering that, ten years before Jedediah Smith
made his journey northward across Oregon to Fort
Vancouver, there were well established lines of travel
and well established settlements on the Columbia and
its tributaries, we may think that by this time we
are close to the first of things in Western history.
Of course we know that ahead of the Astoria party
was the Lewis and Clark expedition. Before Lewis
and Clark came the Louisiana Purchase, which
offered us this territory for exploration; and the
Lewis and Clark expedition will serve as the starting
point of our scheme of the history of the trans-Missouri.

We may, perhaps, reinforce these salient points in
memory if we go back once more well upon this side
of our former starting point, and work to it again
upon slightly different lines. For instance, we may
ask, who built Fort Henry, the fort that the Astorians
found abandoned, west of the Rocky Mountains?
The answer is, Major Andrew Henry, some time partner
of that energetic early merchant, General Ashley.
Henry was at the Three Forks of the Missouri in
1810. He crossed southward through the mountains
and built Fort Henry in the fall of that year. This
.pn +1
was the first post built west of the Continental
Divide. It was erected on what is now known as the
Henry Fork of the Snake River.

But was Major Henry himself the first man to
penetrate into the Rockies? He was not. Who,
then, was ahead of Henry? The answer is, Manuel
Liza, that strange character of Spanish, French and
American blood, who was perhaps the first of the
Western merchants to catch the full significance of
the Lewis and Clark expedition. We have heard of
one William Morrison, of Kaskaskia, Illinois, who
sent a representative to far-off Santa Fé. This same
William Morrison was the partner of our strange
genius, Manuel Liza, in the first fur trading venture
up the Missouri. They fitted out one keel-boat for
the Northwest trade in the spring of 1807.

Did Liza and his hardy crew of keel boatmen find
an untracked and uninhabited wilderness? Not altogether
such; for, as they were ascending the ancient
waterway, they met coming down one John Colter,
that hardy soul who had left the Lewis and Clark expedition
to return to the Yellowstone River for the
purpose of doing a little beaver trapping on his own
account. Colter, it may be remembered, is thought
to have been the first discoverer of the region now
included in the Yellowstone National Park. This
country was discovered and forgotten, to be later
.pn +1
officially “discovered” on the same basis that Frémont
discovered other portions of the Rockies. Colter is
the last link in this chain. He brings us back again
to Lewis and Clark, the first of the up-stream adventurers
to penetrate the region of the trans-Missouri.

We may all the better strengthen the backward-running
chain by one or two more links extending
from comparatively recent dates, to those
that we may consider as marking the beginning
of things in the West. For instance, we have heard
much of General Ashley, that enterprising and fortunate
early fur trader, whose success was the first to
call the attention of the capital of the East to the
enormous profits of the fur trade in the West when
properly conducted. Ashley’s first partner was Major
Andrew Henry.

The first rendezvous of the mountain men was that
arranged in 1824 for Ashley and Henry’s men. Ashley
himself undertook to explore the Green River,
a stream then thought to empty into the Gulf of
Mexico, no less an authority than Baron Humboldt
having made this particular error in Western
geography. Shipwrecked, Ashley none the less
escaped, and somewhere near the point where he met
his disaster, he cut his name on a rock, together
with the date, 1825. Major Powell, later an official
.pn +1
discoverer, in his expedition down the Colorado River,
found the place where Ashley was wrecked on that
stream just forty-four years earlier. Major Powell
read the engraved inscription as 1855 instead of 1825.
In his account he sends some of Ashley’s men, survivors
of the wreck, over to Salt Lake City, and has
them go to work upon the Temple! “Of their subsequent
history,” remarks Major Powell, gravely, “I
have no knowledge.”

This, as Mr. Chittenden points out in his admirable
work, “The American Fur Trade,” is one of the jests
of Western history, for Ashley was on the Green
River thirty years before the Mormons left Missouri!
We shall need to allow a few years to pass before we
come to the transcontinental migration of the Mormons
and the building of their Temple. Ashley
foreran all that. He was at Salt Lake and on the
Green River, and quite across the Mormon country, a
short time after the first Astorian party had passed
on west.

Thus, if we begin to study too closely into the early
history of the trans-Missouri, we begin to lose all respect
for its mysteries, and come to think of it as a
country that was never new, but was always well
known. Indeed, there is much warrant for this. Witness
again the journeys of that straightforward character,
Lieutenant Pike, the first American officer to
.pn +1
reach the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and to
arrange for the proper respect for the American flag
in that far-off country. After Pike had returned
down the Mississippi River and had been ordered to
explore the country near the Rockies, around the
headwaters of the Red River, he began to cross the
trails of some of these earlier adventurers of whom
we have been speaking. Thus, in 1806, while Pike
is making his way across the plains, he hears of
Lewis and Clark’s descent of the Missouri. On
August nineteenth, 1806, he states that he finds the
“place where Mr. Chouteau formerly had his fort.”
Chouteau was one of these same early fur traders, as
we shall find if we care to go into the minutiæ of history.
Lieutenant Pike describes this fort as “already
overgrown with vegetation;” so it could not
have been new in 1806.

From this point Lieutenant Pike goes to “Manuel
Liza’s fort,” which then marked another advance
post of the trans-Missouri travel. Next he heads
westward, touches the Grand and White rivers
and reaches the Solomon Fork. Here he meets the
Pawnees, discovers that they are wearing Spanish
medals, learns that the Spaniards have sent an expedition
into that country from the New Mexican settlements,
and finds a “very large road” over which
the Spaniards have returned to the westward. Thus
.pn +1
it seems that not even good Zebulon was to have
a West all his own.

Forsooth, Lieutenant Pike might have gone back
more than two hundred years, and have bethought
himself of the old Spaniard Coronado, who in the
year 1540 journeyed from Mexico across the plains
until he stood on the banks of the Missouri River,
from which Pike himself started forth. And strange
enough, if we seek for coincidences, is the fact that
Coronado himself recounts that he met on the Missouri
River, that is to say, on the stream that is now
called the Missouri, an Indian who wore a silver
medal that was evidently the work of a white man.
There is something singular for you, if you seek a
strange incident! Where did Coronado’s Indian get
his medal? This was closer to the first of things.
It must have come from the settlements of the whites
on the lower Atlantic slope. But by what process of
travel? Are we indeed to have any mysteries in the
West, and shall we ever be able to set any date in our
scheme of transportation properly to be called
initial?

If we look at a map of the trans-Missouri as it
existed in 1840, prior to the official exploration of
the West, we shall indeed find that “hardly one of the
great geographical features was unknown.” We shall
find the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers dotted
.pn +1
thick with the stockades of the fur traders. We shall
find, if we search in the records of those days, that
the whites had long lived among the Indians and had
come to know their ways. We shall discover, if we
care to believe such apochryphal history as that offered
by the ostensible Indian captive, John D.
Hunter,[#] that the Indian himself has been something
of an explorer. Hunter tells of plains Indians,
dwellers of the prairie country near the Missouri,
who themselves made the transcontinental
journey and saw the mouth of the Columbia. He
states that this journey was traditional at that time,
and adds that he himself, with a party of plains
Indians, likewise made this journey to the Columbia,
crossing the Rockies at a different pass in coming
back from that met with in the western journey.

We may believe his story or not, as we like; but we
are bound to believe that these plains Indians antedated
the first white men in the discovery of the South
Pass and of many other features of the Rocky Mountains.
It is doubtful, indeed, whether any party of
white men in those early days ever crossed the mountains
excepting under the entire or partial guidance
.pn +1
of Indians, who took them over country known to
themselves.

We may believe, therefore, that the native Indian
savages furnished the source of original knowledge
to our first explorers. If you be familiar with the
Rockies of to-day, you shall now and again see the
old Indian trails, overgrown and unused, sinking
back into the earth. In the valley of the Two Medicine,
on the reservation of those same Blackfeet who
once fought the trappers so boldly, the writer once
found, high up on the mountain side, a plainly
traceable trail that led down to the summit of a
high ridge, whence one could look far to the eastward,
to where the Sweet Grass hills loomed out
of the level sweep of the prairies. There was a
hunter with me, a man married among the Blackfeet,
of whom I asked regarding this trail. “It is the old
Kootenai trail,” said he; “and if you follow this back
to the West, it will take you through a pass of the
Rockies and into the country of the Flatheads.”

Here, then, was indeed an ancient and historic
pathway, one not used to-day by any rails of iron, nor
followed even by the pack trains of the “adventurers”
of to-day. Here was a pass discovered, no man may
tell when, by Indians who wandered eastward and
westward across the upper Rockies. Perhaps the old
trappers also know this trail; though there are not
.pn +1
wanting those who believe that less than a double
decade ago the valleys at the headwaters of the St.
Mary’s Lake still lay untouched by the foot of white
man. Here, along this forgotten mountain trail,
came the Kootenais with their war parties against
the Blackfeet. Here, perhaps, came, from the upper
Pacific coast, the first horses used by the plains
Indians in the far North. Be that as it may, my
companion and I without doubt stood on one of the
original or aboriginal pathways; and he had been dull
indeed who did not find an interest in that fact
and in the surroundings.[#]

“Who made the first Indian trails?” I asked of my
friend, as we stood at the eastern end of this old
pathway. He pointed to similar paths crossing the
sides of the ridge near to us, and other little paths
leading up the valley along the sides of the mountains.

“It was the elk and the deer and the mountain
sheep,” said he. “They found the easiest ways to
travel; they found the grass and the water.”

.fm

.fn #
All of these maps, by the way, must have been at the disposal
of Frémont; yet we do not learn that he believed the
east and west course of the Buena Ventura was an impossibility,
although Jedediah Smith had long since shown the inaccuracy of
this old idea, which later was to cost Frémont so much suffering
in the mountains of upper California.
.fn-

.fn #
Again, remember this significant date of 1834.
.fn-

.fn #
This story of an alleged captivity among the Indians, extending
from childhood to young manhood, is by some considered
unauthentic. The volume, a curious one, was printed in
London, in 1825.
.fn-

.fn #
The trail of the white race over the Appalachians was but
the trail of the red men. The Sioux Indians, for generations
inhabitants of the upper plains country of the West, formerly
lived east of the Appalachians. The first settlers of Kentucky
and Tennessee simply followed the ancient ways by which the
Indians crossed into the valley of the Mississippi. And there, as
in the West, the Indians but followed the paths of the wild animals,
which clung nearly as possible to the courses of the
streams.—V. “The Indians of To-day;” Grinnell.
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk3ch05 pn=+1
CHAPTER V||ACROSS THE WATERS[#]
.sp 2

Twenty-five years ago potatoes were so high in
price in certain towns of the Rocky Mountains that
the merchants handling them often reserved the
right to retain the peelings, which, in turn, were sold,
for planting purposes, the eyes of the potatoes thus
having a considerable commercial value, obviously
in proportion to the distance from the nearest railroad
or steamboat line. This situation could not
forever endure. There must come a day when we
could afford to throw away our peelings, and throw
them away cut thick and carelessly. Equally true is
it that the time is coming in America when we shall
again gather up our potato-peelings and cherish them.
There you have the three ages of the West.[#]

.pn +1
The early American life was primitive, but it was
never the life of a peasantry. Look ahead into the
future, the time of the second saving of the peelings.
Once there was a time in the West when every man
was as good as his neighbor, as well situated, as much
contented. It would take hardihood to predict such
conditions in the future for the West or for America.

For half a hundred years America looked across
the Alleghanies. It was nearer to England than to
Iowa. Our standards in fashion, in art, in literature,
were yet those of an older world. Then came the age
of Americanism, when it mattered not to the women
of the frontier what were the modes brought in the
latest ship from London or Paris. Under the Monroe
doctrine of the frontier the women made their
petticoats of elkskin, and found it good. Behold
now a day when Iowa is as near as England, and
England almost as near as New York. Again the
contents of the ships are valid matter of curiosity
to the women of the West.

.pn +1
We are in the third age, the age of steam. The
pack-horse and the sailboat were vehicles of the individual
or of the section. Wheeled vehicles afforded
a speedier and more flexible intercommunication that
made the idea of secession forever impossible, and
made us a national America. The common carrier
made us and will destroy us as a national entity. The
wheels have written epochal record on the surface of
the land. Long and devious and delightful, weary
and sad and tragic, are the old wheel-tracks of the
West, worn deep into a soil red with blood, on paths
lined with flowers, and with graves as well.

At the half-way point of the century the early
wheels of the West were crawling and creaking over
trails where now rich cities stand. The Red River
carts from Pembina, their wheels sawn from the ends
of logs, and voicing a mile-wide protest of unlubricated
axle, crept down to a “St. Paul’s” that had
a population of about twelve hundred, mostly halfbreeds.[#]
A yard of cloth or a butcher-knife still
sold for twenty dollars at old Fort Benton in the
beaver country.

.pn +1
The Western railroads were only little spurs of
iron thrusting out into the prairies. Indeed,
they could not always boast rails of iron, as witness
the old wooden-railed road from Chicago
to Galena. Still eager, still harkening to the Voices
of the West, the men who were to make the West
pressed on, taking the railway as far as it went,
then the stage-coach and the wagon and the horse
and the lone path of the farthest venturer.

The man of Virginia heard that the prairies of
Iowa would give him a farm for a price per acre less
than one-tenth that commanded by the red clay hills
of the Old Dominion. He forsook the land of terrapin
and peaches, of honeysuckle and sunshine, and started
West by rail across the Alleghanies, across Ohio by
the early Pennsylvania railway system, beyond the
boom town of Chicago, across the Mississippi, and
out into the black mud of the prairies for fifty miles
or so. Thence by stage he went, the head of his tearful
wife against his breast, but in that breast beating
a heart whose one thought was the “better
chance.” It was the better chance for these babes
that tugged at the skirts of their mother—this was
what the father wanted, and this was why the mother
went with him, grieving, as she yet must, for the
home land that she perhaps would never see again.

One such settler, who went West from Virginia
.pn +1
into an agricultural state in 1854, said that he came
West in order that he might be able to educate his
children. He educated them. To-day one child is
buried in California, one in Dakota, three live in
Iowa, and one in Illinois. Such is the typical record
of an American family.

The man of old New England might cross this
trail of the Southern man, and find himself betimes
in Kansas or Nebraska, forerunner of that day when
it was to be said that Massachusetts was west of the
Missouri River, as indeed is true to-day. Boston began
to build Chicago, and the first of those men went
West that were to make the old Red River cart-towns
of St. Paul and Minneapolis little else than New
England communities—cities of a state which to-day
has a permanent school fund of nearly eight million
dollars, and a university fund of nearly one million
dollars, in securities largely made up of the bonds
of other states, among them a large amount of the
funding bonds of the ancient state of Virginia. It
was a race into the West—a race in which now the
North outstripped the South, the commercial outran
the heroic, the ax and the plow outstripped the rifle
and its creed.

In 1826 arose one Philip Evans Thomas, sometime
known as the father of American railroads, son of
a Baltimore banker, and living, as we may thus
.pn +1
notice as a curious fact, near to that early abiding-place
of the star that marked the center of American
population, that Ararat from which the Western
civilization started outward. Early in his life Philip
Evans Thomas saw how excellent it would be if only
water could be made to run up-stream. He had seen
the use of railroads in England, and had, moreover,
noted the beneficial effects upon the trade of Eastern
cities of the traffic that was carried by canals. He
had the far-reaching mind of the world-merchant,
whose problem is ever that of transportation. He
saw that railroads can go where canals can not,
and he presently resigned his directorship in the
Maryland Canal, because he saw that a canal can
not climb a hill, and that mankind could not forever
go around the hills or up and down the streams.

It was on February twelfth, 1827, that Thomas
called together twenty-five of the leading citizens of
Baltimore. Comment of the time says that he seemed
touched with the spirit of prophecy as he spoke of
the enterprise that was to cast aside the mountains,
to unite the streams, and to discover what
there might be in that mysterious land, the West—the
West that was west of the Alleghanies and
in or near the Mississippi valley. Beyond the Mississippi,
of course, the mind of man might not go!
The minutes of this notable railway meeting are
.pn +1
preserved in a pamphlet known as “Proceedings of Sundry
Citizens of Baltimore, convened for the Purpose
of Devising the Most Efficient Means of Improving
Intercourse between Baltimore and the Western
States.”

There were two opinions as to the wisdom of
Mr. Thomas’s project, and these were the opinions
of the North and of the South; for again the South
was to be the pioneer into the West, and again the
North was to follow. The cities of the North made
loud outcry against the Baltimore prophet, and said
that this railroad, if built, would divert from them
forever the traffic that was then coming to them
from the West. This was ever the typical attitude of
the upper East toward the West.

None the less the enterprise went on, and the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad Company was duly organized,
an act for its incorporation being passed on
February twenty-seventh, 1827. The stamp of success
was upon the idea before the ink had dried
on the records. By April twenty-fourth of the
same year stock was subscribed to the figure of four
million one hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars.
The first railway planned for the West—planned
because there was a West and because that
West was wanted as a part of the East—was promptly
elevated into one of the most important commercial
.pn +1
enterprises of the time. The stock was coveted by
all, and the struggle was for first place in the line
of purchasers.

It can not be within the present purpose to particularize
as to the railroad development of the West,
nor to attempt the unimportant chronological record
of first one and then another of the multiplying railways
that early began to crowd out into the West
from the Eastern centers. The important thing is
the tremendous expansion of population that now
ensued for the Western states, the blackening of the
census maps in spaces once barren, the crossing and
interweaving of the Northern and Southern populations,
which now occurred as both sections pressed
out into the West. There were grandfathers in Virginia
now, grandfathers in New England. The subdivided
farms were not so large. There were more
shops in the villages. There was demand for expansion
of the commerce of that day. The little
products must find their market, and that market
might still be American. The raw stuff might still
be American, the producer of it might still be American.
So these busy, thrifty, ambitious men came up
and stood back of the vanguard that held the flexible
frontier. Silently men stole out yet farther into
what West there was left; but they always looked
.pn +1
back over the shoulder at this new thing that had
come upon the land.

Thinking men knew, half a century ago, that
there must be an iron way across the United States,
though they knew this only in general terms, and
were only guessing at the changes that such a
road must bring to the country at large. Some of
these guesses make interesting reading to-day. Thus,
in 1855 it was announced as a settled thing that the
continental route could not lie across the Northern
Rockies, because in that region the heavy snowfall
would block all railway travel. It was concluded
that there were only four points on the Pacific coast
to which the railway might address itself: San
Diego, San Francisco, “some spot to be chosen on the
navigable waters of the Columbia,” and another “on
the borders of the Strait of De Fuca, in the new
Territory of Washington.”

The government of the country was so slow in developing
this railway project that some capitalists
were for building at once a road of their own, and
they chose the route from Charleston to San Diego.
What would it have meant to this country had this
been the first and only railway across the continent?
As to the route up the Platte valley and over the mid-Rockies,
that was dismissed as quite impracticable.
“The absence of timber on most of this route would
.pn +1
prove an insuperable objection to its selection, even
were it not ineligible from other considerations,”
comments one writer of the day. The same writer[#]
says that the route from San Francisco to St. Louis
would be geographically preferable, but admits that
the “formation of the intermediate country, and the
character of the mountain-ranges to be crossed, are
deemed to present insuperable difficulties to its construction.”

The bearing of these reflections upon the purpose
in hand is not so much one of mere literary
curiousness as one of commercial comparison. The
logic of that time carried a large <i>non sequitur</i>.
“The country intervening between the most western
limits of civilization and the recently settled territories
of the Pacific,” says the same early historian,
“is confessedly little known.” The empire of the
Middle West was not dreamed of. This is what the
new road was to do:

“Instead of weary months of travel around the
capes of Africa and South America, less than a
month will suffice to transport the teas and silks of
China, the coffee and the spices of Java and Ceylon,
to the great Atlantic cities, thence to be distributed
as from the world’s depot to the nations of Europe.
But not only will this new mode of transit take to
.pn +1
itself the best and most remunerative part of the
traffic now existing between eastern Asia and Christendom,
but it will also create a new traffic, compared
with which the trade now existing will bear almost
no comparison.

“Instead of here and there a seaport in China holding
commercial relations with America, this nearness
of access to the best markets of the world will stimulate
into an unprecedented activity the raising of all
agricultural products, the manufacture of all goods
and wares, and the disinterring of all the mineral
resources which the three hundred millions of China
can furnish us, at a cheaper rate than we can obtain
them elsewhere. Japan, with a population almost
double our own, now shut out from all intercourse
with the rest of the world, must soon be forced by
the strength of circumstances to welcome to her
ports the merchant fleets of other nations, anxious
and eager to distribute to the wide world the rich
products of her soil, her climate, and her domestic
industry. The tropical fruitfulness of the over-populated
islands of the Eastern Archipelago will also
pour, in increased abundance, the rich spices of their
balmy breezes through this new and rapid conduit.”

Not so bad was this flowery prophecy, though its
fulfilment was to run over into another century, and
to fall subsequent to a still greater industrial
.pn +1
phenomenon, the gourd-like maturing of the trans-Missouri
region.[#] This rapid development of the interior
region of America was not foreseen by the wisest
of the prophets of fifty years ago. Yet unspeakably
swift and startling as it has been, it was, after all,
the product of an arrested growth, of an advancement
upon lines substantially different from those
on which it was originally and naturally projected.

As once the West had sought to secede, now at
length the South, foster-mother of the West, bethought
herself to set up a separate land, even at the very time
when there was in progress a great transcontinental
project that was to make all this country one, forever
and inseparable. It was the Civil War that delayed
the construction of the Pacific railway. Had
that road been built, had the roads from the North
.pn +1
into the South been built half a generation earlier,
there could never have been any Civil War. The indissoluble
brotherhood of the North and the South
would have been established a generation before, and
at what untold saving of splendid human life! This
war, fatally and fatefully early—early by a quarter
of a century, since after that quarter-century it could
never have attained importance, or could never have
been at all—changed history in America more than
any written history has ever shown. Still curiously
and intimately connected, it was the South and the
West that were to suffer most in that war, cruel
as this may sound to that splendid East that poured
its blood like water and its treasure with a freedom
the West might not equal.

The industrial revolution of the West was subsequent
to the Civil War, and was, to large extent,
caused by the Civil War, or, rather, was dependent
upon the same conditions that had part in bringing
forth that war. The vast and virgin West, “confessedly
but little known,” lay waiting for a population.
The Eastern portion of the Northern States
had its own population. The South, under the conditions
of that day, offered incalculably more opportunity
for crude labor than did the West; but it offered
no security for either capital or labor. Therefore
it was that the Old World was called upon to
.pn +1
furnish the raw labor requisite to subdue this wild
land.

It can be only with horror that we reflect that the
Old World was called upon also to furnish us a people
to replace the more than half-million dead of
as grand a population as the world ever knew, the
flower of America, North, South, East, and West. It
would have been this splendid army of men that
would have settled the West, had it not been for the
war, which a few years later would have been an impossible
thing. Could that half-million dead have
arisen from the grave in the decade following that
truly cruel war, the nomenclature of many Western
cities would be different to-day, and the face of
the census maps would show a different story. To-day
the whole upper portion of the population chart
of the United States is black with the indication of
a foreign-born population. The only part of this
country that the census map dares call American
is a thin, wavering line along the plateaus of Tennessee
and Kentucky,—the land that the first adventurers
sought out when they crossed the Alleghanies. It is
the South alone that is to-day American. It was
the South that gave us the new-American, that
splendid figure in the history of the world.

Within two months in the year 1899, fifty-seven
thousand foreigners were brought to this country
.pn +1
to be made over into Americans. Among these were
Croatians, Slavs, Armenians, Bohemians, Servians,
Montenegrins, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians,
Moravians, Lithuanians, Magyars, Jews, Syrians,
Turks, Slovaks, with others of the better-known
nationalities, such as English, Germans, French, and
Scandinavians. Of the total number of these immigrants,
less than one-tenth had a capital as great as
thirty dollars with which to begin life in the new
land. Many of these immigrants from lower Europe
linger in the cities of the West, and do not become
a part of the agricultural communities; but the indirect
tax on the agricultural communities none the
less remains. They become only parasites upon the
parasitic middlemen, and all these must be supported
by the farms.

It must be conceded that the new problems assigned
to the West in the way of absorption and
assimilation of alien population in these days
of rapid transportation are nothing short of
serious and perplexing. These new people, brought
out in swarms by means of the rapid wheels of steam-locomotion,
are like the early Americans who settled
first a real America. They are very poor; their fare
must be coarse, their garb mean, their opportunities
for self-improvement but meager. Yet how different
are they, the product of the third age of
.pn +1
transportation, from those Argonauts, the Southern riflemen
and the Northern axmen, who toiled with oar or
slow-moving wheel across this land in the days so
recently gone by!

There are three great pictures of the West—one
that was, one that is, and one that might have
been. This last picture is a sad one to any
thinking man not concerned in politics. The
West of steam-transportation has not so much impressed
itself, and in reason could not be expected
so to impress itself, upon its population as did that
West reached by slow-moving wheels when the natural
difficulties to be overcome were so vastly greater for
the individual. The old West begot character, grew
mighty individuals, because such were its soil and
sky and air, its mountains, its streams, its long and
devious trails, its constant stimulus and challenge.

That which was to be has been. The days of the
adventurers are gone. There are no longer any Voices
to summon heroes out on voyage of mystic conquest.
It now costs not so much heroism, but so much
money, to get out into the West, and it costs so much
to live there. As a region the West offers few special
opportunities. It is no longer a poor man’s country,
nor is any part of America a country good for a
poor man. It is all much alike. Our young men of
the West are as apt to go East to seek their fortunes
.pn +1
as to try them near at home. There is no land of the
free. America is not American. Food must digest
before it can be flesh and blood, and our population
must digest before it can be called American.

Twelve years ago money brought two per cent. a
month west of the Missouri River, and it earned it.
To-day you can get a barrelful at five per cent. a year.
It is only free men who can afford to pay two per
cent. a month—men who still have open lands to
settle, much raw wealth to dig out of the earth and a
future to discount. There are no more Oklahomas
now. We have stolen most of the reservations from
the Indians, and a few men have stolen most of the
pine,[#] and nothing short of a syndicate will do for
a mine to-day. You may search far for eagle faces,
such as came from Maine and Carolina, the men that
followed the westward course of the young star of
America.

Away with the saddle-blanket! The beaver are
gone, and the range cattle are all fenced in.
Hang up the rifle, for our great game is vanishing.
If you seek a pleasant picture, gaze on the
accumulating balance-sheets of some monopolist’s
millions. If you wish to hear a soothing sound,
.pn +1
listen to the wheels that go and come. Content yourself
with these things; else you must admit that,
however strong, brilliant, and consistent was our
Western drama in the more slowly moving days, history
has made anticlimax in the days of steam.
Carry your conclusions out whimsically if you like,
and reflect that in the year 1900 not only our own
Western cow-punchers, but also the samurai of
Japan, were riding bicycles, and the newspapers of
Japan were reporting the prize-fights of America!
This is civilization, but the view of it is not altogether
comforting.[#]

Augur of what might have been, but for our Civil
War, was that long line of white-topped wagons that
streamed westward across Illinois, Iowa, across the
.pn +1
Missouri River, out into the West, the still glorious
and alluring West, immediately upon the close of
the war. This was not an influx of foreigners, but
a hejira of native Americans, a flood-tide that
could not wait for the railroads that were now so
swiftly taking up the new and mighty problems
of a convalescent country. “By an impulse, providential
or evolutionary, but irresistible,” said an
American statesman of that decade,[#] “civilization
has, during the present generation, moved all at
once and in concert, in a process of territorial expansion
as sudden and inexplicable as that which at the
close of the fifteenth century impelled the nations
of Europe to voyages which, resulted in the discovery
and occupation of America. . . . The United
States will command the greatest part of the trade
with the Chinese Orient. We can produce every
article that can be sold in this now and limitless
market.” Not bad reiteration, this, of the prophecy
of our historian of 1855. The latter did not foresee
our Civil War, nor could he have foreseen our armies
across seas. They are there not so much by reason
of political mistakes or political wisdom as by an impulse
“providential or evolutionary.” In 1865, upon
the plains, or in 1900, in the Asian islands, the army
.pn +1
was only the escort. It is not our army that will
conquer new provinces and create new opportunities
in place of those with which we have been so sadly
careless and so lavishly generous; it is our railways
and our steamships that are to prove our conquering
agencies. Thereby we shall recoup ourselves at
the coffers of the world.

We lose all sentimental regrets and superficial
reservations when we come to examine closely the
tremendous revolutions created by the genius of
modern transportation. With the era of steam came
a complete reversal of all earlier methods. For
nearly a century following the Revolutionary War
the new lands of America had waited upon the transportation.
Now the transportation facilities were
to overleap history and to run in advance of progress
itself. The railroad was not to depend upon the
land, but the land upon the railroad. It was strong
faith in the future civilization that enabled capitalists
to build one connected line of iron from Oregon
down the Pacific coast, thence east of the mouth
of the Father of Waters, in all over thirty-two hundred
miles of rail. Then came that daring flight
of the Santa Fé across the seas of sand, a venture
derided as folly and recklessness.

The proof you may find by seeing the cities that
have grown, the fields which bear them tribute. North
.pn +1
and south, and east and west the prairie roads run.
The long trail of the cattle-drive is gone, and the cattle
no longer walk a thousand miles to pasture or to
market. Once, twice, thrice, the continent was
spanned, the dream of Robertson made manifoldly
true, and the path across the continent laid well and
laid forever.[#] In the Middle West the Great American
Desert was cross-hatched with iron lines and
dotted full with homes that never could have been
but for those iron lines. In the Northwest lay a
land of almost arctic winters, with little or no shelter,
with short and torrid summers, the land of the
Red River carts, where the fur traders were at last
replaced by the raisers of number two hard wheat.

Into this region came a large foreign population,
sought out in the Old World by the diligent agents of
a common carrier needing business. The hard plains
of the North were literally stocked with these people.
They came with their tickets bought through to such
or such a point in Minnesota or Dakota. It was foreseen
that the mere raising of wheat could not build
up a permanent civilization, and the railway did the
thinking for the blind ones who had taken its word
and risked their lives and fortunes in the removal
.pn +1
to that America which had so wide and various an
interpretation. The railway sent out, free and unsolicited,
seed wheat and choice breeding-stock, dropping
these contributions wisely, here and there, into
such communities as most needed them. The railway
was explorer, carrier, provider, thinker, heart,
soul, and intellect for this population that in
another generation was to be American. No wonder
these folk stand and stare when the railway-train
goes by. It has been Providence to them. It is a
Providence that has given to Europe what America
might have had.

To-day towns do not grow merely because of their
location, and this factor of location will become less
and less important as the years go by. St. Louis was
a city of location; Chicago is a city of transportation.
Chicago is situated upon the most impossible and
unlovely of all places of human habitation. She is
simply a city of transportation, and is no better than
her rails and boats, though by her rails and boats
she lives in every Western state and territory. The
same is true now of St. Louis and the vast Southwest.

One railroad recently planned for a Western extension,
and laid out along its lines the sites of
thirty-eight new towns, each of which was located
and named before the question of inhabitants for the
.pn +1
towns was ever taken up. Another railway in the
Southwest has named fifty cities that are yet to
build; and still others have scores of communities
that in time are to be the battle-grounds of human
lives, the stages of the human tragedy or comedy.
The railways have not only reached but created provinces;
they have not only nourished but conceived
communities. Out of that cold upper land of the
Northwest, which was thus fostered and nurtured into
strength, there came, in one year, one hundred and
ten million bushels of wheat to feed the world, and
that in a year when the crop shortage was over one
hundred million bushels. This is only a part of the
output of that land, for the railway showed these
farmers long ago that diversified farming was their
hope and their salvation.

Past one of those forts which in 1812 the United
States erected to protect her fur traders and to keep
out her covetous rivals, there came in the same year
from the far Northwest, once home of the buffalo, the
Indian, and the scout, twenty-five million two hundred
fifty-five thousand eight hundred and ten tons
of freight, nearly all of the long-haul sort, and hence
to be taken as showing in part the product of the far
Northwest itself. Three transcontinental roads, the
Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Southern
Pacific, in 1899 carried twenty million one
.pn +1
hundred forty-six thousand four hundred and ten tons of
freight, with a haul averaging about three hundred
miles in length.

Nearly a thousand millions of dollars is represented
in the capitalization of these roads—far
more than is demanded by the free roadway of
the Great Lakes, the modern freight traffic of
which is really a development subsequent to that
of the railway exploitation of the West. This perhaps
suggests a day when Chicago may come to be as
closely connected with New Orleans as was the latter
city with Kentucky in the day of Wilkinson.[#] It
is impossible to study the industrial history of the
West without studying also that of the South, for
though the two sections are far apart and utterly unlike,
they yet have the intercurrent soul of twins.
No part of America is less known and more
.pn +1
misunderstood than the South, and surely it must be one
of the most cheering reflections to conclude that
yearly the South comes closer to the North, and the
North to the South. Statesmanship could not in a
century so fully have accomplished this great and
desirable result. The railroads are doing what statecraft
could not do.

It is the part of the great captains of transportation
to live strenuous lives, to work out great problems
faithfully and patiently, to accomplish great results
mysteriously, to live, to die, and to be forgotten.
The heroes of the hustings, the heroes of our
wars, are remembered and immortalized. The man
that makes possible their triumphs finds no record
on the page of time. His obituary is only the passing
chronicle of the daily press, feverishly concerned
with what is known as news.

To-day James F. Joy, the father of the Michigan
Central Railroad, is little known by the general public,
though his was a far greater work than that of
.pn +1
seeking public office. John Murray Forbes, father
of the great Burlington and Quincy system, is
a man too much forgotten. As these lines
are written comes the news of the death of
Henry Villard, the man that solved so many
problems for the Northern Pacific. Dropped for the
time out of sight, he will now shortly follow the fate
of his compeers, and soon be dropped forever. William
Henry Osborn died only a few years ago, yet
there are many who make the winter trip to the Gulf
coast that do not know who planned the flight of
rails that runs from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. It
is a duty and a pleasure to mention the names of such
great and useful men, if only to ask that their
work be held in understanding memory.

Especially significant now is the memory of Mr.
Osborn, and we might well speak of him as assistant
and coadjutor of such men as Lincoln and Grant, and
the statesmen who since the war have sought to unite
North and South. As we find that it was the South
that first marched westward, and a Southern man who
first planned a great highway of iron into the West,
we may state with equal pleasure and confidence
that it was the East, and an Eastern man, that made
the South a portion of the West, and both a part of
a united America.

William H. Osborn was a native of Massachusetts,
.pn +1
and was by birth of no exalted position in
the world. His chief capital was a clear brain and
an unclouded purpose, which later ripened into a farsightedness
in large affairs that has rarely been
equaled in the ranks of practical American men.
Sent to the East Indies as the representative of a
New York firm, he got a good insight into the trade
in spices, and was successful in its operation. Later
he married the second daughter of that sterling
American merchant, Jonathan Sturges of New York,
whose first daughter was the first wife of J. Pierpont
Morgan. Mr. Sturges was heavily interested in the
young Illinois Central Railroad, the first of the land-grant
railways, the original seven hundred and five
miles of which were intended to develop the agricultural
lands of the great prairie state of Illinois,
and to bear the products of that state up to the
water-transport of the Great Lakes, which then carried
most of the long-haul business from the West
to the East.

The original lines of this road were laid out in the
form of a large Y, one leg of which ran from Dubuque,
Iowa, southward, meeting the other leg, which
extended south from Chicago. The two legs of the
Y met at what is now Central City, and thence the
line ran south to Cairo. This road was one of the
earliest attempts to parallel the old water-highways
.pn +1
that had once carried the freight of a riparian population.
Its first grant was made in 1850, and its
first train was run in 1855. During the war this
line was of much service in transporting troops and
material to the southward.

Yet, in spite of its well-conceived plan, and in
spite of the natural wealth of the country it
traversed, the road as a property was a source
of perpetual anxiety to its shareholders. It
needed a great mind to straighten out its problems,
and Mr. Sturges thought that his son-in-law had that
mind. He therefore despatched Mr. Osborn to Chicago,
and gave him full charge of the system. The
choice was a wise one. Mr. Osborn brought the property
through the panic of 1857, when all securities
were falling in ruins, and weathered even an assignment,
which was made by the company during his
absence in England. He backed his faith in his
judgment by negotiating a personal loan of three
million dollars, out of which he paid the matured
coupons that were pressing for payment. He secured
a new loan of five million dollars, paid off all
the smaller debts, established the credit of the company,
and set its affairs thenceforth upon a secure
footing.

All these details were such as might perhaps have
been accomplished by another. It was not only in
.pn +1
these executive matters that the genius of this captain
evinced itself. He saw at once to the marrow
of the difficulties that had caused this embarrassment.
There had now been built around the
foot of Lake Michigan those east-and-west through
lines that killed the lake carriage just as his own
road had killed the river carriage on the Mississippi
trail. These roads reached out after their own business,
and did not depend upon the traffic the
north-and-south line carried. It was easy to foresee
a failing business, but not so easy to name a remedy
for it. Mr. Osborn found his remedy in the idea of
a north-and-south transcontinental line. Between
Cairo and the town of Jackson, Tennessee, there was
a gap over which no railroad passed, though from
Jackson as far south as New Orleans there ran the
rambling lines of a system controlled by H. S. McComb,
of Crédit Mobilier fame. Mr. Osborn secured
the immature Southern roads, built the connection
from Cairo to Jackson, and in 1873 had a completed
line from the Lakes to the Gulf.

It all sounds easy, but it took one man’s brain and
one man’s life to do it. The story of the road and of
the man that made it is not yet told, but it will be
written in the development of one of the richest sections
of America. It is writing daily in the trains
that come from North to South, from South to
.pn +1
North, agencies that daily break down and pass
through any sectional barrier and bring about the
better understanding which makes kin one with the
other the sons of the old riflemen and the old axmen
who built the West.

Thus are the trails of the two forever interwoven.
Beside this trail of commerce runs the old trail of
the Mississippi, whose tawny flood still carries its
burden of adventure and romance. Robertson,
Thomas, Whitney, Osborn,—these are the names of a
few of the prophets, forgotten men of the early and
the modern days, who blazed the intercurrent trails
where now march the feet of those living under a
complex civilization.

From these crude studies of early Western history
we may gather one very significant fact, which will
mean more a hundred years from now than it does
to-day. It is that America got her territory first, and
then her transportation and her population. She
bought on a rising market, and her purchase was of
territory, land, the only thing on earth that can not
be increased or multiplied. Moreover, her land was
such as the earth has never duplicated and can never
duplicate. The magnificent American West was a
realm unrivaled, and it was originally settled by men
who had the most priceless of all possessions, a splendid
ancestry. Providence held back the wheels for
.pn +1
a hundred years while the Western character was
forming.

Let us, even though by dint of effort, fling away
the personal plaint. It is un-American to snivel, and
as the old-time Western men would not have done
so, neither shall we. The West is not dead. It is
immortal. We have come upon a century of force.
The conflict is to be the bitterest the world has ever
known; not the conflict of man with beast, or with
savage nature, but the conflict of masses of men,
masses of things, one combination against another,
one wedge of impact, head on, against another. It is
too late to call out for an America like that of
Washington or Jefferson; too late to ask for a practical
Monroe doctrine; too late to speak of policies
or politics gone by.

With Europe in fear of our Western products,
and yet dependent upon those products; with
America coming each day, by causes “providential
or evolutionary,” into the plans of the
world, of what possible avail is it to cry out for a
West or for an America that is gone forever? Call
back the armies if you wish, but you can never call
back the wheels. The pathway points now not out
into the West, but out into the world. Never doubt
that the sons of the West, sons of this Anak, sons
whose fathers are in Valhalla to-day, will follow that
.pn +1
road as far and as fearlessly as they did the path
across the continent. In the veins of these men runs
the riot unconquerable, the distillation of the skies
and winds. Their feet march now to the rhythm of
phantom footfalls, those of the men that marched
before from home out into the perilous unknown.
Black men, yellow men, peasant men—all these must
take their chances. There are no longer any vacant
lands. Europe, which sent to the West some of its
best and its poorest population, will have more to
fear at the hands of the West than China has to
dread to-day. Europe has to combat not only the
West, but all the heredity of the West.

This, then, is where the eagle-faced pioneers of
America will find their last trail. This is how the
king will at last come again into his own. Peoples
may pass away, monarchies may fall, but above them
there will stand the only aristocracy fit to survive;
not a false democracy that nominates all men as
equal, but the aristocracy of survival. You may
abolish many things, and in the future enact many
things of which we of to-day may not guess; but never
shall there utterly perish the strong blood that got its
survival by fitness, and its education by continuous
conflict with mighty things. The largest, the most
compact, and the most closely knit Caucasian population
of the world to-day, is that of America, and
.pn +1
to-day America is potentially the most powerful of all
the world-powers. Why? Because her unit of population
is superior. The reason for that you may
find yourself if you care to look into the great movements
of the west-bound population of America.

As to the future steps in the development of the
West, we may perhaps be indulged in a hazard of
opinion, as our fathers were before us. It would seem
sure that every inch of our agricultural lands must
come under the plow of Belgium, and be tilled inch
by inch. The vast Delta of the Mississippi, from
Memphis south, the richest soil the world ever saw,
will be a continuous garden, supporting a great population
of its own, and feeding thousands in the
cities, in full verification of the wisdom of the man
who foresaw that the South must be joined to the
North, even as the West to the East. Perhaps some
of the more barren steppe country of the West will
ultimately be abandoned in spite of scientific irrigation,
just as some of the slashed-off timber-lands of
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are now being
abandoned, in sequel to the ruinous American lumbering
operations.[#]

.pn +1
In the great river valleys there will be an enormous
thickening of the population; so that it may yet
be many years before the center of population,
which in 1900 was near the little town of
Columbus, Indiana, shall have passed the Mississippi
River in its west-bound course.[#] We have yet to
learn to save our potato-peelings. We are yet to go
more and more under task-masters, are to learn more
and more the value of the penny, that coin once so
bitterly scorned in all the West. We are to work out
the problems bequeathed humanity with the passing
years; and in the end we are to ask, as we ask to-day,
that unanswered question, Why? Policies and politics
can not change these things. The wheels have run
too far. Let fall the little words of our talking men;
.pn +1
let wave the tiny swords of those who are called our
warriors; and let the writers rage. Back and beyond
their trivial and transient deeds runs the broad,
somber flood of fate. Humanity, not political divisions,
is the concern of time. The individual yields
to the section, the section to the nation, the nation
to the world, the world to the plans of fate, of
Providence.

There is another, a lighter and more cheerful side
to the conclusions that we may draw from our
study of the way in which the West was made—the
side that has to do with the growth of the newer
portions of this country in all the liberal arts, in that
noble flowering of the human imagination, which is
most naturally to be expected of an environment of
ease and a time of leisure. Art rests ever upon the
material, the imagination dates ever back to actual
deeds. The gentler days of the West are no better
than its ruder times, but the one is as good as the
other, since each came in its proper period. It was
the railway that developed the West in artistic
things as well as in material things. It was as long
ago as 1870 that a Western man, Justice Paine of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court, found occasion to
speak of the vast influence of these civilizing agencies.
He said:

“They have done more to develop the wealth and
.pn +1
resources, to stimulate the industry, reward the labor,
and promote the general comfort and prosperity
of the country than any other, perhaps than all
other mere physical causes combined. There is
probably not a man, woman or child whose interest
or comfort has not been in some degree subserved by
them. They bring to our doors the productions of
the earth. They enable us to anticipate and protract
the seasons. They enable the inhabitants of
each clime to enjoy the pleasures and luxuries of all.
They scatter the productions of the press and of
literature broadcast through the country with amazing
rapidity. There is scarcely a want, wish, or
aspiration of the human heart that they do not in
some measure help to gratify. They promote the
pleasures of social life and of friendship; they bring
the skilled physician swiftly from a distance to attend
the sick and the wounded, and enable the absent
friend to be present at the bedside of the dying.
They have more than realized the fabulous conception
of the Eastern imagination, which pictured the
genii as transporting inhabited palaces through the
air. They take a train of inhabited palaces from
the Atlantic coast, and with marvelous swiftness deposit
it on the shores that are washed by the Pacific
sea. In war they transport the armies and supplies
of the government with the greatest celerity, and
.pn +1
carry forward, as it were on the wings of the wind,
relief and comfort to those who are stretched bleeding
and wounded on the field of battle.”

He has not read well the history of his country,
has not learned the intricate web of the commercial
system of to-day, has surely not studied the developments
of the third age of American transportation,
who can believe that there exists any longer any considerable
difference between the most widely separated
parts of America in matters of the gentler life.
The publisher of a noble periodical controls an
agency the influence of which is as valuable and as
much desired in the West as in the East, and which
is felt as quickly and as sensitively in the one region
as the other. The art and literature of the time
belong to the West as much as to the East, and in its
due time the West will produce as well as consume
in the matters of art and literature. There were
Western artists, Western painters, Western sculptors
on the plains before the buffalo were gone.

It is a matter of wonder that any American literature
could ever speak of the American West in anything
but terms of pride and honor. There is a certain
literature, color-crammed, superficial, and transient,
because wrong, that affects to believe that
there is still a West that is a land of crude souls
exclusively and of little hope for a hereafter. If the
.pn +1
good folk who so believe lack the great privilege of
actual American travel, they have at least left for
them the resources of an American railroad map.
Let them study; and even if they study no deeper
than the map, they must come to see that the West
is no more as once it was.

Changed unspeakably and utterly, the old West
lies in ruins. To pick about among those ruins may,
indeed, be to find here and there a bit of local color;
but were it not better to reflect that this color may
be only the broken bits of a cathedral pane? Restore
that cathedral, in recollection, in imagination
at least, if it be within the skill of art or literature to
do so. Restore it, and write upon its arch the
thought that history may be more than a mere recital
of wars and religions; that the destruction of
human life may be nationally not so great as the development
of human character. Give the men of the
old West, parents of the men of the new West, this
epitaph: They had character. Let the heroes have
place of honor in their own cathedral; and so
may the Western earth lie light above them, and
the Western skies smile over them rememberingly.

.fm

.fn #
The Century Magazine, January, 1902.
.fn-

.fn #
Another instance of changed standards in the West may be
seen in the revolution as to petty prices. Up to twenty years
ago, in most Rocky Mountain communities, the quarter-dollar
was the smallest coin in circulation. With the railroads came
the dime, the nickel, and at last the penny; but they came to
a West that was no more.

A Montana periodical thus comments on these matters as they
appeared at the time when the railroad reached Miles City:

“The advent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, in November,
1881, brought about a complete change in the methods and
manners of the people. The railroad brought the community at once
in touch with the more concise and narrower life of ‘the States’;
the ‘nickel’ displaced the ‘quarter’ as the smallest coin in use,
and prices shrunk accordingly. . . . This proposed innovation
was hotly contested for a while by the adherents of the ‘two-bit’
theory, resulting finally in a compromise that established ‘two-for-a-quarter’
as the going rate. It would be hard to describe
the feeling of dejection that overwhelmed the old-timers when
this conclusion was reached. It was accepted by them as a pronounced
and evident sign of decadence.”
.fn-

.fn #
A settler who moved, in 1854, from Virginia to Iowa complained
that for a whole year in that frontier country he saw no
fruit except a half-peck of crab-apples. It was much the same in
Minnesota at that time; yet, in the year 1900, the city of St. Paul
alone used one thousand dollars’ worth or grapes each day for
fifty days, all imported, and at an average price of only fifteen
cents per basket. This fruit was largely imported from the state
of New York.
.fn-

.fn #
Henry Howe; “The Great West” (1855).
.fn-

.fn #
In the year 1900 began the great tendency toward consolidation
in railway interests. Nor did the sequence cease at this point.
In the same year there were begun, for use upon the Pacific
Ocean in connection with this same transcontinental route, five
giant ocean-going freight ships, the largest yet known, each to be
750 feet in length, of 74 feet beam, and with a carrying capacity
of 22,000 tons. These ships will carry American cotton to Japan,
for use instead of the short-staple cotton of India, until recently
used by Japan. They will enable the railroad-builders of Japan
to figure as exactly on the price of a ton of rails as can the contractor
of Kansas or Nebraska. They will lay down a barrel of
Minnesota flour in China or the Philippines at a cost for carriage
of not over $1.25. All this shows to what extent American commerce,
made active by American transportation methods, is invading
the markets of the world; for, at this same time, Russia
can not lay down a barrel of (an inferior) flour at the seaboard of
China for less than $4.25. Surely our prophet of 1855 dreamed more
wisely than he knew!
.fn-

.fn #
The desecration of America, in the terrible devastation of
her forests, is something no observant man can face with composure.
.fn-

.fn #
The time is not one for individual optimism, and the old
hopefully self-reliant spirit of the West must be content to lose
its personal quality in the larger and vaguer, though not less
certain, tendencies of modern life. Bearing upon a theme kindred
to the above, James Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth,”
recently found occasion to write:

“National ideals to-day tend toward a large and strong state,
with vast external possessions, with a huge army and navy, with
an extending trade, and great consequent wealth; and the ideal
of education is less toward ‘unprofitable culture’ and more toward
subjects that enable men to raise themselves in the world. People
now talk more about capital and labor. Formerly there seemed
rather more faith in the power of reason, rather more hope of
progress to be secured by political change. Altogether there
seemed rather more of a sanguine spirit formerly. Mankind must
never cease to cherish and follow the dream of that golden age,
which at one time they believed to lie in the past, but which for
some centuries had been supposed to glimmer in the future. They
must never forget that hope. But the golden age seemed nearer
in 1850 than it does now.”
.fn-

.fn #
The late Cushman K. Davis, United States senator from Minnesota.
.fn-

.fn #
In 1902 Canada began to emulate the history of the United
States, and planned for the building of two more transcontinental
railways. She could inflict no greater blow to the United States.
V. also Chap. V, Vol. IV; “The Pathways of the Future.”
.fn-

.fn #
Engineers disagree as to the possibility of making a ship-canal
of the great highway of the Mississippi; but engineers
have always disagreed about the doing of great things, and then
have always done them. It is likely that the dream of that
shrewd merchant-explorer, Louis Joliet, will eventually be realized,
and the Chicago drainage-canal will in that case attain a great
importance.

Indeed, inland-water transportation may be upon the eve of a
great development. Thus, in December, 1900, there was organized
a canal company for the purpose of navigating the Red River of
the North, of improving the channel by dredging, putting in locks
and reservoirs, to regulate that historic stream into conditions
virtually those of a canal. Another curious proposition to reach
Congress in the same year was a bill for the purpose of building
a ship-canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, an enterprise
which would have great significance in the coal and iron trade.
This canal would follow the course of La Salle on his first journey
from the Great Lakes—the old south-bound war-trail of the Six
Nations. Geography, of all things, seems to repeat itself. No one
may tell what new importance this canal proposition may attain,
though it may be dormant for a time.

Early in the year 1901 the leading journals of Germany were
discussing the prospects of a canal from Chicago to the Atlantic
Ocean, and held the enterprise practicable.

As showing the extent of water-transportation on our Great
Lakes, it may be stated that more tonnage passes Sault Ste. Marie
in seven months of each year than goes through the Suez Canal
in three years. The city of Duluth alone, at the head of the
water-trail, has a tonnage each year of more than 11,500,000 tons.
.fn-

.fn #
The population of Michigan in the decade 1890-1900 drifted
rapidly toward the cities. Yet the Michigan railroads are bravely
trying to solve the problem of building up a population on the
country desolated by the lumbermen, and with great success are
developing resources in agriculture and manufactures which for
a long time lay unsuspected.
.fn-

.fn #
In this connection the census map offers an unfailing interest.
Investigation shows that our star, denoting the center of population,
has traveled in all only 525 miles since 1790, the greatest
west-bound gains being in the decade 1850-60, 81 miles. At no
time has the center of population moved back toward the East,
though it is nearer to doing so now than ever before—proof that
the history of America has been but the history of a West, and
also proof that that wayward West may soon bend its footsteps
homeward after a century of adventure. The record of the movement
of the population center is as follows:

1790, 23 miles east of Baltimore, Maryland; 1800, 18 miles west
of Baltimore, Maryland; 1810, 40 miles northwest by west of Washington,
D. C.; 1820, 16 miles north of Woodstock, Virginia; 1830,
19 miles west-southwest of Moorefield, West Virginia; 1840, 16
miles south of Clarksburg, West Virginia; 1850, 23 miles southeast
of Parkersburg, West Virginia; 1860, 20 miles south of Chillicothe,
Ohio; 1870, 48 miles east by north of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1880, 8
miles west by south of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1890, 20 miles east of
Columbus, Indiana; 1900, 7 miles north of Columbus, Indiana.
.fn-

.pb

.pn +1
.ce
<l>ACROSS THE PACIFIC</l>

.h2 id=bk4ch01 nobreak
CHAPTER I||THE IRON TRAILS
.sp 2

At the time of the discovery of gold in California,
there had been built up a splendid Western population,
hardy, self-confident, able to shift for itself,
wholly distinct from that population that it had for
a generation left behind at the old starting places of
the trails. These trails across the continent, wavering,
tortuous, yet practicable, had been fully established.
So far as might be within the horizon of
those days, all was now ready for the epoch-making
event that was to change all the methods of America,
that was to make Westerners by wholesale and
to draw them swiftly from every corner of the
earth.

The great state of California alone was cause
and sufficient reason for the swift development of
the remoter American West. There can not be denied
the tremendous effect produced by the sudden
growth of California, coming as it did hard on
.pn +1
the time of the annexation of Texas and the widening
of our national territory in the far Southwest.
As to the discovery of gold and the swift growth of
California being unmixed benefits, there may
exist at this later day something of a sober doubt.

California marked the beginning of the feverish,
insane, excitable type of American, who wishes to
do everything at once—and does it! Without California
and the Civil War we should to-day still be
settling the West. With California we are settling
the islands of the Orient. The high-geared life of
to-day is part of the corollary of washing a year’s
income out of the ground in an hour’s work, of
crossing the continent in a week instead of a season,
of tearing down mountains by machinery instead of
building up homesteads deliberately. Stimulation
and destruction do not go so far apart. California
gave to the world the spectacle of a nation drunk
with energy, using with maddened zeal for a time
powers made three-fold, employing an imagination
under whose concept naught under Heaven seemed
impossible—or was impossible!

This was revolution. There was a demand for
revolution of an even pace in all lines of allied
industry. It was time for the railroad,
and the railroad must now perforce come
swiftly. We built better steamships to get
.pn +1
out into our new, feverish, golden West. We used
the old trails, but they would no longer serve. We
employed the old mountain passes, the old grazing
and watering places, but neither would these serve.
No time now for hoof or wheel, or for the way of
the ship upon the sea! No time now for the wayside
ranches along the Platte, for the old posts of
Laramie and Bridger and Hall! The golden country
clamored all too strongly. Therefore, with a
leap, the old trails straightened out and shortened.
New passes over the Great Divide were found. The
long thin line of rails connected the East with a
West now swiftly grown mightier than itself. All
American morals and manners underwent swift reconstruction.
The United States, plus California,
plus the Western railways, became a different nation.

It is not necessary to take up in detail the chronological
or geographical study of the building
of the transcontinental railways. They have done
their work. The commercial history of America
is sufficiently well written to-day on the face
of every country of the globe. We have built our
own railroads, and to-day we build and sell railroads
and equipment for the Himalayas and the
Sudan. We shall build the railroads that will
make Africa another America. We shall build the
.pn +1
railroads that will at length bring the Anglo-Saxon
face to face with the Slav, in that struggle that shall
pit the American West against the Russian East.

The West of the midway district between the Missouri
and Pacific was largely settled by reflex. The
mines of California spilled back men, great, splendid
men, to the eastward again, to exploit all those
ranges of the Rockies whose wealth the trappers had
not suspected. Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada—all
these might be called a part of the scheme of
California. New and splendid empires were founded,
new standards of civilization were erected in the
recent wilderness. The grand and alluring story of
the West went on apace for yet a little time.

But these times were not to endure. There came
swiftly the Western rush of population, which swept
off the map the free lands of all our Western empire.
The vast American public, mad with the lust of land,
raped the Indian reservations from those that had
frail title given them in the honor of a great nation;
so that thus one more bar was broken between the
East and the West. Home-building, farm-making
man came close on the heels of trapper and trader
and nomad cattle driver. The hordes of the land
seekers held their lotteries even in the desert once
dreaded by the travelers of the old Santa Fé trail.
Incipient cities were built in that waterless waste
.pn +1
where Jedediah Smith, the first transcontinental
traveler, lost his life in mid-continent. Never a bit
of open land was left in all the West; or if there
were such land remaining, it was of a quality that
would once have been viewed with contempt.

The story of the swift changes wrought by the
iron trails is such as not to afford complete satisfaction
in the contemplation; yet we may calmly review
the different stages of that story. First we
had the day of competitive railway building, when
there were not enough railroads for the demands of
a vast and unsettled region whose resources appealed
to a population. Then we came rapidly to
the time of too many railroads; of attempts to adjust
an unprofitable competition; of combinations, of
arrangements, agreements, mergers; and of popular
and governmental action upon such mergers. To-day
all America is districted and divided among a
few great railway systems. Once we were better
than our transportation; now we are not so good.
Once we depended upon it; now it rules us almost
without argument. The swiftness with which these
tremendous changes have been brought about furnishes
one of the most remarkable phenomena recorded
in the history of the world.

Recently there was erected at Doylestown, Pennsylvania,
a monument to a forgotten man, John Fitch,
.pn +1
who in the year 1785 was known as one curious in experiments
with steam as a motive power. Fitch built
a steamboat, and had visions of many things in the
way of steam locomotion. The life of this unknown
man marks the extent of our backward vision in
these matters; yet Fitch lived little more than a
century ago. Indeed, the growth of the railroads
of America has taken place in less than three-quarters
of a century. And yet to-day we have more
than two hundred thousand miles of railway, and as
each day rolls by, we build from ten to twenty-five
miles more. Railroading is a profession perfected in
the hard evolution of American necessity. Our first
railways were but attempts, guesses, desires, hopes,
purely local propositions and not always well conceived
as such. Yet they grew and multiplied, and
presently, before we had time to think, they had
multiplied over much. Then came the days of the
railroad receiver. After the receiver there came the
combiner. This man, in these bubble days of so-called
prosperity, for a time undertakes to do what
competition was not able to do. It is only for a time
that any man or combination of men can escape the
workings of the great natural law of competition.
Neither monopolies nor trades-unions, neither the
“trust” in capital nor the “trust” in labor can
.pn +1
forever evade it. In time there will again be change;
and meantime, ruin.

To-day there are five great centralizations or combinations
of capital that control the railway situation
in America. In these swift times of change these
arrangements may not long remain permanent, and
it is bootless to mention them specifically. The building
of these thousands of miles of railway and the
assembling of them together under industrial truce
has been the product of a giant game in commerce, a
commerce not to be confined wholly by the limits of
this continent. The great ships built for the Orient
are now an old story, an accepted enterprise that
spells Europe on the one hand and Asia on
the other.

As for our own marches, Alaska is to repeat at
least in part the story of California. The Yukon
and White Pass Railway is but a hint, a beginning.
It is now upon the question of a railway
from Circle City in Alaska to the Bering Sea, to
connect there with a railway which shall eventually
tap both China and Siberia! It is entirely within
possibility that we shall in time see a continuous
railway transportation from the Atlantic to the far-off
straits that separate this country from Asia.
Scientists tell us that over these straits there perhaps
came once the ancestors of the aboriginal
.pn +1
population of this continent. This population we
have destroyed. There will also be destroyed all
those nomad tribes of northeastern Asia that seem
not useful in this great scheme which we call civilization.
Alaska was long thought uninviting; yet
railroad building there is feasible, and Alaska is
feasible as residence for man; and railroad man is
concerned with every corner of this globe that can
serve as residence for human beings.

In the course of an address during the year 1901,
a modern railway man[#] spoke in part as follows:
“The twentieth century has been ushered into existence,
and at its very dawn we find a struggle, not
for the acquisition of new territory, not for the
subjection of foreign countries, not a crusade to
introduce a new and better religion, but a struggle
between the great nations of the earth for supremacy
in industrial pursuits and to supply the markets
of the world. The nineteenth century has frequently
been referred to as the Age of Transportation.
Distribution is the handmaid of production.
Bacon said: ‘There are three things that make a
country great: fertile fields, busy workshops, easy
conveyance for men and goods from place to place.’
The evolution that has taken place in the transportation
of this country during the nineteenth century
.pn +1
has been remarkable and unparalleled in the history
of man. In the year 1800 it cost one hundred dollars
to move a ton of wheat from Buffalo to New
York. The regular rate is now a dollar and a half
per ton, and it has been carried for a dollar. One
hundred years ago we paid twenty-five cents per mile,
traveling by stage-coach, without baggage; now we
carry home-seekers from the East into California
for approximately one-twentieth of the old rate.

“Our American railroads were, not a very long
time since, owned largely outside the United States,
but during the world’s panic that occurred in 1893,
our British, German and Dutch friends discovered
the necessity of selling something, and the only
things in their strong boxes that they could sell
without too much sacrifice were their American securities.
They dumped them on the American
market; and, notwithstanding the financial strain
and the depression from which we were suffering,
our American financiers mustered pluck, courage
and money enough to buy them. They were bought
at bargain prices. The advance in them has been
stupendous, but it is worth a great deal to feel that
we are not only blessed with the most improved and
cheapest transportation in the world, but that our
railroads are owned by our own people. The value
of the railroads of the United States amounts to
.pn +1
over one-fifth of the total wealth of the country.”

Another master in transportation,[#] in a public
address delivered in 1902, gave yet further details
in the vivid story of the extension of the iron trails
of America: “While the railroads may have to answer
for many mistakes of judgment or of intent,”
said he, “on the whole the result has been to create
the most effective, useful, and by far the cheapest
system of land transportation in the world. In
England the average amount paid by the shipper
for moving a ton of freight one hundred miles is
two dollars and thirty-five cents; in France, two dollars
and ten cents; in Austria, a dollar and ninety
cents; in Germany, where most of the railroads are
owned and operated by the government, a dollar and
eighty-four cents; in Russia, also under government
ownership, where the shipments are carried under
conditions more nearly similar to our own than any
other country as respects long haul, a dollar and
seventy cents. In the United States the average cost
is seventy-three cents, or less than forty per cent. of
the average cost in Europe.”

From the above comparisons this captain of transportation
concludes that the railroad industries of
this country are in a flourishing condition and that
they should not be interfered with. Yet he
.pn +1
concludes his comment with words that contain a
corollary inconsistent with his earlier attitude, as
we may later have occasion to note. He says: “For
the first time in the history of this country thousands
of our farmers are seeking homes in the Canadian
Northwest, owing to the cheap lands offered in
that country, and to the difficulty of securing such
lands in the United Slates.” Earlier in the same
address there is this epigrammatic statement: “Land
without population is a wilderness; population without
land is a mob.” If our Western Americans are
leaving the flag of a republican government to seek
land elsewhere, is not the inference fair that they
do so because they have become a population without
land? If this be true, assuredly it is the work
of the iron trails.

We have an overgrowth, or, rather, too sudden
and rank a growth, of transportation in America. It
is attended with sudden changes, attended also with
a certain weediness and immaturity, which we should
be entitled to call un-American and undesirable,
even were it not for the graver features that amount
to revolutionary changes and to national menaces.
Borne aloft upon a great wave of commercial prosperity,
the American people is at the present time
taking itself with entire seriousness as the greatest
nation of the world. Its rapid industrial expansion
.pn +1
has indeed been cause for marvel in the mind of all
the world. There is a certain national comfort in
these reflections, without doubt, and solace in the
almost incomprehensible totals of the figures on
which such assertions are grounded. Therefore it
must come almost with ill grace to offer in these
days of jubilation any word that might seem to
indicate that perhaps, in spite of all this superficial
prosperity, all may not be well with America as a
nation, that all is not really well with our American
man.

We are told that these are good times, the best
we ever knew. It is triumphantly announced to us
that we have in one year invested nearly seventy
millions of dollars in foreign securities, largely in
railroad bonds of Russia, in German Treasury bills,
and English Exchequer loans. This is very good;
it sounds well. As an offset to it one should apologize
for offering the simple but multifold statements
from the columns of the daily press bearing upon
the greater cost of living in Western states. It is
seven per cent. greater, says one dealer in statistics.
It is twenty-five per cent. greater than it ever was,
says another. The housewives of America, the best of
all statisticians, say that in 1902 it cost thirty-three
per cent. more to live than it did in 1899. These prices
of bare commodities in these days of super-excellent
.pn +1
transportation go well toward comparing with those
we have shown as existing in the far-off mountain
communities in the days of pack-horse and ox-team
transportation. If this be so, is all well with
America? The prices are the results of combinations
and monopolies. The monopolies are based
largely on non-competitive transportation. The
iron trails are built over the hearthfires of America.
The iron trails must do otherwise than thus.

We are informed that during the last year the
balance of trade in favor of the United States was
something like seven hundred millions of dollars.
“Figures up to March twenty-first (1902), just finished,”
says a careful report, “are so stupendous as
to be staggering. *\ *\ * Nations have generally
measured their prosperity by their foreign trade.”

There might perhaps be other ways of measuring
that prosperity. As against the above imposing aggregation
of figures, I offer a simple newspaper paragraph
printed in 1902, which sounds like Kaskaskia,
or Alder Gulch, or the end of the Santa Fé Trail:
“Potatoes have been selling for a dollar and seventy-five
cents a bushel in Chicago this week,” says the
item. “A year ago the price was about forty cents.
This enormous advance, coupled with the corresponding
rise in the prices of nearly all vegetables, presents
a serious economic problem for large families with
.pn +1
small incomes.” The same paper goes on to say: “The
greatest sufferers from the high price of potatoes are
the small wage-earners. They have learned to depend
upon potatoes almost as much as upon bread. Yet, at
a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel, this staple
food is out of the reach of many. The best thing
they can do is to fall back on rice, which is
an excellent substitute for potatoes and is still
reasonable in price. Unfortunately, large numbers
of wage-earners are incapable of making a sudden
change in their diet. Many women that have
depended upon potatoes all their lives do not
know how to cook rice or hominy. They are as
helpless with these substitutes as were many of the
Irish people with the corn meal that was sent to
them from America during the potato famine, or as
Hindus, who are accustomed to rice, would be when
they were given wheat flour to cook. This scarcity of
potatoes is likely to cause a good deal of hardship
before the proper use of the cheaper staples is
learned.”

And this is in America, in the zenith of the Age
of Transportation! I fancy my man of pack-horse
and cordelle living upon rice! I fancy Daniel
Boone or Davy Crockett or Kit Carson using such
diet as backing for his deeds! Meat and corn
are the diet that built America. Good leaders of
.pn +1
America, insist not over-much on this rice fare,
as you do at present in these bubble days. Let
weediness and immaturity, imported overmuch,
be overrun and oppressed by organized rapacity,
and then, one day, good leaders, you shall see
the American man even yet fall to his well-learned
task of leading himself.

This is in America, and in the Age of Transportation!
I read of these startling changes and can
scarcely believe that they have happened within a
lifetime, a part of which was passed in a West where
wealth and poverty, arrogance and self-denial, were
alike unknown; where, if one hungered, he was free
to enter the door of any little cabin he found here
or there in the mountains, and to eat freely of whatever
food he found, though the owner of the abode
himself might be absent and might forever remain
unknown; where the thought of price did not enter
into the mind of either the uninvited visitor or his
unknown host; where herds, wild or tame, covered
a country vast, inviting and hospitable; where each
man was his own leader; and where the thought of
any difficulty in the simple problem of making a
living never entered into the heart of man!

Those were days perhaps of not so great and apparent
a national prosperity, but there comes a catch
in the throat at comparing those days with these. The
.pn +1
horror of it, the shameless waste, the destruction,
the change, the ruin of it all—these can leave us
little comfort as we gaze on the glittering picture
of to-day. As a nation we are building for ourselves
higher and higher a false castle of prosperity, blowing
for ourselves wider and wider a bubble fragile
at heart as any that ever met collapse in another
day. “Give me back my legions!” cried the Roman
general. God grant there may never bitterly rise
to the lips of an American leader the unavailing cry,
“Give me back my Americans!” God grant there
come not too late the cry, “Give us back our
America!”

“Taking it all around,” says an unprejudiced
writer, “the present generation in the United States
reminds one of a young spendthrift just come into a
fine property, accumulated by the thrift and carefulness
of many ancestors. He thinks he is something
out of the ordinary, and intends showing others how
things should be done. In the society of flatterers,
speculators and gamblers, he soon parts with his
ready money and bank stock. He then sells the timber
off his land. After that is spent he sells his live
stock. Having thus deprived himself of the means
for the proper tillage of his soil, he then sells the
hay crop from his meadows until they are no longer
productive. He next mortgages his property; and
.pn +1
the last scene in the final act is the auctioneer’s
hammer at the public vendue.”[#]

Another commentator[#] takes up the same trend
of thought: “The cry of the people of the West,”
says he, “is rising almost to the ominous threat of
revolution. The wealth of the country has increased
enormously, but it is becoming concentrated in the
hands of a comparatively few individuals. Only in
the days of the early empire and late republic of
Rome was it possible for a few individuals in a few
years to amass such enormous fortunes as they do.
Having exploited the wealth of the great middle
class, we are now drifting into the second stage.
Small investments no longer pay. There is no Eastern
or Western state that has not a score of stranded
towns and villages once prosperous in small industries.
The small farmer is no longer able to make
a living in the competition which he meets....
All this may be progress, but it is progress over a
precipice.”

Still another observer[#] carries his conclusions yet
further, and in a public address states: “The work
of such men as [this monopolist] and his associates
of the big combinations is preparing the minds of our
.pn +1
people for socialism. I am not in favor of socialism,
but men like these so-called captains of industry,
who are opposed to socialism, are preparing the way
for the rapid spread of the socialistic idea. Should
some able leader take up that idea and advocate it,
we shall see it spread with tremendous rapidity in
America.”

So much for the accomplishments of the Age of
Transportation. It has already shown us the meaning
of monopoly and has shown us the abolishment
of the individual. It has taught us, or some of us,
to believe that the establishment of an expensive
university may serve as emendative of an unpopular
personal career. It has taught us, or some
of us, obsequiously to worship that form of wealth
that soothes its conscience by the building of public
libraries. Whether or not learning best grows
and flourishes that has such foundation heads, library
and university alike must to-day admit their impotence
to answer the cry of the leader, “Give me
back my Americans!”

The America of to-day is an America utterly and
absolutely changed from the principles whereon
our original America was founded, and wherefrom
it grew and flourished. Never was there
any corner of Europe, before the days of those
revolutions that put down kings, worse than some
.pn +1
parts of oppressed America to-day. It is not
too late for revolution in America. There is not
justice in the belief that America can to-day be
called the land of the free. The individual is no
more. He perished somewhere on those heights
we have seen him laboriously ascending, somewhere
on those long rivers we have seen him
tracing. He died in the day of Across the Waters.

To-day we have labor unions, organizations that
in the old West would have called forth indignant
contempt in the mere suggestion. We have associations
of managers to fight the unions; we have
monopolies, combinations, masses, upon the one
side and the other, contending, not working together
harmoniously. We have become <i>par excellence</i> the
people of castes and grades and classes. The whole
theory of America was that here there was hope for
the individual; that here he might grow, might prevail.
It is degradation to abandon that theory. It
is degradation for the American man to say of his
own volition: “I am but one cog of a wheel, and my
neighbor another. I can not change; I can not rise;
I can not progress; I can not grow; I dare not hope.”
The degradation of the industry shares the degradation
of the individual. The joint degradation, if it
be accepted as final, spells a national deterioration
and a national ruin which may be gradual and slow,
.pn +1
or may, in these swift-moving days, be rapid and
cataclysmic in its nature.

We have departed from the careful intent of
that government which originally abolished for
us even the law of primogeniture, a clause adopted
in the state constitutions nearly throughout the
Union. Our general public is more absolutely
ruled by a few than is the case in any portion
of the earth. Offsetting this, we boast of our “prosperity”!
Let those that like call this a national
prosperity. It is national fate, but there may be
those that do not care to call it by the name
of prosperity. Times are good when all the people
are busy. Most of the people in the South were
busy before the war; we called that slavery. It
was as nothing compared to the industrial slavery
impending over the American people to-day. It was
simple by comparison as a problem. Tremendous
indeed is the problem this implies, and grave and
serious indeed should he be who attempts to solve it.
We need statesmen, not politicians, to-day. We need
men willing to do their duty in office, without regard
to the question of their re-election to office.

We have promised that our study of American
transportation should bring us close to the heart of
things in our national life. The promise may be
made good in the review of the work of the iron
.pn +1
trails in the Age of Transportation. It would be
but raving to hold the captains of transportation
alone responsible for the deplorable changes that
are taking place in America and the American character;
yet only an equal folly could deny that too
little fearless statesmanship, combined with too
much politics and too much ungoverned transportation,
has been responsible for many of these changes.
Any candid student of American transportation and
of American politics will find himself irresistibly
arriving at the great question of the unrestricted
American immigration.

We Americans have claimed this continent for
humanity. We say that America is not to be used
by the Old World as colonization ground, or for the
planting ground of Old World ideas of government;
and yet, even as we speak these words, we vitiate
doctrine even wider than the Monroe doctrine—the
doctrine of common sense. We throw open the gates
of America and invite the sodden hordes of worthless
peasantry to flock hither and pillage this country,
the choicest of the continent, without let or
hindrance, without requiring of them the first standard
of fitness for American citizenship; without asking
of them even the slightest educational test as
to their fitness to enter into and enjoy a part of
.pn +1
the once splendid heritage of this American people.
The only price we ask is a ticket and a vote.

Of a truth, there would be justice in saying that we
would better watch not so much South America as
Castle Garden. There is where much of the degradation
and depression of American life is going on.
There is where trades-unionism begins, and indeed
must begin. There is where monopolies begin. There
is where, indeed, we are being colonized by the European
peoples. For those that come here to
work, to study, to learn and to grow there
may be room yet in this great America.
For those that come here to exist as parasites
there should be no longer any room. All this
is to some extent the act of common carriers in
search of commerce. Behind this search there often
lies all too certainly the intent of importation of a
passive and semi-servile class,[#] content to accept the
.pn +1
hardest conditions of life, and content to accept life
barren of all hope, of all chance for future betterment.

Such life is un-American. Every one of these
foreigners comes here with a vote in his hand.
We have long allowed the vote to pay for everything;
and, seeing that he had a vote, the poor foreigner
though turbulent and discontented, has perforce
satisfied himself with an America not much
.pn +1
better and not much different from Europe. Assuredly,
the time will come, and perhaps presently,
when there must be considered with all seriousness
this question of a mis-chosen and wrongfully used
factor in our commercial fabric. It is not the upper
branches of our model system of commerce which
are wrong, nor will pruning those upper branches
set that wrong right. We must go to the root of
things.

Surely we have gone forward far enough in our
commercial growth to learn that our country is not
exhaustless. Were it so we should not to-day be considering
the expenditure of hundreds of millions of
dollars to stretch the shrunken acreage of the once
boundless West. Once we had enough for all, but now
we no longer have enough for all. Once we could
keep open house, but we can now no longer do so.
There comes a time even in the question of open
house when the doctrine of self preservation, greater
than any Monroe doctrine, greater than any constitution,
must have its place.

We, as well as Great Britain and other world powers,
must eventually come to the doctrine of selfishness.
Great Britain herself, a land not offering the inducements
held out by America to the penniless settler,
seriously contemplates the restriction of immigration
along the severest lines. She fears becoming
.pn +1
the great almshouse of Europe. Shall we in her
stead become the great almshouse of the world? It
is suggested by a foreign-born philanthropist, for instance,
that America should forthwith throw open
her doors to the five millions of persecuted Russian
Jews. English authorities cheerfully believe that
America could easily assimilate this great mass of
new population. There are many American captains
of politics and captains of transportation who would
cheerfully agree in throwing this task of assimilation
upon this country; but this attitude can not long
remain indorsed by fearless men and thoughtful men
unsodden in the mire of modern American politics,
or unsmirched in the grime of headlong and heedless
American commerce.

Under all this discussion and all these generalizations
there lies, of course, the great, human, individual
question. Back of all stands that great, pathetic
figure, the man about whose neck fate has
hung the destiny of a wife and children. Once there
was room in America for that man. Once there was
hope and a chance ultimately to be called his own. It
is this man, this simple, common, plain American citizen
who is to-day most vitally concerned. The man
we have with us, the man of America, who has helped
win and make America, is the one that ought to be
.pn +1
protected by America, rather than the one that still
has root in the Old World soil that bore him.

This is selfishness; but it is the only plan that offers
hope to humanity in either world. The glory, the
pride of America, the beauty and the flowering of her
growth, have root in her splendid heritage, the heritage
of a virile character born of a magnificent
environment; but there exists no heritage which may
not be dissipated, there lives no blood forever proof
against continuous vitiation.

“The American people,” says the governor of a
Western state, “will no more submit to commercial
despotism than they would to governmental despotism,
and the tendency in the one case can be,
and will be, as easily thwarted as the tendency in
the other.” Let us leave to an impartial and intelligent
judgment of readers the question whether or
not there exists or threatens to exist in America a
commercial despotism; whether or not there exists
any American people; whether or not we have, in the
foregoing pages, found any causes for the changes
and tendencies toward change that are to-day unmistakable
phenomena—changes so rapid and elemental
that any true American ought to be ashamed
to say, “I belong without thought to this, that or the
other political party.” Perhaps we shall be all the
better fortified with premises if we delve a trifle
.pn +1
deeper into the statistics of this question of foreign
immigration; for any writer deals better in undeniable
premises than in ready-made conclusions.

The tables compiled by the United States Commissioner
of Labor are conclusive. At the beginning
of the Revolutionary War four-fifths of the
American population could claim English as their
native tongue. To-day not half our population can
make such claim. There is interest in the story of
the statistics.

“The number of immigrants coming into this
country between 1820 and June thirtieth, 1900, was
nineteen million one hundred and fifteen thousand
two hundred and twenty-one. Prior to 1820 the government
did not take account of immigration, but the
generally accepted estimate of the total immigration
between the adoption of the Constitution and 1820
is but two hundred and fifty thousand. This number
is not included in the above total.

“The character of the immigration has changed
in a most interesting way. From 1821 to 1850, two
and three-tenths per cent. of our immigration came
from Canada and Newfoundland; during the next
decade, 1851 to 1860, the percentage was the same,
and during the last decade only one-tenth per cent. of
the immigrants was from those sections. From 1821
to 1850, twenty-four and two-tenths per cent. came
.pn +1
from Germany, and in the next decade thirty-six and
six-tenths per cent., this being the highest percentage
reached by the Germans. During the last decade
the Germans supplied only thirteen and seven-tenths
per cent. of our foreign immigration. During the
period first named, 1821 to 1850, Great Britain furnished
fifteen per cent. of the immigrants, and in the
next decade sixteen and three-tenths per cent. Then
came a large increase from Great Britain between
1861 and 1870, the percentage being twenty-six and
two-tenths; from 1871 to 1880 it was nineteen and
five-tenths, while for the last decade it was but seven
and four-tenths. From 1821 to 1850 Ireland furnished
forty-two and three-tenths per cent. of our immigrants,
and between 1851 and 1860 thirty-five and
two-tenths per cent. Since then there has been a
rapid decrease, and between 1891 and 1900 Ireland
furnished but ten and five-tenths per cent. of our
immigrants. Those from Norway and Sweden constituted
only six-tenths per cent. between 1821 and
1850. The Scandinavians increased in numbers between
1881 and 1890, when their proportion was ten
and eight-tenths per cent.; during the last decade it
was eight and seven-tenths per cent.

“The immigration from the whole group just
named, Canada and Newfoundland, Germany, Great
Britain, Ireland, and Norway and Sweden, shows a
.pn +1
marked relative decrease. While the immigrants
from these countries constituted seventy-four and
three-tenths per cent. of the whole number of immigrants
during the entire period under discussion,
they furnished between 1821 and 1850 eighty-four
and four-tenths per cent. of the total, and during the
next decade ninety-one and two-tenths per cent., since
which time there has been a rapid decrease, this
group of countries during the last decade furnishing
but forty and four-tenths per cent.

“These figures enable us to bring into direct and
sharp comparison the immigration from countries
that fifty years ago furnished hardly any increment
to our population. From 1851 to 1860 Austria-Hungary
sent no immigrants to this country, or
not enough to make any impression upon the statistics,
but between 1861 and 1870 the immigration
from that country was four-tenths per cent., during
the next decade two and six-tenths per cent., from
1881 to 1890 six and seven-tenths per cent., while
during the last decade it was sixteen and one-tenth
per cent.

“Italy, beginning with two-tenths per cent. during
the period from 1821 to 1850, increased to two per
cent. between 1871 and 1880, and to nearly six per
cent. during the next decade, while during the last
.pn +1
decade that country furnished seventeen and seven-tenths
per cent. of our total number.

“The proportions for Russia and Poland are almost
identical with those of Italy. Those two countries,
taken together, beginning with only one-tenth per
cent. of our total number of immigrants between 1821
and 1850, increased but slightly until between 1881
and 1890, when they contributed five per cent., and
during the last decade sixteen and three-tenths per
cent. These three sections—Austria-Hungary, Italy,
and Russia and Poland—taken together, contributed
during the last decade fifty and one-tenth per cent. of
our immigrants, as against forty and four-tenths per
cent., as stated, for the group of five countries first
named; nine and five-tenths per cent. came from elsewhere.

“It is interesting to know how many of the nineteen
million one hundred fifteen thousand two hundred
and twenty-one immigrants coming to this country
since 1821 are now living. The recent census,
by its classification of population into native and foreign
born, answers the question, and we find that of
the total number of immigrants fifty-four and seven-tenths
per cent. were living in June, 1900. In 1880
sixty-two per cent. of the whole number of immigrants
at that date were living, while in 1850 forty-four
and four-tenths per cent. were still in existence.
.pn +1

“... The conclusion unfortunately is unavoidable,”
says the statistician, “that our immigration
is constantly increasing in illiteracy, and the immigrants
themselves are showing higher percentage
of illiteracy. Nearly one-half of our steerage immigration
now presents an illiteracy of from forty to
over fifty per cent. Of the three hundred eighty-eight
thousand nine hundred and thirty-one steerage
aliens who arrived during the year, the following
totals are given for the principal countries”:

.ta l:18 r:7 r:8
                        | Males.  | Females.
Southern Italian        | 86,929  |  24,396
Polish                  | 25,466  |  12,170
Hebrew                  | 23,343  |  19,894
German                  | 17,238  |  12,442
Slavic                  | 19,309  |   7,622
Northern Italian        | 16,202  |   4,158
Scandinavian            | 12,200  |   9,981
.ta-

And fifty per cent. of them are illiterate! Shall we
let them come? Shall we perhaps teach them to eat
rice with the rest of us? Shall we divide our inheritance
with them? Shall we remember only that
each of them has a vote? The leveling methods of
the Age of Transportation, the day of the iron
trails, have made possible, and have made imperative,
these very questions. Their answer lies in the
future, yet perhaps no very distant future. There
.pn +1
are not lacking those, and they constantly increase in
numbers, who believe that the answer must be the
putting up of the bars against all future immigration
except of a closely selected sort, and preferably that
bred upon this continent. America has eaten
overmuch; she may yet assimilate, but she must
gorge no more. We can now rear actual Americans
enough to feed the world, and to defeat the
world when the time shall come for the fatal shock
of arms, and under a system of rest and recuperation
we may become a united and strong America; while
under the system of the past, and the system that now
prevails, we must presently become a warring and
divided, hence a weakening, land.

.fm

.fn #
Mr. Paul Morton, of the Santa Fé Railroad.
.fn-

.fn #
Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Railroad.
.fn-

.fn #
Wm. F. Flynn, in “Forest and Stream.”
.fn-

.fn #
Prof. Benjamin F. Terry, of the University of Chicago.
.fn-

.fn #
Rev. George C. Lorimer.
.fn-

.fn #
Since the above lines were written the following editorial
comment appeared in a leading American daily newspaper:

“Almost every nation in the world is sending an increasing
number of immigrants to the United States. Last month (April,
1903) the new-comers numbered 126,200, being 30,000 more than
for April of 1902. The total for the year may reach 1,000,000, or
half the population of Chicago, the second largest city in the
country.

“Is so great an influx of foreigners natural or desirable?
Many in a condition to know say that immigration is promoted
largely by mine-owners and railroad managers, who wish to be
kept supplied with cheap labor, and who do not care particularly
whence it comes or whether it will be desirable material out of
which to make American citizens, or whether its presence may
not contribute to social or industrial disorder.

“Many of the great railroad systems approve of unrestricted
immigration because it swells their profitable emigrant business.
They have their agents in Europe soliciting that kind of business.
The greater the number of men and women that can be induced
to come to this country and to buy tickets to interior points, the
more money the roads make. They offer low ocean and rail rates,
which tempt the emigrant and yet are profitable to the roads.

“While some great employers favor unrestricted immigration
because it gives them cheap labor, the labor unions may reach
the conclusion that for that very reason unrestricted immigration
must be harmful to their interests, because it will lead
inevitably to a reduction of wages. When the supply of labor
is much in excess of the demand the maintenance of a high
wage scale becomes impossible.

“While a large percentage of the immigration is unskilled
labor, it must be remembered that many unions are composed of
men who do that kind of labor. Moreover, some of them will
learn trades and increase the number of skilled workers. When
times grow dull there will be an excess of workers and wages
will go down. The labor organizations belonging to the American
Federation of Labor asked the last Congress to bar out illiterate
immigrants. The object was to keep down the undesirable cheap
labor immigration. The steamship companies, which make money
off their steerage passengers and drum up business throughout
eastern Europe, and some western railroads which are extending
their lines, protested against and defeated the legislation ‘organized
labor’ petitioned for. Considering the swelling tide of
immigration, much of it of an undesirable nature, the labor
leaders probably will ask the next Congress in emphatic language
to order the exclusion of illiterates to protect American
labor and the high standard of American citizenship.”
.fn-

.sp 4
.h2 id=bk4ch02 pn=+1
CHAPTER II||THE PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE
.sp 2

The open and abounding West is no more. From
California, from all the interior regions of the great
dry plains rises the same cry, that the government
should take measures to give the people more land;
that by means of irrigation it should restore, in some
measure at least, the opportunities which allured
the men who in the old days followed in the pilgrimage
“out West.” This changed and restricted region
has problems entirely different from those of the
West that was.

Once we wished a population to embrace the opportunities
that abounded in the West. Now we wish
to increase the opportunities for a population clamoring
for a better chance than is offered anywhere in
America. It is demanded that the government shall
bring about reclamation of the arid lands, and their
actual settlement in small tracts. “The political party
that shall boldly advocate a great national irrigation
appropriation will receive the support of millions of
people, now homeless and discontented, who desire
homes and an opportunity to make a living by
.pn +1
honest labor.” This is the statement of a master in
transportation, who has assisted in the importation of
hundreds of thousands of these homeless and discontented
people into an America too suddenly
gone small. He would scarcely care to see our railroads
under government control, but he can suggest
a method by which the government could be immensely
helpful to the Western people, and perhaps
to the Western railroads!

In yet another prominent railroad office, the conversation
lately turned upon the future of the carrying
trade in the West, when another of these captains
of transportation swept his hand in a large
circle on a map that hung on the wall. Within
his circle was included a good portion of Montana
and Wyoming, with other parts of the great Western
interior. “All this region must go under irrigation,”
said he. “It is worthless to-day for farming
purposes, but there exists no richer soil when once
you get water on it. There is no county or state
government, there is not even the richest railroad
corporation, that can afford to put this vast acreage
under the ditch. It is a problem for the national
government of the United States; and, mark my
words, that government will one day be obliged to
solve that problem. Of course, the interest of our
railroad in the matter is purely a business one.
.pn +1
We want this country settled up, not by a few scattered
grazers, but by many producing farmers. We
want this country filled full of small land holders,
not that we may carry their products to the East on
our railway, but so that we may carry them west
to the Pacific, and thence across the ocean to the
Asiatic market. There must be a new West, and for
that West the market must be found in Asia.”

The common carriers, therefore, tell us that our
West is now beyond the Pacific; that the East has
come into the West; that the Old World has come
into the New; that the Latin methods of farming
must supplant the Anglo-Saxon ways. Perhaps; but
this will take some time. As against the likelihood
of any early and sweeping national action in the matter,
there remains chiefly the <i>vis inertiæ</i> of mental
habit in the American farmer, who hitherto has not
been acquainted with the doctrine of irrigation and
reclamation. Vast tracts of California, Colorado,
New Mexico, Arizona, Texas—large regions in what
was once considered the irreclaimable desert of
America, go to show that the Western-American can
learn irrigation and can successfully carry on farming
of that nature; but none the less, for the average
American farmer, who has been accustomed to the
wide-handed methods of his forefathers, this proposition
will carry no immediate appeal.
.pn +1

The proof of this latter statement lies in that
very emigration into Canada to which attention has
been called, and which constitutes one of the most
remarkable phenomena ever known in the history
of the American West. These dwellers under the
Stars and Stripes, these citizens of the land of the
free, of the land supposed to offer the greatest extent
of human opportunity to-day, are flocking across
her borders with the purpose of establishing homes
in an alien land, and under a flag from which in a
century gone by they made deliberate and forcible desertion!

They want the cheap lands, the wide acres, the
great horizon of a West, even if they must find that
West in land other than that which bore them!
They do not want irrigated land that is worth one
hundred dollars an acre, even though there be an
unchanging and pleasant climate as an attraction
thereto. They prefer a cold, bleak environment, a
rude, hard life, with poorer markets, a looser touch
with civilization, but with a bolder, a wider and freer
individual horizon. There has been nothing in our
history more pathetic than this. There has been
nothing more cheerlessly disheartening in our history
than the thought that we are exchanging thousands
of men of this bold and rugged type, men
who are willing and able to go out into the savage
.pn +1
wilderness and lay it under tribute, for an equal
number of thousands of shiftless and unambitious
incoming population, who are willing to live on the
droppings of the American table.

As to the extent of this American emigration
northward into Canada, the figures are great enough
to cause consternation in the mind of more than one
railroad man, and to set on foot all possible measures
of checking the outgoing stream. Within the
year 1902 more than fifty thousand American citizens,
some say seventy-five, even a hundred thousand,
are thought to have taken up homes on the soil of
Canada. These American emigrants took with them
twenty million dollars out of the banks of Iowa alone.
Great syndicates, in part made up of American capitalists
and in conjunction with American and Canadian
masters of transportation, have undertaken the
settlement of large tracts of these cheap Canadian
lands.

The settlers of the remoter West, the men from
Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and so forth, largely
move into Manitoba or other western British provinces.
Farther to the east, in what is known as
New Ontario under the new railroad industrial policy,
an equally determined effort is making to influence
American citizens to settle on lands subject to the
rigorous climate north of Lake Superior. If only
.pn +1
the settler shall come here he may have land at any
price he likes, on terms of payment that shall suit
himself. In all the large Canadian cities, whether
under government countenance or not, there are
emigration bureaus. In the cities of St. Paul and
Minneapolis there are yet other emigration offices,
proclaiming as flamboyantly as they ever did for
the lands of the United States, the attractions of a
home in the far Northwest, across the borders of
the United States.

Canada lost one-fifth of her population to the
United States. She is regaining much of it to-day,
because she still has a West, and we have none. There
is systematic, deliberate and highly differentiated
effort going on toward the influencing of this American
emigration. To offset it we have nothing to offer
except the incoming stream of city dwellers from
Europe, and the possible policy of national irrigation,
subject always to the dubious methods of American
politics. Gaze now once more, if you like, on the picture
of the old West and of the new!

England fears, and in some portions of Canada
that fear is shared, that these Americans will not become
good Canadian subjects; that, in short, Canada
will become Americanized. Only the years will tell.
These great popular movements are matters of individual
self-interest. The day of the individual is
.pn +1
indeed passing, yet it is not to pass without a fight
to the last gasp upon the part of that individual
himself. It would lie ill to suggest that the American
government has not always properly treated its
people, in spite of that vast modern meshwork of
monopolies and combinations which has brought
about practically an industrial slavery, and has
gone so far toward bidding our once free American
to hope for freedom no more. Yet the answer as to
the patriotism of the American people lies silent
before us in the records of the ticket offices of these
railways that run from America into Canada.

In a view of the past American transportation
methods, and of that natural Monroe doctrine whose
basis lies in the abundant natural richness of the
environment of the American temperate zone, it is
no unbiased prophecy to suggest that this question
will eventually be settled, not by the government of
the United States, not by the government of England,
not by the government of Canada, but by the
people themselves. If the transportation of the future
shall make Canada and the United States alike,
then assuredly the people will attend to the rest, and
care not what may be the politics or the government
of either the one land or the other. The eventual
settlement of the West may mean a country in which
there shall be small distinction between Canada and
the United States, small distinction between the
.pn +1
latter and the more desirable parts of the republic of
Mexico on the south. If these questions shall be
settled in Washington or Ottawa, it is safe prophecy
to believe that it will be in the railroad offices and
not the governmental offices of those respective cities.
It takes more than politics to suppress the instinct
that seeks individual well being. It takes
more than politics to prevent water from running
down-hill.

The reply to such prophecy or foreboding, or
guessing, as one may choose to call it, which has
been provided by the government of England, is not
apt to take any form different from the ancient
policy of England, which after all is military. England
is old and is, or presently will be, decadent.
Her bigotry is that of age, her unprogressive slowness
of change is senile. She has been the great
colonizer; and in so far as the development of transportation
facilities has brought her colonies closer
home to her, it has given England hope—her only
hope—that of existing in the future of her
robust children. Yet we find the concern of England
to-day to be that of securing military touch with
all the corners of the world, rather than that of establishing
a flexible and durable system of transportation
methods that shall make for the individual
well-being of all her widely scattered subjects.
.pn +1

England, concerned with this American invasion of
settlers, is to-day planning a great trans-Canadian
road, whose western head shall lie somewhere within
striking distance of Asia. “This,” says one commentator,
“is England’s answer to Russia and the
trans-Siberian railway.” To a humble observer it
might seem far safer were England concerned, not so
much in answering Russia, as in answering the
United States.

The best answer to Russia would be multitudes of
farms in Western Canada, which one day we may
call Western America. She can make that answer
only by learning the methods of the United States.
Till in some measure she shall have done so, she can
not be safe as against the inroads of the American
citizens. She can not restore the level of the waters
by the building of railroads with military reasons
under them. There may be a time in the history of
the North American mid-continent when Canada and
the United States will agree that it is better to get
along comfortably together than it is to aid a far-off
and somewhat mythical government to fight its battles
somewhere at the end of military roads.

Our little Western secessionists, our little frontier
republics cleaved to the government at Washington
as soon as the pathways thereto made such loyalty
a possible thing. It is nearer from Quebec and
.pn +1
Ottawa to Washington, than it is to London. Patriotism
is much a matter of transportation. The
faster the ocean steamships, the better the telegraphic
communication, the nearer Canada is to England;
yet at the same time relatively she grows still
nearer to the United States.[#]

Germane to these questions are those that rise
as to the opening of additional avenues of industry
at the other end of those pathways that stretch
out across the Pacific Ocean. In the mad race for
the gates of the imperial city of China, America
had no real friends at her side. That was the time
when the covetous powers of Europe, owners of
lands overpopulated and industries overcrowded,
conceived that they had at length opportunity to
.pn +1
urge quarrel on a weaker land, with the result of
a war in which the weaker power would inevitably
be obliged to pay the penalty of unsuccessful resort
to arms. England and Germany wished to do what
England had been doing in South Africa and elsewhere
for some time. They wanted a quarrel and
a war, therefore a dismemberment and a division.
Water transportation is cheap. The coal and iron
of China lie close to water transportation. It had
excellently well served the designs of England and
Germany to parcel out this land, so full of raw
material fit for manufacturing purposes. It had
excellently well suited the powers to wipe the barbarians
off the map, as has been done in so many
South Asiatic and South African transactions of a
similar nature. The secret of the Christian indignation
at the barbarity of the heathen Chinese is none
too much a secret in the frank vision of commercial
desire.

The part of America in this game was well played.
It is too late now to cry out for an America
for Americans. We have squandered our substance,
wasted our heritage, played the spendthrift royally
as we might. Now it is too late. We may shut our
gates on the East, but we must some time take our
part in the great game of going abroad in the West.
We have not yet felt that time to be near at hand;
.pn +1
but it was splendid statesmanship on the part of
America that kept China intact for yet a while, and
got the armies off her soil.

The blandishments of England and Germany
ought not to appeal to America. There is no nation
that loves us unselfishly, or that would aid us unselfishly
were we in need of help;[#] but if it shall one day
come to the last bitter game among the nations,
there will be none then so well equipped as we. We
shall not need to call for aid. An English journal
deems it “crude vulgarity” for the United States
to think of wresting the maritime supremacy from
Great Britain. It may be such, though we are not
sure. It was perhaps crude vulgarity when we took
America from Great Britain, when we took for ourselves
a country so full of natural wealth, a country
so perfect for the upbuilding of an aggressive and
self-reliant national character. It might be crude
vulgarity if we took this whole American continent
as our own. Let us hope that this same character may
still abide with us when we find need for the farther
crude vulgarity of going abroad into the world. That
we are meantime going abroad is without question
true; not at the direction of our “leaders,” not by
.pn +1
reason of our politics, but by reason of our transportation.

The South, always the leader into the West, exclaims
politically against the look toward Asia. It
is but politics. The Tennessee troops fought well in
the Philippines. Not all the world can stop us from
thus going abroad. Whether we shall come home
again at a later date remains yet to be seen. Whether
we shall then have left a home worth the name remains
yet to be proved.

Such are some of the localities and situations into
which our trails have nationally led us; such
some of the problems into which our vaunted
Age of Transportation is carrying us. There
are new equations, new questions, new problems
constantly confronting us with an ever
growing urgency. It is not in any wise certain
that a dispassionate study of this nature can leave
us with a national vanity wholly untouched. It is
not altogether sure that the conclusions framed upon
our chosen premises, inevitable as they are, can leave
the student wholly convinced of either our universal
success or our universal happiness.

Yet we shall do best to dismiss forebodings, and
to cling, as still we may, to the faith and hope
that was part of the American birthright. Indeed,
we find it difficult to study even our grim
.pn +1
columns of figures, our unimaginative records of events,
without still retaining the curious and awesome feeling
that heretofore the settlement of the American
West, the birth and growth of the American man,
has been a matter of fate, of destiny. There seemed
to be a mighty west-bound tide of humanity of which
we were but spectators, if indeed we were not part
of the tide’s burden of hurried flotsam, carried forward
without plan or aim or purpose.

We go on apparently still without plan, apparently
still borne forward in a throng resistless as of yore.
Perhaps in the forefront of our ranks we carry trump
of Jericho for other lands; if not in the bugle note
of our armies, at least in the humming of our commerce.
Let us hope that we do not invite a trumpet
call at our own walls.

A million dead men are forgotten. Our wars
are as nothing. But a million live men, taken up
bodily from one environment, and set down bodily
in another environment in any antipodal quarter
of the world—that means history; that spells questions
in forethought; that bids rise an American
statesmanship big and honest, not selfish, not corrupt,
and not afraid! These questions are such as
must be approached wholly without reference to
party or to politics.

It has been hitherto in America not so much a
.pn +1
question of politics as of roads; but now the roads
are builded that shall lead us to our City of Desire
or to our Castle of Despair. Steam will establish
our doctrines and our tariffs. But steam has no
soul. To it, our flap-hatted frontiersman, our new-American,
our product of a noble and unparalleled
evolution, is but the same as the wrinkled-booted
foreigner that puts down his black box in the middle
of a Dakota prairie or in the heart of a crowded
Eastern city. Steam has no care for the real glory
of our flag. It cares naught for character. It does
not love humanity. In it dwells no ancient love for
the history of an America which at least might once
have been dear to the heart of all humanity. Steam
is an equalizer. It breaks down the lines between
nations. It makes America like unto Europe, causing
us to change to meet the changes of the Old
World. If we be not careful we shall see going forward
that equalizing of humanity that is brutalizing.
And then in the good time of the ages we
shall see cataclysm, revolution, change.

Whatever the product of that change after the
revolutions that are yet to be, no man of all the
future will ever again behold a land like that
American West which is now no more. That was
indeed a land rich in the bounty of nature, rich
in opportunity for humanity. It was a land where
.pn +1
a man could indeed be a man; where indeed he might
live honestly and cleanly and nobly, unshrinking
from his fate, unfearing for his own survival, helpful
to his neighbor, independent as to himself.

Now we have seen our old rider going far, our
flap-hatted man, the fearless one. He has strange
company to-day, at home and abroad. In all reverence,
let us hope that God may prosper him! In
all reverence, let us hope that there may never arise
from the great and understanding soul of any leader
of this country that sad and bitter cry, “Give me
back my Americans!”

.fm

.fn #
Canada does not lack a fearless view in some of these matters.
In 1902 a prominent journal of Halifax, N. S., boldly compared
British and American institutions: “Had our forefathers thrown
in their lot with the other American colonies at the time of the
Revolution,” says this journal editorially, “Nova Scotia would
now be a greater Massachusetts. The Dominion of Canada would
have five-fold its wealth and population.” <i>Per contra</i>, American
emigrants face some facts which to-day are not wholly satisfactory.
Taxation in Canada in 1901 was $10 per capita, and but $7.50 per
capita in the United States. To-day the debt of the Dominion is
$66 per capita, whereas that of the United States figures but $14.52.
In proportion to population, Canada has twice as much foreign
trade as the United States; yet much of her foreign trade is with
the United States. The Dominion of Canada clings still to the
mother country, but in these modern days, the lines between states
and provinces and governments become annually more faint. Life
bases itself upon the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The
interdependence of a mutual self interest makes the strongest
bonds between peoples, between governments, or between government
and people.
.fn-

.fn #
Unless it might perhaps be the republic, France, from whom
took the difficult doctrine that all men are “free and equal.”
.fn-

.pb

.ce
<l>GENERAL INDEX</l>

.in +1
.nf l
<i>Abbott</i>, J. S. C.: #158#, #162#-3, #224#, #236#.

<i>Abenakis</i>: #22#.

<i>Adams</i>, Josiah: opinion on admission of Louisiana as a state, #61#-2.

<i>Alabama</i>: few whites there in 1800, #46#;
  part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#.

<i>Alamo</i>, The: no messengers of defeat, #149#;
  Travis hemmed in, #177#;
  battle of, #179#.

“<i>Alamo</i> baby”: #180#.

<i>Alarcon</i>: #328#.

<i>Alaska</i>: #387#.

<i>Alexander</i>, Colonel: defeats Crockett for Congress, #165#.

<i>Allegheny</i> mountains: barrier formed by, #48#.

<i>America</i>: her debt to her early explorers, #74#;
  population of, #221#;
  gets her territory first, #372#;
  potentially most powerful of all world powers, #375#;
  utterly changed from original America, #398#;
  a look into the future, #424#-428.

<i>American</i>, The: his birth, #103#.

<i>American</i> frontiersmen: dress of, #18#.

<i>American</i> Fur Company: first steamboat, #188#;
  gets posts of Northwest Company, #197#;
  beginning of, #329#.

<i>Appalachians</i>: first trails were waterways, #39#.

<i>Archer</i>, of Virginia: #177#.

<i>Armijo</i>, Governor: #242#.

<i>Armstrong</i>, Lieutenant-Governor: #169#.

Asenesipia: #69#, #124#.

<i>Ashley</i>, General: goes up the Platte, #294#;
  takes cannon through South Pass, #328#;
  undertakes exploration of Green River, #336#-7.

<i>Astor</i>, John Jacob: #289#;
  expedition to Astoria, #329#-333.

<i>Astoria</i>: #329#.

<i>Atchison</i>, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad: #270#.

<i>Austin</i>, Stephen A.: #173#.

<i>Austin</i>: #177#.

<i>Austria</i>-Hungary: emigration to the United States, #409#-410.

<i>Ax</i>, The American: description and uses, #7#-10.

<i>Bacon</i>, quotation from: #388#.

<i>Baird</i>, J. M.: #268#.

<i>Baird</i>, McKnight & Chambers: #268#-271.

<i>Baker</i> and Company, I. G.: #210#.

<i>Balance</i> of trade: #393#.

<i>Baltimore</i>: #45#, #168#.

<i>Baltimore</i> and Ohio Railroad Co. organized: #349#.

<i>Bank</i> examiner: distance traveled by one, #208#.

<i>Batts</i>, Thomas: #101#.

<i>Beale</i>, Lieutenant: #250#.

<i>Bear</i>, black: #163#.

<i>Beaver</i>, skin: price of, #190#.

<i>Becknell</i>, William: #270#-272.

<i>Bee</i> Hunter, The: #176#, #181#.

<i>Benton</i>, Thomas: #300#.

<i>Benton</i>, Fort: #209#.

<i>Bering</i> Sea: #387#.

<i>Berkeley</i>, Bishop: #38#.

<i>Bicknell</i>, William: #270#.

<i>Big</i> Men: America rich in, #126#-7.

<i>Birch</i>-bark: absence of in Montana, #197#.

<i>Birch</i>-bark canoe: description of, #19#-24.

<i>Blackfeet</i>, The: #341#-2.

<i>Blue</i> Ridge mountains: barrier formed by, #48#.

<i>Boarding</i>: cost of in the West, #215#.

<i>Boat</i>, The American: description of, #19#-24.

<i>Bob</i>, Col. R. E.: foot-note, #164#.

<i>Bodley</i>, Thomas: #79#.

<i>Bonneville</i>, Captain: #312#-315, #329#.

<i>Boone</i>, Daniel: #45#;
  leaves Society of Friends, #77#;
  moves from Bucks county, #77#-8;
  brothers-in-law, #79#;
  marriage, #80#;
  called Luther of frontiering, #88#;
  personality, #89#-90;
  personal description, #91#-94;
  birth, #94#;
  second marriage, #95#;
  with Braddock as a wagoner, #96#;
  determines to explore Kentucky, #98#;
  where is his fame as an explorer, #102#;
  departure from the Yadkin settlement for the West, #103#;
  left alone in the wilderness, #105#;
  moves family to Kentucky, #107#;
  undertakes discovery of surveyors, #107#-8;
  lays out road from the Holston to the Kentucky, #108#;
  knowledge of woodcraft, #109#;
  capture of his daughter by the Indians, #110#;
  captured by Indians and taken to Detroit, #111#;
  life saved by Kenton, #114#-15;
  adventure with two Indians, #115#-16;
  leaves Kentucky, #116#;
  granted a commission by Spanish governor of Louisiana, #117#;
  land taken from him by the government, #117#;
  date of death, #118#;
  his late years, #118#-19;
  his body and that of his wife moved to Kentucky, #120#;
  compared with Davy Crockett, #145#-6.

<i>Boone</i>, Squire: #104#;
  family moves to Kentucky, #106#;
  death, #113#.

<i>Boonesborough</i>: #42#, #99#;
  founding of, #108#;
  saved by Boone, #111#-112.

<i>Bore</i>, in rifle: #13#.

<i>Bowie</i>, James: #177#.

<i>Braddock</i>: #96#.

<i>Brandywine</i>, battle of: #82#.

<i>Brant</i>, Mohawk chief: #48#.

<i>Bread</i> riot: #216#-218.

<i>Bridger</i>, Fort: #295#-6.

<i>Bridger</i>, Jim: #295#-6.

<i>Britain</i>, ancient: #36#.

<i>Broadwater</i>, Colonel Charles A.: #210#.

<i>Bryan</i>, James: #79#.

<i>Bryan</i>, Morgan: #79#-80.

<i>Bryan</i>, Rebecca: #80#, #95#.

<i>Bryan</i>, William: #79#.

<i>Bryant’s</i> Station, fight at: #113#.

<i>Buchanan</i>, Mrs. Sally: #56#.

<i>Buena</i> Ventura: #243#.

<i>Buffaloes</i>: first seen by Boone, #103#.

“<i>Bullboats</i>”: #197#.

<i>Bullitt’s</i> Lick: #65#.

<i>Burro</i>: price of, #203#.


“<i>Caches</i>” of Baird and Chambers: #269#.

<i>Cahokia</i>: #45#.

<i>Calico</i>: price of, #190#.

<i>California</i>: discovery of gold in, #200#;
  density of population in 1870, #220#;
  discovery of gold, and its effect on the West, #381#-385.

<i>Callison</i>, Susannah: #82#.

<i>Calloway</i> family: #110#.

<i>Canada</i>: emigration to, and cause, #391#;
  emigration to the United States 1821-1850, #407#;
  emigration to, #416#-418;
  will it be Americanized, #418#-422.

<i>Canal</i>, Washington’s: #67#.

<i>Cañon</i> of the Colorado: #231#, #328#.

<i>Canot</i> du Maître: #23#.

<i>Canot</i> du Nord: #22#, #195#, #197#.

<i>Caravan</i> trade: its extent, #281#;
  goods carried, #282#;
  carried on by Southern-Western men, #282#.

<i>Cardenas</i>: #328#.

<i>Carolina</i>: #47#; rallying ground for adventures, #88#.

<i>Carolina</i>, North: its relations with the Washington District, #128#;
  annexes Watauga, #131#;
  gives Washington District to the United States, #132#;
  repeals act of cession of Washington District, #133#;
  appoints officers for state of Franklin, #137#.

<i>Carson</i>, Kit: grandson of Daniel Boone, #120#;
  birth, #223#;
  description, #225#;
  dress and equipment, #227#;
  greatest of American travelers, #228#;
  dispute concerning birth place, #228#;
  boyhood days, #229#;
  wanderings from 1826 to 1834, #229#-238;
  first marriage, #239#;
  hunter for Bent’s Fort, 1834-1842, #239#-240;
  guide for first Frémont expedition, #241#;
  second marriage, #242#;
  guide for second Frémont expedition, #242#-245;
  guide for Frémont a third time, #247#-9;
  messenger to Washington three times, #249#, #250#, #251#;
  appointed lieutenant in the U. S. A., #251#;
  expedition with eighteen old friends, #254#;
  sheep drive to California, #255#;
  Indian agent and counselor, #257#;
  death, #258#.

<i>Carter</i>, John: #128#.

<i>Castrillon</i>: Mexican general, #180#.

<i>Caucasian</i> population: largest is that of America, #374#.

<i>Cavalier</i>: #37#, #53#, #75#.

<i>Census</i>: second of the U. S., #45#.

<i>Center</i> of population in 1860: #220#.

<i>Central</i> Pacific Railroad: #209#.

<i>Chambers</i>, Baird and McKnight: #268#-271.

<i>Champlain</i>: #265#.

<i>Cherokees</i>: #54#; League with Spain, #59#.

<i>Cherronesus</i>: #69#, #124#.

<i>Chicago</i>: a city of transportation, #364#.

<i>Chicasas</i>: #140#.

<i>China</i>: struggle of the nations for its commerce, #422#-424.

<i>Chittenden</i>: #337#.

<i>Choctaws</i>: #140#.

<i>Chouteau</i>: #266#, #338#.

<i>Church</i>: first in the West, #126#.

<i>Civil</i> government: first written compact of, #130#.

<i>Civil</i> War, The: causes and results, #354#.

<i>Clark</i>: #71#, #287#.

<i>Cleveland</i>: founded, #70#.

<i>Cleveland</i>, Moses: #70#.

<i>Coahuila</i>: #174#.

<i>Coal</i> oil: price of, #214#.

<i>Coast</i> Indians: #331#.

<i>Cocke</i>, General William: #134#.

<i>College</i>: first in the West, #126#.

<i>Colorado</i>, Grand Cañon of: #231#, #328#.

<i>Colter</i>, John: #335#.

<i>Commerce</i>, Western: #191#.

“<i>Commerce</i> of the Prairies, The”: #268#.

<i>Commercial</i> West: its beginning, #65#-6.

<i>Congress</i>: sells land to Ohio Land Company, #41#;
  proposes to sell vacant lands, #132#;
  does not recognize independence of Franklin, #137#.

<i>Coureurs</i> du bois: #194#.

<i>Coole</i>, William: #103#.

<i>Cooley</i>, William: #103#.

<i>Cooper</i>, Braxton: #271#.

<i>Cooper</i>, Fennimore: #45#.

<i>Corn</i>: price of in early days, #189#.

<i>Coronado</i>: #339#.

<i>Cost</i> of living: greater to-day than in 1899, #392#.

<i>Courts</i>: follow swiftly into Kentucky, #112#.

<i>Crittenden</i>: orator at Boone’s burial in Kentucky, #120#.

<i>Creek</i> War: #154#.

<i>Crockett</i>, Davy: #145#;
  compared with Boone, #145#-4;
  his rapid change after going to Congress, #147#;
  birth, #149#;
  leaves home, #151#;
  works for his freedom, #152#;
  goes to school, #153#;
  marriage, #153#;
  moves toward the West, #153#-4;
  serves in the Creek War, #154#-5;
  wife dies and he marries a second time, #156#;
  elected to the legislature, #157#;
  moves to the Mississippi, #157#;
  electioneering stories, #159#-163;
  skill as a bear hunter, #163#-4;
  defeated by Alexander for Congress, #165#;
  elected to Congress, #166#;
  changes from bear hunter to politician, #166#-7;
  opposes Jackson, #167#;
  motto, #167#;
  makes a trip through the North and East, #168#-9;
  result of northern trip, #169#;
  open animosity toward Jackson, #170#;
  his experience with the political machine, #171#-2;
  determines to move to Texas, #172#;
  “autobiography,” #175#;
  route of journey to Texas, #176#;
  accuses Houston, #178#;
  death, #180#;
  alleged diary, #181#.

<i>Crockett</i>, John: #150#;
  opens a tavern, #151#.

<i>Crooks</i>: #333#.

<i>Cutler</i>, Manasseh: #41#.

<i>Cutthroat</i>: sign for, #195#.


<i>Danger</i> of a stage trip: #213#.

“<i>Dark</i> and Bloody Ground,” The: #114#.

<i>Davis</i>, Cushman K.: #361#.

<i>Day</i>: #333#.

<i>Dechard</i>: #13#.

<i>Dechert</i>: #13#.

<i>De Munn</i>: #266#.

<i>Dequelo</i>, The: #179#.

<i>Detroit</i>: #111#.

<i>Development</i> of the West: influenced by difficult route of entry, #49#-50.

“<i>Diamond</i> hitch”: #205#.

“<i>Diamond</i> R” Transportation Company, The: #210#.

<i>Difficulties</i> of Western travel: #212#.

<i>Doan</i>, Reverend Samuel: #131#.

<i>Dogs</i>: use of in packing, #196#.

<i>Donelson</i>, Rachel: #55#.

<i>Doylestown</i>, Pennsylvania: #385#.

<i>Drake</i>, Joseph: #100#.

<i>Dress</i> of American frontiersmen: #18#.

“<i>Driving</i> the nail”: #16#.

<i>Dugout</i>, The: #23#.


<i>East</i>, The: occupies Western territory the South opens, #189#.

<i>Easterner</i>, The: his idea of the Westerner, #67#.

<i>Ely</i>, Warren S.: #76#.

<i>Emigration</i> to Canada: cause, #391#, #416#-418.

<i>Empire</i>, Westward the course of, takes its way: #38#.

<i>England</i>: #61#, #72#;
  transfers trading posts to United States, #196#;
  fears Canada will be Americanized, #418#-422;
  answer to Russia, #421#;
  wished division of China, #423#.

<i>Europe</i>: must combat the West, #373#.

<i>Expansion</i>, geographical: how it proceeds, #46#.

<i>Explorations</i> by men of Kentucky and Tennessee: #43#-44.


<i>Fannin</i>: #177#.

<i>Fare</i>, from Atchison to Helena: #214#.

<i>Farms</i>: not wanted West of the Mississippi, #193#.

“<i>Father</i> of the Santa Fé trail”: #272#.

<i>Fergusons</i>, The: #79#.

<i>Finley</i>, Alexander: #79#.

<i>Finley</i>, Archibald: #79#.

<i>Finley</i>, Henry: #79#.

<i>Finley</i>, John: #79#, #81#;
  president of Log College, #85#;
  traded with Indians on Red River, #99#;
  on the Ohio River, #101#;
  goes West with Boone, #103#.

<i>Finley</i> family, members of: #79#.

<i>Fitch</i>, John: #385#-6.

<i>Fitzpatrick</i>, noted fur trader: #233#.

<i>Flack</i>, Ann (Baxter): #81#.

<i>Flack</i>, Benjamin: #82#.

<i>Flack</i>, James: #81#.

<i>Flack</i>, William: birth, #81#;
  marriage, #82#.

<i>Flack</i>, W. W.: #81#.

<i>Flat-boat</i>: its use carried men away from the East, #66#.

<i>Flour</i>, price of: #215#.

<i>Forbes</i>, John Murray: #368#.

<i>Fowler</i>, Jacob: #271#.

<i>France</i>: #61#, #72#;
  cedes trading posts to England, #196#.

<i>Frankfort</i>, Kentucky: Boone erects palisades near present site of, #108#;
  Boone buried here, #120#.

<i>Frankland</i>: #134#.

<i>Franklin</i>, Benjamin: #134#.

<i>Franklin</i>, Free State of: beginnings of, #124#-5;
  legal tender in, #135#;
  salaries of officers, #136#;
  clings to standards of North Carolina, #136#;
  ceases to exist, #138#;
  looked southward for an alliance, #139#.

<i>Free</i> State of Franklin: #124#-5.

<i>Freight</i> rates: comparative costs in Europe and America, #390#.

<i>Frémont</i>: #224#;
  first expedition, #241#;
  second expedition, #242#-245;
  hunts a more direct trail to California, #247#-9;
  last expedition, #257#-8;
  shall he share honors with Carson, #312#.

<i>Frémont</i>, Jessie Benton: #251#.

<i>French</i>, The: #47#-8;
  expedition of 1735, #101#.

<i>Friends</i>, Society of: #77#.

<i>Frontier</i>, Western: question of gradually solves itself, #141#-2;
  in 1810, #185#.

<i>Frontiersman</i>, American: outline of his westward progress, #87#.

<i>Fur</i> trade: its home in the West, #194#;
  end of, #200#;
  end of the beginning of a new day, foot-note, #238#.

“<i>Fur</i> trade, The American”: #337#.

<i>Fur-traders</i>: find a way to the Rockies, #186#;
  many in the trans-Missouri before 1840, #339#.


<i>Garces</i>, Father: #327#.

<i>Gardoquoi</i>: Spanish minister, #139#, #140#.

<i>Geography</i>, a lost art: #260#.

<i>Georgia</i>: few whites there in 1800, #46#;
  part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#;
  refuses to interfere in North Carolina-Franklin controversy, #137#-8;
  sells a portion of its territory, #140#.

<i>Germans</i>, The: #76#.

<i>Germany</i>: emigration from to the United States, #408#;
  wished division of China, #423#.

<i>Gibson</i> House, Helena: #216#.

<i>Gillespie</i>, Lieutenant: #248#.

<i>Girty</i>: #113#.

<i>Gist</i>, Christopher: #98#, #101#.

<i>Glenn</i>, Hugh: #271#.

<i>Gold</i>: discovery of in California and its effect on the West, #200#, #381#-383.

<i>Governor</i> of Louisiana: grants Daniel Boone a commission, #117#.

<i>Grape</i> vine: use of by Daniel Boone, #106#.

<i>Great</i> Britain: arms savages below the Great Lakes, #110#;
  emigration to the United States, #408#.

<i>Great</i> Meadows: #96#.

<i>Green</i> River: exploration of by Ashley and Henry, #336#.

<i>Greenbacks</i>: value of in the West, #214#.

<i>Greene</i>, Jonathan H.: #176#.

<i>Gregg</i>, Josiah: #268#, #275#, #326#.


<i>Hall</i>, Fort: #289#.

<i>Hall</i>, John: #128#.

<i>Hamilton</i>: commandant of Detroit, #111#.

“<i>Harrington</i>”: #176#.

<i>Harris</i>, Ann: #79#.

<i>Harris</i>, Hannah: #78#.

<i>Harrod</i>, James: #99#.

<i>Harrodsburg</i>: #42#, #99#.

<i>Harvard</i> College: #169#.

<i>Hawkins</i>, Joseph: #150#.

<i>Helplessness</i> of trapper without a horse: #28#.

<i>Henderson</i>, Colonel: #108#.

<i>Henry</i>, Fort: #332#, #334#.

<i>Henry</i>, Major Andrew: builds Fort Henry, #334#;
  undertakes exploration of Green River, #336#.

<i>Hill</i>, James J.: #390#.

<i>Holden</i>, Joseph: #103#.

<i>Horse</i>, The American: aid r=endered Western explorer, #25#-31.

<i>Horse</i> stealing: a serious crime, #28#.

<i>Houston</i>, Sam: #174#, #177#.

<i>Howard</i>, John: #101#.

<i>Howe</i>, Henry: #352#.

<i>Huger</i>, Isaac: #140#.

<i>Hunt</i>: #333#.

<i>Hunt</i>, Wilson Price: #294#.

<i>Hunter</i>, John D.: #340#.

<i>Hunter</i>, Mary: #78#.

<i>Hynds</i>, Alexander: #130#.


<i>Illinois</i> Central Railroad: #369#-371.

<i>Illinois</i>, Governor of: #189#.

<i>Immigration</i>: caused by Civil War, #356#;
  its effect on the West, #357#;
  an argument against unrestricted immigration, #401#-412;
  restriction contemplated by Great Britain, #404#;
  statistics for, #407#-411.

<i>Independence</i>: starting point of Santa Fé trail, #276#.

<i>Indians</i>: could not occupy trans-Alleghany ground, #49#.

<i>Individual</i>, The: losing his grip in America to-day, #399#.

<i>Industrial</i> revolution of the West: #355#.

<i>Ingles</i>, Mary Draper: #99#.

<i>Inman</i>: #270#.

<i>Iroquois</i>, The: trafficked with the English, #43#;
  allied with New York, #47#.

<i>Irrigation</i> of the West: #413#-416.

<i>Italy</i>: emigration to the United States, #409#, #410#.


<i>Jackson</i>, General Andrew: #55#;
  serves in Creek War, #154#;
  opposed by Crockett, #167#;
  denounced by Crockett, #170#;
  favors annexation of Texas, #178#;
  opposed by Crockett because of veto for Maysville road, #183#.

<i>Jamison</i>, Robert: #79#.

<i>Jefferson</i>, Thomas: #68#, #300#.

<i>Jews</i>, Russian: #405#.

<i>Johnston</i>, General Albert Sidney: #298#.

<i>Johnson</i>, Sir William: Indian agent, #48#;
  foot-note, #83#.

<i>Jonesboro</i>, meeting at: #133#;
  courts held at by Franklin, #137#.

<i>Joy</i>, James F.: #367#.


<i>Kaskaskia</i>: #45#; visited by General Lafayette, #189#.

<i>Kearney</i>, General: #249#.

<i>Keel-boat</i>, The: #185#.

<i>Kenton</i>, Simon: #114#.

<i>Kentucky</i>: fights for a highway over the Appalachians, #41#;
  occupied by dangerous Indian tribes, #43#;
  outpost of civilization, #50#;
  saved to the Union, #58#;
  pioneers of, #80#;
  by whom settled, #88#;
  explored by Salling and Walker, #98#;
  recapitulation of explorations, #100#-101;
  separated from Virginia and set up as a state, #116#;
  pays debt to Daniel Boone and his wife, #120#;
  part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#.

<i>Kentucky</i> settlements: #58#.

<i>Kephart</i>, Horace: #44#.

<i>Kin Cade</i>: #230#.

<i>Kincaid</i>: #229#.

<i>Kootenai</i> trail, The: #341#.


<i>Labor</i> unions: #399#.

<i>Lafayette</i>, General: #189#.

<i>Lafitte</i>: #173#.

<i>Lajeunesse</i> Basil: #241#, #248#.

<i>La Lande</i>: #263#.

<i>Langford</i>, N. P.: #134#, #140#, #210#.

<i>Laramie</i>, Fort: #295#.

<i>Law</i>: position of the West in regard to, #127#-128.

“<i>Leatherstocking</i> Tales”: #45#.

<i>Lederer</i>, John: #101#.

<i>Lee</i>, Captain U. S. A.: #236#.

<i>Lee’s</i> army: #215#.

<i>Lewis</i>, Meriwether: #76#.

<i>Lewis</i> and Clark: #71#, #287#.

<i>Linseed</i> oil: price of in Montana, #214#.

<i>Liza</i>, Manuel: #335#.

<i>Log</i> College: #85#.

<i>Long</i>, Major: report of his Platte expedition, #193#;
  seeks the Red River, #287#.

“<i>Long</i> Hunters”: #100#.

<i>Louis</i> the Grand Monarch: #194#.

<i>Louisiana</i>: settled after Canada, #46#;
  evils likely to arise from its incorporation into the Union, #63#;
  dispute with Spain over Sabine as boundary of, #173#.

<i>Louisiana</i> Purchase: #60#-61;
  significance of, #61#.

<i>Luther</i>, Martin: #88#.


<i>McBride</i>, James: #100#.

<i>McComb</i>, H. S.: #371#.

<i>McCullough</i>, John: #101#.

<i>McGary</i> fight: #113#.

<i>McKee</i>: #113#.

<i>Mackenzie</i>: #333#.

<i>Mackinaw</i> boats: #198#.

<i>McKnight</i>, John: #271#.

<i>McKnight</i>, Robert: #230#.

<i>McKnight</i>, Baird and Chambers: #268#-271.

<i>McLaughlin</i>, Doctor: #324#.

<i>McLellan</i>: #333#.

<i>Malgres</i>: #266#.

<i>Mallet</i> brothers, The: #263#.

<i>Man</i>, The West-bound American: #51#.

<i>Mansco</i>, Kasper: #99#.

<i>Mansker</i>, Kasper: #99#.

<i>Maritime</i> supremacy: struggle for, with Great Britain, #424#.

<i>Markets</i> of the world: a struggle for to-day, #388#.

<i>Martin</i>, Governor of North Carolina: #136#-137.

<i>Martin</i> Academy: #132#.

<i>Maryland</i> Canal: #348#.

<i>Massachusetts</i>: part played in the development of the West, #347#.

“<i>Mayflower</i>,” The: #42#.

<i>Maxwell</i>: establishes ranch with Carson, #253#.

<i>Maysville</i> road: bill for, #183#.

<i>Merriwether</i>: #267#.

<i>Metropotamia</i>: #69#.

<i>Mexican</i> capital: in western trade, #274#.

<i>Michigan</i>, Lake: #188#.

<i>Militia</i>, The Pennsylvania: #96#.

<i>Mills</i>: improvement of rifle by, #13#.

<i>Minneapolis</i>: emigration offices in, #418#.

<i>Mississippi</i>: few whites there in 1800, #46#.

“<i>Mississippi</i> Territory”: #70#.

<i>Mississippi</i> River: why explored from the North, #46#;
  control of secured, #60#;
  little understood by statesmen a hundred years ago, #61#;
  as a boundary of civilization, #68#;
  a boundary of states in “Ordinance of Northwest,” #68#;
  descended by John McCullough, #101#;
  first explorers, #73#.

<i>Missouri</i>: becomes outpost of civilization, #50#;
  first steamboat on, #188#.

<i>Missouri</i> Fur Company: #197#.

<i>Monay</i>, James: #103#.

<i>Montana</i>, routes to: #211#.

“<i>Montana</i> Post”: #210#.

<i>Mooney</i>, James: #103#.

<i>Morgan</i>, Colonel George: foot-note, #82#-83.

<i>Morgan</i>, J. Pierpont: #369#.

<i>Mormons</i>, The: #296#.

<i>Morrison</i>, William: merchant of Kaskaskia, #282#, #335#.

<i>Morton</i>, Paul: #388#.

<i>Mother</i> of the West: #40#.

<i>Moultrie</i>, Alexander: #140#.

<i>Murphy</i> wagons: #211#.

<i>Murray</i>, John Dormer: #78#.


<i>Napoleon</i> Bonaparte: #61#, #212#.

<i>Nashville</i>, Tennessee: settlement, #54#-57;
  in touch with the Ohio River, #58#.

<i>National</i> road: #64#, #183#.

<i>Neeley</i>, Alexander: #104#.

<i>Neshaminy</i> Church: #85#.

<i>New England</i>: not the mother of the West, #39#;
  realization of the West, #40#;
  character of population compared to that of western Pennsylvania, #44#;
  explanation of her part in discovery of the West, #44#;
  chances in favor of it in western movement, #49#;
  gives a cordial reception to Crockett, #169#.

<i>Newfoundland</i>: emigration to the United States, #407#.

<i>New Madrid</i> earthquakes: #157#.

<i>New</i> Orleans: easy to reach from Kentucky, #58#;
  visited by John McCullough, #101#;
  the steamer, #187#.

“<i>New</i> Purchase”: #156#.

<i>Newspaper</i>: first in the West, #126#.

<i>New</i> York, parent of the West: #40#;
  her policy toward the Indians, #47#;
  spared by Six Nations, #47#;
  influence with Indians due to Sir William Johnson, #48#;
  gains lands from the Iroquois, #48#;
  chances in favor of it in westward movement, #49#.

<i>Nicollet</i>: #265#.

<i>North</i>, The: occupies Western territory;
  the South opens, #189#.

<i>North</i> Carolina: men from, built Harrodsburg and Boonesborough, #42#.

<i>Northern</i> Pacific Railway, The: #365#.

<i>Northwest</i>, The: its rapid settlement to-day, #299#.

<i>Northwest</i> Company: extends posts along our Northern border, #196#;
  rival of Hudson Bay Company, #329#.

<i>Northwestern</i> Company, The: #333#.

<i>Northwest</i> Territory, The: #124#.

<i>Norway</i>: emigration to the United States, #408#.


<i>Occupation</i> of the West: a study of transportation, #36#.

<i>Ohio</i>: receives first population from New England, #70#.

“<i>Ohio</i> Land Company”: #41#.

<i>Ohio</i> River: known in early days, #38#;
  center of population on, #220#.

<i>Ojibways</i>: #22#.

“<i>Old</i> Betsy”: #168#.

“<i>Ordinance</i> of the Northwest”: #68#.

<i>Oregon</i>: density of population in 1870, #220#;
  should extend to Alaska, #289#-290.

<i>Oregon</i> trail: greatest of all American roads, #262#;
  early need for, #289#;
  early makers, #291#;
  its beginning, #293#;
  early adventurers along, #294#;
  a second stage begins, #297#;
  first agricultural invasion along, #298#;
  distance and direction, #305#-310.

“<i>Oregon</i> Trail,” Parkman’s: #303#.

<i>Osborn</i>, William Henry: #368#-372.

<i>Oxen</i>: used as pack animals, #206#.


<i>Pacific</i>: first man to reach it by land trail, #318#.

<i>Pacific</i> Fur Company: #197#.

<i>Pacific</i> railway: delayed by the Civil War, #354#.

<i>Pack</i> horse: #202#.

<i>Packing</i>, flexibility of charges for: #204#.

<i>Paine</i>, Justice of Wisconsin: #377#.

<i>Panniers</i>: #30#.

<i>Parkman</i>, Francis: #275#, #300#-304.

<i>Pastimes</i> of frontiersmen: #16#.

<i>Pathfinder</i>, The Great: #224#.

<i>Pawnees</i>, The: wear Spanish medals, #338#.

<i>Pax Jacksonii</i>: #178#.

<i>Pelesipia</i>: #69#, #124#.

<i>Penn</i>, William: #76#.

<i>Pennsylvania</i>: starting point of the westward movement, #13#;
  chances against it in westward movement, #49#;
  first trail from, #73#;
  migrations from in last half of eighteenth century, #77#.

<i>Peters</i>, Doctor: #228#.

<i>Petition</i> of Robertson and Sevier’s men: #59#.

<i>Phenicia</i>: #36#.

<i>Philadelphia</i>: #76#, #168#.

<i>Phillibert</i>: #266#-7.

<i>Physical</i> strength: its importance in the West, #192#.

<i>Piano</i> taken to a mining camp: #204#.

<i>Pike</i>, Lieutenant Zebulon: marches to the Colorado, #71#;
  theory of straight lines, #262#;
  seeks headwaters of Red River, #264#;
  opposed by the Spaniards, #266#;
  selects route of Santa Fé trail, #270#;
  mistakes Rio Grande for Red River, #287#;
  journeys of, #337#-339.

<i>Pioneers</i> of Kentucky: #80#.

<i>Pirate</i>, The: #176#, #181#.

<i>Plains</i>, Indians: #340#.

<i>Platt</i> River: ancient road of the Indians, #293#.

<i>Poland</i>: emigration to the United States, #410#.

<i>Polk</i>, Colonel: #159#.

<i>Population</i>: center of in 1860, #220#;
  of America, #221#.

<i>Post</i>, The: #215#-216.

<i>Potatoes</i>: price of in San Juan mining camp in 1875, #203#;
  in Montana, #215#;
  in Chicago in 1902, #393#.

<i>Powell</i>, Major: #336#.

<i>Prices</i>: high in the Rockies, #203#;
  in Virginia City, Montana, #214#-216.

<i>Princeton</i>: #85#, #131#.

“<i>Proceedings</i> of Sundry Citizens of Baltimore”: #349#.

<i>Prosperity</i>: a false condition of to-day, #395#-401.

<i>Protestant</i>, The: #53#.

<i>Purcell</i>, James: #263#.

<i>Puritans</i>: #42#-3.

<i>Putnam</i>, Rufus: #41#.


<i>Quakers</i>: #53#; stem of pioneer stock, #76#;
  find homes west of the Alleghanies, #77#.

<i>Quicksilver</i>: hard to pack in the mountains, #205#.


<i>Railroads</i>: wooden-railed road from Chicago to Galena, #346#;
  idea of Philip Evans Thomas, #348#-9;
  routes suggested to the Pacific, #351#-2;
  prophecy of what a road to the Pacific would do, #353#;
  to the Pacific delayed by Civil War, #354#;
  part played by them in the development of the West, #362#-367;
  changes wrought by them, #385#;
  their growth in America, #386#;
  formerly owned largely outside the U. S., #389#;
  an overgrowth to-day, #391#;
  will settle future of the West, #420#.

<i>Ramsey</i>: #134#.

<i>Receipt</i>-book of William Flack: #81#.

<i>Red</i> River carts: #345#.

<i>Reed</i>: #333#.

“<i>Remember</i> the Alamo”: #182#.

<i>Rifle</i>, The American: description, #11#-18.

<i>Rio</i> Grande: #173#.

<i>Robertson</i>: rebellion of his men against Washington, #59#;
  formulates first written compact of civil government, #130#.

<i>Robertson</i>, Charles: #128#.

<i>Robertson</i>, James: #53#-4.

<i>Rocky</i> Mountain Fur Company: #197#.

<i>Roosevelt</i>, Mr.: of New York, #187#.

<i>Roundhead</i>: #37#.

<i>Routes</i> suggested to the Pacific: #351#-2.

<i>Routes</i> to Montana: #211#.

<i>Rush</i>: #177#.

<i>Russia</i>: emigration to the U. S., #410#;
  England’s answer to, #421#.


<i>Sabine</i> River: #173#.

<i>St. Clair</i>: defeat of, #114#.

<i>St. Louis</i>: became great by reason of her situation, #51#;
  depot for fur trade, #70#;
  a city of location, #364#.

<i>St. Paul</i>: emigration offices in, #418#.

<i>St. Vrain</i>, Colonel: #257#.

<i>Salem</i> Presbyterian Church: #131#.

<i>Salling</i>, John Peter: #98#-9, #101#.

<i>Salt</i>: its importance in early days, #100#.

<i>San</i> Antonio: Texans at, #175#;
  Crockett inside the gates of, #177#.

<i>San</i> Francisco: #256#.

<i>San</i> Jacinto: #182#.

<i>Santa</i> Anna: marches on San Antonio, #174#;
  his peons march toward the Alamo, #179#.

<i>Santa Fé</i> railway: #279#-280.

“<i>Santa Fé</i> Trail, Old”: #270#.

<i>Santa Fé</i> trail: not a transcontinental trail, #262#;
  extent of, #276#;
  distances and directions of, #276#-280;
  a fate finger pointing to Mexico, #285#.

“<i>Saw</i> Buck,” The: #30#.

<i>School</i>-building: first one in Tennessee, #131#.

<i>Scotch</i>-Irish: stem of pioneer stock, #76#.

<i>Scott</i>, General: #114#.

<i>Secession</i>: position of the West in regard to, in early days, #123#-4.

<i>Settlement</i>: advanced toward the Mississippi in the shape of a wedge, #45#.

<i>Sevier</i>, John: rebellion of his men against Washington, #59#;
  honored by Tennessee, #125#;
  friend of Washington, #128#;
  a member of the North Carolina legislature, #128#-9;
  formulates first written compact of civil government, #130#;
  part taken in annexation of Watauga to North Carolina, #131#;
  presides at Jonesboro meeting, #133#;
  elected governor, #134#;
  arrested on charge of treason, #138#;
  elected to Congress, #138#.

<i>Sevier</i> and Robertson: riflemen of, #58#.

“<i>Shakes</i>,” The: #157#.

<i>Shawnee</i> Indians capture Daniel Boone: #111#.

<i>Shelby</i>, Captain Evan: #128#.

<i>Shenandoah</i>—Kentucky stock: #73#.

<i>Shiells</i>, Dr. Hugh: #79#.

<i>Shiells</i>, Kitty: #79#.

<i>Sierra</i> Nevada mountains: #243#-4.

<i>Sioux</i> Indians, The: #195#.

<i>Six</i> Nations: #47#.

<i>Skaggs</i>, Henry: #101#.

<i>Smet</i>, Father de: #297#.

<i>Smith</i>, Henry: #174#.

<i>Smith</i>, James: #101#.

<i>Smith</i>, Jedediah: meets his fate on Sante Fé trail, #273#;
  goes to the Pacific by land trail, #318#-327.

<i>Snipes</i>, Major William: #140#.

“<i>Snuffing</i> the candle”: #16#.

<i>Socialism</i>: captains of industry likely to cause the spread of, #398#.

“<i>Society</i> of Friends”: records of, #77#.

<i>South</i>, The: mother of the West, #40#;
  opens Western territory, #189#;
  is to-day American, #356#;
  little understood, #366#.

“<i>South</i> Seas, The”: #129#.

<i>Southern</i> Pacific Railway, The: #365#.

<i>Southern</i> riflemen: their skill, #14#.

<i>Spain</i>: league with the Cherokees, #59#;
  claims portion of Georgia, #140#;
  claims Sabine as a boundary, #173#.

<i>Spaniards</i>: result of letting their horses struggle over the plain, #27#;
  interfere with Jedediah Smith, #321#.

<i>Spencer</i>, Judge: #138#.

<i>Stage</i> lines: #207#.

<i>Stage</i> trip: description of, #213#.

<i>Star</i> of empire: #38#.

<i>Steam</i>, era of: causes great change in America, #362#.

<i>Steamboat</i>: first one built on the Ohio River, #187#;
  run regularly on western rivers, #201#.

<i>Steiner</i>, Michael: #99#, #108#.

<i>Stewart</i>, John: #103#;
  killed by Indians, #104#.

<i>Stewart</i>, William: #78#.

<i>Stone</i>, Uriah: #101#.

<i>Stoner</i>, Michael: #99#, #108#.

<i>Streams</i>: their appeal to explorers, #292#.

<i>Strode</i>, Martha: #80#.

<i>Stuart</i>, John: #103#.

<i>Stuart</i>, Robert: #294#.

<i>Sturges</i>, Jonathan: #369#, #370#.

<i>Sublette</i>, William: #295#.

<i>Sugar</i>: price of in running camps, #203#.

<i>Sumpter</i> mule: #202#.

<i>Supplies</i>: how received by outlying posts, #198#;
  taken to Montana mining camps, #211#.

<i>Sweden</i>: emigration to the United States, #408#.

<i>Sylvania</i>: #69#.


<i>Taylor</i>, Colonel: foot-note, #83#.

<i>Tennessee</i>: saved to the Union, #58#;
  by whom peopled, #88#;
  part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#;
  honors John Sevier, #125#;
  early form of government, #130#;
  first literary institution in, #131#.

<i>Tennent</i>: #85#.

<i>Texans</i>: harass western commerce, #273#.

<i>Texas</i>: size, #172#;
  population, #174#;
  declared independent, #174#;
  situation in after declaration of independence, #177#.

<i>Thermopylæ</i>: #149#.

<i>Thimblerig</i>: #176#, #181#.

<i>Thomas</i>, Philip Evans: #347#-349.

<i>Thorne</i>, captain of the Tonquin: #330#-331.

<i>Timber</i> lands: being abandoned, #375#.

<i>Tonquin</i>: ship of Astor, #330#-331.

<i>Trade</i>, caravan: its extent, #281#;
  goods carried, #282#;
  carried on by southern-western men, #282#.

<i>Trail</i>: the Iroquois, #47#;
  the Santa Fé, #260#;
  the Oregon, #287#.

<i>Tramell</i>, Colonel: #230#.

<i>Transportation</i>: in its infancy, #64#;
  difficulty of, leads to attempts of secession, #124#;
  its importance in early days, #191#;
  means employed in early times, #328#.

<i>Transylvania</i> University: #79#.

<i>Travel</i>: difficulties of in the West, #212#.

<i>Travis</i>: #177#.

<i>Travois</i>, The: #196#.

<i>Tucker</i>, Benjamin: #41#.

<i>Two</i> Medicine: The valley of, #341#.


<i>Ulster</i>, Ireland: #84#.

<i>Ulster</i> Scots: #83#-86.

<i>Union</i> Pacific Railroad: #209#, #365#.


<i>Van Buren</i>: #183#.

<i>Verendrye</i>, Sieur de la: explores the West in 1742, #265#;
  one of the first to tread the Oregon trail, #294#.

<i>Victoria</i> Cross: #115#.

<i>Villard</i>, Henry: #368#.

<i>Virginia</i> City, Montana: market reports, #214#.

<i>Virginia</i>: noted as a breeding ground for horses, #26#;
  men from built Harrodsburg and Boonesborough, #42#;
  part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#.

<i>Virginia</i>, West: part included in Free State of Franklin, #125#.

<i>Von Humboldt</i>, Baron: #287#.


<i>Wagon</i> train: description of, #209#.

<i>Walker</i>, J. R.: goes to the Pacific, #315#-318.

<i>Walker</i>, Doctor Thomas: #98#, #101#.

<i>Wallace</i>, John: #80#.

<i>Wallace</i>, Rev. J. W.: #80#.

<i>Washington</i>, George: canal, #67#;
  birth, #94#;
  defeated at Great Meadows, #96#;
  on the Ohio River, #101#;
  friend of Sevier, #128#, #140#.

<i>Washington</i>: authorities at, unable to be firm with France, Spain
  and England, #59#.

<i>Washington</i> College: #132#.

<i>Washington</i> District: men of offer their services in the Revolution, #128#;
  becomes part of North Carolina, #131#;
  given to the United States, #132#;
  takes steps to establish a government, #133#.

<i>Washington</i>, government at: Wilkinson stirs up dissatisfaction against, #141#.

<i>Watauga</i>: #130#;
  annexed to North Carolina, #131#.

<i>Watauga</i> Articles of Association: #130#.

<i>Water</i> trail: from Green Bay to the Mississippi, #70#.

“<i>Wautap</i>”: #20#.

<i>Webster</i>, Daniel: #64#, #300#.

<i>Welsh</i>: #76#.

<i>West</i>, The: indebted to southern states for its inhabitants, #184#;
  either old or new, #302#;
  a prediction of its development, #375#-377;
  little difference between it and the East, #379#.

<i>West-bound</i> man: The American, #51#.

<i>Western</i> man, The: his reliance and development, #67#.

<i>Westward</i> movement: starting point, #13#;
  compared to flock of wild pigeons, #143#;
  one of angles, #144#.

<i>Wharton</i>, Samuel: foot-note, #83#.

<i>Whartons</i>, The: #177#.

<i>Wheat</i>: cost of moving a ton in 1800, #389#.

<i>White</i>, James: opinion on future of Louisiana after its purchase, #62#.

<i>White</i> people: portion of country inhabited by them in 1800, #45#.

“<i>Whoa-haw</i>”: #299#.

“<i>Widow</i> and orphan makers”: rifle so called, #14#.

<i>Wilkinson</i>, General James: plans to hand over the West to Spain, #59#-60, #124#;
  continues his intrigues, #139#.

<i>Williams</i>, Bill: guide for Frémont, #258#.

<i>Williams</i>, Ezekiel, #294#.

<i>Wills</i> of Bucks countians: #80#.

<i>Women</i>: two go West along Oregon trail, #297#.

<i>Wyeth</i>, Nathaniel J.: #289#.


<i>Yazoo</i>: #140#.

<i>Yellowstone</i> National Park: #335#.

<i>Young</i>, Ewing: #230#.
.nf-
.in -1

.pb

.nf c
<l><i>“The Books You Like to Read
at the Price You Like to Pay”</i></l>
.nf-

.nf b
There Are Two Sides
to Everything—
.nf-

.nf b
—including the wrapper which covers
every Grosset & Dunlap book. When
you feel in the mood for a good romance,
refer to the carefully selected list
of modern fiction comprising most of
the successes by prominent writers of
the day which is printed on the back of
every Grosset & Dunlap book wrapper.

You will find more than five hundred
titles to choose from—books for every
mood and every taste and every pocketbook.

<em>Don’t forget the other side, but in case
the wrapper is lost, write to the publishers
for a complete catalog.</em>
.nf-

.nf b
There is a Grosset & Dunlap Book
for every mood and for every taste.
.nf-

.pb

.nf c
<l>ZANE GREY’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.nf b
TO THE LAST MAN
THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER
THE MAN OF THE FOREST
THE DESERT OF WHEAT
THE U. P. TRAIL
WILDFIRE
THE BORDER LEGION
THE RAINBOW TRAIL
THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
THE LONE STAR RANGER
DESERT GOLD
BETTY ZANE
.nf-

.nf b
LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
  The life story of “Buffalo Bill” by his sister Helen Cody
Wetmore, with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
.nf-

.ce
<l>ZANE GREY’S BOOKS FOR BOYS</l>

.nf b
KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
THE YOUNG FORESTER
THE YOUNG PITCHER
THE SHORT STOP
THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND
  OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
.nf-

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD’S
STORIES OF ADVENTURE</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.in +2
.ll -2
THE RIVER’S END

.ti +2
A story of the Royal Mounted Police.

.sp 1
THE GOLDEN SNARE

.ti +2
Thrilling adventures in the Far Northland.

.sp 1
NOMADS OF THE NORTH

.ti +2
The story of a bear-cub and a dog.

.sp 1
KAZAN

.ti +2
The tale of a “quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky” torn
between the call of the human and his wild mate.

.sp 1
BAREE, SON OF KAZAN

.ti +2
The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part
he played in the lives of a man and a woman.

.sp 1
THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM

.ti +2
The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his
battle with Captain Plum.

.sp 1
THE DANGER TRAIL

.ti +2
A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the North.

.sp 1
THE HUNTED WOMAN

.ti +2
A tale of a great fight in the “valley of gold” for a woman.

.sp 1
THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH

.ti +2
The story of Fort o’ God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness
is blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.

.sp 1
THE GRIZZLY KING

.ti +2
The story of Thor, the big grizzly.

.sp 1
ISOBEL

.ti +2
A love story of the Far North.

.sp 1
THE WOLF HUNTERS

.ti +2
A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.

.sp 1
THE GOLD HUNTERS

.ti +2
The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.

.sp 1
THE COURAGE OF MARGE O’DOONE

.ti +2
Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.

.sp 1
BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY

.ti +2
A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made
from this book.

.ll
.in

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>PETER B. KYNE’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.in +2
.ll -2
THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR

.ti +2
When two strong men clash and the under-dog has Irish
blood in his veins—there’s a tale that Kyne can tell! And
“the girl” is also very much in evidence.

.sp 1
KINDRED OF THE DUST

.ti +2
Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lumber
king, falls in love with “Nan of the Sawdust Pile,” a
charming girl who has been ostracized by her townsfolk.

.sp 1
THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

.ti +2
The fight of the Cardigans, father and son, to hold the
Valley of the Giants against treachery. The reader finishes
with a sense of having lived with big men and women in a
big country.

.sp 1
CAPPY RICKS

.ti +2
The story of old Cappy Ricks and of Matt Peasley, the
boy he tried to break because he knew the acid test was
good for his soul.

.sp 1
WEBSTER: MAN’S MAN

.ti +2
In a little Jim Crow Republic in Central America, a man
and a woman, hailing from the “States,” met up with a
revolution and for a while adventures and excitement came
so thick and fast that their love affair had to wait for a lull
in the game.

.sp 1
CAPTAIN SCRAGGS

.ti +2
This sea yarn recounts the adventures of three rapscallion
sea-faring men—a Captain Scraggs, owner of the green
vegetable freighter Maggie, Gibney the mate and McGuffney
the engineer.

.sp 1
THE LONG CHANCE

.ti +2
A story fresh from the heart of the West, of San Pasqual,
a sun-baked desert town, of Harley P. Hennage, the best
gambler, the best and worst man of San Pasqual and of
lovely Donna.

.ll
.in

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>JACKSON GREGORY’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.in +2
.ll -2
THE EVERLASTING WHISPER

.ti +2
The story of a strong man’s struggle against savage nature and humanity,
and of a beautiful girl’s regeneration from a spoiled child of wealth into
a courageous strong-willed woman.

.sp 1
DESERT VALLEY

.ti +2
A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet
a rancher who loses his heart, and become involved in a feud. An intensely
exciting story.

.sp 1
MAN TO MAN

.ti +2
Encircled with enemies, distrusted, Steve defends his rights. How he
won his game and the girl he loved is the story filled with breathless
situations.

.sp 1
THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN

.ti +2
Dr. Virginia Page is forced to go with the sheriff on a night journey
into the strongholds of a lawless band. Thrills and excitement sweep the
reader along to the end.

.sp 1
JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH

.ti +2
Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed
by her foreman. How, with the help of Bud Lee, she checkmates Trevor’s
scheme makes fascinating reading.

.sp 1
THE SHORT CUT

.ti +2
Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a violent quarrel. Financial
complications, villains, a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, all go to make
up a thrilling romance.

.sp 1
THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER

.ti +2
A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice’s Ranch much to her
chagrin. There is “another man” who complicates matters, but all turns
out as it should in this tale of romance and adventure.

.sp 1
SIX FEET FOUR

.ti +2
Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty. Intensely exciting, here is a
real story of the Great Far West.

.sp 1
WOLF BREED

.ti +2
No Luck Drennan had grown hard through loss of faith in men he had
trusted. A woman hater and sharp of tongue, he finds a match in Ygerne
whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the “Lone Wolf.”

.in
.ll

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>B. M. BOWER’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.nf b
CASEY RYAN
CHIP OF THE FLYING U
COW-COUNTRY
FLYING U RANCH
FLYING U’S LAST STAND, THE
GOOD INDIAN
GRINGOS, THE
HAPPY FAMILY, THE
HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT
HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX, THE
LONG SHADOW, THE
LONESOME TRAIL, THE
LOOKOUT MAN, THE
LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS, THE
PHANTOM HERD, THE
QUIRT, THE
RANGE DWELLERS, THE
RIM O’ THE WORLD
SKYRIDER
STARR OF THE DESERT
THUNDER BIRD, THE
TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE, THE
UPHILL CLIMB, THE
.nf-

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>RUBY M. AYRE’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.in +2
.ll -2

RICHARD CHATTERTON

.ti +2
A fascinating story in which love and jealousy play
strange tricks with women’s souls.

.sp 1
A BACHELOR HUSBAND

.ti +2
Can a woman love two men at the same time?

In its solving of this particular variety of triangle “A
Bachelor Husband” will particularly interest, and strangely
enough, without one shock to the most conventional minded.

.sp 1
THE SCAR

.ti +2
With fine comprehension and insight the author shows a
terrific contrast between the woman whose love was of the
flesh and one whose love was of the spirit.

.sp 1
THE MARRIAGE OF BARRY WICKLOW

.ti +2
Here is a man and woman who, marrying for love, yet try
to build their wedded life upon a gospel of hate for each
other and yet win back to a greater love for each other in
the end.

.sp 1
THE UPHILL ROAD

.ti +2
The heroine of this story was a consort of thieves. The
man was fine, clean, fresh from the West. It is a story of
strength and passion.

.sp 1
WINDS OF THE WORLD

.ti +2
Jill, a poor little typist, marries the great Henry Sturgess
and inherits millions, but not happiness. Then at last—but
we must leave that to Ruby M. Ayres to tell you as only
she can.

.sp 1
THE SECOND HONEYMOON

.ti +2
In this story the author has produced a book which no
one who has loved or hopes to love can afford to miss.
The story fairly leaps from climax to climax.

.sp 1
THE PHANTOM LOVER

.ti +2
Have you not often heard of someone being in love with
love rather than the person they believed the object of their
affections? That was Esther! But she passes through the
crisis into a deep and profound love.

.in
.ll

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

.pb

.nf c
<l>ELEANOR H. PORTER’S NOVELS</l>

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
.nf-

.in +2
.ll -2

JUST DAVID

.ti +2
The tale of a loveable boy and the place he comes to
fill in the hearts of the gruff farmer folk to whose care he
is left.

.sp 1
THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING

.ti +2
A compelling romance of love and marriage.

.sp 1
OH, MONEY! MONEY!

.ti +2
Stanley Fulton, a wealthy bachelor, to test the dispositions
of his relatives, sends them each a check for $100,000,
and then as plain John Smith comes among them to
watch the result of his experiment.

.sp 1
SIX STAR RANCH

.ti +2
A wholesome story of a club of six girls and their summer
on Six Star Ranch.

.sp 1
DAWN

.ti +2
The story of a blind boy whose courage leads him
through the gulf of despair into a final victory gained by
dedicating his life to the service of blind soldiers.

.sp 1
ACROSS THE YEARS

.ti +2
Short stories of our own kind and of our own people.
Contains some of the best writing Mrs. Porter has done.

.sp 1
THE TANGLED THREADS

.ti +2
In these stories we find the concentrated charm and
tenderness of all her other books.

.sp 1
THE TIE THAT BINDS
.ti +2
Intensely human stories told with Mrs. Porter’s wonderful
talent for warm and vivid character drawing.

.in
.ll

.ce
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York