Buy a Bride :: Marriage History Papers

Buy a Bride In the mid-eighteen hundreds the first gear waves of Americans began distributor pointing west. They were in see of the American dream their chance to live happily constantly after. This first wave of settlers was for the most part, composed of miners looking at to strike it rich. They exploited the mineral resources all over the west, wherever gold was found the most noned places were in California, Colorado, and the Dakotas. The brave and adventurous men streamed over the continent in wagon trains or around it in ships in order to area the west coast. Towns sprang up around the different places where gold had been found as well as around places for ships to dock. The next wave of people to head west was the ranchers. They needed trim and western land was far cheaper than land in the east. The ever growing cities in the east needed an ever increasing supply of food and the cattle found on the western plains proved a good and profitable solution. Shortly after t he ranchers the farmers came looking for land. The land in the east was worn out from over cultivation, in stark contrast the western land was rich and virtually untouched, not to mention cheaper. The west was a new and promising land with immortal possibilities. (Summitt) Despite the promise and possibilities there were a few minor problems. angiotensin converting enzyme such problem was that the vast majority of the settlers were men. Men from the eastern states, Canada, and atomic number 63 often preceded the women, and then found themselves longing for feminine companionship. (Yalom 226) Population imbalances, combine with geographical isolation and physical distance, often made men agitated to find wives from among the few single Anglo women living in their region of the west. Unfortunately, miscellaneous marriages were not looked upon favorably by the population at large, so point men who had taken Indian brides were looking for women of European decent (15) In some plac es the problem was worse than in others. In the Washington soil it has been estimated that the ratio of men to women, regardless of marital status, as high as 91 and that there were at least two gramme men in the Territory that wished to get married (Holbrook 47). This problem was not a simple one to remedy. Men who had enough money traveled east and brought back a wife, but the vast majority of the thickly settled did not have the capital needed to make such a journey possible.