50 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT The Old West Written and Illustrated by Sean O’Neill Red Chair Press
Chapter 1 WESTWARD EXPANSION When President Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 the United States doubled in size American territory now spread all the way to the Pacific Ocean Most of it was a vast wilderness never seen by Europeans although it was already inhabited by many thousands of Native peoples President Jefferson quickly put together an exploration group led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new lands and the expansion in the American West began 4
WESTWARD EXPANSION 1 A fifteen-year-old Shoshone girl named Sacajawea accompanied Lewis and Clark on their journey She helped the explorers by translating and negotiating trade with the Native Americans they met along the way 2 As a souvenir of the trip Lewis sent President Jefferson a live prairie dog 3 Between 1850 and 1890 the West grew from about 1 percent of total U S population to over 20 percent 4 We may think of horses as a natural part of the western plains but there were no horses anywhere in North or South America until 1519 when eleven stallions and five mares were brought to what is now Mexico by Spanish explorers 5
