Westward Movement

American History before 1877

The Way West

Fur traders lead the way

Explore and map the land

Establish trading posts, guide settlers moving west

Intermarry with Indians & bridge the two societies

Indian removal

Indians caught in impossible situation

Whites continually moving onto their land

Resistance is futile; government & army powerless or hostile

Land exchange: land given up for lands out west

Moving west

By water if possible

By wagon, horse, or foot

Life on the trail

Settling

Squatters

Surveying the land

Auctioning the land to speculators

Selling the land to settlers

Yankees from New England

Best-organized migrants

State-chartered companies

Model of the Puritan township

Long house lots, separate farmland, commons, Congregational Church

Yankee Towns

Quickly establish church, school, often a college

Straight roads; neat frame houses; well-tended fields

Productive and market-minded

Individualism Rises

Land distributed in square blocks

Survey grid ignores natural features

Grid encourages scattered residence on farms

Congregational churches underfunded, undermanned, outcompeted by Baptists and Methodists

Oregon

Jointly administered by U.S. and Britain

British turn settlers southward into Willamette Valley

Americans eye harbor in the Puget Sound (Seattle)

California

First American settlers: mainly New Englanders

California “wasted” by Mexicans; Americans should take it

Two of the best ports on the West Coast

San Francisco

San Diego

Texas

Mexico invites settlement, 1822

Empresarios: given land in exchange for bringing settlers

3 requirements for settlement

Convert to Catholicism

Trade within Mexico

Slavery prohibited

All three widely ignored

Intermittent attempts to halt immigration

Anglos keep coming