sent by the Methodist denomination, and Revs. Samuel Parker
and Marcus Whitman sent by the American Board. The Methodist
mission was at the Dalles, the other at Walla Walla. This was
the first introduction of Protestant missions among the Oregon
tribes.
WITH THE VANGUARD TO OREGON.
"_This army does not retreat!_"
Emigration was to be our army of occupation in Oregon. In this
conviction Mr. Benton was looking about him for the means to set it
in motion, when he chanced to meet Lieutenant John C. Fremont, of the
topographical engineers, who had just returned from surveying the Upper
Mississippi, with Nicollet.[1]
Mr. Benton wanted the Oregon route surveyed in aid of emigration to the
Lower Columbia. The subject led to an intimacy between the two men, in
the course of which Fremont fell in love with Mr. Benton's daughter
Jessie, whom a little later he married, so uniting his fortunes with
the distinguished senator's family, as well as his plans.
It resulted in sending Fremont (1842) to find out whether the South
Pass[2] of the Rocky Mountains, the usual crossing-place, would best
accommodate the coming emigration.
This was the very first step taken by our Government in aid of
emigration to Oregon. Hitherto it had reflected the prevailing belief
in the worthlessness of Oregon for any such purpose. We were, at this
time, thick in the dispute with England about the boundary, and so the
expedition was rather assented to, in deference to Western men, than
authorized as a Government measure.
St. Louis is no longer to be considered as a starting-point for the
mountains. Already this had gone three hundred and fifty miles west.
Fremont's journey therefore began at the little village of Kansas,[3]
now a city larger than any then existing west of the Alleghanies, but
then only a landing for Chouteau's trading-post, ten miles up the Kansas
River. From this place, early in June, Fremont's party set out for the
mountains. Kit Carson of Taos, a famous hunter, was their guide.
For most of the way Fremont's wagons only followed in the track of
those that had gone before them, sometimes with guides, but oftener
without them. The road was plain, and led over ground where vehicles
pass everywhere with ease, except when gullies or streams cross their
path. So Fremont's men journeyed on quite at their ease. At nightfall
the wagons were drawn together in a circle, thus forming an enclosed
and barricaded camp, in which the travellers pitched their tents.
Fremont went up the Kansas valley as far as the Big Blue, crossing
thence over to the Platte, which was now to be his guide for the rest
of his journey.
[Illustration: FORT LARAMIE.]
Now and then Fremont would come across the abandoned camp of some Oregon
emigrants, who thus seemed piloting him on, instead of he them.
At the forks of the Platte the party was divided, Fremont himself going
down the South Fork, to St. Vrain's Fort,[4] while the rest kept on
up the North Fork, to Fort Laramie,[5] where Fremont presently joined
them again.
When firewood grew scarce the men would have to make their fires of
dried buffalo-dung, as the Arabs of the desert do with that of the
camel.
At Laramie, Fremont learned that the mountains beyond swarmed with
Indians, who were out on the war-path, and had declared the road shut to
the whites. But Fremont went on to the South Pass, which was found to
rise by so gradual an ascent that the exploring party hardly knew when
they had reached its summit.
In the valley beyond this pass, the explorers rested. Before turning
back, Fremont himself, with a few others, made their way into the
mountains and up to the summit of the high peak now known by his name,
which rose, the monarch of all in this region, 13,570 feet above the
sea. In this way the three greatest landmarks of the Rockies make
memorable the names of three explorers, Pike, Long and Fremont.
While Fremont did little that had not been done already, his careful
record of distances, fords, camping-places where grass, wood and water
could be had, was just what outgoing emigrants needed to know, and so,
immediately, they began to go forward with confidence. It was besides a
token that Government had taken hold of the matter at last, and would,
it was thought, now foster and protect the emigration.
Fremont said it would be necessary to have permanent military posts at
Laramie, St. Vrain's and Bent's Fort, to keep the Indians from killing
our people, as they passed through their country. Until this should
be done the road could not be called safe. But he did the most for
emigration in correcting the popular error about the barrenness of the
great plains, to which Major Long gave currency, and which everybody to
this time had believed. He showed that where the buffalo roamed in such
vast herds, and found food, could not be a desert, for the wild grass
they lived on would certainly keep the emigrants' cattle, while no man
need starve in the midst of such abundance of wild game as constantly
roved these plains before their eyes. It was much to have all these
things set down in an orderly manner by some friendly hand, and with the
seal of Government authority. Fremont did this as it had not been done
before.
Fremont's first expedition met with such favor that he was immediately
sent on a second (1843), and much more important one. This time he was
to begin at the South Pass, and go through the Lower Columbia country.
He was well on his way when the War Department suddenly recalled him to
Washington, but Mrs. Fremont took the responsibility of suppressing the
order until the explorer was too far off for it to reach him.
[Illustration: AMOLE, OR SOAP-PLANT OF THE PLAINS.]
At the moment of starting from the Missouri, Fremont met a large
party of emigrants who were going to California under the lead of J.
B. Childs. This party took with them that modern civilizing engine,
a saw-mill, ready to be put up on reaching the Sacramento. As Fremont
moved west, trains of wagons were seldom out of sight. The great march
had begun in earnest.
Fremont decided to explore the mountains in the neighborhood of St.
Vrain's Fort to see if they would afford a practicable passage on
a more direct east-and-west line than the old way up the Platte. He
therefore struck into them, north of Long's Peak, and by following
the Cache-à-la-Poudre[6] River came out on the other side, where his
journey of the previous year had ended. From here he passed on into the
valley of Bear River, and so on to the Great Salt Lake,[7] which he
also explored.
From Salt Lake, Fremont went north to the Hudson's Bay Company's post
at Fort Hall, striking the Oregon Trail again by the way. The explorers
divided here, part going back to the States and part down the river with
Fremont. Fort Boisé[8] they found was only an ordinary dwelling-house.
Going on they next came to the mission Dr. Whitman had founded among the
Nez Percés, near Walla Walla. It then consisted of but one adobe house,
though more were going up around it. Its cornfields and potato-patches,
which Dr. Whitman had cleared and planted, were a pleasant sight to men
worn down with travel and fasting, but not more so to Fremont than the
little colony of emigrants now collected here after their long march of
two thousand miles,—men, women and children,—all in robust health, and
all regaling themselves with Dr. Whitman's potatoes.
Fort Walla Walla marks an important strategic point in the early
movement of emigration to Oregon. Situated only nine miles below the
junction of the two great branches of the Columbia, it was thus also
planted at the meeting of two great trans-continental routes of travel,
one coming from the United States by way of the South Pass, the other
from Hudson's Bay by way of Lake Athabasca and the mountain passes near
it. For such of the emigrants as chose to go on by water, Walla Walla
was the end of their long overland journey. Fremont found a large body
of emigrants, under the lead of Mr. Jesse Applegate, building bateaux
here to go down the river in.
But the British trading-post lay on a sandy plain, where scarce a blade
of grass or a shrub grew. Dr. Whitman had chosen a pleasant and fertile
nook, not far from the fort, where emigrants might recruit themselves
among friends; for at the fort itself every effort was made to turn
them back or send them into California. Thus everywhere, except at the
missions, emigrants found this Oregon Trail a hard road to travel, for
our Government left them to the mercy of the Hudson's Bay Company's
agents, who hindered them in every way, or failing to stop them, charged
exorbitantly for every thing furnished.
Finding emigration would increase in spite of them, this company chose
to save itself by bringing in British emigrants from the Red River of
the North. It meant to occupy the best lands, as it had the best trading
sites. The first colony was on the Upper Columbia when Dr. Whitman heard
of it. If Oregon were to be saved to us, there was not a moment to lose.
He instantly started for Washington with the news of this threatened
invasion.
Dr. Whitman's ride to St. Louis, by way of Santa Fé, will ever be
memorable in the annals of Oregon, as well for its perils as for what
it accomplished. He found our Government had just signed the Ashburton
Treaty,[9] by which Oregon was still left out in the cold, without
a boundary or the protection of our laws or flag. His great energy,
however, enabled him to get together on the frontier an emigrants' train
of two hundred wagons with which, as the leader of an army, he started
back in the spring. It was these people whom Fremont had seen setting
out, had tracked a thousand miles on their way, and finally come up with
at their journey's end. As the Government would not lead, it now had to
follow the people's grand march for the Pacific.
With fresh horses Fremont pushed on down the left bank of the Columbia
to the Dalles, Mount Hood towering in the distance. Here the whole river
rushes through a long and narrow trough of rock, with so swift a tide
that in the season of high water boats cannot stem it.
A few miles below, Fremont emerged from the sterile and inhospitable
region through which he had been travelling, upon a green spot in the
valley, where, among groves of noble forest-trees, the Methodist mission
had reared its two dwellings, its one schoolhouse, and its barn, cleared
ground for planting, gathered to it a colony of Indians for instruction
in the ways and religion of the whites, and so dropped in the wilderness
the seed of Christian civilization.
From the Dalles, Fremont sailed down the river to Vancouver, finding
here still more emigrants, most of whom were waiting to cross over into
the fertile Willamette Valley, which was then their land of promise.
At this point Fremont's journey ended. His explorations had now
connected with surveys conducted by Captain Wilkes from the Pacific
coast. Fremont therefore turned homeward again, taking with him the most
exact knowledge of the country traversed, so far obtained.
FOOTNOTES
[1] J. NICOLAS NICOLLET had first established the sources of
the Mississippi. He had returned from exploring a considerable
part of Minnesota and Dakota.
[2] THE SOUTH PASS cuts the south part of the Wind River
chain.
[3] KANSAS CITY took its name thus early from its
neighborhood to the Kansas River (though in Missouri), which
has led many to suppose it is in Kansas.
[4] ST. VRAIN'S FORT, a fur-trading post, in communication
with Santa Fé by way of Taos. Under the mountains, seventeen
miles east of Long's Peak.
[5] FORT LARAMIE, first called Fort William (Sublette),
built by Robert Campbell about 1835, since named from the
Laramie Fork, near which it stands. Its walls were ranges
of adobe houses, in the Spanish style, with bastions at the
corners. The house tops or roof formed a banquette, on which,
again, was set a row of palisades.
BENT'S FORT, on the Arkansas, established by Charles Bent,
was the third of these remote posts, for which the above
description will suffice.
[6] CACHE-À-LA-POUDRE. French, hiding-place for the powder.
[7] SALT LAKE was known to early Spanish explorers (see
p. 37); had been often visited, but not explored. Ashley
of Missouri, who led a party of trappers to the heads of
the Colorado in 1823, built the next year a trading-house
near Salt Lake. See also Bonneville's account. Fremont's
explorations disclosed the existence of a great interior
basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, whose waters fall
into Utah and Salt Lakes instead of reaching the Columbia or
Colorado.
[8] FORT BOISÉ. French, meaning wooded.
[9] ASHBURTON TREATY settled our north-eastern boundary with
England, and carried the parallel 49° to the Rocky Mountains,
but not beyond. In 1846 a second treaty carried it to the
Pacific.
TEXAS ADMITTED.
Mexico threw off her allegiance to Spain in 1821. Not till then did the
Spaniards in Mexico abandon their policy of excluding all foreigners
from their soil; but the example set them by the United States, with the
feeling born of freedom from the Spanish yoke, brought about a change of
policy in this regard, and Americans were invited to settle in Texas on
the most generous terms. No stronger instance is found of the influence
exerted by free institutions from without upon the hereditary prejudices
of a whole people. It confessed a failure nobly.
When Texas was thus thrown open to emigration her settlements were few
and scattered. Habitual timidity or indolence had restricted them to
the neighborhood of fortified posts or missions.[1] The chief ones
were San Antonio, Goliad, Refugio and Nacodoches, and around these small
parcels of land had been brought under cultivation. But the missions
themselves, which had formed the groundwork of Spanish occupation, were
fallen into irremediable decay. The Indians who had been gathered into
them by the monks had dwindled away until the missions were mostly
depopulated. Here, as in California, experience had shown that the
natives could not exist under the shadow of the whites. Civilization
wasted them away.
[Illustration: SAN ANTONIO.]
To induce settlers to come into Texas, they were offered exemption from
all taxes for the space of ten years.
Among the first to avail themselves of these offers was Stephen F.
Austin, of Durham, Conn. Acting under a grant of lands made by the
Mexican authorities to his father, Austin began a settlement on the
Brazos in 1821, which later became the capital of the State, of which
he was the foremost founder.
Emigration poured in from the Lower Mississippi Valley,—from Louisiana,
Arkansas, and Mississippi,—and even the older States contributed to
swell the tide. The law forbade slavery, but many brought negroes with
them and held them in spite of it. Many were adventurers who held law
in little estimation, or found in Texas a convenient asylum from the
pursuit of their creditors. Others were poor people whom the liberal
offers of the Mexican Government lured from their homes in the hope of
bettering their condition. Though sound at the heart, in no long time
Texas had won for itself an unenviable name throughout the Union as the
chosen home of lawless men, through its worst elements rising to the
top.
Our Government had long coveted Texas, and had made two unsuccessful
attempts to buy it of Mexico, considering it as an integral part of Old
Louisiana, to which we had a sort of right by the prior discovery of La
Salle.
Texas, which the Spaniards had weakly settled and feebly governed,
declared herself independent of Mexico in 1835. When this revolt took
place there were more Americans than people of Spanish blood in Texas,
so bringing over to the Texan cause the warm sympathy and active aid of
a large part of the American people.
The conflict was short and bloody. After meeting reverses at Goliad
and the Alamo,[2] the Texans won their independence by defeating the
Mexican army at San Jacinto,[3] in 1836. General Samuel Houston, the
Texan leader, was subsequently made president of the Republic of Texas,
which then set up for itself upon the model of the United States.
In no long time Texas applied for admission to the Union. Too weak to
maintain herself as an independent power, her interests were now at one
with the South. Her soil, climate, and productions were much the same.
Her population was largely derived from that source, and owned to like
feelings and prejudices with their brethren of that section. The South,
therefore, favored the admission of Texas, not only for these general
reasons, but because it would add a slave State to the Union, as, since
Missouri and Arkansas had come in, there was no more territory, except
Florida, open to slavery under the interdicted line of 36° 30´.
[Illustration: THE ALAMO.]
For this very reason the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North
strongly opposed the admission of Texas. It was further opposed on
the ground that as Mexico had not yet acknowledged the independence of
Texas, so unfriendly an act toward Mexico would lead to war. Moreover,
Texas was of such vast extent, compared with other States, that the bill
for its admission allowed the making of four more new States out of it,
so opening the door of the Union not to one, but several slave States
in the future.
[Illustration: SAMUEL HOUSTON.]
But the North and South did not separate themselves into two distinct
political factions, or their citizens stand wholly together, on this
Texas question. With many it was simply a question of national policy or
expediency. It was championed by the Democratic party, which believed
in the "manifest destiny" of the Union to control the whole continent,
while the Whig party was conservative, and its opposition was based on
the grounds already given, which many thought equivalent to national
dishonor. Southern men were in both parties, and Northern men in both.
Each party nominated a Southern man for President upon this issue. This
question was carried to the people in the next national election (1844),
when Clay, the Whig candidate, and opponent of annexation, was defeated,
and Polk,[4] the Democratic candidate and its advocate, elected. The
Congress therefore admitted Texas to the Union, Dec. 29, 1845.
FOOTNOTES
[1] TEXAS MISSIONS were established by Franciscan monks
as follows: In 1690, that of San Francisco on the Lavaca
River, at Fort St. Louis (see "La Salle's Colony"); St. John
the Baptist was founded on the Rio Grande, same year. In
1714, those of San Bernard and Adaes, fifteen miles west of
Natchitoches. In 1715, Mission Dolores, west of the Sabine;
one near Nacodoches, and another near the present town of
San Augustine. The mission and fortress of San Antonio de
Valero was soon after founded near the present city of San
Antonio. In 1721, one was located at the crossing of the
Neches; another on the Bay of St. Bernard, called Our Lady
of Loretto; and a third, called La Bahia (the Bay), at the
lower crossing of River San Antonio. In 1730, the Church of
San Fernando, San Antonio, was founded; in 1731, the mission
of La Purissima Concepcion, near the same place. All these
missions were secularized in the latter part of the eighteenth
century.—_Baker, Texas Scrap-Book._
[2] THE ALAMO (Spanish for poplar-tree), was a chapel used
in connection with the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Here one
hundred and forty-four Texan revolutionists, under W. Barrett
Travis, were besieged (1836) by superior Mexican forces under
Santa Anna. The insurgents held out ten days, when the Alamo
was stormed, and all of its brave defenders put to death.
David Crockett of Tennessee was among the slain. The event has
been commemorated by a shaft bearing the legend: "Thermopylæ
had its messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none."
[3] SAN JACINTO is a small village near Galveston Bay. The
decisive battle was fought April 21, 1836.
[4] JAMES K. POLK, of Tennessee. His nomination was the
first public news ever sent by telegraph in the United States.
Morse's new line was just completed between Baltimore and
Washington.
INTERLUDE.—NEW POLITICAL IDEAS.
"_Truth crushed to earth will rise again._"—_Bryant._
As yet any direct attack upon slavery was unpopular in the North. The
two antagonistic ideas of limiting or extending it were now running a
neck-and-neck race for controlling power; but attachment for the Union
itself was stronger at the North than at the South, whose people had
been taught to consider it a compact to be kept only during the pleasure
of the several States, or so long as their interests were promoted
by it. This doctrine was never taught in the North. The prevailing
sentiment there was attachment for the Union, "one and indivisible;"
while the South, under different teachings, was weighing its worth in
the balance with slavery.
One new and potent element, however, had come into the controversy.
At the North a little band of men pledged to work for the immediate
emancipation of the slave, and deeply in earnest, had begun a warfare
that ere long was to shake the Union to its foundations. Though few in
numbers, they were both hated and feared. At the North they were called
fanatics, at the South abolitionists. At the North they were mobbed,
at the South a reward offered for their heads. The North apologized for
them, the South demanded they should be put down. But though they were
thus held up to public detestation, as enemies of the Union, by both
sections, these men felt that they stood for a great and holy principle,
which surely must triumph in the end. It made them strong. It made them
respected. They were led by William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts,
whose name is now spoken in the land with as much honor as it once was
with bitter scorn and hatred.
Slavery was to be openly attacked through the printing-press, the
platform, and the right of petition. The two first agencies would reach
the people, and the last their representatives in Congress. Garrison
declared in his paper "The Liberator," that he would be heard; and he
was heard, though not till he had been dragged through the streets of
Boston with a halter round his neck. In Congress, as the outcome of
this agitation, John Quincy Adams presented many petitions, praying for
the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the nation's capital,
the District of Columbia. He was assailed with a storm of indignation.
Congress would not receive the petitions. They continued to come in
by the hundred, some bearing thousands of names. All were refused
a hearing. The venerable Adams,—"the Old Man Eloquent,"—then in his
sixty-fifth year, was declared an incendiary unworthy of a seat in the
Capitol, and a resolution to expel him was even introduced; but his
brave stand for the right of petition made a hundred friends for the
anti-slavery cause where one had been before.
IOWA ADMITTED.
Iowa was the first free State to be formed out of the Louisiana
purchase. She had been admitted with Florida in 1845, but her people,
being dissatisfied with the boundaries Congress had prescribed, refused
to ratify the Act, so delaying her admission until the next year 1846.
THE WAR WITH MEXICO.
"_You can do any thing with a bayonet but sit on it._"
Those who said war would follow the annexation of Texas were right.
It was soon seen that Mexico would not sit down quietly under her loss
of territory, or lightly pass over the affront to her national honor.
They who reckoned on her doing so forgot that if the Spanish race is
indolent, it is also brave.
When nations are resolved on war a pretext is soon found for it.
Texas had brought with her into the Union a dispute with Mexico about
her western boundary. She claimed to the Rio Grande, while Mexico
claimed to the Nueces,[1] thus leaving in question a tract one hundred
miles wide, extending between these rivers.
It is true the tract itself was worth little to either party, it being
mostly barren prairie land, but in a military view the Rio Grande
offered much the strongest line of defence, and for this reason Texas
wanted her boundary fixed on it.
[Illustration: MEXICAN CART.]