Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
February 13, 2013
A/A.P. U.S. History
Mr. Green
Objectives: Students will:
Describe the nature of the cultural conflicts and battles that
accompanied the white American migration into the Great Plains
and the Far West.
Explain the development of federal policy towards Native
Americans in the late nineteenth century.
Analyze the brief flowering and decline of the cattle and
mining frontiers, and the settling of the arid West by small
farmers increasingly engaged with a worldwide economy.
AP Focus
Federal land grants entice whites to seek out new lives in
the West, which brings them into conflict with the Indians, many
of whom had earlier been pushed west by the U.S. government.
By the end of the century, the frontier is closed—all of the land in
the continental United States is settled or can no longer be
considered frontier, according to the Census Bureau.
CHAPTER THEMES
After the Civil War, whites overcame the Plains
Indians’ fierce resistance and settled the Great West,
bringing to a close the long frontier phase of
American history.
The farmers who populated the West found
themselves the victims of an economic revolution in
agriculture. Trapped in a permanent debtor
dependency, in the 1880s, they finally turned to
political action to protest their condition. Their
efforts culminated in the Populist Party’s attempt to
create an interracial farmer/labor coalition in the
1890s, but William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in the
pivotal election of 1896 signaled the triumph of
urbanism and the middle class.
1890s Decade Chart due today
Reservation system developed when the federal
government signed treaties with various tribes at
Fort Laramie in 1851 and Fort Atkinson in 1853
Difficulty in making treaties
Tribes/Chiefs were not used in Native American
culture
Many groups were nomadic/scattered bands
1860’s-Dakota Territory/Indian Territory
Corrupt federal Indian agents
Many wars after the Civil War with Native
1864-Sand Creek, CO massacre
Colonel J. M. Chivington’s militia massacred
400 Indians
1866-Sioux massacred Captain William J.
Fetterman’s 81 soldier/civilian crew
1868-2nd Fort Laramie treaty guaranteeing
Sioux land
1874-Custer discovered gold in Black Hills
Battle of Little Big Horn-Custer lost everyone
Willingness to use military force to back its
land claims
Railroad
Diseases
Firewater
Extermination of the Buffalo
15 million Bison grazed the plains after the
Civil War
By 1885 only a few 1,000 remained
Battle of Wounded Knee-1890
200 Indian men, women, and children killed
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
dissolved many tribes
ended tribal ownership of land
individual family heads with 160 free acres
citizenship in 25 years
full citizenship granted in 1924
Carlisle Indian School in PA
“Kill the Indian and save the man”
243,000 in 1887
1.5 million according to Census 2000
Colorado-1858
Comstock Lode-1859
Once the gold was gone, ore breaking
machinery was brought in
The mining industry began with corporations
pooling resources-industrialization of gold
panning
Increased the federal Treasury, helped fund the
Civil War, railroads, and conflict with the
Indians
The railroad started and ended the Long Drive
Cowboys brought cattle to train stations
Cattle shipped to stockyards, then the east
coast
The railroad ended the Long Drive with new
routes and accessibility
1.How did whites finally overcome resistance of
the Plains Indians, and what happened to the
Indians after their resistance ceased?
2. What social, ethnic, environmental, and
economic factors made the trans-Mississippi
West a unique region among the successive
American frontiers? What makes the West
continue to be a region quite distinctive from
other regions such as the Northeast, the
Midwest, and the South? How does the myth of
the frontier West differ from the actual reality, in
the late nineteenth century, and after?
Identifications due on February 19
Study/Prepare for Unit 6 assessment-gilded
age 1865-1900