She sent letters and her journal entries to relatives that described the beauties of the West and offered reassurance that rivers were fordable, travel by wagon was practical, and the so-called hostiles were generally friendly. Despite the travails of the journey, Narcissa thrived.
In 1836, she and her missionary husband joined a small caravan bound for Oregon. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (1808–1847) proved them wrong. The experts said that respectable women and families would never make it to, or live in, Oregon. Some intrepid Americans had already made the trek, but the common view in the East was that the intervening lands were a “howling wilderness” populated by hostile Indians. To strengthen its hand, the United States would need settlers to migrate in large numbers. The British had a head start because the Hudson’s Bay Company, a fur-trading monopoly supported by the British government, had been in the area for years. But to claim the lush lands across the Rockies and the lucrative trade with China and East Asia the United States had to make good on that claim, whether through diplomacy or war. Together with the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain finally ratified in 1821, the United States was now potentially a two-ocean power. The Anglo-American Convention of 1818 stipulated that the citizens of both the United States and Britain would have equal access to the Oregon Country-the lands north of Spanish California well into present-day Canada-until its final status was resolved.
0 kommentar(er)
