The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 34

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. cn
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
Number of Pages: 622


USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 34


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To understand this Pacific entanglement, it is necessary to take a brief retrospect.


The fur trade of the northwest coast was a prize for which Spain and England had long been contending. The efforts to find an overland passage had been far more striking with the English, while the Spaniards had for the most part pushed up the coast from California.


As early as 1775, Cadotte, who had long been a trader at the Sault Ste. Marie, had explored with Alexander Henry north- west of Lake Superior, and, in their wandering, had fallen in with one Peter Pond. This adventurer was, according to some accounts, a native of Boston, but was probably born, as Ledyard had been, in Connecticut. He was strong in body, eager for hazards, intelligent in spirit, with a knack for scientific obser- vation, and an eye for mercantile profit without many scruples as to the method of it. He had, in April, 1785, in behalf of the North West Company of Montreal, a fur-trading organiza- tion, addressed a memorial to Governor Hamilton at Quebec, proposing to undertake, in connection with other members of that company, the exploration of "the whole extent of that unknown country between the latitudes of 54° and 67° to the Pacific Ocean." He informs the governor that he had learned from the Indians that the Russians had already established a trading station on that coast, and that other posts were sure to


390


UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.


be established there by Americans, who had been shipmates of Captain Cook. He further said that if the delivery of the lake posts, as contemplated in the treaty of 1782, was ever made. the way would be opened for enterprising Americans to reach by the Lake Superior route that distant region, and rein- foree their countrymen, who had songht it by water. For these reasons he urged upon Hamilton the necessity of protecting the North West Company in the undertakings which they had outlined.


The explorations of Pond about Lake Athabasca had con- vineed him, as his map, which has come down to us, shows, that the western end of that lake was not very far distant from the Pacific. The accounts of Cook's voyage had just then been pub- lished (1784-85), and a comparison of Cook's charts and this map, by differences of longitude, seemed to show that the fresh and salt waters were within a hundred miles of each other. On a map preserved in the Marine at Paris, and which is given by Brynner in his Canadian Archives Report for 1890, and which is said to be a copy of Pond's drawing made by Crevecoeur for La Rochefoucanlt, the coast of " Prince William Sound, as laid down by Captain Cook," is separated from the affluents of " Aranbaska Lake" by a coast range, beyond which, as the legend reads, the Indians say they have seen bearded men. As signifying an inviting route to the western sea, Pond had re- ported the climate of Athabasca as moderate, and said it was owing to the ocean winds, which we, in our day, recognize as the chinooks.


Pond, as we have intimated, was not averse to playing off one master against another, and while he was assuring Hamil- ton that his interests were for Britain, he seems to have sent another copy of his map to Congress, which fell into Crève- cœur's hand, and upon a copy which he made, that traveler wrote of its author : " This extraordinary man has resided seven- teen years in those countries, and from his own discoveries, as well as from the reports of the Indians, he assures himself of having at last discovered a passage to the [western] sea." This memorandum is dated, " New York, 1 March, 1785."


NOTE. - The map on the opposite page is a section of Pond's map (as reproduced in Brymner's . ('anadian _Irchires, 1890), showing the Grand Portage and the source of the Mississippi. The river " Winipique " connects Lake Winnipeg with the Lake of the Woods.


1


River Winpique


Buck road from I, la Pluis to L du Bois


CHIPOWAY or by


du Bois


Lake Chain fof Lakes


Sturgeon


the French SAULTEURS


G.Portage


Red Lake


RES! Louis


Bear Lake


White Bear Lake


or Winipique


Ravens wing Hiver


Croix Lake


R.


Panin .... LLake


COTTA


Lac La Pluis


(Lako


Red River


R. Montgomery


Gorddurds R.


392


UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.


But Pond's ambition to reach the Pacific had not been accom- plished when, in 1790, Vancouver was on that coast, establisli- ing new claims for England. He passed, without knowing it, the month of the great river that heads near the springs of the Missouri. It was left for the Boston ship "Columbia," under Captain Kendrick, in the same season, to enter that river and bestow the name of his vessel upon it.


Not far from the same time, Spain and England, the two great European rivals for North America, who were each intent on contracting the limits of the young Republic, came into colli- sion on the western coast of Vancouver's Island. Spain, by virtue of Balboa's discovery in 1513, and subsequent explora- tions up the coast, and England, by reason of Drake's assump- tion of New Albion in 1579, and the recent explorations of C'ook and others, set their respective claims to this region in sharp conflict. Spain, being at the moment more powerful at Nootka Sound, seized some English vessels trading there. It was this aet that was now likely to bring the armed forces of the rivals to leveling muskets on the Mississippi, and to open a confliet of which the United States, with grudges against each of the contestants, might find it difficult to be a passive observer.


When the news of the seizure at Nootka reached England, and it was known that the Spanish authorities had simply released the captured ships without making reparation, the Eng- lish king, on May 5, 1790, announced in Parliament that war with Spain was imminent. Great activity followed in the doek- yards and arsenals. Louisiana was at once recognized as the most vulnerable part of the Spanish empire. To engage the western Indians for a campaign against New Orleans by the river, large stores of gifts were hastily sent to Canada. Dor- chester was, at the same time, instructed to secure if possible the active aid of the United States, and, in case this failed, he was told to play upon the passions of some of the disaffected regions of the Republic. While the northern and southern factions of the country were being brought to a sharp issue on the question of a site for a capital, and were seeking at the same time to play off Vermont and Kentucky against each other in the balance of power, by fixing periods for their admission to the Union, the British government was seeking to make a breach


The


SEA


Conperi.


Hills


Coppermine R.


Buffalo M Lake Stoney Ms


Cogead L.


Copper


Theye Check I & Thoye Aye-tyneed


CrossPer


He


Hara :


Napashish


Thoy noye


kyed L


Magn


use R


itmey


Cassadyath


Cassey L.


Wilden I ..


Minishlid:


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ling


Stor R . L.


M. S:Frias


Arabascal.


Bloki


Bherungs Bay


Bald Me


Peace R


Fire SER


Fort


c.&c M' Fairweather


Plank


Porflock Harb.


Cross Cape


Bay of Islands


....


track 17å?


Rocky


Commaney Christianssd


otter sd


Port Bacardi


S.Carlos I:


stephens Sound


NorthI.


Calamity Harb.


A Princess


Rovals I:


Isles


Milbank's Sa


C.st James Catverts I.


Fitzhughs sd


Scots Is Q. Charlottes Sound.


Port Brooks British Factory


50


Woody Point


Nootka or


King Georges Sound


Strof Juan u Fica


Puracle Rock Tatontche


C.Fluttrey


er Classet


Shoal water Bar


[Showing Nootka Sound as on the main land, when really on the outer coast of Vancouver's Island ; also Mackenzie's track and the supposed waters west of Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay. The map is a part of a " Chart of the N. W. Coast of America, showing discoveries lately made," in Jedediah Morse's American Universal Geography, Boston, 1st ed., 1789; 4th ed.,


.


1802.]


NORTHWEST COAST.


ike of


"esh Water


Chesterfield I


Merrys Hou


Land. 2


M: Kenzies RIv.


Rof the Gr.Beur Lake


Dog Ribb'd Lake


Chiesadant


Doobaunt L.


Route 1789


Indians


Indiansy


AnowaIg


ClowerPo


Prde Town


chipeway


Yath


Great Slave


Admiralty Ray


Caribocal


Gr Arabasca


MacKarzzes


Beaver


Strong Bow


C.Edgcumbe


Indians


Port Banks


MER Mountains


Queen Charlotte's The Narrow Ses


Indians


Indians


Yath Keyed'r.


Snowy NEWS. ..


PointL


394


UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.


between each of those States and the Union. It was thought that the discontent in Vermont, not wholly stilled by the out- come of Yorktown, was rendered at this juncture peculiarly susceptible while she was appealing to a laggard Congress to give her sisterhood in the Union. So Dorchester was instructed to open communication with such as he could approach.


A convention in the Kentucky country was about deter- mining to take final measures for securing Statehood, - it was to take place in July, - but it was not certain that the majority for it would be large. To take advantage of any such indiffer- ence, Dorchester was further instructed to picture to the Ken- tuekians the advantages which would acerne if they accepted the help of England to force the Spaniards from the Missis- sippi. There was also, Dorchester was expected to show, an unmistakable gain for them in an English alliance in open- ing the lakes and the St. Lawrence for the export of their produce. Such were the terms of Grenville's dispatches to the Canadian governor in May, 1790, at the time that prepara- tions were making in England for a Spanish war.


The conditions on all sides were perplexing. Great Britain was anxious lest war with Spain would give the Americans an opportunity to wrest from their feeble garrisons the lake posts, and there was danger that such hostilities might lead to the dispatch of a crowd of privateers from the American ports. There was a chance that the military power of the Republic would have more than it could do to protect and hold in alle- giance the western country, and Dorchester's information from the Ohio region was encouraging to British hopes. He learned that the " discontented Continental soldiers " at the Muskingum colony were " attached to the United States by no other tie than personal regard for the President, considering themselves sacrificed by Congress, and defrauded even in the sales of the lands they occupy ;" and this feeling, said a correspondent, gave them "an extreme tenderness toward the British govern- ment."


Early in the year, Dorchester had sent to the States an emis- sary on an ostensibly friendly errand, but really to spy out the feelings of the people, and to ascertain what preparations were in hand for any armed excursion. This messenger was a cer- tain Major Beckwith, and his instructions were dated on June


395


WASHINGTON'S CABINET.


27. He was specially directed to learn the chances of the United States joining England in the threatened war, and the likelihood of their resisting the persuasions of Spain to rely upon her aid in attacking the lake posts. Dorchester had an American correspondent, who was assuring him that General Knox would be only too glad to attack the Spanish posts on the upper Mississippi, while an English fleet forced the river from the Gulf. This letter-writer had outlined a further plan of a joint expedition to the Santa Fé region, the west being counted on to recruit an adequate force from its three hundred thousand inhabitants. This occupation of the Spanish mines was a favorite aim with Dorchester, and he had in contempla- tion to found a base for such an expedition on the Mississippi, north of the Missouri, whence it was only eight days' march to Santa Fé, through a country fit for military operations. It was certain that Spain feared such an attack, and was striving to strengthen her Indian alliances beyond the Mississippi, and was seeking to induce the Indians on the east of that river to migrate to the other bank, and her persuasion had had some influence among the Cherokees.


The policy of the United States, so far as Washington's cab- inet was to form it, rested in councils far from harmonious. Hamilton could not forget the irritating vacillation of Spain during the Revolution, and her inimical conduct ever since. He thought she had no reason to expect that the United States would shield her from British enmity. He was, on one point at least, in sympathy with Jefferson in contending that Spain must either open the Mississippi or take the consequences. " If Great Britain sides with us," he said, " and France with Spain, there will be a revolution in our foreign politics." When Beck- with sought to sound him, Hamilton was cautious, and rather vaguely promised an alliance with England " as far as may be consistent with honor."


Jefferson's anti-English views were too notorious for England to expect any countenance from him. Dorchester had been warned of this, though his American correspondent assured him that the Americans, as a body, were "by no means favor- able to Spanish interests." It was Jefferson's belief that a Spanish war - with the Americans neutral - would be sure to throw both Louisiana and Florida into the hands of Britain.


396


UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.


This would mean, he contended, that England, possessing the west bank of the Mississippi, would control the trade of the east bank, and holdt the navigation of that river as the price and lure of an alliance with the western States. It would, moreover, surround the Republic on all the land sides with British power and with British fleets at the seaward. It was, perhaps. some consolation to him, in a possible alliance of the States with England, that, in the division of the spoils of war, Florida might fall to the Americans. His expectation was that France could not help being drawn into the war on the side of Spain, and if the States could maintain neutrality he saw a chance of "the New World fattening on the follies of the Old." If American neutrality could not be preserved, he mich preferred that the Republic should take sides with Spain. For this end he was ready to guarantee the trans-Mississippi region to Spain, if she would cede New Orleans and Florida to the United States. He thought that to enter upon the war in this way would induce a popular support, and that Spain should agree to subsidize the Americans, if such a stand brought on a conflict with England. To prepare for such a consumma- tion, Jefferson instructed Carmichael to let the Spanish court understand that, if such a plan was not acceded to, there might be great difficulty in restraining the west. Such a guarantee of the distant west was not, fortunately, in the way when Jef- ferson himself, not many years later, bargained for this same Louisiana, and forgot how he had so recently professed that the United States would not for ages have occasion "to cross the Mississippi."


There was one consideration which, in case of war, had caused Washington much uneasiness. It was whether Dorchester would, with or without permission, cross the American territory to reach the Mississippi, in an effort to descend to New Orleans. The President consulted his cabinet in August on the stand to take in case Dorchester should ask permission. His advisers were at variance, as before. Hamilton was for allowing the passage rather than hazard hostilities. Jefferson said that, while circumstances did not warrant giving the negative which the request deserved, it was best to avoid an answer, and if the passage was made, to treasure the memory of it against a time "


397


THE DILEMMA OF SPAIN.


of England's distress. Adams, the Vice-President, differed only from Jefferson in advising a dignified refusal and waiting till an indemnity could be enforced.


The dilemma of Spain was the most serious of all. She rec- ognized that the United States might assist her, but she was not prepared to pay the cost, and she knew what risks she was run- ning of an Anglo-American alliance, with the aim of forcing the Mississippi.


So the Spanish policy was to shuffle as long as it would be prudent; to embroil France if she could ; to organize an In- dian expedition against the Pacific posts of the English, and take advantage of developments.


Affairs in this way could not drift long, with such a deter- mined adversary as England, and on October 28 Florida Blanca yielded to the British demands, and so avoided war, in conclud- ing the convention of Nootka, wherein he acknowledged the equal rights of England on the Pacific coast. When, on No- vember 12, the ratifications were exchanged, England ceased to be a factor in the Mississippi question.


CHAPTER XVIII.


THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.


THE federal government in coming to power found the North and the South not unequally matched. Pennsylvania and the States northward showed about two million inhabitants, and there was an equal population in Maryland with the farther south. It was thought that the valuation of the thirteen States was approximately $800,000,000, and this aggregate was nearly equally divided between the two sections. In some aspects of business activity, they were also nearly equal, and the $5,000,- 000 exports of the North could be set against a corresponding sum for the South. In domestie trade the North doubtless held some preponderance, for the one hundred and fifty thou- sand tons of shipping engaged in fishing and in coastwise traffic was mainly owned and employed in the North, and this section claimed a large part of the three hundred and sixty thousand tons engaged in the foreign trade.


The territory which was assured to the United States by the treaty of independence, but which was as yet, west of the moun- tains, but precariously held for the most part, was variously reckoned, according to the imperfeet estimates of the time, as between eight and nine hundred thousand square miles. Of this imperial domain, not far from two thirds was unoccupied except by vagrant Indians. The great bulk of the four million people, whom the world was learning to call Americans, occu- pied a region stretching along the Atlantic seaboard. It ex- tended back to a line which roughly followed the crest of the somewhat disjointed Appalachian range, and measured from Maine to Florida not far from three thousand miles. This more compactly settled territory which the French maps repre- sented as the United States, and in this were followed by some English maps, contained not far from two hundred and twenty- five thousand square miles, or probably a scant quarter of the


399


POPULATION OF THE WEST.


entire acreage of the Republic. Of the gross population of four million, considerably less than half a million souls were scattered occupants of the remaining three quarters of the national domain. There was great uncertainty in estimating this outlying population. Some placed it as low as two hun- dred and fifty thousand, while others reckoned it at over four hundred thousand, and it was thought it had the capability of doubling, through immigration and the prevalence of large families, in fifteen years. Burke had said of it, when Parlia- ment was struggling with the problem of controlling it : " Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than the Americans spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations." Much the larger part of this western population was settled in confined areas, isolated by stretches of wilderness, and thickest along the streams in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee. There were only the beginnings of settlements north of the Ohio, except as one moved on to the Wabash, the Illinois, and the Mississippi, where the mongrel communities, originally French, at Vin- cennes and Kaskaskia, were encountered, mixed with Canadian traders and Spanish interlopers. This isolated class offered a life little consonant with that which the American pioneers were establishing in the intervening country.


There is the same uncertainty in apportioning this aggregate over-mountain population among the several districts. Perhaps there were seventy thousand, or as some reckoned nearer one hundred thousand, which found a centre in Pittsburg. This Pennsylvania folk stretched up the Alleghany and Mononga- hela, and their lateral valleys, and there was some talk of their ultimately acquiring Statehood. Kentucky, which with respect to soil and climate was usually spoken of as more favored than any other American region, claimed to have about seventy-four thousand inhabitants, including twelve or thirteen thousand blacks. It is still more difficult to determine the population of Tennessee, divided between the Holston and Cumberland regions. The enumeration has gone as high as eighty thonsand and as low as thirty or forty thousand.


The immigrants to these regions south of the Ohio had prob- ably, in the largest numbers, come from Virginia, now the most populous of the thirteen States. The impoverishing of Vir-


400


THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.


ginia soil by tobacco was serving to increase the spread of her people beyond the mountains. The current was not yet wholly checked, which in the middle of the century had brought other pioneers from Pennsylvania and Maryland through the valley of the Shenandoah on the way to the Kanawha and beyond.


The opening of the river route from the Monongahela to Limestone on the Ohio, " the most beautiful river " of the world, as it was customary to call it, had diverted a large part of the stream of adventurous settlers, but they mostly went to Kentucky, for there was still difficulty in the land questions on the Muskingum, which was preventing its full share of the intending settlers. Further south, an emigrant stream was con- stantly passing from Carolina.


There was possibly a preponderance of English blood in all these diversified currents ; but the Scotch-Irish and the Ger- mans were numerous enough to give a strengthening fibre in this mingling of ethnic strains. There was, in this south- western race, little mixture of the New England stock, though a few families from Connecticut and Massachusetts had made a mark among them. This northern element, however, was just beginning to assert itself north of the Ohio, in communi- ties destined to become more mixed in blood than those south of that river. The Ohio Company, as we have seen, had taken shape in the New England spirit. The region between the two Miamis was controlled by the racial quality of the middle States. The lands reserved for bounties to the Virginia sol- diers, something over four million acres, and more open to In- dian attacks than other parts of the northwest, invited still other individualities. When Chillicothe was founded, Kentucky and Tennessee sent thither a restless horde. In this there was good blood mixed with less desirable strains coming from the poorer elements of Holston and Carolina. It was left for New England to restore a good average when the Western Reserve along Lake Erie came to be settled, its reputation for having a damp and cold soil tending to deter immigration for some years.


It is generally computed that there were, in 1790, nearly four thousand three hundred people, other than Indians, north of the Ohio. Of these there were about a thousand in and around Marietta, to be increased during the year by more than


401


THE ILLINOIS SETTLEMENTS.


one hundred and thirty new families. The hostility of the Indians prevented their hunters going far beyond the support of their armed guards, and the buffalo by this time had dis- appeared from Kentucky, except about the sources of some of the rivers, and were rarely to be found north of the Ohio, unless in similar feeding-grounds near the fountains of the northern tributaries of that river. So a scarcity of food was not an unusual condition, and, during the early months of 1790, there had been danger of famine but for the kind help of a Virginia hunter and farmer, who was settled on the opposite side of the Ohio. The next year, however, the crop proved a good one.


On the lands of Judge Symmes, between the Great and Little Miami, there were reckoned to be one thousand three hundred souls. St. Clair, in January, had visited these settle- ments, and set them up as the county of Hamilton, and made at Cincinnati the seat of government for the shire.


The settlement on the Wabash was supposed to have about a thousand souls, among whom St. Clair early in the year had been, and had found them thriftless. They were dreading a scarcity of food, and the governor relieved them. He officially confirmed their occupancy of the lands, which had been origi- nally secured to them under the French rule. Another thou- sand of this trans-Ohio population was to be found in the other old French settlement at Kaskaskia and in the adjacent region. St. Clair had found these also fearing a famine, and he had issued orders to prevent the Spanish, in St. Louis, crossing the river to kill buffalo and to carry off the timber. This scarcity of food had driven off a good many to join Morgan's settlement at New Madrid, and it was the general complaint that much of their distress was owing to the failure of Virginia to pay for the supplies which they had furnished to George Rogers Clark twelve years before. These difficulties were increased by the obscuring of land titles, which a transfer of allegiance had pro- duced, and St. Clair had had poor success in endeavors to remedy the evil. He found that the passage of supplies by ascending the Mississippi from the Ohio was jeopardized by the velocity of the current, and he at once urged upon the federal government the construction of a road for a distance of fifty or sixty miles, leaving the Ohio at Fort Massac, so that the region




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