EDITOR'S PREFACE

Notwithstanding that the three members of the Society's committee on publications, including myself, unhesitatingly agreed upon printing this book as it appears, I feel some trepidation about it. While its novelty or uniqueness, in substance and form, chiefly constitutes its strength, yet, obviously, it raises a suspicious question of venturesomeness, on the whole, and whether the matter, however valuable, might not have been presented in better form.

Between the crude people and material resources of the northwestern plains (and especially of the part called the Nebraska Country), and St. Louis, there was a notable mutuality, a sort of "Useless each without the other" relationship. That more or less romantic fact is illumined along the serial thread of the story; and while the French founders of St. Louis and their compatriots lacked the genius for the larger enterprise of building a permanent empire of the greater Northwest, beyond the Ohio, which they at first occupied or possessed, but let slip to their British rivals, yet for the rudimentary achievement their temperament was the better fitted.

The book consists largely of accounts of the adventures of the fur trader founders of St. Louis on the great plains of the Missouri valley and in the adjacent mountain region, as related consecutively and contemporaneously in the Missouri Republican, from the year 1808 to 1861. Similar material, important in quality and amount, was procured from the Missouri Intelligencer

and other pioneer newspapers on file in the library of the State Historical Society of Missouri, from the Cincinnati Gazette, and from the National Intelligencer.

That the continuous publication of the Missouri Republican was begun as early as July 12, 1808, is very remarkable, but it is also remarkable that, with the exception of an occasional number, continuous files of the paper were kept from the first, and they are still remarkably well preserved. I closely scanned every issue, noting news of the Nebraska Country and copying in full the most important articles about it. That this was no easy task may be inferred from the fact that this great newspaper was issued daily from March 14, 1837. Until it was first named Missouri Republican on March 20, 1822, it was called, successively, Missouri Gazette, Louisiana Gazette, Missouri Gazette and Illinois Advertiser, and Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser.

Perhaps the most valuable information in the book is that of the traffic on the great highways to Oregon and California, and especially the part of it which was systematically obtained and recorded, by official authority, at Fort Laramie and Fort Kearny.

My explanatory and supplemental notes will, I hope, be useful to casual readers, though in their painstaking preparation I had in mind especially the use and need, constantly increasing, of teachers and other students for such authenticated material.

In the long and laborious examination of the files of the Republican, Mr. Collins Thompson, secretary of the newspaper,-named the St. Louis Republic in 1888generously provided a desk for me in the business department where the volumes were brought from the vault in the basement; and after the files were placed in the custody of the Missouri Historical Society, housed in the Jefferson Memorial Building, I received a like generous aid in completing my task. I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Beauregard, archivist of the Society, and to Miss Drumm,

librarian, for their uniform courtesy to me during my long tenancy of an apartment in their building, which is admirably adapted to the orderly housing of its invaluable historical records and relics. I am grateful, also, for the cooperative courtesy of the late Judge Walter B. Douglas, immemorial vigilant fostering friend of the Society. I thankfully acknowledge the accommodating service of Mr. Gifford, librarian, and Mr. Mills, assistant librarian, of the Mercantile Library of St. Louis, of the officers of the St. Louis Public Library, and of Mr. Shoemaker, superintendent of the State Historical Society of Missouri, at Columbia, for the use of the very valuable early newspapers which are preserved in the Society's library. I am under similar obligations to the librarians respectively of the Public Library and the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati and the librarian of the University of Cincinnati.

Circumstances required me to avail myself of the diligent and intelligent aid of my daughter, Mrs. Edson Watkins Burgitt, of Britt, Ia., in the tedious task of reading the proofs of the book. This service by a French scholar was apt and opportune.

In the copious quotations from the original sources adverted to, I, of course, faithfully followed copy, and to make the historical portrayals the more realistic, the style of the typography, such as capitalization of proper names, of date lines, of the address of letters, etc., was copied as closely as practicable-a difficult task, by the way.

Mr. Sheldon, secretary of the Society, shared largely in selecting and procuring the illustrations of the volume. Many of them were obtained from the rich collection of the Missouri Historical Society and through its favor. ALBERT WATKINS.

OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

Preceded by the editor's preface and a list of the officers and
directors of the Society and followed by a general index, is a
history, in serial short stories, of the valleys or plains of the
Missouri and Arkansas rivers (comprehensively The Nebraska
Country) and of the contiguous mountain region, covering the
first six decades of the nineteenth century and compiled mainly
from contemporaneous newspapers named in the preface.

First are the stories of the traffic of the fur traders of St.
Louis-mainly French-with the Indians, along the Missouri, the
Platte and the Arkansas rivers, by means of rowboats, saddle
horses and pack mules. The progressive advance, from 1819, of
steamboats up the Missouri; the movement at the same time for
military protection of the Upper Missouri traders from Indians.
and British trespassers; the later construction of military posts
along the Oregon Trail, to protect fur traders of the middle
mountain region and the emigrants to California and Oregon,
and afterward along the cut-off road to Montana; the cholera
scourge at St. Louis and on the California and Oregon road, and
of the smallpox among the Upper Missouri Indians; management
of the public lands, mismanagement of the Indians and their
segregation; political organization for the region thus opened
for white settlers and the fierce partisanship incident thereto,
especially touching the slavery question; character of the pioneer
currency; origin of the Santa Fe Trail, and its traffic; wars be-
tween gentile settlers and undesired Mormons and the retirement
of the saints to Utah and the armed rebellion there; the continual
hostilities between whites and Indians and among the Indian
tribes; the annexation of Texas, and the part of it included in
Nebraska; emigration to the Pacific coast and intervening terri-
tory; early mails; building of the earliest railroads west of the
Mississippi, are also a part of this varied, vivid and often flash
lit history.

The events related in the newspapers as they occur, in chrono-
logical sequence, are so numerous that it was not practicable to
classify them in chapters or other groups; besides, this continuity
in time has obvious positive advantages. Readers are therefore
left for guidance to the titles of the odd numbered pages and the
page references to the specific topics in the comprehensive index.