Americans had comprehensive knowledge and contact with Spanish and Russian officials in what is now the American West.

One of the best-known examples of this is the Astoria expedition of 1810, in which America's richest man outfitted an expedition to Oregon in order to capitalize upon the fur resources that the Lewis and Clark expedition had revealed. If you're unfamiliar with the topic, Peter Stark's Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire is a fast-reading, understandable, and widely available history of the topic. Outside magazine published an excerpt two years ago. The more ambitious reader can consider LeRoy Hafen's 10-volume series, The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, published between 1965 and 1972.

Long story short, the Lewis and Clark expedition brought a monumental surge of interest in the territory west of the Mississippi River once its journals and diaries were published. One of the big takeaways for the profit-minded was the abundance of furs, principally beaver, that the expedition found. Until the widespread adoption of plastics in the second half of the 20th century, furs were the best way to keep warm and dry during winter. Their limited availability made them expensive and sought-after. Even today, the frost-shedding properties of wolverine fur haven't been duplicated by synthetic materials.

Astor was among the Americans who saw the opportunity brought by the Lewis and Clark expedition, but unlike most other Americans, he had the ability to do something about it. Using his vast wealth, he funded a 60-person expedition that intended to travel up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, the expedition would establish a string of trading posts to collect furs bought from American Indians with goods carried from St. Louis.

Once on the Pacific Ocean, the expedition would establish a port to carry the furs on to China, the richest country in the world, which had a ravenous appetite for furs. Astor had bigger aspirations as well. Russian America was desperately in need of supplies but rich in furs. He knew that New Archangel (modern Sitka) was trading with Spanish California for food, and if he could divert the Russian trade to his Pacific port, he could monopolize the western fur trade.

In his quest, Astor was challenged by a Spaniard, Manuel Lisa, who was born in New Orleans in 1772. Lisa was very much an adopted American. He cut his teeth running riverboats on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and established trading posts in the Northwest Territory (today's Indiana and Illinois, specifically). He moved to Spanish Louisiana and used his knowledge of the Spanish colonial bureaucracy to garner permits to trade with the Osage Indians, with various amounts of success. He was familiar with the members of Lewis and Clark's expedition before they left (and later hired some of them), and he organized trading expeditions from St. Louis to Santa Fe, then in Spanish-held Mexico.

He ran fur-trading expeditions to the west with varying degrees of success, and by the time Astor's man, Wilson Price Hunt, arrived in St. Louis in fall 1810, Lisa's Missouri Fur Company became suspicious that Astor had designs on their territory as well as that west of the Mississippi River. Astor's crew left St. Louis in the fall, setting up camp about 450 miles upstream (they wanted to cut costs by living off the land instead of in St. Louis). When spring came and the Missouri thawed, one of the great races of the era began. Lisa was 450 miles behind, but over the winter, he had created a rival expedition and with furious poling and paddling, he caught up with Hunt's men on June 2.

The two parties had a nasty feud going until Lisa, who had a good reputation with the riverside tribes, spoke up for Astor's men and said they were his friends. The Astor men continued over the mountains, struggling through the winter of 1811-1812 until they founded Astoria just in time for the outbreak of the War of 1812. Astoria was sold to the British North West Company at fire sale prices.

Hunt nevertheless managed to conduct some exchanges with the Russians before the British axe fell.

Lisa, meanwhile, had made some profit from his expedition on the eastern side of the Rockies. He spent most of the war years successfully countering the efforts of British agents who sought to stir up the region's tribes against the Americans.