CHAPTER 14
THE WESTERN CROSSROADS
What did Americans desire
in the western lands?
 Farm land
 gold
ASSIMILATION OF THE
NATIVES AMERICANS
 to bring into conformity with the customs,
attitudes, etc., of a group, nation, or the
like; adapt or adjust: to assimilate the
new immigrants.
Government Assimilates
the Natives Americans
 Placed on a reservation
 Controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs
 Forced to learn English
 Lost their native names
INDIAN COUNTRY
 Bureau of Indian Affairs – Government
agency responsible for managing the
Indian issues
INDIAN COUNTRY
 Government was dishonest to the Indians
– failed to honor treaties
INDIAN COUNTRY
 Government diverted supplies to the
Indians
INDIAN COUNTRY
Indians angered because of starvation –
turned to violence – attacking agencies,
farms and towns
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Confrontation at
Sand Creek
 John Chivington – Army Colonel –
attacked Black Kettle’s camp in Colorado
even though a white flag was raised
 200 women and children were
massacred
(known as the Sand Creek Massacre)
 Indians stepped up their attack
Colonel John Chivington
Battle of Sand Creek
Battle of Sand Creek
Fort Laramie Treaty
 The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called
the Sioux Treaty of 1868) was an
agreement between the United States
and the Lakota nation, Yanktonai Sioux,
Santee Sioux, and Arapaho signed in
1868 at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming
Territoryguaranteeing to the Lakota
ownership of the Black Hills, and further
land and hunting rights in South Dakota,
Wyoming, and Montana.
BATTLE OF
LITTLE BIG HORN
 Sitting Bull/Crazy Horse
 Last victory for the Sioux
 General George Armstrong Custer – 600
members of his Calvary were massacred
 Death to Custer and his Calvary
Battle of the Little Big Horns - Montana
SITTING BULL
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse Monument
General George Armstrong Custer
THE GHOST DANCE
 Wovoka – (Indian Ghost Dance)
 Indians believed that the dance would
bring back the buffalo heads
 Some wore ghost shirts – special
symbols that could stop bullets
THE GHOST DANCE
 Spread to the Standing Rock Indian
Reservation in North Dakota.
 Sitting Bull was arrested – eventually
killed with 14 other Indians
Wovoka Ghost Dance
BATTLE AT
WOUNDED KNEE
 Wounded Knee, SD
 Sioux were angered by Sitting Bulls
death and started their ghost dances
 Gov’t ordered the seizure of their rifles –
searched their tepees – violence broke
out- 150 Indians killed and 30 soldiers
killed
Battle at Wounded Knee,
South Dakota in 1890
Death at Wounded Knee
END OF RESISTANCE
 Chief Joseph – Nez Perce leader –
attempted to escape to Canada –
captured 40 miles from the border
 Geronimo – Apache leader that fled the
reservation with 130 Indians and raided
settlements – his surrender marked the
end of the resistance in the southwest
Chief Joseph – Chief of the Nez Perce
Geronimo - Apache Chief
ASSIMILATING THE
AMERICAN INDIANS
 Dawes General Allotment Act – Indians
received 160 acres of reservation land for
farming
Section 2
Western Farmers
What were white
Americas looking for?
 Cheaper land
 Make a new start
 Gold
Why did African Americans
leave the South ?
 Escape persecution in the South
What were Scandinavians
looking for?
 Had the “American fever”
 Fresh start
 Farm land
 North of Salem
What about the Irish in
this new land?
 Moved to the plains after building the
railroads
 Many became farmers
 MONTROSE FIGHTIN’ IRISH
Where did the Germans
move from?
Moved to the plains from the
Mississippi Valley to the plains.
Farmers
Salem area
What made the Chinese
move to the west?
 Came during the gold rush
Describe the difficulties that farm
families faced on the Great Plains.
 Housing – poor (sod houses)
 Weather – blizzards in the winter and
heat in the summer
 Insects – swarms of insects
(grasshoppers)
 Fires – on the prairie were common
 Work – very hard and difficult
LAND ACTS
 Homestead Act – white settlers could
receive 160 acres of land – they needed
to farm for 5 years
 400,000 settlers took advantage of the
act
Homestead Act
PACIFIC RAILWAY ACT
 Land given to the railroad companies
linking the east to the west
MORRILL ACT
 States received 17 million acres of
federal land
 Constructed agriculture and engineering
schools
 70 state universities were founded
 SDSU
Building of the Railroad
OKLAHOMA HOMESTEADS
 11 millions acres given to non-Indian
settlers
MOVING WEST
Easterners – looking for a new life
African-Americans – escape the
persecution
Exoduster – movement of the AfricaAmericans to the west
SCARCE RESOURCES
 Lack of water – water sometimes 300
feet deep – used windmills to pump water
 Lack of trees
 Used dried buffalo manure
 Build sod houses
SCARCE RESOURCES
 U.S. Department of Agriculture taught
new methods of farming – dry farming
BONANZA FARMING
 Large-scale farming – used more than
500 workers
A 30-horse-drawn combined harvester and thresher in use
near Moro, Oregon, ca. 1903. As machines grew larger,
they required more horsepower to operate them. A further
technological advance enabled a single machine to
combine two or more steps of the harvesting process. With
machinery like this, farms of thousands of acres known as
"bonanza farms," employing hundreds of workers,
transformed commercial farming into an agricultural
industry. One such farmer produced 600,000 bushels of
wheat in 1881. Farmers like him were just as much
capitalists as J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, using
other peoples' money to invest in land and machinery and
mass-produce a needed product.
In the 1870's pioneers faced a fierce attack of
grasshoppers. The insects covered every inch of ground and
ate all the vegetation within their path. On a Sunday in May
1876, Father Boucher appealed to a higher source for relief
from the grasshoppers for his parishioners. The priest led his
congregation on an all-day, eleven mile pilgrimage, placing
three crosses in different locations. Though the grasshopper
came again in later years, the area within the crosses was
never touched. This cross is adjacent to St. Peter's Catholic
Church in Jefferson, South Dakota. Another one of the
crosses can be seen at the Morin farmstead 4 miles
northwest of Jefferson on County Road 1B, and the third
cross is on County Road 23 on the Dale Chicoine farm.
Grasshopper Cross, Jefferson, SD
Section 3
The Cattle Boom
TEXAS LONGHORNS
 A breed of cattle from Texas
(crossbreed of English and
Spanish cattle)
CATTLE TOWNS
 Were called railheads
 Towns along the railroad that shipped the
cattle to market
 Kansas (Abilene, Dodge City, Wichita)
RANCHING
Open Range – cattle
ranchers using public
land or grazing land
JOSEPH GLIDDEN
 Inventor of the barbed wire
 Ranchers refused to use because of injury to
the cattle
 Wire was used to control land and water
 Conflict erupted between ranchers and farmers
MINING IN THE
BLACK HILLS
 Gold was discovered in 1876
 In Lead City, Dakota Territory
ARTICLES
Western
Frontier
Copy of the Ft. Laramie Treaty
Ft. Laramie Treaty (broken promises)
Wild Bill Hickok





U.S. Marshall in Abilene Kansas
Came to Black Hills prospecting for gold
Playing poker at the old Saloon #10
Killed by Jack McCall
McCall wanted to have a reputation as a
gun fighter
 “deadmans hand” – 2 aces, 2 eights,
Jack
Jack McCall
 Hanged in 1877 at age 24
 In Yankton, Dakota Territorial capital
Wild Bill Hickok
Saloon #10 in
Deadwood, SD
Jack McCall
Deadman’s Hand
Test on Chapter 14
Test
On Tuesday