Welcome to my Wild West!

I spent this week on line edits of “Ghost of Texas”. Frankly. I find it embarrassing how much red covers that Word document right now.

Going back through these stories also refreshed my memory on some things I forgot putting in there, and they’re fueling ideas for the next installment of the story.

Justifiably, some readers have questioned how Shiloh got from Nebraska to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. I know he rode the train to Sacramento, California then made his way north to Oregon where he last heard his family was homesteading. 

From there, he learns they pulled up stakes and headed east for reasons I haven’t yet determined. Meanwhile, Doc Hall latches onto him and Doc’s inability to stay out of gambling trouble hounds them.

There’s also the possibility that the Texas branch of Shiloh’s family never realized what part of Oregon Territory the Mercer’s settled in. When Congress organized it in 1848, Oregon Territory included the modern day states of Washington and Idaho and parts of Wyoming and Montana. 

Most of Montana started out as part of the Louisiana Purchase which became the District of Louisiana in 1804 while the Corps of Discovery was still making its way to the Pacific. 

In 1818, this section of land, minus the incorporated state of Louisiana, became Missouri Territory, applicable since it included the whole Missouri River Drainage. After Missouri’s incorporation in 1821, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, half of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and good chunks of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana became unnamed frontier mostly ceded to Native Tribes. 

In the 1820s, Texas was the immigrant destination of choice. Long settled by the Spanish, Tejas lay nearly a thousand miles across the desert from the capitol in Mexico City. This made it a prime place for US citizens looking for new land.

Not until 1853 did Texas contribute land to US expansion. In that time, California became a state while Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah became territories, albeit not in the forms we recognize today.

On the other hand, the northern Great Plains remained unnamed and roughly ignored except by those crossing to the west coast along the Oregon Trail which follows the same corridor as the Transcontinental Railroad and Interstate 80. If you ever want to retrace the major trails of the Westward Migration, that area is a must!

Finally, after being part of Nebraska Territory, Dakota Territory, and Idaho Territory, Congress created Montana Territory in 1864, roughly three years prior to the start of Ghosts of Texas.

Native born US citizens grew up learning about wagons with “Oregon or Bust” painted on their canvases. I recall wondering why so many people would flood to such a tiny part of the West. In fact, the destination for pioneers changed throughout the history of Westward Expansion to wherever US industry needed people to extract resources.

Early on, and most notably, the drive was for gold. Montana owes its existence to the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch in 1863. Miners discovered other minerals which became the primary industry of western Montana (the mountainous areas). 

In contrast, eastern Montana became the destination for many a herd driven north by cattlemen intent upon setting up their own ranches. This dichotomy remains active in the politics and culture of the state to this day.

It is very possible that some migrants moved west to places like Oregon Territory first and then migrated back east following opportunities. Conventional education skips much of this history because the settlement of California and events of the Civil War masks it.

Nevertheless, it remains important to the background of any western story, especially if a writer wants accuracy. For instance, the Civil War affected the entire population of the US and it inspired a need to escape civilization in many.

The other driving force was advertising. A government in need of funds with only land to sell, wanted people to move west and buy land. They also needed it populated with what it deemed citizens in order to protect it from Canada and Mexico. Then the railroads, also with a bunch of land, did the same thing. They didn’t just need to sell off their land; they needed customers.

And nothing sold a hard and expensive relocation than a religious slogan like “Manifest Destiny.” For immigrants fresh to the country, choking on coal smoke and foul odors of the overflowing eastern cities, few things sounded better than the comparative freedom of the frontier.

Land ownership for the average person wasn’t an option in Europe. West of the Mississippi, everything was settled, and if you didn’t get along with your family well enough to work the farm with them, you had to go some place else or have the money to buy someone who was selling out.

Moving west was a cheaper option, especially for the sons of dirt farmers. Back then, farming was not as lucrative or stable as government programs and insurance made it since the 1940s. Agriculture was also the primary career field for working men and women.

Ranching, part of the agricultural industry, was primarily a western industry. Branching out from Texas in the late 1860s, the practice proved more successful on the arid high plains than crop farming until the development of mechanical irrigation. 

This is the American West for the last part of the 1800s and the backdrop of most Western stories. It’s also what I’ll consider in developing my next addition to Shiloh’s Trail to Black Coulee. For more information on Montana Territory and visual maps of how the legal borders of the West changed over the century, check out these pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Montana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Territory

Until next time, adios!

TW