Manifest DestinyChapter 9
Objectives
Explain the concept of Manifest Destiny.
Explain the causes and challenges of westward migration.
Migrating to the West
Americans sought economic opportunity
NM, oldest colony along New Spain’s northwestern frontier 9,600 Hispanics live there 1765
El Paso and Santa Fe
Discouragement 1. threat of war with nomadic
Native Americans 2. Apaches, nomads of Great Plains
Perpetual Warfare
Competition for buffalo
Comanches and Lakotas
Apaches raid Pueblo and Spanish settlements in NM (N.W. NM Navajos)
Protection of NMStronger frontier defenses
and more flexible diplomacy with nomadsGave gifts made
alliances with Comanches
No Love for Texas
NM growth and improved security did not extend to TX
Distant
Poor
Subject to raids
California Isolation
Too far to market (export livestock and grains)
Needed royal money to supply/pay soldiers
Lack of guns and horses allow for Christian missions Father Junípero Serra Allowed for growth (construction
of buildings, irrigation ditches, erected fences, herded cattle, and cultivated grain
Looking Westward
1821, revolution Spanish rule toppled Mexico made independent republic
Expansionists look towards CA, NM, and TX Weakness of Mexican
government/economy Mexicans inferior America needed land Manifest Destiny
Santa Fe Trail Independent Mexico and America
begin trading
Santa Fe Trail Opened trade across Great Plains to
Santa Fe, NM American manufactured goods
horses, mules, fur, silver
Mariners from Northeast sailed around South America to CA coast Tallow and hides manufactured
goods
Santa Fe Trail Map
Mountain Men
Daring young American trappers who hunted beaver pelts in the Rockies
Jedediah Smith, 1826 Crossed Great Basin and Sierra
Nevada to reach CA Traded with Mexican residents His trade and migration route
became the California Trail, linking the US with the Pacific Coast
Oregon Trail
A variant of this trail turned northwest at South Pass to reach Oregon Country Found Indian mission at Walla Walla