Gray, Wyeth, Fremont, Rept. of Exploring Expedition to Oregon, 75. The Pacific Coast Oregon. From the day when Astor's trading post was abandoned to the Hudson Bay Company, the Columbia River country was coveted by American fur traders. Bonneville, Sublette, and other adventurers hunted and trapped in the debated territory and brought their spoils to St. Louis, but not till 1832 was there any attempt at settlement. In that year a party of Massachusetts men, under the leadership of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, made the arduous journey up the north branch of the Platte River and over the South Pass to the westward flowing waters of the Snake. Here they established Fort Hall in defiance of the Hudson Bay Company's claims. Four years later Marcus Whitman conducted a missionary expedition up the Snake River to Walla Walla, proving the Oregon Trail practicable for women and wagons. Thereafter the beauty and fertility of this region attracted hundreds and thousands of emigrants. In June, 1843, a caravan of two hundred wagons gathered at Westport on the Missouri, under conduct of Dr. Whitman, for the difficult overland journey. It was the first of a long procession of similar migrations. The characteristic vehicle was the "prairie schooner," a long, heavy cart with a canvas cover. The women and children with provisions and camping kit were carried in the wagons. The men rode horseback or walked alongside. As the Indians along the route became troublesome, strict guard was kept lest a foraging band capture the horses and cattle. The government sent a detachment of troops under Fremont to explore the route and protect the emigrant trains. He found a well-beaten trail and wayside camps the whole distance from Fort Hall to Walla Walla. "The edge of the wood, for several miles along the [Bear] River, was dotted with the white covers of emigrant wagons, collected in groups at different camps, where the smokes were rising lazily from the fires, around which the women were occupied in preparing the evening meal, and the Bancroft, Hist. of the Pacific States, Stillman, Seeking the Fleece. children playing in the grass; and herds of cattle grazing about in the bottom had an air of quiet security and civilized comfort, that made a rare sight for the traveler in such a remote wilderness." Before the close of 1844, three thousand emigrants had found their way to the Columbia River region. Houses and cattle and plowed fields frightened the beaver from their accustomed haunts and threatened the interests of the fur traders. The Hudson Bay Company strove to avert this invasion by refusing to employ Americans, and by offering them various inducements to move to California. But the emigrant trains came steadily on. The British government was finally forced to surrender the land to the actual occupants. The Ashburton Treaty of 1846 secured the country north to the forty-ninth parallel as within the jurisdiction of the United States. The acquisition held rich industrial resources. The Columbia River plateau was destined to become a vast wheat granary. The Cascade Mountains contain coal and iron and gold. Puget Sound is a beautiful land-locked harbor second only in physical advantages to that of San Francisco. Its waters and those of the tributary rivers abound in salmon and other edible fish of high commercial value. California. The discovery of a nugget of virgin gold in an irrigating ditch on a Sacramento River cattle ranch (January 19, 1848) was the origin of a westward movement quite different in character from any antecedent migration. A horde of adventurers, young men for the most part, swarmed across the Cordilleran Range to the El Dorado on the Pacific coast. Gold to the amount of $5,000,000 was taken from the placers of the Sacramento Valley in 1848 by the five thousand men who were first on the ground. In the next year fifty thousand people made their way to California. Some of the "forty-niners" undertook the nineteen thousand mile voyage round the Horn, others sailed to Panama and, crossing the pestilential isthmus, took ship for San Francisco; but the most impatient and foolhardy made their way along the El Dorado. Salt Lake Trail from Fort Leavenworth up the Platte Taylor, Utah, Utah. At Salt Lake, on the edge of the Great Basin, Linn, the gold seekers came upon a Mormon settlement. The Story of the saints had migrated from Iowa in the spring of 1847, 378-409. Mormons, making their way up the Platte River by what came to be known as the Mormon Trail, to Fort Laramie, and so over the table-land to their arid destination. The sage brush Brough, plains proved highly fertile under irrigation. The settlers Irrigation in put up flour mills and saw mills, woolen and nail factories, Ch. I, II. and were soon able to supply themselves with all the necessaries of life. Few joined in the rush to California. They found a surer means of making money in providing food and transportation at exorbitant prices to the desperate gold seekers. In the winter of 1848-1849 there were five thousand people in Utah. The population of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast communities amounted in 1860 to more than five hundred thousand. The character of the settlers as well as the nature of the climate and the economic resources, rendered the whole of this territory unfit for slavery. The U.S. Census, new West offered, on the contrary, many and hopeful openings for free and self-employed labor. Not even among the Mexican population of New Mexico and Arizona did slavery flourish. Agriculture could be carried on only by means of irrigation, and this required a degree of intelli 1900, gence and a capacity for coöperation that can be expected only in a free farmer. Bolles, Ch. VI, VII. II, 419-474. Tariff Hist. of the U.S., 109-154. Dewey, 237-239, 249252, 257-259, 262-265. Influence of Revenue Tariffs The golden age of American industry was coincident with a period of low import duties. The gradual reduc tion of the tariff provided for in the compromise of 1833 had been consistently carried out, and the horizontal scale of twenty per cent was reached in 1842. This minimum tariff was in operation but two months (July and August). Then the advocates of protection secured a brief lease of power. With a view to making political capital out of benefits conferred, the Whig majority in Congress enacted a law imposing heavy duties on salt, glass, iron, cotton, woolen, and silk manufactures, industries represented in New England and the Middle states. The West was indifferent to the measure, the South was distinctly hostile. The unqualified Democratic victory of 1844 gave the opponents of protection their opportunity. In his annual report of December 1845, R. J. Walker, Secretary of the Tariff Laws, Treasury, demonstrated that the prevailing customs duties imposed a tax of $81,000,000 upon consumers in the way of enhanced prices, while they brought to the government a revenue of only $27,000,000. He proposed that tariff legislation should be determined by financial considerations solely, and that the import duties should be laid in accordance with sound principles of taxation. Rates should be fixed at the point that would insure the maximum return over and above the cost of collection. Protection should Rabbeno, Thompson, Ch. XXXIX, XL. Executive Documents, 29th Cong., 1st Session, II, No. 6. |