Why didnt americans/europeans living on the east coast, go out west in the 1600’s, 1700’s and very early 1800’s?
Wasnt it commonly known by everyone in the world that the Spanish, at that time, were in Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, California, etc, taking out fotunes in gold and silver?
The Spanish treasury was filling up with riches, while americans on the east coast ignorred all the gold and silver out west.
It only took one year for California to fill up after news leaked out of gold discovery at Sutters mill, but the spanish, for centuries, were mining gold and silver out west.
I dont see the great effort it would have taken to go out west, you can walk accrross the country in less than a year.
Furthermore, wouldnt there have been some reason for americans/europeans on the east coast to go visit other europeans/spanish living a thousand miles to the west?
Wasnt there some sort of comfort, knowing that if you went west far enough, that you would again reach civilization/european culture?
I find it hard to believe that this was not common knowledge. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that the common east coast american would be “afraid” of spanish monks/priests living out west.
It’s not like they could hop on a plane and fly to LA, or jump in a car and take the interstate. Before the 1840’s anything west of the Mississippi was largely unexplored and dangerous territory. There were wild animals, unfriendly Indians and a noticable lack of improved roads.
The Lewis & Clark expedition (1804 - 1806) provided maps and information on some parts of the west, but the first real colonizaton of any size was the Mormon pioneers in 1847, and they suffered a tremendous number of deaths along the way.
There were some settlers who sailed around the tip of South America to get to California prior to that time, but even then it was a dangerous journey and many did not survive.
Bottom line is that it wasn’t the spanish monks/priests they were afraid of, but the stuff in between.
Most of the gold/silver the Spanish were mining in the 16th/17th century came from mines in Mexico/Peru, not from the American west. The gold/silver deposits there weren’t found until the 19th century. That was one of the reasons that there were just a few Spanish monks living in places like Texas and California. The places were frontier, outside of important population centers, without much to draw people there.
Also, from a practical standpoint, even assuming people living on the east coast knew about the riches of the west, getting there would be a problem. Remember, by the end of the 18th century, the new American nation was just starting to settle places like Kentucky and Illinois. To get to California by land would require a trip across land unsettled by Europeans, with potentially hostile Indians. Settlers were able to make the trip to California in the 19th century only because of the network of forts, settlements, and supply stations along the way, and even then, a lot died.
Mightn’t need for resources (or lack thereof) also have played a part? On the east coast and midwest (I’m thinking of the slow westward expansion towards the wilds of Ohio), no one had yet run out of land, timber, water, etc. There was still plenty to be had without risking life and limb heading way out west.
Yes, it certainly wasn’t easy. The Oregon Trail-a vast amount of people never even made it to their destination. The terrain wasn’t picture perfect, either-remember the Donner Party?
If you just started wandering west, you’d likely eventually be killed. The major achievement of the Lewis and Clark expedition wasn’t so much that they traveled all the way to the pacific ocean, although that was a really difficult thing to do. It was that none of the tribes they met along the way decided to kill them. Even if 90% of the people you met along the way had no problem with strangers wandering through their tribal lands, a few grumpy young men deciding you don’t belong and you never make it back home.
I’m pretty sure land ownership (on the state level) also had something to do with it–the U.S. pretty much expanded westward as it acquired territory from Britain, France, and Spain (through purchase or war). Settlers might have leaked in in small quantities before official ownership was established, but it’s always been my impression that migration westward was a function of having new land to settle. The official owners of the territories would most likely have been very protective of any resources like gold, so it’s not like Americans could just go in there and grab it all (even if the other restraints mentioned above had been removed).
It amazes me that out of millions!! not one person just started walking west, until he got to the end. Yeah, Lewis and Clark did it in 1804, but no one before that, and few after them.
Even Daniel Boone may have stopped at St Louis, although some say he might have wandered to yellowstone.
Yet, no one on record just walked west until he found the pacific ocean. Daniel boone kept going west, but he kept stopping whenever he found a place with no white men, why didnt he just keep walking?
Sure there were dangers, but there were dangers everywhere back then. YOu could get killed by indians in new york or kentucky just as well as nevada or california.
If people thought there were specific dangers of those who wanted to go all the way out west, then there would have been stories, and warnings from those who tried,but no one tried.
No group ever went out west, and thus no survivors to warn of even greater dangers past the mississsippi.
Not a single pair of teenagers, or 20 year olds, had any curiosity as to what is west?
I think I understand , that was when money was actually worth something, and either made out of gold, or backed up by gold by the United States governement.
But I am talking about young men, who once they grow up, before they get married, before they have a farm to take care of, why didnt any of them get the urge to just up and go west? The cost is free, and couldnt have been more dangerous in Missouri than in kentucky or virginia where they would have wondered anyways.
I think what the Spanish were doing in what is now the US was in large part missionary work. They were looking for gold, but they never really found any to speak of. A couple years after Spain unloaded California, gold was discovered. Poor them.
I believe it was commonly understood in the late 1600’s up through the 1700’s that west of the Mississippi was a vast desert and nobody in their right mind would go out there. People were having a hard enough time scratching out a living where the land was good. If people wanted to go to the west coast, they sailed.
I don’t think that’s an accurate perception. It was more dangerous in unexplored, uncharted, unknown areas. When you’re close to civilization, there are resources available to you, and you generally know what dangers to expect. Once you’re a certain distance away, you’re totally on your own. While particular dangers may or may not be worse than what you’re used to, the fact that some are different from what you’re used to can be a major handicap.
When you’re out of bullets, where do you find lead? When you’re out of gunpowder, where do you find sulfur, etc.? If your knife blade breaks, you’re sure not going to find and smelt iron ore and make another. To eat, you’ve got to hunt and gather. Major illness or broken limb, and you’re screwed.
The distance you’re talking about covering is HUGE for someone on foot (or horseback, though it’s questionable that the horse could last very much of the journey). Consider that there were no routes to follow, no way of knowing where to find the few viable passes over the Rockies, no way of even knowing that the Rockies were there.
We’re talking about years to make the trip, with no companionship other than those you might persuade to go along with you. It’s a pretty sure bet that would not include women. What’s the incentive to try if you can have a reasonable living where you are, or close by?
The reality is, those who sought something more or different from what they had only had to go a relatively short distance to find it. And that’s pretty much how the westward expansion went–many short hops over a course of centuries.
Actually, I don’t think there were a lot of Indians in New York or Virgina once by the 1800’s. Too many white people.
I’m sure somebody tried, but the reason there were no legends or rumors about what was on the way is that people either turned back before they got too far or they never came back.
I think you are underestimating the danger and difficulty here. This isn’t like today when you can just walk from one coast to another. Today you would have clearly marked roads, well defined maps, resteraunts and hotels at decent intervals, a very good idea of where you were going, and people who could help you out if you got sick or broke your leg or something like that.
In 1800(say, for the sake of arguement), this is the situation. The East coast has been settled pretty well. There are even states inland, but the missippi is about as far as anyone has ever been, and there’s a lot of wilderness between New York and St. Louis(once you cross the moutains).
So you get to St. Louis, and decide to just walk west. Okay, here are the problems you are going to have.
A.) You know the Pacific Ocean is roughly 2000 miles west of you. That’s about all you know. There are NO maps between here and there. You are essentially walking into a great unknown. Thus if you get lost, you aren’t going to know if you are lost, or even how to get back. There are NO roads to guide you.
B.) You’re going to be doing a lot of walking, so you need to eat a lot to keep from starving to death. Where is this food going to come from? You can only carry so much with you to start, and somehow I think that’s going to be gone withen a week. Remember that you also have to bring equipment. Oh, and you aren’t going to get a lot of variety in your diet, unless you know a lot about edible plants that grow in the area you are going into, so there’s the problem with sickness.
C.) To survive, you’ll need equipment. Say a small kit of cooking gear so you don’t have to eat everything raw, a fire starting kit(flint and steel), a gun(plus ammunition, powder, cleaning supplies) and a knife for killing and cleaning animals/cutting up animals/plants and such(If you’re a vegitarian, you’re pretty much screwed before you start). A compass, a canteen(maybe two), a blanket or a warm coat. Hope you’re in good shape because you have to carry all of this all the way there and all the way back. Add this to the to bulk and weight of the food you brought to start with.
D.) Native Americans. Some are friendly, some aren’t. If you run into the unfriendly ones, the least they will do is not help you. The helpful ones may help you with any medical problems and give you some food, but that’s about the most you can expect without having trading goods(actually, you may not get that far without trade goods).
E.) You have 3 very large obstacles in your path. The Great plains which have tornados, lack of trees and even defining features for the most part. Then you have to cross either the Rockey Mountains or the Southwestern Desert, niether of which will be very hospitalable and some more forest land before you reach the pacific. Not to mention a lot of rivers in your path. Hope you know how to swim. Oh, and you have to cross these again before you can return, unless you bump into a spanish settlement with that has regular ships coming in, but somehow I think not. This is going to take several years, minumum.
Did I mention you have no idea there’s a mountain range and/or a desert that lies before you?
F.) Assuming you make it over the moutains, it’s very likely going to be winter. Do you know how to build a shelter? I sure hope so or else you’ll likely freeze to death before winter is over if you aren’t in a Southern Region.
So I’ve laid it out for you…You get sick and nobody comes by to help(assuming they can help)…you will likely die. You break a leg or maybe an arm…you die. You run across hostile indians…you die. You run across a deadly animal and are attacked by it…you likely die. You run out of food and can’t fimd more…you die. You run out of water for more then a day or so…you die. You get caught in extreme heat…you may die. It’s winter and you can’t find food/build a shelter/find shelter…you die. Game over. Nobody knows what became of you unless you kept a journal and some settlers in 30-40 years stumble across your body and hopefully still readable journal.
And you wonder why nobody has just started walking to the west and came back with all these tales? Assuming they did, they died or they came back before they made it far enough to see anything other then miles of featurless plain.
Walking to the pacific in 1800 isn’t a weekend excursion. It’s deadly serious and very likely, you won’t come back if you are going alone, even if you know what you are doing.
Well, it’s very unlikely you could walk across the country in less than a year in the 1600’s unless you launched an expedition much more sizeable than a “pair of teenagers, or 20 year olds” could manage.
No modern camping or outdoor supplies, so you’d have to carry everything – knives, guns, clothes, tents, food, water, etc. Even with a pack animal, this would be a lot of supplies, and it would be extremely difficult to get a pack animal across the Mississipi. The weight of supplies would limit your speed.
With no maps and no cache of supplies, a considerable amount of time would have to be spent hunting. Ammunition would be irreplaceable, so you’d have to do as much trapping as possible. With no refrigeration, you’d have to spend time smoking and drying food or just hope that you’d find your next dinner further on down the road. It’s very likely our explorers would die of starvation.
With no maps, you’d spend a lot of time backtracking. “Flyover” territory contains a lot of extremely rugged terrain. (An explorer encountering the Grand Canyon is gonna have a miserable time walking around it.) The Great American Desert is virtually uncrossable while weather would limit travel severely in the northern area of the country.
Even if there had been gold nuggets the size of basketballs lying in Nevada for the taking, what good would it have done? (if you think money made of gold is actually worth something, try trading it for food in the middle of Nevada in 1650). With no East-West navigable rivers, there would have been no way to get the resources back to civilization until infrastructure had been built up. And until ownership of the land was acquired from the countries that had claimed them and/or ripped off from the indigenous tribes, infrastructure couldn’t be built.
So, crossing the country is dangerous, arduous, expensive and not a little foolhardy. Not a surprise that so few tried it and fewer survived to tell about it.
There were a number of explorations in the west, but they were carried out by people other than Americans.
Henry Kelsey explored the Canadian prairies in 1690 on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
De La Verendrye, de La Salle, and other French explorers made extensive trips exploring the Mississippi/Missouri river system in the early and middle 1700’s, which covered much of what became the western US east of the Rockies.
In 1754 Anthony Henday traveled from Hudson Bay as far as the foothills of the Rockies. Samuel Hearne followed the Coppermine River to its mouth and became the first white man to reach the Arctic Ocean by land in 1771.
In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie followed the river which now bears his name from its source to the Arctic Ocean. In 1792, Mackenzie set out again and crossed the continent to the Rocky Mountains which he crossed over to reach the Fraser River and the Pacific in 1793. Cook and Vancouver were exploring the Pacific coast by sea during the same period.
In 1808 the Fraser River was thoroughly explored by Simon Fraser, after whom it is named. In 1811 David Thompson completed his exploration of the Columbia from its source, in southeastern British Columbia, to its mouth, in present-day Oregon.
I dont buy that walking is too much, or too difficult, I think most people can walk accross the country if they wanted to. If you can walk an average of 20 miles a day, you can cover 200 miles in 10 days, 2 thousand in 100 days. I dont see a problem with bringing pack horses either, as long as you can find grass and water, they will be fine.
You are absolutely right about going only a short distance, that is exactly what people did, they only went to the first good valley they found where no one was there yet, and stopped. That was the mo of daniel boone and his comtemporaries.
To the other person, I didnt mean to limit this to 1800, why not walk accross it in 1650?
One thing which made me question this, is that the people of Jamestown were well aware of Roanoke, and that the people of Roanoke disappeared. Yet, no one from Jamestown went down to Roanoke to see what happened(with or without indian guides), even though it was a pretty short distance from Jamestown to Roanoke.
Everybody seems to be pretty accurate about the dangers, and that these dangers would stop the average wimp of today.
But I am not talking about wimps who are afraid of shooting themselves, who cant ride a horse, who cant live off the land, etc. we are talking about people who crossed an ocean to live in a total wilderness on the east coast of america in the 1600’s and 1700’s. The people who were here then, were not wimps who would stay at home if they knew the trip or new land might be dangerous.
These people already made a choice to live where there would be no help, no McDonalds, no food other than what they themselves produced. These people already came here deciding that they did not need help from anyone accross the sea.
Anyone who came here in the 1600’s and early 1700s, came here facing extreme danger and unknowns , and not much less than they would find by continuing to walk.
Another thing. If you aren’t an official explorer with a mission to report back to the government, this sort of thing isn’t a “there and back again” adventure. If you are the sort who can go off into the wilderness by yourself and live there by yourself for years, that’s more of a lifestyle. That is how you live. It takes specialized knowledge and skills to do this, you can’t just decide you’re tired of farming and take off.
There were probably lots of mountain men who just wandered off into the wilderness and were never heard from again. If you enjoy living by yourself in the woods, though, why would you ever come back? You’re more likely to either become a hermit or get adopted into some indian tribe. If you were the sort of person who could walk all the way to the Pacific Ocean for fun (or even just to the Rockies), why would you ever go back to the crowded cities of the east coast?
Why do you think that the original settlers knew how to live off the land? These were people who grew up in a settled agricultural or urban environment. The first few colonies struggled mightily. As you pointed out, Roanoke disappeared. Plymouth colony lost many people the first year. The early settlers might have been somewhat hardier than the average person today because of the amount of manual labor in their daily lives, but I don’t buy this modern-people-are-just-wimps assertion. Just because someone is living in 1650 doesn’t make them any more willing to die.
If you think 20 miles per day is do-able, give it a try. With a hundred pound pack and a gun. Don’t forget to be dropped in the middle of a forest or a desert hundreds of miles from civilization. Mix in a few mountains and rivers – marching on the flat is no fair. You have to catch your own food, and you have no map. Feel free to march in the rain if you want – but there’s no place to dry your equipment in the woods and it’s going to be cold at night.
The reason people didn’t try to walk across the country was not because they were wimps but because they weren’t idiots.
I dont buy that walking is too much, or too difficult, I think most people can walk accross the country if they wanted to. If you can walk an average of 20 miles a day, you can cover 200 miles in 10 days, 2 thousand in 100 days.
Nowadays, maybe. But back then, with no roads, dense woodlands, large expanse of near-waterless prairie, and carrying necessary survival equipment, it was plenty difficult. 20 miles a day would be a pipe dream.
I dont see a problem with bringing pack horses either, as long as you can find grass and water, they will be fine.
When you hit big rivers, large prairies, and tall mountains, I see plenty of problem.
I don’t think anyone here is trying to trivialize the courage of the early settlers. It took a great deal of courage and fortitude to make the journey.
However, courage by itself isn’t enough. There’s a reason that most of the settlements in the 1600s and early 1700s were set on the ocean or major rivers, and that was that the colonists weren’t trying to block themselves off from anyone across the sea. They wanted more ships to come, to bring more settlers and goods that couldn’t be produced in the colonies. They wanted access to news, and to reassure themselves that they weren’t alone, and also to sell the goods they made to England. Even if a ship could only come once a year, it was at least something. Most colonists didn’t want to get so far away from civilization that they were alone.
Also, it’s not a matter of “just keep on walking”. If you’re going to explore and colonize, you need a jumping off point…you need a base. A ship, at that time, carrying supplies and food from London can carry enough supplies to get to Jamestown or Boston or New York. It can’t carry enough supplies to get to Kansas. Because if you just keep walking, eventually you’re going to run out. There are some things you can’t forage for, because they take special skills, knowledge, or equipment. How are you going to get bullets when they run out, or gunpowder when it runs out? How are you going to get a new wagon wheel when yours breaks? Can you make it? Are you going to carry your food with you? What happens when that runs out? Ok, you can hunt or forage, but that takes time, which takes time away from your traveling, and hunting and foraging is risky…especially in unknown territory. You might not find anything. Are you going to carry fodder for your animals? If you just let them graze, what happens when you can’t find good grazing land? What happens when your animals die?