Go West Reading Project
By: Jocelyn Holmes
What does it mean to be an American as an explorer during Westward Expansion?
Of all frontiersmen, the mountain men were the most independent. They had to endure months of isolation. The explorers had to be able to chop, plow, mow, and cut up Indian corn. The New York Tribune states, " The conditions of living are very rude there." Mountain men faced a lot of dangers. Grizzly bears were the most dangerous predator. When the weather conditions got worse and they could not get food, mountain men had to slaughter and eat their mules and horses. A lot of times they would die of extremely low temperatures.
Some mountain men would trade for profit and some would trade to support the journey of going west. If the mountain men made friends with some Native American tribes then that would limit the amount of dangers they had to overcome. Beavers were commonly used to make clothing. Fur trade was very important. The fur from a beaver was strong and durable. To explore the west the explorers had to be well prepared. In order to do that they had to trade for the right supplies.
William Clark
Meriwether Lewis
Oregon Trail
Manifest Destiny
Works Cited
Davidson, James West and Michael B. Stoff. America History of Our Nation. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006. Print.
DeFelice, Cynthia. Weasel. New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1990. Print
“Lewis and Clark Journal Entries.” Brain Waves Instruction. 2014. Web. <www.brainwavesinstruction.blogspot.com>
Murphy, Dallas. Read Aloud Plays Pioneers. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1998. Print.
“On the Plains in 1844.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 2013. Web. <www.gilderlehrman.org>
“Rural America: The Westward Movement.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 2013. Web. <www.gilderlehrman.org>
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: The New Press, 2003. Print.