What was life like for people in the West in America Between 1800-1840?

Well westerners worked for wages, often at a firm owned back East or in Europe as most capital-intensive employers were, with far more working mines and sawmills/logging than herding cattle or sheep. Cowboys were comparatively rare, poorly paid, often in poor health either from a lifetime of bad nutrition on a slave plantation or Irish tenant farm or working conditions (my cowboy greatuncle died of tuberculosis in the dry Southwest where TB sufferers went to recover!), and it was for most a job held for a few years rather than a lifetime career, either moving on to becoming a small rancher or moving to town for non-seasonal, better paid work.

People was getting beat and treated horribly and black people hated it