After the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, the country which is now South Dakota had a rush in 1876 and for some years following, much like that of Nevada and Montana during the Civil War and of California in 1849. This frequently does not result in a well-balanced permanent population, and the real settlement of South Dakota dates from the succeeding period when its prairie lands were taken up by wheat growers from the States of the upper Mississippi Valley. The wheat industry in Wisconsin gradually died during the decade of 1870-80, and many who found the ground unprofitable there moved farther west, as did others with similar motives from western New York and the States of the old Northwest Territory.
South Dakota has a slightly higher percentage of old Americans than its sister to the north; otherwise the two differ remarkably little in size, composition, and resources. In 1920, half of the inhabitants of North Dakota claimed South Dakota as a birthplace; while half of the inhabitants of South Dakota claimed North Dakota as theirs. Of all the forty-eight States, these two are unmistakably the Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Nebraska after the Civil War continued to attract mainly the old American pioneer class, but it also became a haven for several foreign groups. It is said to contain about one-eighth of all the Bohemians in the United States. The serious permanent settlement of the State began in the early '70's. Many discharged soldiers seeking to make a new start went West with their families. It was only a few years later that the foreign tide began to reach these prairies and thereafter the State attracted large fractions of the Bohemian, Scandinavian, and German immigrations. Like some of the other prairie States it also received many settlers who were listed as Russian because of their nationality, but who, in fact, were Germans whose ancestors had gone to Russia and failed to prosper there. Nebraska, therefore, though less than three-fourths native, is overwhelmingly Nordic.
Kansas is still four-fifths native and nine-tenths Nordic. It has received the same foreign contributions as Nebraska, but in much smaller quantities. At the same time it has continued to receive settlers from the Mississippi Valley, and even from Eastern States, such as New York and Pennsylvania.
On the whole, the prairie States have been notably successful in assimilating their immigrants and maintaining an American tradition. The newcomers were not segregated in slums but scattered on farms. It was almost a necessity for them to learn the speech and adopt the customs of their hosts. While some of the Scandinavians, as in Minnesota, have tried to have their children learn the language and preserve the traditions of the "old country," these have at least been Nordic traditions, and any feeling of aloofness or separateness is rapidly disappearing.
The mountain States date largely from the Civil War, when another of the country's waves of migration and settlement broke loose from its moorings and started westward.
The first great migration of the American stock began immediately after the Revolution, and resulted in the creation of Kentucky and Tennessee by the Southerners, the transformation of western New York by the New Englanders, and a mingling of these two streams as they crossed the Ohio River to open up the Northwest Territory.
The second great migration reached its crest with the panic of 1819. It completed the settlement of the Ohio Valley and of the States along the lower Mississippi and the Gulf.
The third great migration reached its height with the feverish land speculation promoted by Andrew Jackson's experiments in banking and broke with the collapse of the prosperity which Martin Van Buren inherited from his predecessor. It witnessed the settlement of the Mississippi Valley throughout almost its entire length; together with the Nordic absorption of Texas.
The fourth wave, slightly more diffuse, washed over the "great plains" and broke on the crests of the Rocky Mountains during the Civil War, though a heavy splash had meanwhile reached the Pacific Coast. It began with the settlement of Kansas, motivated in part by land hunger, but also by definite political calculations. Meanwhile the conquest of California, the discovery of gold there, the settlement of Oregon, and the Mormon appropriation of Utah, brought into existence an active traffic across the plains, which was the beginning of Nebraska's existence.