Stephen Aron Westward Expansion Summary

During the period of the 1800s, American territory expanded to a vast size. A resulting consequence of this was that the Indians, also known as Native Americans, suffered greatly from hostile tensions created during the expansion. By 1790, the United States Government had claimed all Indian territory East of the Mississippi River, and sold the land to settlers. This pushed Native tribes existing on the land westward. There was a unanimous agreement among Americans to start to explore the land West of the Mississippi River after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when the United States purchased approximately 828 million square miles from France. The problem with this for the Natives was that this meant the Americans would be expanding further

This is because many considered the winning of the West a glorious achievement and a major step forward for American society. Early movies and television shows in the 1940s/50s tended to demonize the Native Americans in order to justify the events of Westward expansionism. However, in recent decades most historians have rejected this perspective and stripped the historical event of its romance, instead going on to unearth the casualties and environmental costs of American expansion, particularly in the case of the Native Americans. For example, historian Stephen Aron focuses on the stripping the American West of its myths on issues such as the people involved and the environment in ‘The American West: A Very Short Introduction’. There were several reasons behind the Indians failure to resist American expansion, most significantly their poor economic standing, weak politics, minor socialisation and declining

In the early 1800s, there were 18 million Native Americans living in the United States. They relied heavily upon bison for their food, clothing and a source of food. After the Colonists arrived in the United States, the Natives’ economy became reliant on the goods brought over by the Colonists due to the Colonists hunting the same food source and reducing the availability of bison, and this, therefore, meant once the Colonists turned on the Natives in order to expand their land the Native economy took a dive. Gradual westward expansion caused the breakdown of the Natives’ economy, which was based on trapping fur, hunting game and growing crops such as corn and beans in their fields. The expansion of the Colonists meant that the white farmers moved onto Native American land, and they cleared the lands and altered the game potential of the land, which created an immense threat to the Native economy as it decreased a substantive source of income they had. The Native population majorly declined during the period of American expansionism as a result of losing a vital source of food and being forced into new living conditions that they struggled to adapt to. Also, an agreement known as the ‘Fort Laramie