West, they
continued to fret and strain against the Spanish boundaries. There was
no temptation to them to take possession of Canada. The lands south of
the Lakes were more fertile than those north of the Lakes, and the
climate was better. The few American settlers who did care to go into
Canada found people speaking their own tongue, and with much the same
ways of life; so that they readily assimilated with them, as they could
not assimilate with the French and Spanish creoles. Canada lay north,
and the tendency of the backwoodsman was to thrust west; among the
Southern backwoodsmen, the tendency was south and southwest. The
Mississippi formed no natural barrier whatever. Boone, when he moved
into Missouri, was but a forerunner among the pioneers; many others
followed him. He himself became an official under the Spanish
Government, and received a grant of lands. Of the other frontiersmen who
went into the Spanish territory, some, like Boone, continued to live as
hunters and backwoods farmers. [Footnote: American State Papers, Public
Lands, II., pp. 10, 872.] Others settled in St. Louis, or some other of
the little creole towns, and joined the parties of French traders who
ascended the Missouri and the Mississippi to barter paint, beads,
powder, and blankets for the furs of the Indians.

Uneasiness of the Spaniards.
Their Religious Intolerance.

The Spanish authorities were greatly alarmed at the incoming of the
American settlers. Gayoso de Lemos had succeeded Carondelet as Governor,
and he issued to the commandants of the different posts throughout the
colonies a series of orders in reference to the terms on which land
grants were to be given to immigrants; he particularly emphasized the
fact that liberty of conscience was not to be extended beyond the first
generation, and that the children of the immigrant would either have to
become Catholics or else be expelled, and that this should be explained
to settlers who did not profess the Catholic faith. He ordered, moreover,
that no preacher of any religion but the Catholic should be allowed to
come into the provinces. [Footnote: Gayarre, III., p. 387.] The Bishop
of Louisiana complained bitterly of the American immigration and of the
measure of religious toleration accorded the settlers, which, he said,
had introduced into the colony a gang of adventurers who acknowledged
no religion. He stated that the Americans had scattered themselves over
the country almos