Chapter 13 – The American West
Section Notes
Video
The Fight for the West
Mining and Ranching
Farming the Plains
Maps
History Close-up
Major Battles and Native American
Territory in the West, 1890
Cattle Trails
Oklahoma Land Rush
Quick Facts
Challenges for Farmers
Visual Summary: The American
West
The American West
Images
Hunting on the Plains
Lakota Boys
Family with Sod House
Land Poster
The Fight for the West
The Main Idea
Native Americans fought the movement of settlers westward,
but the U.S. military and the persistence of American
settlers proved too strong to resist.
Reading Focus
• How was the stage set for conflict between white settlers and
Native Americans in the West?
• What were the Indian Wars and their consequences?
• How did Native American resistance to white settlement end?
• What was life like on the Indian Reservation?
1 - Stage Set for Conflict
• Culture of the Plains Indians
– Buffalo provided food, clothing, and shelter for the
nomadic lifestyle of the Indians. They did not believe
land should be bought and sold, and white farmers felt it
should be divided.
• Government policy
– Instead of continuing to move the Indians westward, the
government changed its policy. Indian land was
seized, and they were forced onto reservations.
• Destruction of the buffalo
– The buffalo-centered way of life was threatened, with
vast herds driven to extinction by reduced grazing lands
and hunting for sport and profit. This deprived the
Plain Indians of their food supply.
2 - The Indian Wars
Sand Creek
Massacre
Treaties
The Battle
of the Little
Bighorn
Army troops attacked and massacred surrendering
Cheyenne. Congressional investigators
condemned Colonel Chivington, but no one
was punished in the Sand Creek Massacre.
After the massacre, Cheyenne and Sioux stepped
up their raids. In return for closing a sacred trail,
the Sioux agreed to live on a reservation. Other
nations signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty and were
moved to reservation lands in western Oklahoma.
George Armstrong Custer led his troops in
headlong battle against Sitting Bull and lost.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the last
victory for the Lakota Sioux. The U.S.
government was determined to put down the
threat to settlers.
3 - The Indian Wars
Palo Duro
Canyon
The Ghost
Dance
The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon ended the
Indian Wars on the southern Plains. With
over 1,000 ponies killed and food stores
destroyed, surviving Comanches moved onto
the reservation.
The Ghost Dance developed by a Paiute
shaman, Wovoka, was a religious movement
that inspired hope among suffering Native
Americans. Newspapers began suggesting that
this signaled a planned uprising. The military
killed Sitting Bull while attempting to arrest him in
a skirmish.
4 - The Indian Wars
Wounded
Knee
The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred the day
after the surrender. Shooting began after a gun
went off, and the fleeing Sioux were
massacred. This action marked the end of the
bloody conflict between the army and the
Plains Indians. Colonel James Forsyth
removed from command, but three officers
and 15 enlisted men received the Medal of
Honor for their actions.
5 - Resistance Ends in the West
Resistance in the
Northwest
• The government took back
nine-tenths of the Nez Percé
land when gold miners and
settlers came into the area.
• Fourteen years later they
were ordered to abandon the
last bit of that land to move
into Idaho.
• Chief Joseph tried to take
his people into Canada, but
the army forced their
surrender less than forty
miles from the Canadian
border.
• Chief Joseph and many
others were eventually sent
to northern Washington.
Resistance in the
Southwest
• The Apache people were
moved onto a reservation
near the Gila River in Arizona.
• Soldiers forcefully stopped a
religious gathering there, and
Geronimo and others fled
the reservation.
• They raided settlements
along the Arizona-Mexico
border for years before finally
being captured in 1886.
• Geronimo and his followers
were sent to Florida as
prisoners of war. His
surrender marked the end of
armed resistance in the area.
6 - Life on the Reservation
The government wanted control over all the western
territories and wanted Indians to live like white Americans.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs began to erase the Indian
culture through a program of Americanization. Indian
students could speak only English and could not wear their
traditional clothing. They learned to live like Americans.
The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up many reservations
and turned Native Americans into individual property
owners. Ownership was designed to transform their
relationship to the land. The Indians received less
productive land, and few had the money to start farms.
Most of the land given to the Indians was unsuitable for
farming.
Mining and Ranching
The Main Idea
Many people sought fortunes during the mining and cattle
booms of the American West.
Reading Focus
• How did mining lead to new settlements in the West?
• Why did mining become big business?
• How and why did the cattle boom come to an end?
7 - Striking Gold and Silver
• Discovering gold and silver
– After the California gold rush, Colorado was next. Most
who went there were disappointed, but the silver in the
Comstock Lode in Nevada’s Carson River lasted for
more than 20 years.
• The Klondike gold rush (1897)
– The Yukon Territory, along the Klondike River, was
the site of a huge gold rush, but getting there was
treacherous. Canadians required miners to bring a
year’s worth of supplies with them, and that was a
difficult task. Reports of “gold for the taking” were false.
8 - Development of Communities
• Mining camps and towns
– Thousands of men poured into mining areas. Camps
were hastily built and had no law enforcement. Vigilante
justice was used to combat theft and violence
among competing miners.
• Camps become towns
– Some camps developed into towns, with hastily
constructed buildings of stores and saloons.
– As towns developed, women and children came to join
the men, making the towns more respectable.
Townspeople established churches, newspapers, and
schools.
9 - Mining as Big Business
Placer mining allowed individuals to pan for gold in
loose sand or gravel.
Large companies were formed to invest in hydraulic
mining (high-pressure water) and hard-rock mining
(deep shafts cut in the earth). Prospectors became
employees, working dangerous jobs for these companies.
Water released sediments choking rivers and causing
floods.
Miners began to organize unions to negotiate safer working
conditions and better pay. Mining companies resisted, and
violence broke out. At Cripple Creek, Colorado, the Western
Federation of Miners faced off against the corporate mining
interests. When it was over, 30 men were left dead and the
union was defeated.
10 - The Cattle Boom
Origins of
ranching
Demand
for beef
Ranching
as big
business
The Spanish were the first ranchers in the West,
raising cattle under dry and difficult conditions.
They bred the hardy Texas longhorn and
started sheep (wool) ranching. Grazing lands
were needed for both.
Growing populations in the East needed food
after the Civil War. The age of the cattle drive had
arrived. Cowboys drove the cattle to towns with
railroads to be shipped to meatpacking centers such
as Chicago. One of the most famous cattle trails
from Texas to Kansas was the Chisholm Trail.
Joseph Glidden invented barbed wire, allowing
ranchers to enclose grazing lands. Privately
owned ranches spread quickly, and investors
transformed the cattle business into big business
which led to many conflicts. Two years of severe
winters brought huge losses to the industry.
Farming the Plains
The Main Idea
The government promoted the settlement of the West,
offering free or cheap land to those willing to put in the
hard work of turning the land into productive farms.
Reading Focus
• What incentives encouraged farmers to settle in the West?
• Which groups of people moved into the West, and why did they
do so?
• What new ways of farming evolved in the West?
11 - Incentives for Settlement
• New legislation
– In 1862, Congress passed three acts to turn public
lands into private property.
• The Homestead Act gave 160 acres of land to heads
of household.
• The Pacific Railway Act gave land to the railroad
companies to build railroad and telegraph lines.
• The Morrill Act gave lands to states for colleges for
agriculture and the mechanic arts.
12 - Incentives for Settlement
• Railroads encourage settlement
– Railroads reaped profits by selling some of their land to
settlers. They placed ads to lure homesteaders to the
West. The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 opened
unassigned Indian land to settlers. Over 50,000
people took part in the rush to stake a claim on
these 2 million acres of land.
• Closing of the frontier
– In 1890 the Census Bureau issued a report, “there can
hardly be said to be a frontier line,” declaring the frontier
closed. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner stated in
a famous essay that the existence of the frontier
made the United States distinctive.
13 - Migrating West
White settlers
European settlers
• Middle-class businesspeople
or farmers from the
Mississippi Valley moved
west.
• Lured by economic
opportunity, they came from
Scandinavia, Ireland, Russia,
and Germany.
• They could afford money for
supplies and transportation.
• They brought their farming
experience with them.
Black settlers
• Benjamin “Pap” Singleton
urged his own people to build
communities in Kansas.
• Many fled the violence and
oppression in the South.
• Rumors of land in Kansas
brought 15,000
Exodusters who also settled
in Missouri, Indiana, and
Illinois.
Chinese settlers
• Initially came for the gold
rush or to build railroads
• They turned to farming,
especially in California,
establishing the fruit industry
there.
• Most Chinese were farm
laborers because they were
not allowed to own land.
14 - New Ways of Farming
New farmers faced harsh climate, scarce water, and lack of
lumber. Farmers installed windmill-driven pumps and used
irrigation techniques. They used the earth for shelter, first
building dugouts into hillsides, then making sod houses.
New farming equipment helped. James Oliver developed a
sharper plow edge. Combine harvesters used one operation
to cut wheat, separate grains, and remove the husks.
Giant bonanza farms operated like factories, and they
reaped great profits during good seasons. However,
they could not handle the boom-and-bust farming cycles
well, and by the 1890s, most bonanza farms had been
broken up.