Summary Of Westward Expansion In My Antonia

In early American history, people expanded the nation west, creating Westward Expansion. In My Ántonia, details of Westward Expansion and the creating of western American civilization is seen. Many immigrants moved to America in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, and many of them set out west to make a living for themselves farming or ranching like so many did in My Ántonia. The railroads, just like in the book, brought so many of these immigrants and settlers to the West. Some settlers expanded their journey even further than Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and went to the Yukon and Alaska in search of gold during the Gold Rush, like Tiny in My Ántonia. Real details of Westward Expansion and America’s growth is …show more content…
In the beginning of My Ántonia, the reader meets Jimmy Burden and Jake Marpole on a train headed west to Nebraska, just like so many other settlers did going west. In My Ántonia, Jimmy Burden is traveling to Nebraska with a hired hand, Jake Marpole. Before the beginning of the story, Jimmy’s parents had died, his relatives in Virginia are sending him to live with his grandparents in Nebraska, and his father’s hired hand, Jake, is going along with to work for Jimmy’s grandparents. Also, a Bohemian immigrant family was going to settle land in the west by the same train. The significance of the two parties both traveling on a railway to go west is its relation of how many other settlers during Westward Expansion went west by using the railways. Both parties were traveling to the town of Black Hawk, one that the railroad ran through and farms and ranches surrounded. It relates to the fact that is written in “Railroads: The First Big Business” by Benson, Stock, and Brennan, “As the chief system of transportation of goods and people, railroads were essential to American industry. Where railroads went, towns and cities with bustling new commerce arose, all dependent on the railways for shipments of food and