While a few bold settlers had moved westward before the middle of the nineteenth century, they were the exception, not the rule. The “great American desert,” as it was called, was considered a vast and empty place, unfit for civilized people.

In the 1840s, however, this idea started to change, as potential settlers began to learn more from promoters and land developers of the economic opportunities that awaited them in the West, and Americans extolled the… Most settlers in this first wave were White Americans of means.

Americanization — the policy aimed at assimilating Native Americans into a middle class, Protestant version of the American way of life through boarding schools for Native American children and…. bonanza farms — large farms owned by speculators who hired laborers to work the land; these large farms allowed their owners to benefit from economies of scale and prosper, but they did nothing…. California Gold Rush — the period between 1848 and 1849 when prospectors found large strikes of gold in California, leading others to rush in and follow suit; this period led to a cycle of boom and…. Fence Cutting War — this armed conflict between cowboys moving cattle along the trail and ranchers who wished to keep the best grazing lands for themselves occurred in Clay County, Texas, between….