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He recommended two plans, either to follow the Missouri River to its head-waters or to push a chain of trading-posts gradually westward until the continent should be crossed. The former plan was the one actually carried out, eighty-three years later, by the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, which crossed the Rockies and followed the Columbia River to the ocean.
Until the establishment of the several trading-posts, the lives of these men were continuous struggles for existence, as no company could possibly transport provisions sufficient to last beyond the most remote settlements, and the men were compelled to depend entirely upon their rifles for a supply of food.
La Vérendrye, the French Canadian, and his sons had come from the St Lawrence inland and before 1750 had established trading-posts on the Red river, on the Assiniboine, and on the Saskatchewan. After this fewer furs came down to the Bay. It was now clear that if the Indians would not come to the adventurers, the adventurers must go to the Indians.
From here one looked down into a room one or two hundred feet square, its floor covered with a snowstorm of torn pieces of paper, and its air a babel of shouts and cries. Here were gathered perhaps two thousand men and boys; some were lounging and talking, but most were crowded about the various trading-posts, pushing, climbing over each other, leaping up, waving their hands and calling aloud.
By 1827 trading-posts had been established at Blue Mills, Fort Osage, and Independence. The first-mentioned place, which is situated about six miles below Independence, soon became the favourite landing, and the exchange from wagons to boats settled and defied all efforts to remove the headquarters of the trade from there for several years.
The rest of the country was defended by little garrisons at Three Rivers and Montreal as well as by several small detachments distributed among the trading-posts where the white men and the red met in the depths of the western wilderness.
And about this time, he began working on a grandiose and picturesque enterprise. The English Hudson Bay Company, established many years before, with hundreds of trappers and traders and scores of trading-posts, controlled the rich fur business of Canada and the northwest.
"The Russians settled here, finding the fishing and furs fine things for trade, and driving the Indians, who would not yield to them, farther and farther inland. In 1790 the Czar made Alexander Baranoff manager of the trading company. Baranoff established trading-posts in various places, and settled at Sitka, where you can see the ruins of the splendid castle he built.
The Dutch claimed the region as the result of that voyage, and during the next few years, Dutch traders visited it regularly and did a lively business in furs; but no attempt was made at colonization until 1624, although small trading-posts had existed at various points along the river for ten years previously.
Astor's plan, in outline, was to render American trade independent of the Hudson Bay Company by establishing a chain of trading-posts from the great lakes to the Pacific, to plant a central depot at the mouth of the Columbia river, and to acquire one of the Sandwich Islands and establish a line of vessels between the western coast of America and the ports of Japan, China and India.
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