Exploring the American West
Many groups of people explored Americas western half, back when it was still uninhabited. Throughout this website is information on most of the people who explored the West back in the 1840's through the 1860's.
Why do People Migrate?There are many different reasons why people migrate, but most people migrate because of push or pull factors. Some of the push factors for migration are, poverty, natural disasters, unemployment, famines, drought, religious persecution, political persecution, and war. Another reason that people migrated was because of the pull factors and some pull factors are, that there was high salary, liberty, the people received better living standards, had religious freedom, education facilities, and better living conditions.
And although the families had been split up this allowed both men and women to find greater opportunities for themselves in the west no matter the difficulty of the journey most of the time miners became rich with gold or families found new land to settle on that was better than there old land that they had before. Also another impact that migration had on people was that they would have to start a new life in unknown territory with unknown people there so it was very difficult at first but once they had adapted it got easier for the settlers in the west.
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These are some of the main reasons that people in the 1800's had migrated west into Oregon and California but also some people such as women and children did not have a choice because the men chose for the families most often. Also migration had a great impact on the people expanding westward because they had to either chose to travel on land on the Oregon Trail or go by sea on the 6 month journey, but both journey's had there challenges. Another way that the migration had impacted the peoples lives was that men may want to leave there family behind and travel west for greater opportunities for them to bring back more money to the family and because of this many families were split up which caused hardship.
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