People began moving west in large numbers around 1840.
The U.S. government encouraged people to move west, especially families. The government believed that families would settle land quickly and make it a safe, desirable place to live. With settlers farming the land, establishing towns, and building churches, the West would soon become a prosperous place, and the entire U.S. would benefit.
In 1838 the government founded the Corps of Topographical Engineers. The group would survey western lands and decide what land was best for settlements. It would map the region to give settlers a better idea of what the West looked like. The maps would help people plan their trips westward.
The government helped people settle the West by selling tracts of land to any settler who could afford it. By the 1830s the government was selling 40-acre (16-hectare) lots of land for $1.25 an acre. At that price many families could afford to buy land.
WAGON TRAINS
Between 1840 and 1870, about half a million settlers headed west. Many traveled on the Santa Fe Trail or the Oregon Trail. The 900-mile (1,448-km) Santa Fe Trail began in Missouri and ended in New Mexico territory. The Oregon Trail also started in Missouri and spanned 2,170 miles (3,492 km) to the Pacific Northwest.
It wasn’t easy to move out west. Settlers had to leave friends and family behind, knowing that they might never see them again. Once on the trail, they were forced to rely completely on themselves and their traveling companions. As a result, people who wanted to move west were usually independent and used to hard work. Thirteen-year-old Martha Morrison headed to Oregon with her family in 1844: “We did not know the dangers we were going through. The idea of my Father was to get to the coast; no other place suited him, and he went right ahead until he got there …”2
People traveled west in covered wagons. Oxen were stronger than horses, so they usually pulled the wagons. The covered wagons were not very big—a little larger than an SUV or minivan—and couldn’t hold more than 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms). People could bring only the things they needed for survival. Some people tried to take large pieces of furniture with them when they moved. More often than not, those big pieces of furniture ended up on the side of the trail when their owners decided not to haul them any farther. The settlers quickly learned that when the trails got rough, the extra weight of anything large made traveling much harder.
Some families made the trip alone, but most traveled in groups. Wagon trains usually included 20 to 40 wagons, but some had more than 100. Wagon trains typically traveled between eight and 20 miles (13 and 32 km) each day. If rainy weather turned the trail to mud, they didn’t travel as far. But if the weather was good and everyone in the group was well, they traveled as far as they could. Settlers left Independence, Missouri—called the “jumping-off point” for the Oregon Trail—in May so they could cross the Rocky Mountains before the winter snows closed the passes.
THE DONNER PARTY
Perhaps the most tragic story of the Oregon Trail is that of the Donner Party. The Donner Party was made up of about 200 men, women, and children who left Independence, Missouri, in May 1846 to travel on the Oregon Trail to California.
Bad weather plagued the travelers from the beginning, first with heavy rains and then snow in the mountains. In Wyoming 87 members of the party made a fatal mistake by leaving the Oregon Trail to take what they believed would be a shortcut. By early November the party was trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Starving, some most likely resorted to cannibalism, eating the flesh of their dead companions to survive. Just 47 of the original 87 members of the group lived to reach California.
LIFE AND DEATH ON THE TRAILS
When settlers were done traveling for the day, there were chores to be done before they could rest. They had to find water, care for their animals, set up camp, and prepare meals. They supplemented the food they brought with them with game they hunted or fish caught in streams, lakes, and rivers.
Many settlers worried about the American Indians they might meet along the way. But attacks from Indians were rare. Most deaths on the trail were caused by disease, accidental gunshot wounds, or drowning. When settlers reached rivers, there were no bridges. Figuring out how to cross rivers without drowning or losing everything they owned was a constant challenge.
If the settlers got sick or hurt, there were often no doctors available. Illnesses were common and often transmitted from one group of settlers to another. Many settlers became sick with pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, or smallpox. They often died before reaching their final destination. Graves of men, women, and children dotted the trails.
Cholera was the deadliest disease. The infection of the intestines causes fever, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea. Settlers who came down with cholera often died within days. In the late 1840s a severe outbreak of cholera swept through groups of settlers. Of about 350,000 people who set out on the Oregon Trail between 1840 and 1860, it is estimated that about 20,000 died from disease, never seeing their new homes.
For the settlers, moving onto land where American Indians already lived could be a dangerous proposition. As the settlers came into their territories, the American Indians were forced by the government to move off the land to less desirable places. Conflicts were bound to happen.
American Indians sometimes burned the settlers’ houses, barns, and crops. They stole horses and livestock. Sometimes they killed settlers.
ARMY INVOLVEMENT
As settlers moved west, the U.S. Army moved along with them. The army built a number of forts in the West—some permanent, but many others temporary settlements that were eventually abandoned. At first the army’s purpose in the West was to keep peace among warring American Indian tribes and to keep white settlers from disregarding treaties and taking over Indian lands. As more settlers came west, though, clashes between Indians and settlers increased. The army’s role then became to protect the settlers from Indian attacks.
In the summer of 1854, Mary Perry Frost and her party faced unfriendly Indians in what is now Idaho.
“We had traveled perhaps an hour … Then Indians … came up squarely in front of our train and stopped the teams, but appeared friendly, shaking hands and asking for whiskey; upon being told that we had none they began to talk of trading with the men, and while my father was talking of trading a pistol for a pony, they opened fire on us, shooting my father, my uncle and my father’s teamster.”3
The Homestead Act of 1862 gave, for a $10 filing fee, 160 acres (65 hectares) of land to any settler who was willing to live on the land for five years. The act encouraged thousands of people to move to the Great Plains, the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Small farmers claimed about 80 million acres (32 million hectares) through the act.
