THE GREAT WEST AND THE
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION,
1865-1896
Chapter 26
Indians Embattled In The West
• The Great West
• At the time of the Civil War the West was a vast unsettled area
• By 1890 territories were being carved out and Indians being
squeezed out and pushed into reservations.
• 1865-1890 final showdown for the independent Indian tribes.
• Area inhabited by “plains” Indians
• hunted and relied on the vast herds of Buffalo that roamed freely
over the prairie.
Pressure on Western Indians
• Pre-Civil War
• Guns
• Diseases
• Cattle
• Post Civil War
• Migration West by settlers forced tribes to move further west.
• More pressure on Western tribes when competition between
tribes for resources began to increase.
Treaties
• Politicians tried to pacify the tribes by signing treaties with the
tribal heads.
• Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, under the terms of agreement,
the United States would supply the several tribes with $50,000
for 50 years, design territorial boundaries of each tribe, provide
punishment for depredations, and gave authority for the
government to lay roads and build military forts on Indian
lands.
• Fort Atkinson Treaty, this treaty was an attempt to establish
peace among southern Plains Indians in order to ease settlers
passage westward and facilitate the building of the
transcontinental railroad through Indian lands.
• Beginning of the reservation system in the west.
• Treaties were doomed to failure.
Fort Laramie Treaty Land Survey
Reservations
• In the 1860s Indians began to be confined to
even smaller reservations in exchange for
promises to be left alone, food and other
supplies.
• Northern plains Indians --the large Dakota territory
(“Great Sioux Reservation”)
• South, Indian territory in present-day Oklahoma.
• Promises were broken.
• Sioux uprising in Min. during the civil war is
bloodily crushed
Indian Wars
• 1868-90 -- Constant warfare
between Indians and
federal government.
• Buffalo soldiers of the 10th
Cavalry.
• Western Indians were a
much bigger challenge than
Eastern Indians.
Receding Native Population
• Atrocities on both sides
• Sand Creek Massacre (1864), a surprise attack by US troops on a
Cheyenne camp during peace negotiations with the federal government.
Led by Col. Chivington, the Indians attempted to surrender but US
forces continued to attack killing over 200 Cheyenne tribe members.
• Sand Creek Massacre led to the Plains Indian Wars.
• Fetterman massacre, worst military defeat to Indian forces at that
time, occurred in Powder River Wyoming and Indian forces defeated
Captain Fetterman and his 81 troops.
• Red Cloud’s War
• Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, granted hunting rights to original tribes
in areas of South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Also granted larger
area of land to the Indians, closed off areas to white settlers, and helped
end Red Clouds War.
2nd Treaty of
Ft. Laramie (1868)
Reservation
Policy
Battle of Little Big Horn
 Custer leads a “scientific expedition” into
the Black Hills of South Dakota
 Reports discovery of gold on Sioux
territory.
 Hordes of gold seekers stream into
the Sioux territory.
 The Sioux attack these “invaders” of
their land led by Sitting Bull.
 Custer’s’ 7th Cavalry sent in to bring
“peace.”
 Custer’s troops wiped out at Little
Big Horn in present-day Montana when
Custer blunders into an ambush sprung
by a superior force. All 264 killed.
Chief Sitting Bull
Gen. George
Armstrong
Custer
Apache
• Apache’s in Arizona
and New Mexico were
the most difficult to
subdue.
• Led by Geronimo.
• Ultimately Resettled in
Oklahoma
Nez Perce
• Nez Perce go to war in
Idaho in 1877.
• Government shrunk
reservation by 90%.
• Chief Joseph leads his
band on 1700 mile trek
over the Continental
divide.
• Surrenders and sent to
reservation in Kansas
where 40% die of disease.
Bellowing Herds Of Bison
• 1865--15 Million buffalo.
• Integral to the way of life for
Nomadic Western Indians.
• They were the staff of life for
Indians,
• By 1885 fewer than a 1000.
• Shot to feed RR gangs, for
skins, for sport and as a
way to subdue the Indians.
The End Of The Trail
• 1880s national conscience
awakening.
• Helen Hunt Jackson -- A
Century of Dishonor; Ramona
• Humanitarians:
• Christianize the Indians
• Turn them into productive
farmers
• Integrate them as citizens.
• Hardliners insisted on forced
containment.
Assimilating Indians
• Missionary policies ignored
the culture of the Indians.
• Christian missionaries on
the reservations tried to
force Indian culture out of
the Indians. Didn’t work
• Ghost Dance cult: began
once Federal Government
outlawed the “Sun Dance.”
• Wounded Knee massacre.
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
• Attempt to transform Indians into good American
farmers.
• Major shift in Indian policy. Ends reservation system.
• Provisions:
•
•
•
•
•
Dissolved many tribes as legal entities
wiped out tribal joint ownership of land.
Individual family heads given 160 acres of land.
Full title and citizenship in 25 years if behaved themselves.
Leftover reservation land sold; money to be used to educate and
civilize the Indians.
• Missionaries and teachers sent to reservations to
Christianize and teach women to sew and keep house.
Dawes Severalty Act (1887):
Assimilation Policy
Carlisle Indian School, PA
Dawes Act Failure
• Dawes Act failed.
• Why?
• By 1900 Indians had lost half of the land they had
held 20 years earlier.
• Dawes Act remains as basic framework for dealing
with Indians until 1934, later changed to what was
called the Indian Reorganization Act which tried to
restore Indian culture.
Mining
• Mining brought many people west and helped settle the
west.
• Gold in California in 1849,
• Gold Rush in Colorado in 1858 Pike’s Peak or Bust.
• Comstock load in Nevada in 1859.
• Additional smaller strikes in Montana, Idaho and other
Western states.
• Many boomtowns spring up
Mining
• Small-time mining replaced by
corporations
• Increased role for women in
West
• Effect on economy of mining.
• Helped finance the Civil War
• Facilitated building of the RR
• Reduced the value of silver
Mining Centers: 1900
Cattle Drives
• 1866-1888 was the era of the
Cattle drives
• Wild Longhorns in Texas and
Mexico.
• Transcontinental Railroad
allowed for easy shipping of
cattle back east to stockyards
and meatpacking industries.
• 1000-10,000 head herds
• Abilene, Dodge City, Ogallala
and Cheyenne.
Cattle Drives
• Pros and cons for
terminus towns
• Wyatt Earp; Batt
Masterson
• 4 million steers were
driven north. Profits
as high as 40%.
• Why Cattle drives
ended? Barbed Wire
Free Land For Free Families
• Homestead Act of 1862.
• Any adult could claim 160 acres of public land on certain
conditions:
• Live on it for 5 years
• Improve the land
• Pay a fee of $30.00
• Dramatic change in land policy.
• Trickle-down
• Intent was to provide a stimulus to the family farm, seen as
the back-bone of democracy.
Reality of Western Farming
• Problem: 160 acres often inadequate to sustain a
farmer in the Trans-Mississippi west because of the
scant rainfall.
• Perhaps 2/3 failed to stay for the full five years.
• In 40 years, nearly half a million families took
advantage of the Homestead Act (160 acre tracts
granted to men looking to settle in western US).
• Many more than that purchased their lands from the
RR, land companies or the states.
• Rampant Fraud: corporations, land-grabbers, lack of
improvements, “dummy homesteaders.”
Homestead Act
A Pioneer’s Sod House, SD
Great American Desert
• Western Prairie had
thick sod, no trees.
Thought to be unfarmable.
• Rich soil underneath
• Sod-busting
• Oxen and heavy plow
• 1870s farmers stream
onto Western Prairie
Busting in Kansas
• Farmers pushed too far west.
• 100th Meridian.
• 1870s Farmers do well. Why?
• 1880s and early 1890s many of these farmers
busted. Why?
• Western Kansas lost half its population between
1888 and 1892.
• What new innovations help western farmers.
•
•
•
•
dry-land farming;
heartier wheat;
new crops;
irrigation
Average Annual Precipitation
The Far West Comes Of Age
• 1870 and 1890 a boom time for the far west.
• Colorado, Dakotas, Montana, Washington,
Idaho and Wyoming all become states
during this period..
• Oklahoma Land Rush
• Last gasp of the large-scale opening of new lands
for settlement
• April, 1889 Oklahoma thrown open to settlement.
• Sooners
• Boomers
• By end of year, 60,000 inhabitants. Oklahoma a
state in 1909.
The Folding Frontier
• The frontier is considered to have closed in 1890.
• No longer a discernable frontier line.
• No longer “good” free land readily available.
• Lots of unsettled land, but largely undesirable.
• No longer line beyond which wilderness and no
civilization.
• Role of Frontier in shaping America
Frontier Settlements: 1870-1890
Frederick Jackson Turner
The Significance of the Frontier
in American Society (1893)
The Farm Becomes A Factory
• Farming more of a business post-Civil War.
• More farmers raise cash crops. Problems with
this?
• Farmers have to buy more stuff.
• Increased mechanization boosted production,
but also boosted the cash farmers need.
• Needed heavy machinery in order to plant and harvest
their bigger crops on larger farms.
• Many bought the new harvester-reaper
Unhappy Farmers
• Much more dependence on banks, RR and
manufacturing
• Farmers had to be much better businessmen
• Farmers were and felt much more vulnerable and
powerless.
• Farmers grew resentful of eastern banking and RR,
which they blamed for their problems.
• Farming became a much larger-scale operation.
• Small farmers were pushed out by increased mechanization
Deflation Dooms the Debtor
• 1880s and 1890s: deflation and depressed
commodity prices
• Farmers, in debt to buy land and harvesters,
behind the 8-ball. Debts harder to pay off.
• Causes of deflation
• Not enough dollars in circulation
• Money supply did not keep pace with increased
economic activity.
• After the Civil War, Grant contracts the money supply
to get rid of greenbacks and to shore up US credit.
Falling Grain Prices
• Effect of mechanization
on grain supply.
• Farmers went bankrupt in
great numbers
• Especially in the south,
farmers became tenants
rather than owners.
• By 1880 ¼ of all American
farms operated by tenants.
Unhappy Farmers
• Farmers faced additional
problems:
Grasshoppers
Boll weevil
Droughts
Land was over-taxed by state and
federal government
• Protective tariff
• Trusts exacted inflated prices.
• RR freight rates were sometimes
ruinous.
•
•
•
•
• Farmers still half the
population in 1890 but
hopelessly disorganized
The Farmers Take Their
Stand
• The Grange (1867).
• Oliver Kelley the founder
• Spread quickly; by 1875 had 800,000 members
• Advocated regulation of RR rates, grain storage fees.
• Coops.
• Got into politics.
• Got states to pass laws regulating RR and grain
elevators, but Supreme Court struck down these
laws.
• Wabash Cases
Prelude to Populism
• Farmers’ Alliance founded in Texas in late 1870s.
• By 1890 more than a million members.
• Problems
• targeted to land-owners, thus ignoring all the tenant farmers
• excluded blacks, half all southern farmers
• Goals:
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•
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nationalize RR,
abolish national banks,
institute a graduated income tax
government-owned warehouses where they could store their
crops until market prices rose while taking out loans against the
assumed future value of their crops.
Prophets of Populism
• Mary Lease. “Raise
More Hell and less
Corn.”
• Electoral success of
Farmers’ Alliance.
• Jim Crow laws passed
as a result.
• Movement matures
into the Populist Party.
McKinley
• William McKinley of Ohio.
• Mark Hanna
• McKinley political philosophy.
• Hanna’s money and political
influence get McKinley the
nomination on the first ballot
Bryan’s Cross of Gold
• In 1896 Democrats were in
turmoil. Cleveland very
unpopular
• Silverite faction in firm control.
• William Jennings Bryan
• Cross-of-Gold Speech
• Floor the convention and gets him
the nomination
“Cross of Gold” Speech
You shall not
press down upon
the brow of labor
this crown of
thorns; you shall
not crucify
mankind upon a
cross of gold!
Democratic Platform
• Platform calls for unlimited minting of silver at the ratio of
16 ounces for each ounce of gold.
• Why?.
• Many conservative democrats bolt the party and support
McKinley.
• Populists endorse Bryan and sacrifice their identity.
Silver v. Gold
• Republicans assumed tariff would be the
primary issue, but Bryan made it silver.
• He traveled tirelessly giving 600 speeches.
• His campaign like a religious crusade.
• Silver became the rallying cry.
• Debtors and Farmers v. eastern big-money
interests.
• Gold standard a scapegoat.
• Return of Jacksonian Democrats?
Hanna Leads Gold Bugs
• Conservatives and business interests saw the freecoinage of silver as the road to economic ruin.
• Allowed Hanna to raise tons of money from big
businesses
• Republicans had a 16-1 money advantage.
• Hanna wages campaign of fear against Bryan.
• Slogan “McKinley and a full dinner pail.”
• McKinley campaigns from his porch
• Employers scare employees
• McKinley wins decisively by 500,000 votes and
271-176 in Electoral College. Turnout is very high
Election of 1896
• Why Bryan loses
• Election was a major victory for middle-class values, big
business and conservative monetary policies.
• Most significant election since Lincoln and until FDR in
1932.
• Renewed Republican dominance of Presidency
Inflation Without Silver
• McKinley was a cautions, temperate, conservative
• Worked well with congress and with his own party
• Did not advocate major reforms.
• Tariff rates back to 46.5%
• Soon after the election, prosperity returned;
natural business cycle. Republicans took credit.
• Inflation happened naturally.
• New gold discoveries and new processes for extracting
gold from ore increase money supply
Was Bryan right?
• Was a shortage of
currency
• Did hurt debtors and
farmers
• Banking system did
favor big business.
• But, Silver would have
taken US off Gold
standard
• Silver the wrong cure
Graphic Analysis
• In examining the chart below, develop 1-2 paragraphs
explaining why the employment of farming took such a
drastic downward trend from 1910-2000. Include 2-3
reasons gained during lecture or prior knowledge to
support your argument.