Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/198



186 F. G. YOUNG

reveal these, and from these get additional support for the interpretation given, as well as a more real and satisfactory view of one of the founders of Oregon.

THE WORLD OF ADVENTURE AND OPPORTUNITY TO WHICH EWING YOUNG WAS LURED IN THE TWENTIES

By the early twenties of the 19th century enough of the home-building pioneers had in their westward movement crossed the Mississippi river to qualify Missouri for state- hood. Up to this time the hunters, trappers and fur traders, serving as scouts for the on-coming settler, had regularly fol- lowed the courses of the water ways in penetrating the wilder- ness. Now as the vanguard reached the great bend of the Missouri river conditions counselled a change to an overland advance. Several efforts to stem the swift currents beyond this point through the long distance to the mountains had proven arduous and virtually futile. Two salients were thus at the beginning of the twenties being projected westward across the prairies to the mountains and beyond.

The line of the Oregon trail pointed to the northwest and served as the highway for traffic with the Indian tribes in that quarter and with the mountain men as they exploited the fur wealth of the mountain wildernesses. The other line of advance across the prairies to the southwest was the Santa Fe trail serving for similar traffic with the tribes of the southwest, but also made a new short cut, and therefore preferred, line of communication with an isolated outpost of civilization in that region. Soon over the Oregon trail pressed the caravans of settlers who were to save the Pacific Northwest and Upper California to our jurisdiction. Along the Santa Fe trail moved those who Americanized the vast region of the southwest so that its cession to us by Mexico was inevitable and in accord- ance with the principle of self-determination.

These two transcontinental highways had as a common start- ing point the turn made by the Missouri from its long south-