European America’s Manifest Destiny
The history of the Fur Trade and the Oregon and Mormon trails cannot be separated. The Rocky Mountain Fur Traders and Mountain Men not only paved the way West, they often led the wagon trains. A great many people paid a huge price to live, or even to survive, in this country. Western migration was not easy for anyone. Oregon Trail pioneers struggled West for free land and a better life; Mormon emigrants went West to escape religious persecution. White Americans took the land that Native Americans had taken from other Native Americans. Striving for a better life, religious persecution, and one people taken another peoples land are cornerstones of World History.
Manifest Destiny was a political phrase of the 1800s. The term was used to express the belief that the United States was divinely inspired to spread democracy and freedom across North America. The phrase was coined in 1844 by New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan in his magazine the Democratic Review. The term was used to justify the United States territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean.
America’s Manifest Destiny was the beginning of the end for several hundred thousand Native Americans and millions of buffalo. Forty-six years after Joel Walker’s family traveled over the Oregon Trail to the Oregon Country, the last buffalo hunt was held in the Judith Valley, and the vast majority of free-roaming Plains Indians were confined to reservations.
As this country expanded and defined itself, there is no doubt that tragedies occurred, i. e. Trail of Tears, Moravian Massacre. Native Americans were not innocent bystanders; they committed many atrocities as well. Similar wrongs have happened throughout world history, and are still happening today in Russia and in many third world and Muslim countries. Despite what we may want to believe, this has been the pattern for all developing countries, and it was going on long before there was an America. From a biblical sense, it started with Cain and Abel.