Philip Rubenstein
Go West Young Man, Part 1: Manifest Destiny

Phil Rubenstein - Go West Young Man, Part 1: Manifest Destiny

- So, hello everyone again. Welcome and well, I was going to say good to see everyone, but of course I can’t see anyone, but you know what I mean. For those of you who are living in Washington DC this may be a good moment to close your ears for about 20 seconds. ‘Cause I’m going to start with a quote. “Washington DC is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. Go West, Young Man, Go West and grow up with the country.” You can, you can start listening now. So “Go West young man, go West.” This is a phrase that we’re all so familiar with and that we all know, and it’s credited to a newspaper editor by the name of Horace Greeley, who was writing in 1865 in favour of American expansion to the West.

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Now, for those of you who’ve who were regulars of lockdown, you’ll have noticed that the series on America is already well into the 20th century. So we’re a bit out of time here. These two lectures are going to turn the clock back to the mid 19th century for the early story of Western expansion. So forgive me for doing that, and I hope you don’t mind just being slightly out of sequence. But that means for those of you who are regulars, some of this is going to feel like familiar ground. William has already given a couple of lectures where he’s done a great sweep of the history of the West. While you’ll recall a couple of weeks ago, David did a great lecture where he unpicked the myth of the cowboy. And of course, Trudy has also spoken about those early Jewish settlers, mainly German Jews who made their way to the West. In these two lectures, so one today and part two is on Thursday.

We’re going to be focusing on one extraordinary decade, the pioneering decade. So this is the 1840s, and today we’re going to look at the American pioneers who first settle the West, the White American pioneers, I should say. We’ve all seen the movies and we all know that this is the decade of waggon trains blazing the trail. And this is a time before the California gold rush of '49, before the Klondike, before the Civil War, before the Homestead Act, which granted citizen 160 acres of fairyland, before the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, before the culling of the buffalo and before the destruction of the Native American way of life. We’re back in the 1840s when it all still feels new and wide open. So today we’re going to look at the experience of those pioneers, and towards the end, we’re going to consider what, if anything, that experience can tell us about the character and psyche of the American nation today. And on Thursday, we’re going to focus on one single community, much reviled at the time, much persecuted, but whose story of foundation and extraordinary survival is a very American story.

Yes, it’s the Mormons. So for those of you who are interested, I hope you tune in on Thursday. So I’m going to get the slides up and we’re going to start just by reminding ourselves and just taking a look at who owned what at the turn of the 19th century, in other words, around about 1800. So here we go. So how was the North American continent divided up circa 1800? And who claimed what land? Well, you can see from this map that the United States as it then was occupied the easterly side of the continent. And as such, the the both the culture and the economy of the US face seaward. In other words, face eastward, the new world as it was depends on the success of finding its place in the great Atlantic economy of Seaborne trade. While the Republic’s leaders, they’re still defensively preoccupied with Europe, but more and more Americans are starting to feel the pull of the land, and that means turning their gaze towards the east. Now, when we talk about the east, I mean, you can see who’s already there. France has that huge vast area that we know as Louisiana, and then Spain to the west of them, and that will soon become Mexican. And the British have claimed all of Canada and what is going to be known as Oregon territory.

The first great game changer, as we all know, is the Louisiana purchase. So in 1803, Napoleon sells 800,000 square miles of territory, a vast amount of space to the US President Thomas Jefferson. And what this means effectively for France is that it knocks them out out the equation of North America in one fell swoop. I mean, if you look at it on the map, you can just see just how vast it is. And I have to say, it kind of reminds me a little of that Roshas, you know, the inkblot, because it almost looks as if the USA as was then and Louisiana or French, Louisiana, they almost look like a kind of a mirror image of themselves. And so it’s no accident that this single act of purchase doubles the size of the US pretty much overnight. One historian has called the Louisiana Purchase the buying of America. And I have to say, I think for once I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. And for the very first time, it’s possible to believe that one day soon the United States could, could stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from sea to shining sea. There’s one person who believes this in his bones, and that’s the President, Thomas Jefferson. Immediately on signing the deal, he decides he’s going to send an expedition to explore the new domain and find if they can a good route to the Pacific.

The so-called Northwest Passage. Who does he ask? Well, he decides to stay fairly close to home. So he asks his personal secretary, a gentleman by the name of Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition. Lewis is a former soldier, so he was sold in a former life and he’s dispatched immediately by Jefferson to Philadelphia. And when he gets there, he’s going to do a crash course in all the things that he thinks he’s going to need. So he learns in very short order about botany, about medicines, zoology, and celestial navigation. For his co-commander, he selects his former military superior. So they, a decade earlier had done battle together against the Northwest Indian Federation. And so his name is William Clark. And Lewis and Clark decide that they need to recruit an entourage of staff to help them get there and negotiate the passage. And more important than any other member is, I’m probably going to mangle her name, so apologies to everyone, they hire Sacagawea, who is going to be their guide, and you can see she’s shown in this painting, she’s going to be their translator and she’s also going to be their chief diplomat because she’s Shoshone. And a good chunk of the journey is going to be through Shoshone territory. So on May the 14th, 1804 Auspicious Day, they set out from St. Louis, an entourage of 50 of them, and they make their way by boat.

There’s a 10 foot keel boat, which is the main boat, and then a series of smaller vessels. And they pull and push and pull all in search of this great northwest passage up to the Pacific Ocean. And the expedition is a great adventure. So here’s the map, and you can see they start from St. Louis and they make their way up the Missouri River, and they encounter these great massive animal herds. Along the way they have a lot of fun naming geographic locations after various expedition members. Even Lewis’s dog gets in on the act. His dog is called Siemen. And Siemens Creek is named in present day Montana. And also along the way, again, part of their mission is to make peace and contact with Native American communities. So they meet a number of these communities along the way, and they deliver speeches, grand speeches, and they request for peace, and they promise trade. Most of the tribes they meet welcome the party and they welcome the trading opportunities, and they provide the expedition with food and knowledge and guides and shelter. And there’s only one exception, which is the Lakota who they meet a little further on in what today is South Dakota and the Lakota are quite hostile towards them. And this may have something to do with the fact that the Lakota has already encountered the British and it’s made them a little suspicious of the white man’s intention. They nearly turn violent on the expedition.

But some quick thinking, local diplomacy, Manchester duplicate them. So over the five months of their expedition, they experience illnesses and injuries of all kinds. There’s dysentery boils, they get terrible tick bites, all kinds of injuries, including from prickly pears. But amazingly, only one man actually perishes over the course of the entire journey. They end their journey, and you can see over here along the Columbia River, out towards the sea. And they finally arrive in, sorry, they finally arrive at the Pacific Ocean in mid-November. Clark records the first sighting in his diary. Ocean in view he writes, “Oh, the joy.” So Lewis and Clark succeed magnificently in their mission, and when they get home, they’re fated by everyone. And it’s not long before they have many, many follow ups to the extent that by 1840, 35 years later, the west has been pretty thoroughly explored. So who is it who’s doing all the exploring? Well, I mean, over that period, the land is crisscrossed several times by hundreds of what are known as mountain men. And you can see three of them, three of the more well-known ones shown in these images.

These are men who live in the wilderness and they make their living from hunting, trapping, and trading. They’re a diverse group in terms of their background, where they’ve come from and their levels of education. The one on the right, Jim Bridger, is something of a legend. He was a trapper and a scout, an explorer who starts out when he’s 18, and he has a career that lasts over 40 years. And over that time he discovers new routes across the frontier. He establishes a trading fort, and he’s also married to three separate Native American women, I should say sequentially and not at the same time. It’s important to just underline that these mountain men, they’re not settlers, they’re moving across the Great Plains, but they don’t stay on them. But they are a vital link in what’s going to become the process of settling the west because they’re the ones who discover all the various different trails across the plains, which are then going to be followed later by actual settlers. So by 1840 it was known that the Valley of the Columbia in Oregon, which we just saw in that map just up here, you remember? So all around here that this is a good place for farm settlements.

And it’s also understood that California is quite promising farm country as well. So second map of the day, or third map of the day, I should say actually. This is a map we’re going to be coming back to two or three times over the course of today and also on Thursday as well, because this shows the so-called immigrant trails that start out from the 1840s, and it’s really from 1841 that the, what’s known as the Great Migration, it gets well underway. It starts as a trickle. So in 1841 there’s a small caravan of 58 souls, which is called the Bidwell Bartleson Company named after two of the leaders and they follow the trail. And when they get here to Soda Springs, you can see the greater part of them decide to follow the green line. So they continue up to Fort Hall and across southern Idaho, and that means crossing the Blue Mountains and eventually they’re going to get well into Oregon territory.

And the smaller group take the yellow track and they crossed the Bear River and they then crossed the Great Salt Lake Desert. They traverse over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they become the first immigrants on this trail who were going to follow the land route to California. So the this first group, this in 1841, they’re the ones who are going to help establish what become known as the Great Oregon and California trails. I call them immigrants. And they were known as immigrants. And this was known for the first few years as the immigrant trail. And that’s because when you get to Oregon, remember you’re still in British territory, so you’re travelling to foreign countries, you’re not travelling, you’re starting out in the United States, but you’re actually going to end up in a foreign country. For those who are going to Oregon, you’re going to end up in what is a British province, which is run by the Hudson’s Bay Company.

And they’re based, as you can see over here, the far end in Fort Vancouver just up here. And then for those who go to California, that’s now run by Mexico, the newly established Mexican state who inherited it after the Spanish left and seeded it effectively seeded it to them. So whichever way your waggon train is going, you’re going to territories that don’t yet belong to the United States. This is not a continent yet, this is still off the country, but all of that is going to change by the end of the 1840s. And it’s going to do so under the presidency of James Polk. James Polk doesn’t go down as one of the great US presidents, he only serves one term, but in that term from 1845 to 1849, the continent that we know as the USA is fully met because he negotiates, first of all the Oregon Treaty with the British in 1846, which effectively is going to divide the territory between the US and Canada, roughly along the 49th parallel up here. I say roughly because a lot of Canada’s bigger cities like Toronto or Montreal are actually below the 49th parallel, but it’s known as, it’s known in shorthands as the 49th parallel. So now Oregon is part of the United States of America. And of course in the same way that that the Louisiana of the Louisiana purchase was 13 states in effect, not just the state of Louisiana.

In the same way Oregon territory is much more than just the state of Oregon. So the US under this treaty acquire, the present state day states of Oregon and Idaho and Washington, and also big chunks of Wyoming and Montana. So that’s the first achievement podcast. And the second is he also leads the US to victory in the Mexican American war. And so by 1848, what that means is the transfer of a vast new territory, which comprises, and again, almost the whole of the southwest of what we know as the southern west of the USA today. So that’s all to come, but for now, the immigrants are going west from Missouri and they’re following the river lines, passing through a number of forts as you can see, Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger. And then if they go up to Oregon Forts Hall and Boyds. Some of these forts, they start out, they’re pretty basic. This is a painting that was done from memory of Fort Laramie just before 1814. As you can see, there’s not much there. It’s a staging post and it’s not much else.

So who are they these early pioneers? Well, I mean they’re mostly farmers. Some of them are artisans and there’s the usual number of hangers on who were there to just effectively make themselves useful and hope that by tagging on they can get a better life for themselves. They’re mainly religious people, which of course means they’re mainly Protestant. Interestingly, they’re not poor. Well, they’re certainly not destitute. The farmers are people who’ve sold their farms, they’ve sold machinery, they’ve sold household goods, and that’s given them a reasonable amount of cash with which to start the journey. And you have to be a person of some substance in order to do this journey because it requires a certain amount of investment. You have to buy a waggon and then you need plenty of food for your livestock and your mules and your horses. And then you also need funds with which to make a start when you actually get there. So as I say, they’re not destitute and they’re also travelling in small communities, which might include maybe local towns folk, but also extended family groups. So that means there’s a lot of children who are part of these wagon trains.

Now that we know who they are, why is it that they are attracted westwards? Why are they moving west? Well, there’s certainly a generally in the air, a growing sense that Europe to the east is old and outdated and the thinking is we’ve left the east behind and we’ve already come this far west. So it’s in the blood to keep moving in that direction. And certainly if we look at the intellectual backdrop of the time around the 1840s, there’s a lot of kind of lofty, high flown stuff going around about the west and western expansion. Henry David Thoreau, who’s the great 19th century author, writes in his essay on Walking by the way, really interesting essay if you get a chance to read it. He says, “I must walk toward Oregon and not toward Europe. That way the nation is moving. And I may say that mankind progresses from east to west.” There are also, of course, religious overtones.

And from those who’ve listened to William and Trudy and David’s lectures, you’ll remember they all talked about Manifest Destiny, so let’s remind ourselves. In 1845, John O'Sullivan, who’s the editor of the New York Morning News, he writes this in an editorial in an op-ed piece, “The right of our Manifest Destiny of the United States to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent, which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” Providence, this is a providential view of history. This is the idea that white Americans are divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of America, of North America. Well, so much for the big high-minded ideas. On a more mundane and individual level, you have to ask, what is it that’s actually motivating ordinary people to leave half and home to venture out into the unknown wilderness? And when it’s got to be, is it just the idea of Providence? Is it a sense that life is just moving westwards or is it something a little bit more mundane and close to home?

The reality is that there were a lot of push and pull factors for those early settlers. Life in places like Illinois and Missouri, which were often the starting points in that decade for settlement out west. Life in those places were tough around the early 1840s. For one thing, they were in the grip of economic recession, but the farming was also often very tough in those areas. Much of the land was disease ridden. And plenty of people are thinking, well, I’m quite prepared to uptick if this land isn’t yielding. If I can try somewhere else where I’m likely to have more success. There also, as there always are with these things, there are personal circumstances at play here. There are newly marrieds who want to start married life in a new place. There are people who have defaulted on their mortgages and need to leave town fast. And there are just some people who they just want a second chance at life. And so optimistically they want to leave to start again somewhere else. And there’s also, there’s also pull factors.

If we’re being kind and polite, we would call them publicity campaigns. And these are campaigns that are run by politicians and they’re aimed at persuading people to move to Oregon and California. Why? Because politicians want American settlers to start to outnumber the British and Spanish so that they can have might on their side as well as right and can start to claim these lands for their own. So there’s a kind of a boosterism to get people out west to popularise the west. And most of these campaigns, I mean they’re built around outrageously tall tales. Oregon is painted as a land where you can grow pumpkins as big as barns and maize as tall as telegraph palms. In California, I mean, in one campaign it’s some kind of Shangri-La where allegedly you can live up to 200 years old. And there’s even a tale told about a man who’s died and he’s brought to California where magically he just rises from the dead. So people believe what they want to believe or what they need to believe, and many move out west with the hope of a better life and possibly even with dreams of making their fortune. So now let’s talk about the journey. What’s the journey like? And to get in the mood, we’re going to hear a song, we’re going to hear two verses from a song.

This is Sweet Betsy from Pike, and it’s a song that was written 20 years later. So it’s a gold rush era song from the late 1850s. And it’s about a couple by the name of Betsy and Ike who migrate from Pike County, Missouri to California. And the song evokes many of the hardships of the German. And to be honest, one of the reasons I’m playing it is because this version is by the late great Johnny Cash. So really any excuse to play something by Johnny Cash is good in my book. So here are the first two verses.

Audio plays.

♪ Now don’t you remember sweet Betsy ♪ ♪ from Pike to cross the big mountains ♪ ♪ with her lover, Ike two yoke of oxen, a big yellow dog, ♪ ♪ a tall Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog. ♪ ♪ One evening quite early they camped ♪ ♪ on the Platte, down by the road on a green shady flat ♪ ♪ where Betsy got tired and laid down to repose. ♪ ♪ And Ike just gazed on his Pike County road. ♪ ♪ They soon reached the desert where Betsy gave out, ♪ ♪ And down in the sand, she lay rolling about ♪ ♪ while Ike in great tears, looked all in surprise, said, ♪ ♪ “Betsy, get up, you get sand in your eyes.” ♪ ♪ While a Shanghai ran off ♪ ♪ and their cattle all died, the last piece of bacon ♪ ♪ that morning was fried, Ike got discouraged ♪ ♪ and Betsy got mad. ♪ ♪ The dog wagged his tail and looked wonderfully sad. ♪

So as I said, those are the first two verses and you can imagine what happens next. It goes from bad to worse. The waggon train crashes, the wheels fall off, they get to the alkali desert and it’s burning and it’s bare. And they’re starved and they’re thirsty. Betsy and Ike quarrel and eventually they end up splitting. And the reason I wanted to play it is that Betsy and Ike’s experience was not in any way exceptional. This journey westward for the early pioneers, this is before the railroad, it’s full of dangers. It’s 2000 miles to Oregon by ox-drawn waggon. Now, on average, on a good, no, not on average, on a good day you might do 13 miles. Okay? So it’s going to take you, if you’re really lucky, without stops during the day, it’s going to take you five months. But inevitably there’s going to be stops. There’s going to be all all manner of problems that are going to hit you. So in reality, it’s going to take a lot longer than five months and you better get the timing right because of the weather. So the weather, terrible sandstorms, common crossing the Great Plains. And in the winter, ferocious winds, the so-called northerns across the Great Plains also thunderstorms, flooding, terrible droughts and many areas, of course, you know, along the prairie area, flat and featureless, and they’re inhabited by locust, grasshoppers, and wolves.

So you’ve got all that to contend with. You can also and are likely to be hit by disease. Cholera and typhus were very common and often affected families would simply be left behind to prevent the disease spreading. So there was no great camaraderie about this. There was a kind of a, a ruthlessness to get there. And if you can’t make it, you’re on your own. The overall mortality rate was around 10% in those years, which is, it’s quite a high figure. And the greatest cause, the greatest single cause of death on the trail, which I have to say really surprised me when I when I discovered this was drowning in the rivers. And another big one was the accidental or careless discharge of firearms. Now for the pioneers who head into California, who go along the California track, the worst plot of the trip is the stretch of barren alkali desert that’s known as the 40 mile desert. And this is situated in present day Nevada. It’s like 60 to 100 miles east of Reno. So it’s not too far from the Nevada California border. By the time you get to the desert, you’ve just completed a 300 mile stretch that offers scant water and very few places with good grassland for your animals.

So your company’s already in a pretty poor physical condition. And then, then you reach the desert. It’s 40 miles of salt flats with almost no grubs and almost no water. And there are dozens of accounts where travellers talk about the blistering heat during the day and often having to discard nearly every possession along the way. Discarding animals and animals and people dying of thirst. The timing is crucial because most waggon trends would’ve waited until spring to start their track from Missouri. I mean, it makes sense because they want to take advantage of the warmer travelling weather. But what that means is that you’re going to arrive at the desert in August, so you’re going to arrive in to a period of unbearable heat. In 1850 there was a survey that was done of the 40 mile desert and it, I mean it makes the grim reading. They found 1,000 dead mules, 4,000 dead cattle, 5,000 dead horses, and 1,000 human graves.

The other great peril of the trip is people, your fellow travellers. Because until you make that trip with a group of people over 2000 miles, several months, it’s 2000 miles of rivers, mountains, frozen wastelands barren deserts. Until you do that, you don’t really know those people you’re travelling with. You don’t know what they’re capable of and they dunno what you’re capable of. And not surprisingly, these trips were often extremely fraught with rivalries, quarrels, problems of all kinds. Probably the most extreme story, the cautionary tale that was told for many years afterwards is the story of the Donner Party. And this story more than any other, I think highlights the plight and severity of the journey that these settlers made. The saga starts in April, 1846 when a prosperous band of 87 immigrants led by George Donner, hence the name Donner Party. They leave Springfield, Illinois and they’re happily heading for new lives in California, which of course is then part, still part of Mexico until 1848. So this is the map that we saw before. So they travel from Springfield, from Illinois, okay?

And they get to Fort Bridger here. So the foot of the rockets, and it’s now it’s the end of July. So remember they started out in April, so they’ve made reasonably good time, but they’re getting towards the end of the season and this is where they make a fateful decision. Instead of following the trail, following the yellow trail here and going up and round, they decide they’re going to take a shortcut. This is a shortcut that was discovered a few years earlier. And there it is. You can see it’s called the Hastings Cutoff. And this cutoff is going to take them, as you can see, it’s going to take them southwards and they have to cross mountains and they have to go through the great Salt Lake desert. It’s tempting, it’s so tempting because it can save you and it would save you 400 miles. But they’ve been warned by an old friend from Illinois who just completed the journey from west to east. So coming back from the west to the east using the same route. And he pleaded with them not to take it. And the group in their wisdom decides to ignore the advice and they take the Hastings Cutoff.

And it’s a disaster from the very start. Once they hit the desert, they suffer terribly from thirst and they lose several ox. Discipline just breaks down, fights break out. One man is murdered for his gold and another is killed in self-defense. And another kills and is banished and a fourth, unable to walk, he’s just left behind to die. So the group is just, is just dissipating quickly. And by the time they actually reach the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in late October, so they’re getting around here. By the time they get there, they’re exhausted. They’re starved, they’re dying of thirst. And now they get attacked by Peyote warriors who kill several of their remaining oxen. So now they’re demoralised and they’re still starving and they’re fatally behind schedule because winter is about to set in. And this is when an apocalyptic blizzard descends them. For four months they encounter snow storm after snow storm. There’s around 20 feet of snow that’s piled up and they’re just stopped dead in their tracks. They managed to find basic refuge in rough cabins and crude shelters. And it’s in these filthy hovels that they begin to starve, truly starve. First eats what’s left of their cattle, then they have to resort to bark and twigs 'cause there’s nothing else. Finally, some of the party die of starvation.

Some of them turn to cannibalism eating parts of the people who’ve already died. Rescue groups from Fort Soto finally managed to rescue most of those who are still alive. But the snow is still so deep, but it takes until next April for the last survivor to be finally dug out. And when the rescuers do find the survivors, they encounter scenes that will transfix the whole nation because newspapers start to, they start to print these lured accounts of them discovering children, “Sitting upon a log with their faces stained with blood devouring the half roasted liver and heart of a father.” So of the 87 who set out only 46 survive, which means that 41 have died along the way. What’s interesting, I think about this terrible ordeal of the Donner Party, which highlights the incredible risks that are inherent in this great overland trek. What’s interesting is that even though people read about this, were obsessed with the detail of the stories. It did almost nothing to slow the pace of integration. This is an exit of a letter from Virginia Reed. She’s one of the survivors of the Donner Party and she’s writing to her cousin in Illinois. And she describes in graphic detail the horrors of the journey. But amazingly, she concludes, “Don’t let this letter dishearten you.” And she has a final piece of advice. “Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.”

So I mentioned just now the peyoti attacks on the Donner Party. And earlier on in this talk I also mentioned that the Lakotas were hostile towards Lewis and Clark on their expedition. These of course, are solitary reminders that the land, though vast was anything but empty when the settles found it. For the proponents of Manifest Destiny, the Native American population and the Native American way of life was a reality not to be accepted and not to be respected. Instead, the Indian tribes were seen as an impediment. They were an impediment to the forward march of white settlement. And then later from the 1860s onwards, they were an impediment to technological progress and to economic exploitation of the land. Most of the skirmishes and the battles and the full on massacres against the Native American population. These are all going to happen from the time of that the Civil War ends until 1890. So that’s that 30 year period, the '60, '70s and '80s culminating in wounded knee in 1890 when 150 Native Americans are going to be slaughtered by the US Army. But the tragedy is that it was always going to end this way even before the very first waggon crane set out. Even as far back as 1830. So 10 years earlier, congress passes an act, the Indian Removal Act, as it was known at the behest of the President, who was then Andrew Jackson.

And Jackson believes that all of these tribes are just standing in the way of what he sees as the settlers divinely ordained rights to clear the wilderness, build homes, and grow crops. He makes an address to Congress and this is what he says. So when you’re listening to this, just remember this is a United States President addressing the United States Congress. “They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement, which are essential to any favourable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and air long disappear.” The new law, the Indian Removal Act, required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully. But Jackson is having none of that and much of the time, he and his government ignore the letter of the law and they force Native Americans to vacate lands on which they’d lived for generations. So from 1830 to 1840, the US Army removes somewhere in the region of 60,000 Indians who were mainly Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee from the east.

And they send them to territory west of the Mississippi. In the winter of 1831, the Choctaw become the first nation to be so expelled and they make the journey west on foot. They’re forced to make it on foot. It’s winter, it’s mid-winter, so it’s freezing cold weather. And they make the journey without any food or any supplies or any help provided by the government. Thousands die along the way and it’s known as the Trail of Tears because one Chocktaw leader lamented that it was, “A trail of tears and death.” And as whites pushed ever westward, the Indian designated territories continued more and more to shrink. The overall exact numbers are still quite difficult to come by. But the estimate is that in 1800 there were around about 600,000 Native Americans who lived in the areas which comprise the modern day United States. By 1890, so that’s 90 years later, that number’s been reduced by around 60% to somewhere in the region of 250,000. So this painting, this is American progress, this is an iconic painting. This is probably the iconic painting of the settlement of the American West and of Manifest Destiny. And as you can see, it’s an allegorical representation.

It’s painted in 1872 by John Gast and the figure in the centre, she’s Columbia and she’s this kind of providential figure who’s shining on the USA and she’s leading the settlers. And you can see that they’re following her on foot and on horseback by waggon, by stagecoach and on relatively newly laid railroad tracks. And where’s she moving from? Well, she’s moving from the light skies. She’s moving from the light sky east of New York to the benighted west and she’s on a mission. And the mission is to civilise the west. So in her right hand she’s carrying a schoolbook, and in her left hand she’s holding a telegraph wire. And it’s a picture overall of a bright, progressive future, but not for everyone because you can see on the left the buffalo who know what’s coming, they’re already scattering. And there’s also a small group of Native Americans who are looking behind them, who were also running fast 'cause they can also see what’s about to happen. So this then, this is the American of the frontier. I’m going to stop sharing.

It’s the American that the author Frederick Jackson Turner writes about. Turner is an author that, again, if you’ve watched Williams lectures, Williams talked about Turner. Turner writes in 1893 in a landmark essay, very famous essay called, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. And Turner says that it’s not just the success of the United States, it’s the very spirit, the core, the identity of the United States that’s inextricably bound up with a country’s westward expansion. He sees that the frontier is the crucible out which the character of America is forged. It’s this pushing across the continent, which he thinks has produced a kind of balance between what he calls savagery and civilization, wilderness and garden, lawlessness and the law. And it manifests itself as inventiveness, as practicality, as a coarseness sometimes and above all, as a kind of a restless nervous energy, a rugged individualism. And it’s all these things that are emerging out of the crucible of frontier life. Now, it’s very easy to pick holes in Turner’s thesis. And believe me, many, many modern historians do, have done and continue to do so. There’s an absence of women in Turner’s version of the frontier.

There’s an absence of non-whites in this story. And also, you know, if we’re looking at the experiences that shaped most Americans in the mid to late 19th century, it’s life in the city, far more than experiences on the normal frontier. And yet even despite all those things, Turner’s thesis was incredibly influential and was taught in schools and colleges across the country for much of the 20th century. This frontier, it may be a myth, I mean, let’s call it an idea, but it’s an idea that powered a young nation to become the world’s largest economy and the acknowledged leader of the democratic world in a very short space of time. It’s obvious that the America of today is in many ways a different place to America 100 years ago, 50 years ago, I mean even 25 years ago. But America is still a place of movement, of vitality and of restlessness. And I’m speaking from the UK and it’s interesting in the UK just terms of the language that we use. If you’re an aspiring politician and you want to make it what you do, you stand for parliament. Standing, standing is important here. Standing means you have roots. Standing means you stand for something.

But in America, you don’t stand for Congress, you run for Congress on the move, pushing forward, testing the limit. There’s something about mobility, about the idea of moving, it’s very American. I recall, you know, the dawn of the millennium, I mean I’m sure everyone will remember this, you know, you couldn’t move for newspapers and TV news telling us all that America’s Day is soon going to be over because it, the 21st century is going to be the Asian century, it’s going to be the century of China or perhaps the century of India. And perhaps that’s so, but my feeling, and I have to say my hope is that that incredible restless nervous energy is still there and my belief is that America ain’t yet done. Thank you. Right. Okay. So let’s have a look at questions and comments, shall we?

Q&A and Comments:

Dennis says, the influence of Horace Greeley evidently extended well beyond the United States. The full name of the German banker economist, Dr. Schacht Hjalmar’s economics minister, born five years after Greeley’s death was Horace Greeley, wow. And that’s extraordinary. I didn’t know that. That’s, gosh, that’s interesting, isn’t it?

Q: Steven asks, was Oregon country then part of the USA?

A: It became part of the USA only after 1846 after the treaty was concluded with the British. But before that, no it wasn’t.

Q: Shelly asks, this is an interesting question. Was it a mistake on Napoleon’s part to sell the Louisiana territory? What was his reasoning after all that French fought the British 50 years earlier for Canada?

A: Napoleon needed the money, it’s the old story. He had war in Europe to fund and he also had some major debts. So he needed some quick money. But I think the USA got the deal of the century. I think the total cost was something like $50 million. So it’s $50 million well spent. I mean in some parts of the US you’d be hard pressed to buy a home for that.

Hillel says, a year or two after the 67, six day war, Shimon Peres was guest speaker at an association for American and Canadian immigrants in Israel. And he said, “We should all admire American President, James K. Polk. All the liberal American Israelis could hardly hold back their laughter. Not realising why he was admiring him, but having expanded America into newly acquired territory. Only later would he become a supporter of peace and territorial compromise with the Palestinians. Okay, well that’s interesting.

Okay, and let’s see, one comment, it was the fear of the American Manifest Destiny that helped lead to the confederation of Canada. That’s absolutely right.

Sally says, oh my goodness, I learned Sweet Betsy from Pike when I was a camper. But there was a Tora Lora chorus as well. Yes, I think there’s many, many versions of that song. I just picked that one 'cause I happen to like it.

And let’s see, just time for one more. The novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder give a vivid picture of what Pioneer life was really like despite being considered children’s literature. So thanks Hillary. So that was Laura Ingalls Wilder. Thank you very much for that.

Well that’s great. Thank you everyone. And I wish you well over the afternoon or evening. And if you’ve got stomach for any more of this, as I say, I’m back on Thursday to talk about the Mormon Trail. And if you’re an ignoramus like me and you knew very little about the history of the Mormons, it’s really, really interesting. So I hope to see some of you then. Okay, bye-Bye.