Unit One: The Wild West
Settling the West
Westward Expansion
• From the beginning of American history,
Americans were constantly moving westward
expanding the boundaries of the country and to
gain their own land or sense of independence.
• This constant wave of settlers led to regular
conflicts with Native tribes who lived in the
areas.
• The Americans first moved across the Great
Plains to the Pacific Coast because it was
thought to be a vast desert, but American
settlers starting just before the Civil War began
closing in the Great Divide.
Indian Territory
• The Great Plains also known as the
Prairies (a vast rolling grassland) was a
sparsely populated vast amount of land in
the center of North America.
• The Great Plains was “given” to the
Indians by the American government as a
reserve known as the Indian Territory.
• The Plains were populated by the Plains
Indians which included the Arapaho,
Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Navajo.
Indian Territory
• The Plains Indians due to the introduction
of the horse by the Spanish became
expert breeders and riders with all aspects
of their society based around their Horse
Culture.
• The horse made the Plains Indians
extremely mobile nomadic hunters.
• The Plains Indians hunted the American
Buffalo, which was used for food, housing
(teepee), clothing, medicine,
and as part of their religion.
Indian Territory
• The Plains Indians were not the only
Indians who lived in the region, due to the
Indian Removal Acts (1830) of Andrew
Jackson’s administration most all Eastern
tribes were moved across the Mississippi
into the Oklahoma Territory (Plains).
• The greatest example of this forced
movement was the Trail of Tears when the
Cherokee Indians were forced out of
Georgia to the Oklahoma Territory.
Indian Territory
• The Natives of the Plains heard of the
American white man from the Eastern
tribes, but already new about the “white
man” when the Spanish owned the
territory.
• The Great Plains or “Western frontier”
would not stay long in the hands of the
Natives due to the movement of miners,
ranchers, homesteaders, and railroads
into the area to claim it for American
prosperity.
Manifest Destiny
• Americans believed through Manifest
Destiny that it was America’s mission from
God to spread over the whole of the
continent and settle the land. (no matter
who was in the way)
• The American government just before the
Civil War tried to entice settlement into the
Great Plains region and railroad expansion
across the continent to the Pacific Ocean
to connect the nation.
Western Expansion
• There were many push-pull factors leading
to settlement of the West.
– Push – displacement of farmers, former
slaves, and other workers after the Civil War;
mass immigration into the Eastern seaboard;
high cost of living in the East.
– Pull – government incentives through various
acts offering large tracts of land for cheap
prices; owning own land (private property);
gold strikes; vast amount of cattle and buffalo.
Government Incentives
• The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 & 1864 gave
large land grants to the Union and Central
Pacific Railroads for the purpose of the building
of a Trans-Continental Railway or Overland
Route. (They received more than 175 million
acres of public land).
• The Union Pacific started at Omaha Nebraska
and was built mostly by Irishmen (patty or mick),
veterans, and free blacks.
• The Central Pacific started just south of San
Francisco, California and was built mostly by
Chinamen (chink, celestials, or coolies) and
Native Americans.
Transcontinental Railroad
• The construction was hard with tunnels
having to be blasted into the Sierra
Nevada Mountains with the use of nitroglycerin (liquid explosive).
• The final spike (golden spike) was driven on
10 May, 1869 at Promontory Point Utah.
(“Driven” by Leland Stanford president of the
Central Pacific”)
• The driving of the Golden Spike signaled the
completion of Manifest Destiny and led to
mass settlement of the Great Plains region.
Transcontinental Railroad
• To better organize the train routes and time
schedules the railroads adopted A System of
National Time Zones for Railroads, dividing the
nation into four time zones.
Government Incentives
• The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 gave state
governments millions of acres of land in the
West to sell for the establishment of “Land
Grant” colleges for agriculture and mechanical
arts. (Auburn and Alabama A&M)
• The largest amounts of these lands were
purchased by bankers and land speculators
(people who bought land in the hope that the
price would rise and sell it for a profit later.)
• The Homestead Act of 1862 offered people 160
acres of land (quarter mile square) for a dollar
an acre if they lived and cultivated the land for
five years, it was free.
Government Incentives
• The Timber Culture Act of 1873 provided a
free grant of 160 acres of land if forty
acres were planted in trees, for ten years.
• The Desert Act of 1877 provided for 640
acres of land for a dollar an acre to
reclaim, irrigate, and cultivate the land for
three years.
• These many incentives caused people in
mass numbers to settle the Western lands,
but the first mass wave of people
developed because of the gold strikes.
The Mining Strikes
• There are two types of mining: placer and
quartz.
– Placer mining is when dirt from river beds is
sifted for gold, or small mines are dug into
mountains. (panning or using a sluice box)
– Quartz mining is done by deep mines dug into
the ground or mountain sides by large mining
corporations.
• A person who came to the west to hunt for gold
was called a prospector.
• A prospector “staked” a “claim” on his land and
had to protect it from others, because if he left it
he lost the claim. (later claims were bought and
sold)
Mining Techniques
The Mining Strikes
• The first gold strike that moved people to the
West in great numbers was the discovery of gold
on Sutter’s Mill sparking the California Gold
Rush and the mass movement of single men
called Forty-niners (1849) into the area.
• The next major gold strike was the Colorado
Gold Rush in 1859 at Pike’s Peak by William
Greenberry Russell near Cherry Creek.
• Many people headed to the area with the slogan
“Pike’s Pike or Bust”, but many did not find gold,
because it was too deep.
The Mining Strikes
• Also in 1859 a huge silver and gold strike
developed in Nevada’s Six-Mile Canyon by
“Henry Comstock” with his famous Comstock
Lode. ( It was one of the richest silver veins in
the world with $306,000,000 worth of bullion.)
• John W. Mackay and partners found the largest
vein of ore in the Comstock Lode known as the
“Big Bonanza”.
• During the Civil War gold strikes and rushes
occurred in Idaho, Montana, Washington,
Wyoming, and New Mexico.
The Mining Strikes
• In the 1870s a gold strike was found in the
Black Hills of the Dakota Territory by a
group of prospectors led by George
Armstrong Custer starting the Black Hills
Gold Rush.
• One of the biggest effects of the Black
Hills Gold Rush was the encroachment on
Sioux Indian lands and war.
• The last great gold strike was in the 1890s
in Alaska known s the Klondike or Yukon
Gold Rush. (Last Frontier)
Effect of the Mining Strikes
• The quick rush of people into the mining areas
led to quickly put together towns known as
Boom towns.
• When the gold, silver, copper, or etc. veins
went dry so did the town, now called a ghost
town.
• In the West famous and infamous mining
towns developed like Tombstone, Deadwood,
Last Chance Gulch, Leadville, Silver City, and
Virginia City.
• Most all Boomtowns had a Saloon (casino and
bar), Hurdy-gurdy House/brothel/bordello
(prostitutes), Opium din, Race track, and
General Store.
The Mining Frontier
Effect of the Mining Strikes
• The mining towns were at times violent places to
live with prospectors fighting over claims,
highway men or road agents attacking
stagecoaches that carried goods and precious
metals, and town violence.
• To enforce the law because organized law was
scarce or corrupt, miners and townspeople
formed vigilance committees to track down
criminals and hang them by lynching (lynch mob
justice).
• A new style of dress developed in the
mining areas led by Levi Strauss who in
1872 with inventor Jacob Davis patented
denim “blue” jeans to sell to the miners.
Effect of the Mining Strikes
• People in these areas before
the expansion of the railroads got
their mail through the Pony Express.
• One of the most famous stagecoach services
was Wells Fargo & Co. formed by the founder
of American Express (pony mail
service) Henry Wells, William Fargo,
and John Warren Butterfield.
• The Mining Frontier led to mass movements
of people into the Western Frontier and gave
needed capital and materials for the Industrial
boom in America.