HIST 460
Chapter 7
Signs of Modernity
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2.
3.
4.
Towns
Railroads
Labor Unions
Education
Ties to Frontier Roots
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Rural
Towns small and agrarian
Primitive transportation
Population young and male
Horse and gun culture
"This frontier society was in transition, to be sure, but even as more modern trends came to
predominate by the 1890s and early twentieth century, Texans continued to honor the old
heritage."
Demographics: The population increased fivefold between 1860 and 1900. Immigrants were
mainly white southerners attracted by inexpensive land.
In South Texas, many Mexicans lost their land:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Fraud
Taxes
Declining price of beef and droughts
Reluctance of independent ranchers to commercialize
Until the 1870s, the dominant powers on the plains of West Texas were the Comanches and
Kiowa.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Warrior tradition
Military tactics
Westering Texans stopped short of Comanche and Kiowa territory.
The nomadic lifestyle meant the Indians had no farms, storehouses, or munition stock
piles to attack.
After the Civil War, the U. S. Grant administration attempted a peace policy toward the Plains
tribes. At the Salt Creek Massacre (1871), Satanta, a Kiowa chief, and between 100 and 150
followers attacked a supply train, killing and mutilating seven of the twelve drivers. In response,
the U. S. Army took the offensive against the Plains Indians. Comanche raids decreased.
Indian resistance failed:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
defeat on the battlefield
no system of supply depots and armories
no support network of factories, farms, or efficient infrastructure
weapons ineffective in a conflict against a well-armed and well-financed opponent.
disease and alcoholism
elimination of the buffalo
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Why were the buffalo exterminated?
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2.
3.
4.
5.
Indians slaughtered more buffalo for sustenance and for trade.
Domesticated animals exposed buffaloes to fatal diseases.
Increased population and livestock reduced timberland and grazing land.
Droughts reduced the number of buffaloes.
Whites slaughtered the buffalo.
Why did whites slaughter the buffalo?
1.
2.
3.
4.
"Sportsmen"
Suppliers of meat for railroad crews
Traders in buffalo hides
To destroy the Plains Indians' economy
Texas Cattle Kingdom: mid-1860s to mid-1880s:
The earliest “long drive” was in 1866 to the railhead at Sedalia, Missouri. The Chisholm Trail
ended at Abilene, Kansas. As the frontier was settled, successive trails moved westward.
Finally, the railhead for the Goodnight-Loving Trail was Pueblo, Colorado. Free-rangers were
cattlemen who had free use of the open range. By the 1870s, free-rangers included John
Chisum, Charles Goodnight, C. C. Slaughter, George Littlefield, Abel H. Pierce, and Oliver
Loving. These men ruthlessly defended their “range rights.” “Land and cattle companies”
bought large tracts of land. Ranchers provided the labor and shared the profits. The largest of
these was the XIT ranch owned by a Chicago syndicate that received 3,050,000 acres from the
state in payment for having built the new state capitol in 1888.
In the 1880s, the cattle boom waned:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Cattle lost too much weight on the trail.
Costs for provisioning the cowboys rose.
Kansas passed laws banning Texas cattle.
Pastures grew thinner on the trail.
The introduction of barbed wire fenced off the cattle trails.
In the mid-1880s, Texas cattlemen confronted calamitous freezes and droughts.
Railroads carried people to Central and West Texas. Abilene, Sweetwater, Big Spring, Midland,
and Odessa were founded out of agreements between railroads and towns folk.
In 1877, George Wilkins Kendall first attempted to make sheep raising a viable concern. The Rio
Grande Valley (known as the Wild Horse Desert) became the state’s leading sheep and goat
raising region.
Violence and lawlessness: Why?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Bitterness from the Civil War
Indian warfare
Banditry
Conflicts resulting from the cattle industry
Agrarian discontent
Political conflicts
Tensions caused by modernization
Racial conflicts
The determination of some to bring law and order to the frontier
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Lawlessness:
1.
Vigilantes: Between 1865 and 1900, East Texas had 50-60 incidents of vigilantisms.
2.
Feuds: Historians have identified about eight major feuds. The most notorious was the
Sutton-Taylor feud arose out of the bitterness of the Civil War.
3.
Gunfighters: The most prominent gunfighter was John Wesley Hardin, a defender of the
Confederate cause and a hateful racist, who killed more than twenty men.
4.
Lynching: Between 1870 and 1900, white Texans lynched about 500 blacks, a number
exceeded only by Georgia and Mississippi. In 1897, the legislature passed an antilynching law, but it was ineffective.
When whites moved into South and West Texas, they lynched Tejanos suspected of crimes or
collusion with raiders from Mexico. In 1891-92, Catarino Garza used South Texas as a base for
launching a revolution against the Mexican government. In the 1870s, the Salt War was a conflict
between Anglos and Mexican Americans over salt deposits in the El Paso Valley.
5.
6.
Cattlemen and sheepmen conflicted over grazing rights. Cowboys looked down on
sheep-herders, especially Mexican pastores. Cattlemen contended that sheep ruined the
range grass. Moreover, they claimed that sheep emitted an odor that deterred cattle from
feeding over the same grassland.
Rustling: Rustling occurred throughout Texas, but was especially common in the Rio
Grande Valley.
In 1874, the state government re-established the Texas Rangers. They carried out their duties
effectively, but frequently used unjustified violence and overstepped the laws they were supposed
to enforce.
Cities:
San Antonio: Its population of 12,256 in 1870 grew to 50,000 in 1900. It continued to be a
military center and a point of departure for western expeditions.
Houston: In 1869, the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company began dredging Buffalo Bayou.
Houston was the major port for the exporting of cotton.
Galveston: Continued to be an important port until a hurricane in 1900 devastated the city.
Dallas: Became an important transportation center for farmers and ranchers when railroads
reached the town in the 1870s.
Fort Worth: In the 1860s-70s, the cattle trade energized Fort Worth. Cattle enroute to Kansas
passed through the city and the arrival of the railroad in 1876 made Fort Worth a major shipping
point for the cattle industry.
Texas cities lacked certain characteristics of Northeastern cities: tenement housing, suburbs,
mass transit, factories, telephone and telegraph systems, European ethnic enclaves, and black
communities.
Plain living: Texans had “to wrest a hard livelihood from what was basically still a frontier society.
People turned to the woodland, thicket, and brush for essential materials…” Wild game,
domesticated animals, garden plots, fields. Isolation was common, but also quilting bees, house
raisings, church, picnics, and dances.
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Women could not 1) buy or sell property independently, 2) bring suit in court, 3) sit on a jury, 4)
vote, or 5) hold public office. Women confronted a double standard of morality. Women were
expected to work in the home, although often rural women performed “men’s work.” Domestic
service was the most common profession for women who worked outside the home. Others were
laundresses, seamstresses, waitresses, and cooks. Some took in washing, ironing, or boarders.
Women had little opportunity in professions where men dominated: ministers, lawyers,
physicians, bankers, and teachers. Social reform, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, offered women an activist role in society.
Black Texans
Jim Crow segregation
Several institutions sustained black communities:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Mutual aid societies
Newspapers
Churches. Baptists were most successful in winning black parishioners, perhaps
because of congregational independence.
Entertainment and holidays: Juneteenth
Opportunities for military servicemen – “Buffalo Soldiers.” Battle of Rattlesnake Springs,
Victorio, Henry O. Flipper
Mexican Americans
In South Texas, Mexican Americans overwhelmingly outnumbered Anglo Americans.
Maintenance of the Mexican past:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Language
Secular and religious holidays
Food
Curative herbs
Familial structure
Mutual aid societies
Spanish-language newspapers
German Texans
German Texans settled the “German Belt” in Central Texas. By 1887, Germans represented
more than half of all European immigrants.
In 1854, Poles settled Panna Maria.
Czechs, Wends, Italians, Dutch, Greeks, and Chinese also settled in Texas.
Between the 1870s and 1900, Texas was transformed from a frontier region. Anglo Texans
established their hegemony. Railroads and other technology linked Texans together and linked
Texas into the world market. The frontier left a legacy of self-confidence, individualism, courage,
and a sense of power. It also instilled a legacy of arrogance, racism, violence, greed, and
wastefulness.