ABSTRACT

Between 1860 and 1900, the number of American farms rose from 2 million to nearly 6 million. Most of the new ones were established on the Great Plains— the vast treeless region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains that had been left to the Indians long after both coasts were settled. Now it was the only frontier remaining, and once the Indians were expelled from there too, hundreds of thousands of pioneer families moved out onto the plains.