In the first part of this post (available here) we discussed the course and flow of the Missouri River, the Geology of the drainage basin and the early history of the river.
We know that there have been people living in the Missouri drainage basin and along the banks of the river for at least 12,000 years. For most of that time they lived in relative peace, trading and cooperating with each other. The rich bounty of the river provided sustenance to millions of inhabitants.
All that would change fairly rapidly with the first Europeans on the Continent. It would take some time for the first English led settlers to cross the Mississippi and make the earliest contact with indigenous people of the Missouri, certainly the mid 17th Century at the very earliest.
Source
The first contact and a huge impact on the people would come from the south and the Spanish who were much more active and organized than the English in North America. Coronado, the Governor of New Spain (Mexico) crossed into what would be the US in early 1540. His party fought violently with the local inhabitants killing many and enslaving many more. His most important contribution to the population of the Missouri river was horses. He lost horses during the expedition and they would change the drainage basin forever.
In less than 100 years horses would become a major part of the life and livelihood of many of the tribes in the western US. By the time the first French trappers and traders made contact with the upper Midwest natives horses were an established force for many of the tribes. Horses made buffalo hunting relatively easy and allowed vast populations to roam the plains in a relatively nomadic way, without depending on the river for food and transportation,
The history of the French and English in North America was particularly brutal in the context of the inhabitants of the continent. Superior weapons and disease that the natives had no defense for decimated the indigenous population east of the Mississippi, Many of the agrarian tribes disappeared entirely. That would change when whites first crossed the Mississippi and entered the Missouri basin.
In 1673 the first official French expedition down the Mississippi discovered the mouth of the Missouri, the first written sighting. The French would be the primary explorers of the region right up until the Americans bought the basin from France. The explorer Bourgmont was the first to travel up the Missouri (and the first to call the river by that name). His writing show that he made it to the confluence with the Platte river in 1714. He also described the ‘blond natives’ (the Mandan tribe) who certainly lived in North Dakota.
The French defeat in the French and Indian war cost France it’s holdings in Canada to the English and much of the Louisiana Territory to the Spanish, essentially ending their exploration of the Missouri. In 1795 the United States signed a treaty with Spain that detailed the use of the Mississippi river (which included access to the Missouri) which was revoked by Spain in 1798. The Spanish also secretly returned the Louisiana Territory to Napoleon which set up the purchase of the Territory by the US in 1803. The purchase of the territory doubled the size of the US.
President Jefferson was in trouble with the electorate and the Congress for spending $15 million on the purchase so he quickly formed up an expedition to follow the Missouri River all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark would find out fairly early that wasn’t going to happen but they did map the Missouri all the way to the Yellowstone and continue on to the Pacific, a nearly three year trip.
The Lewis and Clark expedition proved once and for all that there was no ‘Northwest Passage’ through America. It also mapped a sizeable fraction of the Missouri basin and found flora and fauna that was just completely unknown prior to their trip.
There is no question that the North American fur trade drove the complete exploration of the Missouri. Traders, not trappers really drove the push to the west when they discovered that the natives would be happy to trade manufactured goods for furs. Mountains of furs. The traders routinely returned to civilization with tales of endless animals and land. The rush was on. It started as a bare trickle of Europeans and ended as a flood of immigrants entered the basin.
In the end, it was the flood that overwhelmed the natives in the basin. Their populations had been decimated by disease (smallpox) and the sheer number of settlers ended their free run on the western half of North America.
All the well known trails that helped settle the west started on the Missouri, which was the very edge of civilization in the early 19th Century. The California, the Oregon, the Mormon and the Santa Fe all started there. The later Pony Express started at the Missouri.
Independenc Rock, Wyoming. Photo Courtesy of the author. So named because travelers on the Oregon Trail wanted to be here by Independence Day in order to avoid the snows in the mountains ahead.
Gold. The legendary gold strike at Sutter’s Mill California populated the state and most of those people took the California Trail westward to get there. There was no Panama Canal, the sea voyage around the tip of South America was expensive and perilous. The California Trail was no bargain, but in the mid 19th Century it was the obvious alternative.
It wasn’t long and gold strikes in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah brought more people westward, and the Oregon Trail was opened. It was long and arduous but it was a significant improvement to the California Trail. Settlers by the tens of thousands headed out into the plains and inevitable conflicts with the native inhabitants.
By 1857 the conflicts had involved the US Army which led to the Fort Laramie Treaty which promised a huge hunk of the Missouri drainage to the Sioux and other northern plains tribes. By 1878 the treaty had been broken by the US and rewritten twice. The Army relentlessly pursued the ‘hostiles’ and forced them onto reservations. Even the Sacred Black Hills were taken when Gold was discovered there. There is a lawsuit involving the Sioux tribes and the US Government that is still pending and concerns the payment promised to the Sioux for the Black Hills which now involves billions of dollars.
On a very personal note, my Grandfather was born in Kansas after his father had served in the 7th Cavalry in the area. He and his wife and parents decided to head west to Oregon. They waited until my Grandfather was 2 years old and thought that he could survive the trip. He did. They were part of the last big push before the railroads really got to they plains. We will discover the impact of bridges over the Missouri and the railroads on the entire plains in the last installment of this series.
While the words and ideas in this post are strictly those of the author this source was referred to by me to insure numerical and historical accuracy.
Wikipedia: Missouri River
Unsourced Photos are used courtesy of the author.
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