Mary Richardson Walker, a young woman from the East with a strong religious faith, wanted to serve God as a missionary to Native Americans.  In April 1838 she and her husband started out from Missouri, bound for Oregon.  After a 129-day trek along the Oregon Trail, they established a mission at Tshimakain near what is now Spokane, Washington, and began their efforts to convert the Nez Perce people to Christianity.  She wrote in her diary of some of her experiences:

“January 21, 1839.  The Indians have covered our house with grass & boughs & chinked it so that we are very comfortable.  August 5, 1839.  I have just been exercising some [Nez Perce] boys in adding numbers.  I never could make white children understand half as quick. ...  December 9, 1847.  We were hoping to have Dr. Whitman to supper with us tonight.  But about sunset, Old Solomon arrived bringing the sad intelligence that Dr. & Mrs.  Whitman ... & others have been murdered by the Indians.  ... I do not see why I should expect to be preserved when more faithful servants are cut off.”

In 1800 only around 387,000 white settlers lived west of the Appalachian Mountains.  By 1820 that number had grown to more than 2.4 million people, and the numbers continued to rise rapidly.  By the time the Civil War began, more Americans lived west of the Appalachians than lived in states along the Atlantic coast.

Some Americans headed west for religious reasons.  Others were lured by the chance to own their own farms.  While most settled east of the Mississippi River, more than 250,000 Americans headed farther west, across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to California and the Pacific Northwest.

In 1845 a magazine editor named John Louis O’Sullivan declared that it was the “manifest destiny” of Americans “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence....” Many Americans believed in this concept of Manifest Destiny—the idea that God had given the continent to Americans and wanted them to settle western land.

Farming the New Lands

Early settlers marked out farms on the rich river bottom land.  Others occupied fertile woodland soil.  These pioneers became known as squatters, because they settled on lands they did not own.  The federal government intended to survey the land and then sell large parcels to real estate companies, but squatters wanted to buy the land they occupied directly from the government.

Bowing to public pressure, Congress passed the Preemption Act of 1830, a renewable law made permanent in 1841.  This law protected squatters by guaranteeing them the right to claim land before it was surveyed and the right to buy up to 160 acres for the government’s minimum price of $1.25 per acre.

Plows and Reapers

A few decades earlier, farmers had only wooden plows to break the grass cover and roots of Midwestern sod.  Jethro Wood patented an iron-bladed plow in 1819, and in 1837, John Deere engineered a plow with sharp-edged steel blades that cut cleanly through the sod.  This reduced by half the labor needed to prepare an acre for farming.

Midwestern agriculture also received a boost from the mechanical reaper, which Cyrus McCormick patented in 1834.  For centuries farmers had cut grain by hand using a sickle or a scythe—time-consuming and exhausting work.  Switching from a sickle to a McCormick reaper pulled by horses or mules, farmers could harvest far more grain with far less effort.

Explain:
How did Congress help squatters attain land in the West?
 

Settling the Pacific Coast

Latecomers to the Midwest set their sights on California and Oregon.  This push to the Pacific Ocean happened partly because emigrants assumed that the treeless expanse of the Great Plains, which lay just beyond the frontier, contained poor land for farming.

Dividing Oregon

Other nations, as well as Native Americans, had already laid claim to parts of Oregon and California.  In the case of Oregon, the United States and Great Britain competed for possession, though they had agreed in 1818 to occupy the land jointly and settle their disputes later.  In the late 1830s, American missionaries began arriving in Oregon, hoping to convert Native Americans.  It was these missionaries who first spread the word about Oregon, persuading many Easterners to come to the lush Willamette Valley.

Populating California

In 1821, after a bloody struggle, Mexico gained its independence from Spain.  The new nation controlled a vast territory, including California, but that territory lay far from the central government in Mexico City.  The local California government often relied on foreign settlers because it could not attract enough emigrants from Mexico.  In 1839, hoping to attract more settlers, Juan Bautista Alvarado, governor of California, granted 50,000 acres (20,250 ha) in the Sacramento Valley to John Sutter, a German immigrant.  There Sutter built a trading post and cattle ranch.  Sutter’s Fort—as it was called—was often the first stopping point for Americans reaching California.  By 1845 more than 200 Americans had settled in California.

GEOGRAPHY
The Trails West

Much of the terrain between the frontier jumping-off points and the Pacific was difficult.  A small number of trailblazers—mountain men like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger—made their living by trapping beaver and selling the furs to traders.  At the same time they gained a thorough knowledge of the territory and the local Native Americans.

By the 1840s the mountain men had carved out several east-to-west passages that played a vital role in western settlement.  The most popular route was the Oregon Trail.  Others included the California Trail and the Santa Fe Trail.

Wagon Train Life

Emigrants made the journey in trains of covered wagons.  Before starting out, the trains assembled at staging areas outside a frontier town.  There, families exchanged information about routes, bought supplies, trained oxen, and practiced steering the cumbersome wagons, which new drivers were apt to tip over.

The first wagon trains hired mountain men to guide them.  Once the trails became well worn, most of the travelers—known as overlanders—found their own way with the help of guidebooks written by earlier emigrants.

Sometimes the guidebooks were wrong, leading to tragedy.  In 1846 a group of 87 overlanders, known as the Donner Party after the two brothers who led them, were trapped by winter snows high up in the Sierra Nevada.  After 41 died of starvation, those still alive faced the choice of death or cannibalism.  Many, in desperation, did resort to cannibalism in order to survive.

The typical trip west took five to six months, the wagon trains progressing about 15 miles (24 km) per day.  Generally, men drove the wagons, hunted game, and bedded down the animals at night, while women looked after the children, cooked their families’ food, cleaned the camp, and laundered the clothes.  As Elizabeth Geer recalls here, the journey west was exhausting and difficult:
 

“I carry my babe and lead, or rather carry, another through snow, mud, and water, almost to my knees.  It is the worst road. ... [T]here was not one dry thread on one of us—not even my babe. ...  I have not told you half we suffered.  I am not adequate to the task.”

Early travelers feared attacks by Native American warriors, but such encounters were rare.  By one estimate 362 emigrants died due to Native American attacks between 1840 and 1860.  The same estimate calculates that emigrants killed 426 Native Americans.  In fact, Native Americans often gave emigrants gifts of food as well as helpful information about routes, edible plants, and sources of water.  They often traded fresh horses for items such as cotton clothing and ammunition.

As the overland traffic increased, Native Americans on the Great Plains became concerned and angry over the threat immigration posed to their way of life.  The Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other groups relied on the buffalo for food, shelter, clothing, tools, and countless other necessities of everyday life.  Now they feared that the increasing flow of American settlers across their hunting grounds would disrupt the age-old wanderings of the buffalo herds.

Hoping to ensure peace, the federal government negotiated the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851.  Eight Native American groups agreed to specific geographic boundaries, while the United States promised that these territories would belong to the Native Americans forever.

Describe:
What were the difficulties facing Western settlers?
 

The Mormon Migration

Unlike those bound for the West Coast in search of land, the Mormons followed a deeply rooted American tradition—the quest for religious freedom.  The Mormons, however, sought that freedom by leaving the United States.

In 1844, after a mob murdered Joseph Smith, the Church’s leader, his successor Brigham Young decided to take his people west to escape further persecution.  Several thousand Mormons forged their way along a path that became known as the Mormon Trail.

Along with the Oregon Trail, it served as a valuable route into the western United States.  In 1847 the Mormons stopped at the Great Salt Lake in what is now Utah.  With the words “This is the place,” Young declared that here the Mormons would build a new settlement.  Undeterred by the wildness of the area, the Mormons staked a claim on the land they called “Deseret.”

Examining
Why did the Mormons emigrate to the West?
 

REVIEW & DO NOW Answer the following questions:
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