![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() One of Lewis and Clark's traveling companions, John Colter (c. Keeping the fur trade in mind as they searched for the Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reported on the abundance of beavers along the western rivers and their tributaries. After the Louisiana Purchase, Americans began to hope that expanding their involvement in the fur trade would be good for the American economy. The Spanish, French, and British dominated the fur trade in this region when the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. In the early 1800s, with the fur supply between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River depleted and settlements filling up the wilderness land, European fur trappers looked to the land beyond the Mississippi River. Fur traders, also called mountain men, had traveled over the Appalachian Mountains, around the Great Lakes, over the Rocky Mountains, and into the southwestern deserts in search of beaver pelts long before white settlers started to carve farms out of the wilderness. More than anything else, the growing fur trade attracted white men across the Mississippi River into the interior of North America. Excerpt from Adventures of Zenas Leonard Fur Trader ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |