Timeline: 
American West 1800 to 1900

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Long, Long Ago: This song was written in 1833 by English songwriter and dramatist, Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839). It was not published until ten years later, after Bayly had died. The song first appeared when Rufus Griswold, editor of a Philadelphia magazine, published a collection of Bayly's poems and songs in 1843. Bayly originally named the tune The Long Ago, so it appears Griswold changed the name. It achieved instant popularity and was the most popular song in America in 1843. 
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1800 The secret Treaty of San Ildefonso transfers the Louisiana Territory from Spain back to France, on the condition that France never yield it to an English-speaking government.

1801 President-elect Thomas Jefferson invites Meriwether Lewis, a captain in the First United States Infantry, to become his private secretary. Lewis had volunteered for a transcontinental expedition that Jefferson tried to organize in 1792; now, as President, Jefferson sees an opportunity to launch this expedition, and sees in Lewis someone who could lead it. Over the next two years, he will guide Lewis as he gains the scientific knowledge, technical skills and special equipment he will need for the journey.

1802 Spain closes the port of New Orleans to U.S. cargo, violating the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo. American rights are restored within six months, but Spanish fears of the young nation's expansionist energies remain.

1803 Jefferson asks Congress for an appropriation to send an expedition up the Missouri River and on to the Pacific, in order to discover whether a Northwest Passage or water route across the continent exists and to lay the groundwork for extending American fur trade into the region. None of this territory is part of the United States when Jefferson makes his request in January, but even then he is negotiating secretly through James Monroe to purchase the whole vast region from France.

1803 By April, Napoleon has agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15 million, although the transfer will violate the terms under which he had received the territory from Spain. Congress approves the deal in October. Thus, as Jefferson no doubt foresaw, his proposed expedition will also serve to secure America's hold on its newest possession and to reinforce American claims in the Pacific northwest.

1803 THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION (1803-1806)

Captain Meriwether Lewis leaves Pittsburgh aboard a specially designed keelboat, the Discovery, on the first leg of his transcontinental expedition. At Louisville he is joined by Captain William Clark, an experienced frontier soldier who is the youngest brother of William Rogers Clark, the hero of the Revolutionary War in the West. Together Lewis and Clark proceed up the Mississippi to Wood River, Illinois, opposite the mouth of the Missouri, where they establish a winter camp to make final preparations and train their recruits.

1804 Heading up the Missouri River in May, Lewis and Clark stop to visit Daniel Boone at his home near St. Charles. By October, they have reached the villages of the Mandan in present-day North Dakota, where they establish winter quarters. During their months at what they call Fort Mandan, they receive invaluable information from the Indians about the course of the Missouri and the countryside surrounding it. Here they also add three more to their 30-member Corp of Discovery: a French trader named Toussaint Charbonneau, who will serve as interpreter, his wife, Sacagawea, a Shonone who had been kidnapped and raised by the Hidatsa, and their baby, whom Clark calls Pompey.

1805 In April, Lewis and Clark resume their expedition by canoe, sending the keelboat Discovery back down the Missouri laden with scientific specimens. Within a few weeks, they reach the mouth of the Yellowstone River and in May catch first sight of the Rocky Mountains. In June, they portage around the Great Falls of the Missouri, reaching the upper forks of the Missouri in July. Coming to the navigable limits of the river in mid-August, they set out on foot to cross the continental divide, and here they encounter the Shoshone, whose chief, by an astounding coincidence, Sacagawea recognizes as her brother. With her help, the expedition purchases 30 horses from the Shoshone and begin the difficult trek through the Bitterroot Mountains, where snow and hunger lengthen the trail. Coming down out of the mountains, they are found by the Nez Perce, who permit them to fell trees for five dugout canoes and set them on course down the Clearwater River. Following the Clearwater to the Snake River and thence to the Columbia, Lewis and Clark come in sight of the Pacific on November 7, 1805. Here they establish their winter quarters, named Fort Clatsop for a nearby Indian tribe.

1806 Leaving the Pacific coast in March, Lewis and Clark retrace their path, crossing back over the Bitterroots in July. Here the Corp of Discovery divides into two parties: those led by Lewis venture cross-country to the Great Falls of the Missouri, with an excursion north up the Marias River; those led by Clark explore the Yellowstone River. The two groups are reunited near the mouth of the Yellowstone in August and reach St. Louis on September 23, where they have been presumed lost and receive a hero's welcome. They are accompanied by the Mandan chief, Big White, and his wife, Yellow Corn, who travel with Lewis to meet President Jefferson in Washington, D.C.

1806 Spanish authorities in San Francisco reverse their policy and agree to sell provisions to Russian colonists after the Russians' representative becomes engaged to the daughter of the presidio's commander. 

1806 Captain Richard Sparks and the frontiersman Thomas Freeman are appointed by Jefferson to explore and map the Red River region along the United States' border with Tejas.

1806 Zebulon Pike sets out on an expedition to make peace among the Pawnee in Nebraska and explore the headwaters of the Arkansas River. His mission takes him into Colorado, where on Thanksgiving Day he and his party try unsuccessfully to climb the peak that bears his name.

1807 Crossing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Zebulon Pike comes to the Rio Grande, which he mistakes for the Red River. Here he builds an outpost and is discovered by a Spanish patrol, which takes him first to Santa Fe, then into Mexico, and finally to the Tejas border near Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he re-enters the United States in June. After reporting on Spanish forces and settlements in the Southwest, Pike publishes an account of his expedition which makes him a national celebrity.

1807 John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who remained in the West as a fur trader, explores the Wyoming country and an area he calls "Colter's Hell," which is thought to be the geyser and hot springs country of present-day Yellowstone Park. 

1807 Fur trader Manuel Lisa establishes Fort Raymond, the first trading post in present day Montana, at the mouth of the Bighorn River.

1808 The U.S. government moves Cherokee Indians who had attacked Tennessee settlers across the Mississippi into Arkansas.

1808 John Jacob Astor forms the American Fur Company to compete with the North West Company of Canada in the northern Plains.

1809 Meriwether Lewis, appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory on his return from the West, dies mysteriously and violently in a Natchez tavern on his way back to Washington to answer charges of mismanagement.

1809 Meriwether Lewis, appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory on his return from the West, dies mysteriously and violently in a Natchez tavern on his way back to Washington to answer charges of mismanagement.

1809 By this time there are 25 Russian American colonies strung along the northern Pacific coast as far south as California. 

1810 John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company to expand his trading empire to the Pacific coast.

1810 Kamehameha the Great unifies Hawaii, aided by former British seamen who teach his warriors how to sail heavy vessels and use cannons in island warfare. 

1811 Russian settlers found Fort Ross at Bodega Bay just north of San Francisco. 

1811 Astor's Pacific Fur Company establishes Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. Soon the area is thick with the outposts of rival traders. 

1812 The United States and Great Britain clash in the War of 1812.

1813 John Jacob Astor's Pacific Northwest outpost, Astoria, is sold to the North West Company shortly before it is formally captured by a British warship in the War of 1812. On their overland return to the east, the former Astorians cross the continental divide south of the Wind River Range, discovering the South Pass that will become part of the Oregon Trail. 

1814 The History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark, drawn from the explorers' notebooks by editors Paul Allen and Nicholas Biddle, is published with a preface by Thomas Jefferson.

1814 The United States and Great Britain conclude a treaty ending the War of 1812.

1817 Kamehameha banishes Russian fur traders from Hawaii when they attempt to erect a fort on his territory.

1818 The 49th parallel is agreed upon as the border between the United States and Canada from Lake of the Woods westward to the Rocky Mountains, with joint occupation of the Oregon Territory.

1819 The United States renounces all claims to Tejas in a treaty with Spain that brings Florida under American control.  

1820 jor Stephen Long of the Corps of Engineers leads an expedition across Kansas to the Rocky Mountains, where a member of his party, Dr. Edwin James, scales Pikes Peak. On the map charting his explorations and published in 1823, Long labels the area east of the Rockies "The Great American Desert," a characterization that will steer settlers away from the region for decades to come.

1820 The Missouri Compromise brings Missouri and Maine into the union and slavery to the American West.

1820 By this time more than 20,000 Indians live in virtual slavery on the California missions.

1821 Mexico issues a land grant to the American Moses Austin for a settlement of 300 families in Tejas, in the hope that responsible Americans given a stake in the province will help deter unsavory American squatters crowding over the border from Louisiana.

1821 Czar Alexander closes Alaskan waters to foreign vessels and extends the territory of the Russian American Company to the 51st parallel, into an area claimed by both the British and the United States.

1821 Mexicans rebel against Spanish rule, winning independence.

1821 William Becknell leads a trading expedition from Franklin, Missouri, into the southern Rockies, where they encounter a Mexican patrol. Informed that Mexico is now an independent republic and that restrictions against foreign traders have been relaxed, Becknell turns south to Santa Fe, where he finds a ready market for his goods. Over the next several years he repeats the trip, blazing a new path along the Cimmaron and Canadian Rivers that becomes part of the Santa Fe Trail.

1822 William Henry Ashley and his partner Andrew Henry, Missouri businessmen, advertise for "enterprising young men" to join a fur trading expedition to the upper Missouri. The young Jedediah Smith and the legendary riverman Mike Fink are among those who answer the call. The group establishes an outpost, Fort Henry (later Fort Union), near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, but meets resistance from the local Arikara Indians who want to maintain their lucrative role as middlemen in the Missouri river trade.

1822 President Monroe warns of armed reprisals if Russians attempt to establish a physical presence on lands claimed by the United States in the Pacific northwest.

1823 Stephen Austin establishes the first American settlement in Tejas on land originally granted to his father along the San Antonio River. By the terms of this grant, all 300 families in the new colony are to become Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics.

1823 Stephen Long leads an expedition up the Red River of the North and along the 49th parallel, marking a point north of Pembina, North Dakota, as the official border between Canada and the United States. 

1823 Joseph Smith, living near Manchester, New York, begins his study of the golden-plated book revealed to him by the angel Moroni. 

1823 President James Monroe proclaims the "Monroe Doctrine" against European intervention in the Americas.

1824 The Bureau of Indian Affairs is established within the War Department, with a primary duty to regulate and settle disputes arising from trade with Indian tribes. 

1824 The U.S. army establishes outposts in present-day Oklahoma, at Fort Towson on the Red River and at Fort Gibson on the Arkansas River, in preparation for the removal of the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes from the Southeast to the newly designated Indian Territory. 

1824 Russia agrees to set its southern border in the Pacific northwest at 54 degrees, 40 minutes, and to allow American vessels within the 100-mile limit it had set around its territories in the Pacific. 

1824 THE MOUNTAIN MEN (1824-1840)

Frustrated in their attempt to establish a trading post on the upper Missouri River, William Ashley and Andrew Henry revolutionize the previously river-based fur trade by sending small bands of trappers -- called brigades -- into the mountains on horseback. One of their first brigades, led by Jedediah Smith, rediscovers the South Pass in western Wyoming, where refugees from Astoria had crossed the divide a decade before, and beyond it the fur-rich Green River valley. Before year's end, Ashley himself leads a larger expedition to join Smith in the region.

1824 Jim Bridger, a young scout for the Ashley expedition, ranges beyond the Green River valley and down into Utah, where he becomes perhaps the first white to see the Great Salt Lake. "Hell, we are on the shores of the Pacific," he is reported to have said after tasting the waters.

1825 Ashley completes his revolution of the fur trade when he divides his expedition into small groups, each to trap and explore independently through the spring and then meet at Henry's Fork on the Green River in late summer. This meeting becomes the first rendezvous, attracting not only the trappers in Ashley's company but free-trappers and Indians as well. For the next 15 years, the annual rendezvous replaces the trading post in the Rocky Mountain fur trade, as free-trappers -- soon to be known as mountain men -- displace the trading company agent as the engines of commerce on the frontier.

1825 The federal government adopts a policy of exchanging Indian lands in the east for public land in the west, where the tribes can live beyond state jurisdiction and organize their own forms of government.

1826 Jedediah Smith, in search of new trapping grounds, leads the first party of Americans overland to California. Setting out from the Great Salt Lake basin, Smith's expedition travels along the Colorado, over the southern Rockies and across the Mojave Desert to Mission San Gabriel, then north through the San Joaquin valley, where they attempt to cross back over the mountains along the American River. Leaving most of his party in California, Smith and two others eventually find a way through the Sierras and cross the parched Great Basin to reach the rendezvous of 1827. 

1827 Dr. John McLoughlin, director of the Hudson's Bay Company, builds the first lumber mill in the Pacific northwest at Fort Vancouver, intending to sell lumber in California. 

1828 The Senate ratifies a treaty setting the Sabine River as the border between Mexico and the United States. 

1828 Rejoining his expedition in California, Jedediah Smith leads the way north into Oregon, where only Smith and three others escape an Indian massacre on the Umpqua River. The survivors flee to the Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Fort Vancouver.

1828 The Cherokees of Arkansas agree to give up their land and settle in the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.

1829 Mexico refuses an American offer to buy Tejas for $5 million.

1830 Congress passes a Pre-emption Act which grants settlers the right to purchase at $1.25 per acre 160 acres of public land which they have cultivated for at least 12 months, thereby offering "squatters" some protection against speculators who purchase lands they have already improved.

1830 Jedediah Smith and William Sublette, now partners in the successor to William Ashley's trading company, lead the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains at South Pass and on to the Upper Wind River. The 500-mile journey through Indian country takes about six weeks, proving that even heavily loaded wagons and livestock -- the prerequisites for settlement -- can travel overland to the Pacific.

1830 Joseph Smith publishes the Book of Mormon and establishes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

1830 The Indian Removal Act, passed with strong support from President Andrew Jackson, authorizes the federal government to negotiate treaties with eastern tribes exchanging their lands for land in the West. All costs of migration and financial aid to assist resettlement are provided by the government. Jackson forces through a treaty for removal of the Choctaw from Mississippi within the year.

1830 Alarmed at the growing number of Americans in Tejas, Mexico imposes sharp limits on further immigration. 

1831 Joseph Smith, suffering persecution in his native New York, leads his followers to Kirtland, Ohio, where they can build a new Zion.

The Nez Percé send a delegation to St. Louis requesting white teachers for their people, sparking a missionary movement to the Northwest.

1831 In Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, a dispute over Georgia's attempt to extend its jurisdiction over Cherokee territory, Chief Justice John Marshall denies Indians the right to court protection because they are not subject to the laws of the Constitution. He describes Indian tribes as "domestic dependent nations," saying that each is "a distinct political entity...capable of managing its own affairs."

1832 In Worcester v. State of Georgia, the Supreme Court rules that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over Indian territories. The case concerns a missionary living among the Cherokees, Samuel A. Worcester, who was jailed for refusing to comply with a Georgia law requiring all whites residing on Indian land to swear an oath of allegiance to the state. In ruling against Georgia's actions, Chief Justice John Marshall writes that Indian tribes must be treated "as nations" by the national government and that state laws "can have no force" on their territories. Defying the court, Georgia keeps Worcester in jail, and President Andrew Jackson, when asked to correct the situation, says, "The Chief Justice has made his ruling; now let him enforce it."

1832 George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri, traveling more than 2,000 miles with trappers from the American Fur Company to their outpost at Fort Union, painting hundreds of portraits of Indians and Indian life along the way.

1833 At the San Felipe Convention, held in San Felipe de Austin, American settlers led by Stephen Austin vote to make Tejas a Mexican state, rather than a dependent territory, and draft a state constitution based on that of the United States. Austin himself carries the proposal to Mexico City, where President Santa Anna agrees to repeal the 1830 law limiting American immigration but refuses to grant statehood.

1833 Samuel Colt develops his revolver.

1833 The German naturalist, Prince Maximillian, and the Swiss painter, Karl Bodmer, travel up the Missouri in Catlin's footsteps, to observe and record Indian life.

1833 The Choctaw complete their forced removal to the West under army guard.

1834 Congress restructures the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the Department of Indian Affairs, expanding the agency's responsibilities to include both regulating trade with the tribes, as before, and administering the Indian lands of the West.

1834 William Sublette and Robert Campbell establish Fort Laramie on the North Platte River in Wyoming, the first permanent trading post in the region and soon to be an important stopping point for pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail.

1835 The Florida Seminoles reject forced removal to the West and begin a seven-year war of resistance under Chief Osceola.

1835 The Cherokee finally sign a treaty of removal, giving up their lands in Georgia for territory in present-day Oklahoma.

1835 THE TEXAS WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE (1835-1836)

Mexican President Santa Anna proclaims himself dictator and attempts to disarm the Americans in Tejas, sending troops to reclaim a cannon that had been given to the settlers for protection against Indian attacks. When the Americans resist at an engagement near Gonzales on the Guadalupe River, the Texas War for Independence begins.

1835 At a Consultation held in San Felipe de Austin, members of Stephen Austin's American colony issue a "Declaration of the People of Texas," proclaiming their independence of Santa Anna's government on the grounds that he has violated the Mexican constitution by proclaiming himself dictator.

1835 Mexican troops sent to put down the Texas rebellion are defeated at San Antonio by a tejano force led by Juan Seguin and sent home in humiliation after promising an end to the hostilities.

1836 Meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texans vote a Declaration of Independence, appoint an interim government and elect Sam Houston, former governor of Tennessee, commander-in-chief of the army. Houston orders his troops to withdraw from the fortress-like Alamo in San Antonio and the fortified town of Goliad, convinced that he can defeat Santa Anna's superior numbers only by drawing his army into a chase. The headstrong defenders of the Alamo and Goliad ignore Houston's commands.

1836 Santa Anna leads a force of 5,000 troops into San Antonio to put down the Texas rebellion. On March 6, in a brutal show of force, the Mexicans overwhelm 187 Texans at the Alamo. Colonels William B. Travis, James Bowie and Davie Crockett perish in the massacre, which costs as many as 1,600 Mexican lives. A few weeks later, to the south, some 300 Texans, commanded by James W. Fannin, are defeated and captured near Goliad. Continuing his brutal policies, Santa Anna orders them all executed.

1836 Setting out in pursuit of Houston's army, Santa Anna crosses the Brazos in hopes of capturing the newly formed Texas government at Harrisburg, where it has been urging Houston to stand and fight. When the government eludes him, Santa Anna turns back to intercept Houston's forces along the San Jacinto River. But Houston, aware of his enemy's movements, launches a surprise attack along the San Jacinto in which the Mexicans are routed and Santa Anna taken captive. Negotiating from a field cot with a bullet-shattered leg, Houston secures Santa Anna's agreement to withdraw all his forces from Texas and to recognize Texan independence.

1836 On his return to Mexico, Santa Anna is driven into retirement and his agreement to recognize Texas independence is denounced. For the next ten years, Mexican troops and Texans continue to war against one another in a series of intermittent clashes along the border.

1836 In the fall, Sam Houston is elected the first President of the Republic of Texas, outpolling Stephen Austin 4-to-1, and Texans vote to seek annexation by the United States.

1836 Responding to the 1831 Nez Perce request for teachers, the Whitman party -- Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, accompanied by Narcissa's former suitor, Rev. H. H. Spalding, and his wife, Eliza -- travel what will soon be known as the Oregon Trail to arrive at the junction of the Columbia and Snake Rivers, where they establish a mission to bring Christianity to the Indians of the northwest. Narcissa and Eliza are the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains, and their group is perhaps the first party of settlers to travel overland to the West.

1837 Congress refuses to annex Texas, bowing to abolitionist opponents who call it a "slavocracy." But President Andrew Jackson recognizes the Republic of Texas on his last day in office.

1838 Mormon founder Joseph Smith leads his persecuted followers to Missouri, to settle at a site he calls the Garden of Eden, but local opponents force the settlers to flee into Illinois where they establish Nauvoo.

1838 General Winfield Scott oversees the forced removal of the Cherokee from Georgia to the Indian Territory of the West along the "Trail of Tears."

1840 The last rendezvous on the Green River marks the end of the mountain trapping era, as fashion changes in Europe and steady declines in the beaver population make the fur trade barely profitable.

1840 In its continuing hostilities with Mexico, Texas allies itself with Mexican rebels in the southern state of Yucatan, sending a small navy to blockade Mexican ports. Texans also lend support to anti-government forces in Mexico's northern states, providing a target for Mexican nationalists who hope to unify their strife-torn country by stirring up hatred of a common enemy.

1841 John Sutter buys Fort Ross north of San Francisco, ending Russia's thirty-year presence in California. Sutter dismantles the settlement and carries it to his newly established Fort Sutter at the junction of the Sacramento and American Rivers.

1841 John Bidwell organizes the Western Emigration Society and leads the first wagon train of pioneers across the Rockies, a party of 69 adults and children who divide into two groups after crossing South Pass. One group heads north into Oregon, while the other, led by Bidwell, continues west to California, suffering desperate hardship and near starvation before arriving in Sacramento, where Bidwell finds work with John Sutter.

1842 Lieutenant John C. Fremont of the Army Topographical Corps leads a scientific expedition into the Rocky Mountains, guided by the mountain man Kit Carson. Crossing into the mountains at South Pass, Fremont explores the Wind River Mountain region, pausing to plant a specially prepared flag on a high peak which he names for himself. On his return, Fremont's account of the expedition and expert maps are ordered published by Congress.

1842 Francisco Lopez discovers gold dust in the roots of an onion he dug up for lunch, touching off a local gold rush to San Feliciano Canyon near Los Angeles, but news of the discovery is largely ignored elsewhere.

1842 Responding to years of harassment along the Texas border, Mexican troops strike San Antonio, killing many of the town's defenders and carrying off many others as prisoners. This action, called "Dawson's Massacre," leads to the removal of the Texas capital from Austin to Washington-on-the-Brazos, and to a retaliatory attack on Santa Fe.

1843 THE OREGON TRAIL

Seasoned mountain men Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez establish Fort Bridger on the Green River to re-supply migrants traveling the Oregon Trail. Theirs is perhaps the first mountain outpost not designed as a trading post for trappers.

The Great Migration, a party of one thousand pioneers, heads west from Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail, guided by Dr. Marcus Whitman, who is returning to his mission on the Columbia River. Forming a train of more than one hundred wagons, and trailing a herd of 5,000 cattle, the pioneers travel along the south bank of the Platte, then cross north to Fort Laramie in Wyoming. Here they follow the North Platte to the Sweetwater, which leads up into South Pass. Once through the pass, they cross the Green River Valley to newly established Fort Bridger, then turn north to Fort Hall on the Snake River, which leads them to Whitman's Mission. Once in Oregon, they strike out along the Columbia for the fertile lands of the Willamette Valley, the endpoint to a journey of 2,000 miles. After the mass exodus of 1843, the migration to Oregon becomes an annual event, with thousands more making the trek every year.

1843 Joseph Smith records his revelation that plural marriage should be a practice of the Mormon church.

1843 Restored to power in Mexico, President Santa Anna warns that American annexation of Texas will be considered an act of war.

1843 Guided by Kit Carson, John C. Fremont launches a more ambitious expedition into the West, traveling from the Great Salt Lake north into Oregon, then across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California, and finally eastward across what Fremont calls the "Great Basin" and over the Wasatch Mountains to the Arkansas River in Colorado. Fremont's report, published in 1844, again by Congressional order, becomes a best-seller, and his map of the West becomes a travel guide to pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

1844 John C. Calhoun negotiates an annexation treaty between Texas and the United States, but abolitionists block its ratification by the Senate.

1844 Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, are killed by a mob at Carthage, Illinois. Brigham Young becomes the new head of the church.

James K. Polk is elected President with the slogan "54-40 or Fight" -- a promise to set the disputed northern border of the Oregon Territory at 54 degrees, 40 minutes by diplomacy or war, and an implicit promise to expand American territories in every direction.

1845 John L. Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, criticizes American temerity toward Mexico and argues that it is "our Manifest Destiny...to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

1845 TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR

Outgoing President John Tyler signs a congressional joint resolution to annex Texas and make it part of the union. In response, Mexico severs diplomatic relations with the United States. When Texas accepts annexation, newly-elected President James K. Polk sends a force under General Zachary Taylor to the Mexican border.

At the same time, Polk sends a representative to Mexico City to offer financial compensation for the loss of Texas and to explore whether Mexico will sell the territories of California and New Mexico for a combined $40 million. Insulted, the Mexicans reject the American proposals and prepare for war. Texas enters the Union at year's end.

1846 In March, American forces under Zachary Taylor cross the Nueces River, which Mexico regards as the Texas border, and take up positions along the Rio Grande, which is the border Texans claim. In response to this provocation, a brigade of 1,600 Mexicans crosses the river in late April, where they overwhelm an American cavalry patrol and then wait for the main body of the Mexican army to press the attack. When word of this encounter reaches Washington, President Polk takes the opportunity to declare war on Mexico.

By early May, nearly 4,000 Mexican soldiers have converged on Palo Alto, where they surprise Taylor's 3,000 troops on an open field. Bringing his light field artillery to the front, Taylor turns back the Mexican charge, forcing a retreat. The battle is an early example of the carnage to come when industrial age weaponry confronts traditional battlefield tactics. Over the next two years, more than 13,000 Americans die in the Mexican War, which prepares a generation of military leaders for the Civil War.

1846 Britain and the United States reach a compromise in the Pacific Northwest, setting the Oregon Territory's northern border at the 49th parallel.

1846 CALIFORNIA AND THE MEXICAN WAR

In March, John C. Fremont, on his third expedition through the West, raises the American flag over California at an improvised fort near Monterey, but he soon abandons his impetuous efforts and turns toward Oregon. On the way, however, he receives word of the impending Mexican War and returns to California to play a part in its conquest.

In June, Fremont joins forces with a group of Americans who capture Mariano Vallejo, the amicable commandante of the Sonora region, and proclaim California an independent republic. But their "Bear Flag Revolt," named for its distinctive banner, comes to an end in July, when American naval forces arrive in Monterey and take control of the port without firing a shot.

Over the following months, American troops under Commodore Robert F. Stockton, aided by Fremont's so-called California Battalion, capture San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles without bloodshed. In Los Angeles, however, the American occupation force stirs up violent resentment, and by October they are driven out by a guerrila force led by Anrés Pico, brother of the departed California governor.

Stockton's first attempt to regain control of Los Angeles is repulsed, and while he regroups, an American force arrives from New Mexico, commanded by General Stephen Kearny. Attacked by Pico's insurgents at San Pascual, Kearny's troops suffer heavy losses, but with Stockton's aid they reach safety in San Diego. Early the next year, Stockton, Kearny and Fremont combine forces to recapture Los Angeles, with Fremont accepting the insurgents' surrender in the Capitulation of Cahuenga on January 13.

1846 Driven from Nauvoo by violent mobs, the Mormons head west under the leadership of Brigham Young, travelling with the organization of a military campaign. They establish Winter Quarters near present-day Omaha, Nebraska, but despite their preparations, suffer near starvation and a cholera epidemic that claims 600 lives. At Winter Quarters Brigham Young assembles a "Mormon Battalion" of 500 volunteers to fight in the Mexican War, though by the time they reach California early in 1847, the conquest there is complete.

1846 The Donner Party, trapped by heavy snows when it attempts to follow the "Hastings Cutoff" through the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California, is driven to cannibalism as it attempts to survive the winter.

1847 John C. Fremont is appointed governor of California by Commodore Stockton, but he is soon arrested by General Kearny, who is under orders to act as governor of the province himself. Kearny ships Fremont back to Washington, where he is convicted of disobeying orders and dismissed from the Army.

1847 Brigham Young leads an advance party along the Mormon Trail into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, where they arrive on July 23 to begin creating a secure refuge for their church. Before the day is over, these first settlers begin digging irrigation ditches and planting crops. And even before the thousands following behind them arrive, Brigham Young begins laying out the streets of Salt Lake City.

1847 Cayuse warriors massacre Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife, Narcissa, and twelve others at Waiilatpu, their mission on the Columbia River in reprisal for deaths caused by a measles epidemic among their tribe.

1848 THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

 On January 24, James Marshall, a veteran of the Bear Flag Revolt, discovers gold on the American River at Coloma while building a lumber mill for John Sutter. A brief report of the discovery appears in a San Francisco newspaper in mid-March, where it goes mostly unnoticed.

In May, Sam Brannan, a Mormon elder who owns a store near Sutter's Fort, arrives in San Francisco with a bottle of gold dust and a plan to draw potential customers for his supplies. Walking through the streets with the gold dust in his hand, he shouts, "Gold! Gold from the American River!" Brannan's publicity stunt sets off a gold rush that will draw fortune-hunters from around the world.

1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the Mexican War, giving the United States Texas, California, New Mexico and other territories in the southwest.

1848 A huge flock of sea gulls arrives providentially in the Salt Lake Valley to devour a swarm of crickets that had threatened to destroy the Mormons' crops.

1848 In December, PresidentJames K. Polk confirms the discovery of gold in California, sparking a nationwide stampede to the West.

1849 Forty-niners heading for California's gold fields expand the network of trails across the continent, as wagon trains stretch across the plains and struggle through the mountains as far as the eye can see. Forty-niners also come west by ship, sailing around Cape Horn or crossing by canoe and donkey train through the jungles of Panama.

1849 Forty-niners pioneer the boomtown life that will follow miners throughout the West, a life of desperately hard work hardened by gambling, drinking, violence and vigilante justice. "Pretty Juanita," convicted of murder after stabbing a man who had tried to rape her, becomes the first person hanged in the California mining camps. She gives a laugh and a salute as the rope pulls tight.

1849 By year's end, more than 80,000 fortune-seekers have made their way to California from every corner of the world, nearly tripling the territory's population.

1849 Alarmed at the sudden incursion of "Gentiles" drawn west in search of gold, Brigham Young organizes the Perpetual Emigrating Company to help Mormon converts in England and Europe make the trip to Utah and so increase the Mormon population there.

1850 Five Cayuse Indians, among them Tiloukaikt, the tribe's chief, are hanged in Oregon City for the Whitman massacre. All five had turned themselves in to spare their people from persecution. "Did not your missionaries teach us that Christ died to save his people?" Tiloukaikt said on his way to the gallows. "So we die to save our people."

1850 California enters the Union.

With miners flooding the hillsides and devastating the land, California's Indians find themselves deprived of their traditional food sources and forced by hunger to raid the mining towns and other white settlements. Miners retaliate by hunting Indians down and brutally abusing them. The California legislature responds to the situation with an Indenture Act which establishes a form of legal slavery for the native peoples of the state by allowing whites to declare them vagrant and auction off their services for up to four months. The law also permits whites to indenture Indian children, with the permission of a parent or friend, and leads to widespread kidnapping of Indian children, who are then sold as "apprentices."

1850 Complaints by Americans that miners from Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia and other parts of the world are taking gold that "belongs to the people of the United States" prompt the California legislature to enact a Foreign Miners' Tax which requires all miners who are not native or naturalized citizens of the United States to obtain a license at the staggering cost of $20 per month. In the diggings, foreign miners stage protest demonstrations which quickly lead to violence, and within a year the tax is repealed, only to be reinstituted in 1852 at the eventual rate of $4 per month.

1850 Levi Strauss begins manufacturing heavyweight trousers for gold miners, made of the twilled cotton cloth known as "genes" in France. Strauss had intended to make tents, but finding no market, made a fortune in pants instead.

1851 The United States and representatives of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara, Assiniboin, Mandan, Gros Ventre and other tribes sign the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, intended to insure peace on the plains. The treaty comes as increasing numbers of whites -- gold seekers, settlers and traders -- make the trek westward, and as Native Americans react to this invasion by attacking wagon trains and, more often, warring against one another for territorial advantage.

The treaty divides the plains into separate tracts assigned to each tribe, who agree to remain on their own land, to cease their attacks on each other and on white migrants and to recognize the right of the United States to establish roads and military outposts within their territories. In return, the United States pledges that each tribe will retain possession of its assigned lands forever, that they will be protected by U.S. troops from white intruders and that they will each receive $50,000 in supplies and provisions annually for the next fifty years. Both sides agree to settle any future disputes, whether between tribes or between Indians and whites, through restitution.

Unfortunately, the chiefs who sign the Fort Laramie Treaty do not have the authority over their tribes that the United States negotiators assume, and the negotiators themselves cannot deliver the protections and fair treatment they promise.

1851 James Savage becomes the first white man to enter Yosemite Valley while pursuing a band of Indians who had raided several trading posts in the region.

1851 Federal commissioners attempting to halt the brutal treatment of Indians in California negotiate eighteen treaties with various tribes and village groups, promising them 8.5 million acres of reservation lands. California politicians succeed in having the treaties secretly rejected by Congress in 1852, leaving the native peoples of the state homeless within a hostile white society.

1851 John L. Soule, in an editorial in the Terre Haute Express, advises: "Go West, young man, go West." But New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley gets credit for the line.

1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, galvanizes public opinion against slavery and stiffens its defenders in the South.

By year's end, more than 20,000 Chinese immigrants have come to America, all but 17 arriving at San Francisco to join in the search for gold. Most are part of a Cantonese emigrant labor pool that has worked throughout South Asia for generations, and they view California as but another place to practice their itinerant trade. In most cases, they arrive indebted to Chinese merchants who have paid for their passage, and this network of debt, reinforced by village and kinship loyalties, makes the immigrant Chinese community highly organized and, at the same time, keeps it insulated from mainstream American society. Thus, even in the remotest mining camp, the Chinese live within a system of obligations that links back to their home.

1853 Willamette University in Oregon becomes the first university west of the Rockies.

1853 Kong Chow Temple is established in San Francisco, the first Buddhist temple in the United States.

1853 Domingo Ghirardelli begins selling rich chocolates to rich San Franciscans, establishing a confectionary that will become a landmark of the city's skyline.

1853 California begins confining its remaining Indian population on harsh military reservations, but the combination of legal enslavement and near genocide has already made California the site of the worst slaughter of Native Americans in United States history. As many as 150,000 Indians lived in the state before 1849; by 1870, fewer than 30,000 will remain.

1853 San Francisco's newspaper, the Alta California, criticizes the emergence of Chinatown, a concentration of about 25,000 Chinese immigrants along Dupont Street [now Grant Avenue] in the heart of the city: "They seem to have driven out everything and everybody else." In the gold fields, anti-Chinese prejudice leads to a ruling that Chinese miners can only work claims that white miners have abandoned as worthless. Still they manage, through persistence and organization, to recover enough gold to stir fresh resentment against them.

1853 Mexico agrees to the Gadsden Purchase, selling a strip of land running along Mexico's northern border between Texas and California for $10 million. Intended as the route for a railroad connecting the Mississippi to the Pacific, the territory goes undeveloped when the approach of the Civil War causes the project to be put aside.

1854 British Baronet Sir George Gore organizes a 6,000-mile buffalo hunting expedition on the Great Plains, leaving Fort Leavenworth for a three-year adventure. By this time, the increasing presence of travelers on the plains has divided the buffalo into a northern and southern herd, where once they roamed freely from Kansas into the Dakotas. Gore's expedition represents a more direct threat to the herd, and to the Indian peoples for whom the buffalo defines a way of life.

1854 Conquering Bear, the Lakota chief who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, is killed when troops from Fort Laramie storm into his encampment to arrest a warrior who had shot a Mormon calf. Meeting resistance, the troops open fire. All but one of the troopers is killed in the Lakota counterattack, and in retaliation the army sends a force against the band which kills 86 and carries off 70 women and children. Though Conquering Bear had offered to make restitution for the calf, as the treaty required, the incident instead proves to the Lakota that Americans cannot be trusted to keep their word.

1854 After much bitter debate, Congress approves the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing these two territories to choose between slavery and free soil.

1854 The Republican Party, born out of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, declares its opposition to slavery and privilege, and its support for new railroads, free homesteads and the opening of Western lands by free labor.

1855 A pro-slavery legislature is elected in Kansas when 6,300 ballots are cast in a region with only 3,000 voters. Intimidation and ballot-box stuffing by "border ruffians" from neighboring Missouri account for the result. Later in the year, free-soil supporters hold a convention at Topeka, where they declare the pro-slavery legislature illegal and draft a constitution calling for the territory's admission to the union as a free state.

1855 Abolitionists in New England and other parts of the North form Emigrant Aid Societies to send anti-slavery activists into Kansas, where they can vote to keep it free. In Georgia and Alabama similar societies send in settlers who will vote in defense of slavery.

1856 Stirred by the impunity of the pro-slavery forces in Kansas, John Brown, a militant abolitionist, leads his sons in a night raid on pro-slavery settlers living along Pottawatomie Creek. Five men are dragged from their cabins and massacred. In reaction, pro-slavery forces rampage through Lawrence, Kansas, a free-soil stronghold, killing one man. Daniel Woodson, the territory's recently appointed pro-slavery governor, declares Kansas in a state of open insurrection, as a force of 300 pro-slavery men attacks Brown at Osawatomie, where he and forty supporters drive them off. Later in the year, Brown leaves Kansas to continue his war against slavery in the east.

1856 John C. Fremont becomes the first Republican candidate for the Presidency, pledging to eradicate the "twin relics of barbarism," polygamy and slavery. He wins 11 states in the election, but loses to James Buchanan.

1857 Responding to complaints by federal officials in Utah and national outrage over the Mormon practice of plural marriage, President James Buchanan sends U. S. troops to impose federal law in Utah. To the Mormons, this appears the onset of another persecution, which Brigham Young is determined to resist. Rather than engage in battle, however, he attacks the federal troops' supply lines, burning Fort Bridger, destroying supply trains and setting fire to the plains to deprive the advancing army of forage for its horses. At the same time, he readies a plan to evacuate and destroy Salt Lake City, should the federal troops get through.

1857 In this atmosphere, a wagon train of non-Mormon settlers moving through southern Utah on their way to California falls victim to Mormon fears. Paiutes besiege the settlers at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah and call on local Mormons to help destroy them, or face attack from the Indians themselves. Perceiving the settlers as part of the general threat to their community, the Mormons, led by John D. Lee, lure them from their wagon train and, with Paiute help, murder all but a few of the children. Whether Brigham Young approved this Mountain Meadows Massacre is unclear, but once aware of it, he does nothing to help federal authorities find the murderers.

1857 In Kansas, pro-slavery forces meeting at Lecompton draft a constitution making the territory a slave state. They submit to local voters only the question whether they approve a "constitution with slavery." Free-soil supporters boycott this election, and the "constitution with slavery" is submitted to Congress. But the free-soilers convince the territory's acting governor to convene a special session of the legislature, which calls for a second vote on the Lecompton constitution itself. In this referendum, Kansans reject the pro-slavery constitution by an overwhelming margin.

1858 Political supporters secure a federal pardon for the Mormon's alleged violations of federal law, and two weeks later federal troops move through a nearly deserted Salt Lake City to establish an outpost forty miles away, bringing the "Mormon War" to a close.

1858 President Buchanan, under pressure from the South, urges Congress to admit Kansas to the union under the Lecompton constitution. Instead the House calls for yet another vote. Kansans again reject the pro-slavery constitution by nearly ten-to-one.

1858 The first non-stop stage coach from St. Louis arrives in Los Angeles, completing the 2,600 mile trip across the Southwest in 20 days.

1859 Gold is discovered in Boulder Canyon, Colorado, sparking the Pikes Peak gold rush which brings an estimated 100,000 fortune-hunters to the Rockies under the banner "Pikes Peak or Bust."

1859 Oregon enters the union as a free state.

1859 Silver is discovered at the Comstock Lode in Nevada, turning nearby Virginia City into a boom town.

1859 Free-soil and pro-slavery forces meet in convention at Wyandotte, Kansas, drafting a constituion that will make the territory a free state. Voters approve the new constitution, but Southerners in Congress delay its acceptance.

1859 Juan Cortina, member of a prominent Mexican family living near Brownsville on the Rio Grande border, leads an uprising against the mistreatment of Mexicans by Texans. He and his supporters occupy Brownsville and proclaim the Republic of the Rio Grande with the shout, "Death to the gringos!," but they leave the city unharmed. Cortina defeats a force of Texas Rangers and local authorities, but when they are reinforced by army troops, he retreats into Mexico where he continues his guerilla war against Anglo injustice for another ten years.

1859 John Brown is hanged for his attempt to incite a slave uprising at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

1859 During this decade, a tidal wave of 2.5 million immigrants enter the United States, including 66,000 Chinese.

1860 A Homestead Bill, providing federal land grants to Western settlers, is vetoed by President Buchanan under pressure from the South. The veto divides Buchanan's Democratic party, clearing the way for Abraham Lincoln's election in a three-way race.

1860 The Pony Express completes its inaugural delivery, bringing mail over the 1,966 miles from St. Louis to Sacramento in 11 days. Organized by William H. Russell and Alexander Majors, the service depends on a string of 119 stations, about 12 miles apart, where the young riders -- "skinny, expert . . . willing to risk death daily" -- exchange horses to keep advancing at top speed.

1860 Severe drought leads to an exodus of 30,000 settlers from Kansas.

1860 Lincoln is elected President, pledging to pass homestead legislation and to oppose the spread of slavery. His victory provokes South Carolina to secede. 

1861 Kansas enters the Union as a free state.

1861 Colorado and Nevada Territories are organized as Congress begins to consolidate federal control over the West, establishing strong local governments loyal to the Union across the region.

1861 Texas joins the Confederacy, forcing its legendary Unionist governor, Sam Houston, out of office.

1861 Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, unleashing the Civil War.

1861 California declares for the Union when news of the Civil War reaches the far West more than a month after the attack on Fort Sumter.

1861 Crews working to complete a coast-to-coast telegraph line meet at Fort Bridger in Utah Territory. The first transcontinental telegram, transmitted from Sacramento to Washington, carries a message from the state's Chief Justice to President Lincoln. Completion of a transcontinental telegraph line signals the end for the Pony Express.

1861 The Kansas Jayhawkers, a supposedly pro-Union guerrilla band organized by Charles J. Jennison, begin marauding across the Missouri border. In December, they attack and occupy Independence, Missouri, burning much of the city and killing many citizens.

1862 Congress passes the Pacific Railroad Act, which authorizes the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Companies to build a transcontinental rail line along the 42nd parallel and provides public lands and subsidies for every mile of track laid.

1862 Idaho Territory organized.

1862 Congress passes the Homestead Act, which allows citizens to settle on up to 160 acres of surveyed but unclaimed public land and receive title to it after making improvements and residing there for five years.

1862 The Civil War divides the Five Civilized Tribes, who brought slaves west with them when they were forced from their homelands in the South. Most side at once with the Confederacy, contributing a brigade to the cause. But the Creek Nation splits into pro-Union and pro-Confederate factions, who battle against one another throughout the war.

1862 Sibley's Brigade, an army of Texas Confederates commanded by General Henry J. Sibley, invade New Mexico, moving up the Rio Grande. They defeat a Union force at Valverde, advance through Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and then turn north toward Colorado's gold fields. But at Apache Canyon they are ambushed by a squad of Colorado volunteers commanded by the "Fighting Parson," John M. Chivington, and two days later they are defeated by a Union force at Glorietta Pass, where Chivington's irregulars rappel down a cliff face to destroy their supply wagons. The Texans retreat in disarray, their hopes of conquest shattered at "the Gettysburg of the West."

1862 Congress passes the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which targets the Mormon community by prohibiting polygamy in United States territories. The law is ignored in Utah.

1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

1863 Union forces prevail at the Battle of Gettysburg.

1863 Congress organizes the Arizona Territory.

1863 Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate guerrilla band operating out of Missouri, terrorize Lawrence, Kansas, killing 150 residents and burning much of the town. Among the Raiders are Frank and Jesse James, and Cole and Jim Younger, who will use the hit-and-run tactics taught by their leader, William Clarke Quantrill, to create vicious outlaw gangs in the post-war West.

1864 Congress organizes the Montana Territory and admits Nevada into the union, completing the political organization of the West under local governments loyal to the Union.

1864 A second Pacific Railroad Act is passed by Congress, one that aims to stimulate investment in the enterprise by doubling the size of the land grants and improving the subsidies offered for every mile of track laid.

1864 Sent to punish Navajo raiding parties in northwest New Mexico, Colonel Kit Carson leads a campaign of destruction through their villages, burning crops and killing livestock. When the Navajo surrender, he marches 8,000 of the tribe on a grueling "Long Walk" across New Mexico to a parched reservation near Fort Sumner on the Pecos River, where they are held as prisoners of war until 1868.

1864 Meeting with army officers at Fort Weld outside Denver, the Cheyenne chief, Black Kettle, agrees to lead his people back to their Sand Creek reservation in order to restore peace after Indian raids on ranches in the area. He is attacked there by a volunteer force led by John M. Chivington, the "Fighting Parson" of Glorietta Pass, which sweeps down on the Cheyenne encampment at dawn and massacres nearly two hundred men, women and children. Later Congressional and military investigations condemn the slaughter.

1865 The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, brings an end to the Civil War.

The Union Pacific Railroad begins moving westward, laying track at an average rate of one mile per day. In California, Chinese laborers join the Central Pacific work gangs, providing the strength, organization and persistence needed to break through the mountains.

1865 Mark Twain publishes "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a tall tale set in a boisterous California mining camp which brings the Western experience into the mainstream of American literature.

1866 General Philip H. Sheridan takes command of U.S. forces in the West, proposing to bring peace to the plains by exterminating the herds of buffalo that support the Indians' way of life: "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians," he says.

1866 A Lakota war party led by Chief Red Cloud attacks a wagon train bringing supplies to newly-constructed Fort Phil Kearny on the Powder River in northern Wyoming. The Lakota see the fort, situated to protect travel to Montana mining country along the Bozeman Trail, as a threat to their territory. When a patrol led by Captain William J. Fetterman rides out to drive off the war party, it is lured far from the fort and destroyed to the last man.

1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blaze the first cattle trail, driving a herd of 2,000 longhorns from Texas to New Mexico in what will become an annual tradition across the southern plains.

1866 Jesse and Frank James, veterans of Quantrill's Raiders, launch their legendary criminal career with a bank robbery at Liberty, Missouri.

1867 Nebraska enters the Union.

1867 The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.

1867 The first cattle drive from Texas up the Chisholm Trail arrives at the railyards of Abilene, Kansas.

1867 The United States and representatives of the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other southern Plains tribes sign the Medicine Lodge Treaty, intended to remove Indians from the path of white settlement. The treaty marks the end of the era in which federal policymakers saw the Plains as "one big reservation" to be divided up among various tribes. Instead, the treaty establishes reservations for each tribe in the western part of present-day Oklahoma and requires them to give up their traditional lands elsewhere. In exchange, the government pledges to establish reservation schools and to provide resident farmers who will teach the Indians agriculture. This same principle of restricting the Plains tribes to reservations will help shape the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In both cases, the tribes' refusal to give up their free-ranging traditions and remain confined within the territory assigned to them leads to devastating warfare.

1868 Congress organizes the Wyoming Territory.

1868 The Senate approves a treaty permitting unrestricted immigration from China.

1868 The Chinese railbuilders of the Central Pacific finally break out of the High Sierras.

1868 Chief Red Cloud and General William Tecumseh Sherman sign the Fort Laramie Treaty, which brings an end to war along the Bozeman Trail. Under terms of the treaty, the United States agrees to abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and grant enormous parts of the Wyoming, Montana and Dakota Territories, including the Black Hills area, to the Lakota people as their exclusive territory.

1868 General Philip Sheridan sends Colonel George Armstrong Custer against the Cheyenne, with a plan to attack them during the winter when they are most vulnerable. Custer's troops locate a Cheyenne village on the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma. By a cruel coincidence, the village is home to Black Kettle and his people, the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Custer's cavalry attacks at dawn, killing more than 100 men, women and children, including Black Kettle.

1869 John Wesley Powell, a veteran of the Civil War who lost part of his right arm at Shiloh and a self-taught expert on mountain geology, leads the first recorded voyage through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, winning national acclaim and setting the stage for government funded scientific study of the West.

A Golden Spike completes the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.

1869 Wyoming becomes the first place in the United States where women have the right to vote.

1870 Buffalo hunters begin moving onto the plains, brought there by the expanding railroads and the growing market for hides and meat back east. In little more than a decade, they reduce the once numberless herd to an endangered species.

Railroad companies begin massive advertising campaigns to attract settlers to their land grants in the West, sending agents to rural areas in the eastern states and throughout Europe to distribute handbills, posters and pamphlets that tout the rich soil and favorable climate of the region. But the higher costs of railroad land compared to public lands, and the fact that railroads pay no taxes on their lands, soon stirs charges of extortion, leading to state laws controlling railroad rates and land sale practices by the decade's end.

1870 With Brigham Young's support, the Utah territorial legislature grants women the right to vote, providing the Mormons with an added margin of political power.

1870 A California court rules in White vs. Flood that a black child may not attend a white school, setting the legal precedent for school segregation.

1870 The Union Pacific in Wyoming hires Chinese laborers for $32.50 a month rather than pay $52.00 a month to whites. From incidents like this one, white laborers across the West develop the opinion that Chinese immigrants are competing unfairly for jobs, a feeling that will lead to violent racial conflict and labor unrest in years to come.

1870 Bret Harte publishes The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, a collection of stories based on his years as a San Francisco journalist, which offers a sentimental and humorous view of "uncouth" frontier characters, establishing a set of stereotypes that will remain an important part of the myth of the American West.

1871 More than 100 Apaches -- most of them women and children -- are murdered outside Camp Grant, Arizona, where they had been given asylum, when members of the Tucson Committee of Public Safety arrive with a force of Papago Indians, the Apaches' long-time enemies. The committee members claim they acted in retaliation for raids by various Apache bands at distant points across the region, but public opinion, particularly in the East, links the event to the recently investigated Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 as further evidence of Westerners' deep-seated hatred for Indians.

1871 Congress approves the Indian Appropriations Act, which ends the practice of treating Indian tribes as sovereign nations by directing that all Indians be treated as individuals and legally designated "wards" of the federal government. The act is justified as a way to avoid further misunderstandings in treaty negotiations, where whites have too often wrongly assumed that a tribal chief is also that tribe's chief of state. In effect, however, the act is another step toward dismantling the tribal structure of Native American life.

1871 Federal judge James B. McKean, seeking to break the alliance between church and state in Utah, orders the arrest of Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders on charges of polygamy. Federal prosecutors also charge John D. Lee and others with murder for the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.

1871 A quarrel over a woman between two Chinese men in Los Angeles escalates into a city-wide anti-Chinese riot, ending in the murder of at least 23 of the city's 200 Chinese residents.

1871 Cochise, the Apache chief who led a decade-long guerilla war against whites in Arizona, surrenders to General George Crook but escapes back to his mountain stronghold rather than let his people be sent to a New Mexico reservation. General Otis Howard finally makes peace with Cochise the next year, agreeing to establish an Apache reservation in Arizona.

1872 Arbor Day (April 10) is celebrated for the first time in near-treeless Nebraska.

1872 Mark Twain publishes Roughing It, a humorous account of his adventures as a budding journalist in the West, which adds a self-conscious depth to the entertaining Western myth pioneered by Twain's one-time mentor, Bret Harte.

1872 The Yellowstone Act sets aside more than 2 million acres in northwest Wyoming as a public "pleasuring-ground" for the "preservation... of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders... and their retention in their natural condition." It marks the first time any national government has set aside public lands to preserve their natural beauties and sets a precedent later followed in countries around the world. Much of the impetus for establishing the park can be traced to William H. Jackson's photographs of its natural wonders, taken when he traveled there with the Hayden expedition of 1871.

1872 "Buffalo Bill" Cody is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service as a scout in General Philip Sheridan's four-year campaign against the Cheyenne. The same year Cody begins his theatrical career, appearing as "Buffalo Bill" in Ned Buntline's The Scouts of the Plains.

1873 Cable cars are introduced in San Francisco.

1873 Although federal authorities estimate that hunters are killing buffalo at a rate of three million per year, President Grant vetoes a law protecting the herd from extermination.

1874 Mennonite immigrants from Russia arrive in Kansas with drought-resistant "Turkey Red" wheat, which will help turn the one-time "Great American Desert" into the nation's breadbasket.

1874 Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire, an inexpensive, durable and effective fencing material which, with the destruction of the buffalo, will open the plains to more efficient agriculture and ranching.

George Armstrong Custer announces the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota, setting off a stampede of fortune-hunters into this most sacred part of Lakota territory. Although the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty requires the government to protect Lakota lands from white intruders, federal authorities work instead to protect the miners already crowding along the path Custer blazed for them, which they call "Freedom's Trail" and the Lakota call "Thieve's Road."

1874 William H. Jackson discovers and photographs the centuries-old Anasazi cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado.

1875 Pinkerton agents fire-bomb the James family farm in Missouri in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the notorious outlaws. The incident stirs widespread sympathy for the James Gang, who are seen as populist enemies of the banks and railroads who "rob" the common man.

1875 Deadwood, soon to be one of the wildest towns in the West, springs into existence when Black Hills miners find gold on Deadwood Creek. Within a year, the legendary gunfighter "Wild Bill" Hickock will be murdered here while holding aces and eights -- the dead man's hand -- in a game of poker.

1875 THE LAKOTA WAR

A Senate commission meeting with Red Cloud and other Lakota chiefs to negotiate legal access for the miners rushing to the Black Hills offers to buy the region for $6 million. But the Lakota refuse to alter the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and declare they will protect their lands from intruders if the government won't.

1876 Federal authorities order the Lakota chiefs to report to their reservations by January 31. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and others defiant of the American government refuse.

General Philip Sheridan orders General George Crook, General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon to drive Sitting Bull and the other chiefs onto the reservation through a combined assault. On June 17, Crazy Horse and 500 warriors surprise General Crook's troops on the Rosebud River, forcing them to retreat. On June 25, George Armstrong Custer, part of General Terry's force, discovers Sitting Bull's encampment on the Little Bighorn River. Terry had ordered Custer to drive the enemy down the Little Bighorn toward Gibbon's forces, who were waiting at its mouth, but when he charges the village Custer discovers that he is outnumbered four-to-one. Hundreds of Lakota warriors overwhelm his troops, killing them to the last man, in a battle later called Custer's Last Stand. News of the massacre shocks the nation, and Sheridan floods the region with troops who methodically hunt down the Lakota and force them to surrender. Sitting Bull, however, eludes capture by leading his band to safety in Canada.

1876 Colorado enters the Union.

1877 Crazy Horse finally surrenders to General George Crook at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, having received assurances that he and his followers will be permitted to settle in the Powder River country of Montana. Defiant even in defeat, Crazy Horse arrives with a band of 800 warriors, all brandishing weapons and chanting songs of war. By late summer, there are rumors that Crazy Horse is planning a return to battle, and on September 5 he is arrested and brought back to Fort Robinson, where, when he resists being jailed, he is held by an Indian guard and killed by a bayonet thrust from a soldier.

1877 Congress votes to repeal the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and take back the Black Hills, along with 40 million more acres of Lakota land.

1877 With the threat of Indian attack removed, mining camps and boom towns -- French Creek, Whitewood Gulch, Black Tail Gulch -- crowd the Black Hills.

1877 John D. Lee is brought to trial for the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, but Mormon loyalty to one of their own leads to a hung jury. The national outcry at this result persuades Mormon leaders to withdraw their support for Lee, and in a second trial he is convicted by an all-Mormon jury. On March 23 he is executed by firing squad at the site of the massacre, after denouncing Brigham Young for abandoning him. His last words are for his executioners: "Center my heart, boys. Don't mangle my body."

1877 On August 29, Brigham Young, the Mormon leader who built a prosperous community and a vigorous church in a seeming wasteland, dies at age 76.

Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Percé, surrenders to General Oliver Howard, bringing to an end his four-month-long circuitous retreat from the Wallowa Valley in eastern Oregon toward Sitting Bull’s encampment in Canada -- one of the most remarkable military feats of the Indian Wars. Eluding or defeating army troops at every turn, Joseph and a band of fewer than 200 warriors bring nearly 500 women and children over 1,500 miles of mountainous terrain to within forty miles of the border before they are finally stopped by a force of 500 troopers led by Colonel Nelson A. Miles. Reduced by this time to just 87 men, Joseph still holds out for five days in a pitiless snowstorm, and then surrenders only because his people have no food or blankets and will soon die of cold and starvation. "I am tired of fighting," he declares as he holds out his rifle to General Howard. "I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

1877 John Wesley Hardin, a Texas gunfighter who claims to have killed more than 40 men, is sentenced to 25 years in the Texas State Prison for the murder of a deputy sheriff. "I take no sass but sasparilla," he once said, explaining his deadly disposition.

1877 Congress passes the Desert Land Act, which permits settlers to purchase up to 640 acres of public land at 25¢ per acre in areas where the arid climate requires large-scale farming, provided they irrigate the land.

1877 The last Federal troops withdraw from the South, bringing the Reconstruction era to an end.

1878 With racial discrimination on the rise in the post-Reconstruction South, an estimated 40,000 African Americans begin to migrate from the former slave states into Kansas. Many of these so-called Exodusters answer the call of Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a land speculator with a vision of establishing independent black communities across the state.

1879 The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of anti-polygamy laws, denying Mormon arguments that plural marriage is protected under the First Amendent guarantee of religious freedom and giving federal authorities the weapon they have hoped for in their efforts to break the alliance between church and state in Utah.

1879 At the urging of John Wesley Powell and others, Congress creates the United States Geological Survey to coordinate the many independent survey projects it has funded since army surveyors first charted potential routes for a transcontinental railroad in the 1850s. Under Powell's direction beginning in 1881, the USGS expands its focus beyond mineral resources and geological formations to include study of the potential for irrigating the West's arid lands and the selection of suitable sites for dams and reservoirs. This pioneering work eventually bears fruit with passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act in 1902.

1879 To complete its consolidation of federally-funded scientific exploration in the West, Congress creates the United States Bureau of Ethnology to coordinate study of the region's native peoples and complete a record of their cultures before they vanish under the pressure of expanding white settlement. Directed by John Wesley Powell, the Bureau of Ethnology launches an ambitious program to document the culture and society of Native Americans, sending one of its first field teams to Zuni Pueblo, where ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing anticipates the methods of 20th century anthropology by becoming a member of the Zuni community.

The first students, a group of 84 Lakota children, arrive at the newly established United States Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a boarding school founded by former Indian-fighter Captain Richard Henry Pratt to remove young Indians from their native culture and refashion them as members of mainstream American society. Over the next two decades, twenty-four more schools on the Carlisle model will be established outside the reservations, along with 81 boarding schools and nearly 150 day schools on the Indians’ own land.

1880 President Benjamin Hayes signs the Chinese Exclusion Treaty, which reverses the open-door policy set in 1868 and places strict limits both on the number of Chinese immigrants allowed to enter the United States and on the number allowed to become naturalized citizens.

1880 Backed by the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, Kansas Governor John St. John forces through prohibition legislation, making Kansas -- the site of towns like Dodge City where the saloon has been almost a symbol of civic life -- the first state in the nation to "go dry."

1881 Sitting Bull returns from Canada with a small band of followers to surrend er to General Alfred Terry, the man who five years before had directed the campaign that ended in the Lakota Chief’s victory at Little Bighorn. After insulting his old adversary and the United States, Sitting Bull has his young son hand over his rifle, saying, "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living."

1881 Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, the first detailed examination of the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans in the West. Her findings shock the nation with proof that empty promises, broken treaties and brutality helped pave the way for white pioneers.

1881 Late summer brings the last big cattle drive to Dodge City. With livestock plentiful on the plains, the long trek up the Western Trail is no longer profitable, and most states now prohibit driving out-of-state cattle across their borders. The increasing use of barbed wire to enclose farms and grazing land has ended the era of the open range. In the fifteen years since Texas cowboys first hit the trail, as many as two million longhorns have been driven to market in Dodge.

1881 Legendary outlaw Billy the Kid, charged with more than 21 murders in a brief lifetime of crime, is finally brought to justice by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who trails The Kid for more than six months before killing him with a single shot at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

1881 Tombstone, Arizona, Deputy Marshall Wyatt Earp and his brothers gun down the Clantons in a showdown at the O.K. Corral.

1882 Intensifying its anti-Chinese policies, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, which completely prohibits both immigration from China and the naturalization of Chinese immigrants already in the United States for a period of ten years. The bill comes amid increasing outbreaks of anti-Chinese violence, stirred up by the belief that low-paid Chinese workers are taking jobs away from Americans. Within the year, immigration from China drops from 40,000 in 1881 to just 23.

1882 Congress passes the Edmunds Law, making polygamy a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison and denying convicted polygamists the right to vote, to hold office and to serve on juries. The law increases federal pressure on Mormons to renounce their practice of plural marriage and sends many Mormon leaders into hiding.

1882 Jesse James, the notorious outlaw who was a veteran of Quantrill’s Raiders during the Civil War, is shot in the back by Robert Ford, a kinsman who hoped to collect a $5,000 reward. James' death ends the career of an outlaw gang that terrorized the West for more than a decade.

1883 Texas purchases The Alamo from the Catholic Church to preserve it as an historic shrine.

"Buffalo Bill" Cody stages his first Wild West Show at the Omaha fairgrounds, featuring a herd of buffalo and a troupe of cowboys, Indians and vaqueros who re-enact a cattle round-up, a stagecoach hold-up and other scenes drawn from Cody's own life on the frontier.

1883 A delegation of U.S. Senators meets with bitter resistance from Sitting Bull when they propose opening part of the Lakota's reservation to white settlers. Despite the old chief's objections, the land transfer proceeds as planned.

1883 The Northern Pacific Railroad, connecting the northwestern states to points east, is finally completed, after a 19-year struggle against treacherous terrain and intermitent financing. Along the line, crews blast a 3,850-foot tunnel through solid granite and construct a 1,800-foot trestle. As a result, the round trip to the Columbia River that took Lewis and Clark two-and-a-half years in 1803 now takes just nine days.

1883 Buffalo hunters gather on the northern Plains for the last large buffalo kill, among them a Harvard-educated New York assemblyman named Theodore Roosevelt, who hopes to bag a trophy before the species disappears. Hunters have already destroyed the southern herd, and by 1884, except for small domestic herds kept by sentimental ranchers, there are only scattered remnants of the animal that more than any other symbolizes the American West.

1883 A group of clergymen, government officials and social reformers calling itself “The Friends of the Indian” meets in upstate New York to develop a strategy for bringing Native Americans into the mainstream of American life. Their decisions set the course for U.S. policy toward Native Americans over the next generation and result in the near destruction of Native American culture.

1884 When his wife and mother die within hours of one another in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt heads west to become a Dakota cattle rancher and escape his grief. He will emerge from the experience with an attachment to the Western landscape and a respect for Western society that help shape his conservation and land development policies as President.

1885 President Grover Cleveland warns so-called "Boomers" to stay off Indian Territory lands in present-day Oklahoma.

1885 Federal troops are called in to restore order in Rock Springs, Wyoming, after British and Swedish miners go on a rampage against the Chinese, killing 28 and driving hundreds more out of town. This "Rock Springs Massacre" follows a similar race riot in Tacoma, Washington, where whites force more than 700 Chinese immigrants to spend the night crowded onto open wagons, then ship them to Portland, Oregon, the next day.

1886 Anti-Chinese mobs in Seattle kill five and destroy parts of the city before forcing 200 Chinese aboard ships bound for San Francisco. Leaders of the race riot vow to sweep the city clean of Chinese within the month.

1886 Geronimo, described by one follower as “the most intelligent and resourceful...most vigorous and farsighted” of the Apache leaders, surrenders to General Nelson A. Miles in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, after more than a decade of guerilla warfare against American and Mexican settlers in the Southwest. The terms of surrender require Geronimo and his tribe to settle in Florida, where the Army hopes he can be contained.

1887 Congress passes the Dawes Severalty Act, imposing a system of private land ownership on Native American tribes for whom communal land ownership has been a centuries-old tradition. Individual Indians become eligible to receive land allotments of up to 160 acres, together with full U.S. citizenship. Tribal lands remaining after all allotments have been made are to be declared surplus and sold. Proponents of the law believe that it will help speed the Indians’ assimilation into mainstream society by giving them an incentive to live as farmers and ranchers, earning a profit from their own personal property and private initiative. Others see in the law an opportunity to buy up surplus tribal lands for white settlers. When the allotment system finally ends, Indian landholdings are reduced from 138 million acres in 1887 to only 48 million acres in 1934. And with their land many Native Americans lose a fundamental structuring principle of tribal life as well.

1887 Increasing pressure on the Mormons, Congress passes the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which disincorporates the Mormon church, confiscates its real estate and other properties, and abolishes women's suffrage in Utah. The law effectively destroys the political, economic and social system by which the leaders of the Mormon church have guided and governed their society, imposing federal authority in its place. 

1887 A fare war between competing rail lines and the inducements of eager land speculators bring newcomers to Los Angeles by the trainload; 120,000 arrive in 1887, drawn by the promise of pure air, warm sunshine and prosperity. Within a few years, the city is transformed and the Californios who have lived there for more than a century are suddenly regarded as strangers in their own land.

1888 Deep snows and raging blizzards, following a dry summer, devastate the cattle herds of the northern Plains. When the snows finally melt, hundreds of thousands of carcasses litter the range, leading the ranchers who must gather them up to call the winter of '88 "The Great Die-Up."

1889 Wovoka, a Paiute holy man, awakes from a three-day trance to teach his tribe the Ghost Dance, with which they can restore the earth to the way it was before the whites arrived in the West. His teachings will soon touch many tribes across the West, stirring a spiritual revival that whites nervously misinterpret as a return to hostilities.

1889 President Benjamin Harrison authorizes opening unoccupied lands in the Indian Territory to white settlement, an order put into effect on April 22 at noon, when a gunshot gives settlers the signal to cross the border and stake their claims. Within nine hours, the Oklahoma Land Rush transforms almost two million acres of tribal land into thousands of individual land claims. Many of the most desirable plots are taken by "Sooners," so called because they crossed into the territory sooner than was permitted.

1889 At the urging of the National Farmers' Alliance, Kansas adopts first-of-its-kind legislation regulating trusts, providing an early portent of the agrarian-based progressive movement preparing to sweep through the West.

1889 Farm and labor representatives meet with prohibitionists in Salem, Oregon, to form a progressive Union Party.

1889 Washington, Montana and the Dakotas join the Union.

1890 Congress establishes the Oklahoma Territory on unoccupied lands in the Indian Territory, breaking a 60-year-old pledge to preserve this area exclusively for Native Americans forced from their lands in the east.

1890 Wyoming enters the Union.

1890 Sitting Bull is murdered in a confrontation at the Standing Rock Reservation when Lakota policemen attempt to arrest him as part of a federal crackdown on the Ghost Dance.

Federal troops massacre the Lakota Chief Big Foot and his 350 followers at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in a confrontation fueled by the government’s determination to stop the spread of the Ghost Dance among the tribes. The incident stands in U.S. military history as the last armed engagement of the Indian Wars.

1890 Congress establishes Yosemite National Park at the urging of naturalist John Muir, who argues passionately for the preservation of its sequoia forests.

1890 The U. S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act, denying that its assault on Mormon institutions constitutes a violation of Mormon religious freedom. At the same time, Congress debates the even more punitive Cullom-Strubble Bill, designed to deny all Mormons the right to vote. In response, Wilford Woodruff, leader of the Mormon Church, issues the "Manifesto," a revelation urging all members of the church to comply with the laws of the land regarding marriage.

1891 Congress passes the Forest Reserve Act, which authorizes setting aside public forests in any state or territory to preserve a timber supply for the future. The law marks the first step in a process that will steadily place more and more Western land in the hands of the federal government while leaving less and less available for private purchase and use. As a result, federal priorities in the West gradually shift from selling public land to managing public resources, from land development to land conservation, and federal regulations become a permanent presence on the once wide open spaces.

1892 Congress extends the Chinese Exclusion Act for an additional ten years, adding a requirement that all Chinese workers in the United States register or face deportation.

1892 A strike by silver miners in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, erupts in violence, as miners are killed and a security guard barracks blown up. State and federal troops intervene to restore order by locking miners into an outdoor bullpen. The miners' defeat leads to the formation of the Western Federation of Miners in Butte, Montana, the next year, an organization representing mine workers across the West.

1892 Under the Dawes Act, nearly two million acres of Crow tribal land is opened to white settlers in Montana.

1892 John Muir founds the Sierra Club in Yosemite Valley, California, to “protect the nation's scenic resources” and oppose the lumber industry’s encroachments on public forests.

1893 Presidential amnesty is granted to Mormon polygamists, marking the federal government's first step toward closing the book on the "Mormon problem."

Frederick Jackson Turner, a 31-year-old instructor at the University of Wisconsin, declares the closing of the Western frontier in his seminal lecture, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, delivered at a meeting of the American Historical Association held in conjunction with the Chicago Columbian Exposition.

1893 Experts estimate that fewer that 2,000 buffalo remain of the more than 20 million that once roamed the Western plains.

1893 More than 100,000 white settlers rush into Oklahoma's Cherokee Outlet to claim six million acres of former Cherokee land.

1894 Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan -- "The Great Commoner" -- gains national attention as the West's eloquent spokesman against the restrictive economic policies of east coast capitalists, emblemized by the gold standard.

1894 The Carey Act grants one million acres of public land to arid states and territories on the condition they "reclaim" the land by irrigation and sell it to settlers. This attempt to promote irrigation of arid Western lands proves unsuccessful when states find they cannot raise the funds to mount large-scale irrigation projects. Effective land reclamation in the West will require a massive federal investment.

1896 Utah enters the Union.

1896 William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech against the restrictive gold standard makes him the Presidential candidate of the Democratic and Populist parties, but his appeal to rural voters in the West and South does not carry him to the White House.

1896 The discovery of gold at Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River near Dawson City, Alaska, sparks the last great Western rush for riches.

1898 The United States annexes Hawaii.

1899 Robert Parker and his partner, Harry Longbaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and "The Sundance Kid," lead their "Wild Bunch" in a series of bank and train robberies across the West. When they eventually flee to South America in 1901, the era of the outlaw band comes to an end.

Source:

 PBS.org; THE WEST is an eight-part documentary series which premiered on PBS stations in September 1996.

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