“Settlers” & Native Americans in the West, 1865 - 1900

1. “Settlers” & Native Americans in the West, 1865 - 1900 U.S. History II

2. Buffalo Hide Painting

4. The Plains Indians • Approx. 250,000 Indians in Great Plains in 1865 • smallpox, tuberculosis & malaria killed many & reduced fertility among survivors • women outnumbered men 2:1 in some tribes • destroyed cultures as well when elders killed before they could pass on oral traditions • 2 main groups: • semi-sedentary farmers living in earthen lodges along Missouri R. (Arikaras, Hidatsas, Mandans, Pawnees & Omahas) • horse-mounted, nomadic buffalo hunters on “high plains” (Arapahoes, Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Comanche, Crow, Kiowas & Sioux)

5. The Indian Wars • Ft. Laramie Treaty (1851) set boundaries for Northern tribes, but soon violated • Cheyenne & Arapaho annihilated at Sand Creek (1864) • Oglala Sioux Chief Red Cloud fought U.S. to stalemate in 1866-67 war & received guaranteed boundaries in 1868 treaty • when George Custer’s expedition verified gold in Black Hills, U.S. tried to back out of treaty, so war broke out with Sitting Bull • Custer’s 7th Cav. wiped out at Little Bighorn in 1876 Sitting Bull

6. Sand Creek Massacre

7. The Southern Plains Indians • Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867) set boundaries for southern plains tribes, but gov’t failed to supply them as promised, so Indians resumed hunting & war broke out • Sheriden & Custer destroyed villages & pony herds • Resistance broken by 1875 • 72 leaders imprisoned in Florida & subject to experimental “civilization by immersion” program run by Capt. Richard Pratt • Wovoka’s Ghost Dance movement crushed by massacre of 200+ Sioux at Wounded Knee in Dec. 1890 Gen. Phil Sheridan

8. Wovoka & the Ghost Dance

9. Big Foot Killed at Wounded Knee

10. The Reservations • Reservations seen as temporary - designed to civilize & Christianize Indians • Run by Bureau of Indian Affairs (est. 1824) • controls schools & legal system, grants recognition • agents white, but lesser officials Indian, which deflected hostility onto traitors • Traditional practices & communal work replaced by individualism, because whites believed indiv. land ownership was bedrock of democracy • Children often sent to boarding schools & punished for speaking native tongue

11. General Allotment • Dawes Severalty Act (1887) broke up reservations to encourage individualism • each head of household given 160 acres (320 if suitable only for grazing) • could pick own land, but held in trust by gov’t for 25 years • would become citizens after 25 years if gave up tribal ways • reduced Indian-owned acreage from 138 to 48 million - rest opened up to white settlement • Curtis Act (1898) terminated tribal gov’ts that rejected allotment

12. Shrinking Reservations

13. Denying Tribal Sovereignty • Legal status as nations with treaty rights stripped by Congress, with Supreme Court’s approval • 1871: Congress declared tribes no longer sovereign nations, but wards of gov’t • Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903): Court ruled Congress had plenary power over tribes - could act unilaterally to violate treaties & dispose of Indian lands as it saw fit • Indian Citizenship Act (1924) granted citizenship to all Native Americans

15. The Great American Desert • Great Plains long considered “Great American Desert” - too arid for agriculture • average annual rainfall too low to support crops without irrigation • unusually rainy years in mid-1880s & ads encouraged settlers, but drought at end of decade ruined many • Open-range livestock grazing ended after bad winters of 1886-87 • 25-30% of cowboys were African Americans or Mexican Americans • after demise of open range, many became cheap labor on farms

16. Home on the Range • Families, not individuals, settled west for the most part • couples had many kids - needed them as labor • fathers did heaviest work: sodbusting, construction, mining, etc. • mothers did housework, cared for livestock, gardened & earned extra cash by washing, cooking & sewing for single men • kids helped out by hunting, weeding, herding, cooking & caring for younger siblings • related families frequently settled together, which especially helped women

18. Farming • Cereal farming, but as agribusiness (capitalist agriculture) • 1873- barbed wire invented to fence in fields & protect from herds • Mechanization increased production dramatically - 4 times as much corn, 5 times as much hay, 7 times as much wheat & oats as before Civil War • Tariff kept cost of goods farmers bought high, leading to perpetual debt • by 1890s, 70% of farmland west of Mississippi River owned by Eastern investors

19. Government Assistance • Homestead Act (1862) - stake claim to quarter section (160 acres) & occupy five years, or buy after six months at $1.25/acre • Transcontinental railroads given over 180 million acres in alternating plots along routes - sold to settlers to insure steady freight business • Newlands Act (1901) - federal Bureau of Reclamation set up in Interior Dept. to build interstate irrigation projects

20. Mining • Pan prospecting ran out quickly - required capital to sink mine shafts • Chinese immigrants as well as whites, though former usually squeezed out • Major “strikes”: • Comstock Lode (1859) - silver • Cripple Creek (1891) - gold & silver