[2] Pierre Laclede came up from Lower Louisiana in 1763 to start a fur-trade west of the Mississippi, going first to St. Genevieve, subsequently to Fort Chartres. The two brothers Auguste and Pierre Chouteau were with him. He held a trading license from the governor of Louisiana.—Nicollet-Edwards.
[3] North-west Company, the great rival of the Hudson's Bay Company; formed by the union (1784) of rival interests; Frobisher and McTavish, managers; did business by the way of the Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, etc.
II.
THE PATHFINDERS.
LEWIS AND CLARKE ASCEND THE MISSOURI.
"To lose themselves in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon."
Mr. Jefferson had never forgotten his talk with Ledyard at Paris. It was the key-note of future projects. Even before Louisiana was ours, he began to take steps for having it explored, partly with the view of ascertaining its real value, but chiefly to determine whether the Missouri and Columbia Rivers would afford a practicable overland route for commerce with the Pacific. Should they do so, the discovery of the century would be made. It was the very first step taken to open a road across the continent under national auspices, and, as such, has historic importance, going far beyond the aimless wanderings of a few migratory fur-traders, who, thus far, were the sole geographers of this interesting region.
Except that they took their rise somewhere in the great Rocky Mountain chain, next to nothing was known about the higher sources of the Missouri. Something, indeed, was learned from the French traders who had been making canoe voyages up the Missouri for many years. These adventurers had pushed their way into the Osage, the Kansas, and the Platte. To them we owe the names these streams bear to-day, which are derived, the Platte[1] alone excepted, from the tribes inhabiting their banks. For the same reason the great Missouri[2] itself was given this name by the French explorers because they were ignorant of its existing Indian name.