Cattle Ranchers
Texas Cattle
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In the 1800’s, ranchers in Texas raised and sold
longhorn cattle.
Texas had a lot of cattle, but the market was not good.
Cattle sold for only $4.00 each. In the eastern and
northern parts of the country, cattle sold for about $40
each. This difference was because of supply and
demand.
Demand is the amount of something that people want
to buy at certain prices. When the prices are low,
people usually buy more of it. Supply is the amount
of something that people want to sell at certain prices.
When the price is high, people want to produce and
sell more of it.
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The Cattle Drives
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Cowhands led cattle to railroads, where the cattle
were shipped to eastern and northern cities.
Ranchers wanted to sell their cattle to eastern and
northern cities where supply was low and demand
was high.
To get them to the cities they had to lead them to
railheads. A railhead is a town where the tracks
begin or end.
Because the railheads sometimes were hundreds of
miles away, cowhands had to lead them on cattle
drives.
Life on the Drives (see map on page 240)
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A cowhands job was hard,
sometimes boring, and
usually dirty.
Often the cowhands were
African Americans or
Mexicans. One well known
African American cowhand
was Nat Love, who wrote a
book about life on the trail.
One famous trail is the
Chisholm Trail. The trail
stretched from southern
Texas across the Red River,
and on to the railhead in
Abilene, Kansas.
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The End of the Drives
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Cattle drives ended for several reasons. One
reason was the invention of barbed wire.
Barbed wire is twisted wire with a sharp
point every few inches. Barbed wire was put
up by new settlers and cattle drives could not
cross the land as easily.
Also the growth of more railroads. After
railroads were built in Texas, cowhands could
ship their cattle.
Conflicts on the Plains
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American Indians and settlers fought on the Great
Plains in the late 1800s.
Settlers were moving west in search of gold or land.
They settled on land already lived on by American
Indians.
The Government built roads and railroads on the
land. They tried to convince the American Indians to
move to reservations. A reservation is land that the
government set aside for American Indians.
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Conflicts on the Plains
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The Government hoped that the Plains Indians
would move to the reservations and begin
farming. But the Plains Indians were used to
hunting buffalo and moving around. They
didn’t want to move.
Plains Indians fought soldiers who tried to
force them onto reservations. Most of the
fighting occurred in the 1860s and 1870s.
Sand Creek Massacre
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In 1864, volunteer fighters of the Colorado militia
attacked a Cheyenne Indian village near Sand Creek,
Colorado. The village people were asleep. Chief
Black Kettle raised a white flag and an American
flag to surrender, but it was ignored. The soldiers
continued to kill almost half of the men, women, and
children. After this massacre, the Plains Indians did
not believe that peace was possible with the U.S.
Government.
Battle of the Little Bighorn
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The Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are
sacred to the Lakota Indian tribe. In the 1870s
Lieutenant colonel George Custer led soldiers to the
Black Hills and found gold. Thousands of Lakota
and Cheyenne Indians gathered to protect the land.
In 1876 Custer tried to force the American Indians
on reservations. They attacked them at their village
on the Little Bighorn River. Led by Crazy Horse,
Gall, and Sitting Bull, the American Indians won,
killing all of the U.S. soldiers.
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Massacre at Wounded Knee
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Many Plains Indians followed a religion
called Ghost Dance. When Sitting Bull
became a ghost dancer, the government sent
police to arrest him and he died. Many of the
Ghost Dancers, led by Chief Big Foot, were
scared and hid in the Badlands of South
Dakota. U.S. soldiers captured Big Foot and
killed many men, women, and children in the
fight.
Destruction of the Buffalo
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Because of the settlers and railroads, many of
the buffalo habitats were destroyed. A habitat
is the area where an animal or plant normally
lives or grows.
Settlers killed the buffalo for meat, for sport,
or for the skins. This caused the buffalo to
become extinct, no longer exists. By 1889,
only about 1,000 buffalo were left.
Government Policy
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Government officials tried to force American
Indians to change their way of life.
Lawmakers tried to get the American Indians
to assimilate into American life. Assimilate
means changing a group’s culture and
traditions so that it blends with a larger group.