206 The Winning of the West 



been Vice-President of the United States, and was 

 a brilliant and able man, of imposing personality, 

 whose intrigues in the West attracted an attention 

 altogether disproportionate to their real weight. In 

 consequence each event is often treated as if it 

 were isolated and stood apart from the general cur- 

 rent of Western history ; whereas in truth each was 

 but the most striking or important among a host 

 of others. The feats performed by Austin and 

 Houston and the other founders of the Texan Re- 

 public were identical in kind with the feats merely 

 attempted, or but partially performed, by the men 

 who, like Morgan, Elijah Clark, and George Rogers 

 Clark, at different times either sought to found 

 colonies in the Spanish-speaking lands under Span- 

 ish authority, on else strove to conquer these lands 

 outright by force of arms. Boone settled in Mis- 

 souri when it was still under the Spanish Govern- 

 ment, and himself accepted a Spanish commission. 

 Whether Missouri had or had not been ceded first 

 by Spain to France and then by France to the 

 United States early in the present century, really 

 would not have altered its final destiny, so far at 

 least as concerns the fact that it would ultimately 

 have been independent of both France and Spain, 

 and would have been dominated by an English- 

 speaking people ; for when once the backwoodsmen, 

 of whom Boone was the forerunner, became suffi- 

 ciently numerous in the land they were certain to 

 throw off the yoke of the foreigner; and the fact 

 that they had voluntarily entered the land and put 



