Chapter 26
The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution
1865-1896
Culture on the Plains
• 360,000 Native Americans in 1860
• Tribal warfare on the Plains
• Cheyenne and Sioux used horsesnomadic hunters now
• Whites= disease, decimate buffalo
• Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) and Treaty
of Fort Atkinson (1853)
• Bureau of Indian Affairs Indian wars
Indian Wars/Massacres
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Sand Creek Massacre 1864
Captain Fetterman and Bighorn Mountain
2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868
Colonel George Custer Battle at Little
Bighorn 1876 vs. Sioux
• Sitting Bull
• Nez Perce and Chief Joseph
• Surrendered and forced onto reservation
in Kansas
Indian Wars/Massacres
• Apache and Geronimo- refused to
acknowledge US authority in West
• Reservation system= destruction on
Native American traditions and culture
– Railroads, disease, extermination of the
buffalo
– 15 million at end of Civil War- near extinction
by 1885
Geronimo (ca. 1823–1909), Also Known by His
Apache Name, Goyahkla (One Who Yawns)
Indian Wars/Massacres
• Helen Hunt Jackson
• 2 sided argument with Native American
policy- humanitarians vs. hard liners
• Sun Dance ritual outlawed 1884
• Rise of the Ghost Dance started by Paiute
• Massacre at Wounded Knee 1890
– Great Sioux Reservation being split up
– Ghost Dance frightened BIA agents- army
called in
– Sitting Bull killed= rumors
– 200 Sioux killed, 29 soldiers (battle?)
Indian Policy
• Dawes Act 1887
– 160 acres
– Destroyed native social structure
– Freed up land for railroads and white
settlement
– Indian Reorganization Act 1934
• Carlisle Indian School
– “Kill the Indian, save the man”
Vanishing Lands
Cowboys
• Longhorn cattle in Texas= hides
– Railroad Long Drive to Cow Towns
– Meat packing dominated by trusts
– Cowboys need
• Homesteaders and barbed wire= closing
off open range
• Cattle ranches- The Wyoming Stock
Growers’ Association
Cattle Trails
Farmers
• Homestead Act 1862
– 160 acres for 5 years, small fee
– Plains prone to drought
– Fraud of Homestead Act
– Cultivation of Plains, barbed wire (Joseph F.
Glidden)
• 1870’s- push west of 100th meridian
(semiarid)
– Dry farming
– Federal irrigation system
Average Annual Precipitation, with Major Agricultural
Products, 1900Northern Hemisphere storms typically circle the globe in a westto-east direction. Much of the life-nourishing water in these storms is dumped as
rainfall on the western slopes of the Pacific coastal ranges and the Rocky Mountains,
creating huge “rain shadows” in the Great Basin and in the western Great Plains.
Westward-faring pioneers had to learn new agricultural techniques when they pushed
settlement into the drought-prone regions west of the 100th meridian, as reflected in
the patterns of crop distribution by 1900.
End of the Frontier
• 1890 census
• 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner- The
Significance of the Frontier in American
History
– Frontier Thesis
– Frontier= romantic symbol, allowed mobility,
“safety valve”
• National parks created
Organized Farmers
• Weather and natural disasters 1880’s-1890’s
• Over taxation as compared to wealthy easterners
– Had tariff for protection, Western farmers= competition
in global market
– At the mercy of the trusts
• The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
1867
– Social activities organize farmers for betterment
– Granger Laws
• Greenback Labor Party 1878= 14 Congressmen,
1880= James B. Weaver
Populism
• Farmers’ Alliance- cooperatives
– 1 million members by 1900
– Excluded African Americans, sharecroppers,
tenant farmers etc.
• The People’s Party (Populism) formed
1890’s
– Free and unlimited coinage of silver
– Federal “sub treasury”
– Mary E. Lease
– James B. Weaver
Labor Unrest
• Jacob Coxey 1894 Coxey’s Army with 500
unemployed workers marching to DC
– Wanted inflation, public works projects
• American Railway Union formed by Eugene
V. Debs 1894
• Pullman Strike- cut wages, not rent
– Rail service west of Chicago stopped
– 2,000 soldiers sent in (disrupted postal service)
– 13 strikers killed, 57 wounded- Debs to jail for
contempt of court (no jury trial!)
1896 Election
• Republicans- William McKinley (Ohio) with
Mark Hanna as campaign manager
– platform: gold standard, tariff, anger at
Democrats for Panic of 1893
• Democrats split (Cleveland hated)nominated William Jennings Bryan
(Nebraska)
– Cross of Gold speech
– Platform: unlimited coinage of silver (16 to 1
ratio)
– “Gold Bugs” left Democratic party, Populists also
endorsed Bryan
1896 Election
• Bryan= campaigner with 600 speeches in 26 states
• Bryan victory= fear from industrialists= $16 million
– Business contracts contingent on McKinley victory, paid
off employees, threatened pay in silver dollars if Bryan
won
• McKinley= 271 EV vs. 176 (east and upper
Mississippi Valley)
• Bryan= South and West (no labor or landless
farmers)
• Election= turning point (end agrarian power)