Westward Expansion and the Pioneer Era

A country that kept growing

In 1800 most Americans lived east of the Mississippi River. By 1890 the United States stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This long period of growth is called westward expansion.

It is a story of courage, hard work and new beginnings. It is also a story of war, broken promises and the loss of homelands. To understand it, you need to look at it from more than one point of view.

The Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France. It stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and roughly doubled the size of the country. France sold land that it claimed, but dozens of Native nations, including the Osage, Lakota, Mandan and many others, already lived there.

Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new land and find a route to the Pacific. Their group, the Corps of Discovery, set out in 1804 and returned in 1806.

Two people besides the captains were especially important:

• Sacagawea, a young Lemhi Shoshone woman, traveled with the expedition with her baby son. She helped with translation and recognized landmarks in her homeland, and her presence showed Native nations that the group was not a war party.
• York, a Black man enslaved by William Clark, did the same hard work as the other men, hunted and helped meet Native nations. After the journey, Clark did not free him for many years.

The expedition also depended on food, guidance and shelter from many Native nations along the way.

Removal from the East

While some Americans looked west, the government pushed Native nations out of the East. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 allowed the president to make agreements forcing nations to trade their eastern homelands for land west of the Mississippi.

The Cherokee fought removal in court and in the newspapers. Even so, in 1838 and 1839 the U.S. Army forced them from their homes. Thousands died on the journey, which the Cherokee call the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw and Seminole nations were also removed. Their descendants live in Oklahoma and elsewhere today.

Life on the Oregon Trail

Starting in the 1840s, thousands of families packed covered wagons, nicknamed prairie schooners, and set out on the Oregon Trail. The journey of around 2,000 miles from Missouri to Oregon took about four to six months.

Most people walked beside their wagons to save the oxen. Children gathered buffalo chips (dried dung) for fires, fetched water and looked after younger brothers and sisters. Families crossed rivers, deserts and mountains. The greatest danger was disease, especially cholera, along with accidents such as wagon wheels and drownings. Many travelers traded with Native people for food, horses and help crossing rivers.

Gold, land and railroads

The Gold Rush

In 1848, gold was found in California, which the United States had just taken from Mexico after the U.S.–Mexican War. By 1849 people were rushing in from across the country and the world. Few got rich. California’s Native population, already harmed by Spanish missions, suffered terrible violence during these years.

The Homestead Act

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who lived on it and farmed it for five years. Hundreds of thousands of families, including immigrants, women who headed households and Black Americans, claimed land this way. But the land given away was land that had been taken from Native nations.

The transcontinental railroad

Also in 1862, Congress approved a railroad to link the East and West. The Central Pacific built east from California, and the Union Pacific built west from Nebraska. Thousands of Chinese workers blasted tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains in dangerous conditions, while many Irish workers laid track across the plains. The two lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869. Trips that once took months could now take about a week.

The bison and the Plains nations

For Plains nations such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa, the bison (often called buffalo) provided food, clothing, shelter and tools, and held deep spiritual meaning. Bison once numbered in the millions. During the 1870s and 1880s, hunters killed them in enormous numbers for hides and sport, and railroads made shipping hides easy. By the late 1880s, very few were left. Losing the bison made it much harder for Plains nations to resist being forced onto reservations. Today, many tribal nations lead efforts to bring bison back.

Many points of view

• Pioneer families often saw the West as a chance to own land and build a better life. Their journeys were hard and sometimes deadly.
• Native nations experienced expansion as an invasion of their homelands. They resisted through diplomacy, treaties, court cases and war, and many treaties were broken by the United States.
• Mexican Americans such as Californios in California and Tejanos in Texas suddenly found themselves living in the United States after 1848. Many lost land in courts despite promises in the treaty.
• Black homesteaders saw the West as a place to escape violence and unfair treatment in the South. Around 1879, thousands of Exodusters moved to Kansas and built towns such as Nicodemus.
• Chinese immigrants worked on railroads, in mines and in towns, but faced discrimination and, later, laws that blocked more Chinese people from coming.

What was “Manifest Destiny”?

In the 1840s, some writers and politicians said it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to spread across the continent. “Manifest” means obvious, and “destiny” means something meant to happen. People used this idea to argue that taking land from Native nations and Mexico was natural and right.

Historians treat Manifest Destiny as a belief people held, not as a fact. Many people at the time, including Native leaders and some Americans who opposed the war with Mexico, disagreed with it.

How to use this page for homework

• Use the timeline to make a cause-and-effect chain, such as Louisiana Purchase → Lewis and Clark → more settlers moving west.
• For a “points of view” assignment, pick two groups from the “Many points of view” section and compare their experiences.
• When writing about Native nations, name the specific nation (for example, Cherokee or Lakota) rather than using a general term.
• Check one primary source from the list below, such as the Homestead Act at the National Archives, and quote a short line in your answer.