The West Transformed
(1860-1896)
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A California Gold Mine in 1849.
Where Americans settle and why
• http://mcdcmaps.missouri.edu/totalpop17902010/images/1910.jpg
Any of you ever been out West? Through
Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas?
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4 things that have to happen to
settle the West:
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•
•
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Transportation—Railroads!
Deal with the Native population “problem”
Access to water—irrigation
Provide fencing—barbed wire
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The movement West
Land grants
• Ex:1 The Homestead Act of 1862: offered
160 acres of free land to anyone who would
cultivate it for 5 years
• Ex: 2 Oklahoma Sooners:
– 1889, a major land giveaway; in less than 24
hours, settlers claimed 2 million acres, even
before gov’t had declared it open for settlement
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• Never before in human history had the gov’t
gone to such lengths to help people become
landowners.
• WHY???
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Farming in the West
Homesteading
In 1862, Congress
passed the Homestead
Act. Under the act, the
government gave 160
acres of land to anyone
who farmed for 5 years.
The government wanted
to encourage farmers to
settle in the West. They
also wanted to give poor
people in the East a
chance to own their own
farm.
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Railroads open the West
• From 1850-1871, the gov’t gave 170
million acres in land grants for laying track.
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The Native American Question:
In 1851, the Federal Government
met with the Indian nations near
Fort Laramie in Wyoming. The
Government asked the Indians to
stay in a limited area. In return,
they promised money, domestic
animals, agricultural tools, and
other goods. The Native
American leaders agreed to the
government’s terms in the Fort
Laramie Treaty.
In the next 20 years, 250,000 pioneers
passed through Indian territory with less than
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Last Stand for Custer and the Sioux
Even on reservations, the Indians were
not left in peace. In 1874 gold was
found on a plains Indian Reservation
in the Black Hills region.
Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
fought back against the Americans
invading their lands in 1876. This
war between the settlers and Indians
was called the Sioux War. Colonel
George Custer led his soldiers
against the Indians. George Custer
attacked the Indians was only 225
men. He lost the battle. This battle
was called the Battle of Little
Bighorn.
Chief Sitting Bull and
George Custer 10
Indian People in Retreat
Many Americans forced the Indians off
their lands by force.
In 1876, Sitting Bull, an Indian chief
wrote the to the United States Army
troops when they drove him off his land.
Sitting
Bull
“ I want to know what you are doing to
the land. You scare the Buffalo way. I
want to hunt in this place. I want you to
return back from this place. If you
don’t, I will fight you!”
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A Century of Dishonor
• Book by Helen Hunt Jackson that
documented history of whites breaking the
Indian treaties.
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Dawes Act--1887
• Turn nomadic Indians into farmers
• Each family 160 acres
• Instead of reservation policy for tribal
nations, giving land to individuals
• Offered citizenship
• By 1900, all Indians who were still “tribal”
were put on reservations
• 147 million acres on reservations in 1887;
54 million acres by 1960.
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Carlisle Training Schools
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15
Wounded Knee
December 1890
• Officers sent to arrest Sitting Bull; his body
guard shot one. Police returned fire, killing
Sitting Bull. Several days later, Custer’s
old regiment rounded up 350 Sioux and
took them to a camp. They demanded they
give up weapons; one Indian refused and
fired. Within minutes, they had slaughtered
300 unarmed Native Americans, including
children. They left their corpses to freeze. 16
This was the last of the Indian wars.
African Americans
• The Exodusters
– View The West
• Who are they?
• Where did they go and why?
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How did
mining and
railroading
draw people
into the
West?
gold
Issue 2. Mining
Many Americans were lured to the West by the chance to strike it
rich by mining gold and silver. The Western Mining boom had
begun with the California Gold Rush of 1849. In California,
miners searched for new strikes of gold and silver.
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In 1859, two young prospectors struck gold in the
Sierra Nevada lands. Henry Comstock discovered a
vein of gold called a lode.
The Comstock Lode attracted thousands of prospectors.
Miners came across the United States, as well as from
France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, and China. One of
every three miners was Chinese.
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20
When the gold was gone the cities turned
into ghost towns.
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Issue 3: The Railroads
To the Indians, the railroad was a terrifying
monster, an “iron horse” letting out black smoke
and moving at stunning speeds. A railroad train
was called an “iron horse.”
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In 1863, two companies began the race to build the
first transcontinental railroad. They were called
the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad.
The Transcontinental Railroad was a
railroad that stretched across the from the
east coast to west coast.
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• View “A Grand Anvil Chorus” from
The West
And reading about the railroads:
1.What interrupted the building of the railroad?
2.What did Congress approve in 1862?
3.What is finished in 1869?
4.How does the railroad change the nation?
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Both companies building the railroad had trouble
getting workers. Labor was scarce, backbreaking, and
dangerous. The pay was also very low. Many of the
railroad companies used immigrant workers to build the
railroad. The railroad used thousands of workers from
China, Ireland, Mexico, and Africa. Many workers
were killed by snow storms and avalanches.
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The Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad met at
Promontory Point on May 10, 1869. They hammered a
golden spike into the rail that joined the 2 tracks. People in
the country celebrated the goals achieved by the two
railroads. Before long other major railroad lines will link to
the West and East. Soon wherever rail lines went, towns and
cities spring up all along the tracks.
The Transcontinental Railroad. The golden spike
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Issue 4: Native Americans Struggle to
Survive People of the Plains
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The Indians moved very often, following the Buffalo
that roamed the plains. The buffalo served as a living
grocery store for the Plains Indians.
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The Indians lived in
tepees made from
wooden sticks and
Buffalo skins. The Plains
Indians were dependent
on the Buffalo for food,
clothing, tools, and
shelter.
Buffalo meat, rich in protein, was the
main item in the Indians diet.
The elimination of the buffalo was one
of the major sources of conflict between
whites and natives.
29
As the settlers moved
West, the United States
promised to protect the
Indians hunting
grounds. The United
States Government
broke promise after
promise.
View: A Wound in the
Heart
30
In 1858, gold was struck at Pikes
Peak in Colorado. The gold strike
brought miners onto the land the
government promised to the
Indians. In 1860, the Indians were
forced to give up the land around
Pikes Peak.
Native Americans refused to give up their land. They attacked
trains, burned, and killed many soldiers and common people.
Colonel John Chivington, of the United States Army, attacked
the Indians. When the Indians surrendered he ordered his men
to destroy the village and take no prisoners. He slaughtered
about 150 Indian men, women, and children. This was called
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the Chivington Massacre.
In 1867, the Southern Plains Indians
signed a new agreement with the
United States Government. The
Indians were promised the land in the
territory called present-day
Oklahoma. The Indians were unhappy
with the new treaty, had little choice
but to move.
The Indians in the Northern Plains
also signed a treaty. They agreed to
live on reservations that included
all of South Dakota west of the
Missouri River.
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End of the Buffalo
1. Hired Hunters killed thousands of buffalo
to provide food for the railroad crews
laying tracks across the prairie.
2. Buffalo hunting became a
fashionable sport and
commercial hunters shot
Buffalo to make hide blankets.
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Apache Indians
fiercely resisted the
loss of their lands
by the settlers
setting up ranches.
One leader
Geronimo
continued to fight
the longest.
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Bellwork
1. Which action represents the major change in U.S.
policy toward American Indians after the Civil War?
A) Relocation to distant territories.
B) Granting of citizenship.
C) Peaceful negotiations with hostile tribes.
D) Giving tribal property to private
individuals/families.
2. What piece of legislation supported this policy?
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5. The Cattle Kingdom
When the Spanish conquistadors bring the longhorns to the New
World, the herds begin to thrive on the Mexican grassy plains, then
eventually on the plains in the US.
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In response to the need for meat, ranchers began rounding up
the herds of longhorns. They drove the herds hundreds of
miles (cattle drives.) The Chisholm Trail became the most
famous cattle trail. Ranchers employed cowhands to tend the
cattle and drive the herds to the market. Their job was to keep
the cattle moving and round up strays. Most of these cow
hands were Spanish—Vaqueros-- or skilled riders who herded
cattle on ranches in Mexico.
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The cattle industry lasted from the 1860’s to the 1880’s. The
region dominated by the cattle industry and its ranches, trails,
and cow towns came to be called the cattle kingdom. Ranching
spread north from Texas across the plains. A rancher could buy
a young calf for five dollars and sell a mature steer for sixty
dollars. Soon cattle grazed on the grassy plains from Kansas38to
the present day Montana.
Important developments;
• Discovery during Civil War that cattle
could survive harsh winters of the high
plains. Then they could be rounded up and
taken to the stockyards in the railtowns.
• Barbed wire fence.
– 1874: $20/100 lbs, 10,000 lbs produced
– 80.5 million lbs produced
• Would cost the lives of many in WWI!
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The Wild West-Cow Towns
Cattle drives ended in cow towns. In cow towns the cows were
held in large pens until they could be loaded on large trains and
shipped to markets in the East. Towns such as Abilene, Kansas,
Topeka and Dodge City sprang up. Cow towns attracted settlers
that wanted to build stable communities where families could
strive. Each town had a main street where people conducted
business. Every town had a general store that sold tools
groceries and clothing.
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The End of the Cattle Kingdoms
• From Episode 7, view: Hell Without the
Heat
– Why does the cattle industry decline?
• Gunpowder
– Describe Buffalo Bill’s show: is it an accurate
depiction of the “wild” west? What role does
Sitting Bull play and why?
• Final Vision
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Many Easterners rushed to accept this offer for free
land. These people who accepted acquired free land
from the government were called homesteaders. By
1900, half a million farmers have settled on the Great
Plains under the Homestead Act.
42
The Homestead Act had its problems. Only about 20% of the
homestead land originally went to small farmers. Big land
owning companies took large areas of land illegally. They
divided the land and then resold it to farmer’s high price.
African Americans joined in the rush for land. In 1879, a group
of African Americans decided to move to Kansas. They called
themselves the Exodusters. They took their name from the
Bible. White Southerners did not want to lose a cheaper labor
supplied by the African Americans. To prevent the African
Americans from leaving, whites stopped the boats carrying the
African Americans up the Mississippi. Despite the danger,
between 40,000 and 70,000 African Americans moved to Kansas
in 1881.
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A Hard Life on the Plains- New Farming Methods
Many farmers made their homes from soil because
wood was rarely found on the plains. They called
these homes sod homes.
Plows made of steel enabled farmers to break up the
ground for planting. It enabled sodbusters, or the plains
farmers, to cut through the sod and reach the soil below.
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Important innovations
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•
•
•
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Barbed wire (boundaries, protects crops)
Steel plow (hard sod)
Reaper (faster harvest)
Steel windmill (irrigation)
Fertilizers, tractors (steam then gasoline)
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RESULTS
• Agriculture machinery increased
productivity over 400%
• Cheaper, more plentiful and higher quality
food (to US and overseas)
• Growth of agriculture industry
• View: “Farming Becomes a Business”
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Last Rush For Land
In 1889, 100,000 people formed a line in Oklahoma
City to claim 2 million acres of for land that once
belonged to the Native Americans. Fights broke out
over the land. A few people known as Sooners, had
already sneaked on the land and claimed it as their
own land. One year later the U.S. government said no
more land was available.
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Farmers
Organize
In the 1860’s farmers began to work
together to improve their farming
conditions through economic
cooperation and political action.
They formed an organization called
the National Grange.
The Grange helped farmers set up
cooperatives. In a cooperative, farmers
pooled their money together to make
large purchases of tools, seed, and
other supplies at a discount.
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• View “The Frontier Passes into History”
• Reading of “This Isn’t History”
• Study Guide—you’re welcome
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