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courage already wrested the West from the English, never again to pass under the dominion of a foreign nation.
The Virginia Legislature inscribed a memorial of Colonel Clark's brilliant achievements upon its records and granted to each soldier to his army two hundred acres of land.*
The first English adventurers found their way into the upper Mississippi Valley in about 1766. They were lawless hunters and trappers and there is little doubt that they extended their traffic with the Indians up several of the Iowa rivers. From this crude beginning developed finally the great Northwest Fur Company, which in 1806 had extended its trade from the St. Lawrence to Hudson's Bay; and from headquarters on the west shore of Lake Superior, their hunters, trappers and traders penetrated the west as far as the Rocky Mountains, embracing Iowa and Minnesota in their range.
At the close of the war of the Revolution, Great Britain relinquished to the United States its possessions east of the Mississippi River, from its sources to the 31st parallel of latitude, and with it free navigation of the river to its mouth as derived by previous treaties with France and Spain.
* George Rogers Clark was a brother of Captain William Clark who was one of the commanders of the Lewis and Clark exploring expedition of 1804; and who was appointed by President Jefferson Governor of Missouri Territory. One of Col. Clark's soldiers in his western campaign was John Todd who became a prominent citizen of Kentucky and was the great uncle of Mary Todd, wife of Abraham Lincoln.
[Vol. 1]
