In the fall of 1816, I determined to visit the Mississippi valley--a resolution which brought me into the situations narrated in the succeeding volume. In the three ensuing years I visited a large part of the West, and explored a considerable portion of Missouri and Arkansas, in which De Soto alone, I believe, had, in 1542, preceded me. My first publication on the results of these explorations was made at New York, in 1819. De Witt Clinton was then on the stage of action, and Mr. Calhoun, with his grasping intellect, directed the energies of the government in exploring the western domain, which, he foresaw, as he told me, must exercise a controlling influence on the destinies of America.
In the spring of 1818, Major S. H. Long, U. S. A., was selected by the War Office to explore the Missouri as high as the Yellowstone, and, accompanied by a corps of naturalists from Philadelphia, set out from Pittsburgh in a small steamer. The results of this expedition were in the highest degree auspicious to our knowledge of the actual topography and natural history of the far West, and mark a period in their progress. It was about this time that Colonel H. Leavenworth was directed to ascend the Mississippi, and establish a garrison at the mouth of the St. Peter's or Minnesota river. Early in 1820, the War Department directed an exploratory expedition to be organized at Detroit, under the direction of Lewis Cass, Esq., Governor of Michigan Territory, for the purpose of surveying the upper lakes, and determining the area at the sources of the Mississippi--its physical character, topography, and Indian population. In the scientific corps of this expedition, I received from the Secretary of War the situation of mineralogist and geologist, and published a narrative of it. This species of public employment was repeated in 1821, during which I explored the Miami of the Lakes, and the Wabash and Illinois; and my position assumed a permanent form, in another department of the service, in 1822, when I took up my residence in the great area of the upper lakes.
It is unnecessary to the purposes of this sketch to pursue these details further than to say, that the position I occupied was favorable to the investigation of the mineral constitution and natural history of the country, and also of the history, antiquities, and languages and customs, of the Indian tribes. For a series of years, the name of the author has been connected with the progress of discovery and research on these subjects. Events controlled him in the publication of separate volumes of travels, some of which were, confessedly, incomplete in their character, and hasty in their preparation. Had he never trespassed on public attention in this manner, he would not venture, with his present years, and more matured conceptions of a species of labor, where the difficulties are very great, the chances of applause doubtful, and the rewards, under the most favorable auspices, very slender. As it is, there is a natural desire that what has been done, and may be quoted when he has left this feverish scene and gone to his account, should be put in the least exceptionable form. Hence the revision of these travels.