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The American West
Chapter 13
The Plains Indians
The Plains Indians
lived in the area from
the Mississippi River
to the Rocky
Mountains and from
Canada to Mexico.
Plains Indians
• The most important tribes were the Sioux, Blackfoot,
Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Comanche.
• The plains area was hotter than 100 degrees in the
summer, and could drop to 40 degrees below zero
with heavy snows in the winter. The region was so
dry that when it rained it often flooded. The rolling
land was covered with grassland and a few
mountains. The Black Hills were high and steep.
• Few Indians lived on the Great Plains before white
men brought the horse in the 1600’s.
• After the 1600s Plains Indians became
dependent on horses.
• Indian clothing was highly decorative
and symbolic
• They used buffalos for everything from
source of food to building teepees
Teepees
• The teepee opening always faced east.
The outside of the teepee was
decorated with paintings of animals,
stars, or other objects. The Plains
Indians had little furniture. Their beds
were made from buffalo robes, skins
with the hair left on.
Comanche Buffalo Hunters and Their Tepee Lodges Aug. 1871. National
Archives
Government Policy
• Changed in the mid-1800s
• Before, had forced Indians West
• Now, they seized Indian land and forced
tribes onto reservations
• U.S. army’s policy: destroy the buffalo
and the Indians will move
• 60 million >100s
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/american-buffalo-spirit-of-anation/introduction/2183/
Indian Wars
•
•
•
•
Sand Creek Massacre
Battle of Little Bighorn
Wounded Knee Massacre
Ghost Dance
Resistance Ends in the
West
• Reservation system:
– The government wanted to control the
territory
– Americanization
• The Dawes Act (1887): broke up most
reservations and turned Native
Americans into individual property
owners.
“You are therefore directed to induce your
male Indians to cut their hair, and both
sexes to stop painting their faces…the
wearing of citizens’ clothing, instead of the
Indian costume and blanket, should be
encouraged.”
BIA letter to Greenville Indian School, CA, 1902
Mining & Railroaders
When the 1849, California gold rush
ended, miners looked for new
opportunities
Comstock Lode
• A massive body of silver ore
discovered under what is now
Virginia City, Nevada in 1859.
• Between 1859 and 1878 it
yielded $400 million in silver and
gold.
• It is notable not just for the
immense fortunes it generated
and the large role those fortunes
had in the growth of Nevada
and San Francisco, but also for
the advances in mining
technology that it spurred.
Miner working in the Comstock Lode
Klondike Gold Rush, 1897
• About 100,000 people came to the
Klondike
• Many people from other countries
• Placer mining, hydraulic mining, hardrock mining
From Boomtown to
Ghost town
Territorial Government
• Boom towns marked
by lawlessness and
disorder
• Vigilantes
• gunslingers
Wild Bill Hickock
Wyatt Earp
Railroaders
1863, 2 companies raced to build the first
railroad from one coast to the other
Laborers
•
•
•
•
Mostly Chinese
Irish
African Americans
Mexicans
Ranchers
The Homestead Act
• The Homestead Act of
1862 has been called one
the most important pieces of
Legislation in the history of
the United States. Signed
into law in 1862 by Abraham
Lincoln after the secession
of southern states, this Act
turned over vast amounts
of the public domain to
private citizens. 270 millions
acres, or 10% of the area of
the United States was
claimed and settled under
this act.
The Oklahoma Land Rush of
1889
Sodbusters
• Farmers in the
plains who built
their homes out
of sod and
worked hard to
remove sod
from their fields
in order to
make them
usable.
• Men plowing sod
and a sod house
The Chinese
Exclusion Act
•
The statute of 1882
suspended Chinese
immigration for ten years and
declared the Chinese as
ineligible for naturalization.
Chinese workers already in
the country challenged the
constitutionality of the
discriminatory acts, but their
efforts failed. The act was
renewed in 1892 for another
ten years, and in 1902
Chinese immigration was
made permanently illegal. The
legislation proved very
effective, and the Chinese
population in the United States
sharply declined.
Famous People
Sitting Bull
Ghost Dance of the Oglala Sioux, Frederic
Remington, Harper's Weekly, December 1890.