Armstrong's attempt
In 1789, General Henry Knox, Washington's secretary
of war, ordered General Josiah Harmar, commanding the
Western frontier at Cincinnati, to "devise some
practicable plan for exploring that branch of the
Mississippi called the Messouri, up to its source,"
and possibly beyond to the Pacific. Captain John Armstrong,
then in command at Louisville, was despatched upon this adventure
in the spring of 1790. Entirely alone in a canoe, he
"proceeded up the Missouri some distance above St. Louis
. . . but, meeting with some French traders, was persuaded
to return in consequence of the hostility of the Missouri
bands to each other, as they were then at war, and he could
not safely pass from one nation to the other."
