Dear B.E.,
It was good to get your letter, dated December of 1818. It’s been busier here on the plains than a one-legged jackrabbit in a rattlesnake-hopping contest. There have been more of you easterners traipsing across the plains, going west, than I can count.
Ever since ole Tom Jefferson hornswaggled all this land out of that Frenchman, Napoleon, back in 1803, fellows have been coming through nearly ever year. Soon its going to be so crowded I might up and move to those Shining Mountains that you easterners are calling the Rockies.
Just after that land swapping you call the Louisiana Purchase two gentlemen came through, Captains Lewis and Clark. They had fourteen soldiers and nine frontiersmen with them, and a couple of French boatmen. Also there was this big black gentleman by the name of York, a servant, slave actually, of Captain Clark.
They all sure had some traveling to do. Said they were going up the Missouri River to its source. Then they planned to cross the Continental Divide and go down the Columbia River to its mouth out in Oregon Country.
They built a fort here in the Dakotas. Fort Mandan, they called it. They spent the winter there and picked up a guide and interpreter, a Frenchman by the name of Toussaint Charbonneau. He took one of his wives along when they left. She’s a nice Shoshone gal by the name of Sacagawea. She birthed a baby boy at the fort before they left.
It hadn’t been a year after Lewis and Clark came back through, going east, when another fellow went through, going west. Zebulon Pike was his name. And would you believe he discovered this tall mountain peak and named it after himself. Why, I’ve known that mountain was there all along.
Things slowed down here on the plains till 1811 then here came another bunch heading west by way of the Missouri River. It was this fellow called John Astor. He and his group were headed for Oregon Country, too. There must be something mighty grand about Oregon to keep all these folks traipsing all over the prairie, trying to get to Oregon. Mr. Astor said he was going there to build a city and call it Astoria, and to trap beaver.
There’s a place up in the Dakotas called the Red River Valley. Well, when President Jefferson bought all this land from the French this valley wasn’t part of the deal. But the British up and tossed it in. Right nice of them, don’t you think? I can’t help but wonder, though, what the regular folks living out here, the Indians, think about all this trading and swapping of the land they’ve lived on for centuries. I expect we’re going to hear from them one day concerning the situation.
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