Louisiana and Aaron Burr 345 



Government. The headwaters of the Mississippi 

 and the beautiful country lying round them were 

 known only in a vague way; and it was necessary 

 to explore and formally take possession of this land 

 of lakes, glades, and forests. 



Beyond the Mississippi all that was really well 

 known was the territory in the immediate neighbor- 

 hood of the little French villages near the mouth of 

 the Missouri. The Creole traders of these villages, 

 and an occasional venturous American, had gone up 

 the Mississippi to the country of the Sioux and the 

 Mandans, where they had trapped and hunted and 

 traded for furs with the Indians. At the northern- 

 most points that they reached they occasionally en- 

 countered traders who had traveled south or south- 

 westerly from the wintry regions where the British 

 fur companies reigned supreme. The headwaters 

 of the Missouri were absolutely unknown; nobody 

 had penetrated the great plains, the vast seas of 

 grass through which the Platte, the Little Missouri, 

 and the Yellowstone ran. What lay beyond them, 

 and between them and the Pacific, was not even 

 guessed at. The Rocky Mountains were not 

 known to exist, so far as the territory newly ac- 

 quired by the United States was concerned, although 

 under the name of "Stonies" their Northern exten- 

 sions in British America were already down on some 

 maps. 



The West had passed beyond its first stage of un- 

 controlled individualism. Neither exploring nor 

 fighting was thenceforth to be the work only of the 



