Western settlers came with their own goals. Even sophisticated cults that fled west like the Mormons formed the earliest terror groups with the goal of carving their own state. I forget when they decided to affirm their loyalty to Washington DC but that's beside the point.
Billy the Kid and Jesse James didn't do what they did for love of country and they likely had no loyalty to where they resided. They robbed and killed to serve themselves and buy their way to paradise far away from civilization.
The Governor of California regularly had to send out military expeditions to purge dissident dixie trannies all over his part of the country, which further showed just how much of a disconnect there was between the land, the people, and the government residing over them.
It wasn't until social security and other social support programming was implemented that people in California entered the American fold and started tattooing social security numbers. These people were loggers and miners left to toil for many generations and completely forgotten before they got a helping hand.