In the early 1800's, no one knew who would control the seemingly infinite spaces of the West. Many nations and many peoples still laid claim to much of it. Hopeful Americans now began moving there nevertheless, and the individual trails they followed merged into "Manifest Destiny." Mountain men, such as the legendary Joe Meek, found more adventure than profit as they scoured the uncharted Rockies for furs. Missionaries like Narcissa Whitman left the safety and friendship of home to travel west in a quest to convert Indians to Christianity. In Mexican Texas, Sam Houston led the fight for an independent republic. And Virginians Henry and Naomi Sager, following a restless dream of better times over the next horizon, set out with their children on the Oregon Trail -- but their deaths left unfulfilled dreams and seven orphans to reach the continent's farthest shore alone. Regardless of their reasons for going west, once they got there, the Americans soon determined to make the West -- all of it -- their own.