And also were here with cspan, booktv. And so we have a National Audience as well as a oregon audience. So im going to tell some stories, and you oregonians may know some of the stories, and you may not know others. But ill start with how i came to this story. And, actually, whats 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, irvings 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 im sure some of you know a lot more about them. But in the national consciousness, theyre largely forgotten, except among historians and people who really follow western history. So it is a really important story. Its historically significant, and its a great adventure story. And thats partly what attracted me to it. And its also a story that i feel needs to be told because its 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 ive 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 thats 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 im 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 im 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 youve 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 im 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, transpacific trade empire. Well, john day i didnt know the bigger story at that point, i just knew that john day was this guy who had been, im trying to think where his trauma start ad, but it started early. He was a 40yearold 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 didnt 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 days 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 thats 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 im 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 astors 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 markups 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 astors settlement on the west coast would be the first seeds of an american or a democracy. He wasnt 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 thats the background. So what im going to do is im going to read a little bit about, a little snippet from four different characters, and thats 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 im 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 astors 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 wasnt 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 sacajaweas several times over. She has the most incredible survival story you can imagine. A friend in missoula where im from whos 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 hunts party. So sally said, well, ive always wondered what sacajawea said to marie dorian, and wouldnt that be an interesting conversation to overhear . So ive tried to speck hate a little bit speculate a little bit what it might be. [laughter] and i say this is im 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. Its 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 peoples ancient seminomadic way of life. One imagines her saying to marie dorian, dont 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 im reading takes place as theyre 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 hunters 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 66yearold a 66yearold 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 dont 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. Thats 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 im 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 thats cut this river drainage or another, the implications are profound and sometimes fatal. By morning he decided its 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 members 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. Im 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. Weve all heard of that name the waldorf astoria. Its 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 hadnt allowed for one major factor. Mountain climbers talk about exposure meaning ones 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.