In film of John Ford, the man who killed Liberty Valance (1960), one of the actors affirms: “In the West, when the legend exceeds reality, then one prints the legend”.
And, in fact, the legend of the West east entered the history of the West: it has nourished for one century the dreams of million Americans and it carried, through the literature, the cinema, publicity, of the stereotypes born in the West: the cowboy, the Indian or the valorous pioneer. However, if the legend informs us about the installation of a system of representation, it is put up badly with reality, so much so that it erases it, as testifies this declaration to it to the American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in 1972: “I always acted only like a cowboy leading his herd, a cowboy entering only a city, on his horse, without very a gun, because it does not come to draw. It acts, being at the good place at the good moment…”.
That the confidential agent of president Nixon, that a brilliant student of Harvard can be compared without ridiculous to a hero of western of B movie in known as length on the popularity of imaginary of the West. Today, for the Americans, the West continues to incarnate the traditional values of their country and its history remains an inexhaustible subject of model, reflection and pride.
For the Americans, the West starts as of the crossing of the Mississippi; beyond opens a very specific natural environment where the aridity dominates. Between the river and the Rocky Mountains extends a space, strange for the Westerners, of immense plains without trees, a grass ocean baptized by the French the Meadow. “The ground of the Eagles” - to take again the expression of the first occupiers, Indians - remains a world of excess: frightening drynesses, pitiless tornadoes devastators, deserts, powerful mountainous barriers with their cathedrals of rocks, and majestic sites like the Large Canyon of Colorado. Beyond the Rock ones radiant California and Oregon with its cedars appear which touch the sky.
The first Europeans: Spanishs and French The first Europeans to discover the West were not Anglo-Saxons as let it think many westerns, but of the Spanishs and the French. Since 1540, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado went with a handful of men, follow-ups of cattle, towards the unknown grounds of North where, according to the accounts confused of adventurers, were supposed to draw up the seven gold cities of Cibola. Coronado did not find gold but landscapes without end, a ground similar to Mancha and populations with the reserved reception.
Disappointed, the Spanishs installed some small stations to protect the Franciscan ones in search of conversion; in 1610, they founded Santa Fe in a baptized province Nouveau Mexico. Incompetents to mobilize a strong immigration to colonize these vast spaces, the Spanishs were satisfied to explore them; the toponymy of these regions, from Texas to San Francisco, has the memory of their wanderings. The first colonizers left a double heritage to the West: the interbreeding and of new pets. The latter upset the lifestyle of the Indians; the horse offered mobility to them, the sheep and the goats brought the meat; as for the bovines, they gave place to an extensive breeding under the surveillance of vaqueros, ancestors of the cow-boys. The interbreeding, as for him, remained a permanent data of the human relations in the West, as well with the Spanishs as with the French; but the arrival of the Americans limited the mixed marriages considerably.
The French penetrated in the West by the valley of the Mississippi; at the beginning of the XVIII E century, they went up Missouri and entered in the middle of the plains of North. At that time, the great shifts in population Indian were about to be completed. Indeed, the Large Plains had been invaded during the XVII E and XVIII E centuries by tribes of the East or North. The reasons of these migrations remain delicate to perceive; undoubtedly, the European invasion on the Atlantic littoral and its procession of war were combined with the extension of the epidemics which decimated the tribes to push back towards the Western number of tribes. The diffusion of the horse by Comanches, during the XVIII E century, was probably a determining factor of these migrations, insofar as the natural environment of the Plains, rich in bisons, remained much more favorable to the use of the horse than the wooded mediums of the East. As that had the case with that of the Spanishs, the French penetration remained marginal; it was limited to trappers who were integrated into the life of the wandering bands.
The most important consequence of the French presence appeared in the trade of the skins of beavers, in exchange of which the French échangaient iron, boilers, firearms and alcohol. There still, owing to commercial contacts, the mixed unions multiplied, in particular in the population Sioux of banks of Missouri. On the littoral of the Pacific and in California, the contacts with Europeans were more sporadic. Around 1774, the Spanishs were established on the coasts of bay of San Francisco to prevent the Russian attempts come from Alaska. But in California, the Hispanic presence was limited to the chain of the Franciscan missions and some stations with San Diego, Monterey or San Francisco.
Thus, contrary to a received image, the West, on arrival of the first American colonists, was not a virgin land, and the Indians, except for certain tribes of Rock, at least knew, if these are not the White, the objects and other goods that they brought and who forwarded of tribe in tribe. Contrary to the Spanishs and the French of Louisiana, who remained unable to control a so vast space and did not have the will to impose their kingly authority on the Indians, the Americans of the young Republic of the East needed these immense territories for their farmers in search of free grounds. In this beginning of the XIX E century, the Americans had the conviction besides that they were invested of a mission: to conquer the continent, to develop it and “bring civilization to the wild people”. The “manifest destiny” (Manifest destiny) of chosen people was going to be achieved in the West before the eagle does not spread its wings on other skies.
After the end of the first French colonial empire, in 1763, immense Louisiana returned to the Spanishs. Napoleon I er only recovered it into 1802 to resell it the following year in the United States of America. President Jefferson, who wished to control navigation on the Mississippi, had between outline, at the time of his embassy in Paris, the potentialities of this forgotten province of the French. As for Napoleon, in conflict with the British, it then needed so much money which it did not wish to engage in remote and transoceanic military operations. The purchase of Louisiana caused the popular passion but more reserve on the part of certain elected officials, anxious of a disproportionate extension which was likely to call into question the preeminence of the States founders. The acquisition of Louisiana, from which nobody knew neither the extent then nor the richnesses, made it possible the United States to double their surface and, by releasing circulation on the Mississippi, to disenclose the basin of the Big lakes and North Western.
The forwarding of Lewis and Clark The ignorance of the Americans on this remote West, this Far West, led Jefferson to require of his private secretary Meriwether Lewis to launch out in an exploratory mission beyond the Large River. Officer himself, Lewis associated another soldier, William Clark; they recruited about twenty soldiers and left Saint Louis in May 1804. With the assistance of a French guide, All Saints' day Charbonneau, and of his/her young partner shoshone, Sacajewa, the Americans went up Missouri until the Rock ones. After an epic crossing of the mountains, they reached the Columbia river, which they descended in raft.
On November 7th, 1805, Lewis foot-note in her newspaper which he heard the deaf rumbling of the waves which broke; the Americans had reached the Pacific Ocean and taken possession of the Continent. The account of the voyage of Lewis and Clark filled with enthusiasm the Congress which required the publication of it of 10' 000 specimens, which were torn off at once; Oregon seemed a genuine Promised land: the Americans had not discovered the West but the Paradise! The Lewis and Clark were thus the pioneers of a geographical form of exploration where precede the spectacular one and the communication with the general public, properly scientific aspects resident marginal.
Admittedly, the Americans returned with plants, animals, Indian objects but their account, ignited by the romanticism, was read as an extraordinary adventure. Supported by the optimism of the public opinion and the press, the US government hastened to send missions of exploration towards other areas. From 1805 to 1807, lieutenant Zebulon Pike went up the Arkansas river, climbed the top which bears its name in the Rock ones and arrived at Santa Fe, then in Mexican territory. With its return, it compared these areas with the “African sand desert”. Another soldier, Stephen Long, confirmed the remarks of Pike; in the years 1819-1820, he undertook a tour along the Platte river then went down again towards the central Plains. His report was somewhat disillusioned: “this immense part of the country is unsuitable with the culture and, consequently, completely uninhabitable for populations which remain only by agriculture”.
Thus, on the chart, in the middle of the West, was registered the terrifying words of “Large American Desert”. The aridity, combined with the absence of trees, accredited the idea that the Plains were hopelessly sterile and, during a half century, few valorous pioneers tried the adventure to stop there to cultivate the ground.
The conquest of the old Spanish territories A new stage in exploration was reached in 1838, with the creation of the topographic Service of the Army whose object was to chart the new territories of the Republic. Resulting from this body, guided by Kit Carson, John Charles Frémont traversed the West and California with the erudite French geologist Jean-Nicolas Nicollet, had married the girl of the senator Thomas Benton, a partisan convinced of the expansion towards the West. Besides the young wife of Frémont wrote the reports of exploration with a lyric fever, transforming the deserts into gardens: she imagined the green pastures, the corn fields undulating in the Plains. There still, the Congress ordered at once the publication of a literature which made discover with the reader a New World.
After the Civil war, exploration became more scientific; Geological Survey undertook with Clarence King of excellent geological statements. Other explorers visited the Rock ones, traversing imposing spaces of Yellowstone; major John Wesley Powell, as for him, descended the Colorado river and contemplated the Large Canyon. All these explorations gave the dimension of the West but they showed its limits; in the Western South remained a vast Spanish empire while in the extreme North-West, Oregon of today, the English presence affirmed itself.
As of the years 1820, the Hispanic Western South knew sudden starts with the penetration in Texas of American colonists in search of new grounds for the “king cotton”; under the control of “contractors”, such Moses Austin, they settled in the East of the province. In 1835, the Americans were 30' 000 with more than 3000 slaves; for a few years, some had expressed the will to be made independent of a Hispanic power, however very liberal in their connection. In March 1836, the American colonists declared their independence; a handful of between them was encircled in the small one extremely of Alamo. Davy Crockett, William Travis and their men went until the sacrifice and became the first martyrs of Independence. Under the control of Sam Houston, the Americans took their revenge one month after by beating the Mexicans with San Jacinto.
Texas had gained its independence; it entered the Union in 1845, at the moment when the young Irishman John O' Sullivan ignited the spirits by writing in the review which it had launched that the “destiny expresses” of the American people was to conquer the continent. O' Sullivan distinguished the ways of God in the domination from this New World; freedom, democratic spirit and natural right contributed to justify American nationalism. This last was expressed again at the time of the tension between the Republic and Mexico City about the Hispanic provinces of South-west.
Determined to take possession of California, president Polk addressed an ultimatum to the Mexican government while massing troops on the Rio Grande, to the border between Texas and Mexico. An incident, amplified by the American press, started the hostilities: the Americans invaded New Mexico and advanced even to Mexico City. Peace was signed in February 1848. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave to the Americans New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
Oregon Trail Two years before, the United States had obtained from Great Britain that the border of Oregon was fixed by the parallel 49e. More than 5? 000 American colonists had been established in this fertile area since 1840. “Had the fever of Oregon” seized the pioneers, who did not hesitate to follow a track, does Oregon Trail celebrate it, on nearly 3? 000 kilometers to join Portland cement and the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The candidates with the voyage found themselves in Independance, in Missouri; from there, the track of Oregon followed the Platte river until Fort Laramie, crossed the Rock ones by South Pass. Arrived to this collar, the pioneers had the choice to move towards the North-West and Oregon, or to go down towards San Francisco. “The thirst for grounds” pushed many Americans to try the adventure, the more so as the agricultural crises of 1837 and 1844 ruined the small farmers. The epidemics of malaria, yellow fever, typhoid acted like repulsive and drove out the populations towards big spaces. Guides flowered, offering an idyllic vision of the West; whimsical booklets with a dollar circulated, whose often authors had never seen banks of the Mississippi and even less the sky of the West.
In front of the proliferation of erroneous publications, the American ministry of the War brought its official guarantee to the work of an officer, Rudolph B. Marcy, person in charge of several forwardings in the West. The Traveller of the Meadows. Guide for forwardings through the Continent, will be even republished often, more copied and counterfeited. Contrary to a received image, the volunteers with the voyage were not the poor. It was indeed necessary to be equipped for such a company: to buy material, ox an attachment as well as a heavy carriage, the conestoga, name of the valley where it was manufactured, and of the reserves of food: flour, dried fruits, bacon for the journey time, approximately three to four months.
The departures of Independence had in May place or June, in order to cross the Rock ones before the arrival of snow and the cold. By safety, the pioneers voyagaient in convoys of several hundreds of individuals; families and single people were to cohabit of long months. A few days before the departure, when the convoy was formed, the heads of the family elected “a captain” whose load consisted in making reign the order and, in the serious cases, to constitute a jury and to make apply the law. The daily newspaper of the voyage appeared to the pioneers quickly: infernal noises of tens of carriages jolting in the ruts and goes in dust and heat. As for the famous track, it was summarized with the traces of wheels; as the way appeared in edge of the objects, pieces of furniture and others, abandoned to reduce the carriage. Less encouraging still, the tombs marked out the track: a testimony affirms that there were every hundred meters of them! Actually, on the 250 to 300' 000 pioneers approximately, 20 to 30' 000 succumbed, especially of the old men and young children. On the other hand, little was killed by the Indians who came to look at passing the convoys and exchanging skins against food. Tiredness, damaged food, the epidemics, imprudences or the conflicts made much more deaths than the attacks of Cheyennes.
As for the daily life on the track, it did not upset the division of the family tasks: the man carried out the attachment, his/her partner supervised the children who ran behind the carriage or gathered wild fruits with her daughters. The halt of the evening was done close to a water supply point; the women washed the linen and extended it on grass. They prepared the evening meal while the men commented on the events of the day. After the dinner, they adapted the collected fruits, cooked the bread for the following day then knitted or repaired clothing. The morning, raised before the family, the mother prepared the meal. The kitchen took much time because it was done on a wood fire, sensitive to the risks of the climate. Moreover, the scarcity of wood obliged the women to collect during the day of the dungs of bisons for future cookings. The men paraded with their weapons and were wounded sometimes; alcohol remained the most alarming plague. Many preferred to throw a piece of furniture that a whiskey barrel. However, with time, the community learned how to organize itself and many selfishnesses were erased in front of solidarity.
Two weeks after the departure, the pioneers arrived on Platte where the game, in the first times, was still abundant: bear, coyotes, deer and herds of bisons. After a few years, the wildlife was done rarer: rifles had eradicated many species, for the greatest misfortune of the Indians. A few weeks later, the crews reached Fort Laramie; it still remained to them to traverse 2000 kilometers. The fort resembled a true caravanserai: a mixture of pioneers, Indians, trappers and soldiers. Everyone made barter and sought information before launching out to the attack of the Rock ones.
The rise of Rock was preceded by the ritual pause with Independance Rock'n'roll where some engraved their name, ultimate testimony of their passage on the track. The crossing of Rock remained an good occasion to lighten last piece of furniture, while of throat in ravine, the carriages jolted; “it was necessary to cut down and give off the trees to make them pass” foot-note Jeffe Applegate which took part, at the seven years age, with the great migration. Many pioneers chose, with the sight of Columbia, to descend the river, not without risk of drowning. Lastly, the survivors contemplated the fort of Walla Walla, carries from Oregon; they touched finally with the Promised land.