PIONEERS
The settlers in America did not find an unoccupied country of which they
were free to take possession, but a land in which dwelt a savage and
warlike people, who had been named Indians, because the first voyagers
supposed that it was the Indies they had discovered. The name has clung,
in spite of the attempts of scientists to fasten upon them the name
Amerinds, to distinguish them from the inhabitants of India. Indians
they will probably always remain, a standing evidence of the confusion
of thought of the early voyagers.
That the Indians owned the country there can be no question; but
civilization has never stopped to consider the claims of savage peoples,
and it did not in this case. Might made right; besides, the Indians,
consisting of scattered, semi-nomadic tribes, seemed to have no use for
the great territory they occupied. Indeed, they themselves, at first,
welcomed the white-skinned newcomers; but they soon grew jealous of
encroachments which never ceased, and at last fought step by step for
their country. They were driven back, defeated, exterminated. But in the
early years, no settlement was safe, and every man was, in a sense, a
pioneer.
The French, in their eagerness for empire, allied themselves with the
Indians, supplied them with arms, and offered a bounty for scalps; and
for nearly three quarters of a century, a bitter and bloody contest was
waged, which ended only with the expulsion of the French from the
continent. Deprived of their ally, the Indians retreated beyond the
mountains, where their war parties gathered to drive back the white
invader. Those years on the frontier developed a race of men accustomed
to danger and ready for any chance; and towering head and shoulders
above them all stands the mighty figure of Daniel Boone, the most famous
of American pioneers. About him cluster legends and tales innumerable,
some true, many false; but one thing is certain; for boldness, cunning
and knowledge of woodcraft and Indian warfare he had no equal.
Born in Pennsylvania, but moving at an early age to the little frontier
settlement of Holman's Ford, in North Carolina, the boy had barely
enough schooling to enable him to read and write. His real books were
the woods, and he studied them until they held no secrets from him. He
was a born hunter, a lover of the wild life of the forest, impatient of
civilization, and truly at home only in the wilderness. The cry of the
panther, the war-whoop of the Indian, were music to him; that was his
nature--to love adventure, to court danger, to welcome the thrill of the
pulse which peril brings. Understand him: he was not the man to incur
foolish risks; but he incurred necessary ones without a second thought.
He was near death no doubt a hundred times, yet lived to die in his
bed. But he was at his best, he really lived, only when the wilderness
held him and when his life depended upon his care and watchfulness.
[Illustration: Boone]
In 1755, Boone married and built a log cabin far up the Yadkin, where he
had no neighbors; but as the years passed, other families settled near;
the smoke of other cabins rose above the woods; his fields were bounded
by rude fences; he could scarcely stir out without encountering some
neighbor. It was too crowded for Daniel Boone; he felt the same
sensation that your nature lover feels to-day in the midst of a teeming
city--a sense of suffocation and disgust--and he finally determined to
move still further westward, and to cross the mountains into Kentucky,
concerning whose richness many stories had reached his ears. He
persuaded six men to accompany him, and on the first day of May, 1769,
set forth on the perilous journey which was to mark the beginning of his
life-work.
Up to that time, the Alleghany Mountains had marked a boundary beyond
which white settlers dared not go, for to the west lay great reaches of
forest, uninhabited except for wild beasts and still wilder bands of
roving Indians. Into this forest, Boone and his companions plunged, and
after some weeks of wandering, emerged into the beautiful and fertile
country of Kentucky--a country not owned by any Indian tribe, but
visited only by wandering war- and hunting-parties from the nations
living north of the Ohio or south of the Tennessee. The party found
game in abundance, especially great droves of buffalo, and spent some
months in hunting and exploring. A roving war-party stumbled upon one of
Boone's companions, and forthwith killed him; a second soon met the same
fate, and Boone himself had more than one narrow escape. The danger grew
so great, that the other members of the party returned over the
mountains, and Boone was, for a time, left alone, as he himself put it,
"without company of any fellow-creature, or even a horse or dog."
His brother joined him after a time, and the two spent the winter
together. Game furnished abundant food, and the only danger was from the
Indians, but that was an ever-present one. Sometimes they slept in
hollow trees, at other times, they changed their resting-place every
night, and after making a fire, would go off for a mile or two in the
woods to sleep. Unceasing vigilance was the price of safety. When spring
came, Boone's brother returned over the mountains, and again he was left
alone. Three months later the brother came back, bringing a party of
hunters, but no one was inclined to settle in so dangerous a locality,
the struggle to possess which was so fierce that it became known as "the
dark and bloody ground."
In 1773, Boone himself started to lead a band of settlers over the
mountains, but while passing through the frowning defiles of the
Cumberland Gap, they were attacked by Indians and driven back, two of
Boone's sons being among the slain. Hunting parties crossed the
mountains from time to time after that, and made great inroads on the
vast herds of game, but the Indians were in arms everywhere, and not
until they had been defeated at the battle of Point Pleasant, the
bloodiest in the history of Virginia with its Indian foe, did they sue
for peace.
The coming of peace marked a new era in the development of the western
country. Some years before, a company of men headed by Richard
Henderson, had conceived the grandiose project of founding in the west a
great colony, and had purchased from the Cherokee Indians a vast tract
of land, which they named Transylvania. It included all the land between
the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers, and Daniel Boone was selected to
blaze a way into the wilderness, to mark out a road, and start the first
settlement. He got a party together, crossed the mountains, and on April
1, 1775, began to build a fort on the left bank of the Kentucky river,
calling it Fort Boone, afterwards Boonesborough. Some settlers moved in,
but the outbreak of the Revolution and the consequent renewal of Indian
hostilities under encouragement from the British put a stop to
immigration.
The fort, alone and unprotected in the wilderness, was soon attacked by
a great war-party, but managed to beat off the assailants. Shortly
afterwards, while leading an expedition to the Blue Licks, on the
Licking river, to secure a supply of salt, Boone became separated from
his men, and was surprised and captured by an Indian war-party. The joy
of the savages at this capture may be imagined, for they had in their
hands their most intrepid foe. After being exhibited to the British at
Detroit, he was brought back to the Indian settlements north of the
Ohio, and formally adopted into an Indian family, for the savages
desired, if possible, to make this mighty hunter and warrior one of
themselves. And Boone might have really adopted Indian life, which
appealed to him in many ways, but one day he found that preparations
were on foot for another great expedition against Boonesborough.
Watching his opportunity, he managed to escape, and reached the fort in
time to warn it of the impending attack. He covered the distance, 160
miles, in four days, eating but a single meal upon the road--a turkey
which he managed to shoot.
He came to Boonesborough like one risen from the dead. The fort was at
once put into a state of defense, and endured the most savage assault
ever directed against it, the Indians numbering nearly five hundred,
while the garrison mustered but sixty-five. The siege lasted for nine
days, when the Indians, despairing of overcoming a resistance so
desperate, retired.
The succeeding years were full of adventure and hair-breadth escapes,
which cannot even be mentioned here. On one occasion, Boone and his
brother, Squire, were surprised by Indians; the latter was killed and
scalped and Boone escaped with the greatest difficulty. At the battle of
Blue Licks, two years later, two sons fought at his side, one of whom
was killed and the other severely wounded. But Boone seemed to bear a
charmed life. His years in the wilderness had developed in him an
almost supernatural keenness of sight and hearing; and constant peril
from the Indians had made him very careful. Whenever he went into the
woods after game or Indians, he had perpetually to keep watch to make
sure that he was not being hunted in turn. Every turkey-call might mean
a lurking savage, every cracking twig might mean an approaching foe.
On one occasion, his daughter and two other girls were carried off by
Indians, and Boone, raising a small company, followed the trail of the
fugitives without resting for two days and a night; then came to where
the Indians had killed a buffalo calf and were camped around it, never
dreaming of danger. So Boone and his men crept up on them, shot down the
Indians and rescued the girls. On still another occasion, he was pursued
by Indians, who used a tracking dog to follow his trail. Boone turned,
shot the dog, and then made good his escape. Such incidents might be
related by the dozen. No wonder Boone was considered one of the most
valuable men on the frontier, and was a very tower of strength in
defending it against the Indians.
The end, however, was sad enough. When Kentucky was admitted to the
Union, Boone's titles to the land he had laid out for himself were
declared to be defective; it was all taken from him, and he moved first
to Ohio, and then to Missouri, where he spent his last years. He was
hale and hearty almost to the end, leading a hunting-party to the mouth
of the Kansas when he was eighty-two years old, and completely tiring
out its younger members. Nearly at the end of his life, Congress
recognized his services to his country by granting him eight hundred and
fifty acres of land in Missouri, and on this grant, the last years of
his life were spent. Chester Harding visited him just before the end and
painted a portrait of him which remains the best delineation of the
redoubtable old pioneer, whose striking face tells of the resolute will,
and unshrinking courage which made the settlement of Kentucky possible.
Scarcely less prominent than Boone on the Kentucky frontier, and with a
career in many ways even more adventurous, was Simon Kenton. Born in
Virginia in 1755, he had grown to young manhood, rough and uncultivated,
and with little evidence of having been raised in a civilized community.
At the age of sixteen, he had a desperate affray with a neighbor named
William Veach, during which he caught Veach around the body, whirled him
into the air, and dashed him to the ground with such violence, that he
thought he had broken his neck. Not daring to return home or to linger
in the neighborhood, for fear his crime would be discovered and he
himself arrested and hanged, he plunged into the wilderness and made his
way westward over the mountains, changing his name to Simon Butler.
The two or three years following were spent by him in roaming along the
Ohio valley, sometimes alone, sometimes with two or three companions,
and always surrounded by danger. On one occasion, his camp was surprised
by Indians, and he and his companion were forced to flee for their
lives without weapons of any kind, and with no clothing but their
shirts. For six days and nights, they wandered without fire or food,
suffering from the cold, for it was the dead of winter, and so torn and
lacerated that on the last two days they covered only six miles, most of
it on hands and knees. Staggering and crawling forward, they came out at
last upon the Ohio river, and by good fortune fell in with a
hunting-party and were saved.
Kenton's life was full of just such incidents. Daniel Boone found in him
a most valuable ally, incapable of fear and with a knowledge of
woodcraft surpassed only by Boone himself. Kenton was inside Boone's
fort whenever it was in danger, and on one occasion saved Boone's life.
Let us tell the story, for it is typical of the border warfare in which
both Boone and Kenton were so expert.
One morning, having loaded their guns for a hunt, Kenton and two
companions were standing in the gate of Fort Boone, when two men, who
were driving in some horses from a near-by field, were fired upon by
Indians. They fled toward the fort, the Indians after them, and one of
them was overtaken and killed and was being scalped, when Kenton and his
companions ran up, killed one of the Indians and pursued the others to
the edge of the clearing. Boone, meanwhile, had heard the firing, and
came hurrying out with reinforcements, only, a moment later, to be cut
off from the fort by a strong body of savages. There was nothing to do
but to cut their way back through them, and in the charge, Boone
received a ball through the leg, breaking the bone. As he fell, the
Indian leader raised his tomahawk to kill him, but Kenton, seeing his
comrade's peril, shot the Indian through the heart, and succeeded in
dragging Boone inside the fort.
During the Dunmore war, Kenton ranged the Indian country as a spy,
carrying his life in his hand, and accompanied George Rogers Clark on
his famous Illinois campaign. A short time later, with one or two
others, he started on an expedition to run off some horses from the
Miami villages, and had nearly succeeded, when he was captured. The
Indians hated him more bitterly than they hated Boone himself, and they
prepared to enjoy themselves at his expense. They bound him to a wild
horse and chased the horse through the forest until their captive's face
was torn and bleeding from the lashing of the branches; they staked him
down at night so that he could not move hand or foot, and when they
reached their town, the whole population turned out to make him run the
gauntlet. The Indians formed in a double line, about six feet apart,
each armed with a heavy club, and Kenton was forced to run between them.
He had not gone far when he saw ahead of him an Indian with drawn knife,
prepared to plunge it into him as he passed. By a mighty effort, he
broke through the line, but was soon recaptured, lashed with whips,
pelted with stones, branded with red-hot irons, and condemned to be
burnt at the stake.
But before killing him, the Indians concluded to lend him to other towns
to have some sport with, so he was taken from town to town, compelled to
run the gauntlet at each one, and subjected to a variegated list of
tortures. Three or four times, he was tied to a stake for the final
execution, but each time the Indians decided to wait a while longer.
Finally, an Englishman got the Indians to consent to send Kenton for a
visit to Detroit, and he spent the winter there. Then, with two other
captives, and with the help of a kind-hearted Irish woman, he managed to
escape, and made his way back to Kentucky--over four hundred miles
through the Indian country, narrowly escaping death a hundred times--in
thirty-three days.
There he learned that he need not have fled from Pennsylvania, that the
man with whom he had fought years before was not dead, but had
recovered. For the first time since his appearance in the west, he
assumed his real name, and was known thereafter as Simon Kenton. Soon
afterwards he returned to his old home, and brought the whole family
back with him to Kentucky. One would have thought he had had enough of
fighting, but he was with Wayne at the Fallen timbers and with William
Henry Harrison at the battle of the Thames. Sadly enough, the last years
of this old hero were passed in want. His land in Kentucky was taken
from him by speculators because he had failed to have it properly
registered, and he was imprisoned for debt on the spot where he had
reared the first cabin in northern Kentucky.
In the spring of 1824, an old, tattered, weather-beaten figure appeared
on the streets of Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky. So strange and
wild it was that a gang of street boys gathered and ran hooting after
it. Men laughed--till suddenly, one of them, looking again, recognized
Simon Kenton. In a moment a guard of honor was formed, and the tattered
figure was conducted to the Capitol, placed in the speaker's chair, and
for the first and only time in his life, Simon Kenton received some
portion of the respect and homage to which his deeds entitled him.
* * * * *
Boone and Kenton, with a handful of hardy and fearless pioneers, laid
the foundations of Kentucky; but in the history of the "Old Northwest,"
the country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, one name
stands out transcendent; the name of a man as daring, as brave, as
resourceful as any on the border--George Rogers Clark. He was greater
than Boone or Kenton in that he had a wider vision; they saw only the
duties of the present; he saw the possibilities of the future, and his
exploits form one of the most thrilling chapters of American history.
Clark, a Virginian by birth, started out in life as a surveyor, and
early in 1775, removed to Kentucky to follow his profession. There was,
no doubt, plenty of surveying to be done there, since the whole country
was an uncharted wilderness, but the beginning of the Revolution was
accompanied by an immediate outbreak of Indian hostilities, so serious
that the very existence of the Kentucky settlements was threatened.
Soon all but two of them, Boonesborough and Harrodsburg, had to be
abandoned. Boone was, of course, in command at his fort, and Clark, who
had seen some service in Dunmore's war, became the natural leader at
Harrod's. His influence rapidly increased, and he was chosen as a
delegate to journey to Williamsburg and urge upon Virginia the needs of
the western colony, which lay within her chartered limits.
Clark set off without delay on the long and dangerous journey, reached
Williamsburg, gained an audience of Patrick Henry, the governor of
Virginia, and painted the needs of Kentucky in such colors that he soon
gained the sympathy of the impulsive and warm-hearted governor, and
together they secured from the Assembly a large gift of lead and powder
for the protection of the frontier. More than that, they succeeded in
making Virginia acknowledge her responsibility for the new colony by
constituting it the county of Kentucky. This, it may be added, put an
end forever to Henderson's dream of the independent colony of
Transylvania.
Clark got his powder and ball safe to Harrodsburg just in time to repel
a desperate Indian assault; but it was evident that there would be no
safety for the Kentucky settlements so long as England controlled the
country north of the Ohio. All that region formed a part of what was
known as the Province of Quebec. Here and there dotted through it were
quaint little towns of French Creoles, the most important being
Detroit, Vincennes on the Wabash, and Kaskaskia and Kahokia on the
Illinois. These French villages were ruled by British officers
commanding small bodies of regular soldiers, and keeping the Indians in
a constant state of war against their Kentucky neighbors, furnishing
them with arms and ammunition, and rewarding them for every expedition
they undertook against the Americans. They had no idea that any band of
Americans which could be mustered west of the mountains would dare to
attack them, and so were careless in their guard, and maintained only
small garrisons at the various forts.
All this Clark found out by means of spies which he sent through the
country, and finally, having his plan matured, he went again to Virginia
in December, 1777, and laid before Governor Henry his whole idea,
explaining in detail why he thought it could be carried out
successfully. Henry was at once enthused with it, so daring and full of
promise he thought it, and he enlisted the aid of Thomas Jefferson. The
result was that when Clark set out on his return journey, it was with
orders not only to defend Kentucky, but to attack Kaskaskia and the
other British posts, and he carried with him £1,200 in paper money, and
an order on the commander of Fort Pitt for such boats and ammunition as
he might need.
With great difficulty, Clark got together a force of about a hundred and
fifty men, one of whom was Simon Kenton. He could not get many
volunteers from Kentucky because the settlers there thought they had
all they could do to defend their own forts without going out to attack
the enemy's and only a few men could be spared. In May, 1778, this
little force started down the Ohio in flat boats, and landing just
before they reached the Mississippi, marched northward against
Kaskaskia, where the British commander of the entire district had his
headquarters. Clark knew that his force was outnumbered by the garrison
and that it would be necessary to surprise the town. After a six days'
march across country, he came to the outskirts of the village on the
evening of July 4th, and found a great dance in progress in the fort.
Waiting until the revelry was at its height, Clark advanced silently,
surprised the sentries, and surrounded the fort without causing any
alarm. Then with his men posted, Clark walked forward through the open
door, and leaning against the wall, watched the dancers, as they whirled
around by the light of the flaring torches.
Suddenly an Indian, after looking at him for a moment, raised the
war-whoop; the dancing ceased, but Clark, shouting at the top of his
voice to still the confusion, bade the dancers continue, asking them
only to remember that thereafter they were dancing under the flag of the
United States, instead of that of Great Britain. A few moments later,
the commandant was captured in his bed, and the investment was complete.
The other settlements in the neighborhood surrendered at once, so that
the Illinois country was captured without the firing of a gun.
But when the news reached the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, he
at once prepared to recapture the country. He had a much larger force at
his command than Clark could possibly muster, and in the fall of the
year he advanced against Vincennes at the head of over five hundred men.
The little American garrison was unable to oppose such a force and was
compelled to surrender. Instead of pushing on against Clark at
Kaskaskia, Hamilton disbanded his Indians and sent some of his troops
back to Detroit, and prepared to spend the winter at Vincennes. He
repaired the fort, strengthened the defenses, and then sat down for the
winter, confident that when spring came, he would again be master of the
whole Illinois country.
Clark, at Kaskaskia, realized that it was a question of his taking the
British or the British taking him, and that, if he waited for spring, he
would have no chance at all; so he gathered together the pick of his
men, one hundred and seventy all told, and early in February, 1779, set
out for Vincennes. The task before him was to capture a force nearly
equal to his own, protected by a strong fort well supplied for a siege.
At first the journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy
Illinois prairies, broken occasionally by great stretches of woodland,
but when they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, the march became
almost incredibly difficult. The ice had just broken up and everything
was flooded; heavy rains set in, and when the men were not wading
through icy water, they were struggling through mud nearly knee-deep.
After twelve days of this, they came to the bank of the Embarass river,
only to find the country all under water, save one little hillock, where
they spent the night without food or fire. For four days they waited
there for the flood to retire, with practically nothing to eat; but the
rain continued and the flood increased, and Clark, finally, in
desperation, plunged into the water and called to his men to follow. All
day they waded, and toward evening reached a small patch of dry ground,
where they spent a miserable night. At sunrise Clark started on again,
through icy water waist-deep, this time with the stern command to shoot
the first laggard. Some of the men failed and sank beneath the waves, to
be rescued by the stronger ones, and by the middle of the afternoon they
had all got safe to land. By good fortune, they captured some Indian
squaws with a canoe-load of food, and had their first meal in two days.
Soon afterwards the sun came out, and they saw before them the walls of
the fort they had come to capture.
The British had no suspicion of their danger, and they thought the first
patter of bullets against the palisades the usual friendly salute from
an Indian hunting party. But they were soon undeceived, and answered the
rifles with ineffective fire from their two small cannon. All night the
fight continued, and at dawn an Indian war-party, which had been
ravaging the Kentucky settlements, entered the town, ignorant that the
Americans had captured it. Marching up to the fort, they suddenly found
themselves surrounded and seized. In their belts they carried the scalps
of the settlers--men, women and children--they had slain, and,
infuriated at the sight, the Americans tomahawked the savages, one after
another, before the eyes of the British.
Then Clark sent to the fort a peremptory summons to surrender, adding,
that "his men were eager to avenge the murder of their relatives and
friends and would welcome an excuse to storm the fort." To the British,
it seemed a choice between surrender and massacre. They had seen the
bloody vengeance wreaked upon their Indian allies, and they had every
reason to believe that they would be dealt with in the same manner,
since it was they who had set the Indians on. Clark was himself, of
course, in desperate straits, without means for carrying on a successful
siege, but the British were far from suspecting this, and at ten o'clock
on the morning of February 25, 1779, marched out and stacked arms, while
Clark fired a salute of thirteen guns in honor of the colonies, from
whose possession the Northwest was never again to pass.
For eight years longer, Clark devoted his life to protecting the border
from British and Indian invasion. The war over, he returned to Kentucky,
and took up his abode in a little log cabin on the Ohio near Louisville.
He was without means, and a horrible accident marred his last years,
for, while alone in his cabin, he was stricken with paralysis, and fell
with one of his legs in the old-fashioned fire-place. There was no one
to draw him out of danger, and before the pain brought him partially to
his senses, his leg was so badly burned that it had to be amputated.
There were no anaesthetics in those days, but while the leg was being
removed, a fife and drum corps played its hardest at the bedside, and
the doughty old warrior kept time to the music with his fingers.
He lived for ten years thereafter, though his paralysis never left him.
He felt keenly the ingratitude of the Republic which he had served so
well, and which yet, in his old age, abandoned him to want, and the
story is told that, when the state of Virginia sent him a sword of
honor, he thrust it into the ground and broke it with his crutch.
"I gave Virginia a sword when she needed one," he said; "but now, when I
need bread, she sends me a toy!"
* * * * *
In the settlement of the country north of the Ohio, one man, a veteran
of the Revolution, was foremost. His name was Rufus Putnam, and he was a
cousin of that Israel Putnam, some of whose exploits we will soon
relate. He has been well called the "Father of Ohio," for he was the
founder of the first permanent white settlement made within the borders
of the state. He was born in 1738, at Sutton, Massachusetts, and his
early life was a hard and rough one. Left an orphan while still a child,
he was put to work as soon as he was big enough to be of any use, and
received practically no education, although he managed to teach himself
to read and write. He earned a few pennies by watering horses for
travelers, and with this money purchased a spelling-book and arithmetic.
He served through the French war and the Revolution, rendering
distinguished service and retiring with the rank of brigadier-general;
and at its close, finding that Congress would be unable for a long time
to pay many of the soldiers for their services, he became interested in
the suggestion that payment be made in land along the Ohio river, and
offered to lead a band of settlers to their new homes. In March, 1786,
in Boston, he and some others formed the Ohio Company, and one of their
directors, Manasseh Cutler, a preacher of more than usual ability, was
selected to lay the company's plan before Congress. The result was the
famous ordinance of 1787, providing for the establishment and government
of the Northwest Territory, of which Arthur St. Clair was named
governor. Cutler also secured a large land grant for the new company,
and in the following year, Putnam started across the mountains with the
first band of emigrants.
They reached the vicinity of Pittsburg after a weary journey, and there
built a boat which they named the Mayflower, and in it floated down the
river, until they reached the mouth of the Muskingum. On April 17, 1788,
they began the erection of a blockhouse, which was to be the nucleus of
the new settlement, and a place of defense in case of Indian attack. The
settlement was named Marietta, in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen
of France; it prospered from the first, and in a few years was a lively
little village. There were Indian alarms at first, but General Wayne's
victory secured a lasting peace. Putnam served as a brigadier-general in
Wayne's campaign, and was one of the commissioners who negotiated the
peace treaty.
He lived for many years thereafter, and remained to the last the leading
man of the settlement. He was interested in every project for the
betterment of the new Commonwealth, helped to found the Ohio University
at Athens, was one of the drafters of the state constitution, and
founded the first Bible school west of the mountains. A venerable
figure, he died in 1824, having lived to see the valley which he had
entered a wilderness settled by hundreds of thousands, and the state
which he had helped to found become one of the greatest in the Union.
* * * * *
By the end of the eighteenth century, the country between the
Alleghanies and the Mississippi was fairly well known, first through the
explorations of such pioneers as Boone and Clark and Kenton, and, later
on, through the steady advance of civilization, forever throwing new
outposts westward. But beyond the great river stretched a mighty
wilderness whose character and extent were only guessed at. The United
States, of course, had little interest in it, since it belonged to
France, and since, east of the river, there were millions of acres as
yet unsettled; but when, in 1803, President Jefferson purchased it of
Napoleon Bonaparte for the sum of fifteen million dollars, all that was
changed. By that purchase, the area of the United States was more than
doubled; but there were many people at the time who opposed the purchase
on the ground that the country east of the river would never be
thoroughly settled and that there would be no use whatever for the great
territory west of it. So mistaken, sometimes, is human foresight!
The President determined that this great addition to the Nation should
be explored without delay, and, securing from Congress the necessary
powers, he appointed his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to
head an expedition to the Pacific.
Lewis was at that time twenty-nine years of age. He seems to have been
of an adventurous disposition for, despite the fact that he inherited a
fortune, he enlisted in the army as a private as soon as he was of age.
Five years later, he had risen to the rank of captain, and, attracting
the attention of President Jefferson, he was appointed his secretary. He
proved to be so capable and enterprising that the President selected him
for this dangerous and arduous task of exploration. With him was
associated Lieutenant William Clark, a brother of that hardy adventurer,
George Rogers Clark.
William Clark, who was eighteen years younger than his famous brother,
had joined him in Kentucky in 1784, at the age of fourteen, and soon
became acquainted with the perils of Indian warfare. He was appointed
ensign in the army four years later, and rose to the rank of adjutant,
but was compelled to resign, from the service in 1796, on account of
ill-health. He settled at the half-Spanish town of St. Louis, and in
March, 1804, was appointed by President Jefferson a second lieutenant of
artillery, with orders to join Captain Lewis in his journey to the
Pacific. Clark was really the military director of the expedition, and
his knowledge of Indian life and character had much to do with its
success.
The party consisted of twenty-eight men, and in the spring of 1804,
started up the Missouri, following it until late in October, when they
camped for the winter near the present site of Bismarck, North. Dakota.
They resumed the journey early in the spring, and in May, caught their
first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Reaching the headwaters of the
Columbia, at last, they floated down its current, and on the morning of
November 7, 1806, after a journey of a year and a half, full of every
sort of hardship and adventure, they saw ahead of them the blue expanse
of the Pacific. They spent the winter on the coast, and reached St.
Louis again in September, 1807, having traversed over nine thousand
miles of unbroken wilderness where no white man had ever before set
foot. It was largely because of this expedition that our government was
able, forty years later, to claim and maintain a title to the state of
Oregon.
Congress rewarded the members of the expedition with grants of land,
and Lewis was appointed governor of Missouri. But the strain of the
expedition to the Pacific had undermined his health; he became subject
to fits of depression, and on October 8, 1809, he put an end to his life
in a lonely cabin near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had stopped for a
night's lodging. Clark lived thirty years longer, serving as Indian
agent, governor of Missouri, and superintendent of Indian affairs.
While Lewis and Clark were struggling across the continent, another
young adventurer was conducting some explorations farther to the east.
Zebulon Pike, aged twenty-seven, a captain in the regular army, was, in
1805, appointed to lead an expedition to the source of the Mississippi.
He accomplished this, after a hard journey lasting nine months; and, a
year later, leading another expedition to the southwest, discovered a
great mountain which he named Pike's Peak, and, continuing southward,
came out on the Rio Grande. He was in Spanish territory, and was held
prisoner for a time, but was finally released upon representations from
the government at Washington. He rose steadily in the service, and in
1813, during the second war with England, led an assault upon Little
York, now Toronto. The town was captured, but the fleeing British
exploded a powder magazine, and General Pike was crushed and killed
beneath the flying fragments. He died with his head on the British flag,
which had been hauled down and brought to him.
The next step to be recorded in the growth of the United States is a
step variously regarded as infamous or glorious--but it was marked by
one of the most heroic incidents in history, and dominated by the
picturesque and remarkable personality of Sam Houston.
The purchase of Louisiana from the French brought the United States in
direct contact with Mexico, which claimed a great territory in the
southwest, and, finally, in 1819, a line between the possessions of the
two countries was agreed upon. It left Mexico in possession of the wide
stretch of country now included in the states of California, Nevada,
Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most of this
country was practically unknown to Americans, and the great stretches of
arid land which comprised large portions of it were considered worthless
and uninhabitable. But a good many Americans had drifted across the
border into the fertile plains of Texas, and settled there. As time went
on, the stream of immigration increased, until there were in the country
enough American settlers to take a prominent part in the revolt of
Mexico against Spain in 1824. The revolt was successful, and the country
which had discovered the New World lost her last foothold there.
The settlers in Texas, coming as they did largely from the southern
states, were naturally slave-holders, but in 1829, Mexico abolished
slavery, an action which greatly enraged them. It is startling to
reflect that a country which we consider so inferior to ourselves should
have preceded us by over thirty years in this great step forward in
civilization. In other ways, the Mexican yoke was not a pleasant one to
the Texans, and within a few years, the whole country was in a state of
seething insurrection. President Jackson was eager to annex Texas, whose
value to the Union he fully recognized, and offered Mexico five million
dollars for the province, but the offer was refused. Such was the
condition of affairs when, in 1833, Sam Houston appeared upon the scene.
The story of the life of this extraordinary man reads like a fable. Born
in Virginia in 1793, he was taken to Tennessee at the age of thirteen,
and promptly began his career by running away from home and joining the
Cherokee Indians. When his family found him, he refused to return home,
and the next seven years were spent largely in the wilderness with his
savage friends. The wild life was congenial to him, and he grew up rough
and head-strong and healthy. Then the Creek war broke out, and Houston
enlisted with Andrew Jackson. One incident of that war gives a better
insight into Houston's character than volumes of description. At the
battle of the Horseshoe, where the Creeks made a desperate stand, a
barbed arrow struck Houston in the thigh and sank deep into the flesh.
He tried to pull it out and failed.
"Here," he called to a comrade, "pull out this arrow."
The other took hold of the shaft of the arrow and pulled with all his
might, but could not dislodge it.
"I can't get it out," he said, at last.
"Oh, yes, you can!" cried Houston, and raised his sword. "Pull it out,
or it'll be worse for you!"
The soldier saw he was in earnest, and, taking hold of the arrow again,
gave it a mighty wrench. It came out, but the barbs of the arrow tore
the flesh badly. Houston, however, paused only to tie up the wound
roughly, and hurried back into the fight, though Jackson ordered him to
the rear. Before long, two bullets struck him down, and he lay between
life and death for many days.
Such desperate valor was exactly after "Old Hickory's" heart, and from
that time forward, Jackson was Houston's friend and patron. In 1818, he
managed to gain admittance to the bar, and his rise was so rapid that
within five years he had been elected to Congress, and four years later
governor of Tennessee. Then came the strange catastrophe which nearly
wrecked his life.
Houston was, after Andrew Jackson, the most popular man in the state. He
resembled the hero of New Orleans in many ways, being rough, rude,
hot-headed and honest--just the sort of man to appeal to the people
among whom his lot was cast. When, therefore, in January, 1829, while
governor of the state, he married Miss Eliza Allen, a member of one of
the most prominent families in it, everybody wished him well, and the
wedding was a great affair. But scarcely was the honeymoon over, when he
sent his bride back to her parents, resigned the governorship, and,
refusing to give any explanation of his conduct, plunged into the
wilderness to the west.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of frontier society is its
chivalry toward women, and Houston's conduct brought about his head a
perfect storm of indignation. No doubt he had many enemies who welcomed
the opportunity to wreck his fame, and who gladly added their voices to
the uproar. From the most popular man, he became the most hated, and it
would have been dangerous for him to venture back within the state's
borders. Not until after his death, did his wife give any explanation of
his conduct. She stated that he had discovered that she loved another,
and that he had deserted her so that she could secure a divorce on the
ground of abandonment. That explanation, lame as it is, is the only one
ever offered by either of the principals.
Meanwhile, Houston had joined his old friends, the Cherokees, now living
in Arkansas Territory, and asked to be admitted to the tribe. The
Indians expressed the opinion that he should have beaten his wife
instead of abandoning her, but nevertheless adopted him, and for three
years he lived their life, dressing, fighting, hunting and drinking
precisely like any Indian. The papers, meanwhile, were filled with
surmises concerning him. No one understood why he should have exiled
himself, and it was reported that he intended to lead the Cherokees into
Texas, conquer the country and set up a government of his own. President
Jackson wrote to him, protesting against "any such chimerical, visionary
scheme," which, needless to say, Houston had never entertained. These
rumors grew so annoying, that he issued a proclamation offering a prize
"To the Author of the Most Elegant, Refined, and Ingenious Lie or
Calumny" about him.
The trouble culminated when Houston, having gone to Washington to plead
for his friends, the Indians, caned a member of Congress who had
slandered him on the floor of the House. He was arrested, and arraigned
before the bar of the House for "breach of privilege," and was
reprimanded by the Speaker and fined five hundred dollars--a fine which
President Jackson promptly remitted, remarking that a few more examples
of the same kind would teach Congressmen to keep civil tongues in their
heads. Houston's comment on the affair was, "I was dying out once, and,
had they taken me before a justice of the peace and fined me ten dollars
for assault and battery, it would have killed me; but they gave me a
national tribunal for a theatre and it set me up again."
It did "set him up" in earnest. The President, who always had a warm
place in his heart for him, helped by sending him--not, perhaps, without
some insight into the future--to Texas, to examine into the value of
that country, in case the United States should decide to buy it. What
Jackson's private instructions were can only be surmised, but,
certainly, Houston showed no hesitation or uncertainty after he reached
the scene.
On December 10, 1832, he crossed into Mexican territory, and was soon at
the head of the Texas insurrectionists, who had determined to establish
a government of their own, and who found in Houston a leader after their
own hearts. Armed collisions between Texans and Mexican troops became
of common occurrence, and the spirit of revolt spread so rapidly that
Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico, sent an army under General Cos to pacify
the country and drive the Americans out.
It was the spark in the magazine. All Texas sprang to arms under such
leaders as Houston, Austin, Travis, Bonham, Fannin, "Deaf" Smith, and
"Ben" Milam; took Goliad, where Milam lost his life heading a desperate
assault; captured Concepçion and San Antonio, until, by the middle of
December, 1836, not a Mexican soldier was left north of the Rio Grande.
But Houston, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan
forces, knew they would return, and bent every effort to organize a
disciplined army. It was a difficult thing to do with the high-tempered
and lawless elements at hand; everything was disorder and confusion, and
meanwhile came word that Santa Anna himself, at the head of an army of
six thousand men, was entering Texas.
No effective opposition could be offered such an army; the San Antonio
garrison was entrapped in the old mission called The Alamo and killed to
the last man; Fannin and his force, three hundred and fifty strong, were
cornered at Goliad and brutally shot down in detachments after they had
surrendered; and Santa Anna, certain that Texas had been conquered,
divided his army into columns to occupy the country. Houston only was
left, and the fate of Texas hung on his little force; he knew he could
strike but once; if he were defeated, the war for independence would
end then and there; so he watched and waited, gathering together the
stragglers, keeping them in heart, laboring like a very Hercules.
Hundreds of miles away, in Washington, old Andrew Jackson, a map of
Texas before him, followed with his finger the retreat as far as he knew
it, and paused with in on San Jacinto.
"Here's the place," he said. "If Sam Houston's worth one bawbee, he'll
stand here and give 'em a fight."
And so it was. It makes the pulses thrill, even yet, the story of that
twenty-first of April, 1836; how Houston destroyed the bridge behind
them, so that there could be no retreat, and then, on his great gray
horse, tried to address his men, but could only cry: "Remember The
Alamo"; how old Rusk could say not even that, but choked with a sob at
the first word, and waved his hand toward the enemy; how the solitary
fife struck up, "Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?"
while those seven hundred gaunt, starved, ragged phantoms, burning with
rage at the thought of their comrades foully slain, deployed on the open
prairie and charged the unsuspecting Mexican army. It was over in half
an hour--the enemy annihilated, 630 killed, 200 wounded, 700
prisoners--among the prisoners Santa Anna himself, begging for mercy.
And Aaron Burr, dying in New York with the vision of his Texan empire
still before him, reading, weeks later, the news of the victory, cried
out, "I was thirty years too soon!"
There was never any question, after that, of Texan independence; Santa
Anna, to save a life forfeited a hundred times over, was ready to agree
to any terms. Houston was a popular hero; Texas was his child, and he
was unanimously chosen President of the new Republic. From the first,
Houston, recalling the wishes of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, sought
annexation to the United States, and the debates over the question in
Congress nearly disrupted the Union. For the North feared the effects of
such a tremendous addition to slave territory, from which three or four
states might be carved, and so destroy the balance of power between
North and South. Again, Mexico, which still dreamed of reconquering
Texas, notified the United States that annexation would be considered a
declaration of war; but Houston pressed the question with great
adroitness, it was evident that Texas really belonged in the Union, and
on March 1, 1845, Congress passed the resolution of annexation, and
Houston and Husk, the heroes of San Jacinto, were at once elected
senators.
In the brief but brilliant war with Mexico which followed, which is
considered more in detail in connection with the life of Winfield Scott,
and which resulted in the securing of the great Southwest for the United
States, Houston played no part, except as a member of the Senate, where
he remained until 1859, being defeated finally by a secessionist. For,
true to the precepts of Jackson, he was from the first bitterly opposed
to nullification and secession. The same year, he was elected governor
of Texas, turning a Union minority into a triumphant majority by the
wizardry of his personality. He could not prevent secession, however,
but he refused to take the oath to the Confederate government required
by the legislature and was deposed. Martial law being established, an
officer one day demanded Houston's pass.
"San Jacinto," he answered, and went on his way, nor did any dare molest
him. But he was worn out and aging fast, and the end came toward the
close of July, 1863.
Reference has been made to the capture of the old mission at San Antonio
known as "The Alamo," and a brief account must be given of the
remarkable group of men who lost their lives there--David Crockett,
James Bowie, and William Barrett Travis. Crockett was perhaps the most
famous of the three, and his name is still more or less of a household
word throughout the middle West, while some of his stories have passed
into proverbs. He was the most famous rifle shot in the whole country
and the most successful hunter. Born in Tennessee soon after the
Revolutionary war, of an Irish father, he ran away from home after a few
days' schooling, knocked about the country, served through the Creek war
under Andrew Jackson, and gained so much popularity by his hunting
stories, with which he held great audiences spellbound, that he was
elected to the State legislature and then to Congress, though he had
never read a newspaper. In Congress, he managed to antagonize Andrew
Jackson, not a difficult task by any means, with the result that
Jackson, who carried Tennessee in his vest pocket, effectively ended
Crockett's political career. Crockett left the state in disgust, seeking
new worlds to conquer, and hearing of the struggle in Texas, decided to
join the revolutionists.
By boat and on horseback, he made his way toward the distant plains
where the Texans were waging their life and death struggle against the
Mexicans. More than one hairbreadth escape did the old hunter have from
Indians, desperadoes and wild beasts, but he finally got to the
neighborhood of San Antonio, and fell in with another adventurer, a
bee-hunter, also on his way to join the Texans. They soon learned that a
great Mexican army was marching on San Antonio, and that the defenders
of the place had gathered in the old mission called "The Alamo." There
were only a hundred and fifty of them, while the Mexican army numbered
four thousand; but they had made up their minds to hold the place, a
mere shell, utterly unable to withstand artillery, or even a regular and
well-directed assault. It was plain enough that to attempt to defend the
place against such an overwhelming force was desperate in the extreme,
but Crockett and his companion kept straight on, and were soon inside
The Alamo. A few days later, Santa Anna's great army camped around it.
In command of The Alamo garrison was Colonel Travis, a young man of
twenty-five; an Alabaman, admitted to the bar there, but driven out of
his native state by financial troubles, and casting in his lot with the
Texas revolutionists, among whom he soon acquired considerable
influence. The third of the trio, Colonel Bowie, was a native of
Georgia, but had settled in Louisiana, where, nine years before, he had
been a participant in a celebrated affray. Two gentlemen, becoming
involved in a quarrel, decided to settle it in approved fashion by a
duel, and, accompanied by their friends, among whom was Bowie, adjourned
to a convenient place and took a shot at each other without doing any
damage. They were about to declare honor satisfied and to shake hands,
when a dispute arose among their friends, and before it was over,
fifteen were killed and six were badly injured. Bowie distinguished
himself by stabbing a man to death with a knife made from a large file.
The weapon was afterwards sent to Philadelphia and there fashioned into
the deadly knife which has ever since been known by his name. The
prospect of trouble in Texas naturally attracted him, he was made
colonel of militia there, and dispatched to The Alamo with a small force
by General Houston early in 1836.
Here, then, in this old and crumbling Spanish mission, toward the end of
February, were gathered a hundred and fifty Texans, a wild and
undisciplined band, impatient of restraint or control, but men of iron
courage and the best shots on the border, with Travis in command; while
without was the army of Santa Anna. On February 24th, Travis, in a
letter asking for reinforcements, announced the siege and added that he
would never surrender or retreat. Early in March, thirty-two men from
Gonzales, knowing they were going to well-nigh certain death, made their
way into the fort, raising its garrison to 180.
Santa Anna demanded unconditional surrender, and Travis answered with a
cannon-shot; whereat, on the morning of the sixth of March, the Mexican
army stormed the fort from all sides, swarmed in through breaches and
over the walls, which the Texans were too few to man, and a desperate
hand-to-hand conflict followed. To and fro between the shattered walls
the fight reeled, each tall Texan the centre of a group of foes,
fighting with a wild and desperate courage; but the odds were too great,
and one by one they fell, thrust through with bayonets or riddled by
bullets. Colonel Travis fell, and so did Bowie, sick and weak from a
wasting disease, but rising from his bed, and dying fighting with his
great knife red with the blood of his foes. At last a single man stood
at bay. It was Davy Crockett.
Wounded in a dozen places, ringed about by the bodies of the men he had
slain, he stood facing his foes, his back against a wall, knife in hand,
daring them to come on. No one dared to run in upon that old lion. So
they held him there with their lances, while, the musketeers loaded
their carbines and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left
alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the
Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic
events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The
Alamo had none."
* * * * *
One more era remains to be recorded, that in which the United States
confirmed its hold upon the Pacific coast, and here again the story is
that of the lives of three men--Marcus Whitman, John Augustus Sutter,
and John Charles Frémont. It was Whitman who brought home to the Nation
the value of Oregon by a spectacular ride from ocean to ocean; it was
Sutter who led the way for an American invasion of California, and who
gave impetus to that invasion by the discovery of gold; and it was
Frémont who led the revolution there against the Mexicans, and who
secured the country's independence.
The explorations of Lewis and Clark, early in the century, had made the
country along the Columbia river known to the East in a dim way, but it
was so distant and so inaccessible that it excited little interest. Just
before the second war with England, John Jacob Astor had attempted to
carry out a far-reaching plan for the development of the country and the
securing of its great fur trade, but the outbreak of the war had stopped
all efforts in that direction, and Astor never took them up again.
Meanwhile through Canada, the Hudson Bay Company, a great English
concern engaged in the fur trade, had extended its stations to the
Pacific coast, and was quietly taking possession of the country.
In 1834, the American board of missions, learning of the need for a
missionary among the Oregon Indians, appointed Marcus Whitman to the
work. Whitman was at that time thirty-two years of age and was just
about to be married. His betrothed agreed to accompany him on his
perilous mission, and, after great difficulty, he secured an associate
in the person of Rev. H.H. Spalding, also just married. What a bridal
trip that was! At Pittsburg, George Catlin, who knew the western Indians
better than any living man, having spent years among them, warned them
of the folly of attempting to take women across the plains; at
Cincinnati, they were greeted by William Moody, only forty-five years of
age and yet the first white man born there; at the frontier town of St.
Louis, they joined a hunting expedition up the Missouri, and by June 6,
1836, were at Laramie.
A month later, they crossed the Great Divide by the South Pass,
"discovered," six years later, by Frémont; and toward the end of July,
they came to the great mountain rendezvous of traders and trappers high
in the mountains near Fort Hall. Some of those men had not seen a white
woman for a quarter of a century. You can imagine, then, what a
sensation the arrival of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding occasioned, and
with what warmth they were welcomed. Ten days they tarried there, then
pressed on westward, and on September 2, 1836, after a journey of
thirty-five hundred miles, the gates of Fort Walla-Walla, on the lower
Columbia, opened to receive them, and the conquest of Oregon began.
Fort Walla-Walla belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, which had
undisputed control of the rich Oregon fur trade, and which was
determined to retain it at any cost. So the difficulties of the Oregon
trail were invariably exaggerated, and immigration from the states
systematically discouraged. Nevertheless, in the years following
Whitman's arrival, other parties of missionaries and settlers worked
their way into the country, until, in 1842, their number reached about a
hundred and fifty. The Hudson Bay Company realized that neither England
nor America had a clear title to the region, and that its population
must, in the end, determine its nationality. Consequently it bent every
effort to hurry English settlers into the country. In October, 1842,
Whitman was dining with a company of Englishmen at Walla-Walla, when a
messenger arrived with news of the approach of a large body of settlers
from Canada. A shout arose: "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late!
We've got the country!" And Whitman, at a glance, saw through the plan.
Twenty-four hours later, he had started to ride across the continent to
carry the news to Washington. He had caught the import of the news, had
grasped its consequences, and he was determined that Oregon, with its
great forests and broad prairies, its mighty rivers, and its
unparalleled richness, should be saved for the Union. If the Nation only
knew the value of the prize, England would never be permitted to carry
it off. His wife and friends protested against the desperate
venture--four thousand miles on horseback--for it would soon be the dead
of winter, with snow hiding the trail and filling the passes, with
streams ice-blocked and winter-swollen, and last but not least, with the
Blackfoot Indians on the warpath. But he would listen to none of this:
his duty, as he conceived it, lay clear before him; he was determined to
set out at once. Amos Lovejoy volunteered to accompany him, a busy night
was spent in preparation, and the next day they were off.
No diary of that remarkable journey was kept by Dr. Whitman, but most of
its incidents are known. Terribly severe weather was encountered almost
at the start, for ten days they were snowed up in the mountains, and
long before the journey ended, were reduced to rations of dog and mule
meat. But they struggled on, more than once losing the way and giving
themselves up for lost, and on March 3, 1843, just five months from
Walla-Walla, Whitman entered Washington.
His spectacular ride rivetted public attention upon the far western
country, and the information which he gave concerning it opened the
Nation's eyes to its value. When he returned, later in the year, to the
banks of the Columbia, he took back with him a train of two hundred
wagons and a thousand settlers--a veritable army of occupation which the
British could not match. Three years later, so steadily did the tide
continue which Whitman had started, the American population had risen
to over ten thousand, there was never any further real uncertainty as to
whom Oregon belonged, and the treaty of 1846 settled the question for
all time.
The new territory was soon to be the scene of a terrible tragedy. The
white man had brought new diseases into it, measles, fevers, and even,
smallpox; they spread rapidly among the Indians, aggravated by their
imprudence and ignorance of proper treatment, and many died. The Indians
became convinced that the missionaries were to blame, and it is claimed,
too, that the emissaries of the Hudson Bay Company urged them on.
However that may have been, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1847, the
Indians fell upon the missionaries and killed fifteen, of them, among
the dead being Marcus Whitman and his wife. So ended the life of the man
who saved Oregon, and of the woman who was the first of her sex to cross
the continent.
Meanwhile, far to the south, a drama scarcely less thrilling was
enacting, its chief personage being John Augustus Sutter. Sutter was a
Swiss and had received a military education and served in the Swiss
Guard before coming to America in 1834. He settled first at St. Louis
and then at Santa Fé, where he gained considerable experience as a
trader. Finally, in 1838, he decided to cross the Rockies, and after
trading for a time in a little schooner up and down the coast, was
wrecked in San Francisco Bay. He made his way inland, and founded the
first white settlement in the country on the site of what is now
Sacramento. Here, in 1841, he built a fort, having secured a large grant
of land from the Mexican Government, and set up what was really a little
empire in the wilderness, over which he reigned supreme. And here, three
years later, down from the snow-filled and tempest-swept passes of the
Rockies, came a party of starving and frost-bitten scarecrows, the
exploring expedition headed by John Charles Frémont, of whom we shall
speak presently.
The rest of Sutter's history is soon told. In 1848, when Mexico ceded
California to the United States, he was the owner of a vast domain, over
which thousands of head of cattle wandered. A few years later, he was
practically a ruined man--ruined by gold. On the eighteenth day of
January, 1848, one of his men named Marshall, brought to Sutter a lump
of yellow metal which he had uncovered while digging a mill-race. There
could be no doubt of it--it was gold! News of the great discovery soon
got about; there was a great rush for this new Eldorado; Sutter's land
was overrun with gold-seekers, who cared nothing for his rights, and
when he attempted to defend his titles in the courts, they were declared
invalid, and his land was taken from him. To crown his disasters, his
homestead was destroyed by fire; finding himself ruined, without land
and without money, he gave up the struggle in despair and returned east,
passing his last years in poverty in a little town in Pennsylvania.
Frémont, meantime, had done a great work for California. The son of a
Frenchman, showing an early aptitude for mathematics, he had secured an
appointment to the United States engineering corps, and, after various
minor expeditions in which he had acquitted himself well, was put in
charge of an expedition for the exploration of the Rocky Mountains. He
was fortunate at the start in securing the services as guide and
interpreter of that famous hunter and plainsman, Kit Carson, whose life
had been passed on the prairies, who knew more Indians and Indian
dialects than any other white man, and who was, to his generation, what
Davy Crockett was to an earlier one. To Carson a great share of the
expedition's success was no doubt due, and it was so successful that in
the following year, Frémont was leading another over the country between
the Rockies and the Pacific. This one was almost lost in the mountains,
and came near perishing of cold and hunger, but, finally, in March,
1844, managed to struggle through to Sutter's Fort.
Frémont found California in a state of unrest amounting almost to
insurrection against Mexican rule, and as the number of white settlers
increased, this feeling grew, until Mexico, becoming alarmed, sent an
armed force to occupy the country. The show of force was the one thing
needed to fire the magazine; the settlers sprang to arms as one man,
and, under Frémont's leadership, defeated the Mexicans and drove them
southward across the border. Soon afterwards, General Kearny marched in
from the east, from his remarkable and bloodless conquest of New Mexico,
with a force sufficient to render it certain that California would
never again be taken by the Mexicans.
On the fourth of July, 1849, Frémont was chosen governor of the new
territory, and in the following year, arranged the treaty by which
California passed permanently to the United States. The new state was
quick to reward him and sent him to the Senate, where he gained
sufficient prominence to receive the nomination of the anti-slavery
party for the presidency in 1856. He never had any chance of election,
for the reform party had not yet sufficient strength, and was defeated
by Buchanan. He served with some distinction in the Civil War, gaining
considerable notoriety, while in charge of the Western Department in
1861, by issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves of secessionists in
Missouri. The proclamation drew forth some laudatory verses from John G.
Whittier, but was promptly countermanded by President Lincoln. Soon
afterwards, Frémont became involved in personal disputes with his
superior officers, was relieved from active service, and the remainder
of his life was spent in private enterprises.
* * * * *
Fremont's "pathfinding" virtually completed the exploration of the
country. A few secluded nooks and corners became known only as the tide
of immigration crept into them; but in its general features, the great
continent, on whose eastern shore the white man was fighting for a
foothold two centuries before, was known from ocean to ocean. It had
been conquered and occupied by a dominant race, and won for
civilization.
SUMMARY
BOONE, DANIEL. Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, February 11, 1735;
settled at Holman's Ford, North Carolina, 1748; explored Kentucky,
1769-70; founded Boonesborough, 1775; moved to Missouri, 1795; died at
Charette, Missouri, September 26, 1820.
KENTON, SIMON, Born in Fauquier County, Virginia, April 3, 1755; fled to
the West, 1771; ranged western country as a spy, 1776-78; with George
Rogers Clark's expedition, 1778; commanded a battalion of Kentucky
volunteers under Wayne, 1793-94; brigadier-general of Ohio militia,
1805; at battle of the Thames, 1813; died in Logan County, Ohio, April
29, 1836.
CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS. Born in Albemarle County, Virginia, November 19,
1752; settled in Kentucky, 1775; major of militia, 1776; sent as
delegate to Virginia, 1776; second journey to Virginia, 1777; started on
Illinois expedition, June 24, 1778; captured Kaskaskia, July 4, 1778;
captured Vincennes, February 24, 1779; defeated Miami Indians and
destroyed villages, 1782; died near Louisville, Kentucky, February 18,
1818.
PUTNAM, RUFUS. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1738; served in
campaigns against the French, 1757-60; superintended defenses of New
York City, 1776; superintended construction of fortifications at West
Point, 1778; promoted to brigadier-general, January 7, 1783; founded
Marietta, Ohio, April 7, 1788; judge of Supreme Court of Northwest
Territory, 1789; served as brigadier-general under Wayne, 1792-93;
member of Ohio Constitutional Convention, 1803; formed first Bible
society west of the Alleghanies, 1812; died at Marietta, Ohio, May 1,
1824.
LEWIS, MERIWETHER. Born near Charlottesville, Virginia, August 18, 1774;
entered United States army, 1795; promoted captain, 1800; private
secretary to President Jefferson, 1801-03; explored country west of
Mississippi, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1808; killed
himself near Nashville, Tennessee, October 8, 1809.
CLARK, WILLIAM. Born in Virginia, August 1, 1770; removed to Kentucky,
1774; lieutenant of infantry, March 7, 1792; resigned from service,
July, 1796; removed to St. Louis, 1796; accompanied Meriwether Lewis on
western explorations, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1813-21;
superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38; died at St. Louis, September
1, 1838.
PIKE, ZEBULON MONTGOMERY. Born at Lamberton, New Jersey, January 5,
1779; entered United States army, 1799; captain, 1806; conducted
exploring expeditions in Louisiana Territory, 1805-07; major, 1808;
colonel, 1812; brigadier-general, March 12, 1813; died in assault on
York (now Toronto), Canada, April 27, 1813.
HOUSTON, SAMUEL. Born near Lexington, Virginia, March 2, 1793; served in
war of 1812; member of Congress from Tennessee, 1823-27; governor of
Tennessee, 1827-29; defeated Mexicans at San Jacinto, April, 1836;
President of Texas, 1836-38 and 1841-44; United States senator from
Texas, 1845-59; governor of Texas, 1859-61; died at Huntersville, Texas,
July 25, 1863.
CROCKETT, DAVID. Born at Limestone, Tennessee, August 17, 1786; member
of Congress, 1827-33; served in Texan war, 1835-36; killed at The Alamo,
San Antonio de Bexar, Texas, March 6, 1836.
BOWIE, JAMES. Born in Burke County, Georgia, about 1790; notorious in
duel of 1827; went to Texas, 1835; made colonel of Texan army, 1835;
killed at the Alamo, March 6, 1836.
TRAVIS, WILLIAM BARRETT. Born in Conecuh County, Alabama, 1811; admitted
to the bar, 1830; went to Texas, 1832; killed at the Alamo, March 6,
1836.
WHITMAN, MARCUS. Born in Rushville, Ontario County, New York, September
4, 1802; appointed missionary to Oregon, 1834; reached Fort Walla Walla,
September 2, 1836; started on ride across continent, October 3, 1842;
reached Washington, March 3, 1843; took great train of emigrants back to
Oregon, 1843; killed by Indians at Waülatpu, Oregon, November 29, 1847.
SUTTER, JOHN AUGUSTUS. Born in Kandern, Baden, February 15, 1803;
graduated at military college at Berne, Switzerland, 1823; served in
Swiss Guard through Spanish campaign, 1823-24; emigrated to America and
settled at St. Louis, 1834; crossed Rocky Mountains, 1838; settled in
California, 1839; built fort on present site of Sacramento, 1841; gold
discovered on his ranch, January 18, 1848; homestead burned, 1864;
removed to Litiz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1873; died at
Washington, D.C., June 17, 1880.
FRÉMONT, JOHN CHARLES. Born at Savannah, Georgia, January 21, 1813;
explored South Pass, Rocky Mountains, 1842; Pacific Slope, 1843-45;
took part in conquest of California, 1846-47; United States senator from
California, 1850-51; Republican candidate for presidency, 1856; Federal
Commander of Department of the West, 1861; governor of Arizona, 1878-82;
died at New York City, July 13, 1890.
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