Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/271

Rh Already there were fur traders in what was then the far west. For two thirds of a generation after that, all the vast territory between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and also a border-land about the Great Lakes, and the headwaters of the Mississippi was every-man's land, where the French and the English hunted, and made war upon Americans, while the Indians made war upon each in turn.

After our war of 1812, which although brought on by an abuse of maritime rights by the English, was made the excuse by English fur traders for the abuse of American rights on land, the United States congress passed an "exclusion act' compelling the British traders to remove their posts to British territory. This they did as to their posts, but as to their hunting they still for several years continued to gather furs on American rivers and in American forests.

These unsettled conditions bred a class of men whose "double" will never again be seen on American soil, if anywhere on the globe. For brain and brawn, for courage and generalship, their leaders stand unrivaled. Their battlefields were scattered over the interior of America from the Missouri to the Columbia, and beyond, to the headwaters of the great Oregon River, even to the Umpqua, near the California boundary.

Unfortunately, the wars were not always with Indians, but quite as often between rival trading companies. Commerce has always been a relentless pioneer, as it is the most successful civilizer. Except for trade there would be "open doors" nowhere on the earth. It has always required b]ood to make fertile the soil of its most productive regions—the more productive, the more blood.

Beginning with a sketch of the condition of the Mississippi frontier, and the founding of St. Louis, Captain Chittenden gives us the story of the Astor enterprise,