For Judy and Nick,
heroic leaders in the fight against
boring history books
Table of Contents
Title Page
How the West Moved West
Might as Well Start Here
Step 1: Ask for New Orleans
Step 2: Send in Monroe
Step 3: Buy Louisiana
Step 4: Hire Lewis and Clark
Step 5: Meet Your Neighbors
Step 6: Ask Directions
Step 7: Bring Back the News
Step 8: Become a Mountain Man
Step 9: Learn from the Locals
Step 10: Stumble to Santa Fe
Step 11: Move to Texas
Step 12: Meet Me in San Antonio
Did Someone Say “Manifest Destiny”?
Remember the Alamo!
Revenge at San Jacinto
Honeymoon in Oregon
Manifest Destiny Declared
“Who Is James K. Polk?”
Exploring with the Blockheads
Oregon Fever Rages
Are We There Yet?
The Sad Sager Saga
Which Way to California?
Beware of Shortcuts
You Call This a Party?
Now Back to Polk
War, Land, Gold, Trouble
Cause for War?
Santa Anna Does It Again
Is That Supposed to Be a Bear?
Redraw the Map Again
More Settlers
And More Trouble
The Whitman Massacre
A Bloody Preview?
Gold … Maybe
Can You Keep a Secret?
The Gold Fever Dance
But How Do You Get There?
Now the Adventure Begins
Welcome to the Wild West
“What a Puzzling Place!”
Off to the Diggings
Gettin’ Crowded Out Here
I’ve Got a Better Idea
Advancing Civilization?
“California for the Americans!”
The Mystery of Joaquin Murrieta
Time to Give Up?
Maybe I’ll Stay
But Wait, There’s More!
The Ten-Day Millionaire
What Next?
Out of the Way of the Big Engine
The Rise and Fall of the Pony Express
Here Comes Crazy Judah
The Race for Miles—and Money
How to Steal Millions: Part I
How to Steal Millions: Part II
How to Steal Millions: Part III
Who’s Going to Build This Thing?
An Old Problem Gets Worse
Sand Creek and Beyond
War Spreads North
The Shocking Fetterman Fight
And Now Comes the Railroad
This Time for Real
Race You to Utah
Thompson’s Tale
No Interruptions Allowed
Red Cloud Wins One
California Update
Blasting Through the Mountains
“We Are Now Sailing”
The CP Starts Sailing Too
Sprint to the Finish Line
The Golden Spike
Early Train Travelers (and Robbers)
Red Cloud Goes to Washington
Speaking of Heading West …
Cowboys vs. Farmers
Cowboys Wanted
Long Days on the Trail
Long Nights Too
What Are Farmers Doing Here?
Roughing It, Pioneer Style
Roughing It, Continued
Indians and Cowboys
No Love Lost
Cow Towns of the Wild West
Send in the Law
The Farmers Keep Coming
It’s Not Getting Easier
Year of the Grasshopper
Time for Teachers
The Road to Little Bighorn
Goodbye, Buffalo
Sitting Bull and Hard Backsides
Black Hills: Not for Sale
Another Miserable Job
Custer’s Not Worried
Strong Hearts to the Front!
Death All Around
After Little Bighorn
Chief Joseph’s Promise
The End of the Wild West
You’ve Heard This One
The Flight of the Nez Perce
Race to the Border
Fight No More
Exodusters Head West
Towns Everywhere
The Last to Surrender
The Weather’s Still Wild
Rush for the Last Land
Dancing in the Snow
A Dream Dies at Wounded Knee
The Cowboys Retire
What Ever Happened to … ?
Source Notes
Quotation Notes
Index
Notes
Copyright Page
How the West Moved West
Have you ever tried to negotiate a treaty for your country? Maybe not. Well, if you ever do, play it cool. You know—don’t act too eager to make a deal.
This would have been good advice for Robert Livingston, the American ambassador to France. On the afternoon of April 11, 1803, Livingston was sitting in the office of the French foreign minister. The two men were chatting politely, until the Frenchman cut in with an offer that nearly knocked Livingston out of his chair.
Might as Well Start Here
As Robert Livingston sat in Paris that day in 1803, the United States looked like this:
This is a good place to start a book about the American West. Because, as you can see, the land we call the West wasn’t actually part of the United States yet. When Americans said “the West” back then, they meant Kentucky and Tennessee.
That was about to change. In fact, Livingston’s trip to France set off a series of events that quickly changed the size and shape of the United States—and the location of what we think of as the West. Here’s how it happened.
Step 1: Ask for New Orleans
On the map you can see that the city of New Orleans was located in the French territory of Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River. When American farmers shipped their goods down the Mississippi, their ships had to pass through New Orleans before reaching the sea. This made Americans nervous. What if France suddenly shut this port to American shipping? The French could do it at any moment—they had a much more powerful military than did the young United States.
Terrified of losing their route to the sea, American farmers demanded action from Congress. Terrified of losing their jobs, members of Congress demanded action from President Thomas Jefferson. “Every eye in the United States is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana,” Jefferson moaned. “Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation.”
So Jefferson gave the ambassador Robert Livingston a new assignment: convince the French to sell New Orleans to the United States. That explains what Livingston was doing in the office of Charles de Talleyrand, the foreign minister of France, on April 11, 1803.
Talleyrand listened to Livingston’s request. Then he suddenly said: “Would you Americans wish to have the whole of Louisiana?”
This was the point at which Livingston was in danger of collapsing.
By “the whole of Louisiana,” Talleyrand meant France’s massive empire in North America, stretching from the Mississippi River all the way to the Rocky Mountains. Hmm, Livingston thought, might be nice to add all that land to the United States. But Jefferson’s orders were buy New Orleans, not buy half a continent.
“No,” Livingston finally managed to say. “Our wishes exte
nd only to New Orleans.”
But Talleyrand would not drop the subject. “I should like to know what you would give for the whole,” he insisted.
Sensing he was being offered the deal of a lifetime, Livingston pulled a number out of the air: twenty million francs (about four million dollars).
Charles de Talleyrand
Talleyrand waved the figure away as if swatting a fly. Much too low, he said. He told Livingston to think it over and get back to him with a serious offer.
Step 2: Send in Monroe
Back in Washington, D.C., Jefferson was getting more and more worried about New Orleans. He had sent Livingston to buy the place but hadn’t heard any news yet. What was Livingston up to in Paris? What was taking so long?
Jefferson decided to send his trusted friend, James Monroe, to France to help speed up negotiations. When Monroe arrived, Livingston told him that the French had just offered to sell the United States all of Louisiana.
“All France’s lands west of the Mississippi!” Livingston said to Monroe. “My, my! Why, no one even knows how much land that is. How many square miles, have we any idea?”
Monroe said he wasn’t quite sure.
Anyway, he pointed out, they had no authority to buy all that land. And there was no way to check quickly with Jefferson, since getting letters back and forth across the ocean could take months. By then, the French might have changed their mind and taken back their offer.
Livingston and Monroe talked over what to do next.
Step 3: Buy Louisiana
What the Americans didn’t know: Napoleon was desperate for cash. As the emperor of France, Napoleon had the expensive hobby of invading neighboring nations. He needed money for his wars. That’s why he wanted to sell Louisiana.
Napoleon told his treasury minister, Francois de Barbé-Marbois, to get the deal done already. He insisted on getting one hundred million francs for Louisiana.
Barbé-Marbois pointed out that this was more cash than the United States government had.
“Make it fifty million then, but nothing less,” Napoleon said. “I must get real money for the war with England.”
Now it was Barbé-Marbois’s turn to play it cool—or, to try to. He waited a couple of days, expecting Livingston and Monroe to come to his office. When the Americans didn’t show up, he started to sweat.
Emperor Napoleon
Livingston and Monroe were still trying to figure out what to do. They invited some friends for dinner and were talking things over when they noticed someone watching them from the garden behind the house.
“Doesn’t that look like Barbé-Marbois out there?” asked one of the dinner guests.
“It is! It is!” cried Livingston.
Yes, the treasury minister of France was peeking through their dining room window. So much for playing it cool.
Livingston went to the window and invited Barbé-Marbois to come around to the door. Then the two men had a short, awkward conversation.
Livingston and Monroe realized the French were eager to make a deal. And they took a chance, guessing Jefferson would want Louisiana (he did). Over the next couple of weeks, the American and French negotiators hammered out the details of what became the Louisiana Purchase. The United States paid fifteen million dollars (75 million francs) for the Louisiana Territory—less than four cents an acre.
The purchase instantly doubled the size of the United States, which now looked like this:
Step 4: Hire Lewis and Clark
Of course, it’s easy to draw maps these days. But back in 1803 the Americans didn’t really know what they had just bought, or who lived there. Thomas Jefferson gave the job of finding out to two explorers: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Lewis and Clark’s mission was to explore the land, study new plants and animals, find rivers leading from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean (there aren’t any), and establish friendly relations with Native American tribes. The two explorers put together a thirty-three-man team they called the Corps of Discovery, made up mostly of young soldiers. The crew included one African American, a young man named York. (Clark called him “my manservant.” Actually, York was Clark’s slave.)
The Corps of Discovery set out from St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1804.
Step 5: Meet Your Neighbors
A few months later, three Lakota Indian boys were swimming in the Missouri River in what is now South Dakota. They noticed a group of about thirty men setting up tents on the other side of the river. The boys had seen a few white men before (though never a black man). But they had never seen a large group like this. They swam across the river to investigate.
Though they couldn’t understand each other’s words, the Lakota boys and the travelers were able to communicate pretty well using sign language. The leaders of the white men seemed to be saying that they wanted to meet with the Indian chiefs. The boys told them to come to their nearby village, and pointed out the way.
Two days later the travelers paddled up to the village. The chiefs welcomed them, and the groups traded food as a symbol of goodwill. Then the Lakota people gathered around to listen to one of the white leaders, who began a speech with the words:
“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah …”
At least, that’s what it must have sounded like to the Lakota. To those who spoke English, it was clear that Lewis was explaining that all of this land now belonged to the United States. From now on, Lewis said, Native Americans of the region must obey the commands of the “Great Chief”—President Jefferson, that is.
“The Great Chief of the seventeen great nations of America has become your only father,” Lewis said. “He is the only friend to whom you can now look for protection, or from whom you can ask favors, or receive good councils, and he will take care that you shall have no just cause to regret this change.”
Meriwether Lewis
No cause to regret the change? Well, we’ll see about that.
Meanwhile, Lewis realized that the Lakota had no clue what he was saying. One of Lewis’s men was trying to translate the speech using sign language. It wasn’t working. “We feel much at a loss for the want of an interpreter,” Clark noted.
So Lewis stopped talking. Instead, he had his men put on their fancy army uniforms and parade back and forth, firing their guns. Then Lewis and Clark gave out gifts to the chiefs—each one got a “peace medal” with an image of President Jefferson on one side and an Indian and a white man shaking hands on the other.
The reaction of the Lakota chiefs was basically That’s it? You’re asking to pass through our territory, and all you offer in exchange is a stupid medal? They wanted useful tools, and guns and ammunition.
Both sides were annoyed. Both sides were frustrated by their inability to communicate. When three Lakota warriors grabbed one of Lewis and Clark’s boats, the situation nearly exploded. The Indians and Americans shouted threats at each other. “I felt myself warm and spoke in very positive terms,” Clark remembered.
Clark pulled out his sword and ordered his men to aim their guns. The Lakota warriors raised their own weapons. “Most of the warriors appeared to have their bows strung and took out their arrows from the quiver,” said Clark.
For several tense seconds the two groups stood fifty feet apart, weapons aimed at each other. Anything could have happened—though if shooting started, the badly outnumbered Corps of Discovery would almost certainly have been wiped out. Finally, a Lakota chief named Black Buffalo stepped between the men and convinced his warriors to lower their bows.
Then the Corps of Discovery continued their journey west.
Step 6: Ask Directions
Lewis and Clark had a much better time at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages they reached the following month. They were given food and information about the route ahead. Most important, this is where they met a sixteen-year-old Shoshone woman named Sacagawea.
; About four years before, Hidatsa warriors had raided a Shoshone village and kidnapped Sacagawea. They then sold her to a Canadian fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau. He considered her his wife (though technically he already had one).
Now Charbonneau came to Lewis and made an offer: Hire me and Sacagawea as interpreters. Lewis didn’t really want Charbonneau (he called the fur trapper “a man of no particular merit”), but he did think Sacagawea’s knowledge of the Shoshone language would be helpful. Lewis hoped to meet up with the Shoshone in the Rocky Mountains, and he would need their knowledge of the local geography. So he agreed to hire the husbandand-wife team (all the money went to the husband).
On a freezing morning in February 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a baby boy, Jean Baptiste. Less than two months later, she strapped the baby on her back and headed west with the Corps of Discovery.
As Lewis had feared, Charbonneau was not too helpful. He kept accidentally tipping over the boats, dumping precious supplies into the river. Sacagawea proved to be much more useful, finding edible roots and berries where no one else would have known to look.
Sacagawea
By the time the crew climbed into the Rocky Mountains in August, the men were hungry and exhausted. And lost. Luckily for the Corps, Sacagawea had grown up around there. “The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right, which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation,” wrote Lewis.
Sure enough, Lewis soon spotted a Shoshone man on a horse, about two hundred yards away. “I now called to him in as loud a voice as I could command,” said Lewis, “repeating the word tab-ba-bone, which in their language signifies ‘white man.’”