WESTWARD EXPANSION:
The “Manifest Destiny
of Americans?”
Manifest Destiny – a phrase used by leaders and
politicians in the 1840s to explain continental expansion by the
United States – revitalized a sense of "mission"
or national destiny for Americans.
The people of the United States felt it was their mission to extend
the "boundaries of freedom" to others by imparting their
idealism and belief in democratic institutions to those who were capable of self-government.
But there were other forces and political agendas at work as well.
As the population of the original thirteen Colonies grew
and the economy developed, the desire and attempts to expand
into new land increased.
After the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, ample land seemed available for the taking…
For many colonists, land represented potential
income, wealth, self-sufficiency and freedom.
Even before Lewis and Clark
finished their epic journey
to the Pacific, mountain men were traveling
up and down the Missouri River in search of fur.
They were a rough-hewn
bunch of adventurous
entrepreneurs--that came to
be called "Mountain
Men."
These solitary fur-trappers lived thousands of miles from civilization.
Most had no home, no money and
no possessions—except what they
could carry on their backs.
They lived completely off the land
In 1806, Zebulon Pike was sent west to explore the great plains and Rocky Mountains.
Unfortunately, in his reports Pike referred to the plains as
"the Great American Desert," a name that stuck.
Even though much of the region is nothing like a desert, people back east
conjured up images of sand dunes and cactus.
No emigrant in their right mind would try to cross a severe wasteland--and so the big
move west was delayed.
Pike's opinion that the west
was a vast desert was
confirmed by Maj. Steven
Long, who led an expedition west in 1819.
Long and his men passed through what
is now Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. He concluded that the entire region was unfit for human
habitation.
The second major westward expedition was was backed by the world's richest man--John Jacob Astor.
Astor had read about Lewis and Clark's journey and by 1810 he saw an opportunity to make money.
His plan was to set up a fur-trading enterprise at the mouth of the Columbia River. Just one problem--how to
get his men across the uncharted American West.
Robert Stuart led the Astor expedition.
Along the way, Stuart made an incredible discovery--he found a
20-mile wide gap in the Rocky Mountains--the one passage where wagons could get through.
Named South Pass, this find would become the key to western migration.
Explorer John Fremont became one of America's biggest heroes because of his
journeys west.
(He got the job largely because his
wife's father was the powerful Missouri
senator Thomas Hart Benton.)
Benton believed America had an innate right to all the lands of the west, an idea that
came to be called "Manifest Destiny." And so Fremont was under strict orders to make the west seem
attractive--worth settling…
Even though the reports bear his name, Fremont
didn't write them. He gave up and left the
work to his wife--the intelligent and articulate Jesse Benton Fremont.
It was she—as much as anyone—who lit the spark of
America's big move west.
In addition, Horace Greeley, founding editor of the
New York Tribune, one of the first
"penny daily" newspapers, influenced his nearly
one million readers throughout the United States with his ideas about the
lure and value of westward expansion…
In the 1840s, he urged an entire generation to "Go West, young man!"
“Do not lounge in the cities! There is room and health
in the country, away from the crowds of idlers and imbeciles.
Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory.”
(New York Tribune, 1841)
In 1845, California appeared on the map as a
northern province of Mexico. Already there was a small but prosperous community
of Spanish-speaking cattle ranches.
The Oregon country was a huge tract of wilderness that extended north from California to the Alaska border. No one knew for certain to whom the land really belonged…
It was claimed by both the United States and Great Britain who had signed an unusual treaty
of “joint occupation.”
The American pioneers were really emigrants leaving their own country
to a foreign land…
The influx of Americans into Oregon in the 1840s ignited a dispute that eventually led to demands by both
countries for war.
The dispute originated in the fact that the boundaries of Oregon
had ever been clearly fixed. The southern boundary of Russia
extended to the 54 degree, 40 minute parallel of latitude.
The Democratic Party even made the phrase, “Fifty Four, Forty, or Fight”
their 1844 campaign slogan…
The dispute was quietly settled with the boundary set at 49 degrees;
the original proposal by the United States.
When Oregon itself became an official section of the United States
in 1846, the 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail made it the longest thoroughfare
in the republic.
The first emigrants to Oregon came by ship before atrail was established.
Ships continued to to travel to Oregon even after the overland
migrations began, but they were not popular
among the pioneers.
First, the fare for a sea journey to Oregon was quite expensive—
few pioneer families could afford it. Second, most Oregon-bound pioneers
came from the central states—far from any sea port.
Lastly, the sea journey often took up to full year—
versus 4-6 months by wagon.
The journey west on the Oregon Trail and California Trail
was exceptionally difficult by today's standards.
One in 10 died along the way; many walked the entire
two-thousand miles.
The overland move began in 1841 when a party of 69 hardy souls left Missouri, led by a farmer, John Bartleson, and a
schoolteacher, John Bidwell.
The financial collapse and depression of 1837 had prompted people to look for
opportunities in the west, but the discovery of gold in California
in 1848 sent the emigration numbers up to 55,000 per year over the
Oregon Trail !
Over the next 25 years more than a half million people went west on the western trails. Some went all the way to Oregon's Willamette Valley in search of farmland—
many more split off for California in search of gold.
Still other emigrants headed west because of religious persecution in the
United States. The Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints) were driven from their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846.
The church was founded in 1830
by Joseph Smith…
…but its ideas about communal economics and
plural marriage drew hostility
from non-believers.
After Joseph
Smith was arrested
and murdered
by an angry mob in Illinois…
the religious group resolved to move westward, often by handcarts…
…where three years
later, Salt Lake
City would be built
as their new home.
The political and religious
leader Brigham
Young would oversee the
building of a prosperous
city and state of Utah…
ON THE TRAIL…
There was no great highway across the continent;
merely a pair of parallel wheel ruts
traced by wagons across the sod of the prairies.
The Missouri River heads due west from St. Louis; so most emigrants
loaded their wagons onto steamships for the
upstream journey. It was easy traveling, but it didn't last
long. Two-hundred miles from St. Louis, the Missouri takes a cruel turn
to the north.
Further upstream was Westport, St.
Joseph, Omaha and Council Bluffs.The
economies of these frontier
towns depended on emigrants
passing through…
Each spring these small hamlets became raucous boomtowns—
as thousands of emigrants camped for days, or weeks while getting
ready to begin the journey. (Independence was by far the most
popular point of departure in the trail's early years.)
“Our party after leaving Independence, proceeded up the Missouri river for
four days, when it was thought advisable to halt, and remain there a week, there being good grass at the
encampment, and recruiting our animals, get everything in proper
readiness for the progress of our long journey; our company at this
encampment all collected together numbering about forty wagons. Soon
after our arrival at this point, we discovered fresh signs of Indians,
which caused us to keep a pretty close guard over our animals, and indeed ourselves.”
Samuel Hancock, 1845
Huge conestoga
wagons were never used by the pioneers--they were just too
unwieldy.
Instead, the emigrants used small farm wagons. Although they appear simplistic, farm wagons of the 1840s were technologically-advanced vehicles
The wagon box measured only four feet by ten
feet. Most emigrants
loaded them to the brim with
food, farm implements and furniture--often
over a ton of cargo.
A family of four would need over a thousand pounds of
food to sustain them on the 2000
mile journey to Oregon.
What animal would pull the emigrant's covered wagons?
That question was hotly debated among the westward-bound
pioneers.
“Sold out my land in Ioway on Monday, the 19th of March 1852 and now for Orrigon. The first thing for
good teams. Two good waggons and 6 yoak of oxen. All well and in good
sperrets.”
Philemonn Morris, 1852
Horses were quickly rejected because they could not live off prairie grasses
along the way.
As a result, most of the emigrants decided on oxen.
They were strong; could live off grass or sage;
and were less-expensive.
After a few days on the trail, the
emigrants would settle into a well-
defined daily routine. Awake before sunup; yoke the oxen,
cook the breakfast; and
hit the trail.
There was an hour break for lunch and at about six p.m., they set up camp.
“There were days we toiled over the arid plains till far into the night to reach the life-giving water that was a necessity to us and to our trains. The children of the
company walked many many miles....sometimes I think I walked half of the way to Oregon! Some days it was very
hard to find fuel enough for our camp fires. Many a time our simple meals were cooked over a fire
of buffalo chips and sage brush.”
MARY ELIZABETH MUNKERS, 1851
The emigrants did circle their wagons, but it wasn't for protection
against the Native American tribes.
Instead, the circle provided a convenient corral for loose livestock.
At this time encampment on the Little Blue there were more wolves than I ever saw, or might say ever heard of
before, for they made the night hideous with their yelling, and to
persons unaccustomed to such sounds, at least it seemed to me as if all the
wolves for a thousand miles around had congregated at this particular place,
for our especial benefit. In the morning they could be seen dispersing in
droves, in different directions, and we were by no means loathe to part with
these “traveling musicians.”
Samuel Hancock, 1845
The first section of the Oregon Trail
bisected two major Native American
tribes--the Cheyenne to the
north and the Pawnee to the
south.
The emigrants worried about both. But the expected attacks
did not come; in fact, there were many
instances of Native American
kindness--helping pull out stuck wagons; rescuing drowning
emigrants; even rounding up
lost cattle.
Most of the encounters with Native Americans
were simple business transactions.
The emigrants offered clothes, tobacco or rifles, in exchange for Native American horses or food.
Within a few years, the emigrants had overgrazed the prairie grasses, burned
all the available firewood, and depleted the buffalo.
Soon many tribes along the Platte were impoverished.
The emigrants worried a great deal about possible Native American attacks,
but very few were ever actually killed by the native tribes.
Perhaps the most important confrontation with the native tribes occurred
near Ft. Laramie. It began innocently enough—
a single cow wandered away from an emigrant wagon train.
When the cow showed up at a nearby Sioux village, the tribe promptly ate it.
An aggressive Lt. Grattan and 28 men then left Fort Laramie with a single objective—
punish the Sioux. The Sioux recognized their error and offered a
horse in return for the cow, but Grattan ordered his men to fire on the tribe.
The Sioux chief told his warriors to withhold retaliation.
Grattan fired again and killed the chief. Strikes and counterstrikes escalated into all-out
war--the battles continued for decades.
The real enemies of the pioneers were
poor sanitation
and--surprisingly—
accidental gunshots.
“Traveled 16 miles, and camped on a middling, large stream of water. this day Denton drove
Charley's wagon against a stump, and broke the tongue, and in crossing the river, the wagon upset,
and detained us some time with little other detriment. The boys caught some good fish
at this place. Grass good. Aunt Betty died of the consumption. Buried her.”
William Porter, 1848
River crossings were a constant source of distress for the pioneers.
Hundreds drowned trying to cross the Kansas, North Platte and
Columbia Rivers--among others.
“We crossed the Green River at a very steep place where the banks sloped sharply to the river's edge. The boys
unloaded two of our wagons and fastened the two wooden beds
together, and swam across the river and anchored the rope to a tree on the
other side. The beds were loaded with food and the dismantled wagons were pulled across the river, where the wagons
were put together again. The cattle swam to the other side.”
Sarah Sprenger, 1852
Perhaps the biggest problem on the trail was a mysterious
and deadly disease--called cholera for which there was no cure.
Often, an emigrant would go from healthy to dead
in just a few hours. Sometimes they received a proper burial, but often, the sick would be
abandoned, in their beds, on the side of the trail.
They would die alone…
The most horrifying of all stories occurred in 1846…an incredibly
unbelievable story of the Donner Party, 47 out of 81 who survived
being caught in the mountains, mid-winter without food, forced to
consume their dead comrades…
THE JOURNEY’S
END…
Newcomers were quick to
put down “roots.”
New towns seemed to spring up
overnight…like San
Francisco…
Who Were the Pioneers?
They came from all walks of life, some new immigrants from Europe, some from well-respected families
of the founding fathers…
Here are a few of their faces and stories…
William T. Lieuallen and his bride, Margaret
Fuson, were married the day
before they set off from the Fuson
home to get ready for the trip to
Oregon
Gabriel Trullinger, a German emigrant, and Elizabeth Johnson Trullinger, the niece of future president Andrew Johnson. Like many pioneer families, the Trullingers had been moving steadily west for years before making the trek to the Oregon Country. On April 6, 1848, the Trullinger clan set out for Oregon with three ox-drawn wagons.
Jon Baker, first cousin to General Robert E. Lee.
His family owned a large tobacco plantation but Jon was not the eldest son and stood to inherit no land. So he felt that his best chance of making his
fortune in the world was to head west.
Jon was elected captain of the wagon train, and as a result he was known as
Captain Baker for the rest of his life.
The Jorys were a working class family
with limited prospects in
England. In search of opportunity, the family left England for Oregon aboard
the HMS Restitution.
Richard A. Bogle and America Bogle, born in the West Indies in 1835, moved to New York City and to the
Oregon Territory. They were among
many free African-Americans who made the journey westward.
Mary Jane Holmes came to Oregon as a slave of Nathaniel Ford and his family. The wagon train they came with also included black pioneer George Washington Bush and was led by renowned guide Moses "Black" Harris.
David Lenox was born in New York to
English parents descended from the
noble House of Lenox. Orphaned at an early
age, he left for Oregon, shortly after
marrying Louisa Swan, the plantation owner for whom he
worked.
The branch of the Boone family that emigrated to
Oregon was led by Daniel's grandson,
Alphonso Boone. Moving west seems to have run in the family. In 1841, he set up shop in Independence,
Missouri, outfitting fur traders and caravans on
the Santa Fe Trail. In 1846, Alphonso headed west with seven of his
children,
At the age of 25, Ebenezer Ellis left his home in Iowa, and set
out for the Oregon
Territory with his pregnant wife and 18-
month-old son.
The glory years of the westward
trails finally ended in 1869,
when the transcontinental
railroad was completed.
Actual wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail still exist today
in many parts of the American West; and many groups are working hard to
preserve this national historic treasure.
Westward Expansion
