The fur traders of St. Louis had found a way to reach the Rockies. The adventurous West was once more blazing a trail for the commercial and industrial West to follow. This was the second outward setting of the tide of west-bound travel. We had used up all our down-stream transportation, and we had taken over, and were beginning to use, all the trails that led into the West, all the old French trails, the old Spanish trails, the trails that led out with the sun. No more war parties now from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. This was our country. We held the roads.
But now there were happening yet other strange and startling things. In 1806, at Pittsburg, some persons built the first steamboat ever seen on the Ohio River. Its first trip was the occasion of much rejoicing, and was celebrated with fervor, which, however, must have received a certain dampening by the outcome of the experiment. The boat, crowded with excited spectators, ran very handsomely down-stream, but when it essayed to return the current proved too strong, and only setting-poles and rowboats saved the day. This, then, was the precursor of an aristocracy in transportation before which even the haughty keel-boatmen were obliged to abase themselves. In 1811 the steamer New Orleans was built at Pittsburg, and following the guidance of "Mr. Roosevelt of New York," who had previously investigated the matter, successfully ran the riverway to New Orleans.[17] More than that, she proved able to return up-stream.[18] What fate then was left for the keel-boats?
In 1819 a steamboat had appeared as far west on the Great Lakes as Mackinaw. In 1826 a steamboat reached Lake Michigan. In 1828 the first steamboat of the American Fur Company mastered the turbid flood of the Missouri, and ascended that stream as far as the Great Falls.[19] In 1832 a steamboat arrived at the city of Chicago. The West was now becoming very much a country of itself.
The curious fact continued to be fact--that it was the South that was to open, the North and the East that were to occupy. Of the two essential tools, the Southern man might have left at home his ax, the Northern man his rifle. But it was as yet no time for a North or a South. The Northerners and the Southerners both became Westerners, and if the ax followed the rifle, the plow as swiftly came behind the ax.