Your family has seen so many changes in the year 1815, you can hardly count them. You’ve traveled a long way by ship to the United States, and now you’re headed west in a covered wagon, with everything your family needs to start a new farm.
One day, as the wagon rumbles along, you play tag with your little brother. Through the trees, you see some American Indian kids running, and you realize they’re playing tag, too! You wonder what else you have in common. You don’t know that their lives, like yours, are also changing.
In the early 1800s, American Indians saw waves of pioneers traveling across the land. Many of the settlers were recent immigrants from Britain and other parts of Europe. They had heard explorers’ reports of wide-open spaces ready for taking and wanted some land for themselves. These pioneers had come from different places, but as time went by they thought of themselves more and more as Americans. Many had even begun to believe Americans were meant to own all the land between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
