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Definition
Western is an English word that means " of the west ", it is now integrated into the French language to designate the literary and cinematographic genres dealing with the conquest of the western countries of United States of America. This fabulous epic has been related in the Western novels. Hereafter some precisions about their geographical and historical location.
Geography
Western America can be divided into three regions corresponding with the three main stages of the pioneers' advance : Middle West, South West and Far West.
The more the settlers advanced in the direction of the Pacific coasts (end of the way west), the more civilization streched out farther westward. More than the other regions, this moving Frontier (fictitious limit between the already civilized, ruled states and the wild, unexplored countries) has been the ideal location for most of Western novels that stage the confrontation of the Old and the New World, the facing of civilization and wild nature.
History
Christopher Columbus discovered in October 1492 the American Continent. Spanish navigators landed there from the sixteenth century and set villages and towns (in the south-western regions and in California). The French- and the Englishmen soon started to explore this new continent, without any consideration for the rights of its first inhabitants : the Indians. The area colonized during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were limited along the Atlantic coasts of the continent, but we must not forget the numerous fur hunters who went to farther unexplored regions to track beavers and other fur animals.
The exploration of western America in the direction of the Pacific coasts actually started after the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776. M. Lewis and W. Clark led the first crossing from east to west of North America (1804 -1806). There were three main stages in the settlement of the West : up to the Appalachian Mountains (eigtheenth century), beyond the Appalachians (second half of eigtheenth century) and beyond the Mississippi (nineteenth century).
From 1843, the first covered wagons took the Oregon Trail. More than 500.000 pioneers will cross the western trails (Santa Fe Trail, California Trail, Mormon' Trail). The columns of covered wagon were replaced from 1861 by the railroad, but the number of immigrants going west remained significant. The lure of fortune was one of the greatest attraction of the West (three important gold rushes : in California, Nevada and Colorado). Other rushes took place (in 1870 in Colorado for example) to prospect for silver and other precious ores. But the real wealth of these countries was finally revealed in cattle breeding and cultivation. Between 1866 and 1888, six million long-horned cattle were driven from Texas to the North, moving across the pastures of the High Plains of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
In 1861, East and West were connected by wire, in the same year started the Civil War that ended in 1865 with the abolition of slavery. From 1877, Black people migrated to Kansas.
In 1862, the Homestead Act provided inexpensive land for western pioneers. From 1890, five or six million men and women had settled down and were cultivating were buffaloes grazed twenty years before.
All these migrations of gold prospectors and settlers to Indian lands started a succession of Indian wars that weakened in 1886 when Geronimo (famous Apache war chief) was captured, but only finished with the end of 1891.
While pioneers were moving farther westward, the Indian tribes had to give up more and more land . The farmers and ranchers settled down in regions they had chosen and built up villages growing fast to form towns and then new states at the rate of civilization advance that reached the Pacific coasts during the years following 1890.
However, several years were still necessary to pacify and civilize the different territories constituing the American West. But at the dawn of the twentieth century, flourished an era of industrial and agricultural development that announced the end of an epoch and of a way of life centred on the conquest of the West.
In short :
When ? This point is a bit complex. According to some people, a short period (called classic Western) from 1860 to 1890 is to be considered. But in my opinion, the above mentioned period reduces too much a movement that appeared since the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776. In fact, from that date, the Americans, at last free and independent, turned with a keen interest towards the western countries, with a view to explore and conquer them.
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