What was the westward movement

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One of the first areas settled was the Northwest Territory. This area today makes up the states of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Daniel Boone led settlers across the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky.

Louisiana Purchase

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from the French for $15 million. This was a huge area of land west of the Mississippi River. It nearly doubled the land size of the United States. President Jefferson sent explorers Lewis and Clark to learn more about this vast frontier.

Manifest Destiny

Native Americans

One tragic result of the westward expansion of the United States was the forced relocation of many Native American tribes. As the United States moved west, it took over lands once occupied by Native Americans. In many cases, Native Americans were ordered to relocate to new lands or reservations. Sometimes they were forced to leave existing lands by the military and marched at gunpoint to new lands (see the Trail of Tears). You can read more about the culture and plight of Native Americans during the westward expansion here.

Continued Expansion

The United States continued to expand westward and gain land. After a war with Mexico over the rights to Texas, the country gained much of the southwest including the land of California. They also gained the Oregon Territory in a treaty from Great Britain.

Settling the West

Pioneers and settlers moved out west for different reasons. Some of them wanted to claim free land for ranching and farming from the government through the Homestead Act. Others came to California during the gold rush to strike it rich. Even others, such as the Mormons, moved west to avoid persecution.

Wild West

As the first settlers and pioneers moved into the west, there was little government. The law was the local sheriff and people had to look to protect themselves against bandits and outlaws. During this time, gunslingers of the west such as Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James became famous.

End of the Frontier

Interesting Facts about Westward Expansion and the Old West

• The population of the United States grew from 5.2 million people in 1800 to 76.2 million in 1900.
• President James K. Polk played a major role in expanding west. During his presidency much of the land west of the Louisiana Purchase was added to the county including Texas, the Mexican Cession, and the Oregon Territory.
• The Transcontinental Railroad and Transcontinental Telegraph were both important in keeping the large country together in the early days.
• Westward Expansion had a large impact on the Civil War. The South wanted western states to be slave states while the North wanted slavery to be illegal in the new states.

Crossword Puzzle

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History

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Teacher’s Guide

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In the nineteenth century, the United States expanded its territory westward at a dramatic pace, leading to conflict, national growth, and ongoing cultural exchange within a transformed continent.

Background

The expansion of the United States into the territory west of the Mississippi River began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. President Thomas Jefferson nearly doubled the size of the nation by negotiating a price of $15 million to purchase 828,800 square miles from France, including all or part of 14 current states. In 1804, Jefferson sent an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area. The three-year expedition produced new understanding of the geography and resources of the western part of the continent. In the 1830s and 1840s, “manifest destiny”, the idea that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent, was used to promote further territorial expansion. And the nation expanded quickly:

• In 1845 the United States annexed Texas;
• In 1846 the Oregon Treaty ended British claims to Oregon Territory;
• In 1848, following the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded much of the Southwest to the United States;
• In 1853 the United States bought an additional tract of land from Mexico.

States joined the Union at a relatively fast pace: California became a state in 1850 and Oregon in 1859, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867, Colorado in 1876, South and North Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890, and Utah in 1896. As new towns like Denver and Phoenix sprang up in these new states, established towns and cities grew to accommodate the new industries and new populations that westward expansion brought with it.

A number of factors fueled migration west. Trappers, settlers, and miners headed West from the eastern United States prior to the Civil War. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of land for free. Another important factor was completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869; the railroad led to much more rapid western migration and also facilitated economic development.

In looking at the history of the American West, it is important to keep in mind the myths that arose around the settling of the West in the second half of the nineteenth century. The influential historian Frederick Jackson Turner described a uniquely American personality forged by the experience of taming the wilderness and critical to the success and growth of the United States. That view of the West as a frontier where heroic white settlers and cowboys struggled to bring civilization to a savage land framed popular and scholarly thinking for years to come.

More recently, however, historians have questioned the notion of the frontier. Instead, they have argued that the nineteenth-century West was a crossroads of cultures. The trans-Mississippi West was home to countless Native American communities. The lifeways of the Native American groups varied considerably. Some with nomadic lifestyles required large amounts of rangeland to maintain their families; other groups lived in settled communities, where they farmed and raised livestock brought to the West by the Spanish. The cultural diversity was heightened by the addition of tens of thousands of Native Americans forced west from the eastern areas of the United States.

Spain ruled what is today the southwestern United States between 1598 and 1821; it used land grants to promote settlement and protect this remote region of its empire. Spanish policy was to give settlers free land owned by the government. The Republic of Mexico followed many of the same policies when it governed the Southwest between 1821 and 1848.

Thus, when white settlers began pouring into the West, they were entering a region in which indigenous peoples and Spanish settlers had been living for hundreds of years. Nor was east the only direction from which settlers came into the American West.

African Americans came from the southeast, Spanish settlers came from Mexico in the south, and workers came from the west, across the Pacific from China.

The hope for economic advancement that brought white settlers to the West also brought workers from Asia. Chinese immigrants worked in mining, ran small businesses, and helped build railroads across the West; however, they were often met with hostility and violent attacks when they attempted to settle into communities.

Expansion in the American West continues today, as its population centers continue to expand into even the most remote areas of the region. Cultural encounters also continue to have an impact on everyday life in the United States, and may prove to be among the most important legacies of the great era of westward expansion.

Suggestions for Teachers

The documents in this set can be used to help students explore westward expansion of the United States and the resulting interactions among the West’s many cultural groups.

Additional Resources