During his correspondence with Roberdeau over the Spanish boundary question, Long emphasized that he was only offering a technical opinion as to where the boundary might lie. As a matter of policy he thought the United States should aim to have as much of the Rocky Mountains as possible. The mountainous terrain was valuable “on account of the fur it is calculated to yield,” he wrote. The fur trappers who operated out of St. Louis normally passed over the arid plains and went straight to the mountain streams, where they found beaver aplenty. The Great Plains had marginal value; the Rocky Mountains were the grand prize. As in earlier pronouncements, Long expressed strongly nationalist and expansionist views.16
Even as the Long family struggled through illnesses in 1821 and 1822, it prospered financially. As a brevet major, Long’s annual income climbed to $1,625. And being stationed in Philadelphia, he was able to develop other sources of income to augment his officer’s pay, not an uncommon practice in that era. He and Martha moved into a country residence on the outskirts of Philadelphia, where he was able to enjoy the role of gentleman farmer, growing small crops of buckwheat and potatoes for market, riding to and from town on his wagon, and doing commerce with a sea captain who regularly docked his schooner on the Delaware River a few blocks from Long’s office on Filbert Street. Long proudly showed off his miniature country estate to one of the two top generals in the army as the general came through Philadelphia in September 1822.17
Long’s household at that time included not just the major and his wife and their toddler and infant sons but also an unnamed cook and another servant whom Long referred to as “the black boy.” While nothing is known about the cook, the servant was soon to accompany the explorer on his last expedition, so he must have been a grown boy or young man when he joined the Long household in 1821 or 1822. This person was an indentured servant, not a slave, though the distinction was a fine one under Pennsylvania law.18
In March 1823, Long was asked by General Alexander Macomb, chief of engineers, if he was “agreeable” to leading another exploring expedition, one that would focus on the territory lying to the west of Lake Superior. Long accepted the assignment, but this time he felt no elation. Instead, he admitted to feelings of ambivalence, informing General Macomb that he was “extremely anxious” to provide for the “reasonable provision and protection” of his rising family. Nonetheless, he would answer the call of duty.19
Long made swift and even somewhat improvised preparations. On this expedition there would be no steamboat; the party would travel mostly by horseback or canoe and would procure supplies at the western forts as it proceeded. Long’s minimal technical equipment consisted of a patent lever watch, a surveyor compass, a plotting instrument, and a small box sextant. As in his previous exploration, he planned to find scientists and a painter to accompany the expedition, but this time he would have just one assistant officer. Long would hire guides and interpreters along the way, and the small party would pick up a soldier escort at Fort Crawford. He estimated the costs for this expedition at $2,000, one-tenth the cost of his previous expedition. He based this figure on the expectation that the journey would be completed in just eight months. By necessity, they would be traveling light.20
Long invited three members of the 1820 expedition, Thomas Say, Samuel Seymour, and Edwin James, to join him again. All three enthusiastically agreed. However, since James was in Albany, New York, that spring, he and Long had to make arrangements by long-distance correspondence and time ran out before they were able to fix on a point where James would join the expedition en route. Recognizing that James’s participation was problematic, Long recruited another scientist, William H. Keating, to serve as James’s backup. When the half-formed plan for James to join the party did indeed fail, Keating became the expedition’s literary journalist in his place. Keating was just twenty-three years old in the spring of 1823 but he possessed an exceptional education, having studied geology and mining in France, Savoy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, and England. Since returning to the United States in 1820, he had written a book on American mines and mining and had joined the science faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.21
Long named Lieutenant Andrew Talcott, a veteran traveler on the upper Mississippi, to be his second in command. But at the last minute the War Department gave Talcott different orders and substituted James Colhoun, a midshipman in the navy and cousin of the secretary of war. Colhoun (he spelled his name with an “o”) would capably serve as astronomer and assistant topographer.22
Long’s final instructions from the secretary of war were to journey to the Red River of the North; make a general topographical description of the route; ascertain latitudes and longitudes of all major points of interest; compile a scientific record of the animals, plants, soils, and minerals; and inquire into the customs of the Indian tribes inhabiting the country. Starting in Pennsylvania, the route to the northwest would largely be overland through northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, then up the Mississippi and St. Peters (Minnesota) rivers to the Height of Land at the head of the northward flowing Red River. It would then follow the Red River (the modern state line between Minnesota and North Dakota) to the point where it struck the forty-ninth parallel. From there, the expedition would turn eastward, follow the international boundary to Lake Superior, and return by way of the Great Lakes to Pennsylvania.23
Secretary Calhoun’s instructions to Long reflected a keen desire on the part of nationalists to advance US interests in the fur trade in the northern borderlands. Two important developments in 1821 and 1822, one in British America and the other in the United States, altered the terms of the Anglo-American rivalry in the fur trade. Ultimately, the developments on either side of the international boundary strengthened the hand of each government in dealing with Indian tribes. They marked a turning point in white-Indian relations that would come to affect Long’s political outlook and reshape the lives of both John McLoughlin and John Tanner.
American nationalists like Calhoun and Long followed events north of the border with interest. When the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company merged into one, the reorganized Hudson’s Bay Company emerged as one of the greatest companies in North America. It had a board of directors sitting in London and far-flung field operations extending from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean and from the American borderlands to the Arctic. The merger ended a destructive competition and placed British interests in the North American fur trade on a much stronger footing. The British government had, in fact, insisted on the merger as a defense against US expansionism.24
Meanwhile, in the United States, Congress finally abolished the government-run trading houses, or factory system, by an act of May 6, 1822. Though the factory system had always struggled, it had been at the heart of US Indian policy since the mid-1790s. The end of the unpopular system paved the way for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company to expand operations throughout the Old Northwest, including today’s Wisconsin and Minnesota, a region where the two large British fur companies, US factories, and small American trading outfits formerly competed. With a controlled monopoly established in Canada and a competitive marketplace unfettered in the United States, the fur trade in each country entered a new phase. Both the United States and Britain put their internal affairs in order so that they could face off against each other along the forty-ninth parallel in the midcontinent and in the Far West.
Calhoun and other US officials were especially interested to know where the forty-ninth parallel lay in relation to the British settlements in the Red River valley. They wanted a better understanding of the potential for agriculture there, since the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company, in their fierce competition over the area, had produced conflicting reports on the matter.25
Along with his instructions from Calhoun, Long carried a letter signed by Britain’s envoy to the United States addressed to officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the event that Long entered British territory and visited any Hudson’s B
ay Company post, the letter gave assurances that the British government looked with favor on the expedition, and it called on the company’s officers to render whatever assistance Long might request.26
On April 30, 1823, Long set out on his last scientific exploration, accompanied by Say, Seymour, and Keating, and his black servant. The men rode out of the city of Philadelphia in two light carriages, aiming to go as far as Wheeling, Virginia, at the western terminus of the National Road, before continuing the journey on horseback.27
28
The Northern Expedition
Stephen Long’s observations of the fur trade in 1823 began at Fort Wayne, Indiana. There, the party halted for three days to inquire into the manners and customs of the local Indian tribes. A village had grown up in the shelter of the square palisade fort, which had long since ceased to hold any troops but now served as the residence of a US Indian agent. The village population consisted mostly of Indians and French Canadians engaged in the fur trade. The explorers were surprised to pass so suddenly from the American settlements in Ohio to this predominantly French-speaking community in neighboring Indiana. Most of the French Canadians appeared to be part Indian, and what with the numerous Indian languages they spoke, the place was a veritable Babel. It was as if the explorers had entered a foreign country even though they were still within the United States.
The Fort Wayne community impressed them much the way Prairie du Chien had affected Long six years earlier. Just as Long had found the mixed-race people of Prairie du Chien in a state of “degeneracy,” Keating, the expedition’s journalist, described the inhabitants of Fort Wayne as being in a “degraded condition.”
Keating noted with particular disgust the sight of a French Canadian dressed in breechcloth and blanket stooping to weigh the hides that he and his Indian partner had brought to the trader. The French Canadian was an engagé, an employee of the fur-trade outfit, whose role was to accompany Indians on their summer hunts and provide them with equipment, while making sure they did not betray the outfitter by taking their peltries to another trading house somewhere else. What Keating found offensive about this scene was that the “little Canadian” kept making vain attempts to adjust his breechcloth so that it would properly cover his private anatomy as he maneuvered his bundle of hides onto the trading-house scales. The Indian hunter who accompanied this man stood “in an erect and commanding posture” off to one side, while a number of Indian women and children who were looking on snickered over the French Canadian’s difficulty with his native garb. For Keating, Long, Say, and Seymour, the sight of numerous French Canadians walking around Fort Wayne, Indiana, in Indian dress just seemed wrong. There was no place for that kind of cultural crossover in American society, not even on the frontier. It was, Keating wrote, as ridiculous and disgusting as “the Indian who assumes the tight body coat of the white men.”1
The explorers’ response to seeing white men in breechcloths reflected a hardening of American attitudes toward Indian culture that began in the 1820s. Essentially the explorers were troubled because they saw the white men’s use of Indian clothing as a sign of cultural degeneracy. They were unable to perceive this example of cultural exchange in neutral terms but judged it by the moral standards of savagery and civilization. Since “civilized” ways were superior to “savage” ways, they condemned what they saw. Logically, the mirror image of the Indian in ill-fitting white man’s clothes that Keating conjured up by way of comparison should have been a positive rather than a negative image; the fact that he found both images “ridiculous” and “disgusting” was telling. He felt shame for the white man in a breechcloth and mistrust toward the Indian in a waistcoat. Writ large, this was the emotional foundation for a policy of apartheid. As more Americans came to believe that the two races should be kept apart, it led in a few short years to broad public support for “Indian removal,” or government-directed expulsion of all Indian peoples from areas settled by whites to an “Indian territory” lying west of the Mississippi River.
Not that Long or the other explorers were themselves advocates of Indian removal at this time. Long still supported the program of Indian assimilation. Like many of his countrymen, however, he put less and less stock in the traders and believed that Christian missionaries must take the lead in civilizing the Indian. A few days after leaving Fort Wayne, the expedition visited a mission recently founded by the Baptist Missionary Society. The establishment consisted of a residence for the mission family, a one-room school house, and a blacksmith shop. The log buildings were set in about fifty acres of cleared land, with forty acres or so being fenced and planted with corn. The mission school served some forty to sixty Indian children, of whom fifteen were females. The plan of the mission was to instruct the children in the arts of civilization rather than attempt to bring Christianity to the Indian families at the outset. The explorers thought this was a sensible plan. To attempt to Christianize the Indians before they had been civilized would be to expect “a maturity of reasoning” far beyond what they presently had. “In his present state of wildness and ignorance,” Keating wrote, “it is impossible for the Indian to appreciate the vast difference which exists between his heathen superstitions and the pure morality of the gospel.” In due time, after the Indian acquired a taste for civilized life, he would recognize the superiority of the Christian faith to his own religion.2
Long and his companions saw the trader as an obstacle to the Indian acquiring civilized values. In contrast to the missionary’s mostly charitable nature, the trader was typically avaricious. The trader only reinforced the Indians’ tendencies toward cunning and artifice. The trading house itself was “one of the worst schools for morals,” a sink of iniquity where the Indians got drunk and were swindled, abused, and injured. During the three days that the expedition spent at Fort Wayne, two Indians received grave tomahawk wounds to the head. The first assault was by a French Canadian engagé during a so-called drunken frolic on the night of the expedition’s arrival; the second incident occurred the next morning, when an intoxicated Indian man struck his wife. In the view of the explorers, these Indians were victims of the trader who sold them liquor.
Traders were the main suppliers of liquor, but US Indian agents imported quantities as well, using it to obtain the Indians’ friendship or to placate them when they begged for it. Long and his companions felt the US government could do much more to suppress the trafficking of liquor to Indians. “All Indians concur in considering intoxication as improper, and as the source of every evil,” Keating wrote. On this expedition, Long refused to provide Indians with any liquor whatsoever, even if it was customary to offer small quantities as a gift. The expedition carried a supply of tobacco for that purpose instead.3
If Long held a jaundiced view of the trader as a corrupting influence on the Indians, he was still keen to learn how the American traders as a group were faring economically. He found the fur trade in decline from Fort Wayne to Prairie du Chien. Deer skins now made up the bulk of the product, as the valuable beaver was largely depleted. More important, the Indian populations were ravaged. Wherever the number of Indians fell, the traders faced a shortage of labor, for they relied almost entirely on Indian hunters to bring in the animal pelts. When Long reached the prairie lands in what is now western Minnesota, he encountered a different situation. There, beaver was still abundant and the supply of big game was greatly enhanced by the presence of buffalo. The region belonged to the Sioux nation, a powerful and numerous people who were still peaceably disposed to the Americans. Following the rapid withdrawal of the North West Company from the area two years earlier, an American outfit called the Columbia Fur Company had formed to take its place.4
Entering this new country, Long’s expedition was accompanied by a military escort of one officer and a dozen enlisted men, together with two interpreters, one who spoke Sioux and the other Ojibwa. The party was also joined by an enigmatic Italian adventurer, Giacomo Beltrami, who was on a personal quest to find the source of the Mis
sissippi River. All of these men joined the expedition at Fort Snelling, the last military installation on the upper Mississippi River, set on the high bluff overlooking the junction of the Mississippi and St. Peter’s rivers. The fort occupied a site Long had surveyed in 1817. In the middle of July, the expedition started up the St. Peter’s River. They traveled up this river valley in two detachments, one in canoes and the other on horseback and foot, the better to observe the surrounding country as well as scout for Indians. But they saw no Indians; the Sisseton Sioux, considered potentially troublesome and with whom Long hoped to parley, were absent from their village on a buffalo hunt. Two weeks after leaving Fort Snelling the expedition arrived at Lake Traverse, situated just north of the low continental divide between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay watersheds. It was here the Columbia Fur Company had its principal establishment.5
One of Long’s two interpreters, Joseph Renville, was a mixed-blood Sioux, a former Nor’ Wester, and a partner in the newly formed Columbia Fur Company. Renville invited Long and his companions to inspect the retired North West Company post returns. Examining the large bound ledgers of the former company, Long could see that the region lying south of the forty-ninth parallel had been highly productive in recent years. The returns included some 4,000 buffalo hides, which accounted for a fourth of the total dollar value of all furs and hides shipped out of the area. In addition, the meat of the buffalo could be made into pemmican and sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company to supply that company’s operations in the Far Northwest. In coming years, Renville explained, the new company hoped to expand its operations east to the headwaters of the Mississippi and west to the Mandan villages despite its rather small capital stock. Long thought the Columbia Fur Company showed good prospects for success, providing it could stay on amicable terms with the much larger American Fur Company.6
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