Key Concept 3.3

Migration within North America, cooperative interaction, and competition for resources raised questions about boundaries and policies, intensified conflicts among peoples and nations, and led to contests over the creation of a multiethnic, multiracial national identity.

I. As migrants streamed westward from the british colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, interactions among different groups that would continue under an independent United States resulted in competition for resources, shifting alliances, and cultural blending.

    • The French withdrawal from North America and the subsequent attempt of various native groups to reassert their power over the interior of the continent resulted in new white-Indian conflicts along the western borders of British and, later, the U.S. colonial settlement and among settlers looking to assert ore power in interior regions.
      • march of the Paxton Boys, Battle of Fallen TImbers
    • Migrants from within North America and around the world continued to launch new settlements in the West, creating new distinctive backcountry cultures and fueling social and ethnic tensions.
      • Scots-Irish; Shay's rebellion, frontier vs. tidewater Virginia
    • The Spanish, supported by the bonded labor of the local Indians, expanded their mission settlements into California, providing opportunities for social mobility among enterprising soldiers and settlers that led to new cultural blending.
      • Corridos, architecture of Spanish missions, vaqueros

II. The policies of the United States that encouraged western migration and the orderly incorporation of new territories into the nation both extended republican institutions and intensified conflicts among American Indians and Europeans in the trans-Appalachian West.

    • As settlers moved westward during the 1780s, Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance for admitting new states and sought to promote public education, the protection of private property, and the restriction of slavery in the Northwest Territory.
    • The Constitution's failure to precisely define the relationship between American Indian tribes and the national government led to problems regarding treaties and Indian legal claims relating to the seizure of Indian lands.
    • As western settlers sought free navigation of the Mississippi River, the United States forged diplomatic initiatives to manage the conflict with Spain and to deal with the continued British presence on the American continent.
      • Jay's Treaty, Pinckeny's Treaty

III. New voices for national Identity challenged tendencies to cling to regional identities, contributing to the emergence of distinctly American cultural expressions.

    • As national political institutions developed in the new United States, varying regionally based positions on economic, political, social, and foreign policy issues promoted the development of political parties.
    • The expansion of slavery in the lower South and adjacent western lands, and its gradual disappearance elsewhere, began to create distinctive regional attitudes toward the institution.
    • Enlightenment ideas and women's experiences in the movement for independence promoted an ideal of "republican motherhood," which called on white women to maintain and teach republican values within the family and granted women a new importance in American political culture.