The Winning of the West, Volume Four

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

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Four
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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
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 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 end in 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 were the 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