THELOUISIANAPURCHASE

A Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia

xiv—Running Foot

THELOUISIANAPURCHASE

A Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia

Junius P. Rodriguez, Editor

Santa Barbara, California—•—Denver, Colorado—•—Oxford, England

Copyright 2002 by Junius P. Rodriguez

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permissionin writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Louisiana Purchase: a historical and geographical encyclopediaJunius P. Rodriguez, editor.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.ISBN 1-57607-188-X (alk. paper) — e-book ISBN 1-57607-738-11. Louisiana Purchase—Encyclopedias. I. Rodriguez, Junius P.E333 .L69 2002973.4’6—dc21

200200322806 05 04 03 02—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For my parents

Junius P. Rodriguez Sr. (1905–1978)

and Mildred D. Rodriguez (1914–)

Where we love is home,

Home that our feet may leave,

but not our hearts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.(1809–1894)

xiv—Running Foot

Adams, John Quincy, 1Addington, Henry, First Viscount Sidmouth, 3Adet, Pierre Auguste, 4Amana Colonies, 5American Fur Company, 6American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 7Ames, Fisher, 7Amiens, Peace of, 8Aranjuez, Convention of, 9Arapaho, 10Arikara, 10Arkansas, 12Arkansas Post, 14Armstrong, Fort, 14Armstrong, John, 16Ashley, William Henry, 17Assiniboine, 17Astor, John Jacob, 19Atkinson, Fort, 20Audubon, John James, 21

Badlands, 23Barbé-Marbois, François, Marquis de, 24Baring Brothers, 25Bastrop, Baron de, 26Becknell, William, 27Beckwourth, James, 28Bellefontaine, Fort, 29Benton, Thomas Hart, 30Bent’s Fort, 31Bernadotte, Jean Baptiste, 32Bingham, George Caleb, 32Bison, 33Black Hawk, 34Black Hawk Purchase, 36Black Hawk War, 36Black Hills, 38Blackfoot, 39Bodmer, Charles, 40Bonaparte, Joseph, 41Bonaparte, Lucien 42Bonaparte, Napoleon, 43Bonneville, Benjamin L. E., 45Boone, Daniel, 46Bore, Jean Etienne, 47Breckinridge, John, 48

Bridger, Fort, 49Bridger, James, 51Buffalo Soldiers, 51Burr, Aaron, 53

Cabot, George, 55Cajuns, 56Cameahwait, 57Camino Real, El, 58Carondelet, Louis Francisco Hector de, 58Carson, Christopher “Kit,” 59Cartography, 60Casa-Calvo, Sebastián Calvo de La Puerta y

O’Farrill, Marqués de, 61Caspar, Fort, 63Catlin, George, 63Charbonneau, Toussaint, 64Charles IV, 65Chartres, Fort de, 66Cheyenne, 67Chimney Rock, 68Chouteau, René Auguste, 69Claiborne, William Charles Cole, 70Clark, Daniel, 71Clark, Fort, 72Clark, George Rogers, 73Clark, William, 74Clinton, George, 76Collot, Georges Henri Victor, 77Colony for Freed Slaves, 78Colorado, 79Colter, John, 81Comanche, 82Constitution of the United States, 83Convention of 1818, 85Cordero y Bustamente, Manuel Antonio, 86Corps of Discovery, 86Council Bluffs, Iowa, 87Coureurs de Bois, 88Cree, 89Creoles, 90Crow, 91

Dearborn, Henry, 93de Decrés, Denis Duc, 94Deseret, State of, 94

Contributors, xiPreface, xiii

Acknowledgments, xvIntroduction, xvii

Maps, xxix

—Contents—vii

CONTENTS AA

Diplomacy of the Louisiana Purchase, 95Dry Farming, 98Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel, 98Duane, William, 100Dunbar-Hunter Expedition, 100

Essex Junto, 103

Family Compact, 105Federalist Party, 106Fernando, Duke of Parma, 107Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 108Flathead, 109Flora of the Louisiana Purchase, 110Floyd, Charles, 112Fontainebleau, Treaty of, 112Fox, 113Fredonian Rebellion, 114Free Soil Party, 115Freeman Expedition, 116French and Indian War, 117Fur Trapping, 119

Gallatin, Albert, 121Gardoqui, Diego María de, 122Gateway Arch, 123Gayoso de Lemos, Manuel, 124Genêt, Edmond Charles, 125Gibson, Fort, 126Godoy, Manuel de, 127Graduation Act, 128Great American Desert, 129Griffin, Thomas, 130Griswold, Roger, 131Gros Ventre, 132Gutierrez-Magee Expedition, 133

Haiti, 135Hamilton, Alexander, 136Herrera, Simón de, 137Hidatsa, 138Historiography of the Louisiana Purchase, 139Homestead Act, 140Hope and Company, 143Hudson’s Bay Company, 143Hunt, Wilson Price, 145

Independence Rock, 147Indian Removal, 147Indian Territory, 149International Law and the Louisiana Purchase

Treaty, 151Iowa, 152Ioway, 154Irujo, Carlos Martínez de (Marquis de Casa Irujo),

154Isle of Orleans, 155

Jay-Gardoqui Negotiations, 157Jay’s Treaty, 158Jefferson, Thomas, 160Jesup, Fort, 162Jones, Evan, 163

Kansas, 165Kansas-Nebraska Act, 168Kaskaskia, 169Kaw, 169Kearny, Fort, 170Kickapoo, 171King, Rufus, 172King-Hawkesbury Treaty, 173Kiowa, 174

Lafitte, Jean, 177Land Law of 1820, 178Land Speculation, 179Laramie, Fort, 180Laussat, Pierre Clément de, 181Leavenworth, Fort, 182Leclerc, Charles-Victor-Emmanuel, 182Ledyard, John, 183Lewis, Meriwether, 184Lewis and Clark Expedition, 186Lincoln, Levi, 190Lisa, Manuel, 191Literature, the Louisiana Purchase in, 192Livingston, Edward, 193Livingston, Robert R., 194Long, James, 196Long, Stephen Harriman, 197Long (Stephen Harriman) Expedition, 198Loose Construction of the U.S. Constitution, 199Los Adaes, 199Louisiana Land Law of 1804, 200Louisiana Memorial, 201Louisiana Purchase International Exposition, 202L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 204Lunéville, Treaty of, 206

Macomb, Fort, 209Madison, James, 209Magruder, Allan Bowie, 211Mandan, 212Mandan, Fort, 215Manifest Destiny, 216Marshall, John, 218Maximilian, Prince Alexander Philipp zu

Wied-Neuwied, 219McClallen, John, 220McKean, Thomas, 221McLoughlin, John, 221Mesabi Range, 222Michaux, André, 223Minnesota, 224

viii—Contents

Mississippi River, 226Missouri, 227Missouri Compromise, 228Missouri Fur Company, 229Monroe, James, 230Montana, 231Morales, Juan Ventura, 233Mormon Road, 234Mortefontaine, Convention of, 235Mountain Men, 236Mouths of the Mississippi River, 238Murray, Hugh, 239

Nacogdoches, 241Natchez Trace, 241Natchitoches, 242Nebraska, 243Neutral Ground, 245New Madrid Earthquakes, 246New Mexico, 247New Orleans, 248New Orleans, Battle of, 250Newspapers (International) and the

Louisiana Purchase, 252Newspapers (U.S.) and the Louisiana

Purchase, 253Nolan, Philip, 254Nootka Sound Crisis, 255North Dakota, 256Nuttall, Thomas, 257

Oglala Sioux, 259Ojibwa, 260Oklahoma, 261Oregon Country, 263Oregon Trail, 265Orleans, Territory of, 267Osage, 269Osage, Fort, 270

Paine, Thomas, 271Paris, Treaty of, 272Pawnee, 273Pichon, Louis-André, 274Pickering, Timothy, 275Pike Expedition (1805–1806), 276Pike Expedition (1806–1807), 277Pike, Fort, 277Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 278Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 280Pinckney, Thomas, 281Ponca, 282Pontalba, Joseph Xavier de, 283Popular Sovereignty, 284Portage des Sioux, Treaty of, 285Potawatomi, 286Preemption Act, 286

Quapaw, 289

Randolph, John, 291Relf, Richard, 292Rendezvous System, 292Right of Deposit, 294Riley, Fort, 294Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 295Rocky Mountains, 296Ross, James, 298Rutledge, John, 299

Sac and Fox, 301Sacagawea, 302Saint Genevieve, 303Saint Louis, 304San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 305San Lorenzo, Treaty of, 307Sand Hills, 308Santa Fe Trail, 309Santee Sioux, 309Sauk, 310Scott, Fort, 312Sedella, Antonio de, 313Seventh Congress, 313Shoshoni, 314Sibley, John, 316Slavery, 317Smith, Fort, 319Smith, Jedediah Strong, 320Snelling, Fort, 320South Dakota, 321South Pass, 323Squatter’s Rights, 324Stoddard, Amos, 325

Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice de, 327Tallmadge Amendment, 328Taos, 329Taylor Amendment, 329Tertium Quids, 330Texas, 331Textbooks: the Louisiana Purchase in High School

Textbooks, 33236 Degrees 30 Minutes North Latitude, 334Towson, Fort, 334Tracy, Uriah, 335Transcontinental Treaty, 336Tucker, St. George, 338Turner, Frederick Jackson, 339Tuscany, 340

Vallé, Jean-Baptiste, 345Victor, Claude Perrin, 345

War Hawks, 347War of 1812, 347

— Contents—ix

Washita, Fort, 349West Florida, 350West Florida Rebellion, 350Wichita, 351Wilkinson, James, 352Williams, Bill, 353

Winnebago, 354Wounded Knee, 355Wyoming, 357

York, 361

x—Contents

Chronology, 363Documents, 379

Bibliography, 473Index, 489

About the Editor, 513

Lisa AbneyNorthwestern State UniversityNatchitoches, Louisiana

Elizabeth U. AlexanderTexas Wesleyan UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Edward E. BaptistUniversity of MiamiCoral Gables, Florida

J. Herschel BarnhillYukon, Oklahoma

Adrienne W. BerneyLouisiana State MuseumNew Orleans, Louisiana

Rachel Eden BlackEcole Normale Supérieure de LyonLyon, France

Christopher A. BlackburnUniversity of Louisiana at MonroeMonroe, Louisiana

Jon L. BrudvigUniversity of MaryBismarck, North Dakota

Jay H. BuckleyBrigham Young UniversityProvo, Utah

Sean R. BusickUniversity of South CarolinaColumbia, South Carolina

Michael S. CaseyGraceland UniversityLamoni, Iowa

Mark CaveWilliams Research CenterNew Orleans, Louisiana

Roger ChapmanBowling Green State UniversityBowling Green, Ohio

Mark R. CheathemMississippi State UniversityMississippi State, Mississippi

Boyd ChildressAuburn University LibraryAuburn, Alabama

Clarissa W. ConferUniversity of FloridaGainesville, Florida

Rory T. CornishUniversity of Louisiana at MonroeMonroe, Louisiana

Dallas CothrumUniversity of Texas at TylerTyler, Texas

J. Wendel CoxUniversity of Minnesota, MorrisMorris, Minnesota

Jesus F. de la TejaSouthwest Texas State UniversitySan Marcos, Texas

Chris DennisFort Worth, Texas

Richard H. DickersonUniversity of Houston LibrariesHouston, Texas

Douglas W. DoddCalifornia State University, BakersfieldBakersfield, California

Carrie E. DoutheyTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Kathleen DuValUniversity of California, DavisDavis, California

J. Brent EtzelEureka CollegeEureka, Illinois

Dean FafoutisSalisbury State UniversitySalisbury, Maryland

Elizabeth FieldEureka CollegeEureka, Illinois

Daniel L. FountainLouisiana School for Math, Science,

and the ArtsNatchitoches, Louisiana

Steven M. FountainUniversity of California, DavisDavis, California

Andrew K. FrankCalifornia State University, Los

AngelesLos Angeles, California

John K. FranklinTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Peter S. Genovese Jr.Bowling Green State UniversityBowling Green, Ohio

Henry H. GoldmanUniversity of PhoenixPhoenix, Arizona

Suzanne Disheroon GreenNorthwestern State UniversityNatchitoches, Louisiana

Donald E. Heidenreich Jr.Lindenwood UniversitySt. Charles, Missouri

Ricardo A. HerreraTexas Lutheran UniversitySeguin, Texas

John C. JacksonOlympia, Washington

Melinda Marie JetteUniversity of British ColumbiaVancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Karen R. JonesUniversity of BristolBristol, United Kingdom

Ari KelmanUniversity of DenverDenver, Colorado

Todd KerstetterTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

—Contributors—xi

THE CONTRIBUTORS AA

Joseph Patrick KeyUniversity of Arkansas, FayettevilleFayetteville, Arkansas

Michael KimaidBowling Green State UniversityBowling Green, Ohio

C. Richard KingDrake UniversityDes Moines, Iowa

Betje B. KlierAustin, Texas

Christine LambertEmory UniversityAtlanta, Georgia

Derek R. LarsonSt. John’s UniversityCollegeville, Minnesota

Russell M. LawsonBacone CollegeMuskogee, Oklahoma

Alfred LemmonWilliams Research CenterNew Orleans, Louisiana

James W. LoewenWashington, D.C.

Alecia P. LongLouisiana State MuseumNew Orleans, Louisiana

Brad D. LookingbillColumbia CollegeColumbia, Missouri

Mary F. McKennaQuest CollegeDavenport, Iowa

Brian C. MeltonTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Nathan R. MeyerGeorge Mason UniversityFairfax, Virginia

Gene MuellerTexas A& M University, TexarkanaTexarkana, Texas

Caryn E. NeumannOhio State UniversityColumbus, Ohio

Cynthia Clark NorthrupTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Jeanne A. OjalaUniversity of UtahSalt Lake City, Utah

Jerry L. ParkerTrunkee Meadows Community

CollegeReno, Nevada

Lisa PruittMiddle Tennessee State UniversityMurfreesboro, Tennessee

Elizabeth PuglieseRosetta ResearchAustin, Texas

John David Rausch Jr.West Texas A&M UniversityCanyon, Texas

Carey M. RobertsUniversity of South CarolinaColumbia, South Carolina

Alicia E. RodriquezCalifornia State University, BakersfieldBakersfield, California

Marie-Jeanne RossignolUniversity Paris7-Denis Diderot Institut Charles VParis, France

Loriene RoyUniversity of Texas at AustinAustin, Texas

Margaret D. SankeyAuburn UniversityAuburn, Alabama

Frank SchumacherUniversity of ErfurtErfurt, Germany

James L. Sledge IIITruett-McConnell CollegeCleveland, Georgia

Gene A. SmithTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

Robert W. SmithUniversity of Massachusetts, BostonBoston, Massachusetts

Thomas C. SosnowskiKent State University, StarkCanton, Ohio

Scott L. StablerArizona State UniversityTempe, Arizona

Christopher C. StrangemanSouthern Illinois UniversityCarbondale, Illinois

Amy H. SturgisVanderbilt UniversityNashville, Tennessee

Carol J. TerryTexas Christian UniversityFort Worth, Texas

George ThadathilPaul Quinn CollegeMesquite, Texas

Mark ThomasonFort Worth, Texas

Matthew S. WarshauerCentral Connecticut State UniversityNew Britain, Connecticut

Scott WignallIllinois Central CollegeEast Peoria, Illinois

Lisa R. WilliamsWashington State UniversityPullman, Washington

John WillsUniversity of BristolBristol, United Kingdom

Lisa-Kay WolffeNorthwestern State UniversityNatchitoches, Louisiana

xii—Contributors

By their very nature defining moments in history oftenhave inauspicious beginnings. The larger meaning of suchevents is generally recognized over the course of timeonce the ebb and flow of history have played out the con-sequences of actions both great and small upon the life ofthe nation. It is only then, after time and history providethe clarity of perspective, that we can comprehend thepreviously unseen connections that allow us to assess theimportance of actions and policies in light of subsequentdevelopments. Yet we of the modern era who are blessedwith hindsight cannot help but wonder whether a fewbrave visionaries of the past truly understood the conse-quences of their actions. Was the history of the UnitedStates writ large by those who could envision the futureof the nation?

Today it is abundantly clear that the decision of theUnited States to purchase the Louisiana Territory fromFrance in 1803 was a defining moment in Americannational life. What began, ostensibly, as an effort to protectthe commercial and economic interests of western farmerscontained within itself the seminal essence of globalrealpolitik on the part of the young American republic.Neutralizing the French presence in North America hadthe added advantage of making the United States strongerin its diplomacy with Great Britain and Spain—the remain-ing European powers that sought hegemony in NorthAmerica. Although it remains debated whether ThomasJefferson’s action in 1803 grew out of an incipient under-standing of Manifest Destiny or simply was a fortunateoccurrence, one cannot help but fathom that much ofAmerica’s subsequent self-definition was largely influencedby the impact of that territorial acquisition.

The narrow definition of viewing the Louisiana Pur-chase as a mere diplomatic transaction involving thetransfer of real estate belies the complete meaning of thisevent. What some might view as one story was a tale thatcontained many plots and an enormous cast of charac-ters. The story of the Louisiana Purchase was America’sstory. Like the young republic that had acquired the vastwilderness expanse of the Louisiana Territory throughpurchase, there was something fervent and disquieting inboth the nature of the possessor and its new possession.Through the transforming dynamic of the frontier expe-rience, each would attempt to tame the other over time.

This work is designed to serve as a standard referenceto the fully nuanced meaning of the Louisiana Purchasein the history and life of the United States. Within thesepages one will find not only the diplomatic history of an1803 event, but much more. The story of Americanexpansionism is presented here through the stories of per-sons and peoples whose lives were changed by the eco-nomic, social, and cultural transformations wrought byManifest Destiny. The story of the transformation of theland itself is also found within these pages. For good orfor ill the changes foisted upon the natural landscape byAmerican territorial growth and the economic regimenthat followed had a profound impact upon the nation’shistory. Although the United States certainly benefitedfrom this territorial acquisition, at many levels the nationcontinues to pay the costs of its stewardship two cen-turies after the diplomatic negotiations were finalized.

In 1803 the United States was a young nation with apopulation slightly larger than 5.3 million inhabitantswho were primarily farmers. The acquisition of theLouisiana Territory provided the impetus for a nationaltransformation that would affect all aspects of Americansociety and culture. Through the dynamic of territorialgrowth the nation evolved in the nineteenth century intoa more self-assured polity that would come to understandits purpose as being that of a continental power. Thatvision, once secured, would poise America upon theinternational stage as a world power. In time, the confi-dent cosmopolitan republic peopled by millions thatemerged would bear little resemblance to the youngnation that existed two centuries prior.

Who we are today, and what we have been, emergedfrom the inauspicious beginnings of 1803 and thevagaries of frontier diplomacy. How we developed as acontinental power stems from our efforts to reckon withthe seemingly limitless resources of a vast nationaldomain. Frontiers both past and present blur into histor-ical obscurity as we trace the progression of the Americanexperiment. For a nation that is forever a work inprogress, the Louisiana Territory provided a canvas uponwhich the vivid colors of self-definition could beexpressed. The hues, the texture, and the visual sense ofthat identity would come to be as varied as the land uponwhich it was established.

—Preface—xiii

PREFACE AA

xiv—Running Foot

It would have been certainly impossible to produce thisvolume without the assistance of many individuals, and Iowe more appreciation than I can ever offer to all whohelped to make this book a reality. I would like to thankthe team of eighty-five scholars who contributed to thisvolume. Without their efforts in planning, researching,and writing the articles this work would have beenimpossible, and I cannot thank them sufficiently for theirdedication to the task and for their professionalism. I owespecial thanks to several contributors—Boyd Childress,Rory Cornish, Henry Goldman, and Gene Smith—whovolunteered selflessly to write additional entries or toattract other scholars to the project. To all who con-tributed to this work I offer my heartfelt thanks.

I am also indebted to the expert staff of ABC-CLIOfor their patience and counsel over the past two years.Alicia Merritt, Senior Acquisitions Editor, worked withme from the conception of this project, and her assistancehas been invaluable. I thank her for believing in me andfor agreeing that The Louisiana Purchase was a projectworthy of development. Carol Smith, Production Editor,maintained oversight of the project and helped to makedisparate articles come together into final form. WithoutMartin Hanft’s copyediting this work would bear thescars of too many of my imperfections. I appreciate hiskeen eye and his perceptive queries that helped fashionthis into a better book. I also appreciate the efforts of LizKincaid, Media Editor, who handled the details of obtain-ing the illustrations for this volume.

I treasure the understanding and support from my col-leagues and my students who have helped me to remainfocused to cope with the stress of looming deadlines and

who have shared my joy in meeting the same—generally.Your encouragement and support along the way havemeant much to me, and I will always remember your per-ception and kindness. I would also like to thank theEureka College Faculty Development Committee for pro-viding financial assistance to fund postage and duplicat-ing costs when this project was just beginning. I owe aspecial debt of gratitude to several student assistants whoworked with me as this volume developed. Seeff Grauer,Amanda Lampert, and Sarah Wilson all did an admirablejob in helping to advance this work. Each of them hashad a hand in the development of this volume, and Ithank them for their service. I also appreciate the impor-tant contribution of a former student and good friend,Nathan Meyer, who listened intently to early conversa-tions and offered valuable suggestions about this projectwhen it was little more than a rough idea. As always, JoyKinder offered secretarial assistance and helped to makesure that important mailings went out on time. BrentEtzel, Tony Glass, Ginny McCoy, Paul Lister, Ann Shoe-maker, Eldrick Smith, and Kathy Whitson all pitched into help when glitches of varying types appeared, and Iappreciate their assistance.

As a Louisianian, I am especially proud to have beenassociated with the development of this reference workand take responsibility for its inevitable shortcomings. Ihope that this encyclopedia will be valuable to studentsand researchers alike, and that this labor of love will serveas a valuable reference tool for years to come.

Junius P. RodriguezJanuary 12, 2002

—Acknowledgments—xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AA

xiv—Running Foot

In 2003, the people of the United States will celebrate thebicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The recognitionof this historic event honors more than a simple realestate transfer between the government of the FrenchRepublic and that of the young United States of America.The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory was certainlyone of the defining moments of American history, as it setthe stage for many subsequent developments that wouldaffect the course of American civilization and culture.Without the Louisiana Purchase, the concept of ManifestDestiny seems moot, the Free Soil controversy over theexpansion of slavery into the territories is nonexistent,and the rise of an urban, industrial society built upon theeconomic resources of a vast national reserve appears lesscertain. Indeed, the United States redefined itself in 1803by becoming a continental power, and that transforma-tion unleashed forces, both positive and negative, theconsequences of which have resonated throughout ournational history.

Fifteen states owe either all or a portion of their terri-tory to the acquisition from France in 1803. What wasonce viewed as wild, uncharted wilderness has beenshaped by two centuries of American pioneers and theirdescendants, who have left their cultural marks upon thelandscape in ways that are sometimes inconspicuous yetmore often pronounced. The hand of man is evident asnatural forms have been tamed by perpendicular town-ship and range lines reflecting the imposition of a Carte-sian grid system upon nature’s disorder, thereby creatingsomething that is surely less than natural. More disheart-ening is the depopulation of indigenous peoples thatresulted from forced migrations and outright warfare asthe U.S. government sought to tame the wilderness andits inhabitants through more insidious means. Environ-mental degradation has been another terrible cost of thepast two centuries. The destruction of virgin forests andwild prairie grasses, the decimation of animal species, andthe pollution of many rivers and streams have beenbrought about as a result of our unbridled nationalexpansion.

The history of the Louisiana Purchase and the subse-quent transformation of that region into a collection ofAmerican states tells an important story about the peopleof the United States. Our history has been characterizedby both tremendous achievements and inglorious short-comings. It is an important and sometimes painful historythat certainly teaches the salient truth that Americangreatness has often been achieved at tremendous cost; it

also reminds us, however, of the inescapable realizationthat it is our history, and we must reckon with it. WaltWhitman once observed that “the United States them-selves are essentially the greatest poem.” If that is so, theLouisiana Purchase of 1803 certainly provided a youngnation that was itself a work in progress with much of themeter, rhythm, and rhyme of the poem that becameAmerica.

BEFORE THE BEGINNINGWe often accept as a matter of fact that the LouisianaPurchase was simply a diplomatic arrangement whoseconsequence concerned only a few European royal courtsand the government and people of the United States.What we fail to consider in such a view is that the entireregion of the Louisiana Territory was inhabited by a hostof Native American tribes who claimed the land as theirsby right of first possession. From the north woods ofMinnesota to the Gulf Coast, and from the crest of theRocky Mountains eastward across the high plains and ontoward the Mississippi River, there existed a sophisticatednetwork of indigenous peoples who inhabited the landand drew their sustenance from it. Each of these individ-ual nations, based upon the Doctrine of Discovery (or theright of first ownership), actually owned the land uponwhich they lived, while Europeans—and later Ameri-cans—who purported to own the territory found them-selves negotiating for and purchasing the land bit by bitfrom these groups over several centuries.

To claim that the French, the Spanish, or the Ameri-cans owned the Louisiana Territory at any given timeactually means that they owned the claim to the territory,but not the land itself. Since the land was owned by indi-vidual tribes who resided upon it, the arduous process ofconverting one’s claim into legal ownership would takecountless treaties, seemingly endless negotiations, andmuch time. As a result, and because of frequent intransi-gence on the part of Native owners who cared not tonegotiate, war and the outright seizure of territory wereoften the outcome.

Much of the legal system in the United States, as wellas fundamental elements of free-market capitalism, isbased upon the sanctity of contracts. Legal agreementsare binding between individuals and groups when theyenter into such arrangements willingly, bargain in goodfaith, and do not employ fraud or duplicity. Having saidthis, one would be hard-pressed to find circumstances inwhich the negotiated arrangements for the dispensation

— Introduction—xvii

INTRODUCTION AA

of Indian lands met the most basic standards of contractlaw. Despite this characteristic discrepancy, possessiondoes have a powerfully symbolic meaning in the modernworld, and how individuals came to acquire territory isoften superseded by the physical reality that they are thede facto possessors of the land.

CONFLICTING CLAIMSEngland and France entered the contest for colonialsupremacy in North America on an equal footing and atabout the same time. While the English established theirfirst permanent settlement in North America atJamestown in 1607, the French were close behind. In1608, Samuel de Champlain established the French set-tlement of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River and cre-ated the nucleus for what became known as New France.Both outposts were small settlements whose survivalseemed tenuous, at first, until the creation of a sustain-able economy based upon either cash crops or tradegoods made the colonies viable. For the English it wastobacco, cultivated for centuries by Native Americanpeoples, that became the crop which first transformedVirginia, and later, many of the English Atlantic Seaboardsettlements. For the inhabitants of New France, the peltsof fur-bearing animals that inhabited the Canadianwilderness and the Great Lakes region became the com-modity that sustained French interest and investment inthe North American colonial enterprise.

Neither New France nor the English colonies (with theexception of Massachusetts Bay) grew rapidly in popula-tion. It was characteristic in many of the earliest coloniesthat inhabitants experienced a “starving time” when thecolonial populace struggled to produce enough food tosustain itself, while simultaneously needing to fend offepidemics, Indian attacks, and other natural difficultiescreated by exposure to the elements. Colonists in both theEnglish and French areas had to develop an infrastructurethat accommodated dwelling places, defensive structures,and the commercial sites needed to conduct the businessactivities that financed their continued existence. As aresult, the geographical dispersion of colonists into hin-terland regions was limited, because the physical labor ofbuilding a colony was intensive.

When opportunities for expansion did come, theFrench may have had an edge on their English counter-parts. The French were connected by the St. LawrenceRiver and the Great Lakes system to numerous otherrivers and streams that could take them farther and far-ther into the interior of North America. For a time, theFrench believed that they might well discover the elusiveNorthwest Passage, which was rumored to cross the con-tinent. The English colonies established on the AtlanticSeaboard were settled primarily within the tidewaterregion, and nearly each of these colonies had an impos-ing western boundary outlined by the crests of theAppalachian Mountains. Since it was easier to traverserivers than overland trails in colonial America, the French

had access to superior avenues that might help expandthe boundaries of New France. Also, by its very nature,the business of fur trapping involves the constant need tofind new lakes, rivers, and streams to work whiledepleted trapping areas replenish their natural stock. Tothis purpose, French trappers and traders became theagents of empire.

French trappers and traders set out in the mid-seven-teenth century to discover new lands where they mightply their trade. Most of these individual expeditions wentunrecorded, but collectively these forays into the interiorof North America expanded knowledge about the conti-nent. The discoveries led to an improved cartographythat began to depict North America more accurately.Two particular episodes of discovery from this period dostand out, for the sheer magnitude of the expeditionsand the larger implications for the expansion of theempire. Both expeditions were predicated upon the mer-cantile desire to expand French trapping interests intoyet unseen valleys.

In 1673, the Jesuit missionary Father Jacques Mar-quette and French-Canadian trapper Louis Joliet began anexpedition that would take them farther into the NorthAmerican interior than any Europeans had ventured sincethe expeditions of Spanish explorers Hernando DeSotoand Francisco Coronado in the early 1540s. Marquette,who was an expert linguist, was expected to serve as atranslator as the explorers encountered new Indian tribes,and Joliet was to survey the regions he traversed for theirpotential as fur trapping lands. The Comte de Frontenac,the governor of New France, had authorized the expedi-tion to travel from the Straits of Mackinac to seek theMississippi River and follow that stream to its outlet,wherever that might lead. Marquette and Joliet, plus fiveengagés who supported their expedition, reached theupper Mississippi in May 1673 and traveled downriverfor a month in two bark canoes. They traveled as farsouthward as the point where the Arkansas River joinsthe Mississippi. Having learned from the local tribes thatthe Mississippi does flow into the Gulf of Mexico andthat Spanish settlements did exist farther south, Mar-quette and Joliet turned around and returned to NewFrance with their information. Their expedition, whichlasted four months and covered more than twenty-fivehundred miles, brought a tremendous body of knowledgeof the North American continent to French colonial furtrapping interests.

Nearly a decade later, in 1672, Robert Cavelier, Sieurde LaSalle, conducted an expedition that would continuethe initial mission of Marquette and Joliet to explore theMississippi River to its mouth. LaSalle paddled down theMississippi for four months, and on August 9, 1682, hestood near the mouth of the river that the Choctaw called“The Father of Waters” and claimed for France the riverand the entire basin that it drained. When LaSalle plantedthe fleur-de-lis banner, the flag of the French Bourbonmonarchy, upon the land that he named Louisiana, he

xviii— Introduction

not only honored King Louis XIV but also raised thegeopolitical stakes in the race for the North Americanempire, an achievement that certainly added luster to the“Sun King’s” domain.

PRESERVING EMPIREFrance would hold all of Louisiana, as LaSalle haddefined it, for ninety years. During that time the Frenchwould make a concerted effort to possess the territorythat they had claimed, but after nearly a century, muchof the Louisiana Territory was still a wildernessuntouched by French habitation. The most successfuleffort taken by the French had been the establishment ofa colony, aptly named Louisiana, on the Gulf Coast in1699. This settlement was founded by the Le Moynebrothers, Iberville and Bienville. Although the colonyoriginated near the site of present-day Mobile, Alabama,it gradually migrated westward until it was centered atthe town of New Orleans, established along the Missis-sippi River in 1718. After the Louisiana colony wasfounded, the French began to construct a series of settle-ments in the North American interior in the hope thatthese isolated outposts would one day link CanadianNew France with the Gulf Coast colony. French settle-ments at Ste. Genevieve, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes allresulted from this effort to expand French presence inNorth America.

LaSalle’s decision to claim the entire basin of the Mis-sissippi River for France would set the French on a colli-sion course with English interests in North America. TheEnglish claim to all of North America was based upon theseafaring expedition of John Cabot in 1497. The Englishmaintained that their Atlantic Seaboard colonies were, inreality, transcontinental colonies, since all of North Amer-ica was English territory. Although such claims were hol-low and not supported by the actual possession of terri-tory, the government of Great Britain would press theissue during the eighteenth century once French settle-ments began to appear in the Ohio River Valley.

Much of the history of eighteenth-century relationsbetween England (Great Britain after 1707) and Francecan be understood most clearly as being a century of con-flict, or a “hundred years’ war” centered upon the ques-tion of empire. According to their original plan, that wasnot supposed to be the case, but rivalry over NorthAmerican empire did come to dominate relationsbetween the two nations. Shortly before England’s Glori-ous Revolution (1688), and not long after LaSalle’s 1682expedition, the leaders of England and France agreed tothe Peace of Whitehall (1687), in which both powerspledged that they would never enter into a conflict withthe other over a question concerning colonial matters.Nonetheless, despite their pledge of mutual amity,England and France soon found themselves at war, fight-ing King William’s War (1689–1697), or the War of theGrand Alliance. During this conflict the English and theIroquois fought against the French and their Indian allies

over control of the upper Hudson River Valley. Neitherside achieved its strategic goals during the war, as theEnglish failed to conquer Quebec and the French wereunable to take Boston. When the Peace of Ryswick(1697) ended the conflict, there were no colonial territo-rial adjustments made in North America.

A brief interlude of peace followed before the majorEuropean powers found themselves at war again. DuringQueen Anne’s War (1702–1713), the North Americanphase of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714),Great Britain and France again quarreled over colonialpossessions in North America. The infamous DeerfieldMassacre (February 29, 1704) occurred during this con-flict, as French soldiers and their Indian allies burned aPuritan town in Massachusetts, killing 47 individuals andtaking 109 others as captives. British forces were able toseize some strategic parts of New France, but were unableto capture either Quebec or Montreal. When the Treatyof Utrecht (1713) ended this conflict, there were territo-rial changes in North America. The French lost posses-sion of Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and Acadia (laternamed Nova Scotia). The British had diminished the sizeand influence of New France, but they had not eliminatedtheir colonial rivals from North America.

A third colonial conflict would be fought in NorthAmerica, as the British hoped to reduce New France fur-ther and the French hoped to reacquire lost possessions.King George’s War (1744–1748) was the North Ameri-can phase of the War of the Austrian Succession(1740–1748). Both the British and the French maintainedsimilar goals, strategies, and tactics, which they hademployed in the first two colonial wars, but the militaryexploits in North America proved inconclusive. TheTreaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the con-flict, imposed status quo antebellum in North America,and the territorial integrity of each nation’s colonial pos-sessions remained intact.

The fourth colonial war between the British and theFrench would prove to be what many have called theGreat War for Empire. The French and Indian War(1754–1763), known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War(1756–1763), was truly a world war that witnessed fight-ing on three continents as well as naval battles on thehigh seas. In North America it was the expansion ofFrench settlement into the Ohio Valley that triggered theconflict, as Great Britain maintained that such outpostswere untenable and were meant to provoke another colo-nial conflict. Despite early setbacks, when British colonialand regular forces were twice rebuffed by the French atFort Duquesne, British resolve only strengthened duringthe conflict. Under the leadership of Prime MinisterWilliam Pitt, British forces finally captured FortDuquesne in 1758 and renamed the site Pittsburgh. In thefinal stages of the war, the British mounted sustainedefforts to capture Quebec (1759) and Montreal (1760),which both fell. The French, realizing that they were onthe verge of losing New France, sued for peace and stalled

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for time as they sought a diplomatic remedy to the situa-tion before them.

A STRATEGIC ALLIANCEOn the verge of losing its North American colonialempire to the British, the French government sought asolution that might mitigate the harshness of their pend-ing treaty losses. The French realized that if they wereremoved from New France, the Spanish, who possessedMexico and a sprawling but sparsely populated territoryin the American southwest, would be the only Europeanpower that could prevent British colonial hegemony inNorth America. Therefore, in 1761, the Bourbon mon-archs of France and Spain agreed to a “Family Compact”in which each pledged to support one another’s interests,colonial or otherwise. In the eyes of the French, thisagreement was the first necessary step that had to betaken in order to effect a land transfer that would denythe British a significant portion of North American realestate while keeping the faint glimmer of a reestablishedFrench empire alive.

In 1762 the nations of France and Spain negotiatedand signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau. With this bril-liant diplomatic move, the French divided the LouisianaTerritory into two parts that were divided by the Missis-sippi River. France also identified the so-called Isle ofOrleans as a separate area that was not a part of eitherterritory, though it was contiguous to the western half ofthe Louisiana Territory. Since the British had shown a sig-nificant interest in the Ohio River Valley, the Frenchbelieved that they would have to cede the eastern portionof Louisiana to the British in the Treaty of Paris (1763)that would end the French and Indian War. Since theBritish had not expressed an interest in the western por-tion of the Louisiana Territory, the French imagined thatthey might be able to transfer that territory, along withthe Isle of Orleans, to the Spanish Bourbons. As fellowsignatories to the “Family Compact” of 1761, the Span-ish Bourbons were willing to support the interests andintentions of their French Bourbon cousins.

The Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) did contain secretprovisions that were advantageous to long-range Frenchgoals of reestablishing a North American empire. TheSpanish were prevented from alienating the LouisianaTerritory, and it was understood that if the French soughtthe retrocession of the territory at some point in thefuture, the Spanish were bound by their treaty obligationsto surrender Louisiana and the Isle of Orleans. In the eyesof the French Bourbons, the transfer of Louisiana and theIsle of Orleans to the Spanish was a measure of strategicsafe-keeping that would prevent the British from acquir-ing the region, while still allowing France to have readyaccess to the region at a later date.

Although the Spanish were willing to maintain theirpart of the “Family Compact” and accept Louisiana, theydid not show an immediate interest in administering theirnew possession. The Spanish colonial possessions in the

Western Hemisphere were vast and included most ofSouth America (with the exception of Brazil), CentralAmerica, Mexico, the American Southwest, Cuba, and ahost of other Caribbean islands. Spain had grownwealthy from her colonies by exploiting the wealth ofprecious metals—gold and silver—found in various partsof the vast Spanish empire. The seemingly mild interestthat the Spanish showed for Louisiana was based upontwo facts: the territory contained no known preciousmetals, and, for many years, Louisiana had been a finan-cial burden to the French, rather than a profitable enter-prise. For these reasons, the Spanish would wait for sixyears before finally establishing colonial authority inLouisiana in 1768.

During the interregnum between French and Spanishcontrol, the French colonial inhabitants of Louisiana con-tinued to operate as they had under French control.French inhabitants in the area of upper Louisiana(roughly the region around present-day Missouri) contin-ued their work of expanding the fur trade by trappingnew streams and founding new settlements. St. Louis, forexample, was established in 1764 when the French trap-pers and traders in upper Louisiana realized that theyneeded to create an entrepôt on the western side of theMississippi River once the British had come into posses-sion of the eastern bank. Even under the period of Span-ish control, very little change occurred in upperLouisiana.

Once the Spanish authorities had established them-selves at New Orleans, they did begin a period of effec-tive administration of the Louisiana colony. Within adecade the Spanish found themselves tenuously alliedwith the Americans living in the British Atlantic Seaboardcolonies, who were then engaged in a struggle to wintheir independence from their colonial rulers. By beingallies of the French through the Bourbon “Family Com-pact,” the Spanish found themselves to be an associatedally of the Americans after France and the United Statessigned the Treaty of Alliance (1778). Ever careful not tosend the signal that revolting against monarchial rule wasproper behavior for its own colonial citizens, the Spanishdid support the American cause by fighting againstBritish possessions along the Gulf Coast. The militaryefforts of Louisiana governor Don Bernardo de Galvezwere particularly praiseworthy in this regard.

After supporting the cause of American independence,the Spanish found themselves dissatisfied with their newlyindependent republican neighbors. First, it had been theunderstanding of the Spanish that the Americans were notto seek a separate peace with the British until all thewartime goals of the French and Spanish had beenattained. In particular, the Spanish had hoped that theywould be able to reacquire the island of Gibraltar from theBritish. When the Americans signed the Treaty of Paris in1783, the Spanish believed that they had been double-crossed by their former ally. Secondly, the amorphousboundary of Spanish Florida as defined by the treaty also

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angered the court in Madrid. The Spanish had hoped todefine the boundary of Florida at the so-called Yazoo Lineof 32 degrees 28 minutes north latitude—far enoughnorth to include the rich agricultural lands of the NatchezDistrict—but the Americans supported a contrary line at31 degrees north latitude. Contentious debate over thesetwo questions would characterize relations between theUnited States and Spain for the next twelve years.

ECONOMIC WARFAREAfter the United States became an independent nationwith the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Spanish authorities inMexico City reportedly felt confident that Spain’s colo-nial possessions remained safe, because they believed thatthe trans-Appalachian West was too vast to permit rapidexpansion by the Americans. Time would quickly provethat assumption false, as American settlers poured acrossthe Appalachian Mountains and began to settle in theOhio River Valley, where they established pioneer farm-steads. Since a good system of transmountain roads didnot exist, the Western frontiersmen found themselves eco-nomically isolated from Eastern markets. If they desiredto sell their produce, or to trade for necessary supplies,waterborne commerce along the Ohio and MississippiRivers seemed much more efficient, and more appealing,than attempting trans-Appalachian trade.

Spanish officials operating out of Madrid, MexicoCity, and New Orleans began a concerted effort to con-duct a campaign of economic warfare against the youngAmerican republic, and their plan had both covert andpublic elements. The Spanish began to wage a secret cam-paign against U.S. interests by privately encouraging thefrontiersmen of the trans-Appalachian West to secedefrom the United States and ally themselves with SpanishLouisiana. Using the argument that both geography andeconomic necessity spoke to such an arrangement, theSpanish paid several leaders along the American frontierto foment discontent and to talk up the benefits of analliance with the Spanish. Even though the Spanish Trea-sury was paying individuals such as James Wilkinson andJohn Sevier to advance Spanish interests in the region, thedisinformation campaign proved to be ineffectual andonly heightened anti-Spanish sentiment along the frontier.

A more public phase of the aggressive new Spanishpolicy involved efforts to deny Americans the right tonavigate upon the Mississippi River or use warehousefacilities at the port of New Orleans. The Spanishbelieved that such a policy could cripple American com-merce in the trans-Appalachian West, and might wellachieve the goals that covert operations had failed toeffect. The weight of the Spanish threat was so great thatthe U.S. Congress, under the Articles of Confederationgovernment, appointed John Jay, who had served as sec-retary of foreign affairs for the Continental Congress, toserve as a special envoy to remedy the diplomatic impasseover the Florida boundary and the right of access to theMississippi River and the port of New Orleans. Jay’s

Spanish counterpart in these negotiations was Don Diegode Gardoqui, who arrived in the United States in late1784 to begin the talks. The Jay-Gardoqui negotiationswould continue on and off over the course of two years,producing neither a satisfactory outcome for the Ameri-can position nor a treaty that the Confederation Congresscould ratify.

Gardoqui wanted Jay to agree that the United Stateswould forgo commercial rights on the Mississippi Riverfor a period of twenty-five to thirty years in exchange forspecial trading privileges that would be effected betweenthe United States and the Spanish colonies of the WesternHemisphere. Gardoqui also wanted Jay to accept aFlorida boundary that would keep the Natchez District inSpanish hands. Under pressure by Northeastern commer-cial interests, who felt that this was a good commercialarrangement, Jay was induced to accept the terms in adraft treaty, but the Confederation Congress would notratify the arrangement; the impasse continued for nearlya decade more.

By 1795, Spain’s views on these matters changed sig-nificantly in light of new alliances, both real and imagi-nary, that were changing the geopolitical landscape of thelate-eighteenth-century world. When the Spanish learnedof secret negotiations that were taking place between theUnited States and Great Britain in 1794, Spanish officialsbegan to fear that the eventual outcome—Jay’s Treaty(1794)—would produce an alliance between the twonations. Spanish officials imagined that the ultimateobjective of such an alliance involved the seizure of Span-ish colonial claims in North America and the valuable sil-ver mines of northern Mexico. In an attempt to ingratiatethemselves with the United States and forestall this worst-case scenario, Spanish officials in Madrid indicated awillingness to negotiate in good faith with the UnitedStates to settle the unresolved issues that remained fromthe failed Jay-Gardoqui talks.

The United States dispatched Thomas Pinckney toSpain, where he negotiated with Manuel de Godoy toproduce the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795), commonlyknown in U.S. history as Pinckney’s Treaty. The UnitedStates received favorable outcomes on the two issues thathad remained unresolved since the end of the AmericanRevolution. The Spanish agreed to accept the U.S. posi-tion that 31 degrees north latitude was the northernboundary of the Floridas. In addition, the Spanish werewilling to offer to the Americans the “right of deposit” atport and warehouse facilities in New Orleans. This com-mercial benefit was to exist for three years, and the termswere renewable thereafter.

The U.S. government staged a major commercial coupby attaining favorable terms in the Treaty of San Lorenzo(1795), but time would prove that the verities of interna-tional diplomacy often produced arrangements with alimited shelf life. The right to use the Mississippi Riverand benefit from special trade arrangements at NewOrleans did benefit the United States greatly, but those

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opportunities only whet the national appetite for a morepermanent arrangement. The “right of deposit” would beimplemented in 1798, but soon the problems caused bythe retrocession of Louisiana to the French would renderall previous commercial arrangements related to Missis-sippi River navigation obsolete.

EARLY EFFORTS TO REESTABLISH EMPIREStarting with the fall of the Bastille in Paris in July 1789,the events of the French Revolution spiraled into a com-plex struggle that transformed a nation and usheredmuch of Europe into a generation of warfare. Withinmonths France had transformed itself from a monarchyinto a constitutional republic, and as the revolutionarycause grew more extreme, the French abolished themonarchy symbolically when they beheaded their Bour-bon king Louis XVI in 1793. In such a world turnedupside-down, the Bourbon “Family Compact” became arelatively insignificant arrangement, but nonetheless,France continued to have treaty obligations and requisiterites of diplomatic protocol that bound it to others withinthe family of nations.

The idea of reestablishing the former French empire inNorth America was one of the earliest foreign policygoals of the newly established French Republic. How itmight achieve that goal—whether through diplomacy orconquest—was a matter that would be settled by timeand circumstances. As early as 1793, when EdmondCharles Genêt arrived in America as the French ministerto the United States, it seemed clear that finding anopportune means to wrest Louisiana away from Spainwas a key objective of the French Republic. Genêt openlyrecruited American citizens to become mercenaries whowould fight in behalf of the French Republic. He sought,and received, financial contributions that were used tooutfit privateers to sail from American ports and engageBritish merchant vessels on the high seas.

Genêt never lost sight of his primary goal—“to germi-nate the principles of liberty and independence inLouisiana”—so that the French Republic might reacquireits former colonial possession and begin the process of re-creating a French North American empire (DeConde1976). To this end, Genêt had conversations with influ-ential Americans who knew of the dissatisfaction presentamong Americans living in the trans-Appalachian West.Spain’s refusal to allow Americans the right to use theMississippi River and to trade their goods at NewOrleans had created a furor among Western pioneers.Many of these settlers believed that they would havegreater economic opportunities if the French, rather thanthe Spanish, possessed Louisiana.

French officials did attempt to negotiate the retroces-sion of Louisiana from the Spanish in the summer of1795, but the terms that the Spanish demanded beforethey would agree to surrender Louisiana were unaccept-able to the French, and the negotiations related toLouisiana stalled. These talks, associated with the negoti-

ation of the Treaty of Basel (1795), demonstrated thatSpain was willing to cede Louisiana, which it considereda liability, but the Spanish demand for the eastern half ofthe island of Hispaniola was far more than French nego-tiators were willing to accept.

Still, the French Republic used other means to actagainst Spanish interests in Louisiana. In 1796, Frenchofficials sent General Georges Henri Victor Collot, theformer French colonial governor of Guadeloupe, as anobserver who would travel throughout the Ohio andMississippi River Valleys to gain insight into the popularmood of the day in Spanish Louisiana. Collot reportedthat the Spanish were intensely fearful of Americanexpansionism, and he suggested that only France wasstrong enough to withhold such growth.

NAPOLEON AND EMPIREFrom 1795 onward, the French were aware that theSpanish Bourbons were willing to part with the Louisianacolony, provided that a suitable form of compensationcould be found to sweeten the deal. Once NapoleonBonaparte came to power in his coup of November 1799,he set in motion the diplomatic efforts that would resultin the retrocession of Louisiana and the much-anticipatedbeginning of a new French empire in North America. YetNapoleon realized that France would have to make peacewith its former enemies in Europe to ensure that the legit-imacy of the retrocession would be recognized.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the Frenchminister of foreign relations, began the complicated anddelicate task of engineering the diplomatic agreementsthat would be necessary to effect the retrocession. In thesecond Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800), Talleyrand wasable to devise an understanding with the Spanish thatwould transfer Louisiana to France, but this treaty wascontingent upon promises that other treaty agreementswould have to support. In the Treaty of Lunéville, theFrench Republic made peace with the Austrian ruler, whorepresented the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire.One of the terms of that treaty was that the French wouldacquire the Italian kingdom of Tuscany. This area wouldbecome a primary bartering chip between the French andthe Spanish in their ongoing negotiations related toLouisiana.

In the second Treaty of San Ildefonso, Napoleon hadpromised to place the Duke of Parma on the throne of anItalian kingdom. Now that Napoleon had Tuscany, hecould deliver on that promise, but he had secondthoughts that complicated the delicate negotiations.Rather than place Fernando, the Duke of Parma, whomhe detested, on the throne of Tuscany, Napoleon offeredto make Luis, the Prince of Parma, king of Etruria(Napoleon’s new name for Tuscany). These revisionswould have to win the acceptance of King Charles IV, theSpanish Bourbon monarch, before the associated transferof Louisiana could take place. These final negotiationsresulted in the Convention of Aranjuez (1801), which

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affirmed the spirit of the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800)and resulted in the retrocession of Louisiana from Spainto France.

NAPOLEON’S GRAND DESIGNWhen First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte won the retro-cession of the Louisiana Territory in 1801, he had everyintention of reestablishing the French North Americanempire that had been destroyed by France’s defeat in1763. Although earlier colonial experiments inLouisiana—namely, the first French colony and the morerecent Spanish colony—had proven to be financial fail-ures, Napoleon had a grand design for a French empire inthe Western Hemisphere that would incorporate all terri-torial components to maximize their value. The wilder-ness of Louisiana would, in Napoleon’s view, become thebreadbasket colony of the new French empire.

Central to Napoleon’s plans was the reestablishmentof French colonial control in the colony of St. Domingueon the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. A slave revolt thathad begun in that colony in 1791 eventually led to theexpulsion of the French; St. Domingue became an inde-pendent republic, governed by the former slaves who hadpreviously harvested its crops. Napoleon recognized thatthe colony of St. Domingue had been one of the mostvaluable of French possessions prior to the 1791 rebel-lion, its annual sugar crop having been bountiful andimmensely profitable. Napoleon hoped to re-create thehalcyon days of sugar production on St. Domingue withthe use of slave labor, so that his French Republic couldonce again reap the profits. Napoleon Bonaparte consid-ered himself to be a product of the French Revolutionand the spirit of republicanism associated with “liberty,equality, and fraternity,” but his support of those valuesdid not extend to the slaves of St. Domingue, who hadrallied to the same cries of republicanism and overthrownthe shackles of oppression. Napoleon equated St.Domingue with sugar and profits, and nothing more.

In January 1802, a French army of twenty thousandmen arrived in St. Domingue to reconquer the colony andmake it the jewel of the French empire in the WesternHemisphere. Napoleon’s brother-in-law, General Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, commanded the expeditionand anticipated that a corps of elite French regularswould have little difficulty in suppressing an insurgentarmy consisting of former slaves. Neither Napoleon norLeclerc, however, anticipated the impact that diseasewould have upon the troops. Yellow fever, a mosquito-borne disease, was rampant in the Caribbean basinregion, and the French troops had no natural immunity.As a result, thousands died in an epidemic that decimatedthe French corps, claiming even the life of GeneralLeclerc. The inability of French forces to reestablishauthority in the prime sugar colony of St. Domingue cer-tainly gave Napoleon reason to consider how his granddesign for Louisiana—alone—would now generate prof-its for the French Republic.

Much as he had sent General Leclerc to St.Domingue, Napoleon named another French com-mander as captain general of Louisiana and authorizedhim to prepare an expedition to take control of thecolony recently retroceded by the Spanish. GeneralClaude P. Victor, Duc de Bellune, was advised to preparean occupation force that would sail from Europe toaccept possession of the Louisiana Territory at NewOrleans. General Victor began the slow and methodicaltask of organizing the occupation force, but delays con-tinued to push back the departure date. As the expedi-tion prepared for departure in Helvoët Sluys, in theNetherlands, the winter of 1802–1803 arrived, and theexpedition’s ships became icebound in the harbor. Victorwould have to wait until the spring thaw for nature tofree his vessels before he could sail for Louisiana. Again,Napoleon had time to think and reconsider his optionsregarding Louisiana.

It may seem strange to think that mosquitoes and icemay have destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte’s grand designfor a new French empire in the Western Hemisphere, butunanticipated consequences did teach him valuable les-sons and make him reconsider his initial plans. Anotherimportant element was that Napoleon needed ready cash,and quickly. Napoleon was enjoying a brief interlude ofpeace, but he knew that he would be at war with GreatBritain—and perhaps with numerous British allies—soon. Since he knew it would be unwise to enter into amajor European war without a significant supply of cashat hand, Napoleon pondered how much his North Amer-ican wilderness might be worth, were he to sell it.

THE DEAL OF A LIFETIMEThe retrocession of the Louisiana Territory from Spain toFrance in 1801 would have profound economic reper-cussions on America’s commercial independence. Thereacquisition of Louisiana by the French negated anycommercial benefits that the United States held under theterms of the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795), and theprospect of having to renegotiate those terms every timethe Louisiana Territory changed hands was not appeal-ing. From the earliest months of his presidential adminis-tration, Thomas Jefferson sought to devise a strategywhereby, through purchase, the United States might gainlegal rights to navigate the Mississippi River and ware-house goods near its mouth.

President Jefferson’s initial plan was to attempt to pur-chase either the Isle of Orleans or a portion of WestFlorida from the French. He advised Robert Livingston,the U.S. minister to France, to begin negotiating for thisdesired outcome, and he told Livingston that, in the eventof failure to win the concessions sought, the United Statesshould advise the French that it planned to join in analliance with the British. Under such an arrangement, inthe event of another European war, the United Statescould seize the Louisiana Territory as a wartime exigency.When it seemed as though Livingston’s negotiations were

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not bearing fruit, Jefferson authorized James Monroe asan additional diplomat to the French Republic, to assistin the effort.

Neither Livingston nor Monroe—and certainly notJefferson—was prepared for the real estate transfer thatFirst Consul Napoleon Bonaparte offered the UnitedStates in the spring of 1803. Even though purchasing theentire Louisiana Territory exceeded the diplomatic chargewith which they had been entrusted, Livingston andMonroe both realized that a quick response to the offerwas key, lest Bonaparte change his mind on the matter.Both diplomats realized the magnitude of the opportu-nity, and they also understood the political repercussionsthat would result from their decision.

When President Jefferson learned of the decision thatLivingston and Monroe had made, he supported theaction of the diplomats, but he was still concerned abouthow the purchase of the entire Louisiana Territory wouldbe accepted by the U.S. Senate and how foreign govern-ments would view the American action. The ideology ofJeffersonian Republicanism was predicated upon thenotion of small government. Jefferson and his politicalallies supported the doctrine of strict construction of theU.S. Constitution, whereby the government could claimonly those rights that were specifically enumerated; thebulk of rights were reserved to the states and to the peo-ple. The idea of doubling the size of the nation by affix-ing signatures to one treaty was something that troubledJefferson, because the diplomatic action did not haveprior congressional authorization and he did not believethat the Constitution permitted the acquisition of suchterritory by treaty purchase. Privately, Jefferson ponderedthat an amendment to the Constitution would be neces-sary to make the arrangement legal, but he also under-stood that the likelihood of passing such a measure rap-idly in the heated political climate of 1803 was unlikely.As a result, Jefferson set aside his views on small govern-ment and strict constructionism, for the moment, andbecame an advocate of a powerful, large federal govern-ment that drew its powers from a loose interpretation ofthe Constitution. Jefferson was being a pragmatist andputting the nation’s interests ahead of partisan ideology.

REPERCUSSIONSThe Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was an extremely con-troversial event, in both an international geopoliticalsense and also as a domestic policy matter within theUnited States. Beyond the United States and France, noother world powers recognized the legitimacy of the sale.Spain protested loudly that France had no legal right tosell the territory to the United States, and based the claimupon a stipulation in the second Treaty of San Ildefonsothat did not permit France to alienate the territory ortransfer it to a third party. Great Britain and other Euro-pean powers did not recognize the legality of theLouisiana Purchase until after the end of the NapoleonicEra, when the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna

(1814–1815) was signed. Until that time, most Europeanleaders viewed the United States as possessing stolengoods to which it had no clear and legal title.

Additionally, most European powers believed that theLouisiana Purchase would prove to be the undoing of theAmerican republic. It was inconceivable to most Euro-peans that a nation with territorial resources as vast asthe United States could long survive without breakinginto factions that would secede to represent their regionalself-interests. By the European model, nations were small,compact political entities, and the idea that America’sdemocracy within a republic could exist within a tremen-dously large territory was a notion that had few adher-ents in the early nineteenth century.

Even within the United States, many questioned thewisdom of acquiring such a vast territory. During the eraof the American Founding, many had compared theUnited States to the Roman Republic, and much of thelanguage of our political institutions reflects that, but theRoman Republic failed when it adopted imperial ambi-tions. Thus, some of the naysayers of 1803 based theirarguments upon classical Roman antiquity. Many Feder-alists, who were members of the loyal opposition poisedagainst Jeffersonian Republicans, were rather prescientwhen they opposed territorial expansion on the basis thatit would reduce the political influence of New EnglandFederalists within the government. The addition of eachnew Western state further reduced the power base of theFederalist Party.

AN ERRAND INTO THE WILDERNESSEven before the opportunity to purchase the LouisianaTerritory arose in 1803, President Jefferson had begunpreparations for a major scientific expedition to traveloverland to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson had corre-sponded with friends who were major scientists and nat-uralists of the day, and he sought their advice as to whatshould be the areas of focus for such an expedition. Asthe experts responded to Jefferson’s request, each wasasked to tutor Meriwether Lewis, President Jefferson’spersonal secretary and the man whom he had selected tolead the proposed expedition. To that end, on January18, 1803, Jefferson sent a secret message to the Congresscalling for an expedition to explore the unknown regionsof the West.

Captain Meriwether Lewis, having been selected to leadthe expedition, was charged with all the details of prepar-ing the Corps of Discovery. Lewis had to secure the partyof explorers, draw up a budget, prepare a list of neededsupplies, and make sure that everything worked accordingto schedule. One of his first decisions was to write to hisfriend William Clark, with whom he had served in the U.S.Army under the command of General “Mad” AnthonyWayne in 1795. Lewis, acting on his own initiative, invitedClark to join the expedition as coleader.

Lewis and Clark and the other members of their partywitnessed the formal exchange of the upper part of the

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Louisiana Territory at St. Louis on March 10, 1804. Dur-ing the ceremony, the Spanish flag was lowered andreplaced by the French tricolor, and shortly thereafter, thatflag was lowered and replaced by the American flag. Thefinal preparations for departure were then made, as Lewisand Clark and their Corps of Discovery set out from St.Louis, the “Gateway to the West,” on May 14, 1804.

For twenty-eight months, Lewis and Clark and theCorps of Discovery ventured where no Anglo-Americanshad traveled before. In encountering Indian tribes, manyof whom had never before seen Americans, the membersof the expedition were emissaries of American identity,but also early agents of Manifest Destiny and imperial-ism. By venturing beyond the crest of the Rocky Moun-tains, the Lewis and Clark Expedition suggested an earlyawareness that America’s future might well be that of acontinental power stretching from ocean to ocean.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition strengthened Amer-ica’s claim to the newly purchased Louisiana Territory,and it also provided a significant claim to the OregonCountry, which would be divided by a diplomatic agree-ment in the 1840s. The expedition produced a wealth ofinformation about the flora, the fauna, and the ethnogra-phy of the West. The travels of Lewis and Clark alsoexpanded our collective geographical sense of the Westby providing more accurate maps, which confirmed thevastness of the region. In addition, the expedition dis-proved certain mythic falsehoods, such as the incrediblehope that an easy, all-water route to the West might exist.

INADVERTENT DISCOVERERSAlthough major explorations, like the Lewis and ClarkExpedition, are justifiably much acclaimed, most of thediscoveries that were made in the trans-Mississippi Westwere the result of individual acts of valor that werelargely considered unhistoric in their time. Even beforeLewis and Clark had returned from the Pacific, fur trap-pers and traders operating out of St. Louis had alreadybegun to ascend the Missouri River. These individuals,the mountain men of Western myth and folklore, alsobecame agents of empire who extended the Americanpresence in the West as they wandered through obscurecanyons and valleys.

The paths blazed and trails marked by the early furtrappers and traders were early avenues of commerce inthe trans-Mississippi West, but these routes would laterbe used by emigrant pioneers as they traveled westwardinto the growing nation. In later years, when the goldenage of the fur trade would fade, many of the formermountain men became guides to government expeditionsand parties of emigrants who sought to follow the trailswestward to new opportunities and adventure.

POSSESSION RATHER THAN CLAIMIn 1803 the U.S. government paid the French Republic$15 million to acquire the claim that France held uponthe territory called Louisiana. At the time of the

Louisiana Purchase, and for several decades thereafter,vast portions of the territory were occupied, and the landtherein possessed, by several dozen Indian nations whohad lived upon the land for centuries. It would be the jobof the U.S. government as the new owner to make thatclaim real by acquiring the territory and possessing it,parcel by parcel. Achievement of this objective wouldtake much of the nineteenth century, and the task wouldbe achieved through a combination of methods, includ-ing negotiated treaties, federal laws, war, disease, theft,and duplicity.

Regardless of the method used to acquire Indianlands, the burden of defending the newly acquired pos-sessions generally fell upon the U.S. Army. Shortly afterthe United States purchased Louisiana from France, planswere under way to establish a series of military outpostsin those strategic frontier areas where the safe conduct oftrade and commerce, and later of emigrant trains, wasviewed as being in the national interest. Often the fron-tier forts themselves became the site of treaty negotiationswith tribal bands as a sustained effort to reduce Indianlands continued throughout the nineteenth century.

The U.S. government’s Indian policy in the nineteenthcentury was built around the idea of Indian removal.Large sections of Indian land were exchanged for smallerparcels of reservation land that was generally promised toa particular tribe in perpetuity. In addition, the tribe oftenreceived a cash annuity from the U.S. government for aperiod of years, and sometimes special trading privilegeswere also incorporated within the treaty’s terms. The rea-sons for removal in particular situations varied. Tribeslike the Sioux, for example, were moved away from thebanks of the Missouri River, where it was believed thatthey might threaten river-borne commerce. Other groups,such as the Cheyenne and Arapaho, were removed tosites where they would be less likely to disrupt pioneeremigrant trains along the Oregon Trail. In still othercases, the discovery of precious metals or mineraldeposits was used as the pretext for the removal of vari-ous tribes.

GROWING PAINSAs the United States began the process of populating thelands of the Louisiana Territory, there arose many con-troversies about how the nation should expand and whatwould be the most effective use of the Louisiana Purchaselands. The prospect that many new states would becarved out of the Louisiana Territory was a threat tomany political leaders in already-existing Eastern states.Many realized that the addition of new states wouldmerely dilute the political influence of the existing states,and they feared that the inordinate voting power of new,sparsely populated states in the trans-Mississippi Westmight negate the political influence of older, more popu-lous Eastern states.

Occasionally, opponents of Western expansiondefended ethnocentrism in their hope to maintain Amer-

— Introduction—xxv

ica for Americans. There was heated debate in 1812when the Congress considered Louisiana’s request forstatehood. Many opponents of the measure believed thatthe French and Spanish heritage of the region’s inhabi-tants, their Roman Catholicism, and their lack of aware-ness of American customs and traditions made them unfitcandidates for admission into the Union. Still other oppo-nents of Louisiana statehood argued that the presence ofa large slave population in Louisiana made the regionripe for revolt, and that the cost of defending the areaagainst such an uprising would be extravagant. In spite ofthese criticisms, Louisiana became a state in 1812, and itsinhabitants proved themselves worthy citizens when theydefended New Orleans against a British invasion duringthe War of 1812.

In the years during which the Louisiana Territory wasstill a relatively empty region, ideas were put forward asto the most effective use of the land. There were some whoadvocated that a large portion of the Louisiana Territorybe set aside as Indian Territory, so that tribes from theEastern half of the nation could be removed there. In sucha fashion, the Louisiana Territory would become a safetyvalve for national expansion, thereby settling the “Indianquestion” that the nation faced in the early part of thenineteenth century. To a certain extent, the establishmentof the region of present-day Oklahoma as Indian Terri-tory, where members of various nations were resettled,was an effort to put this idea into practice. Still, by 1890even Oklahoma lands were opened for white settlement.

Another idea that was put forward in the early nine-teenth century was to establish a colony for freed slavessomewhere in the trans-Mississippi West. By 1817 orga-nizations like the American Colonization Society wereengaged in returning former slaves to the colony ofLiberia in West Africa. (British abolitionists were doingthe same in Sierra Leone.) Advocates for a colony of freedslaves in the Louisiana Territory maintained that the planwould eliminate one of the biggest problems in antebel-lum America—the presence of a free black population ina society that defined itself as being either slave or free.Despite support for the idea by some politicians andjurists, the plan was never enacted.

The question of slavery, and in particular the expan-sion of slavery, was one that would dominate politicalconcerns in the antebellum era. How slavery should beallowed to expand into the Western territories was one ofthe key issues that brought the United States to civil warin 1861. In many respects, the first battle of that conflictmay have been the congressional debates that surroundedMissouri’s request for statehood in 1819. After nearlytwo years of rancorous debate, the Congress eventuallyallowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state. Thiswas done through the congressional action that came tobe known as the Missouri Compromise (1820). Accord-ing to the doctrine established at the time of Missouri’sadmission to the Union, all lands in the Louisiana Terri-tory that were north of 36 degrees 30 minutes north lat-

itude (with the exception of Missouri) were to becomefree states, while states below that line were permittedslavery if they so desired. That policy would remain ineffect until it was ignored by the Kansas-Nebraska Act(1854) and effectively overturned by the U.S. SupremeCourt’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision in 1857.

The question of how America would grow in a man-ner that was equitable to all was an issue that wouldplague the nation for many years. Additional territorialexpansion that occurred in the 1840s would only exacer-bate the question and drive the slave states and the freestates further apart as they debated the merits of expand-ing either slavery or freedom into an ever-expandingnational domain.

CHANGES TO THE LANDToday, much of the world’s foodstuffs are produced uponthe lands that were once a part of the Louisiana PurchaseTerritory. That a wilderness region has been converted inmany respects to the breadbasket of much of the world isa modern marvel, but that tremendous human achieve-ment has not been without its costs. The modern worldhas produced many benefits, but the original landscapehas had to change in order to make our modern worldpossible.

Perhaps the greatest transformation that took placeafter the Louisiana Purchase was the dramatic environ-mental change that has occurred in the region over thepast two centuries. Much of the wilderness area of theNorth American interior became farmland and rancheswithin the course of less than a century following 1803.The establishment of settlements in the Louisiana Terri-tory corresponded with the rise of early industrializa-tion in America, and not surprisingly, many of the farm-ing and ranching implements were factory-producedmarvels of modern technology. Steel plows were devisedto turn the deep sod of the plains, and mechanicalreapers were fashioned to harvest the rich soil’s abun-dant yields. In the treeless expanse of the high plains,machine-made barbed wire marked out territorial prop-erty lines that forever erased the once common openrange of an earlier era.

In those regions that were blessed with abundanthardwoods, pioneer settlers harvested the trees to build anation, but paid little attention to the blighted landscapesthey often left behind. In many areas the matchlessbounty of the forests of the north woods was destroyedby aggressive logging practices that could have beenaverted. Even within the areas where renewable resourcescould be managed in a sustainable fashion, America’sfrontier settlers often acted only for the moment andthought little of the stewardship of the land.

In a rush to exploit the commercially ordained naturethat we imposed upon the land, we often lost sight of thefirst nature, or original landscape, that we modified inthe name of progress. While some lands were over-plowed, others were overgrazed, but in the end the costs

xxvi—Introduction

were similar: the tall grass prairies that had endured formillennia were destroyed within decades. Valuable top-soil was made vulnerable by overplowing, to the pointwhere drainage runoff from fields and windstorms couldcarry away the richness of the land and leave behind awasteland. Fresh water, a rare commodity in some partsof the trans-Mississippi West, was often exploited, andthe hand of man often polluted streams to the pointwhere they became virtually useless. Sites that containedrich mineral deposits were often mined in such a fashionthat only the scars of an earlier prosperity remind us ofwhat once existed.

Perhaps the most tragic example of environmentaldegradation occurred as animal species were driven to thepoint of extinction, or near-extinction. Although therewas a time when millions of bison lived in herds thatmade seasonal migrations on the Great Plains, the whole-sale slaughter of these animals nearly resulted in theirextinction. At one point it was estimated that only onethousand bison survived in America, but as a result oftwentieth-century conservation efforts and federal legisla-tion, their population has increased.

PAST IS PROLOGUEHistory speaks to us in an effort to instruct, but often wefail to heed its admonitions and reminders. So too theland speaks to us through the silent language of remem-brance as we try to fathom the changes that the centurieshave wrought. To cite Walt Whitman, we who live in“the greatest poem” have a series of obligations to thenation, to our fellow men, and to the land. We, like those

who came before, must learn to comprehend the poetrythat is America.

Thomas Jefferson was a visionary and a nationalist.He may have been the first American political leader tocomprehend the coast-to-coast notion of American iden-tity that by the 1840s would come to be called ManifestDestiny. Before he died in 1826, Jefferson saw two newstates carved out of the lands that had been purchasedduring his administration. The admission of Louisiana(1812) and Missouri (1821) into the Union were historicoccasions, but Jefferson the nationalist feared for thenation when the divisive issue of slavery—“a fire bell inthe night”—surrounded the debate over Missouri’s bidfor statehood. Perhaps it was Jefferson’s dream that thenation might be both expansive and united, but historywould soon prove that these twin goals were mutuallyexclusive.

Jefferson’s vision of America was rooted in the agrarianideal of small, independent farmers who owned their ownland, an image similar in purpose to that of the citizen-sol-diers of the Roman Republic whom he admired. AlthoughAmerica’s destiny would represent a departure from theJeffersonian ideal, there are elements of the old agrariannotion that survive. In Jefferson’s view, the people and theland were inextricably connected to one another in a sym-biotic relationship. Free citizens needed to depend upon thebounty of the land to sustain themselves, but labor wasrequired to husband the land and collect its many gifts. Yet,while we mark the passage of time in the small chronologyof life spans, it is the land that endures, forever.

—Junius P. Rodriguez

—Introduction—xxvii

xiv—Running Foot

Territorial Expansionxxx

The Louisiana Purchasexxxi

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