The American West as both place and idea—a landscape as well as a complex and often contradictory process. It is the product of the pursuit of wealth but also of the search for the unknown, of imperial ambition and conquest but also the mixing of diverse groups of peoples, of brutality and genocide, but also common cause and perseverance. The West is in many ways an ideological invention, but it is also the place where the efforts to pursue those ideologies played out. Using this conception of the West as both process and place, discuss the “American West” at three of the following points in time: 1535, 1680, 1803, 1848, 1862, 1890. How did the landscape itself shape ideas about the West? What were those ideas, and how did they change over time? How did colonization efforts shape each period? How did Native societies respond to colonization efforts in each period? During the nineteenth century, who went west and why? Compare and contrast the experiences of these westward migrants.