He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. At a time when a farm in Tennessee might encompass a quarter-section, or 160 acres, the standard grant in Austin’s Texas colony was a league, or more than 4,000 acres.ĭreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West The government, in order to populate the thinly settled province and build a bulwark against Indian attacks, promised the immigrants land-far more land than most of them would ever have acquired in the United States. Austin, the man later referred to as “The Father of Texas,” brought hundreds of American immigrants to Mexican Texas, with the explicit approval and support of the Mexican government. Not all the immigration from the north was illegal. By the late 1820s, the situation on the border, located on the Sabine River that today separates Texas from Louisiana, appeared to be reaching the crisis stage. In the immediate wake of Mexico’s successful war for independence from Spain, Mexican officials grew alarmed about illegal immigration from the United States. During the two centuries in which Mexico and the United States have shared a border, allegations of out-of-control immigration, with Mexican immigrants posing a threat to American security, have often been a staple of American politics and a source of friction and concern.īut the worry has worked both ways.
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