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