AN EPIC JOURNEY WEST
New Missions – Unit 1 San Francisco – Westward expansion
TEXT 1 – Jefferson’s mission
Jefferson called in his private secretary, Meriwhether Lewis. He knew that Lewis had served […] on the frontier. He asked Lewis to consider leading a group of explorers through the rivers of the Louisiana Territory. Lewis wrote to his friend, William Clark, to ask him to join the group. Both men said yes.
Jefferson wrote instructions to Lewis. He wanted Lewis and Clark to find a Northwest passage, a water route across North America, to bring back maps and written notes about: “the soil and face of the country…, the animals of the country, generally, and especially those not known in the US…, the mineral production of every kind..., [the] climate as characterized by… proportion of rainy, cloudy and clear days…, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flowers…, times of appearance of particular birds, reptiles, or insects.”
Sally S.Isaacs, America in the Time of Lewis and Clark, 1998
TEXT 2 -The Mormon Trail: on the way to ZION
The Mormons were a people with different religious beliefs who experienced persecution from the authorities and many of their neighbors in Missouri and Illinois. In 1844 their founding leader, John Smith, was killed by a mob while he was in jail. The new leader, Brigham Young, decided to guide his followers west in search of a new home.
In 1846 Young led a group of 5,000 followers from a Mormon settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois, across what is now Iowa to Winter Quarters, a camp he established on the Missouri River in Nebraska […], Wyoming, and northern Utah to the Great Salt Lake Valley where he established a new settlement. Young organized permanent campsites along the route to help future emigrants.
Thousands of Mormons followed the trail from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Great Salt Lake. Some farmers were wealthy enough to own wagons, oxen, and many possessions. Many less fortunate Mormons loaded all their possessions into handcarts which were pulled and pushed for 1,200 miles across the plains, along and across the Platte River, and over the Rocky Mountains to the new settlement. Between 1846 &nd 1869, more than 70,000 used the Mormon Trail.
Rachel Dickinson, Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself, 2007
TEXT 3 – The white men
The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark […]
All the Nez Perce made friends with Lewis and Clark and agreed to let them pass through their country and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Perce have never broken. For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last. White men had found gold in the mountains around the land of the Winding Water. […]
I labored hard to avoid trouble and bloodshed. We gave up some of our country to the white men, thinking that then we could have peace. We were mistaken. The white men would not let us alone. We could have avenged our wrongs many times, but we did not. Whenever the government has asked for help against other Indians we have never refused. When the white men were few and we were strong we could have killed them off, but Nez Perce wishes to live at peace. […]
Chester Anders Fee, Chief Joseph: The Biography of a Great Indian, 1936
New Missions – Unit 1 San Francisco – Westward expansion