WEST TO THE PACIFIC

In 1800 the western boundary of the United States was the Mississippi River. Beyond its wide and muddy waters there were great areas of land through which few white people had traveled. The land stretched west for more than 600 miles to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was known at the time as Louisiana.

In 1800 Louisiana belonged to France. The ruler of France at this time was Napoleon, who would soon become the country's emperor. Americans feared that Napoleon might send French soldiers and settlers to Louisiana and so block the further westward growth of the United States.

Then the Americans were very lucky. In 1803 Napoleon was about to go to war with Britain and needed money. For fifteen million dollars he sold Louisiana to the United States. "We have lived long but this is the noblest work of our whole lives," said one of the American representatives who signed the agreement.

Louisiana stretched north from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border and west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. Its purchase almost doubled the land area of the United States. In time, all or parts of thirteen new states would be formed there.

The Louisiana Purchase was authorized by President Thomas Jefferson. Even before this Jefferson had been planning to send an expedition to explore Louisiana. He was a keen amateur scientist and wanted to know more about the geography, the people, the animals and the plants of the lands to the west of the United States. He also hoped that the explorers might find an easy way across North America to the Pacific Ocean.

The expedition was led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In the spring of 1804 its twenty-nine men left the trading post of St. Louis, where the Missouri River flows in from the northwest to meet the Mississippi. The explorers set off up the Missouri by boat. Among their supplies they carried 4,600 needles, 2,800 fishing hooks, 132 knives and 72 pieces of striped silk ribbon. They carried these goods to trade with Amerindians along the way.

For months the explorers rowed and sailed their boats up the Missouri, hoping that it would lead them to the Pacific. Sometimes they had to wade shoulder-deep in the river, pulling the boats forward against fast and dangerous currents. When the Missouri became too shallow to follow any further, they marched for ten weeks across the Rocky Mountains, killing their horses for food and with only melted snow to drink. At last they reached the westward-flowing Columbia River. They floated down it to the Pacific. On a pine tree growing by the shore Clark carved a message - "Will. Clark, Dec. 3, 1805. By land from the United States in 1804 and 1805."

Lewis and Clark arrived back in St. Louis in late September 1806. They had been away for two and a half years and had traveled almost 4,000 miles. They had failed to find an easy overland route to the Pacific, but they had shown that the journey was possible. They had also brought back much useful information about both Louisiana and the western lands that lay beyond it.

These lands beyond Louisiana were known as Oregon. They stretched from Alaska in the north to California in the south and inland through the Rocky Mountains to the undefined borders of Louisiana. In 1805 four countries claimed to own Oregon - Russia, Spain, Britain and the United States.

Russia owned Alaska, and Spain ruled California. But in Oregon the British and the Americans were in the strongest position. Both already had trading posts scattered along Oregon's coasts and rivers. Soon they had more. At these posts traders bought beaver and other animal furs from Amerindian and European trappers. Such trappers were called "mountain-men" because they spent their lives wandering the mountains of Oregon and California in search of furs.

By the 1830s the British had more settlements and trading posts in Oregon than the Americans. American political leaders began to fear that Britain would soon gain complete control of the area. To prevent this they made great efforts to persuade more Americans to start farms in Oregon.

At first Americans traveling to Oregon went by ship. They sailed from the east coast ports of the United States, around South America and up the long Pacific coast. The journey was expensive and it lasted for months. Settlers began traveling to Oregon by land in 1832. They usually set out from Independence, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. From Independence they followed a twisting trail of about 2,000 miles across plains and mountains to the mouth of the Columbia River.

This overland route to the Pacific became known as the Oregon Trail. The wheels of the wagons that traveled along it made deep ruts. These ruts can still be seen in dry areas of the American West today. But the Oregon Trail was never a single trail. It was more a collection of trails, all heading in the same general direction across western North America and meeting occasionally at river-crossing points and passes through the mountains.

Settlers faced many dangers on the way to Oregon. Floods and blizzards, prairie fires and accidents, disease and starvation - all these took many lives. One settler recorded in his diary a common sight along the trail: "At noon came upon a fresh grave with a note tied on a stick, informing us it was the grave of Joel Hembree, aged six years, killed by a wagon running over his body."

But, in spite of the dangers, settlers continued to make the long journey. In 1843 "Oregon fever" came to many parts of the United States. People left their worn-out farms in the East, packed their possessions on wagons and set off for the West. "I have seen hard times, faced the dangers of disease and exposure and perils of all kinds," wrote one, "but I do not care about them if they enable me to place myself and my family in comfortable circumstances [better conditions]."

American settlers soon outnumbered the British in Oregon. American newspapers and political leaders began to express an idea called "manifest destiny." This was a claim that it was the clear ("manifest") intention of fate ("destiny") that the territory of the United States should stretch across North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Supporters of manifest destiny demanded that the United States should take the whole of Oregon, all the way north to the boundary with Alaska at latitude 54 degrees 40 minutes. They began using the slogan "Fifty four forty or fight" and threatened the British with war.

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 40 ff.