The Winning of the West, Volume 4 - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
421 pages
English

The Winning of the West, Volume 4 - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807

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421 pages
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Winning of the West, Volume Four by Theodore Roosevelt
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Winning of the West, Volume Four Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: April 7, 2004 [EBook #11944]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINNING OF THE WEST, V4 ***
Produced by Mark Hamann, Terry Gilliland and PG Distributed Proofreaders PRESIDENTIAL EDITION
THE WINNING OF THE WEST
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
VOLUME FOUR
LOUISIANA AND THE NORTHWEST
1791-1807
WITH MAP
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH HIS PERMISSION
TO
FRANCIS PARKMAN
TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN THE PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR COUNTRY ARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED
PREFACE TO FOURTH VOLUME.
This volume covers the period which opened with the checkered but finally successful war waged by the United States
Government against the Northwestern Indians, and closed with the acquisition and exploration of the vast region that lay
beyond the Mississippi. It was during this period that the West rose to real power in the Union. The boundaries of the old
West were at last made certain, and the new West, the Far West, the country between the Mississippi and the Pacific,
was added to the national domain. The steady stream ...

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Publié le 08 décembre 2010
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Winning of
the West, Volume Four by Theodore Roosevelt
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the
terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Winning of the West, Volume Four
Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: April 7, 2004 [EBook #11944]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK WINNING OF THE WEST, V4 ***
Produced by Mark Hamann, Terry Gilliland and PG
Distributed ProofreadersPRESIDENTIAL EDITION
THE WINNING OF THE WEST
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
VOLUME FOUR
LOUISIANA AND THE NORTHWEST
1791-1807
WITH MAP
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH HIS
PERMISSION
TO
FRANCIS PARKMAN
TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN
THE PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR COUNTRYARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED
PREFACE TO FOURTH VOLUME.
This volume covers the period which opened with
the checkered but finally successful war waged by
the United States Government against the
Northwestern Indians, and closed with the
acquisition and exploration of the vast region that
lay beyond the Mississippi. It was during this period
that the West rose to real power in the Union. The
boundaries of the old West were at last made
certain, and the new West, the Far West, the
country between the Mississippi and the Pacific,
was added to the national domain. The steady
stream of incoming settlers broadened and
deepened year by year; Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Ohio became states, Louisiana, Indiana, and
Mississippi territories. The population in the newly
settled regions increased with a rapidity hitherto
unexampled; and this rapidity, alike in growth of
population and in territorial expansion, gave the
West full weight in the national councils.
The victorious campaigns of Wayne in the north,
and the innumerable obscure forays and reprisals
of the Tennesseeans and Georgians in the south,
so cowed the Indians, that they all, north and south
alike, made peace; the first peace the border had
known for fifty years. At the same time the treaties
of Jay and Pinckney gave us in fact the boundaries
which the peace of 1783 had only given us in
name. The execution of these treaties put an endin the north to the intrigues of the British, who had
stirred the Indians to hostility against the
Americans; and in the south to the far more
treacherous intrigues of the Spaniards, who
showed astounding duplicity, and whose intrigues
extended not only to the Indians but also to the
baser separatist leaders among the Westerners
themselves.
The cession of Louisiana followed. Its true history
is to be found, not in the doings of the diplomats
who determined merely the terms upon which it
was made, but in the western growth of the people
of the United States from 1769 to 1803, which
made it inevitable. The men who settled and
peopled the western wilderness were the men who
won Louisiana; for it was surrendered by France
merely because it was impossible to hold it against
the American advance. Jefferson, through his
agents at Paris, asked only for New Orleans; but
Napoleon thrust upon him the great West, because
Napoleon saw, what the American statesmen and
diplomats did not see, but what the Westerners
felt; for he saw that no European power could hold
the country beyond the Mississippi when the
Americans had made good their foothold upon the
hither bank.
It remained to explore the unknown land; and this
task fell, not to mere wild hunters, such as those
who had first penetrated the wooded wilderness
beyond the Alleghanies, but to officers of the
regular army, who obeyed the orders of the
National Government. Lewis, Clark, and Pike werethe pioneers in the exploration of the vast territory
the United States had just gained.
The names of the Indian fighters, the treaty-
makers, the wilderness wanderers, who took the
lead in winning and exploring the West, are
memorable. More memorable still are the lives and
deeds of the settler folk for whom they fought and
toiled; for the feats of the leaders were rendered
possible only by the lusty and vigorous growth of
the young commonwealths built up by the throng of
westward-pushing pioneers. The raw, strenuous,
eager social life of these early dwellers on the
western waters must be studied before it is
possible to understand the conditions that
determined the continual westward extension of
the frontier. Tennessee, during the years
immediately preceding her admission to statehood,
is especially well worth study, both as a typical
frontier community, and because of the opportunity
afforded to examine in detail the causes and
course of the Indian wars.
In this volume I have made use of the material to
which reference was made in the first; beside the
American State Papers, I have drawn on the
Canadian Archives, the Draper Collection, including
especially the papers from the Spanish archives,
the Robertson MSS., and the Clay MSS. for
hitherto unused matter. I have derived much
assistance from the various studies and
monographs on special phases of Western history;
I refer to each in its proper place. I regret that Mr.
Stephen B. Weeks' valuable study of the Martinfamily did not appear in time for me to use it while
writing about the little state of Franklin, in my third
volume.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL, LONG ISLAND,
May, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT, 1791
II. MAD ANTHONY WAYNE; AND THE FIGHT OF
THE FALLEN TIMBERS, 1792-1795
III. TENNESSEE BECOMES A STATE, 1791-1796
IV. INTRIGUES AND LAND SPECULATIONS—
THE TREATIES OF JAY AND PINCKNEY, 1793-
1797.
V. THE MEN OF THE WESTERN WATERS, 1798-
1802
VI. THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA; ANDBURR'S CONSPIRACY, 1803-1807
VII. THE EXPLORERS OF THE FAR WEST, 1804-
1807.
APPENDIX
INDEX
[Illustration: Map Showing the First Explorations of
the Great West.
Based on a map by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New
York and London.]
THE WINNING OF THE WEST.CHAPTER I.
ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT, 1791.
The Westward March of the Backwoodsman.
The backwoods folk, the stark hunters and tree-
fellers, and the war-worn regulars who fought
beside them in the forest, pushed ever westward
the frontier of the Republic. Year after year each
group of rough settlers and rough soldiers wrought
its part in the great epic of wilderness conquest.
The people that for one or more generations finds
its allotted task in the conquest of a continent, has
before it the possibility of splendid victory, and the
certainty of incredible toil, suffering, and hardship.
The opportunity is great indeed; but the chance of
disaster is even greater. Success is for a mighty
race, in its vigorous and masterful prime. It is an
opportunity such as is offered to an army by a
struggle against a powerful foe; only by great effort
can defeat be avoided, but triumph means lasting
honor and renown.
As it is in the battle, so it is in the infinitely greater
contests where the fields of fight are continents,
and the ages form the measure of time. In actual
life the victors win in spite of brutal blunders and
repeated checks.
The Grimness and Harshness of Frontier Life.Watched nearby, while the fight stamps to and fro,
the doers and the deeds stand out naked and ugly.
We see all too clearly the blood and sweat, the
craft and dunning and blind luck, the raw cruelty
and stupidity, the shortcomings of heart and hand,
the mad abuse of victory. Strands of meanness
and cowardice are everywhere shot through the
warp of lofty and generous daring. There are
failures bitter and shameful side by side with feats
of triumphant prowess. Of those who venture in
the contest some achieve success; others strive
feebly and fail ignobly.
Only a Mighty Race Fit for the Trial.
If a race is weak, if it is lacking in the physical and
moral traits which go to the makeup of a
conquering people, it cannot succeed. For three
hundred years the Portuguese possessed
footholds in South Africa; but they left to the
English and Dutch the task of building free
communities able to hold in fact as well as in name
the country south of the Zambesi. Temperate
South America is as fertile and healthy for the
white man as temperate North America, and is so
much less in extent as to offer a far simpler
problem of conquest and settlement; yet the
Spaniard, who came to the Plata two centuries
before the American backwoodsman reached the
Mississippi, scarcely made as much progress in a
decade as his northern rival did in a year.
The task must be given the race just at the time
when it is ready for the undertaking. The whole

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