Population Trails

For centuries the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West, with enormous open space and potential natural riches, enticed people from all corners of the earth to investigate and settle on what seemed like endless land. The earliest trails brought Native Americans of differing backgrounds to this area, presumably following animal trails. The Navajo and Apache moved from present-day Alberta and Manitoba into the Southwest, where they encountered the Pueblo people, living a very different lifestyle. We have no record of their reactions to each other, only the evidence that both groups still inhabit the same broad region. In the Northern Plains the various bands of Sioux and Cheyenne came from the upper Midwest, pushed westward by the expansionist Iroquois and others.

Group of Southern Ute Elders with Otto Mears and Col. H. Page. Courtesy Fort Lewis College, Center of Southwest Studies

Zoom>>> Territory between the Missouri, Arkansas, and Columbia Rivers occupied by various Indian tribes, 1851 Courtesy University of Wyoming

European incursions into the area came with the Spanish from the south in the sixteenth century and French trappers a hundred years later in the north. These men brought guns, horses, new diseases, European crops, livestock, and the inevitable intertwining of races and cultures. Encounters between different kinds of people increased exponentially in the nineteenth century as the country opened up with exploration, trading routes, the discovery of gold, and the pressure of restless populations moving west across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Children Pulling Up Beets Courtesy Colorado State University Libraries

Settlers, until later in the century, were primarily from the eastern regions of the United States, most of them using the Great Overland Trail up the Platte River, passing through to the mines in the mountains or land in California and Oregon. But after the Civil War, waves of Europeans immigrants from Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, and Britain moved into the Plains to stay, often arriving on the ever-lengthening railroads pushing across Kansas and Nebraska. From the 1870s to the first decades of the twentieth century, Volga Germans from Russia came to eastern Colorado and Wyoming, western Kansas, and Nebraska. They had lived along the Volga River for more than a century. On the Plains they began working mostly in the sugar beet industry or in wheat farming.

"Aunt" Clara Brown Courtesy Denver Public Library - Western History/Genealogy Department

The end of the Civil War also spurred the movement of Black Americans onto the Plains. They became buffalo soldiers in the Army of the West, cowboys, miners, farmers in new settlements, and entrepreneurs in numerous businesses. Clara Brown is thought to be the first Black woman to cross the Great Plains, walking with a wagon train that carried her laundry tubs from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Central City, Colorado, in 1859.

Building the transcontinental railroad brought immigrants from Asia and Europe. Chinese and Japanese workers helped construct the Central Pacific eastward from Sacramento, and many ended up staying in Wyoming and Colorado. Town celebrations brought out images of Chinese culture, such as this dragon in a parade in Evanston, Wyoming.

Japanese, as well, came to work on the railroads. Decades later, after the onset of World War II, Japanese living on the West Coast came again, forced out of their homes and livelihoods and brought to internment camps. The government placed two camps on the Plains, Amache in southeastern Colorado and Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Shown is a memorial to Amache residents killed in battle during World War II. The 442nd Army Division, comprised of soldiers of Japanese descent, was known for its bravery and suffered more casualties than any other unit during the war. As with other ethnic groups, the Rocky Mountain and Plains West have been enriched by those Japanese who stayed in the area.

Hmong dancers Courtesy Denver Museum of Nature and Science

The West remains a meeting point for people from around the globe. Most recently the influx of Southeast Asian refugees has enriched the culture and met, face to face, the new immigration from Eastern Europe and Africa - Hmong, Vietnamese, Albanians, Somalis, Russians. Untraceable, ephemeral, but effective trails in the sky now bring the newest additions to the Western landscape.