The private profit motive dominated the movement westward, but the federal government played a supporting role in securing land.
European immigrants and black freedmen moved to the western portion of America in search of new opportunities, while dispossessed Hispanics struggled to survive in their stolen homeland.
During the late 1800s, many range wars erupted between ranchers over water rights, grazing rights, and property and border disagreements.
Pioneer women took care of child-rearing, fed and clothed the family, managed the housework, and fed the hired hands.
The American Indian Wars were a series of conflicts between American settlers, the U.S. federal government, and the native peoples.
As settlers moved west, Native American tribes were coerced into signing treaties that gave away their land.
The American frontier comprises the geography, history, and culture of the forward wave of American expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early seventeenth century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in 1912.