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Chapter 17
The Transformation of the TransMississippi West
1860-1900
Introduction
• What roles did the army and the railroads play in
the settlement of the West?
• How did whites justify western settlement and
the displacement of Native Americans and how
did native Americans react to attempts to confine
them to reservations?
• How did the Wild West image of cowboys and
Indians originate and why is it still popular?
• Why did some Americans wish to conserve the
natural resources and beauty of the West and
how did this lead to the opening of National
parks?
The Plains
Indians
• Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow and other tribes roamed
the Northern Great plains
• Five civilized tribes along Comanches, Kiowas, Pawnees lived in
Southern Plains
• Lakota Sioux, Crow and Cheyenne hunted and relied upon the buffalo
herds. Indians ate the meat and used hides for shelter and clothing.
• 1860’s the demand for buffalo hides grew in Eastern Markets to the
point that white hunters became profession buffalo killers
• Buffalo Bill Cody 1867-1868 was credited with killing over 4000
buffalos himself
• Buffalo was also used to feed the workers building the transcontinental
Railroad
• By 1880 the herds were reduced to the point that they could no longer
sustain the lives of the Indians on the plains
The Destruction of the Nomadic
Indian Life
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By 1860’s the government was pressuring Plains Tribes to give up their
hunting grounds and settle as farmers on reservations
Pueblos and Crows accepted the change peaceably
1860’s-1890’s tribes such as Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and
Comanche engage in almost constant warfare over possession of the Great
plains and the Southwest
Colonel John Chivington’s Sand Creek Massacre
1867-1868 the government signed treaties with many tribes and assigned
them to reservations in Oklahoma (Indian Territory) and South Dakota
Many Indians rejected the farming lifestyle and left the reservations
Those Indians that left the reservations became a threat to pioneers settling
and moving across the Great Plains
The army retaliated by attacking Indian groups not located on reservations
Custer’s Last Stand 1876
• Sioux refused to sell the Black Hills portion of their
reservation in South Dakota
• Gold had been found in the Black hills
• The army made war against the Sioux
• Sioux annihilate General Custer and the 7th Cavalry
at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.
• Subsequent attacks against the Sioux eventually
forced them to give up their claims to the Black
Hills
• Late 1870’s Nez Perce Indians led by Chief Joseph
surrender and Chief Dull Knife’s Cheyenne
surrender to the US Army
“Saving” the Indians
• 1881 Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of
Dishonor, which called attention to the way that the
US government had mistreated the Indians
• Reformers thought that the best way to deal with
the Indians was assimilation
• 1887 Dawes Severalty Acts divided reservations in
160acre tracts assigned to the head of each Indian
family
• At the end of 25 years the Indians were to receive
full title to their land and full US citizenship
• The government also tried to suppress tribal
languages and culture by opening schools to
assimilate Indian children into American culture.
The Ghost Dance and the End of
Indian Resistance 1890
• Sioux and other tribes turn to the Ghost
Dance
• Army decided to put down the movement
which led to the last battles between the
Indians and whites
• 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre killed over
300 Sioux
The First Transcontinental
Railroad
• Union Pacific and Central pacific Railroads meet at Promontory
Point Utah in 1869
• Construction was authorized by the Pacific
Railroad Act of 1862 and construction continued in spite of the Civil
War
• Chinese Immigrants performed much of the labor for the Central
Pacific Railroad Company and Irish Immigrants performed much of
the labor for the Union Pacific Railroad Company
• Mexican-Americans and African-Americans assisted in the work as
well.
• Government granted land grants to the companies that built the
railroad so the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad
Companies emerged from the period as the biggest landlords in the
West
• By the beginning of the 1900’s nine major railroads linked the
country making travel and shipping safer, easier and faster
Settlers and the Railroad
• Railroad companies were eager to attract future
customers for the Railroads so they set up land bureaus
throughout the west to sell the land grants.
• They offered easy credit and free transportation to
potential buyers
• 1870-1900 Railroads recruited whole families, single
women and 2 million European immigrants to the West
• The pressure for farmers to repay their debts quickly led
to a one/cash crop system that became susceptible to
environmental and economic factors
Homesteading on the
Great Plains
• Provided settlers with 160 acres to anyone that would
live on the land for a period of 5 years
• Offer was especially attractive to European Immigrants
• 400,000 families registered for the Homestead Act
between 1862-1900.
• Most valuable land typically ended up in the hands of
railroad companies, land speculators, lumber companies
and big ranchers
• Small farmers had to scope with isolation, hard work,
extreme weather and living in soddies because of the
lack of trees
• Those that lasted more than 5 years typically saw their
lives improve
New Farms, New markets
• Railroads provided a way to move improve farm
machinery to the West and provided transport
for increasing demand for food in the East
• Agricultural production soared between 18701900.
• New Farms were very risky
– Debt for horses, farm equipment, seed
– Debt was to railroads and banks
– To meet demand for repayment farmers grew cash
crops which made them vulnerable to environment
and economic situations
Building a Society and Achieving
Statehood
• Churches, Schools, Lyceums, Libraries and
Social Clubs began to emerge
• Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska and Colorado
entered the Union in the 1860’s and 1870’s
• Most of the northern portions of the Great Plains
achieved statehood in the 1880’s and 1890’s
• Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico entered the
Union in the early 20th centuries
• By 1910 Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado
led the Eastern states by granting voting rights
to women
The Southwestern Frontier
• American ranchers took over the land and
forced most Spanish speaking inhabitants
off of the land
• The Mexican minority tended to be low
paid day laborers who faced discrimination
and sometimes violent attacks
• The large number of Mexicans in the area
gave the Southwest a strong Spanish
culture
The Mining Frontier
• California Gold Rush 1849
• 1850’s Gold Rushes in Sierra Nevada and British Columbia
• Gold and Silver strikes in Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Montana,
Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska
• Each strike brought eager prospectors with the hope of get-richquick.
• Boomtowns such as Virginia City and Ghost Towns were common in
the West
• Most did not find fortune but many did make a living.
• Hardware stores, saloons, prostitutes etc drained most of the
prospected gold and silver
• Real profits went to Large Mining Companies
• US economic growth of millions of ounces of gold and silver
• Large Mining Companies ravaged the environment
Cowboys and the
Cattle Frontier
• New stockyards and the Railroad led to a boom
in cattle ranching
• Herds had to be driven to the stockyards
• Open range farms promised huge profits
• Cowboys were typically young, underpaid, 1/5
were Mexican or African American.
• 1880-1885
• Industry declined after 1885 because of
overgrazing, enclosure movement and freezing
winters of 1885 and 1886.
• Cattle Ranching continued but changed
Bonanza Farms
• Land Speculators in the 1870’s and 1880’s
invested heavily in the latest equipment
and established 10,000 acre farms in the
belief of huge profits
• Overproduction, bad weather and falling
wheat prices sent most into bankruptcy in
the 1890’s.
• Large scale farms in California under the
“Sunkist” label did the best.
The Oklahoma Land
Rush 1889
• Oklahoma was set aside as a reservation
for Native American tribes
• Pressure from land hungry farmers
mounted and in 1889 Congress decided to
open 2 million acres to settlement
• 6,000 homestead claims were filed within
weeks
• Under the Dawes Act more Oklahoma land
passed to the hands of white settlers
The American Adam and
the Dime Novel Hero
• 1860’s and 1870’s Eastern
writers created the Western
novel
• Frontiersmen heroes fought
savage Indians and rescued
maidens
• Ned Buntline made Buffalo
Bill so famous that Wild Bill
Cody cashed in on the fame
by creating a traveling Wild
West Show.
Revitalizing the Frontier Legend
• Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Remington
and Owen Wister visited the West and
made it the subjects of their history, art
and novels. They fostered the frontier
legend as the home of the cowboy and the
idea of manly virtue
Beginning a Conservation
Movement
• John Wesley Powell, Henry D. Washburn,
John Muir and George Perkins Marsh
created the first national parks
(Yellowstone and Yosemite) and John Muir
created the National Organization
dedicated to conservation called the Sierra
Club