and also we're here with c-span, booktv. and so we have a national audience as well as a oregon audience. so i'm going to tell some stories, and you oregonians may know some of the stories, and you may not know others. but i'll start with how i came to this story. and, actually, what's surprising about it is how this story was very well known in its day. in 1836 when washington irving was commissioned by john jacob astor to write the story of these events 20 years after they occurred, irving's book -- "also called astoria," was a best seller of 1836. and those events have been largely forgotten in the american consciousness. i think you in oregon know a little bit more about them or i'm sure some of you know a lot more about them. but in the national consciousness, they're largely forgotten, except among historians and people who really follow western history. so it is a really important story. it's historically significant, and it's a great adventure story. and that's partly what attracted me to it. and it's also a story that i feel needs to be told because it's had a, those events have had a big impact on the shape of the north american continent and on the course of american empire these events that happened over these three years from 1810 to 1813. so i stumbled across this story just kind of randomly. and there are many things about being a freelance writer which i've been for almost 0 years now -- 30 years now that are a struggle. you know, uncertain income, uncertainty of all sorts. but one of the delightful things about being a freelance writer is how one story, one idea can lead to another. and that's what happened in this case. and so in, what was it, seven or eight years ago i was working on my last book doing research, a book called "the last empty places" in which i profiled four really unpopulated areas of the country. and, of course, one of them, of those unpopulated areas of the country had to be eastern oregon as i'm sure some of you can guess. [laughter] and i was driving in the course of doing my research one night in late may, one evening down a very long, long, lonely, empty highway in eastern oregon, and it was getting dark, and i was starting to think i'm going to have to sleep by the side of the road. and i finally came to a little town that had a motel, and i spent the night there with some gratitude for having this town appear out of nowhere. and the next morning i said, now be, how did a town get the name of john day? [laughter] so i know you've all heard of the town of john day and the john day river and the john day dam, there are many things in oregon named after john day, but i'm not sure anyone outside of oregon knows how all those things got the name of john day. so i did a little research in john day -- [laughter] and in a nearby historical society. and it turned out john day was one of these original astor yangs who was part of this huge overland expedition sent by john jacob astor from new york in 1810 to found the first american colony on the west coast. and what astor hoped would be a transglobal, trans-pacific trade empire. well, john day -- i didn't know the bigger story at that point, i just knew that john day was this guy who had been, i'm trying to think where his trauma start ad, but it started early. he was a 40-year-old kentucky hunter, and he ended up being nearly starving to death, poisoning himself with -- [inaudible] because he thought they were the edible kind of root, survived by shooting a wolf and eating its skin, was helped by a number of indians along the way, was left behind by his main party, wandered a winter trying to find the tracks of the main party, lost them, found a band of indians who he thought would help him who ended up stripping him of all his clothes and sending him out into the wilderness with nothing. and after that john day was just about done with the wilderness. [laughter] and he had, he was actually quite traumatized. and it turned out that he eventually, he had to go back the same way he came eventually, and he pretty clearly had what looks to me very much like the symptoms of ptsd. he tried to, he actually tried to kill himself, he tried to shoot himself. he didn't succeed, he survived. but he was sent back. so i read this story of john day, and i thought, wow, that is one incredible story for this town, you know? to have a town named after that. and the more i looked into john day's story, the more i realized his was just one little, tiny part of this huge undertaking that john jacob astor had sent to the pacific coast. so that's what got me intrigued by it. and the more i looked into it, the more i started to look like, wow, this is a story that should be told in a book. and i'm an adventure writer, i write exploration history. tease are the stories i -- these are the stories i love, so i took it on as a book project. and, fortunately, i found a very willing publisher with echo and harpercollins. so in the introduction you heard a little wit about what -- a little bit about what the expedition was. there were two -- john jacob astor had a vision of a global trade empire on the pacific rim. this was right after lewis and clark, five years after lewis and clark were out here. and thomas jefferson had, essentially, the same vision. and astor came up with this idea, approached thomas jefferson with it. they met in the white house. thomas jefferson gave it his enthusiastic endorsement. it was astor's idea to try and capture, essentially, all the furs in the western part of the american continent, funnel them through a settlement at the mouth of the columbia river and sell them to china. and in china these furs -- and especially sea otterrer furs -- would fetch extremely high prices because the chinese mandarins, for instance, used sea otter furs which were extremely luxurious, something like a hundred -- a million hairs per square inch. i think the fine itself, most densely coat of any mammal in the world. the chinese mandarins would pay incredible prices for these furs. so astor, he was not the first ship here on the west coast, but he was one of the earlier ones, and he came up with this idea of sending trade goods from new york around cape horn by ship to the mouth of the columbia, trading them to the coastal indians here for furs, trading things like knives and beads and pots and then taking those furs to china, trading them to the chinese for, you know, incredible mark-ups at both places, taking chinese luxury goods such as silks, teas, porcelain back around the world, back to london and new york. so his idea was to have this, essentially, a fleet of ships circling the global continuously -- the globe continuously and trading goods all along the way, each at an incredible markup. and thomas jefferson had a vision of he was hoping that astor's settlement on the west coast would be the first seeds of an american or a democracy. he wasn't even saying it was an american democracy. he thought it would be the first seeds of a democracy on the west coast, jefferson did. and something like a sister democracy to the united states and that from the west coast democracy would spread to the east, and the two would join in the middle and pick the whole continent -- make the whole continent a democracy. so that's the background. so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read a little bit about, a little snippet from four different characters, and that's part of what attracted me to the story was that there are some really disat this pointly different -- distinctly different leaders, different characters, different personalities. and they react in very different ways in these circumstances, and their personalities and their reactions in these, in the course of these expeditions across the country and around cape horn determined a lot of what happened this the years that followed and, actually, the decades that followed. so in some ways you can almost trace history back to, you know, pivotal moments. but in some ways these personalities shaped our destiny as a western empire on this continent. so the first one i'm going to read is a woman whom some of you in oregon may know named marie dorian. and she was the wife of pierre dorian who was the interpreter for astor's overland party. there were two expeditions, one overland -- the two advanced parties. one overland up the lewis and clark route, and then one around cape horn, the seagoing party. so pierre dorian was the son of pierre dorian sr., and pierre dorian sr. had been the interpreter for lewis and clark five or six years earlier. pierre dorian jr. was married to marie dorian who was a native american woman from the iowa tribe, and pee offdorian -- pierre dorian insisted his wife come along even though she wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea. she had two small toddlers, two boys, and she also learned enroute that she was pregnant. she ended up -- her story is like sacajawea's several times over. she has the most incredible survival story you can imagine. a friend in missoula where i'm from who's an historian and archaeologist, sally thompson, has studied a lot about lewis and clark and pointed out to me as i was researching this story that sacajawea and marie dorian probably met, almost surely met, and that got me interested in doing the research to see if they did, and they certainly did. they were in the same camp. this was when sacajawea was going back up the river, and marie dorian was going up the river for the first time with hunt's party. so sally said, well, i've always wondered what sacajawea said to marie dorian, and wouldn't that be an interesting conversation to overhear? so i've tried to speck hate a little bit -- speculate a little bit what it might be. [laughter] and i say this is -- i'm speculating. this, of course, is a nonfiction book. whatever happened here happened, but i say that this is -- one likes to think what they might have said to each other. it's likely marie dorian and sacajawea knew even other, two indian women in the small settlement of st. louis, both wives and interpreters in the fur trade. what would sacajawea have told marie dorian? it will be very long and very difficult to reach the ocean. you and your churn will suffer. -- your children will suffer. by then, five years after her journey with lewis and clark, sacajawea may have understood that whites with their powerful guns and endless numbers and relentless urge for furs and farmland and profit had just begun their long reach toward the western ocean. she may have understood that these first expeditions heading westward represented the beginnings of the end for her people's ancient semi-nomadic way of life. one imagines her saying to marie dorian, don't go. be. [laughter] or, join them, because they will come to our homelands whether we sign join them or not. or you will see amazing things. organizing into four river boats laden with approximately 20 tons of goods and equipped with ores, sails and tow ropes -- oars, sails and toe ropes, the party embarked with sails set in a favorable upriver wind. they hoped to reach the pacific, as astor expected, in late summer or autumn. so the second passage i'm reading takes place as they're going up the river from their winter camp which is a little, about 400 miles upriver from st. louis. and as i mentioned that they were to follow the lewis and clark trail which, of course, goes up the missouri and then over the northern be rockies to the columbia and down the columbia. .. to be the kd per traitorous but they were to the british crown and not necessarilcrownand not . so he had wilson price lead the party which had amounted to about 60 people which is twice the size of the party. 40 voyagers, several scottish first traders, and there can hunter's and her family, wilson price. so as they are going up they are starting to hear these stories and one of the problems is one of his small parties in which he is a member had killed and they left a metal hanging around one of their next and then fled the territory and if they were still really angry about that insult. so there had been a previous party going up try to establish the first host at the headwaters and it had disappeared and no one knew quite what happened. so as his party is going up is very, one day in may at 18 i was anthen they are sitting down afr the morning having breakfast and they see two canoes coming down the river and they signal the canoes and they pull over and it turns out there are three kentucky who are survivors of this massacre and one of them is wearing a 66-year-old -- a 66-year-old is wearing a scarf around his head and underneath he has been scalped and survived. he has actually been sculpted back into ohio some years earlier that he survived this massacre where there had been any number of atrocities committed against these trappers. so this told deeply on the young new jersey as best man, but they said while luck you don't want to go up the headwaters but we know some of the headwaters we know a better way. we know a way that you can leave missouri, strike out the overland, crossed several mountain ranges and we think we can take you to a river that is part of the headwaters of columbia. we think we can get you there. that's meant for wilson price striking out into what appeared to be a thousand miles but no idea that it was unmasked. so the serious and conscientious business man had to deliberate what to do. so that is the next passage i'm reading is his decision and the situation. before the boats made progress that day, today they had practiced and met the three trappers coming down, under sail that day and camp that night may 27, 1811 on cedar island there was an estimated 1,000 to 75 miles up the river from st. louis. the island was a botanical wonderland that grew in the centers ar are counted by garden like beds and flowers. voyagers and woodsmen chopped new from the theaters to replace damaged ones wildly eccentric botanists that have joined, while they scrambled about collecting plants he was distracted by his own problems. he had to decide whether to turn from missouri. that the best possible route became a subject of inquiry on cedar island. he questioned them about their proposal and consulted with others who traveled to the upper missouri. he instructed him to try whenever possible to reach consensus among the partners and he told them as he went throughout the journey on their opinions about which way to go. one picture on the narrow island granted a certain safety from indian attack with a large fire throwing yellow sparks toward the diamond bright prairie sta stars. one woman and two children pressed in toward the comfort. perhaps they move between the fire and the tens interviewing and deliberating. in the vast prairie night and the whole western continent behind this tiny growing circle of warmth and humanity. which mountains would let them pass, which tried. wilson price hunt for the first time tasted the unknown. though the flavor and intoxicated like john coulter responsible for the large group of people in the expectations of great men found romantic. it awaited him on the route of misery. on the other that left but struck overland skirting south of the blackfeet where the party might wonder over so he mountain ranges and through the desert what might have come as a startling revelation about striking out into the unknown is that though the questions confronting them are often mundane, this route or that's cut this river drainage or another, the implications are profound and sometimes fatal. by morning he decided it's not surprising that in the choice between the near certain violent confrontation and venturing out into the great stretch of turning avoiding the conflict he finally chose the latter. one could call it a bold choice in the spirit of exploration or cowardice or a retreat into the safety of the party and for himself. whatever their member's perspective, he had made the fateful decision. the overland party would leave and a beer to the south of the planned route avoiding the blackfeet on horseback into the great swath of unchartered turbine. the decision made he sat down to write up the plans. i'm going to skip back for a moment. he was a really conscientious business man, very focused and had come to the country as a young man from waldorf germany. we've all heard of that name the waldorf astoria. it's named for waldorf germany and for pastor his hometown. he came as a young man to new york right after the revolutionary war and he started importing musical instruments from england and he exported for from the north american continent to london he met somebody aboard the ship that brought them over it upset you can make a lot of money and for him he was a very focused and was very driven towards the bottom line. he spent years laying the groundwork for this huge expedition. in all the particulars planning and preparation that he hadn't allowed for one major factor. mountain climbers talk about exposure meaning one's level of risk in a particular situation and on the ledge for instance when a small mistake can result in major consequences. in 1810 when john jacob launched his great endeavor, this far why old edge of the north american continent with its approval for specific storms, hostile natives, extreme remoteness difficult location come and hires, dense rainforest, surf battered coast was as exposed as any habitable place on earth nor was it possible to predict the possible distorting effect that this degree of exposure would have on the personalities and leadership abilities of the men he had chosen to head the west coast empire. under extreme stress on each leader succumbed to his own best and worst traits. for anyone that stood to gain for it, his vision was to mesmerizing off to embrace. his greatest trading scheme harmoniously profoundly joined above farseeing men. he would dominate the world for her market and the pacific rim trade and reap the profits as word his first trade partners. through john jacob astor's partners and west coast county president jefferson and his successors would establish a democratic outpost on the distant pacific coast. jefferson's vision and grace to the entirety of the north america and other corded at the enterprise a powerful role in shaping the continent's political destiny. i view your undertaking jefferson would write. as the germ of a great free and independent empire on that side of the continent and at liberty and self-government spreading from that site as well as decide well in sure their complete establishment over the whole so there is a lot of weight writing when he's making his decision. wrestling bear on the island with his thoughts. so another leader in this is a scottish third traitor by the name of duncan mcdougal, and he was one of the first traders that astor had hired from canada where the experts were and there were many different personalities among them in many different degrees of expertise. but duncan mcdougal don't know if a thumbnail sketch of him would be short, feisty, manipulative and looking out for himself. he had made him the second in command in the west coast colony. hunt was supposed to be the first in command but in his abstinence he said mcdougal should be in charge. what happened with wilson price hunt and the overland party by the kentucky ends, they were supposed to arrive in astoria or i'm sorry at the mouth of the columbia. and in the fall of 1811, but the fall came and went and they still hadn't arrived. duncan mcdougal was in charge. so i'm going to read some of his thought. what had happened is at that point and i should back up a little bit in the story. one expedition when he was going overland, and the other was the party coming around the cape, this was led by the sea captain jonathan foreign who is a naval hero of a u.s. naval hero against the barbary pirates. the shift was stuffed with trade goods but some of you in this room know it may see up in vancouver island of different enunciation and three at 8,000 or 9,000 guns of gunpowder and it was carrying all the supplies to start the support at the mouth of the columbia. it also carried the sailors and crew of yankee. and a number o of french-canadin voyagers that paddle the canoe's, and it carried several clerks from canada, educated young men who are always keeping the journals. the captain was a very fearless guy and a very rigidly minded in this sense of discipline. so he had a boatload o boat loar traders and voyagers and the first night out at 8:00, they were drawing pistols when the captain ordered lights out and they said no. we still want to keep socializing and smoking the pipe on deck. and it came to threats of death threats at that point. he tried to abandon the first traders and sale of way without them. they are in a boat growing madly after and it keeps failing out to the sea and they keep expecting it to turn around and come back and it's 6 miles out and they are going after the islands. they are uninhabited. they think they are going to die if they are left behind. finally, what saves them is the nephew of one of the first traders is on board and he goes up and he draws to pistols and puts them under his chin and says term around the ship is instant or you are a dead man. that is only one of the misadventures on the way to columbia. there are many more but they finally do make it to columbia and they stop in hawaii. lots of misadventures. they pick up a lot of swimmers and they are experts on canoes on a sailing and support the colony and columbia. they finally make it to the captain of the finally near columbia. we all know in this room at least applies off of the mouth of columbia which of course is columbia bar, the great sandbar that blocks the mouth of the river where the huge volume of water goes out and about huge volume of water of the pacific ocean and its tremendous swells over crashing end and the tides are waiting this way and that and it is in the world this day as it was banned. there is one channel through the columbia bar. today it is stretched and its node then it was not known and shifted all the time. so the captain with his charge from john jacob astor is to drop the men and supplies at the mouth of columbia inside the columbia bar and then he is supposed to go on his way into the trade is upon vancouver island where the rich stretches of sea otter habitat were at that point, and associates in aa hurry to get across the columbia bar after all these terrible misadventures and he starts sending small boats with sailors to find the channel. they lose to boats or three of these boats and nine of them drowned trying to find a channel over the course of three days and the free traders into some of the sailors are saying this is matt s. to go send a small boat into the very rough weather at the time but he was just relentless. so finally they get across the columbia bar. it smashes a couple times and it gets inside but they finally choose a spot for the first american colony and we know where it is. it's where oregon is now and they actually mean that astoria at that point when they laid the cornerstone of the warehouse. it could have been a whole country on the west coast if things had gone differently. so he drops of the supplies and then he takes off the coast to the vancouver island. this leaves duncan mcdougal behind wondering where hunt is and meanwhile the tonkin is gone and the indians who had initially created them and traded wittreated with them ande around at the settlement suddenly disappeared. so it gets spooky off their. the sense of exposure deepened and there was a clear between the mountains, forests and rivers and the vastness of the pacific with its crushing swells and storms. it felt like the ends of the the eartearth also woven between tha into the forest was an elaborate network of tribes each with friendships and animosities linked to by the hitting communication network. it was another great unknown. the astoria and could only guess what were these native peoples thinking? should they need to flee they had no one to run to and no one to hide. the exposure were profound. the nearest reliable help was at least a year's journey away. paranoia set in per mcdougal in particular. it was as if in the need for self-importance he had drawn a target on his back. mcdougal set himself up as the king of the northwest telling every chief listened while visiting the tent of the state of his importance and the glory and the power of the empire to be. the complement of the men gone as well as the party and this is another exploratory party coming up the columbia as well as the party traveling up the river and with the indians banished into the river strangely quiet mcdougall realized he was a king that possessed no army and perhaps he also surrounded the tribes through the prism of his own thinking. he hoped to grope wealthy and powerful from this enterprise surely knowing that there would come at least in part of the native inhabitants why given the chance wouldn't they wish to grow wealthy and powerful at his expense? key set trade goods as well as guns and gunpowder that the trade is coveted. after the tonkin had left and the party departed up the river the indians could plainly see the treasure unguarded. the paranoia deepened. so mcdougal came up with this idea that he calls the neighboring tribes to come to the settlement and he pulls a small vital out of his pocket and says in this vital i hold the deadly smallpox in the indians had been decimated 20 years earlier by smallpox. i just have to pull off this quark and everyone dies. that is how he tries to regain power. he later marries the daughters of one of the chiefs a chiefs ar insurance policy. [laughter] but that is sometime later. meanwhile before i read the last passage, we have those same price who was up the river making his decision at cedar island at the advice of the kentucky trappers so he ends up for some reason he doesn't really understand the urgency pity he's never been in the wilderness before. he's already way behind the route schedule that he is supposed to be keeping. he estimates he has between ten to 15 pounds of gear and supply with him. he needs forces to carry all this. he stops at the villages and he starts trading for horses. the problem is they don't have quite enough so he scrambles are bound to tricky find more. it isn't until late july that he decides to head into this unknown turenne. he heads back into the marine corps ama and the toddlers are there. she realizes that she's pregnant and is due in december and this is july. of course the scottish first traders or rioting. eventually they have 115 or so. you can imagine. they cross what is now the dakota is which is now wyoming over the range and over the mountains, so they are in idaho just beside and if they come to a small river and they say well we are pretty sure this leads to columbia. here you go. [laughter] so they built canoes out of cottonwood. they pile into the canoes and 30 voyagers. they start down that river and the first day everybody is happy and that river and the water is flat. the third day by the ninth day they are going over major waterfalls. they have to abandon the canoes and start out on foot. the problem is if they run out of food and they are in the plains of what is now southern idaho and the river canyon and winter is coming on. to make a long story short they end up in the canyon that is deeper as you know is the deepest in north america. they are starving. he has to make the decision whether to speed the starving partners behind. so that is another decision in his life, that is where hunt is and while mcdougal is waiting and wondering where he is he is struggling through the canyons of the river country. he ends up to vancouver island and he has onboard alexander mckay is a very experienced vertigo who in fact crossed the continental ten or 12 years before louis and clark was alexander mackenzie of whom many of you know cross the canadian north but is noborder but is non north of 1793. so alexander experienced first traders on board of the ship and they pick up an interpreter on the way up to vancouver island of the harbor and they end up in what is now the island near. and the interpreter said you don't want to go into the sound. the indians here have bad memories of earlier traders and resentment. he ignores them and goes in any way. i write throughout this book in a number of places about the native american tribes into different cultures. i'm not going to go into any detail at this point other than to say it was an irony that out of all of the native american tribes in north america that his parties ended up coming against two of the wealthiest ones and one of them with th the incredis of buffalo and the other being the northwest coastal indians in the salmon runs and oysters and clams and on and on. they had an incredibly rich life materially and i say in many ways the way of life was materially better than many people in london and new york at the same time. they had a very elaborate ceremonial culture, beautiful artistic traditions and. the interpreter goes into georgia over the negotiations at the indian village and meanwhile some of the canoes he is impatient so that is where the passage begins. out of the cove the negotiations unfolded. on shore the interpreters were warmly welcomed by the village and the chiefs in the village. they pulled alongside the ship's whole and they were moving in thintoclothing and weatherproof. the paddlers held up sea otter for us to trade and the captain and the naval hero with no experience in the indian trade on shore at the villages ordered a tempting array spread out on blankets, knives and other trade goods. an elderly indian chief claimed on board to establish the trade goods for hers. the captain made an offer such as fishhooks in exchange for once the order. they rejected the captain's offers far too low. it was a clash of the cultures and the purest economic terms. the accounts to the details of the interaction between that followed the same general pattern as to the incident as a whole. he wanted five instead of the two that he had offered. he didn't budge. he had a deal about honest pride in his nature would do him personally, and moreover he held the race and the content. they were at a stalemate. jonathan wasn't a bargainer. he was a navy man with little experience offside the cultures. he believed he had given a fair price that he entered the northwest trading culture where it was the centuries way of li life. they dismissed the price and stomped off along the deck. they followed him holding up the bundle and began to ridicule the author harassing and pestering him to trade. the captain suddenly spun about with his temper exploding. he grabbed the for in his face. damn your eyes shouted and really kicking away the traded goods they got on the desk but he threw it off. the others had immediately left in their canoes and they returned in the ship leader that day and when they heard what had happened t today urged the captn to weigh in immediately. they would look for real then check. he contemptuously laughed them off. you pretend to know a great deal about the character, he said. according to alexander's account that captured the spirit of whether or not the exact wording. yoyou would know nothing at all. it did not end well. but that is where i go and. thank you very much. we can talk and take questions. [applause] feel free to get up and leave or we can keep talking about it. there is a question right there. >> what's so interesting about the story is how much you have to leave out to get it in the pages. one of the pieces i thought was fascinating was during the war of 1812, but sold astoria to the northwest company, the canadian company for pennies on the dollar but nonetheless it was sold to the canadian company and that could have ended right there. this could have been southern british columbia except the british ship captain came in and was conquering from canadians during the war of 1812 and because of that treaty all possessions had to be returned. and so it had to be returned in 1818 and so here we are in oregon and the history is full of stuff like that. if they had gotten their three months later, does have the -- there is about half a dozen of those. you are bringing up a good point. but this book focuses on. region is in limbo for about 40 years after the event's for just the reason the questionnaire was fighting that the war broke out and this is all in the book towards the end i focus on these expeditions the war broke out and that's made astoria a prize of potential prize of the four. so mcdougal basically i want to tell the whole story but mcdougal heard that the word had broken out and the really old navy was coming so he sold it out to the rival northwest for company and was subsequently made a partner. he fashioned himself a parachute and then he bailed out. he died in a very nasty way into canada it's an happened to them now section of the book. there are no details about how. he died a terrible death. there are so many things that could have gone differently with this part of the continent. the entire west coast down to mexico as it has become a powerful trading empire across the pacific it could have been a separate country. it could have been any number of things. i don't want to get into many historical details but in 1818 as many of you know the occupation agreement for the northwest which meant either americans or british could be here even though the british had already by that tim the time esd themselves in this columbia basin region. it could have gone a lot of different ways and it could have been astoria. it could have been british or all-american. >> i wonder if you can go into detail to the resupply to the heart of 1812 and the struggles they had to face. >> it is a terrible struggle. you can imagine it was 12,000 miles around from new york and vice versa. it takes a year to get the message either way. that was one of the big problems in division is the lack of communications. he tried very desperately to communicate, but he didn't know for two years that it had exploded. hunt eventually did arrive mostly intact but not entirely. but after has control and he was wanting him to stand fast and put tremendous resources behind it. endless resources. but his band didn't have well and they thought he wasn't as going to spend as much money as he was to defend the place. at one point he spent over a year trying to convince the u.s. navy or the president and secretary of state, everybody in washington, d.c. to send a ship to dock with colombia in the u.sand theu.s. naval ships to dd astoria against the british navy at the u.s. navy was going to send a ship that the last minute they were diverted to fight the battle in the great lakes and so it didn'intoselected indigo thea meticulous planner that outfitted another couple of ships and ascent from new york to run the blockade. he sent two captains under cov cover. they sent the sea captains to london with a blank check to buy the british ship and sail the british ship in the company of the royal navy that probably left because they felt it was a british or russian ship. about it was one thing after another. when they were putting the overland party and the party that was to go by the sea did they have any idea of the difficulties o party would have been reaching astoria that aspect into difficult situations of facing the unknown and the physical and mental stress really interests me. in the upper hudson valley and dragged his weapon through swamps and forests so i think that he had some understanding that nobody realized how vast the continent was. between here and new york and here as we know now it is a long walk and in those days it was tribal territory. it was very underpopulated. there were deserts. the deserts were a big issue. you get into southern idaho and there is no food. in the long run of course. when they came in 2011 to celebrate the bicentennial and did the descendents of john jacob moved to england? that is a long line split. this was around 1800 that's one of the descendents moved to england and eventually became a titled aristocracy but he is a descendent of this. the one i am writin i'm writinge founder of the dynasty and if there werthatthere were many den the united states including the john jacob astor down on the titanic answer that would be that great grandson iabc of that i'm writing about that was the founder and another group went to england. he was not an imposter. were they aware of what was going on in the northwest because they had a little bit. >> yes. good point. of course there is all this historical background i could go intinto but i will limit myself. the spanish started building missions from california from their settlements and basically what is now mexico a the california coast and that is in the 1770s and they got as far as san francisco about the furthest north mission and they had done it in parts of the state claim to the territory. they more or less stopped out of san francisco and the russians started building down from alaska. so that is where the gap in the settlement was between what is not alaska and san francisco. that was all a centrally on thee claim and that is what they saw was this huge chunk of the coa coast. >> i read about they tried to put a settlement account in the coast of washington and oregon. i have never seen it since. i know that they were treating sea otter. that is a follow-up to the question behind you. the russians did build up her post and california the year after astoria was founded in 1811 or 1812. it had a different name but that is about an hour's drive north of san francisco and it's a beautiful museum for the post today. the spanish were unfair that is where the british. he's been a settlement on the pacific coast and he better get out there so he sent david thompson a well-known explorer and the british explorer to come out to columbia and thompson got down columbia and was tagging or putting flagpoles up saying i'm going to build a post here and here as he went down columbia and what is now the tri-city as he is going to build the post and what did he gets to? a storget to? a story was already there and he missed it by three months. he could have gotten there first. >> in the writing of history as it has already been dealt with a book comes out every 15 or 20 years and david labrador wrote about the writers. how do you see writing about this as one of the ads to the complexion of the breath of that story cracks >> the books that have come out previously haven't really focused on these expeditions in the depth that i have. i am an adventure writer and i focused on the exploration and the adventure and i tried to get into the minds and the physiology and at the very detailed specifics of what it was like on those overland journeys and to try to bring them to life as much as possible. so the idea of the wonderful books about astoria and that is a really well beautifully researched scholarly work about astoria and if you want a historical detail that tells everything there is to know and that wasn't really my mission. my nation, my self-appointed mission was to focus on the adventure story of these expeditions. there is such tremendous stories and a dramatic stories and the hardest thing for me was to leave things out. the difficulty with keeping things out. i wanted to use them as a lens to get into the story as a vehicle to get into the story as a way to bring the reader along into the history, so my first priority was to tell a really good story so that is what i've done. they've done a wonderful job telling the story. the sentences are long compared to ours. [laughter] >> we are going to keep the microphone thing from one side to the other. >> did you say just a little bit more about that trip down and coming in about the same time tax >> there's so much to say. so he worked for the northwest company which was the british rival, the canadian arrival. they actually worked with him at the times and proposed a partnership to start the west coast colony, and of a more or less kind of appearance lee declined and he went ahead and started one anyway. as soon as they heard he was starting one they sent a message through the interior network of rivers and lakes in the voyager canoes to as far west as they could and they sent it to david thompson who was then exploring up in the northern rockies and he had been out there for several years and was just coming back east. he finally had a huge amount of exploration of mapping and they called him a stargazer because he was always mapping things. he was on his way back and he gets a message coming up by the voyager canoe is an canoes and t to the mountains of colombia and it isn't clear exactly what the details of the message were but immediately he tried to get to the mouth of columbia, crossed over the rocky mountains, have to winter up in a pass o in the rocky mountains with all of the snow, paddle down the columbia just another day in the life of thompson and by the time that he got there they had been there for three months. he went upstream and actually hung out with them. even though they might be rivals and enemies there was a sort of cordial post and so he was welcomed to all of the dinners and then they turned around and went back upstream. >> said he was onso he was one t wealthy men in the country. >> at amounted to a blank check. one of the things i write about is having a checkbook in the bottom of hills cabin starving. if money can do in certain circumstances or not do. when he eventually got there the second arrived three months after hunt arrived to the coast of vancouver island in alaska that ended up being its own fiasco and they had the choice for the returning in the winter when it was stormy or going to hawaii to fix the ship and the captain convinced him to fix the ship then he ended up in the south pacific after that and he just wanders all over the place. and he finally shows back up in a story as something like 15 months later and it's already been sold out. why argue selling the place. there are stories guy yes. so, she is this incredibly tough, and if she goes through the nose candy and starvation seemed. they go through struggles and the holding. they finally get out of hells canyon ended showing the big party will guide them across the mountain range now to the blue mountains and the vendor. he convinces them to do it, he kind of shames them into doing it and he gives birth at the base of the blue mountains in the winter until late december and then they have to cross the blue mountains and really cold conditions and the baby dies on the top of the blue mountains after a week so it's just one of these things and there should be a marker. i try to trace that trail. there is way more. she survived this incredible massacre that came later were up in the river country and she and her two boys escaped and she killed the horse, head in the blue mountains and in a shelter. but her two boys all winter long and hiked over the mountains into the spring came to columbia and that's a canoe. eventually years later she ended up at one of the first settlers in the valley. so when the wagon trains came out, she was already there and that was another phase of the story but again there are so many stories that all of the stumbling around at the party on the way out here through the snake river country and over the blue mountains and then there was a patron party that went carrying messages from a story about two new york based on the around a year or two but between those two parties got a return party led by robert stewart that is a well known name now, they found what you all know as the oregon trail. that is the average of all routes out it was discovered from all of this blinded wandering around and all the way back discovered south pass. it was finally discovered where you could cross the rocky mountains vehicle. that is the key link in the trail that allowed them to come back and once they could do that, the valley was becoming recognized as a very fertile kind of garden of eden on the west coast and in fact there were historians that for the first to explore the valley and if they knew that it was a very rich agricultural place so this became the magnet for the settlement of the bes west movet and foodies by dancing to settlers to get out there they had to come out and find a way out that they followed to get out. you have been a wonderful audience. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. if you want to talk i will be up here at the table. [inaudible conversations]