Video
Western Expansion and the American Tide
Transcript
When Marcus and Narcissa Whitman crossed the Rocky Mountains and descend into the sweeping expanse of land, known as the Oregon Country, they accomplish something that many have thought was impossible. Regular folk-- both men and women-- had traveled overland to reach the continent's Western edge. Though no treaties were signed with the native peoples of the region, just five years later, in 1841, Eastern Americans are ready and eager to follow in the Whitman's footsteps. Much of the Oregon Territory is under the joint occupancy agreement with Britain. And the idea was that citizens of either nation could go there and settle there. What the British discover is that occupancy is 90% of the law. Over the next few years, thousands will pack their worldly possessions and follow the Oregon Trail on a 2,000-mile overland journey. When the first wagon trains make it to the Northwest, it's a revelation to a lot of Americans back East. There's increasing land pressure back East. The population is exploding. The Oregon Country was part of the national consciousness but was considered too far away, too unapproachable-- a place for mountain men, not a place for families, not a place for settlers. What these first wagon train show is that it's possible. And the rush is on. It's almost like a gold rush, but for land. From the American point of view, the West is ripe for the picking. The idea of Manifest Destiny showed the boundaries of the United States is actually reaching to the Pacific. The entire continent would be an American continent. And that the United States was especially blessed by God and that going West would fulfill a certain kind of noble destiny that God had for Americans. And that they would bring progress and civilization along with them. And that that was superior to anything that already existed. When the settlers came across the Oregon Trail, with this idea of civilization spreading across the land and everything else was savaged on the edges, and that's the way the native people were regarded. No one understood about how we regarded the land. We had laws. We were sovereign. The pressure to claim Indian land grows even more intense after the death of the Whitmans in 1847. The killing of the Whitmans is a bright red line between two eras in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Before the killing of the Whitmans, you have the era of the fur trade and the missions. It's not an equitable era in all ways, but it's an era where Indians and whites, at least, try to work together. After the killing of the missionaries, we move into an era of raw conquest. The word massacre was one that was exploited in the eastern press. And the point is that by describing the killings as a massacre, that justified a certain kind of response that was very useful. Something had to be done quickly about Oregon Territory, and it had to be claimed definitively for the United States. They became a useful symbol to justify expansion, to justify the rightness of expansion, to overlook any injustices to Native people. It was a very well thought out process by the United States on how to gain control of the resource. The goal of the United States government was to take the land, to help extinguish our rights as a people and allow more people from the other side to come into the country. The westward flow of Americans is unstoppable. The Oregon Trail is just one of several used by immigrants to reach not just Oregon, but destinations throughout the West. The Indians would have been dispossessed of their land if the killing of the Whitman's had never happened. There is this flood of white immigration coming into the area. Indians were bound to resist. Oregon becomes an official US territory in 1848. Within a decade, most Indians will be forced to move on to reservations, making way for the tide of pioneers, prospectors, and speculators to rush in and claimed the land for an expanding America.
Description
This 5-minute video talks about the impact of the Manifest Destiny mindset in 1840s United States in the Oregon Country.
Duration
4 minutes, 49 seconds
Credit
NPS Video
Date Created
02/15/2023
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