tjadams

The Treaty of 1818 says it all.
Treaty of 1818 - Encyclopedia

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Richard Stanbery

When we look at the map, and think of just how small America was then, one would seem to ask themselves...which way to point the settlers? Which section is the most important to "Americanize"?

And then one determines that... they all are.

And then, one comes to the obvious conclusion..."We Need a lot more settlers, and fast!"

Speculatin'

If you really want to know what the Louisiana Purchase was like when Lewis and Clark showed up, then read "Before Lewis and Clark; The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier", by S. Christian, 2004.

PragmaticStatistic

Your proposition of laying claim to land that was considered mostly empty country by the European immigrants who desired it (whether American, French, British or Spanish) rules out the fact that the land had been occupied, if only by what you consider a few. Lewis and Clark's journals tell of negotiating trade agreements for furs with the locals, while knowingly realizing that what they had in mind would in time deplete the animal and food resources. None of Lewis and Clark's journal entries discuss mining opportunities or the employment of the locals in anything other than trading in furs which was unsustainable over the long haul.

Here is an interesting book review I found online about the book "Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny" By Robert J. Miller which seems to come to a similar conclusion as I did.

"What is left out of mainstream history books, and what is corrected by Professor Miller in this revisionist look at American expansion, is that the Louisiana Purchase was not in fact a direct real estate purchase. What the United States acquired and the Lewis and Clark expedition set out to inspect was not a land owned in fee simple but an interest conferred by the European doctrine of “discovery.” Miller demonstrates with Jefferson’s own words that the third President was well aware of the real nature of the transaction. “Discovery” meant a right to acquire land from the aboriginal occupants by treaty or by warfare. Terra nullius, the idea that the Americas were empty and ownerless, was a legal fiction subsumed in the doctrine of discovery and was understood as a legal fiction at the time.

What, we might ask with Miller, of that great instrument of self-government, the U.S. Constitution? It was inevitable that whatever legal doctrines came to govern the relationship between the United States and American Indians would be crafted from whole cloth in the Supreme Court. This is not in itself a criticism of Chief Justice John Marshall, but a sober recognition that Indians are mentioned only twice in the entire document, in the commerce clause and again to exclude “Indians not taxed” from population counts for the purposes of legislative apportionment (to be distinguished from African-Americans, who were counted as “three-fifths of all other Persons.”).

Marshall took up the doctrine of discovery as a governing principle and Marshall’s choice lives to this day in federal Indian law, most famously in the 1955 case of Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States, where the Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century disregarded the aboriginal title of people who had enjoyed a peaceful subsistence economy on their lands from time immemorial, as the “rights” conferred by “discovery” passed from Russia to the United States.

Miller’s use of “manifest destiny” might be criticized as anachronistic. He recognizes that Jefferson never used the term. The earliest use of “manifest destiny” in those words was by J. L. O’Sullivan in 1845, in the context of debate over the annexation of Texas. However, Jefferson was the originator of manifest destiny as American policy in all but name. The same can be said, to this writer’s surprise, of “removal,” the policy of uprooting Indian tribes from more densely settled land to “new” lands west of the Mississippi (90-91).

Manifest destiny came to be understood as having three major themes (120):
1. The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;
2. America’s mission to redeem and remake the world in the image of America; and,
3. A divine destiny under God’s direction to accomplish this wonderful task."

In New England, we purchased our land from the locals, in the west we took it from them under the fiction of manifest destiny.

pikeshot1600

PragmaticStatistic,

Unclefred didn't post that, I did, so I will respond.

Mr. Miller's revisionist look at western expansion is politically correct in the current academic fashion of our time. We are expected to feel guilty for expanding westward (Indian = good; White Man = bad). That sort of historical writing now sells books, but is less like analysis than it is like going to Confession. The reviewer seems to be in agreement with the revisionist viewpoint.

I am not sure what such a broad generalization has to do with Lewis and Clark, but IMO, Jefferson was correct in acquiring Louisiana, in exploring the new territory, and in demonstrating that the largest population on the continent was going to inhabit that continent, and was going to control it. Europeans were still in awe of their own sense of "discovery," and they laid claim to the continent from many thousands of miles away. We were here; they were not.

Realistically, all the Mea Culpas cannot change the need for a 19th century agrarian economy with an increasing population to acquire land for its own needs. It also cannot change the necessity for acquiring a port (or two or three...) on the Pacific coast to access the trade of the East - something that Europeans had been looking to increase since the 15th century. There was no point in acquisition of Pacific ports without the contiguous territory being secure for commerce and communication.

"Manifest Destiny" has been turned by revisionists into a malicious historical spell, when all it ever was ever intended to be was newspaper copy.

The introduction of a discussion of law and its application to all this seems more emotional than analytical. In the application of law, it is the law that matters, not the emotion. American Indians, in the 19th century, were not citizens of the United States. That was a matter of law. The legal concept of precedent in "discovery" passing from one European power to the United States has standing in law. The emotion of Indian = good; White Man = bad does not.

Jefferson had an understanding of the importance of both the expanse and of the potential of the continent. Some Federalists wanted to restrict the US to its eastern territory and only face Europe - New England trade interests, etc. Jefferson understood that the future of the continent was in the other direction. It had to be acquired. The Indians were in the way. It was not ever going to be different, and it all proceeded from that.

pikeshot1600

After rereading your OP, I will answer your question, "Exploration or Conquest of the West (?)" that it was both.

Historical analysis is mostly shades of grey; not black/white. That is what makes it interesting.

Chookie

Actually, they were - when Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific at Astoria, they found it occupied by the North-West Fur Company..........

IIRC they also received assistance on the way from members of the Hudsons Bay Company......

pikeshot1600

A handful of traders as opposed to the population of the US? I think you know what was meant.

Chookie

Yes. I do know, but where was that population? ~ On the East coast along with most of the other Europeans...........

pikeshot1600

Well, where was the population of Great Britain, and of Spain? It was twice as distant and separated not only by the Atlantic, but also by vast distances in the Pacific - either from New Spain or from Peru, or around the Straits of Magellan.

Lewis and Clark showed that we could walk to it. It was only a matter of time.