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CHAPTER XIX.

SETTLING THE WEST (1800-1820)

IN 1802 Jefferson predicted that the Mississippi valley "will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half of our inhabitants." Two Contempora decades later the West contained one fourth of the in- ries III.363 habitants of the Union, and had revealed many elements

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241. Resources of the West

of its own natural wealth: (1) The soil was deep and fertile; the bottom lands of Kentucky and Tennessee, the wooded areas of Ohio, and the prairies farther west all bore surprising crops. (2) Most of the settled area abounded in superb timber the best trees ran to 150 or even 200 feet in height and 30 to 40 feet in girth, furnishing abundant building material. (3) The country was well watered and fitted for grazing, so that about 1820 the westerners began to drive herds of cattle over the mountains to market. (4) The abundant waterways and the ease of making roads quickly opened the country to settlement. (5) Coal mining began in Pittsburg in 1784, and the black diamonds cropped out in many places. (6) Iron ore was abundant, and charcoal iron furnaces were started, while lead was discovered in Illinois and Wisconsin.

242. The westward movement

A stream of immigrants sought this promised land, with an effect seen in the census returns of some of the states: Tennessee had 36,000 people in 1790 and 262,000 in 1810; Ohio rose from 45,000 in 1800 to 581,000 in 1820. New settlements sprang up. Fort Dearborn, on the Chicago River, first built in 1803, was destroyed by Indians in 1812, was rebuilt in 1816, and became the nucleus of

Chicago. Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, and South Bend were settled about 1817. St. Louis had been founded by the French in 1764. Although the eastern states were all growing rapidly,

Settled Area in 1790.

Ruling Indicates regions

settled between 1790 and 1810.
Dots indicate regions settled

between 1810 and 1830.

SETTLED AREA IN 1830.

they were able to send off swarms of emigrants, because large families were common throughout the country. Every son could make a livelihood, and almost every daughter was wanted as a farmer's wife.

To accommodate this stream of land-hungry people, the United States, in 1800, adopted a new public land system: land was divided into small parcels and sold at land offices on the frontier at a minimum price of $2 an acre, one fourth of the purchase money down and four years' time for the balance. Many followed the principle of the old woman in Eggleston's novel, who, when her husband was buying, said, "git plenty while you're a gittin'."

To reach the western lands several main highways from east to west were marked out by nature. (1) A route led from 243. Roads Albany through the valley of the Mohawk, and thence. to the West via Geneva to Buffalo. (2) In 1812 Rochester was founded, the plain to the west of it was quickly occupied, and a new main road was laid out directly west to Lake Erie. (3) From Philadelphia a good road ran through Bedford in southern Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, 350 miles. (4) From Alexandria (opposite Washington) a road led about 300 miles to Pittsburg, by Braddock's old route up the Potomac to Cumberland, and across the Laurel Mountains to the Monongahela

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River. (5) From Alexandria or Richmond people followed the long-traveled easy pass from the upper Roanoke southwest to the Holston River, and thence down the Tennessee, or northwestward through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. (6) From

Georgia westward there was easy travel to Mississippi Territory and New Orleans.

Most of the wheel roads crossed many swamps and unbridged streams, and were without good inns. In regions where there was very little stone, pikes were out of the question. As a substitute, companies built "plank roads" of thick boards laid side by side, and charged toll. The greater part of the highways west of the mountains were simple rough tracks, winding in and out among stumps and trees, pleasant in dry weather, and a slough when it rained. Hence the journey from the eastern states to the West was a serious business. The ordinary vehicle was the Conestoga wagon of wood, with an arched canvas top. The emigrants sold most of their furniture and other heavy movables, took food with them, and cooked as they went along. Breakdowns were frequent in the terrible roads, and an average of twenty miles a day was quick travel.

244. River and lake travel

When once the tributaries of the Mississippi were reached, movement became easier; even on small rivers like the upper Wabash and the Muskingum flatboats were used. The simplest craft in the lively river traffic was the birchbark canoe, which would hold one or two persons, or the dugout, often larger. More elaborate was the raft-sometimes as much as a hundred feet long, floating all day on the current, and tied up at night; some of the rafts carried houses, open fires, and cattle. More comfortable was the flatboat, with its crew of unkempt and brawny polemen, the terror of frontier towns; or the flat-bottomed ark, sometimes as much as sixty feet long. A step higher was the keel boat, a more carefully built and ambitious structure, housed over with a deck, and provided with two "broadhorns," or steering oars.

On some such craft the settler floated lazily down the rivers and met the dangers of the voyage-the river pirates, who often attacked even armed boats; and Indians, who poured in

a volley from the shore. Much of the immigration intended for central Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee took advantage of the water highways by following down the Ohio and then poling up a tributary to the place of destination.

After 1812 steamers multiplied on the western rivers. The hulls could be built anywhere out of timber on the spot; the fuel was wood from the river banks; engines and boilers at first had to be brought

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over the mountains.

The river life is best described in the recollections of his boyhood which Mark Twain has preserved for us in his books on the West. In 1820 it took thirty-five days to go up from New Orleans to Pittsburg by steam, and

about ten days to go

A MISSISSIPPI RIVER STEAMER.

down. The Great Lakes were not safe or convenient for sail craft or for rowboats; and were not much used as a highway for emigration till steamers were introduced. The first Lake Erie steamer was the Walk-in-the-Water, built in 1818; in 1832 a steamer reached Chicago from the East; after that time hundreds of thousands of emigrants passed through the Lakes.

nal improvements

Difficulties in traveling westward, and the poverty of the frontier communities, suggested that the federal government build highways. The first act on the subject (in 1802) 245. Interwas that for the admission of Ohio, which provided that 5 per cent of the proceeds of the public lands sold in that (1802-1820) state should be applied to roads to reach those lands. This idea took definite form in an act of 1806 for the survey of a road from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River.

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