Flash-Pack » Lewis and Clark

Chief Joseph’s Long March

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:56:13 +0000

For nearly 70 years, the Nez Perce Indians were friendly to whites, beginning when Lewis and Clark passed through their Northwestern territory en route to the Pacific. But a series of gold rushes in the 1860s led to a treaty dispossessing them of their lands in Oregon’s Wallowa valley and elsewhere and confining them to a reservation in Lapwai, Idaho. In 1877, troops were sent to drive the “non treaty” Nez Perce from the Wallowa area to Lapwai. But the Indians, numbering about 200 warriors and 300 non-combatants under the leadership of Chief Joseph, fled, leading the Army on a 1,300 mile zigzag chase through Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Though heavily outnumbered, Joseph’s band fought off their pursuers several times. Refused sanctuary by other tribes, they headed for safety in Canada but were cornered — cold, starving and exhausted — 30 miles from the border. There, Chief Joseph made his eloquent surrender speech: “It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death… Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” Despite a promise they might go to their reservation, Joseph’s band was shipped to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), where many sickened and died. In 1885 some were allowed back to Lapwai, but Joseph, still considered a dangerous influence, was sent to a reservation in Washington state, where he died in 1904.

The Explorers’ Frontier

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:16:16 +0000

In the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition a succession of explorers, mainly U.S. army officers, surveyed and mapped large tracts of the Louisiana Purchase, the Rockies and the Pacific coast. The earliest was Zebulon M. Pike, whose first expedition (1805) failed to discover the source of the Mississippi, but whose second (1806-1807) took him to Colorado and to the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers and across the closed border of the Spanish Southwest. Pike’s account of his travels did much to popularize the myth of the Plains as the “Great American Desert,” an impression confirmed by explorer Stephen H. Long after his expedition to the Rockies in 1820. But by the 1840s, a new sentiment had taken hold — that it was America’s “manifest destiny” to expand across the continent. The spirit of expansionism was fueled by the efforts of John C. Fremont who, guided by mountain-man Kit Carson, led expeditions to the Rockies (1842); over the Oregon Trail (1844); and into California (1845-1846), where he joined American settlers in the Bear Flag revolt against Mexican rule. Though Fremont discovered no new routes, and thus did not technically merit the nickname the “Pathfinder,” he gathered important geographical data and ignited popular interest in western settlement with his glowing reports.

The Fur Trade

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:11:20 +0000

Fueled by European demand for beaver hats, the North American trade that began with the French and English colonization of eastern North America moved West as supplies were trapped out. By the late 18th century, the North American trade was controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company of Britain and the North West Company of Canada, but these were soon challenged by American entrepreneurs, newly awakened to the continent’s natural abundance by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Over the next 40 years, American companies like John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, Manuel Lisa’s Missouri Fur Company and William H. Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company, dominated the fur trade of the trans-Mississippi region. They built forts along the rivers of the West — the Missouri, Yellowstone, Green, Snake, Laramie and Platte — the forts serving as supply points and trading posts where trappers, traders and Indians engaged in commerce. The fur trade dwindled in the 1840s when silk “top” hats came into fashion, but the forts continued to play a vital role in service of emigrants traveling West and the U.S. military.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806)

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:01:37 +0000

Although Lewis and Clark were not the first whites to cross the North American continent — Scottish fur trader Alexander Mackenzie traversed Canada a decade earlier — their epic journey ranks high in the annals of exploration. Even before the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson was planning a transcontinental expedition and in 1804, he commissioned his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, and another young army officer, William Clark, to explore the vast domain. The Lewis and Clark party included Clark’s slave York and later on, Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian wife of the group’s interpreter. Setting out from St. Louis in May, 1804, they followed the Missouri to its headwaters, crossed the Continental Divide with Shoshone help secured by Sacagawea, and descended the Snake and Columbia rivers to reach the Pacific in November, 1805. Heading east soon afterward, the explorers were back in St. Louis in September, 1806, having traveled more than 8,000 miles. They brought back maps, drawings, botanical and geological specimens and data on the Indians. Though unsuccessful in its search for a water route to the Pacific, the expedition strengthened American claims to the Oregon Territory and stimulated the fur trade and Western Settlement.