Some of the challenges that settlers had while moving west was they ran out of food a lot easier since they had more people. Wagons broke down and didn’t have anything to fix it. Also, they didn’t know exactly where they were. They would follow the map but most of the time the map was inaccurate. Sometimes Savage Indians would attack and would kill settlers. Then, less people were able to make it to where they wanted to go, or their oxen would die of dehydration because they weren’t near rivers or streams.
There were a lot of reasons people moved west. For example, they would search for gold or silver. They moved to the west to settle because they thought it would be good for them in a lot of ways. They wanted to move west to expand the railroad if they expanded the railroad they can transport supplies to other places, with this in handy they were able to bring stuff they needed to other places such as worthless dessert and farming areas. There was a lot of land they could use such as crops and farming. There were a lot of reasons why they wanted to move west but they were miserable because they were not getting what they were expecting to get.
What is Manifest Destiny? Manifest destiny is where the people believed that god wanted to do this and this is what is meant to be. Since everyone believes this they are going west cause they want to spread their belief with everyone else but the people who they tried telling didn’t care what they have to say.
There were a lot of people who were in it like John Bidwell, John Bailhache, Demas Barnes they all have a story. Like John Bailhache was the 10th mayor for Columbus, Ohio, he resigned on April 21, 1836 to go west, or like John Bidwell was known throughout California as a soldier, farmer, states man, and a pioneer. And last but not least Demas Barnes he was a united states representative and an american politicianTrail of tears is part of the westward expansion. Americans wanted to take the indians land part of this was when they took their land they made them travel to a indian reservation. On the way there, there was a lot of children and elderly people dying because they were getting sick.
Gold was a big part of the westward expansion. Gold had people from all over the place coming to get rich but when they got there they realized that it’s harder to get than what then realized. This made them really upset cause it took them longer to get the gold.
The Oregon Trail helped the people who were moving west to stay on track but the trail was really dangerous and could seriously hurt them in many ways, but on the way there they had a lot of problems that they couldn’t solve. They had to have guides to guide them through the Oregon trail cause the trail was so hard to follow cause the trail would fade and then come back, this would throw the people off track and make them lose where they were going and they would end up somewhere totally different. While trying to cross they rivers there were a lot of drownings cause a lot of people didn’t know how to swim, or they would fall off the wagons. Another big part of the deaths were that people would fall off the wagons and the wagons would run them over and kill them because they wagons are really heavy. People would get killed because of the weather for an example, lightening was a really big part of death cause people would be walking and it would strike them.
Hardships of the westward expansion is that people would commit suicide, they would get bit by snakes and would not have the supplies to save them, another big part is gunpowder explosions. There were at least ten graves per mile because of these causes. Or people would be holding their guns and it would accidently fire and kill people or injure them. When a wagon would tip they would either drown or live but either way they would lose their supplies. If a oxen would die they would have to purchase oxens and then they would lose more money than what they could afford to lose.
