Chapter 26 –The Great West and
the Agricultural Revolution (18651896)
The culture of the Plains Indians declines as
white settlers transform the Great Plains.
Meanwhile, farmers form the Populist
movement to address their economic
concerns.
The Clash of Cultures on the Plains
 After the Civil War, the West still wild and untamed
 Populated by mostly Natives and some Mormons and Mexicans
 Natives increasingly displaced by white settlers
 Turn on each other (Sioux expanded at expense of other Natives)
 Increase in diseases
 Left to hunt the few remaining bison
 Feds attempt to pacify Natives with Fort Laramie and Fort Atkinson
treaties
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The treaties were the beginning of the reservation system
But chiefs who signed them didn’t represent all Natives
Confinement of the reservation antithetical to nomadic Plains Indians’ lifestyle
 Feds push Natives into smaller confines, like the “Great Sioux
reservation” in Dakota and Indian Territories (Oklahoma)
 Natives promised food, clothing, supplies; exploited by corrupt
Indian agents
The Buffalo Soldier’s main
charge was to protect settlers as
they moved west and to support
the westward expansion by
building the infrastructure
needed for new settlements to
flourish.
The troops were led by white
officers. Many officers, including
George Armstrong Custer,
refused to command black
regiments and accepted a lower
rank rather than do so. The
black regiments could only serve
west of the Mississippi River
because of the prevailing
attitudes following the Civil War.
The name “Buffalo Soldiers” has
become interesting lore in itself.
There seem to be three possible
reasons for the name. One, it is
said that the curly hair of the
soldiers reminded them of the
Buffalo. Two, they were given
the name because their fierce,
brave nature reminded them of
the way buffalos fought. Third, it
may have been because they wore
thick coats made from buffalo
hide during winter. Whatever
the reason, the term was used
respectfully and with honor.
Buffalo Soldiers
Indian Wars
 Sand Creek, CO massacre of 400 peaceful Natives
 Custer’s Last Stand
 Colonel Custer found gold in the Black Hills of SD (sacred Sioux land);
leads to a rush of settlers
 Sitting Bull and the Sioux to go on the warpath, completely decimating
Custer’s forces at the Battle of Little Big Horn
 The most difficult to subdue were the Apache tribes of Arizona
and New Mexico, led by Geronimo, but even they finally
surrendered after being pushed to Mexico
 The Indians were subdued due to:
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the railroad, which cut through the heart of the West
Disease
extermination of the buffalo (from 15 million in 1865 to 1,000 in 1885)
Wars
loss of their land to White settlement
The End of the Trail
 Sympathy for the Indians inspired by Helen Hunt Jackson’s book A
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Century of Dishonor
White’s force Indians to convert, urged the gov’t to outlaw the sacred Sun
Dance, called the “Ghost Dance” by Whites (a festival that Whites thought
was the war-drum beating)
At the Battle of Wounded Knee, the “Ghost Dance” was brutally stamped
out by U.S. troops, who killed 200 men, women, and children
This battle (1890) marks the end of the Indian Wars as by then the Indians
were all either on reservations or dead.
Dawes Severalty Act (1887): dissolved the legal entities of all tribes, but if
the Indians behaved the way Whites wanted them to behave (become
farmers on reservations), they could receive full U.S. citizenship in 25 years
Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania was founded to teach Native
American children how to behave like Whites, completely erasing their
culture
Ghost Dance
Battle of Wounded Knee
Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive
 As cities back east boomed, demand for food and
meat increased sharply
 Cattle could now be shipped to the stockyards…The
meat-packaging industry thus sprang up…KC and
Chicago grow
 The Long Drive emerged to become a spectacular
feeder of the slaughterhouses, as Texas cowboys
herded cattle across desolate land to railroad
terminals in Kansas
 Barbed-wire, invented by Samuel Glidden, erased
the open-range days of the long cattle drives
Farmer’s Frontier
 Homestead Act of 1862 allows people to get as much as
160 acres of land in return for living on it for five years,
improving it, and paying a $30 fee
 This act led half a million families to buy land and settle
out West, but it often turned out to be a cruel hoax
because of the dry Great Plains
 Fraud was spawned by the Homestead Act, since almost
ten times as much land ended up in the hands of landgrabbing promoters than in the hands of real farmers
 Huge federally financed irrigation projects caused the
desert to bloom; dams that tamed the Missouri and
Columbia Rivers helped water the land
The Far West Comes of Age
 Population surge
 New states: CO, ND, SD, MT, WA, ID, WY
 In 1890, the U.S. census announced that a frontier was
no longer discernible
 Concern led to the first national park being opened,
Yellowstone, founded in 1872, followed by Yosemite and
Sequoia (1890)
 Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier thesis”: “American
history has been in a large degree the history of the
colonization of the Great West”
 Other historians counter Turner’s thesis: the West was a
crossroads of cultures
The Farm Becomes a Factory
 Farmers were now increasingly producing single
“cash” crops
 The mechanization of agriculture led to enormous
farms
 Some said the US was a country of plantations and
estates
 California vegetables and fruits, raised by ill-paid
Mexican workers, made handsome profits when sold
to the East
Deflation Dooms the Debtor
 In the 1880s, when world markets rebounded,
produced more crops, and forced prices down, the
farmers in America were the ones that found ruin
 Paying back debts difficult in this deflation-filled
time; simply not enough money to go around for
everyone. Less money in circulation was called
“contraction.”
 Homesteads fell to mortgages and foreclosures, and
farm tenancy rather than farm ownership was
increasing
Unhappy Farmers
 City, state, and federal governments ripping them off by
making them pay painful taxes when they could least afford
to do so
 The railroads (by fixing freight prices), the middlemen (by
taking huge cuts in profits), and the various harvester,
barbed wire, and fertilizer trusts all harassed farmers
 In 1867, the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry,
better known as The Grange, was founded by Oliver H.
Kelley to improve the lives of isolated farmers through
social, educational, and fraternal activities
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1875, and the Grange changed its goals to include the improvement
of the collective plight of the farmer
managed to get Congress to pass a set of regulations known as the
Granger Laws, but afterwards, their influence faded
Prelude to Populism
 The Farmers’ Alliance (1870s) = farmers seeking to fight the
oppressive banks and railroads
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But they only aimed to help landowners, thereby ignoring tenant farmers;
purposely excluded Blacks
Goals of the Alliance: (1) nationalization of railroads, telephone, and
telegraph, (2) abolition of national banks, (3) graduated income tax, (4) a
new federal sub-treasury for farmers
Call for unlimited coinage of silver
 New political party formed in early 1890’s: the People’s Party,
aka the Populists
 Populist leaders like Mary Elizabeth Lease attack Wall Street
on behalf of suffering farmers
Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike
 Panic of 1893 fueled the passion of the Populists
 Many disgruntled unemployed fled to D.C. calling for change
 Jacob Coxey and his “Coxey’s Army” marched on Washington with
scores of followers; they call for:
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relieving unemployment through government public works program
an issuance of $500 million in legal tender notes
 Coxey’s march on D.C. fizzled out when they were arrested for walking
on the grass
 The Pullman Strike in Chicago (1894), led by labor leader and Socialist
Eugene Debs, was more dramatic
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Debs helped organize the workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company
The cut wages by about 1/3, leading to strikes that were sometimes violent
The workers halted railway traffic across the country
Federal troops, supported by President Cleveland, sent to break up the strike
Debs went to prison for 6 months and turned into the leading Socialist in America
 Populists and workers decry a corrupt alliance between business and
the courts
McKinley vs. Bryan
 William McKinley (Repub) = conservative in business;
prefers laissez-faire; for the gold standard
 He believed prosperity would “trickle down” to the
laborers and farmers if businesses succeeded
 Young and charismatic speaker, William Jennings
Bryan leads the Democrats
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Passionately backed silver standard during his “Cross of Gold
Speech”
Dems against silver left the party
 Bryan takes on the Industrial giants
“You came to tell us that
the great cities are in
favour of the gold
standard; we reply that
the great cities rest upon
our broad and fertile
plains. Burn down your
cities and leave our farms,
and your cities will spring
up again as if by magic.
But destroy out farms and
the grass will grow in the
city...You shall not press
down upon the brow of
labour this crown of
thorns. You shall not
crucify mankind upon a
cross of gold.”
“We will answer their
demand for a gold
standard by saying to
them: "You shall not press
down upon the brow of
labor this crown of thorns,
you shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of
gold”
Cross of Gold speech
1896 Prez Election
 McKinley won the election decisively with support of the
populous East and upper Midwest (Bryan’s support came
from the South and West)
 Perhaps the most important election since Lincoln; the first to
pit the privileged against the underprivileged…resulted in a
victory for big business and big cities
 Election of 1896 could be called the “gold vs. silver” election
 Republicans would seize control of the White House for 16
more years