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How Americans First Saw the West

ELIZABETH LINDQUIST-COCK

IN 1839, when Louis Daguerre astonished the world with his
announcement of his photographic discoveries, the Ameri¬
can frontier was no more than 100 miles to the west of the
Mississippi River. Generally, the "West" in the imagination of
the American public was an alternating vision of heaven and hell:
on the one hand, fertile valleys and plentiful waters; on the other,
barren wildernesses where brigands and marauding Indians
brought constant terror to the agricultural frontier. Beyond lay
even greater mysteries in the mountains and deserts, unchartered
and tmimaginable. The occasional painter exhibiting scenes of
Indian life back East or the lecturer touring with his "mile-long
panorama" of the now-safe Mississippi River did little to dispel
the mysteries for the vast majority of Americans. For compelling
political and economic reasons, not least to fulfill that manifest
destiny which Alexander \on Humboldt and AA'illiam Gilpin had
envisioned, colonizing had to be encouraged, solicited, or bribed.
The discoveries of the gold of California and the Yukon made it
mandatory that Americans have a clear picture of the intervening
territories. There was going to have to be a railroad or two, and
it was largely through the impetus of railroad explorations sup¬
ported by the Federal Government that the American public came
to know the look of the \\'est.

As early as 1842, reconnaissance expeditions of topographical

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