Railroad Workers
 Ex-Civil War soldiers
 Former slaves
 European immigrants
 Irish immigrants who faced
discrimination in the East. (Union
Pacific)
 Chinese workers who faced
discrimination in the West (Central
Pacific).
Positives
 Paid jobs for many who could
not find other work because of
racism/prejudice.
 New start in the West.
Challenges
 Low pay
 Dangerous work
Native American attacks
 Use of explosives
 End of track towns known as “hell on
wheels”
 Harsh conditions
 Cold and snow
 Extreme summer heat

Populists
 The Grange – first farmers group
1872 – tried to reduce the cost of
farming by organizing coops and
businesses that could buy in
bulk.
 Farmers’ Alliance: 1880 New, more
radical farmers’ group began.
 Upset about low prices despite high
demand, they wanted
 Government ownership of
railroads and telegraph
 Free coinage of silver to inflate
crop prices
 Lower taxes
 Populist Party 1892 – political party
created by Farmers’ Alliance ant
other with similar beliefs.
 Populism was a political philosophy
that favored a common person’s
interest over those of wealthy people
or business interests.
 Monetary policy is aimed at
controlling the supply and value of a
nation’s currency.
 At that time, the U.S. had a gold
standard – meaning that every paper
dollar in circulation had to be backed
by a dollar’s worth of gold in the U.S.
Treasury.
 Populists supported a plan to use both
silver and gold to back the currency.
 They believed this would fuel an increase
in crop prices.
 Although the party faded from the scene
following the election of 1896, it did
inspire a new generation of reformers that
would eventually rise to power in the U.S.
American Indians
 Many tribes had already been pushed off
of their land in the East and forced to
relocate to the West (Cherokees and the
Trail of Tears) by the Indian Removal Act
of 1830.
 The western migration during the last half
of the 1800s eventually caused the end of
American Indian culture as it had been.
 The railroad was a threat to the very
existence of the American Indian culture.
 Cut through buffalo hunting grounds.
 Brought ranchers, farmers, and soldiers
 In response, tribes fought the railroad.
This battle for survival represented the
last round of the Indian Wars.
Cultural Differences
 Settlers believed in individual
land ownership while Indians did
not.
 Nomadic Indian tribes who relied
on the buffalo for food, clothing
and shelter, clashed with farming
tribes trying to protect their land.
 American Indian tribes refused
to give up their land without a
fight as more and more settlers
flooded into the West.
 Warriors began to attack settlers.
U.S. Response
 1864 Sand Creek Massacre – 150
peaceful Cheyenne men, women and
children, are murdered by U.S.
Cavalry.
 The federal government tried to
confine most western tribes to
reservations in an attempt to end the
conflict.
 But as settlers began to want the
reservation land for themselves, the
government violated the treaties and
take the land from the tribes.
 1876 Sioux and Cheyenne, who
refused to stay on reservations,
defeated General Custer at the Battle
of the Little Big Horn.
 1877 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
surrenders. “My heart is sick and sad.
From where the sun now stands, I will
fight no more forever.”
 1886 Apache Chief Geronimo and his
followers are captured and held as
prisoners of war.
 American Indian resistance ends.
 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre –
300 men, women and children
Sioux were gunned down by U.S.
Cavalry.
 The massacre shocked the
nation and broke Indian
resistance on the Plains.
Within a few years, the army
had subdued the major tribes
of the Great Plains.
 Reformers had grown concerned that
the Indians on reservations were not
improving the themselves and not
becoming self-sufficient.
 1887 The Dawes Act: The purpose
was to dissolve the reservation by
forcing individual Indians to live on
small family farms.
 Every Indian would receive 160
acres of land with extra land to
be sold.
 A second purpose of the act was
to destroy Indian communalism,
thereby destroying their culture.
 The U.S. government want to
assimilate the Indians or
“Americanize” them. It wanted the
Indians to abandon their culture and
live like white Americans.
 Assimilation: absorb into the
dominant culture.
 Americanization: make into white
“Americans”
The End of the Western Frontier
 1890 The U.S. Census Bureau issued
a report declaring the “frontier
closed.” There had been so many
settlements that they had broken up
the open land, meaning that there no
longer was a frontier area to be
settled.
 What next?