THE AMERICAN WEST
I. INTRODUCTION
• Frederick Jackson Turner
• Land pulled the people
• Frontier generated qualities of Americans
• Individualism, self-help and courage
• Orderly movement west
• W.P. Webb
• Movement erratic
• Industrialization and Technology conquered the West
• Manifest Destiny
• Conviction the country’s superior institutions and culture gave
Americans the God-given right, an obligation to spread
civilization across the entire continent.
• The poverty at the end of Reconstruction prompted
large number of blacks and whites to look for
opportunities in the West
II. SUBORDINATION OF THE AMERICAN
INDIAN
• 1860’s – 1880’s the federal government tried to force NA onto
reservations, where they could be “civilized.”
• Indian Wars
• Chivington’s raid (1864) 450 Cheyenne and Arapaho killed in
Colorado
• Little Big Horn (1876) federal troops led by George Custer massacred
Sioux Indians
• Reform Movement
• Missionaries attempted to persuade Indians to abandon traditional
culture
• Richard Henry Pratt – “kill the Indian, save the man.”
• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
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•
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Reversed reservation policy
Treat Indians as individuals not as tribesman
Children sent to boarding school
Remaining land sold to white settlers
• Dawes Severalty Act
• Reversed reservation policy
• Treat Indians as individuals not as
tribesman
• Children sent to boarding school
• Remaining land sold to white settlers
• Dawes Consequences
• Between 1887-1930’s 52 million acres to 138 million
• Boarding schools caused children to loose their cultural
identity
• Wounded Knee (1890) 200 unarmed Sioux killed
after Sitting Bull. Extinguished any uprising