module 4 The West BEFORE READING Do the following activities. a. Look at the U.S. map on page 51. Name some western states. Give any information you may know about them. b. Give your ideas about the various types of geography in different areas of the West, what economic activities were/are present in these areas. c. Discuss how you think the U.S. acquired this territory (from about 1800 onwards). d. From Westerns you have seen, describe the image you have of the Making of the West. The making of the West in brief The West comprises a huge territory from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean and to the present Mexican border. It includes vast geographical differences: plains, high mountain and plateau areas, desert or semidesert, alpine-climate forest areas, coastal areas. These geographical differences determined the economies which were the most important, for example: farming on the plains; logging, mining and farming in the high mountain and plateau areas; hunting, fishing Unit and logging in the alpine climate areas. Some of these activities continue as important contributions to their state s economy; some have been replaced/reduced by activities of the technological era. In 1800, the U.S. nation extended to the Mississippi River. In 1803, the U.S. bought from France an enormous area of land that extended from present-day Louisiana in the south to present-day North Dakota/Montana in the north. In 1846, the U.S. settled a border dispute claim with Britain, which created the 49th parallel as the U.S. border with Canada to the north. In 1848, the U.S. won the Mexican-American War and acquired what is now the whole area of the Mitchell, South Dakota, has a 100-year-old corn festival where the Corn Palace is decorated with images made up of about 20,000 ears of corn of varying colors. Southwest plus California and Nevada. Therefore by 1850 the U.S. nation stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, though some of these areas were still territories, not yet states, of the U.S. In every case, Native Americans were pushed either further west or onto reservations sometimes with, usually without, compensation for the land taken by the white man. ACTIVITIES 1 After reading Text 1, answer the following questions. a. How did your ideas in answer to Questions b, c and d of the Before Reading compare with the text? b. What problems do you think white settlers in these various areas encountered? Why do you think they had the right/didn t have the right to take lands previously used by the Native Americans of the region? Why do you think whites took these lands? c. What do you think were the reactions of the Native American tribes who had inhabited these regions until then? d. How would you have reacted under such circumstances?