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STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER BY FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ILLUSTRATED New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All rights reserved Copyright, 1910, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.
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PREFACE
PREFACE
I have told here the story of the last frontier within the United States, trying at once to preserve the picturesque atmosphere which has given to the "Far West" a definite and well-understood meaning, and to indicate those forces which have shaped the history of the country beyond the Mississippi. In doing it I have had to rely largely upon my own investigations among sources little used and relatively inaccessible. The exact citations of authority, with which I might have crowded my pages, wou
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CHAPTER I THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
CHAPTER I THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
The story of the United States is that of a series of frontiers which the hand of man has reclaimed from nature and the savage, and which courage and foresight have gradually transformed from desert waste to virile commonwealth. It is the story of one long struggle, fought over different lands and by different generations, yet ever repeating the conditions and episodes of the last period in the next. The winning of the first frontier established in America its first white settlements. Later stru
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CHAPTER II THE INDIAN FRONTIER
CHAPTER II THE INDIAN FRONTIER
A lengthening frontier made more difficult the maintenance of friendly relations between the two races involved in the struggle for the continent. It increased the area of danger by its extension, while its advance inland pushed the Indian tribes away from their old home lands, concentrating their numbers along its margin and thereby aggravating their situation. Colonial negotiations for lands as they were needed had been relatively easy, since the Indians and whites were nearly enough equal in
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CHAPTER III IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST
CHAPTER III IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST
In the end of the thirties the "right wing" of the frontier, as a colonel of dragoons described it, extended northeasterly from the bend of the Missouri to Green Bay. It was an irregular line beyond which lay the Indian tribes, and behind which was a population constantly becoming more restless and aggressive. That it should have been a permanent boundary is not conceivable; yet Congress professed to regard it as such, and had in 1836 ordered the survey and construction of a military road from t
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CHAPTER IV THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL
CHAPTER IV THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL
England had had no colonies so remote and inaccessible as the interior provinces of Spain, which stretched up into the country between the Rio Grande and the Pacific for more than fifteen hundred miles above Vera Cruz. Before the English seaboard had received its earliest colonists, the hand of Spain was already strong in the upper waters of the Rio Grande, where her outposts had been planted around the little adobe village of Santa Fé. For more than two hundred years this life had gone on, unch
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CHAPTER V THE OREGON TRAIL
CHAPTER V THE OREGON TRAIL
The Santa Fé trade had just been started upon its long career when trappers discovered in the Rocky Mountains, not far from where the forty-second parallel intersects the continental divide, an easy crossing by which access might be had from the waters of the upper Platte to those of the Pacific Slope. South Pass, as this passage through the hills soon came to be called, was the gateway to Oregon. As yet the United States had not an inch of uncontested soil upon the Pacific, but in years to come
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CHAPTER VI OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS
CHAPTER VI OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS
The story of the settlement and winning of Oregon is but a small portion of the whole history of the Oregon trail. The trail was not only the road to Oregon, but it was the chief road across the continent. Santa Fé dominated a southern route that was important in commerce and conquest, and that could be extended west to the Pacific. But the deep ravine of the Colorado River splits the United States into sections with little chance of intercourse below the fortieth parallel. To-day, in only two p
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CHAPTER VII CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS
CHAPTER VII CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS
On his second exploring trip, John C. Frémont had worked his way south over the Nevada desert until at last he crossed the mountains and found himself in the valley of the Sacramento. Here in 1844 a small group of Americans had already been established for several years. Mexican California was scantily inhabited and was so far from the inefficient central government that the province had almost fallen away of its own weight. John A. Sutter, a Swiss of American proclivities, was the magnate of th
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CHAPTER VIII KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER
CHAPTER VIII KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER
The long line separating the Indian and agricultural frontiers was in 1850 but little farther west than the point which it had reached by 1820. Then it had arrived at the bend of the Missouri, where it remained for thirty years. Its flanks had swung out during this generation, including Arkansas on the south and Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin on the north, so that now at the close of the Mexican War the line was nearly a true meridian crossing the Missouri at its bend. West of this spot it had b
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CHAPTER IX PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST
CHAPTER IX PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST
2 This chapter is in part based upon my article on "The Territory of Colorado" which was published in The American Historical Review in October, 1906. The territory of Kansas completed the political organization of the prairies. Before 1854 there had been a great stretch of land beyond Missouri and the Indian frontier without any semblance of organization or law. Indeed within the area whites had been forbidden to enter, since here was the final abode of the Indians. But with the Kansas-Nebraska
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CHAPTER X FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA
CHAPTER X FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA
The Pike's Peak boom was only one in a series of mining episodes which, within fifteen years of the discoveries in California, let in the light of exploration and settlement upon hundreds of valleys scattered over the whole of the Rocky Mountain West. The men who exploited California had generally been amateur miners, acquiring skill by bitter experience; but the next decade developed a professional class, mobile as quicksilver, restless and adventurous as all the West, which permeated into the
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CHAPTER XI THE OVERLAND MAIL
CHAPTER XI THE OVERLAND MAIL
Close upon the heels of the overland migrations came an organized traffic to supply their needs. Oregon, Salt Lake, California, and all the later gold fields, drew population away from the old Missouri border, scattered it in little groups over the face of the desert, and left it there crying for sustenance. Many of the new colonies were not self-supporting for a decade or more; few of them were independent within a year or two. In all there was a strong demand for necessities and luxuries which
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CHAPTER XII THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER
CHAPTER XII THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER
In a national way, the South struggling against the North prevented the early location of a Pacific railway. Locally, every village on the Mississippi from the Lakes to the Gulf hoped to become the terminus and had advocates throughout its section of the country. The list of claimants is a catalogue of Mississippi Valley towns. New Orleans, Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, and Duluth were all entered in the competition. By 1860 the idea had received general acceptance; no one in th
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CHAPTER XIII THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD
CHAPTER XIII THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD
It has been pointed out by Davis in his history of the Union Pacific Railroad that the period of agitation was approaching probable success when the latter was deferred because of the rivalry of sections and localities into which the scheme was thrown. From about 1850 until 1853 it indeed seemed likely that the road would be built just so soon as the terminus could be agreed upon. To be sure, there was keen rivalry over this; yet the rivalry did not go beyond local jealousies and might readily b
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CHAPTER XIV THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER XIV THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR
That the fate of the outlying colonies of the United States should have aroused grave concerns at the beginning of the Civil War is not surprising. California and Oregon, Carson City, Denver, and the other mining camps were indeed on the same continent with the contending factions, but the degree of their isolation was so great that they might as well have been separated by an ocean. Their inhabitants were more mixed than those of any portion of the older states, while in several of the communit
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CHAPTER XV THE CHEYENNE WAR
CHAPTER XV THE CHEYENNE WAR
It has long been the custom to attribute the dangerous restlessness of the Indians during and after the Civil War to the evil machinations of the Confederacy. It has been plausible to charge that agents of the South passed among the tribes, inciting them to outbreak by pointing out the preoccupation of the United States and the defencelessness of the frontier. Popular narratives often repeat this charge when dealing with the wars and depredations, whether among the Sioux of Minnesota, or the Nor
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CHAPTER XVI THE SIOUX WAR
CHAPTER XVI THE SIOUX WAR
The struggle for the possession of the plains worked the displacement of the Indian tribes. At the beginning, the invasion of Kansas had undone the work accomplished in erecting the Indian frontier. The occupation of Minnesota led surely to the downfall and transportation of the Sioux of the Mississippi. Gold in Colorado attracted multitudes who made peace impossible for the Indians of the southern plains. The Sioux of the northern plains came within the influence of the overland march in the sa
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CHAPTER XVII THE PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY
CHAPTER XVII THE PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY
The crisis in the struggle for the control of the great plains may fairly be said to have been reached about the time of the slaughter of Fetterman and his men at Fort Philip Kearney. During the previous fifteen years the causes had been shaping through the development of the use of the trails, the opening of the mining territories, and the agitation for a continental railway. Now the railway was not only authorized and begun, but Congress had put a premium upon its completion by an act of July,
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CHAPTER XVIII BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID
CHAPTER XVIII BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID
Of the four classes of persons whose interrelations determined the condition of the frontier, none admitted that it desired to provoke Indian wars. The tribes themselves consistently professed a wish to be allowed to remain at peace. The Indian agents lost their authority and many of their perquisites during war time. The army and the frontiersmen denied that they were belligerent. "I assert," wrote Custer, "and all candid persons familiar with the subject will sustain the assertion, that of all
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CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS
CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS
Twenty years before the great tribes of the plains made their last stand in front of the invading white man overland travel had begun; ten years before, Congress, under the inspiration of the prophetic Whitney and the leadership of more practical men, had provided for a survey of railroad routes along the trails; on the eve of the struggle the earliest continental railway had received its charter; and the struggle had temporarily ceased while Congress, in 1867, sent out its Peace Commission to p
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CHAPTER XX THE NEW INDIAN POLICY
CHAPTER XX THE NEW INDIAN POLICY
Through the negotiations of the Peace Commissioners of 1867 and 1868, and the opening of the Pacific railway in 1869, the Indians of the plains had been cleanly split into two main groups which had their centres in the Sioux reserve in southwest Dakota and the old Indian Territory. The advance of a new wave of population had followed along the road thus opened, pushing settlements into central Nebraska and Kansas. Through the latter state the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, better known as the
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CHAPTER XXI THE LAST STAND OF CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL
CHAPTER XXI THE LAST STAND OF CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL
The main defence of the last frontier by the Indians ceased with the termination of the Indian wars of the sixties. Here the resistance had most closely resembled a general war with the tribes in close alliance against the invader. With this obstacle overcome, the work left to be done in the conquest of the continent fell into two main classes: terminating Indian resistance by the suppression of sporadic outbreaks in remote byways and letting in the population. The new course of the Indian probl
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CHAPTER XXII LETTING IN THE POPULATION
CHAPTER XXII LETTING IN THE POPULATION
3 This chapter follows, in part, F. L. Paxson, "The Pacific Railroads and the Disappearance of the Frontier in America," in Ann. Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1907, Vol. I, pp. 105–118. Thus Kipling wrote of "Letting in the Jungle," upon the Indian village. The forces of nature were turned loose upon it. The gentle deer nibbled at the growing crops, the elephant trampled them down, and the wild pig rooted them up. The mud walls of the thatched huts dissolved in the torrents, and "by the end of th
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NOTE ON THE SOURCES
NOTE ON THE SOURCES
The fundamental ideas upon which all recent careful work in western history has been based were first stated by Frederick J. Turner, in his paper on The Significance of the Frontier in American History , in the Annual Report of the Am. Hist. Assn. , 1893. No comprehensive history of the trans-Mississippi West has yet appeared; Randall Parrish, The Great Plains (2d ed., Chicago, 1907), is at best only a brief and superficial sketch; the histories of the several far western states by Hubert Howe B
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Transcribers' Note
Transcribers' Note
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unpaired quotation marks were retained. For example, the paragraph beginning on page 311 with "There is little doubt" and ending on page 313 with "sincerity of their protestations" contains an unpaired quotation mark. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Index not checked for prop
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