Westward Expansion and Trail Migration

In an earlier lecture, we spent time talking about Lewis and Clark and the overland expedition of the Corps of Discovery between 1804 and 1806. And I mentioned at the time that that expedition opened up the American West to future settlement. And indeed, over the next 30 years or so, by the 1840s, there were quite literally thousands of of people from the United States living in the West. And that raised all kinds of questions about slavery and territorial possessions. And we'll talk about those matters as we go along in this class. But in this lecture, we wanna focus a little bit more specifically on the process whereby people from the Eastern United States began to migrate westward. And we're going to talk about a couple of the major overland trails, the Oregon Trail, which led people from St. Louis up to the Oregon Territory. We're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the Santa Fe Trail, which took people from Missouri down into New Mexico. Spend some time talking about California and finally wrap up our lecture talking a little bit about Texas. But if you need to refer back to this map as we talk, please feel free to back up and refer to the map as need be. Now, in the aftermath of Lewis and Clark, some of the earliest arrivals in the American West were fur trappers and traders. Those were the men who especially found opportunities conducting trade. with Native Americans. And again, one of the things that Lewis and Clark had documented was the existence of various tribes in the West where profitable trade could take place. And it did. The first people to arrive in the West and begin populating the West were fur trappers and traders. And they were very mobile. They didn't really settle in one place. They moved about a great deal. And And in moving back and forth and all around, they began to develop a system of trails in the American West. And the most prominent of these early trails was the Oregon Trail. And I want to talk a little bit about the Oregon Trail, a trail that ultimately led from St. Louis, Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia River in the Oregon Territory. And the man who was especially... important in blazing this trail was a man by the name of John Jacob Astor. Now, you may have heard of the Astor family. They are a very wealthy, very prominent New York social family. And they date their wealth and their power back to kind of the patriarch, a man by the name of John Jacob Astor, who is a German immigrant who arrived in the United States in the 1790s. And originally he was a, he produced and sold musical instruments. He was a musician by training. And so he sold musical instruments, but there wasn't a lot of money to be made in that line of work. And so after the treaties were signed with Indians, John Jacob Astor was one of those who began. securing trade privileges in the West. And he began actually building a very successful fur trading company out of New York City. Well, in 1808, he greatly expanded his operation when he founded the American Fur Company, and he located a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River on the Columbia River. west coast, the Pacific coast, not far from where Lewis and Clark had camped just a couple years earlier. And so the American Fur Company began. trapping and trading and Astor's company was doing pretty well for the first couple of years. The problem was the only way to transport merchandise from Oregon back to New York was on boats that sailed all the way around South America, down the Pacific coast to South America and then up the Atlantic side. It was a very long circuitous route. And so by 1811, um, Astor's company, the American Fur Company, had decided that they were going to try and locate an overland route. Now, it is true that Lewis and Clark had already traveled overland. But the one thing that the Lewis and Clark expedition had demonstrated is that the passes through the Rocky Mountains were all very high and very rugged. And one of the reasons why ships were used to sail around. South America was because there were no good mountain passes that could allow and accommodate, especially wagons. If you were going to transfer large shipments of furs, you needed to do that in wagons, not just on pack mules. So the point is, in 1811, a group of trappers for the American Fur Company, they're often called the Overland Astorians, set out. And, you know, quite fortuitously, and I will say fortuitously, they discovered in southern Wyoming or what is today southern Wyoming, a low-lying pass through the Rocky Mountains. It was called South Pass. And to this very day, the railroad, the interstate highway, they all pass through South Pass because it is one of the low-lying and gradual passes through the Rocky Mountains. It also became then the preferred method for getting to to Oregon. And so basically you would take the Missouri River to the Platte River and up and over South Pass to the Snake River, the Columbia River and down to Oregon. Right. So it was a very efficient pass. And because of that, then, again, more and more people started looking westward. And. And trappers and traders especially were active in their pursuits in the West. Well, there wasn't a lot of call for settling in Oregon until the 1830s. And then in the 1830s, the United States experienced what's often called Oregon fever. And what happened was, according to legend, there was a story. of a small company of Nez Perce Indians who had, according to the legend, traveled from the Oregon country to St. Louis. In other words, they'd taken the Oregon Trail in reverse, and they'd come to St. Louis. Now, when they arrived in St. Louis, first of all, they didn't speak English, and so nobody really knew. what they were doing there. And second of all, they actually died shortly after arriving. But the questions surrounding their, you know, what drove them? Why did they make this long journey? These questions were contemplated and ultimately word began to circulate that these people had made this long journey seeking missionaries. In other words, remember, this is the time of the Great Awakening when there was a lot of religious fervor going on. And consequently, missionary groups now began to think about Oregon as a land of great opportunity. And if these people had come all of that way looking for the Bible and instruction in Christianity, well, missionaries then had a job to do. All right. So. These were Protestant missionaries, not Catholic, but Protestant missionaries, and they included Methodists, they included Episcopalians, and the most prominent of these was a man by the name of Jason Lee. Jason Lee organized a mission effort in 1833, and he and a group of supporters traveled over the Oregon Trail out to the Oregon country. Now, they weren't very successful in their efforts at establishing a mission. In fact, missionaries tended to alienate Native Americans because Native Americans weren't eager to change their religion, contrary to popular beliefs. But what Jason Lee did discover is that Oregon was a country that was rich in agricultural potential. The Willamette Valley, south of the modern-day city of Portland, Oregon, offered tremendous agricultural potential. And so Jason Lee and Hall Jackson Kelly and others, they became boosters and advocates for the Oregon country. And they did create what is often called Oregon fever. And during the 1830s and early 1840s, then thousands of Americans from the United States began traveling over the Oregon Trail. to the Oregon country. And by 1844, as I indicate here, there were something like 5,000 Americans living in the Willamette River Valley. The city of Portland, Oregon is located right at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. So Americans were now starting to populate the Oregon country as a result of the Oregon Trail. But Oregon wasn't the only city. place that Americans were starting to travel. They were also starting to relocate to New Mexico. Now, it is important to remember that New Mexico, prior to 1821, was part of New Spain. It was part of the Spanish Empire. And it was also an area where there was potentially fur trapping and trading. possibilities. And so there were fur trappers and traders that were interested in the area around Santa Fe. And this is ultimately then going to lead to the blazing of a trail called the Santa Fe Trail. So let me tell you a little bit about a man by the name of William Becknell. Okay, William Becknell was a fur trapper who lived in Missouri. Franklin, Missouri, to be precise. And in 1821, he set out on a fur trapping expedition that was destined for Colorado. Now, remember that under the Transcontinental Treaty, the Arkansas River of Kansas and Colorado was the boundary between the United States and New Spain. So William Becknell knew that he had to stay north of the Arkansas River. If he went south of the Arkansas River and traveled into New Spain, he would be in violation of Spanish mercantile policies, and he could be incarcerated, and he could have all of his goods, all of his merchandise seized. So he wanted to stay north of the Arkansas River, which he did. The problem is when he got into Colorado. up into the mountains in Colorado, the river started branching out into all kinds of smaller branches. And he wasn't sure where he was. He wasn't sure if he was north of the river or south of the river. What he did know is he was doing pretty well in his trade there. And so he was happy until one day a group of Spanish soldiers strayed into his camp. And his fear now. was that like many other trappers, he was going to have his merchandise seized and that he could actually be thrown in jail. And others had actually been thrown in jail for violation of trade laws. So he was very concerned, but much to his surprise, these soldiers invited him to come to Santa Fe and to conduct trade. And he said, well, he can't do that. He'd be thrown in jail. And they said, no, no. In 1821, just recently, Mexico has declared independence. Bechnell wasn't aware of that, but he learned it. And so knowing that this was independent Mexico and knowing that the Mexicans now wanted to trade, he traveled south from Colorado down into Santa Fe. Now, as he crossed from Colorado down into Santa Fe, he had to cross over a high mountain pass called Raton Pass. It's actually the interstate highway goes over Raton Pass today. In any case, it's a high pass, and it's one that he was able to pass over with pack animals, but he also knew that if he had wagons, it would have been very difficult to do that. So Becknell was able to cross over to Raton Pass. He traveled down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he traded. very profitably. One of the things he quickly realized is that he had the possibility now to make considerable profits. If he went back to Missouri and loaded up and outfitted a wagon train, he could trade, he could bring things from Missouri to Santa Fe and make lots of money. In Santa Fe, they had silver even, silver coins. And so he was thrilled about the possibility of making a lot of money. He went back to Missouri, took out an ad in the newspaper, invited subscribers, tried to raise as much money as he possibly could. And then he began outfitting Conestoga wagons like you see in this in this slide. All right. His goal was to. track these Conestoga wagons back to Santa Fe and trade there, right? So in 1821, he set out. Now, he realized he wasn't going to be able to make it over Raton Pass. So he took a more direct route from Kansas down to New Mexico. He pioneered what was called the Cimarron Cut-Off of the Santa Fe Trail. And it was almost a devastating. decision that he made. When he cut off away from the Arkansas River, he had no idea what he was getting into. He, first of all, quickly discovered there was no water. He ended up in a desert, the Cimarron Desert, and his animals almost died. He quickly discovered that he was in Cherokee, not Cherokee, Comanche territory, and that there was the possibility of raids. among the Comanches. And so this was a very risky decision that Becknell made. Nevertheless, to his good fortune, he was able to locate the Canadian River, and that took him into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and he was able to get to Santa Fe. And it was a very, very successful trip that he made. He ended up making a lot of money, and he then opened up New Mexico to trade between Missouri and New Mexico, which was part of Mexico at this time. Now, while there were some Americans who began to relocate into New Mexico, there were also some who began to locate in southeastern Colorado on the north banks of the Arkansas River. Point being that this Santa Fe trade was profitable and it started bringing hundreds of Americans, not as many as elsewhere, hundreds of Americans into this part of the world. And it also began to bring the Mexican population of the Rio Grande Valley into close economic ties with the United States, which was important. Now, even as New Mexico and Oregon. were starting to become populated. Americans were also starting to move to and populate California. Now, earlier in this class, remember, we talked about the Spanish colonization of California. Twenty-one missions had been organized along the coast of California from San Diego in the south up to San Francisco Bay in the north. Now, initially, those missions... provided materials for what's called the hide and tallow trade. And I'll try and explain what that is exactly. The mission lands were very good, very productive grazing lands. And the fact is, each of these missions supported herds of cattle in the thousands. So the point is that these herds of cattle. provided valuable resources, especially their skins or their hides, which was used as leather. In the eastern United States and in Europe especially, the boot and shoe industries were starting to take off. Mass production of boots and shoes required leather. And so the hide in places like California and Texas was very valuable. In addition to the hide of the animal, the tallow, which is the fat of the animal, was very valuable as well. Tallow was used in the making of candles. And at a time when there was no electricity, candles were the primary means by which people lit their homes. Tallow was very valuable. And so early on, these California missions were very productive in providing. for this hide-and-tallow trade. And Americans traded with the Spanish missionaries early on. But in the 1830s then, there was a push within Mexico to what's called secularize the missions. Remember, the missions themselves were controlled by the Roman Catholic Church. But there was a movement in Mexico to take those... mission lands and privatize them. That is to have the church relinquish its control. The lands were turned over. to the Indians themselves. They were Indian lands, and now in the 1830s, through a process called secularization, those lands were going to be transferred to the Indians. The Indians didn't fully understand the value of those lands in a market economy, and in the end, large numbers of people from the United States, Americans, began arriving in California. In the 1830s, men like Thomas Oliver Larkin, and others came to California and they were able to buy land very inexpensively. As they did, they quite literally started building landed empires. And Thomas Oliver Larkin himself became one of the most outspoken advocates for California. He believed that if the United States took over California, that California would not only serve as a valuable base or source of resources, grazing lands and timberlands and all kinds of other resources, but he also saw California as a gateway to the Pacific trade. A port city on the California coast would open up the United States to very rich trading in Asia. So T.O. Larkin and others became... boosters in the same way that Jason Lee became an advocate for Oregon. Thomas Oliver Larkin, and Thomas Oliver Larkin even wrote letters to Andrew Jackson, urging Jackson to think about claiming or trying to at least negotiate to get California from Mexico. By 1844, There were something like 3,000 American citizens living in Mexican California. Again, 1844, as we'll see shortly, was a very important year. So thousands of Americans had moved to Oregon and to California. There were certainly hundreds living in New Mexico. But by far the largest number of immigrants to begin heading west were the immigrants who began to move into Texas, okay? And it was the showdown over Texas now that's going to produce violent warfare and conflict between the United States and Mexico, okay? So how did this all come about? Well, in 1821, a young lawyer in New Orleans, a man by the name of Stephen Austin, inherited from his father a very lucrative grant to land, on the Brazos River in what was then, well, by 1821, it was Mexican Texas. Originally, it was Spanish Texas. But Stephen Austin secured his grant from the Mexican government. And ultimately now, under the terms of his agreement, Stephen Austin was given access to 4 million acres of land on the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. And he would be allowed to keep a big chunk of that land himself if he brought 300 families to live on that land and who would then become, who were willing to become loyal citizens of the country of Mexico, the Republic of Mexico. Stephen Austin satisfied the terms of his agreement and he populated the Brazos and Colorado River. with large numbers of people from the United States. And so successful was this experiment that in 1824, Mexico passed a general colonization law. And that general colonization law was modeled on the agreement that had been made with Stephen Austin. Other people who want to receive land, they were known as empresarios. An empresario was the recipient of a land grant. OK, others who wanted to receive land could do so on the condition that they would bring people to settle that land and and that those people would be willing to become citizens of the Republic of Mexico. OK, now, men like Green DeWitt, who founded the area around Gonzales, and there was the only. Mexican empresario was Martin de Leon, who established the area around Victoria. But there were other empresarios as well, and they started to bring people into and settle Texas. And again, the reason why this was important is because Mexico feared that the United States had designs on Texas and the United States might try to occupy Texas. Well, this general colonization law led to a large-scale populating of Texas by people from the United States. By 1835, there was something like 25,000 Americans living in Texas. And they greatly outnumbered the Mexican or Tejano population, which by this time was about 5,000 people, something like that. So there were far more people from the United States now than there were Tejanos. So that was a very kind of dangerous situation. Now, most of these immigrants from the United States came from the South. And when they came to the South, one of the things that they were going to start doing was planting cotton. And ultimately, that meant they brought slavery with them. That was something that created problems. Because in 1828, Mexico officially abolished slavery everywhere in Mexico, with the exception, at least for the time being, of Texas. Initially... Texas was granted an exemption from this, but it remained very controversial. The Roman Catholic Church had become especially outspoken in condemning the institution of slavery. And the idea that slavery would be tolerated in part of Mexico was something that did not sit well with the church, especially. The point being, then, that Texas now and Texans themselves found themselves in a very... kind of a problematic situation. Slave owners feared that slavery would be abolished and they would lose their source of labor, right? And on the other hand, Mexican officials were increasingly intent upon abolishing slavery in Texas as well, okay? So as Texans became increasingly independent-minded and started thinking, well, maybe it would be better to be a slave owner. independent of Mexico, they began challenging Mexican law. They began challenging Mexican officials. There were attempts to disarm many Texans, and that's what led to the clash in Gonzales. So we began to see clashes between Mexican officials and Texans. Well, by 1835, the president of Mexico Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had decided it was time to clamp down on Texans. And so in the fall of 1835, Santa Anna sent 4,000 men northward. Actually, he didn't send them. He led them himself. 4,000 men northward to Texas to basically force compliance with Mexican laws. Santa Ana was a centralist, and he believed that power should emanate from Mexico City. He didn't like the idea of individual states having too much power, okay? And that included especially Texas, okay? Well, the movement of troops by Santa Ana northward to Texas now set the stage for the Texas Revolution. We don't have a lot of time, unfortunately, to talk about the Texas Revolution. do that more in my Texas history class. But in this class, we do want to kind of mention some of the important developments, right? As Texans began to feel the pressure of Mexican presence in San Antonio and in Goliad, basically by March of 1836, a gathering took place at Washington on the Brazos River near modern day. Navasota, Texas, and there a group of Texans with a couple of Mexican-Americans. Mexican-Americans did not support this independence movement widely. There were a couple, but this was an Anglo movement. They declared independence from Mexico, and in so doing, they appointed Sam Houston to be their military commander. Now, Once Sam Houston took command of the Army, the big question was, would he engage Santa Anna directly or would he wait? And of course, Santa Ana by this time had occupied San Antonio, had surrounded the Alamo, and he had also sent troops up to Goliad and had surrounded the fort at Goliad. And I don't have time to get into all of the details of what happened at the Alamo and Goliad, save to say that in dealing with the Texans, Santa Ana was quite literally taking no prisoners. He was brutal in his treatment of the defenders at the Alamo. He was brutal in his treatment of the people, the men at Goliad. As a result of Texan defenses and opposition to Santa Ana's government, 500 Texas... immigrants were dead. Now, I do use the word immigrants, and I think it's important that we understand this. It's a common misconception that the men who died at the Alamo and Goliad were Texans. That really is not the case. The vast majority of these men were Tennesseans. They were Georgians. They were Mississippians. They had only arrived in England. Texas in the months leading up to these events. They didn't have ties to Texas. They didn't have an attachment to Texas. They had come to Texas in the hope of securing land, but they didn't have ties to Texas. And consequently, it's really not accurate to say that they were Texans. Yes, there were Texans at the Alamo and the Goliad. Yes, there were individuals who had been in Texas for eight, ten years by now. Okay. But the reality is most of the men who were at the Alamo and at Goliad were not Texans. They came from elsewhere and had only recently arrived in Texas. Still, there was outrage over the way Santa Ana treated the Americans at the Alamo and at Goliad. All right. So. What would Sam Houston do? Well, while there were those who demanded that Sam Houston stand up and attack Santa Ana's army, he retreated. He retreated eastward. And if you look at this map, you can kind of see his retreat. It's called the Runaway Scrape. But basically, on April 21st of 1836, then just outside of Houston, he stood and took a stand at San Jacinto. He struck at Santa Ana's army quite by surprise. The Mexican army was not prepared at all for the attack when it occurred. And Sam Houston and his men were every bit as brutal in dealing with the Mexican soldiers as Santa Ana had been in dealing with the Texans at or the men at Alamo and Goliad. OK, 630 Mexican soldiers now were dead. And. The net result is that Santa Ana was captured and he was forced to sign a treaty. It was called the Treaty of Velasco. Under this treaty, I'll get to that in a second. Under this treaty, Santa Ana agreed to move his troops south of the Rio Grande. He would evacuate the territory and relocate south of the Rio Grande. and he would then recognize Texas independence. So he was the president. He's now withdrawing troops south of the Rio Grande, and he is now recognizing Texas independence. So Texans celebrate great victory. They celebrate their independence. But it is vital to remember, while Santa Ana signed the Treaty of Velasco, the Mexican Congress never ratified that treaty. And because it never ratified the treaty, Mexico never recognized the Treaty of Velasco as binding. So Texans would point to the Treaty of Velasco as evidence of their independence. Mexico, however, never acknowledged that Texas was independent. All right. About five months later, in the fall of 1836 now, Texans organized their first election. And one of the things that they do then is they vote. that Sam Houston is now going to be the president of the Republic of Texas. The independent Republic of Texas is a separate standing sovereign. But there is general sentiment in Texas in favor of annexation to the United States. In fact, there's overwhelming support. The vast majority of voting Texans wanted to become part of the United States. But that annexation would be conditional upon slavery. If they could enter the Union as a slave state, Texans wanted to enter the Union. But if they couldn't enter with slavery, they would remain independent. So this is 1836. It would be nine years, nine years before the United States annexed Texas. So the question becomes one of why. Why did it take so long? Sam Houston wanted to annex. The people of Texas wanted to annex. Large numbers of Americans wanted to annex Texas. So why is it that Texas didn't become part of the United States? And the answer, quite simply, is slavery. OK, Texans wanted to enter the Union with slavery. In the United States, Democrats, Jacksonian Democrats in the South, they wanted. to annex Texas. But the Whigs, who were especially abolitionists in the Northeast, they did not want Texas to enter the Union if Texas was going to be a slave state. If Texas wants to enter the Union as a free-soil state, Whigs are all for that. Whigs will be very happy to admit Texas to the Union. But Texas did not want to enter the Union as a free-soil state. Texan slave owners demanded that slavery must be legal there, right? And so quite literally now, for nine years, Texas was in a state of limbo. Strictly speaking, Texas was an independent country. But in truth, most Texans continued to hold out hope that Texas would become part of the United States, okay? Well, in 1844... The president of the United States was a man by the name of John Tyler. Now, John Tyler was kind of an interesting character because he had inherited the presidency. He was actually the first vice president to assume the presidency. He was not elected president of the United States. And because he wasn't elected president, there were those who basically called him his accidency. He wasn't the authentic president. of the United States. John Tyler was in a difficult situation because John Tyler was a Whig, but John Tyler was a Southern Whig and he was a slave owner himself. There were Southern Whigs and there were slave owning Whigs and John Tyler was among those. The problem is there weren't many Southern Whigs and he found himself quite literally a man with a party and he had very few supporters. In order to try and bring his party together, in 1844, he proposed a treaty to annex Texas. That treaty was signed with Sam Houston, the president of Texas, and Sam Houston was eager to be admitted into the Union. The problem is, when the treaty went to the Senate for ratification, Whigs blocked it. John Tyler's treaty was defeated. And now, in 1844, the big... question that's going to plague the presidential candidates in 1844 is Texas annexation and Western expansion more generally. So the presidential election of 1844 is now going to hinge very largely on the question of Texas. So who are the candidates? Well, in 1844, the front runners were Martin Van Buren. who was a Democrat. He was a Northern Democrat, and he was the successor to Andrew Jackson's tradition. Though he was a Northerner, he was a Jacksonian Democrat, okay? And he ran as the Democrat against the Whig candidate, none other than Henry Clay, okay? We talked extensively about Henry Clay, but the point being that both of these men realized that if they talked about Texas, it was going to put them in a difficult situation. Okay. Van Buren was a Northerner. He didn't want to talk about slavery because he was a Northern man in a Southern party. Okay. And. Clay was a Southern man from a Northern party. The Whigs were Northern and he was from Kentucky. So the point is that neither of these men wanted to talk about Texas and the annexation of Texas because it would open up the can of worms called slavery. And they didn't want to deal with that. Well, one man who recognized the mood of the day was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from the state of Tennessee. His name was James Knox Polk. He was often referred to as Little Hickory because he was kind of a second version of Andrew Jackson. He was a man from Tennessee, an aspiring politician who wanted to be president, or I should say aspiring president. And so in 1844, James Polk recognized an opening. He recognized that the mood of the country. was in the direction of expansion. And so when he went to the Democratic National Convention and Van Buren was not touching Western expansion and he wasn't talking about slavery, basically James Polk said, that's nonsense. We are going to talk about expansion. We'll deal with slavery as it happens. But James Polk is now going to run for the presidency in 1844, calling for both. the re-annexation of Texas, and 54-40 or fight. What did that mean? What was that all about? Well, James Polk did win the Democratic nomination. He did become the Democratic candidate. Van Buren was out. So what did he mean? Well, basically, Polk argued that John Quincy Adams and the Whigs had basically given away Texas. in 1819 when they signed that transcontinental treaty. And now if he's elected president, he's going to do what John Quincy Adams didn't do back in 1819. He's going to annex Texas. But this is what he calls the re-annexation of Texas. That was basically language that was going to insult Mexico. OK, it was kind of like this Texas was part of the United States all along. All right. He's also going to alienate the British. 5440 or fight was a reference to the Oregon boundary. OK, 54 degrees 40 minutes is the southern boundary of Alaska. And basically, Canadian territory up to the Alaska border and Russia controlled Alaska at this time. OK, that was all British territory. So basically what what. Polk was doing was threatening war with Great Britain. If Great Britain didn't surrender all of its claims to territory between Oregon and Alaska, he was prepared for war. That's what 54-40 or fight was all about. It was a threat of war that was directed at Great Britain. Give up your claims in the Oregon country or we will have war. So James Polk came to this some. this campaign with tough talk and war in mind. And basically that was the mood of the country. We'll talk about what that mood is in our next lecture. But the last point I need to make is this, not only did Polk win election, but Democrats won control in Congress. And when they did, one of the first things that began to happen Congress recognized that the mood was right now for Texas annexation. So even before James Polk took the oath of office in 1845, in February of 1845, Congress passed a joint resolution to annex Texas. And later that year, in January of 1845, Texas was finally annexed and became part of the United States. What happened after that? was a clash with Mexico and that clash of Mexico precipitated the Mexican War, which we are going to talk about in our next lecture.

And we'll talk about those matters as we go along in this class. But in this lecture, we wanna focus a little bit more specifically on the process whereby people from the Eastern United States began to migrate westward. And we're going to talk about a couple of the major overland trails, the Oregon Trail, which led people from St. Louis up to the Oregon Territory.

We're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the Santa Fe Trail, which took people from Missouri down into New Mexico. Spend some time talking about California and finally wrap up our lecture talking a little bit about Texas. But if you need to refer back to this map as we talk, please feel free to back up and refer to the map as need be. Now, in the aftermath of Lewis and Clark, some of the earliest arrivals in the American West were fur trappers and traders.

Those were the men who especially found opportunities conducting trade. with Native Americans. And again, one of the things that Lewis and Clark had documented was the existence of various tribes in the West where profitable trade could take place. And it did. The first people to arrive in the West and begin populating the West were fur trappers and traders.

And they were very mobile. They didn't really settle in one place. They moved about a great deal. And And in moving back and forth and all around, they began to develop a system of trails in the American West. And the most prominent of these early trails was the Oregon Trail.

And I want to talk a little bit about the Oregon Trail, a trail that ultimately led from St. Louis, Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia River in the Oregon Territory. And the man who was especially... important in blazing this trail was a man by the name of John Jacob Astor.

Now, you may have heard of the Astor family. They are a very wealthy, very prominent New York social family. And they date their wealth and their power back to kind of the patriarch, a man by the name of John Jacob Astor, who is a German immigrant who arrived in the United States in the 1790s. And originally he was a, he produced and sold musical instruments.

He was a musician by training. And so he sold musical instruments, but there wasn't a lot of money to be made in that line of work. And so after the treaties were signed with Indians, John Jacob Astor was one of those who began. securing trade privileges in the West.

And he began actually building a very successful fur trading company out of New York City. Well, in 1808, he greatly expanded his operation when he founded the American Fur Company, and he located a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River on the Columbia River. west coast, the Pacific coast, not far from where Lewis and Clark had camped just a couple years earlier.

And so the American Fur Company began. trapping and trading and Astor's company was doing pretty well for the first couple of years. The problem was the only way to transport merchandise from Oregon back to New York was on boats that sailed all the way around South America, down the Pacific coast to South America and then up the Atlantic side.

It was a very long circuitous route. And so by 1811, um, Astor's company, the American Fur Company, had decided that they were going to try and locate an overland route. Now, it is true that Lewis and Clark had already traveled overland.

But the one thing that the Lewis and Clark expedition had demonstrated is that the passes through the Rocky Mountains were all very high and very rugged. And one of the reasons why ships were used to sail around. South America was because there were no good mountain passes that could allow and accommodate, especially wagons. If you were going to transfer large shipments of furs, you needed to do that in wagons, not just on pack mules.

So the point is, in 1811, a group of trappers for the American Fur Company, they're often called the Overland Astorians, set out. And, you know, quite fortuitously, and I will say fortuitously, they discovered in southern Wyoming or what is today southern Wyoming, a low-lying pass through the Rocky Mountains. It was called South Pass.

And to this very day, the railroad, the interstate highway, they all pass through South Pass because it is one of the low-lying and gradual passes through the Rocky Mountains. It also became then the preferred method for getting to to Oregon. And so basically you would take the Missouri River to the Platte River and up and over South Pass to the Snake River, the Columbia River and down to Oregon. Right. So it was a very efficient pass.

And because of that, then, again, more and more people started looking westward. And. And trappers and traders especially were active in their pursuits in the West.

Well, there wasn't a lot of call for settling in Oregon until the 1830s. And then in the 1830s, the United States experienced what's often called Oregon fever. And what happened was, according to legend, there was a story. of a small company of Nez Perce Indians who had, according to the legend, traveled from the Oregon country to St. Louis.

In other words, they'd taken the Oregon Trail in reverse, and they'd come to St. Louis. Now, when they arrived in St. Louis, first of all, they didn't speak English, and so nobody really knew. what they were doing there.

And second of all, they actually died shortly after arriving. But the questions surrounding their, you know, what drove them? Why did they make this long journey?

These questions were contemplated and ultimately word began to circulate that these people had made this long journey seeking missionaries. In other words, remember, this is the time of the Great Awakening when there was a lot of religious fervor going on. And consequently, missionary groups now began to think about Oregon as a land of great opportunity.

And if these people had come all of that way looking for the Bible and instruction in Christianity, well, missionaries then had a job to do. All right. So.

These were Protestant missionaries, not Catholic, but Protestant missionaries, and they included Methodists, they included Episcopalians, and the most prominent of these was a man by the name of Jason Lee. Jason Lee organized a mission effort in 1833, and he and a group of supporters traveled over the Oregon Trail out to the Oregon country. Now, they weren't very successful in their efforts at establishing a mission.

In fact, missionaries tended to alienate Native Americans because Native Americans weren't eager to change their religion, contrary to popular beliefs. But what Jason Lee did discover is that Oregon was a country that was rich in agricultural potential. The Willamette Valley, south of the modern-day city of Portland, Oregon, offered tremendous agricultural potential. And so Jason Lee and Hall Jackson Kelly and others, they became boosters and advocates for the Oregon country. And they did create what is often called Oregon fever.

And during the 1830s and early 1840s, then thousands of Americans from the United States began traveling over the Oregon Trail. to the Oregon country. And by 1844, as I indicate here, there were something like 5,000 Americans living in the Willamette River Valley. The city of Portland, Oregon is located right at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.

So Americans were now starting to populate the Oregon country as a result of the Oregon Trail. But Oregon wasn't the only city. place that Americans were starting to travel. They were also starting to relocate to New Mexico.

Now, it is important to remember that New Mexico, prior to 1821, was part of New Spain. It was part of the Spanish Empire. And it was also an area where there was potentially fur trapping and trading. possibilities. And so there were fur trappers and traders that were interested in the area around Santa Fe.

And this is ultimately then going to lead to the blazing of a trail called the Santa Fe Trail. So let me tell you a little bit about a man by the name of William Becknell. Okay, William Becknell was a fur trapper who lived in Missouri.

Franklin, Missouri, to be precise. And in 1821, he set out on a fur trapping expedition that was destined for Colorado. Now, remember that under the Transcontinental Treaty, the Arkansas River of Kansas and Colorado was the boundary between the United States and New Spain. So William Becknell knew that he had to stay north of the Arkansas River. If he went south of the Arkansas River and traveled into New Spain, he would be in violation of Spanish mercantile policies, and he could be incarcerated, and he could have all of his goods, all of his merchandise seized.

So he wanted to stay north of the Arkansas River, which he did. The problem is when he got into Colorado. up into the mountains in Colorado, the river started branching out into all kinds of smaller branches.

And he wasn't sure where he was. He wasn't sure if he was north of the river or south of the river. What he did know is he was doing pretty well in his trade there. And so he was happy until one day a group of Spanish soldiers strayed into his camp.

And his fear now. was that like many other trappers, he was going to have his merchandise seized and that he could actually be thrown in jail. And others had actually been thrown in jail for violation of trade laws.

So he was very concerned, but much to his surprise, these soldiers invited him to come to Santa Fe and to conduct trade. And he said, well, he can't do that. He'd be thrown in jail.

And they said, no, no. In 1821, just recently, Mexico has declared independence. Bechnell wasn't aware of that, but he learned it. And so knowing that this was independent Mexico and knowing that the Mexicans now wanted to trade, he traveled south from Colorado down into Santa Fe. Now, as he crossed from Colorado down into Santa Fe, he had to cross over a high mountain pass called Raton Pass.

It's actually the interstate highway goes over Raton Pass today. In any case, it's a high pass, and it's one that he was able to pass over with pack animals, but he also knew that if he had wagons, it would have been very difficult to do that. So Becknell was able to cross over to Raton Pass. He traveled down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he traded. very profitably.

One of the things he quickly realized is that he had the possibility now to make considerable profits. If he went back to Missouri and loaded up and outfitted a wagon train, he could trade, he could bring things from Missouri to Santa Fe and make lots of money. In Santa Fe, they had silver even, silver coins.

And so he was thrilled about the possibility of making a lot of money. He went back to Missouri, took out an ad in the newspaper, invited subscribers, tried to raise as much money as he possibly could. And then he began outfitting Conestoga wagons like you see in this in this slide.

All right. His goal was to. track these Conestoga wagons back to Santa Fe and trade there, right? So in 1821, he set out. Now, he realized he wasn't going to be able to make it over Raton Pass.

So he took a more direct route from Kansas down to New Mexico. He pioneered what was called the Cimarron Cut-Off of the Santa Fe Trail. And it was almost a devastating.

decision that he made. When he cut off away from the Arkansas River, he had no idea what he was getting into. He, first of all, quickly discovered there was no water. He ended up in a desert, the Cimarron Desert, and his animals almost died.

He quickly discovered that he was in Cherokee, not Cherokee, Comanche territory, and that there was the possibility of raids. among the Comanches. And so this was a very risky decision that Becknell made. Nevertheless, to his good fortune, he was able to locate the Canadian River, and that took him into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and he was able to get to Santa Fe. And it was a very, very successful trip that he made.

He ended up making a lot of money, and he then opened up New Mexico to trade between Missouri and New Mexico, which was part of Mexico at this time. Now, while there were some Americans who began to relocate into New Mexico, there were also some who began to locate in southeastern Colorado on the north banks of the Arkansas River. Point being that this Santa Fe trade was profitable and it started bringing hundreds of Americans, not as many as elsewhere, hundreds of Americans into this part of the world.

And it also began to bring the Mexican population of the Rio Grande Valley into close economic ties with the United States, which was important. Now, even as New Mexico and Oregon. were starting to become populated.

Americans were also starting to move to and populate California. Now, earlier in this class, remember, we talked about the Spanish colonization of California. Twenty-one missions had been organized along the coast of California from San Diego in the south up to San Francisco Bay in the north.

Now, initially, those missions... provided materials for what's called the hide and tallow trade. And I'll try and explain what that is exactly. The mission lands were very good, very productive grazing lands. And the fact is, each of these missions supported herds of cattle in the thousands.

So the point is that these herds of cattle. provided valuable resources, especially their skins or their hides, which was used as leather. In the eastern United States and in Europe especially, the boot and shoe industries were starting to take off.

Mass production of boots and shoes required leather. And so the hide in places like California and Texas was very valuable. In addition to the hide of the animal, the tallow, which is the fat of the animal, was very valuable as well.

Tallow was used in the making of candles. And at a time when there was no electricity, candles were the primary means by which people lit their homes. Tallow was very valuable.

And so early on, these California missions were very productive in providing. for this hide-and-tallow trade. And Americans traded with the Spanish missionaries early on.

But in the 1830s then, there was a push within Mexico to what's called secularize the missions. Remember, the missions themselves were controlled by the Roman Catholic Church. But there was a movement in Mexico to take those...

mission lands and privatize them. That is to have the church relinquish its control. The lands were turned over.

to the Indians themselves. They were Indian lands, and now in the 1830s, through a process called secularization, those lands were going to be transferred to the Indians. The Indians didn't fully understand the value of those lands in a market economy, and in the end, large numbers of people from the United States, Americans, began arriving in California. In the 1830s, men like Thomas Oliver Larkin, and others came to California and they were able to buy land very inexpensively. As they did, they quite literally started building landed empires.

And Thomas Oliver Larkin himself became one of the most outspoken advocates for California. He believed that if the United States took over California, that California would not only serve as a valuable base or source of resources, grazing lands and timberlands and all kinds of other resources, but he also saw California as a gateway to the Pacific trade. A port city on the California coast would open up the United States to very rich trading in Asia.

So T.O. Larkin and others became... boosters in the same way that Jason Lee became an advocate for Oregon. Thomas Oliver Larkin, and Thomas Oliver Larkin even wrote letters to Andrew Jackson, urging Jackson to think about claiming or trying to at least negotiate to get California from Mexico.

By 1844, There were something like 3,000 American citizens living in Mexican California. Again, 1844, as we'll see shortly, was a very important year. So thousands of Americans had moved to Oregon and to California. There were certainly hundreds living in New Mexico.

But by far the largest number of immigrants to begin heading west were the immigrants who began to move into Texas, okay? And it was the showdown over Texas now that's going to produce violent warfare and conflict between the United States and Mexico, okay? So how did this all come about? Well, in 1821, a young lawyer in New Orleans, a man by the name of Stephen Austin, inherited from his father a very lucrative grant to land, on the Brazos River in what was then, well, by 1821, it was Mexican Texas.

Originally, it was Spanish Texas. But Stephen Austin secured his grant from the Mexican government. And ultimately now, under the terms of his agreement, Stephen Austin was given access to 4 million acres of land on the Brazos and Colorado Rivers.

And he would be allowed to keep a big chunk of that land himself if he brought 300 families to live on that land and who would then become, who were willing to become loyal citizens of the country of Mexico, the Republic of Mexico. Stephen Austin satisfied the terms of his agreement and he populated the Brazos and Colorado River. with large numbers of people from the United States. And so successful was this experiment that in 1824, Mexico passed a general colonization law. And that general colonization law was modeled on the agreement that had been made with Stephen Austin.

Other people who want to receive land, they were known as empresarios. An empresario was the recipient of a land grant. OK, others who wanted to receive land could do so on the condition that they would bring people to settle that land and and that those people would be willing to become citizens of the Republic of Mexico. OK, now, men like Green DeWitt, who founded the area around Gonzales, and there was the only.

Mexican empresario was Martin de Leon, who established the area around Victoria. But there were other empresarios as well, and they started to bring people into and settle Texas. And again, the reason why this was important is because Mexico feared that the United States had designs on Texas and the United States might try to occupy Texas. Well, this general colonization law led to a large-scale populating of Texas by people from the United States.

By 1835, there was something like 25,000 Americans living in Texas. And they greatly outnumbered the Mexican or Tejano population, which by this time was about 5,000 people, something like that. So there were far more people from the United States now than there were Tejanos. So that was a very kind of dangerous situation.

Now, most of these immigrants from the United States came from the South. And when they came to the South, one of the things that they were going to start doing was planting cotton. And ultimately, that meant they brought slavery with them. That was something that created problems. Because in 1828, Mexico officially abolished slavery everywhere in Mexico, with the exception, at least for the time being, of Texas.

Initially... Texas was granted an exemption from this, but it remained very controversial. The Roman Catholic Church had become especially outspoken in condemning the institution of slavery.

And the idea that slavery would be tolerated in part of Mexico was something that did not sit well with the church, especially. The point being, then, that Texas now and Texans themselves found themselves in a very... kind of a problematic situation.

Slave owners feared that slavery would be abolished and they would lose their source of labor, right? And on the other hand, Mexican officials were increasingly intent upon abolishing slavery in Texas as well, okay? So as Texans became increasingly independent-minded and started thinking, well, maybe it would be better to be a slave owner.

independent of Mexico, they began challenging Mexican law. They began challenging Mexican officials. There were attempts to disarm many Texans, and that's what led to the clash in Gonzales.

So we began to see clashes between Mexican officials and Texans. Well, by 1835, the president of Mexico Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had decided it was time to clamp down on Texans. And so in the fall of 1835, Santa Anna sent 4,000 men northward. Actually, he didn't send them. He led them himself.

4,000 men northward to Texas to basically force compliance with Mexican laws. Santa Ana was a centralist, and he believed that power should emanate from Mexico City. He didn't like the idea of individual states having too much power, okay?

And that included especially Texas, okay? Well, the movement of troops by Santa Ana northward to Texas now set the stage for the Texas Revolution. We don't have a lot of time, unfortunately, to talk about the Texas Revolution. do that more in my Texas history class. But in this class, we do want to kind of mention some of the important developments, right?

As Texans began to feel the pressure of Mexican presence in San Antonio and in Goliad, basically by March of 1836, a gathering took place at Washington on the Brazos River near modern day. Navasota, Texas, and there a group of Texans with a couple of Mexican-Americans. Mexican-Americans did not support this independence movement widely. There were a couple, but this was an Anglo movement. They declared independence from Mexico, and in so doing, they appointed Sam Houston to be their military commander.

Now, Once Sam Houston took command of the Army, the big question was, would he engage Santa Anna directly or would he wait? And of course, Santa Ana by this time had occupied San Antonio, had surrounded the Alamo, and he had also sent troops up to Goliad and had surrounded the fort at Goliad. And I don't have time to get into all of the details of what happened at the Alamo and Goliad, save to say that in dealing with the Texans, Santa Ana was quite literally taking no prisoners.

He was brutal in his treatment of the defenders at the Alamo. He was brutal in his treatment of the people, the men at Goliad. As a result of Texan defenses and opposition to Santa Ana's government, 500 Texas...

immigrants were dead. Now, I do use the word immigrants, and I think it's important that we understand this. It's a common misconception that the men who died at the Alamo and Goliad were Texans.

That really is not the case. The vast majority of these men were Tennesseans. They were Georgians. They were Mississippians.

They had only arrived in England. Texas in the months leading up to these events. They didn't have ties to Texas. They didn't have an attachment to Texas. They had come to Texas in the hope of securing land, but they didn't have ties to Texas.

And consequently, it's really not accurate to say that they were Texans. Yes, there were Texans at the Alamo and the Goliad. Yes, there were individuals who had been in Texas for eight, ten years by now. Okay. But the reality is most of the men who were at the Alamo and at Goliad were not Texans.

They came from elsewhere and had only recently arrived in Texas. Still, there was outrage over the way Santa Ana treated the Americans at the Alamo and at Goliad. All right. So.

What would Sam Houston do? Well, while there were those who demanded that Sam Houston stand up and attack Santa Ana's army, he retreated. He retreated eastward.

And if you look at this map, you can kind of see his retreat. It's called the Runaway Scrape. But basically, on April 21st of 1836, then just outside of Houston, he stood and took a stand at San Jacinto.

He struck at Santa Ana's army quite by surprise. The Mexican army was not prepared at all for the attack when it occurred. And Sam Houston and his men were every bit as brutal in dealing with the Mexican soldiers as Santa Ana had been in dealing with the Texans at or the men at Alamo and Goliad. OK, 630 Mexican soldiers now were dead. And.

The net result is that Santa Ana was captured and he was forced to sign a treaty. It was called the Treaty of Velasco. Under this treaty, I'll get to that in a second.

Under this treaty, Santa Ana agreed to move his troops south of the Rio Grande. He would evacuate the territory and relocate south of the Rio Grande. and he would then recognize Texas independence. So he was the president. He's now withdrawing troops south of the Rio Grande, and he is now recognizing Texas independence.

So Texans celebrate great victory. They celebrate their independence. But it is vital to remember, while Santa Ana signed the Treaty of Velasco, the Mexican Congress never ratified that treaty.

And because it never ratified the treaty, Mexico never recognized the Treaty of Velasco as binding. So Texans would point to the Treaty of Velasco as evidence of their independence. Mexico, however, never acknowledged that Texas was independent.

All right. About five months later, in the fall of 1836 now, Texans organized their first election. And one of the things that they do then is they vote.

that Sam Houston is now going to be the president of the Republic of Texas. The independent Republic of Texas is a separate standing sovereign. But there is general sentiment in Texas in favor of annexation to the United States. In fact, there's overwhelming support. The vast majority of voting Texans wanted to become part of the United States.

But that annexation would be conditional upon slavery. If they could enter the Union as a slave state, Texans wanted to enter the Union. But if they couldn't enter with slavery, they would remain independent.

So this is 1836. It would be nine years, nine years before the United States annexed Texas. So the question becomes one of why. Why did it take so long?

Sam Houston wanted to annex. The people of Texas wanted to annex. Large numbers of Americans wanted to annex Texas. So why is it that Texas didn't become part of the United States?

And the answer, quite simply, is slavery. OK, Texans wanted to enter the Union with slavery. In the United States, Democrats, Jacksonian Democrats in the South, they wanted. to annex Texas.

But the Whigs, who were especially abolitionists in the Northeast, they did not want Texas to enter the Union if Texas was going to be a slave state. If Texas wants to enter the Union as a free-soil state, Whigs are all for that. Whigs will be very happy to admit Texas to the Union. But Texas did not want to enter the Union as a free-soil state. Texan slave owners demanded that slavery must be legal there, right?

And so quite literally now, for nine years, Texas was in a state of limbo. Strictly speaking, Texas was an independent country. But in truth, most Texans continued to hold out hope that Texas would become part of the United States, okay?

Well, in 1844... The president of the United States was a man by the name of John Tyler. Now, John Tyler was kind of an interesting character because he had inherited the presidency. He was actually the first vice president to assume the presidency.

He was not elected president of the United States. And because he wasn't elected president, there were those who basically called him his accidency. He wasn't the authentic president.

of the United States. John Tyler was in a difficult situation because John Tyler was a Whig, but John Tyler was a Southern Whig and he was a slave owner himself. There were Southern Whigs and there were slave owning Whigs and John Tyler was among those. The problem is there weren't many Southern Whigs and he found himself quite literally a man with a party and he had very few supporters. In order to try and bring his party together, in 1844, he proposed a treaty to annex Texas.

That treaty was signed with Sam Houston, the president of Texas, and Sam Houston was eager to be admitted into the Union. The problem is, when the treaty went to the Senate for ratification, Whigs blocked it. John Tyler's treaty was defeated. And now, in 1844, the big... question that's going to plague the presidential candidates in 1844 is Texas annexation and Western expansion more generally.

So the presidential election of 1844 is now going to hinge very largely on the question of Texas. So who are the candidates? Well, in 1844, the front runners were Martin Van Buren. who was a Democrat. He was a Northern Democrat, and he was the successor to Andrew Jackson's tradition.

Though he was a Northerner, he was a Jacksonian Democrat, okay? And he ran as the Democrat against the Whig candidate, none other than Henry Clay, okay? We talked extensively about Henry Clay, but the point being that both of these men realized that if they talked about Texas, it was going to put them in a difficult situation. Okay.

Van Buren was a Northerner. He didn't want to talk about slavery because he was a Northern man in a Southern party. Okay. And.

Clay was a Southern man from a Northern party. The Whigs were Northern and he was from Kentucky. So the point is that neither of these men wanted to talk about Texas and the annexation of Texas because it would open up the can of worms called slavery. And they didn't want to deal with that. Well, one man who recognized the mood of the day was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from the state of Tennessee.

His name was James Knox Polk. He was often referred to as Little Hickory because he was kind of a second version of Andrew Jackson. He was a man from Tennessee, an aspiring politician who wanted to be president, or I should say aspiring president. And so in 1844, James Polk recognized an opening.

He recognized that the mood of the country. was in the direction of expansion. And so when he went to the Democratic National Convention and Van Buren was not touching Western expansion and he wasn't talking about slavery, basically James Polk said, that's nonsense. We are going to talk about expansion. We'll deal with slavery as it happens.

But James Polk is now going to run for the presidency in 1844, calling for both. the re-annexation of Texas, and 54-40 or fight. What did that mean?

What was that all about? Well, James Polk did win the Democratic nomination. He did become the Democratic candidate. Van Buren was out.

So what did he mean? Well, basically, Polk argued that John Quincy Adams and the Whigs had basically given away Texas. in 1819 when they signed that transcontinental treaty. And now if he's elected president, he's going to do what John Quincy Adams didn't do back in 1819. He's going to annex Texas. But this is what he calls the re-annexation of Texas.

That was basically language that was going to insult Mexico. OK, it was kind of like this Texas was part of the United States all along. All right. He's also going to alienate the British. 5440 or fight was a reference to the Oregon boundary.

OK, 54 degrees 40 minutes is the southern boundary of Alaska. And basically, Canadian territory up to the Alaska border and Russia controlled Alaska at this time. OK, that was all British territory. So basically what what.

Polk was doing was threatening war with Great Britain. If Great Britain didn't surrender all of its claims to territory between Oregon and Alaska, he was prepared for war. That's what 54-40 or fight was all about.

It was a threat of war that was directed at Great Britain. Give up your claims in the Oregon country or we will have war. So James Polk came to this some.

this campaign with tough talk and war in mind. And basically that was the mood of the country. We'll talk about what that mood is in our next lecture.

But the last point I need to make is this, not only did Polk win election, but Democrats won control in Congress. And when they did, one of the first things that began to happen Congress recognized that the mood was right now for Texas annexation. So even before James Polk took the oath of office in 1845, in February of 1845, Congress passed a joint resolution to annex Texas. And later that year, in January of 1845, Texas was finally annexed and became part of the United States.

What happened after that? was a clash with Mexico and that clash of Mexico precipitated the Mexican War, which we are going to talk about in our next lecture.

Transcript for:Westward Expansion and Trail Migration

Transcript for:
Westward Expansion and Trail Migration