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.