This book, telling the story of westward expansion in the words of the people who lived it, presents seventeen full or excerpted documents that provide a wide range of perspectives on this period in history.

The romantic myth of America's frontier that many people encounter in the media is only part of the story of the nation's expansion in the nineteenth century. This book illustrates the push by European settlers and the federal government ever westward, and its effects on indigenous peoples. Through primary source historical images and the tragic narrative of broken treaties, relocations, and armed conflict, it brings the inspiring resistance and fight...

The Homestead Act was passed in 1862, when states that had seceded from the Union could no longer block it in congress. The act opened land in the west for all Americans, including freed slaves, granting 160 acres to settlers under the condition that they farm it for five years. The result was that 1.6 million claims, covering 420,000 square miles, were granted, making residents of millions of people in the land west of the Mississippi River.