The Making of the Great West

'This history is intended to meet the want for brief, compact, and handy manuals of the beginnings of our country. In this volume, I have followed up to its legitimate ending the work done by the three great rival powers of modern times in civilizing our continent. I have tried to make it the worthy, if modest, exponent of a great theme. The story grows to absorbing interest, as the great achievement of the age.' Contents: Three Rival Civilizations The Spaniards An Historic Era De Soto's Discovery of the Mississippi Death and Burial of De Soto The Indians of Florida How New Mexico Came to Be Explored 'the Marvellous Country' Folk Lore of the Pueblos Last Days of Charles V. And Philip Ii. Sword and Gown in California The French Westward by the Great Inland Waterways The Situation in a.d. 1672 Count Frontenac Joliet and Marquette The Man La Salle La Salle, Prince of Explorers Discovery of the Upper Mississippi The Lost Colony: St. Louis of Texas Iberville Founds Louisiana France Wins the Prize Louis Xiv. The English The Bleak North-west Coast Hudson's Bay to the South Sea The Russians in Alaska England on the Pacific Queen Elizabeth What Jonathan Carver Aimed to Do in 1766 John Ledyard's Idea A Yankee Ship Discovers the Columbia River The West at the Opening of the Century Birth of the American Idea. America for Americans. Acquisition of Louisiana A Glance at Our Purchase The Pathfinders Lewis and Clarke Ascend the Missouri They Cross the Continent Pike Explores the Arkansas Valley New Mexico in 1807 Gold in Colorado.-a Trapper's Story The Flag in Oregon Louisiana Admitted 1812 The Oregon Trail The Trapper, Backwoodsman, and Emigrant Long Explores the Platte Valley Missouri and the Compromise of 1821 Arkansas Admitted 1836 Thomas H. Benton's Idea With the Vanguard to Oregon Texas Admitted New Political Ideas Iowa Admitted The War With Mexico ...

Samuel Adams Drake (1833 - 1905) was a United States journalist and writer. He went to Kansas in 1858 as telegraphic agent of the New York Associated Press, became the regular correspondent of the St. Louis Republican and the Louisville Journal, and for a while edited the Leavenworth Times. In 1861 he joined the state militia and served throughout the American Civil War, becoming brigadier general of militia in 1863.