Alaska Purchase

The 1867 acquisition by the United States from Russia of 586,412 square miles of land at the northwestern tip of the North American continent now known as Alaska created quite a stir during the ratification process. William Henry Seward, secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson, had as early as 1860 proposed the US acquisition of Alaska. The territory was considered an economic wasteland by the Russians, and in December 1866 Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, Russian minister to the United States, was authorized to open negotiations with Seward for Alaska’s sale. On March 29, 1867, Stoeckl and Seward completed the draft of a treaty ceding Russian North America to the United States, and the treaty was signed on the following day. The $7,200,000 price amounted to about two cents per acre. Many Americans, however, viewed the purchase as a too costly an acquisition. The press mirrored the popular opinion and Seward was ridiculed in the press. "Seward's Icebox" was the catchy tag name for the Alaska Purchase. The ratification and funding for the purchase by Congress seemed impossible due to the well publicized public outrage. The treaty was submitted for ratification on March 30. Founding Republican Party Senator Charles Sumner eloquently spoke in its favor, and the treaty was passed on April 9, 1867.

The American Frontier. Токарева с. 81

The Fate of Native Americans

As a result of the Seven Years’ War, Native Americans were no longer able to play the French off against the British and found it increasingly difficult to slow the advance of white settlers into the western parts of New York, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. To stop encroachments on their lands in the Southeast, the Cherokees attacked frontier settlements in the Carolinas and Virginia in 1760. Defeated the next year by British regulars and colonial militia, the Cherokees had to allow the English to build forts on their territory.

Indians in western New York and Ohio also faced encroachment onto their lands. With the French threat removed, the British reduced the price paid for furs, allowed settlers to take Indian land without payments, and built forts in violation of treaties with local tribes. In the spring of 1763, an Ottawa chief named Pontiac led an alliance of Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, and other western Indians in rebellion. Pontiac's alliance attacked forts in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that Britain had taken over from the French, destroying all but three. Pontiac's forces then moved eastward, attacking settlements in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, killing more than 2,000 colonists. Without assistance from the French, however, Pontiac's rebellion petered out by the year's end.

The Cherokee Trail (also known as the Trappers' Trail) was a historic overland trail through the present-day U.S. states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming that was used from the late 1840s up through the early 1890s. The route was established in 1849 by a wagon train headed to the gold fields in California. Among the members of the expedition were a group of Cherokee.

The route of the trail ran from the Grand River near present day Salina, Oklahoma, northwest to strike the Santa Fe Trail at McPherson, Kansas. From there it followed the Santa Fe Trail west, then turned north along the base of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains over the Arkansas/Platte River divide and descended along Cherry Creek (Colorado) into the valley of the South Platte River. The original 1849 trail followed the east side of the South Platte River to present-day Greeley then west via a wagon road to Laporte in Larimer County. From Laporte, the wagon road was built north past present-day Virginia Dale Stage Station to the Laramie Plains in southeastern Wyoming. The trail was then blazed westward and northward around the Medicine Bow Range crossing the North Platte River then turning north to present day Rawlins. The trail proceeded west along the route of present Interstate 80, finally joining the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails near Granger, Wyoming.

In 1850, an additional route was blazed on the west side of the South Platte River, crossing the Cache la Poudre River, and then to the Laramie Plains. There the trail turned west near present day Tie Siding, and proceeded along the Colorado/Wyoming border to Green River and to Fort Bridger where it struck the other emigrant trails.

Parts of the 1850 trail can be seen on Bureau of Land Management land in Wyoming. In Sweetwater County the trail on BLM sections is marked with 4-foot-high (1.2 m) concrete posts.

In Colorado parts of the trail are still visible and walkable in Arapahoe, Douglas and Larimer counties. An approximation of the route can be driven on State Highway 83 from Parker near Denver to Colorado Springs.

In 1849, Lieutenant Abraham Buford, escorting the mail from Santa Fe to the east, turned south at McPherson, Kansas, to follow the recently blazed Evans/Cherokee Trail to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, and then connected with another trail to nearby Fort Smith, Arkansas. Starting in 1850 the trail was used continuously by gold seekers, emigrants and cattle drovers from Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and the Cherokee Nation.

In 1850, a member of a wagon train en route to California discovered gold in Ralston Creek, a tributary of Clear Creek north of present day Denver. Stories of this discovery led to further expeditions in 1858, and the subsequent 1859 Colorado Gold Rush.

In the 1860s portions of the trail from northern Colorado to Fort Bridger in Wyoming were incorporated as part of the Overland Trail and stage route between Kansas and Salt Lake City, Utah.

The outlaw L.H. Musgrove traveled on the Cherokee Trail from Colorado into Wyoming during the 1860s.

What is the American Frontier?

Although American civilization took over and replaced the frontier almost a century ago, the heritage of the frontier is still very much alive in the United States today. The idea of the frontier still stirs the emotions and imaginations of the American people. Americans continue to be fascinated by the frontier, because it has been a particularly important force in shaping their national values.

The frontier experience began when the first colonists settled on the east coast of the continent in the 1600s. It ended about 1890 when the last western lands* were settled.

Americans have tended to see the frontier, its life, and its people as the purest examples of their basic values. The frontier provided many inspiring examples of hard work, as forests were turned into towns, and towns into large cities. The rush for gold in California, for silver in Montana, and for fertile land in all the western territories provided endless stories of high adventure.

Throughout their history, Americans have tended to view the fron­tiersman as the model of the free individual. This is probably because there was less control over the individual on the frontier than anywhere else in the United States. Of course, the frontier has been idealized.

There are two types of this heroic, rugged individualist drawn from two different stages of life on the frontier. In the early frontier, which existed before the Civil War of the 1860s, the main struggle was one of man against the wilderness. The second type of heroic rugged individualist is drawn from the last phase of the western frontier, which lasted from the 1860s until the 1890s. By this time the wilderness was largely conquered. The struggle now was no longer man against nature, but man against man. Cattlemen and cowboys fought against farmers, outlaws, Native Ameri­cans, and each other for control of the remaining western lands. Physical violence was frequent. The frontier became known as "the Wild West".

The frontier also respected the inventive individual. The need for self-reliance on the frontier encouraged a spirit of inventiveness. Frontier men and women not only had to provide most of their daily essentials of living, but they were constantly facing new problems and situations which demanded new solutions. Pioneer women made clothing, candles, soap, and many other items needed for the daily life of their families.

The willingness to experiment and invent led to another American trait, a "can-do" spirit, a sense of optimism that every problem has a solution. Americans take pride in meeting challenges and overcoming obstacles.

Americans have also seen the frontier as a pure expression of the ideal of equality of opportunity. On the western frontier there was more of a

6 — 2749 81

tendency for people to treat each other as social equals than in the more settled eastern regions of the country. Because so little attention was paid to a person's family background, the frontier offered the chance of a new beginning for many Americans who were seeking new opportunities to advance themselves.

The frontier provided the space and conditions which helped to strengthen the-American ideals of individual freedom, self-reliance and equality of opportunity. Frontier ideas and customs were continuously passed along to the more settled parts of the United States as newer frontier regions took the place of older ones during a westward march of settlers that lasted more than two centuries. In this way, many of the frontier values became national values.