CHAPTER XXIII A FORMATIVE PERIOD Influences of the westward movement. A time of expansion. Development of the Mississippi Valley. Influences upon upper Louisiana. Types of the middle period. The soldier's work in the West. Labors of missionaries. Whitman's journey and its real purpose. In the era of exploration, which may be roughly defined as the first half of the last century, the interior commerce of upper Louisiana was represented for the most part by the wares of trappers and by the traders of the Santa Fé trail. But the history of the West was unfolding rapidly. In the lower country there were the increasing settlement and business interests of the state of Louisiana,' admitted in 1812, 1 The picturesque history of Louisiana may be gathered from a study of B. F. French's "Historical Collections of Louisiana" and Gayarre's "History of Louisiana." More of the Southern territories to the east of the Mississippi, and of Arkansas, which became a territory in 1819. East of the great river the pressure of settlement was increased by the European immigration which followed the close of the Napoleonic wars. There were foreign as well as domestic reasons for the fact that the population of Ohio increased from 230,760 to 581,295 between 1810 and 1820, and that of Indiana from 24,520 to 197,198. By 1820 eight states had been formed in the Mississippi valley and the center of population had moved from a point east of Baltimore in 1789 over a hundred and twenty miles westward. The commerce of the Ohio and the lower Mississippi was quickened not only by the productiveness of new settlers but also and immeasurably by the introduction and rapid expansion of steamboat transportation. The influence of the steamboat is emphasized in the history of St. Louis. In 1800, nearly forty years after its foundation, the popular and more accessible are the writings of G. W. Cable, Miss Grace King, and the references in McMaster. = population was only 925. Hardly more than a thousand residents were to be credited to St. Louis in the year of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1810 it was a village of only 1400 souls. But in 1817 the first steamboat reached St. Louis and marked the opening of a traffic imperial in its range. From the upper navigable waters of the Mississippi and Missouri, from the Ohio and the Illinois, and from New Orleans, the steamboat brought the trade of the vast region bounded by the Alleghenies and Rocky Mountains, and in addition the commerce of the eastern seaboard and traffic with foreign countries found their way up the Mississippi and centered in St. Louis. With such a history it is inevitable that the possibility of sending the modern traffic of the West by water to the sea, and reopening the once vigorous life of this great water way, should be a subject of perennial interest. A century after the Louisiana Purchase finds the West concerned with the possibilities of various canal routes, the improvement of river navigation, and the possibilities of deep-sea traffic |