14.0 – Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century

2. 14.0 – Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century • Expansion and development of western railroads • Competitors for the West: miners, ranchers, homesteaders, and American Indians • Government policy toward American Indians • Gender, race, and ethnicity in the far West • Environmental impacts of western settlement

3. Key Tensions • -BUFFALO HUNTERS • U.S. Gov’t • RAILROADS • SHEEPHERDERS • FARMERS NATIVE AMERICANS CATTLEMAN RANCHERS

4. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS

5. Settlers Push Westward • Most settlers believed they could own land by simply making a mining claim, or by starting a business • Called the West “unsettled” because Native Americans had never settled or “improved” it • The prospect of striking it rich drew thousands into Colorado and nearby regions • Mining (ramshackle) towns sprung up and busniess owners followed to try out their luck

6. The Arrival of the Railroad • From 1850 to 1871 the Federal Gov’t made huge land grants to the railroads • Over 170 million acres given for laying track in the West • Both the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific received 10 square miles of public land for every mile of track they laid. • THE RACE WAS ON! • Central Pacific- moved Eastward from Sacramento • Union Pacific- moved Westward from Omaha, NE

9. Promontory Point, UTMay 10th, 1869

10. Many Chinese and Irish immigrants were employed by the Railroad companies Suffered accidents, disease and attacks from Native Americans

11. Changes brought by the Railroads • Rails quickly turned small towns into thriving cities by connecting them to civilization • Easier faster travel brought ideas from the East • North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana became populous enough to gain statehood.

12. Railroad impact on the Native Americans • The completion of the transcontinental railroad required that rail lines run through territories previously ceded to Native American tribes. A congressional commission meeting in 1867 stated the official policy of the American government on “Indian affairs”: Native Americans would all be removed to Oklahoma and South Dakota, and every effort would be made to transform them from “savages” into “civilized” beings.

13. Destruction of the Buffalo • Buffalo herds were almost completely destroyed by white settlers and miners between the 1850s to the 1880s. They over hunted the herds and were actually encouraged to do so by army commanders because they wanted to undermine Indian resistance (main source of food, clothing, shelter and fuel). Bison were also used to feed construction crews building the Union Pacific Railroad. • Tourists and fur traders shot buffalo for sport 1800- 65 million buffalo roamed the plains 1890- fewer than 1000 remained

15. Frontier Thesis • Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued the frontier was significant in • 1) shaping the American character • 2) defining the American spirit • 3) fostering democracy • 4) providing a place for people to flee from industry and urban stress

16. Attracting Settlers to the West • Homestead Act- Gov’t offered 160 acres of land to anyone who would “homestead” it. • *cultivate the land, build a home and LIVE there! • Morrill Land Grant Act- Set aside land and provided money for agricultural colleges. hundreds of thousands of acres of land were given to state governments. This land could be sold by the states to pay for these colleges. Sold at 50 cents an acre (and sometimes less) , *106 Colleges and institutions were created from this Act and Agricultural science becomes a huge industry in the U.S.

17. Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the West • It was in the Western states where the first American women received the vote. • The state constitution of Wyoming was the first to give women the vote on a statewide basis.

18. Thousands of blacks moved west after the Civil War • Many who traveled West lacked the finances and farming abilities to the successful, and faced many of the same racial difficulties they had faced in the American South. However, some black farmers did emerge successfully as plains farmers. The most prominent group of Southern blacks who went west was a 1879 group who called themselves the Exodusters (modeling their journey after the journey of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land). Less than 20 percent of this group became successful farmers in the plains region.

19. The Great Plains

21. Farming the Great Plains • Many settlers who went west were immigrants with families • The harshness of life on the plains was simply too much to bear for many settlers and their families. Temperatures ranged from over 100 degrees in the summer to bitter cold in the winter, and many of the sod houses build by settlers did little to keep out the heat or the cold. Having enough water was a constant problem, with some of the water collected in barrels or buckets carrying “prairie fever” (typhoid fever). In a single year a settler and his land might be attacked by fierce blizzards, howling dust storms, and locusts or grasshoppers. • By 1900 two-thirds of the homestead farms failed, causing many ex-farmers to return to the East.

22. Success on the Frontier • Survival in the plains largely depended on cooperation with other settlers that lived near you. Groups of men would put up new barns and construct fences; women on the plains would get support from wives of other settlers • The United States Department of Agriculture was established in 1862 and by late 1863 was distributing information to plains farmers on new farm techniques and developments. New plows and threshers (included some powered by steam) were introduced in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

23. Farmers Vs. Ranchers

25. Cattle Becomes Big Business • When the great herds of buffalo disappeared, cattle and horses flourished on the Great Plains • With growing cities and population the demand for beef skyrocketed.

26. Cattle Trails

27. A Day in the Life of a Cowboy • Worked 10-14 hours a day on a ranch or the trail. • Alert at all times to dangers that might upset the herd. • Expert rider and roper----Gun used to protect the herd rather than to chase outlaws • Season started with “round up” and ended with the “long drive” or moving of the herd.

28. Legends of the West • “Wild Bill” Hickok and Martha Jane Burke (Calamity Jane) never dealt with cows. • Hickok was a spy and scout during the Civil War and Calamity Jane was a sharpshooter who dressed as a man and was a scout for Colonel George Custer.

29. A critical blow to the cattle industry occurred during two very harsh winters of 1885 to 1886 and 1886 to 1887. Many cattle froze to death or starved during these years, with some ranchers losing up to 85 percent of their cattle. Those ranchers that survived turned to the same business techniques that had saved many plains farms; scientific methods of breeding, feeding and fencing were now utilized by those ranchers that survived. In reality, the independent cowboy present in our myths of the West also died during this transformation.

30. Farmers often accused ranchers of allowing herds to trample their farmland. The invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glidden in 1873 was the beginning of the end for the cattle industry; as farmers began to contain their farmlands, the open range began to disappear.

31. MINERS

32. The rumors of gold at Pike’s Peak, Nevada, silver at Comstock, Nevada, and the other minerals at countless other locations drew settlers westward in the quest for instant riches • Persons of all backgrounds, including women and some Chinese who had left their jobs in railroad construction, all took part in the search for riches

33. The Comstock Lode was a fabulously rich deposit of precious metals that was discovered on the property of Tompkins Paige Comstock in Virginia City, Nevada in 1859. The discovery prompted another wave of immigrants, miners, and fortune-hunters to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Like their predecessors in the California gold rush of 1849, however, few of them actually got rich from mining. Over the next 20 years, about $500 million worth of silver and gold were mined from the Comstock Lode.

34. NATIVE AMERICANS

35. Governments Policy toward American Indians -Originally the Federal Gov’t had ruled the Great Plains as one large Reservation -During the 1850’s, gov’t changed policies and created treatises that defined specific boundaries for each tribe. -Most Native Americans ignores the Federal Gov’t and continued to hunt on their traditional lands which led to a clash with settlers

36. Chief Sitting Bull Vs. General Custer • The tribe that resisted the onrush of settlement most fiercely were the Sioux. In 1865 the government announced their desire to build a road through Sioux territory; the following year tribesmen attacked and killed 88 American soldiers. After negotiations in 1868 the Sioux agreed to move to a reservation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Yet in late 1874 miners searching for gold began to arrive in the Black Hills. • The chief of the tribe, Sitting Bull, and others of the tribe left the Dakota reservation at this point. • General George Custer was sent to round up Sitting Bull and the Sioux. He and his force of over 200 men were all killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June of 1876. • This was the last major Native American victory against the American army. Large numbers of federal troops were brought into the region, returning the Sioux to their reservations.

37. Sitting Bull….. • Perhaps the best-known Native American warrior, Sitting Bull was an implacable enemy of white encroachment and assimilation. His skill in uniting the various Plains Indian tribes led to the Great Sioux War of 1876 and the defeat of Col. George A. Custer at Little Big Horn. Even when it was clear that his people could not prevail in the conflict with whites, Sitting Bull refused to abandon his traditional way of life.

38. When Sitting Bull and the Sioux annihilated Custer and the 7th Calvary it electrified the nation and spurred the U.S. government into prosecuting the war with greater vigor. No sooner had the Native American coalition beaten Custer than they broke up to forage and were continually harried by soldiers well into the winter. Sitting Bull was eventually shot and killed as an attempt was made to arrest him and move him to an Indian Reservation.

39. CUSTER…. • Dressed in fringed buckskin instead of a traditional uniform, he was the embodiment of the dashing Indian fighter. Easterners looked on Custer as the army's foremost Indian fighter. His best-selling book, My Life on the Plains (1874), and several popular magazine articles helped to reinforce his reputation as a military genius. Yet the "Custer myth" did not always square with reality.

40. Massacre at Wounded Knee • Conflict with the federal army occurred again in 1890 after the death of Sitting Bull. Some Sioux again attempted to leave their reservation; these tribesmen were quickly apprehended by the federal army. As the male Sioux were handling their weapons, a shot was fired by someone. The soldiers opened fire on the Native Americans, killing over 200 men, women, and children in the Massacre at Wounded Knee

41. The Wounded Knee massacre was the last major battle of the Indian Wars and marked the effective end of Native American resistance to the advance of white settlers into the western territories. After the murder of Chief Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890 (killed by government officials during an attempt to arrest him), some of his followers joined Lakota Sioux Chief Big Foot, who was encamped at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. U.S. troops were sent to disarm Big Foot's band, which numbered about 350 people, due to the unrest surrounding the spread of the Ghost Dance religion—a mystic belief that dead warriors would rise again to help the Native American people. On December 29, while federal troops negotiated the disarming of the Native Americans, an unknown person fired a shot, prompting nervous cavalrymen to respond by firing into the Native Americans, ultimately massacring some 300 men, women, and children, including Chief Big Foot.

42. Wounded Knee

43. Helen Hunt Jackson • A Century of Dishonor detailed the injustices of the reservation system and inspired reformers to push for change. • Exposed the government’s many broken promises • "to redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a century of dishonor".[

44. Dawes Severalty Act (1887) • Broke up the reservations and distributed the land to the head of each Native American family • Each received 160 acres (or 80 to each unmarried adult) in which they were required to live on for 25 years! • The land then became theirs and they also received American citizenship • “AMERICANIZE” the Native Americans!! • Goal: to assimilate the Native Americans into Western Society • Resistance and poverty led to the decline of many tribes • By 1932, whites had taken about two-thirds of the land set aside for Native Americans