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                         Early Western Travels

                               1748-1846

                             Volume XXVIII




                         Early Western Travels

                               1748-1846

          A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best
        and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive
                   of the Aborigines and Social and
                   Economic Conditions in the Middle
                    and Far West, during the Period
                     of Early American Settlement


           Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by


                      Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.

   Editor of "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," "Original
       Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," "Hennepin's
                         New Discovery," etc.

                             Volume XXVIII

           Part I of Farnham's Travels in the Great Western
                Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839

                            [Illustration]

                            Cleveland, Ohio

                      The Arthur H. Clark Company

                                 1906

                          COPYRIGHT 1906, BY

                      THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                          The Lakeside Press

                    R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY

                                CHICAGO




CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXVIII


  PREFACE TO VOLUMES XXVIII AND XXIX. _The Editor_                     9

  TRAVELS IN THE GREAT WESTERN PRAIRIES, THE ANAHUAC
      AND ROCKY MOUNTAINS, AND IN THE OREGON COUNTRY.
      [Part I, being Volume I and chapters i-iv of Volume II of
      the London edition, 1843.] _Thomas Jefferson Farnham._

          Preface by the First Editor                                 25

          Author's Preface                                            27

          Author's Introduction                                       29

          Author's Table of Contents                                  41

          Text of Part I                                              45




ILLUSTRATION TO VOLUME XXVIII


  FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE TO FARNHAM'S TRAVELS, VOL. I                23




PREFACE TO VOLUMES XXVIII-XXIX


With these two volumes our series returns to Oregon, and to the
question already shadowed forth upon the horizon, whether this vast
territory drained by the Columbia River should belong to the United
States or to Great Britain. Since the treaty of joint occupancy (1818)
the English fur-traders had been in almost exclusive control. From the
upper waters of the great rivers that drain the Arctic plains they had
pushed their way across the Rockies down into the fertile southern
valleys, and had explored, mapped, and threaded the entire region
lying between Spanish territory on the south and Russian on the north.
Between the great mountain barrier on the east, and the Pacific on the
west, they held the country as a vast preserve in which fur-bearing
animals might be reared and hunted. For many years the American right
to joint occupancy lay in abeyance. After his thrilling journey of
exploration and adventure, Jedediah S. Smith was cordially received
at Fort Vancouver (1828), his injuries by predatory Indians avenged,
and his furs purchased by the company's factor; in return for this
courtesy, however, he considered himself in honor bound to restrict the
further trapping enterprises of his firm to the eastern side of the
Rocky Mountains. When Captain Bonneville, with his band of trappers,
reached the forts on the upper Columbia (1833) he was courteously but
firmly refused the privilege of trading at posts of the Hudson's Bay
Company. Thus, fifteen years after joint occupancy had been arranged,
there was scarcely an American in Oregon.

In our volume xxi we traced the rise and fall of the trading
adventures to this far Western territory of Captain Nathaniel Wyeth
of Massachusetts. His two expeditions left on the Willamette River a
small residuum of New Englanders, and before his departure he had seen
the coming of the first American missionaries, pioneers then as now in
advancing American interests. The existence of Oregon had now come to
be known to a considerable body of our people, its fertility and beauty
had been enlarged upon by several writers, its advantages pictured, and
its possession desired.

In returning to the United States, one of the missionaries, Jason Lee,
undertook a tour through the border states of the West, lecturing and
raising funds for his work. In the autumn of 1838 he stopped at the
Illinois town of Peoria, where his glowing descriptions of the land
whence he came produced an impression sufficiently lasting to result
in the organization of an emigration society, which prepared to set
forth for this land of promise early the following spring. Among the
band was a young Vermont lawyer, Thomas Jefferson Farnham, who a few
years earlier had removed to Illinois, and who now sought on the
Western prairies recuperation of his wasting health through outdoor
exploits and change of scene. He also avowed a patriotic purpose to
take possession of this fair territory of