White settlers who had traveled to Oregon along the Oregon Trail began to live in the high desert region in the 1850s and 1860s after they had begun farming and logging in the Willamette Valley and other lands in western Oregon. Thousands of these emigrants reached the area from the west, crossing the Cascade Range to make land claims in eastern Oregon. The high desert area was settled by whites later than western Oregon in part because of Elijah White's failure to find a pass east through the Cascades. Once they had claimed more land, pioneers and members of the American government negotiated treaties with natives in the high desert and elsewhere in Oregon, often forcing them off their native lands and onto reservations.