|
| |
|
| 1820 |
The Missouri Compromise brings
Missouri and Maine into the union and slavery to the American West. |
 |
| 1820 |
By this time more than 20,000 Indians
live in virtual slavery on the California missions. |
|
| 1821 |
Mexico issues a land grant to the
American Moses Austin for a settlement of 300 families in Tejas, in
the hope that responsible Americans given a stake in the province
will help deter unsavory American squatters crowding over the border
from Louisiana. |
|
| 1821 |
Czar Alexander closes Alaskan waters
to foreign vessels and extends the territory of the Russian American
Company to the 51st parallel, into an area claimed by both the British
and the United States. |
|
| 1821 |
Mexicans rebel against Spanish
rule, winning independence. |
|
| 1821 |
William Becknell leads a trading
expedition from Franklin, Missouri, into the southern Rockies, where
they encounter a Mexican patrol. Informed that Mexico is now an independent
republic and that restrictions against foreign traders have been relaxed,
Becknell turns south to Santa Fe, where he finds a ready market for
his goods. Over the next several years he repeats the trip, blazing
a new path along the Cimmaron and Canadian Rivers that becomes part
of the Santa Fe Trail. |
|
| 1822 |
William Henry Ashley and his partner
Andrew Henry, Missouri businessmen, advertise for "enterprising
young men" to join a fur trading expedition to the upper Missouri.
The young Jedediah Smith and the legendary riverman Mike Fink are
among those who answer the call. The group establishes an outpost,
Fort Henry (later Fort Union), near the mouth of the Yellowstone River,
but meets resistance from the local Arikara Indians who want to maintain
their lucrative role as middlemen in the Missouri river trade. |
|
| 1822 |
President Monroe warns of armed
reprisals if Russians attempt to establish a physical presence on
lands claimed by the United States in the Pacific northwest. |
|
| 1823 |
 Stephen
Austin establishes the first American settlement in Tejas on land
originally granted to his father along the San Antonio River. By the
terms of this grant, all 300 families in the new colony are to become
Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics. |
|
| 1823 |
Stephen Long leads an expedition
up the Red River of the North and along the 49th parallel, marking
a point north of Pembina, North Dakota, as the official border between
Canada and the United States. |
|
| 1823 |
Joseph Smith, living near Manchester,
New York, begins his study of the golden-plated book revealed to him
by the angel Moroni. |
|
| 1823 |
President James Monroe proclaims
the "Monroe Doctrine" against European intervention in the
Americas. |
|
| 1824 |
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is
established within the War Department, with a primary duty to regulate
and settle disputes arising from trade with Indian tribes. |
|
| 1824 |
The U.S. army establishes outposts
in present-day Oklahoma, at Fort Towson on the Red River and at Fort
Gibson on the Arkansas River, in preparation for the removal of the
Cherokee and Choctaw tribes from the Southeast to the newly designated
Indian Territory. |
|
| 1824 |
Russia agrees to set its southern
border in the Pacific northwest at 54 degrees, 40 minutes, and to
allow American vessels within the 100-mile limit it had set around
its territories in the Pacific. |
|
| 1824 |
 THE
MOUNTAIN MEN (1824-1840)
Frustrated in their attempt to establish a trading post on the
upper Missouri River, William Ashley and Andrew Henry revolutionize
the previously river-based fur trade by sending small bands of trappers
-- called brigades -- into the mountains on horseback. One of their
first brigades, led by Jedediah Smith, rediscovers the South Pass
in western Wyoming, where refugees from Astoria had crossed the
divide a decade before, and beyond it the fur-rich Green River valley.
Before year's end, Ashley himself leads a larger expedition to join
Smith in the region.
|
|
| 1824 |
Jim Bridger, a young scout for
the Ashley expedition, ranges beyond the Green River valley and down
into Utah, where he becomes perhaps the first white to see the Great
Salt Lake. "Hell, we are on the shores of the Pacific,"
he is reported to have said after tasting the waters. |
|
| 1825 |
Ashley completes his revolution
of the fur trade when he divides his expedition into small groups,
each to trap and explore independently through the spring and then
meet at Henry's Fork on the Green River in late summer. This meeting
becomes the first rendezvous, attracting not only the trappers in
Ashley's company but free-trappers and Indians as well. For the next
15 years, the annual rendezvous replaces the trading post in the Rocky
Mountain fur trade, as free-trappers -- soon to be known as mountain
men -- displace the trading company agent as the engines of commerce
on the frontier. |
|
| 1825 |
The federal government adopts a
policy of exchanging Indian lands in the east for public land in the
west, where the tribes can live beyond state jurisdiction and organize
their own forms of government. |
|
| 1826 |
Jedediah Smith, in search of new
trapping grounds, leads the first party of Americans overland to California.
Setting out from the Great Salt Lake basin, Smith's expedition travels
along the Colorado, over the southern Rockies and across the Mojave
Desert to Mission San Gabriel, then north through the San Joaquin
valley, where they attempt to cross back over the mountains along
the American River. Leaving most of his party in California, Smith
and two others eventually find a way through the Sierras and cross
the parched Great Basin to reach the rendezvous of 1827. |
|
| 1827 |
Dr. John McLoughlin, director of
the Hudson's Bay Company, builds the first lumber mill in the Pacific
northwest at Fort Vancouver, intending to sell lumber in California.
|
|
| 1828 |
The Senate ratifies a treaty setting
the Sabine River as the border between Mexico and the United States.
|
|
| 1828 |
Rejoining his expedition in California,
Jedediah Smith leads the way north into Oregon, where only Smith and
three others escape an Indian massacre on the Umpqua River. The survivors
flee to the Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Fort Vancouver. |
|
| 1828 |
The Cherokees of Arkansas agree
to give up their land and settle in the Indian Territory west of the
Mississippi. |
|
| 1829 |
Mexico refuses an American offer
to buy Tejas for $5 million. |
