The Making of the Great West

"This history is intended to meet the want for brief, compact, and handy manuals of the beginnings of our country. In this volume, I have followed up to its legitimate ending the work done by the three great rival powers of modern times in civilizing our continent. I have tried to make it the worthy, if modest, exponent of a great theme. The story grows to absorbing interest, as the great achievement of the age."
Contents:
Three Rival Civilizations
The Spaniards
An Historic Era
De Soto's Discovery of the Mississippi
Death and Burial of De Soto
The Indians of Florida
How New Mexico Came to Be Explored
"the Marvellous Country"
Folk Lore of the Pueblos
Last Days of Charles V. And Philip Ii.
Sword and Gown in California
The French
Westward by the Great Inland Waterways
The Situation in a.d. 1672
Count Frontenac
Joliet and Marquette
The Man La Salle
La Salle, Prince of Explorers
Discovery of the Upper Mississippi
The Lost Colony: St. Louis of Texas
Iberville Founds Louisiana
France Wins the Prize
Louis Xiv.
The English
The Bleak North-west Coast
Hudson's Bay to the South Sea
The Russians in Alaska
England on the Pacific
Queen Elizabeth
What Jonathan Carver Aimed to Do in 1766
John Ledyard's Idea
A Yankee Ship Discovers the Columbia River
The West at the Opening of the Century
Birth of the American Idea.
America for Americans.
Acquisition of Louisiana
A Glance at Our Purchase
The Pathfinders
Lewis and Clarke Ascend the Missouri
They Cross the Continent
Pike Explores the Arkansas Valley
New Mexico in 1807
Gold in Colorado.-a Trapper's Story
The Flag in Oregon
Louisiana Admitted 1812
The Oregon Trail
The Trapper, Backwoodsman, and Emigrant
Long Explores the Platte Valley
Missouri and the Compromise of 1821
Arkansas Admitted 1836
Thomas H. Benton's Idea
With the Vanguard to Oregon
Texas Admitted
New Political Ideas
Iowa Admitted
The War With Mexico
...

Samuel Adams Drake (1833 - 1905) was a United States journalist and writer. He went to Kansas in 1858 as telegraphic agent of the New York Associated Press, became the regular correspondent of the St. Louis Republican and the Louisville Journal, and for a while edited the Leavenworth Times. In 1861 he joined the state militia and served throughout the American Civil War, becoming brigadier general of militia in 1863.