The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 4
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
money for the first of these and Lewis and Clark were en route to their
celebrated exploration, Jefferson quickly turned his energies to what
he considered the next most interesting and valuable survey of the
West, the Red River expedition. This examination was to go from
the river's mouth to its headwaters, which most contemporaries be-
lieved, from a variety of evidence, to rise in the mountains northeast
of Santa Fe. The explorers were to return via the Arkansas River.5
As he did with the more northerly probe, the president viewed this
southwestern exploration as being multipurpose. His letters make it
obvious that he thought the expedition could serve an important dip-
lomatic function in winning over the Indian nations of the Southwest.
Privately, he apparently also believed that commercial interests might
be served if the Red River did indeed provide a highway to the
legendary Santa Fe.6 Given the strained atmosphere with Spain fol-
lowing his promotion of the Rio Grande as the true boundary of
Louisiana, he also was convinced that careful celestial readings and
map work on the Red and Arkansas rivers would cement the United
States' claim to the southern drainage of the Mississippi and provide
him an attractive alternative if compromise on the boundary question
became necessary.
5The Red does not, of course, rise northeast of Santa Fe, but instead drains the Llano
Estacado, the vast, high plateau-plain of the Southwest. Numerous European explorers
had operated on the Red River, but in 1806 its geography was still hazy. See Walter
Prescott Webb, H. Bailey Carroll, and Eldon Stephen Branda (eds.), The Handbook of
Texas (3 vols.; Austin, 1952, 1976), II, 449-451. Its North Fork was merged with the
Canadian on Pedro Vial's untitled 1787 map and with the Pecos in Baron Alexander von
Humboldt's Carte gdndrale du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne. See the copy in the Uni-
versity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Library, reproduced in Flores (ed.), Jefferson and
Southwestern Exploration, 2o-21. Jefferson received a prepublication copy of Humboldt's
map when the cartographer visited Washington in 1804. See Thomas Perkins Abernethy,
The Burr Conspiracy (New York, 1954), 20. Too, a number of French traders told the
administration they had ascended the river to the mountains. See especially Jean Brevel's
account in John Sibley's letter to Henry Dearborn, April io, 1805, in [Thomas Jefferson],
Message from the President of the United States Communicating Discoveries Made in
Exploring the Missouri, Red River and Washita . . . (Washington, D.C., 1806). This
letter is also available in Annals of Congress, gth Cong, 2nd sess., 1,088-1,104.
sJefferson to Dunbar, May 25, 1805, Eron Dunbar Rowland, Lzfe, Letters and Papers of
William Dunbar . . . (Jackson, Miss., 1930), 175. The commercial possibilities were dis-
cussed privately at a White House dinner with expedition leader Thomas Freeman in
November of 1805. Freeman provides some hints of the nature of these in a letter mailed
later that month from Philadelphia to his friend John McKee. See Freeman to Jefferson,
Nov. io, 1805, TJP, and Freeman to McKee, Nov., 1805, John McKee Papers (Manu-
scripts Division, Library of Congress). In the latter communication Freeman says the
expedition will take him to "the Neighborhood of St. Afee . . . and to the Louisiana
mou[ntains]" and asks McKee, "how would you like to be my Cashier in that country?"
7The president's conviction that scientific map work on the Red River would give the
United States an undisputed claim to the river is intimated in several letters, most
notably a letter to the territorial governor in New Orleans, William C. C. Claiborne,
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/26/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.