Pacific Destiny
The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Walker constructs a compelling narrative that is a string of unusual profiles rather than an analytic account of a major event in American history." - Publishers Weekly
The Oregon Country!
For a century that fabled place, lying somewhere beyond the Rocky Mountains at the farthest reaches of the continent galvanized the American people.
Its riches, in furs, timber, fish, and fecund soil for farming, awakened the avarice of nations. Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States all vied for this trackless Eden of the pacific littoral, and not until the 1840s did the Americans claim it once and for all.
In these pages are the explorations of the fierce Scots who scaled the mountains and mapped the rivers of the Oregon country before the time of Lewis and Clark; the imperial fiefdom created for profit and Britannia by the fur-trading ventures of the Hudson's Bay Company; John Jacob Astor's ill-fated experiment on the Columbia River; the mountain men who risked their lives in Indian country in pursuit of beaver furs; and the arrival of the missionaries and pioneers of the Oregon Trail.
Pacific Destiny is the Spur Award-winning story for best historical non-fiction, told by a distinguished chronicler of nineteenth century America. A story of the clashing of empires, coveting the matchless wealth of the Pacific Northwest-the story of The Oregon Country.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this melancholy, engrossing narrative, historian Walker (Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846) tells the story of early emigration to the Pacific Northwest (from the 1810s to 1848, when America acquired most of the Western territories). "My ambition," Walker writes, was "to answer the questions I imagined the Platte River natives asking: Where were all these people going and why?" Proceeding chronologically, Walker looks for answers in pioneers' biographies. Drawing from the writings of well-known figures (like Washington Irving and Francis Parkman) and the letters of common travelers (mountain men seeking their fortune west of St. Louis, missionaries who aimed to convert reluctant Blackfeet and civilians traveling in overloaded caravans), he recounts not only the harrowing conditions on the Oregon Trail but the economic, geopolitical and personal reasons for westward migration. John Jacob Astor sent traders to the Columbia River basin in hopes of establishing a fur-trading empire; countless numbers went in search of gold; a few eccentrics went to find spiritual meaning. But they all got more than they bargained for in the way of Indian raids, mountain climbs, flooding rapids, desert heat, drifting snow and difficult terrain. Their journeys, he argues, did shape international politics, however. Not only did settlers' conflicts with (and betrayals of) Indians determine the future of the domestic frontier, the Oregon Trail eventually lured enough settlers to force Britain into an accommodation on boundaries with Canada. Walker constructs a compelling narrative that is a string of unusual profiles rather than an analytic account of a major event in American history.
