After Reconstruction, America experienced an "era of incorporation" with mass social movements, tremendous economic change, and national consolidation. Settlers migrated West and encountered landscapes of spectacular beauty, but faced daunting challenges in farming the arid land. Bitter conflicts also arose with Native Americans and Mexicans, who had occupied the land for centuries, over land ownership. After years of hardship, citizens became disgruntled with Republican policies and many turned to the Populist Party, whose ideas anticipated the development of the twentieth-century state.