Following the American Revolution, Americans swarmed to the West. Kentucky and Tennessee provided the beachhead for the vanguard of land-hungry settlers. After the War of 1812 subsequent waves of pioneers flowed into the Ohio River valley, the Great Lake states, the Gulf Plain, and the Mississippi River valley. Still more moved to Oregon and California in the 1840s and into Kansas by the 1850s. By the Civil War much of the territory between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic, as well as areas along the Pacific coast and in the Southwest, had been settled by the descendants of Europeans.
This mass migration produced a series of economic revolutions. The Trans- Appalachian West contained hundreds of Indian nations, each with their own economies based on the local geography. Even before large numbers of Americans settled the West, the economic structures of the native peoples changed......
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