The American West covers a vast area from the Mississippi River co the Pacific coast. It was largely utexplored by white settlers until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Land was scarce in the East so many white people who wished to farm went west in search of a new life The government promised thcse pioneers land in the newly- acquired states of California and Oregon. Many Americans an believed that there should be one large American republic stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Thoy thought that this was part of God's and had the right to claim the land from the primitive natives.