Louisiana and Aaron Burr 299 



that was then known as Upper Louisiana the ter- 

 ritory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific 

 was owned by the Spaniards, but only in shadowy 

 fashion, and could not have been held by any Eu- 

 ropean power against the sturdy westward pressure 

 of the rifle-bearing settlers. But New Orleans and 

 its neighborhood were held even by the Spaniards 

 in good earnest; while a stronger power, once in 

 possession, could with difficulty have been dislodged. 

 It naturally followed that for the moment the at- 

 tention of the backwoodsmen was directed much 

 more to New Orleans than to the trans-Mississippi 

 territory. A few wilderness lovers like Boone, a 

 few reckless adventurers of the type of Philip Nolan, 

 were settling around and beyond the Creole towns of 

 the North, or were endeavoring to found small 

 buccaneering colonies in dangerous proximity to the 

 Spanish commanderies in the Southwest. But the 

 bulk of the Western settlers as yet found all the va- 

 cant territory they wished east of the Mississippi. 

 What they needed at the moment was, not more 

 wild land, but an outlet for the products yielded by 

 the land they already possessed. The vital impor- 

 tance to the Westerners of the free navigation of 

 the Mississippi has already been shown. Suffice it 

 to say that the control of the mouth of the great 

 Father of Waters was of direct personal conse- 

 quence to almost every tree feller, every backwoods 

 farmer, every land owner, every townsman, who 

 dwelt beyond the Alleghanies. These men did not 

 worry much over the fact that the country on the 



