Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн
68 страница из 156
Frémont had acquired the nickname “the great pathfinder” because of his explorations in Western America during the 1840s. His career as federal surveyor and “pathfinder” was promoted by his father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton from Missouri, and his travels were popularized by his wife and Benton’s daughter, Jessie, who rewrote his journals into literary masterpieces that made him a national hero. Benton pushed appropriations through Congress that provided the financial backing for his survey expeditions of the Oregon Trail (1842), Oregon Territory (1844), the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada in California (1845).39 Most of these missions fulfilled Benton’s “Manifest Destiny” views of America’s expansionist future, and all of them were designed to develop the national economy, from transcontinental railroads to resource development (land and precious minerals). Pushing the American Indian and his or her land to one “side” was truly the “downside” of this nationalistic worldview.