The United States Borders the Wilderness—American Ships to the Pacific Coast—The North-West Company—Mackenzie Spans the Continent—Meares and Vancouver Baffled by Breakers—Captain Robert Gray, Victor—The Columbia at Last—The Louisiana Purchase a Pig in a Poke, and a Boundless Wilderness—Claims All Round to the Centre—The Perfidious Napoleon—The Spanish Sentinel Steps Back.

Spain had good reason to turn a watchful eye on the people of the Atlantic seaboard. No sooner was the war for independence triumphantly concluded than they began to look intently toward the vast Wilderness that made up the bulk of the continent, a region so little understood, and the object of so many uncertain, conflicting, and ill-founded claims. Russia was beginning to assert claims from the north-west, Spain had acquired the rights and claims of France, and, with her own, wanted everything west of the Mississippi, while Great Britain advanced from the north-east. The middle road was open to the Americans. The new nation managed its affairs with great skill. Though Spain and France combined to obstruct the westward movement of the young country, and particularly to prevent it from securing any territory whatever near the mouth of the Mississippi, so as to shut it off from free navigation, the treaty of 1783 gave the United States all the country east of the great river and south of the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Yazoo. Notwithstanding opposition, the new Government positively held a huge area, and was next-door neighbour to the delta of the Mississippi as well as upon the threshold of the great undefined Wilderness, known as Louisiana, bordering the Father of Waters on the west.

This immense extension of their domain gave a fresh impulse to American exploration and settlement. They loved the wild woods and came over the crest of the Alleghanies in large numbers, erecting their log dwellings here, there, and everywhere, till it was not long before the fertile region between the Mississippi and the eastern mountains was filling with settlements.

Many of these people were trappers and hunters. The fur trade was yearly becoming a greater business; hundreds, despite danger or privation, were eager to pursue wherever it might lead. The pressure of civilised life with its rigid financial demands was, and is, so intense that whenever a channel of escape opens, the flow through it is as natural as that of water through a puncture in the bottom of the kettle. There were large profits to be made in furs, though it was usually the organiser and business manager who reaped the full rewards. The Pacific coast offered in this line brilliant prospects, and American vessels pushed around Cape Horn and sailed up the western shores to secure a share of the trade of that region. Spain, Great Britain, and Russia were also active there in the fur business, as well as in that of "claiming." The Americans then had no claims in that quarter.

The year following the agreement on the western boundary of the United States, 1784, found a number of Montreal merchants organising with the determination of participating in the rich returns of the fur trade; a business where a penny whistle was traded for a gold dollar. These men of Montreal formed an association which they entitled the North-west Company, consolidating with it a number of small rival concerns which for some years had been operating separately, and often disastrously, for they were frequently at war. The North-west Company intended to occupy the country beyond Lake Superior and oppose there the increasing power of the Hudson Bay Company. One of the men taken into this partnership was Alexander Mackenzie. He was the man for the hour. He proceeded to the far shores of the Saskatchewan, where posts had been established beyond those of the Verendryes and earlier Frenchmen, whose former presence was now marked only by the names they had applied to the natural features of the country. But though the Verendryes were forgotten, the voyageur was still a chief factor in travel and in trapping operations, and the chansons yet echoed through the forests of that wild landscape, where, in the words of Butler,[57]

This was the country the trapper first entered on his way to the Wilderness we are specially considering; here where the voyageur received some of the experience that made him so valuable in this kind of work, the voyageur whom Harmon elaborately describes[58] as lively, fickle, cheerful in privation, talkative, thoughtless, unrevengeful, not brave, deceitful, smooth, polite, dishonest, unveracious, generous, ungrateful, obedient, and unfaithful. Yet he was a man who served the time admirably, who braved many dangers, whose labours helped more than those of any other single element to open the pathways of the Wilderness.

By 1778 the British had founded a trading-post within forty miles of Lake Athabasca, and ten years after one on the shore of Lake Athabasca itself. This was named Fort Chepewyan, and historically is of great prominence, as it was the headquarters of Alexander Mackenzie for eight years, and was his starting-point on both the expeditions which are recorded among the remarkable exploits of the modern world.[59] The North-west Company was making systematic war upon the Hudson Bay Company, and in order to gain advantage for his association Mackenzie undertook the two expeditions, which practically solved the geographical problems of the North-west and determined the impossibility of the existence of any north-west passage. In 1789 he descended, as far as its discharge into the Arctic Ocean, the river that now bears his name, but he was not the first to reach the Arctic overland, for Samuel Hearne, of the Hudson Bay Company, eighteen years before, had touched the shore some miles east of the Mackenzie, having first discovered Great Slave Lake.

These journeys proved beyond question that the Straits of Anian, which had prominently figured on maps up to this time, were a myth. Cook, who had been along the north-west coast, had expressed strong doubts of the existence of any waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific. Mackenzie's other journey was of equal, if not greater, importance. It was in 1793 that the start was made, and he followed up Peace River till, by means of the chasm it cleaves in the great chain to free its waters for their descent to the Mackenzie, he passed entirely through the Rocky Mountains, and with admirable determination and perseverance reached the shore of the Pacific just north of Queen Charlotte Sound, completing the first traverse on record of the North American continent above Mexico. One river, that he followed down for some distance, which was called by the natives Tacoutche Tesse, he thought was the head of the Columbia, which had obtained this name the year before. The Tacoutche Tesse, however, was not the Columbia, as was some years later discovered, but the river now called Fraser.

Navigators had been at work minutely examining the Pacific coast of the Wilderness,—La Perouse, Dixon, Meares, and others. Although Meares, for Great Britain, in 1788, searched for the Rio de San Roque as laid down on Spanish charts, according to Heceta's observations, and although he actually entered the bay where it disembogues, he departed without finding it, because the breakers were clearly seen by him to extend entirely across the shore end of the inlet. In consequence he applied to the place the title of Deception Bay, and the prominent headland just north of it he called by the name it still bears, Cape Disappointment. He declared positively that there was no such river as the San Roque, which illustrates the ease with which mistakes are made, even by men of intelligence. It was a fortunate error for the United States, as now neither the Spanish, who were still clinging to the northern coasts, nor the British, who were opposing them, had obtained any right of discovery in this great river. No captain as yet had possessed the insight, or the courage, or the resources, to dash through the formidable line of fierce combers and open the mouth of the Columbia to the world. But its day was soon to arrive. The same year that Meares in disappointment turned his prow away from the entrance, an American merchant captain, Robert Gray, of Boston, in his trading vessel, the Washington, had nearly foundered in trying to force the passage. After this Gray exchanged ships with Kendrick, a captain in the service of the same company, and in the Columbia made a trip to China and then home. Kendrick, meanwhile, with the Washington, put into the Strait of Fuca and pretty well examined this body of water, which Gray before him had entered to the distance of fifty miles.

After a while, 1792, Gray came back to the north-west coast in the Columbia and met at the Strait of Fuca the great English navigator Vancouver, who had been sent to make charts of the coast, a work which he carried out so admirably that it has been the basis for all charts ever since. Vancouver had already been in Deception Bay before meeting Gray, so that when the latter described the place he had tried to enter with the Washington, and stated his belief in the existence of a large river there, a belief perhaps increased by the statements of Jonathan Carver, he refused to believe. Vancouver had seen the breakers extending "two or three miles into the ocean," and though he noticed that the sea there changed to river water he thought it only from some minor stream, and did not consider the subject of any importance. So, like Meares, he had turned his back upon it, and now he went on to survey Puget Sound. Gray, however, was of a different mind, and he determined to return to the place to explore. It almost seems, indeed, that Fate had appointed this discovery for him. When he arrived there he did not hesitate, but prepared his ship for the passage, and at eight a.m. May 11, 1792, he ran in "east-north-east between the breakers, having from five to seven fathoms of water. When we were over the bar we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered." Thus, in spite of everything and with no effort or desire to do it, the United States had acquired by right of discovery a claim on this far-away country. The matter, which at the time was little thought of, proved afterwards of considerable value. When Gray sailed out of the river, which he was able to accomplish only after several attempts, he gave to the river the name of his ship—Columbia. For some years the name of Oregon, by which Carver had described it as he heard the account from the natives, was also applied, as well as the other title—River of the West,—but all at length gave way before the name bestowed by the discoverer, whose action in running the bar was all the more praiseworthy since other skilful navigators had failed to fathom the secret of Deception Bay.

The following year Mackenzie arrived on the coast, just after Vancouver had passed north in pursuing his excellent survey. Thus little by little the white man was permanently closing in on the great central Wilderness. In 1792-93 Todd, a Scotchman with a special grant from Spain, made several journeys from St. Louis up the Missouri, and Fidler, in the employ of the North-west Company, travelled from Fort Buckingham on the Saskatchewan south-west to the foot of the Rocky Mountains and down through regions drained by the Missouri. Dorion, afterwards with Lewis and Clark, had lived with the Sioux since 1784 or earlier, and there were many others like him.

Trading-posts were established here and there on the Missouri; Pawnee House,[60] or Trudeau's House in 1796-97, near the site of Fort Randall, was occupied by that trader, and a year or two earlier Fort Charles was built six miles below Omaha. Trappers and traders were constantly pushing out into the Wilderness. St. Louis was developing from a mere village to a town of importance, and some of the characters intimately identified, a few years later, with the development of the region were already there, notably the famous Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard, shrewd, daring, and intelligent, speaking with difficulty French and English, who made many enemies, and who feared no man. His name is a part of the history of the breaking of the Wilderness. As the eighteenth century drew to a close this Wilderness had been completely circumnavigated. Two and a half centuries had now gone by since Coronado made his celebrated journey. Ships had passed along the western confines; trappers had penetrated here and there across the eastern part; Escalante had made his entrance north almost to Salt Lake; yet the Wilderness remained the Wilderness still.

Events were now to occur that would affect the Wilderness more than anything which up to this time had taken place. Spain in 1800 secretly transferred to France the great region called Louisiana, the Spaniards to remain in possession till such time as it pleased France to assume direction of the territory. About two years passed before this transfer was published, and meanwhile, though Napoleon had contemplated putting a large army there, circumstances interfered. Having had an agreement with the United States by which the latter were permitted to use New Orleans as a port of deposit, Spain reversed this, and the relations between these countries were thenceforward not the pleasantest. Spain declined to renew this privilege on the ground that the country belonged to France and she had no right to do it. Thereupon the American Government endeavoured to purchase the lands on the east at the mouth of the river, West Florida and New Orleans, and Napoleon, evidently discovering that he would be unable to carry out his plans with regard to Louisiana, and notwithstanding his solemn pledge to Spain that he would never part with it, offered the whole to the United States. The offer was accepted, and the sum of fifteen million dollars was finally agreed upon as the purchase price. Communication was slow; events were rapid; so that Lussat, who had been sent as French Governor to New Orleans, to accept the territory from Spain, received instructions that, instead of holding it, he was to transfer it to the Americans. No one was more surprised or chagrined than the French representative. Spain protested that the transfer was not in conformity with the French agreement, but it availed nothing, and the Spaniards at first were inclined to refuse to give up the land. But on the 30th of November, 1803, Louisiana was formally surrendered by Spain to France and twenty days later France gave possession to the United States. Next to the Revolutionary War, the acquisition of this vast region was the most important occurrence in the life of the Americans. Yet it was a veritable "pig in a poke" which they bought, for not only were its bounds undetermined, except on the east, where it met the Republic, but the character of the domain, for the most part, as is evident from the preceding pages, was entirely unknown. Yet by this purchase the mouth of the Mississippi was permanently secured to the American people, and this was an object of paramount importance; the nature of the Wilderness was secondary. On the part of the Americans there had been a growing impulse to investigate the great wild realm that so invitingly rolled away from their very feet, and had the purchase not been consummated it is probable they would nevertheless soon have passed over into the forbidden land.[61] A vast amount of future difficulty and war, for it takes as little to start a disastrous war among the whites as ever it did among the Amerinds, was permanently avoided.

The acquisition, indeed, was a boundless area. The very first thing to be accomplished was to gain some knowledge of its limits and possibilities. As for limits, it had, as noted, but vague ones, yet on all maps showing the territory purchased at this time the lines delimiting it, which were arrived at only after years of diplomatic discussion, are presented as though they had existence at the moment of purchase and had been measured off like a town lot. As originally ceded by France to Spain and again by Spain to France there were no defined limits whatever other than the Mississippi River on the east, though France claimed to the Rio Grande. The United States acquired the same hazy demarkation. The map on page 154 shows in the dotted portion what the claims were at the time of purchase, in 1803, as well as the defined boundaries that eventually were established.

The Spanish claims ran up the western side of the continent indefinitely, and thence eastward indefinitely. Great Britain considered as belonging to her everything west, south, and north of Winnipeg Lake indefinitely, and everything east, north, and south from Nootka Sound indefinitely. Russia thought that the continent from Bering Strait down to the Columbia River and eastward indefinitely belonged to her, while the United States on their part believed the Louisiana they had taken off Napoleon's hands extended to the Rio Grande on the south-west; and on the west and north-west, and on the north as well, to an undefined distance. The task was now to fit these indefinite bounds against each other, and it was a task that consumed years of diplomacy. In pursuance of this design, President Jefferson projected an expedition which was to traverse the continent where no white men as yet had penetrated—the region of the Columbia. It was destined to take a first place among the explorations of the New World, and to weld into one the names of two admirable men, and this indelibly into the fabric of American history.

The Spanish sentinel had challenged, but the challenge was unheeded. He was obliged to step back; and other backward steps were in store for him.