Native Americans have existed in the West for several centuries, far before the whites came in and took over. Peace and trade alliances existed among these peoples. They protected the hunting domains because it was very important to their economy. The West provided the Natives with many rich resources and nonetheless helped them live comfortably. North American Indians shared their world with buffalos, bear, wolves, eagles, antelopes, and even deers. Early expansion of the new United States to the west completely changed the lives of many Native Americans as whites moved in. Most definitely, the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Trail, and the way the U.S. government acted distorted the lives of millions of Natives. The American Indian almost disappeared just in the same way the buffalos did. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/sfeature/sf_interview.html#a) About less than a thousand buffalos were left by the 20^th century as the land hungry settlers entered the West that the Natives kept under control. Not only did the whites take their land but they also left them hungry as they killed many buffalos.

By the 1830s most tribes relocated, but the two that remained were the Cherokees and the Choctaws. However, with the involvement of the U.S. government, their resistance did not last.  Andrew Jackson came up with the Indian Removal Act that gave him the power to remove the Natives. By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi and sent the Cherokees on a death march known as Trail of Tears. During this long journey they faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html) The Cherokee nation was one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" in the southeast but to benefit the whites, Andrew Jackson planned their removal along with all other tribes existing east of the Mississippi River. (Taylor) However, the civilized tribe tried to fight back against Jackson both in 1831 with the case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia but the Supreme Court denied them self-government. In 1832 however, John Marshall allowed the rights to land for the Cherokee nation in the case Worcester v. Georgia. This did not stop Andrew Jackson and he simply stated, “"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” (Lewis)

"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west..”
(Private John G. Burnett, Torr)

Nonetheless, Jackson went against the constitution and went beyond his presidential powers to force the Native Americans out of the land he wanted white settlers to have even if they were a civilized tribe such as the Cherokee. He did not only did he go against rules, but he also went against humanity as he lead many Natives to their death instead of new land.

The Oregon-California trail also became a nightmare for the Natives. This trail became a 2,170 mile route from Missouri to Oregon and California and it was a way for pioneers to move westward for both land and for gold. The first emigrants took the trip in 1836 and were known as make the Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. The first major migration occurred around 1843 and it was believed that around 1000 pioneers made the journey at one time. (Underwood) During this time it seemed peaceful between the Natives and the new settles and they usually encountered in simple trades. However, even this peace soon ended as the Grattan Massacre took place in 1854 near Ft. Laramie.  A small incident such as a single cow wandering away from an expatriated wagon train and going into a Sioux village where they ate it led to a massacre. An aggressive Lt. Grattan and 28 men then left Fort Laramie with a single objective to punish the Sioux. The Sioux offered a horse in return for the cow, but Grattan refused and fired upon the innocent tribe. Another massacre occurred in the early 1860s known as the Bear Massacre with Patrick Conner, stationed in Salt Lake City. He wanted to teach the Native Americans a lesson and in January of 1863, he and his Californian Volunteers marched north to the Bear River. There, Conner's men brutally killed 400 Shoshoni men, women and children. (Wissler) Even at the beginning of the Oregon trail many natives offered a hand to the distraught emigrants but the only things that the new settlers left for the Natives were mass number of buffalo skeletons.

"The valley of the Platte for 200 miles; dotted with skeletons of buffalos; such a waste of the creatures God had made for man seems wicked, but every emigrant seems to wish to signalize himself by killing a buffalo." (Emigrant Isaac Foster, http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/Buffallo.html)

The Oregon Trail was safe for a while, but soon the brutal attacks from the white settlers angered the Native Americans and they soon began to rebel as well. Land hungry settlers and the natives who wanted their land soon began a quarrel, but fortunately there was no extreme war between the two groups.

Furthermore, the west expansion might have opened a lot more land for the white settlers to do more farming and to even bring in slavery into the new territory but it also meant the worst for the Natives. They were being kicked out of places they have lived for many years. The places they once called homes were now being taken over by people who did not even know what the land had to offer. Through the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Trail, and the actions of the U.S. government, the Natives became unimportant and were forced to get off lands that indeed belong to them.