Chapter 2
Changes on the Western
Frontier
Section 1
Cultures Clash on the Prairie
The Culture of the
Plains Indians

Lower Missouri River
• Osage and Iowa tribes hunted and planted
crops and settled in small villages

Farther west
• Sioux and Cheyenne were nomadic


Gathered wild foods and hunted buffalo
Plains People abided by tribal law,
traded and produced beautiful crafted
tools and clothing
The Horse and the Buffalo

Spanish brought horses in 1598
• Later guns, allowed Natives to travel further and hunt
more efficiently


By mid-1700’s tribes left their farms to roam the plains and
hunt buffalo
Mobility led to war when tribes trespassed on
other tribes hunting grounds
• Won prestige by taking part in hunting and war parties

Made items from buffalo
• Tepees, clothing, shoes and blankets
• Dried meat into jerky and other foods from the fat
Family Life

Lived in small extended family groups with ties to other
bands
• Young men trained to become hunter and warriors
• Women butchered the game and prepared hides

Young women chose their own husbands
• Children learned behavior and culture through stories and
myths, games and good examples

Believed spirits controlled events
• Some became shamans

Communal way of life
• No individual was allowed to dominate
• Ruled by counsel rather than by force
• Land was held in common
Settlers Push Westward

Settlers believed that owning land,
making a mining claim, or starting a
business would give them a stake in
the country
• Natives didn’t improve the land so they
forfeited the land

Migrants, therefore, thought the land was
unsettled
The Lure of Silver and Gold

Discovery of gold in CO in 1859 drew thousands

Mining Camps replace beautiful landscape
• Filthy, ramshackle living quarters, rows of tents, shacks
with dirt floors, dirt streets, wooden sidewalks
• Irish, German, Polish, Chinese, African American men
• Business-minded women worked as laundresses, freight
haulers, or miners

Virginia City, Nevada and Helena, Montana
The Government Restricts Native
Americans

1834 govt passed an act to make the
Great Plains a huge reservation
• Later in the 1850’s, the govt created treaties
and policies to define specific boundaries for
each tribe


Most tribes did not abide by these treaties
Clash between tribes and miner and settlers
Massacre at Sand Creek


1864
Cheyenne returned to CO for the winter
• Thought they were protected by the US Govt

General S.R. Curtis sent a letter to John
Chivington
• “I want no peace till the Indians suffer more”
• Chivington descended on the Cheyenne and Arapaho

Killed 150 mostly women and children
Death on the Bozeman Trail

Ran directly through Sioux hunting grounds

Chief Red Cloud successfully appealed to the govt to end white
settlement on the trail

Dec 1866, Crazy Horse ambushed and killed 80 soldiers
• Natives called it the Battle of Hundred Slain, whites called it the
Fetterman Massacre

Govt agreed to close Bozeman Trail after a few skirmishes
• Treaty of Fort Laramie

Agreed to live on a reservation along the Missouri River
• Forced on the leaders of the Sioux


Sitting Bull refused to sign it (Hunkpapa Sioux)
Ogala and Brule Sioux did sign with every intention to use their traditional
hunting grounds
Bloody Battles Continue

Treaty temporarily ended warfare

Natives resisted the restrictions
“[We] have been taught to hunt and live on the game.
You tell us that we must learn to farm, live in one
house, and take on your ways. Suppose the people
living beyond the great sea should come and tell you
that you must stop farming, and kill your cattle, and
take your houses and lands, what would you do?
Would you not fight them?”
-Gall, A Hunkpapa Sioux
Red River War

Late 1868, war broke out again
• Kiowa and Comanche



US Army responded by herding friendly tribes
onto reservations while opening fire on others
Gen. Sheridan gave orders “to destroy their
villages and ponies, to kill and hang all warriors,
and to bring back all women and children”
With these harsh tactics, resistance did not go on
much longer
Gold Rush

4 years of Fort Laramie Treaty

Miners began searching the Black Hills for gold
• Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho protested


1874 Colonel Custer reported that the Black Hills
had gold “from the grass roots down”
The Chiefs appealed to the govt with no avail
Custer’s Last Stand

Early 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne held a sun dance
• Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers and Natives falling from
their horses

Custer reached the Little Bighorn River, with the awaiting
natives
• Crazing Horse, Gall, and Sitting Bull outflanked the 7th



Within an hour Custer and all the 7th were dead
By late 1876, Sioux were beaten
Sitting Bull took refuge in Canada
• Remained there ‘til 1881
• To prevent starvation, Sitting Bull was forced to surrender

Sitting Bull appeared in “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show
The Government Support
Assimilation

Natives did have supporters
• Debates over treatment continued

Helen Hunt Jackson wrote book A Century of
Dishonor
• exposed the govt’s many broken promises

Sympathizers supported assimilation
• Plan under which natives would give up their
beliefs and way of life and become part of the
white culture
The Dawes Act

Aimed to “Americanize” the Natives

Broke up the reservations and gave some of the reservation
land to individual Natives
• 160 acres to each head of household and 80 acres to each
unmarried adult
• Govt would sell the remainder of the reservations to settlers,
and the resulting income would be used by native to by farm
implements

Aby 1932 Whites had taken @ 2/3 of the territory set aside
for the natives

Natives received no money from the sale of the lands
The Destruction of the Buffalo

Most significant blow

Tourist and fur traders killed
for sport

Gen Sheridan approved of
the slaughter

1800 @ 65 million buffalo
roamed

1890 @ 1000 roamed

1900 US Govt sheltered a
single wild herd in
Yellowstone Park
The Battle of Wounded Knee

Sioux facing poverty and disease
• Turned to Paiute Prophet promised if the Ghost
Dance was performed their way of life would
be restored


Spread fast and worried military leaders
Military ordered the arrest of Sitting Bull
• Friend and bodyguard, Catch-the-Bear shot at
one
• They killed Sitting Bull
• Chief Big Foot led the Sioux away
Wounded Knee

Dec 28, 1890

7th Calvary rounded up 350 starving and freezing Sioux
• Soldiers demanded they give up their weapons
• A shot was fired


The soldiers opened fire with a cannon
7th slaughtered 300 mostly unarmed natives including children
• Left the dead to freeze on the ground
• Brought Indian war to an end
“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back…I can
still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and
scattered all along the crooked gulch…And I can see that
something else died there in the bloody mud., and was buried in
the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful
dream”
-Black Elk
Cattle Become Big Business



With Buffalo gone Cattle and horses
began to flourish
Cattle ranches opened up the Great
Plains to big business
Ranching became a profitable
investment
Vaqueros and Cowboys

Americans never managed large herds on the open range

Learned from Mexican neighbors how to round up, rope,
brand and care for the animals

Texas Longhorns
• Sturdy, short-tempered breeds accustomed to dry grasslands
of S. Spain

Today’s American Cowboy stemmed directly from that of
those first Spanish ranchers in Mexico
• Clothes, food, and vocab, first to wear spurs, chaparreras
(chaps), ate charqui (jerky)
• Broncos or bronc ran wild (bronco caballo or “rough horse”

Railroads expanded the need for cowboys
Growing Demand for Beef

Demand for beef skyrocketed after the Civil War
• Due to growth of the cities

Chicago Union Stock Yards opened in 1865
• By 1866 the railroads were running regularly through
Sedalia, Missouri
• TX could now ship their cattle to Chicago and markets in
the east

Sedalia route presented problems
• Thunderstorms and rain-swollen rivers
• Farmers angered over trampled crops
• Some died of starvation
The Cow Town

Joseph McCoy approached town with plans
to create a shipping yard where the rails
and rail lines met

Abilene, KS agreed to the plan

McCoy built cattle pens and hotel and then
helped survey the Chisholm Trail
• 35000 head of cattle were shipped out o the
yard and Abilene during the first year

Business doubled the next year
A Day in the Life of a Cowboy

As many as 55,000 worked the plains
between 1866 and 1885

Folklore and postcards depicted the
cowboy as Anglo-American
• 25% were African America
• 12% were Mexican

Myth
• Cowboys rode the open range, herding cattle
and fighting villains
• Truth: they did work nonstop
A Day’s Work

Worked 10-14 hrs a day on a ranch and 14 or more on the
trail
• Had to be alert at all times for dangers

Some were as young as 15
• Most were broken-down by 40

Owned their saddle but his horse usually belonged to the
boss

Expert rider and roper

Gun was used to protect the heard from the wild or
diseased animals rather then to hurt or chase outlaws
The Long Drive

Animals often lasted about three months

Typical drive
• One cowboy for every 250-300 head of cattle
• Cook who drove the chuck wagon and set up
camp
• Wrangler who cared for the extra horses
• Trail boss earned $100 or more a month for
supervising the drive and negotiating with settlers
and natives

In the saddle from dawn to dusk

Slept on the ground

bathed in the rivers

Risked death at river crossings
Chisholm Trail

Jesse Chisholm
• Scot-Cherokee trader Jesse Chisholm first marked the
famous Chisholm Trail in 1864 for his wagons. It started
at the confluence of the Little and Big Arkansas Rivers
and went to Jesse Chisholm's trading post, southwest of
present day Oklahoma City.
• used the trail to trade with the U.S. Army and Native
American tribes (Indians) from his trading post at the
present site of the Twin Lakes Shopping Center in
Wichita to his southern trading post in Indian Territories.
The Wichita Indians used the Chisholm Trail when they
moved from their native territory to the mouth of the
Little Arkansas and also when they returned in 1868.
Legends of the West

James “Wild Bill” Hickok
•
•
•
•
Never dealt with cows
Served as a scout and a spy during the Civil War
Later a marshal in Abilene, KS
Violent man who was shot and killed while holding a pair
of aces and a pair of eights in a poker game


Still called the “dead man’s hand”
Martha Jane Burke (Calamity Jane)
• Expert sharpshooter who dressed as a man
• She may have been a scout for Custer
The End of the Open Range



Overgrazing of the land, extended bad weather
and the invention of barbed wire were largely
responsible
Between 1883 and 1887 patterns of dry summers
and harsh winters wiped out whole herds
Most ranchers turned to smaller herds of highgrade stock
• Ranchers fenced the land with barbed wire


Invented by Illinois farmer Joseph F. Glidden
Cheap and easy to use
Section 1 Review
1) Analyzing Causes
• What economic opportunities drew large
numbers of people to the Great Plains
beginning in the mid 1800’s?
2) Drawing Conclusions
• Identify the reasons for the rise and the
decline of the cattle industry.