Chapter 17
The Transformation
of the TransMississippi West,
1860 – 1900
ACT Standards
• C: 1-a Evaluate the impact of new
inventions and technologies of the late 19th
Century.
• C:1-G Identify and evaluate the influences
on the development of the American West.
• C:1-H Analyze significant events for
Native Indian tribes, and their responses
to those events, in the late 19th Century.
Readings for Chapter 17
• You MUST read the
entire chapter!
• Watch:
– Bonanza
– Rifleman
– Plains Indians and
western shows
Native Americans
and the
Trans-Mississippi West
“The buffaloes and the black-tail
deer are almost gone!”
The Plains Indians
• 3 Major Sub Regions
– Northern Plains
• Lakota, Flatheads, Blackfeet, Assiniboins, Northern Cheyenne,
Arapahos, Crows, Sioux
Central Region
• 5 Civilized Tribes
South
Kansas, Colorado, eastern New Mexico and Texas
• Commanches, Kiowas, Southern Arapahos, Kiowa Apaches
Buffalo Bill Cody
• Thousands of Bison killed to feed
• railroad crews
• Army commanders encourage killing of
buffalo to undermine Indian resistance
• Between 1872 and 1875 9 million buffalo
were killed by hunters who wanted skins
• 30 million bison when slaughter began
Assault on Nomadic Indian Life
• Reservations became common (8 by 1860)
•
•
•
•
•
Sand Creek, Colorado
Colonel John M. Chivington
Ely S. Parker, Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Medicine Lodge Treaty, 1867
Fort Laramie Treaty, 1868
Map
17.1:
Major
IndianWhite
Clashes
in the
West
8
Custer’s Last Stand
Chief Red Cloud’s Oglala Sioux
• Sitting Bull
• 7th Cavalry (600 troops)
• June 25, 1876 Little Big Horn
River near Montana
• January 1879 Dull Knife
Little Big Horn (Bighorn)
7th Cavalry
Elliott Custer Video
“Saving” the Indians
• Helen Hunt Jackson
• 1881 A Century of Dishonor
• Indian boarding schools
• Dawes Severalty Act, 1887
Ghost Dance
End of Resistance on the
Great Plains, 1890
• Ghost Dance Movement
• Chief Sitting Bull
• Wounded Knee
– 7th Cavalry
– 340 starving Indians shot and killed
– Indian Wars were over
Map 17.2: Western Indian
Reservations, 1890
Settling the West
First Transcontinental Railroad
• 1862 Pacific Railroad
Act
• May 10, 1869
– Union Pacific
– Central Pacific
– Promontory Point, Utah
– Chinese
– Irish
– Mexican-Americans
– Black
Map of the 1st Transcontinental
Settlers and the Railroad
Map 17.3: Transcontinental Railroads
and Federal Land Grants, 1850–1900
Homesteading on the Great Plains
Map 17.4:
The
Settlement
of the
TransMississippi
West,
1860–
1890
21
New Farms, New Markets
Building a Society and Achieving
Statehood
Spread of Mormonism
• Brigham Young
• Edmunds-Tucker
Act
Southwestern Borderlands
Exploiting the Western Landscape
Map 17.5: The Mining and
Cattle Frontiers, 1860–1890
Mining Frontier
• Comstock Lode
Cowboys and Cattle Frontier
Cattle Towns and Prostitutes
West of Life and Legend
• American Adam
• Dime Novels
• Wild West Show
Bonanza Farms
Map 17.6: The Oklahoma Land
Rush, 1889–1906
33
Oklahoma Land Rush, 1889
• Curtis Act
• Sooners
National Park Movement
• John Wesley Powell
• George Perkins Marsh
• John Muir
36
Conclusion