America’s Heartland:
The Midwest
A Primary Source Collection for
“Regions of the United States”
5th grade
Teaching American History (TAH)
Loudoun County Public Schools
Historical Map of the Region
Note that the
Dakotas are
still a single
territory and
not individual
states; the
map was
published four
years before
the Battle of
Little Bighorn
Note how
Oklahoma and
its panhandle
are labeled at
this time
Includes an
inset map for
principal
products
Note the
presence of
canals – what
waterways do
they connect?
Kentucky is
usually
categorized as
part of the
Southeast
region
Follow the link for a zoomable version of this 1872 map of the region; available on the University of South Florida
“Maps ETC” website (accessed November 14, 2012): http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/6600/6683/6683.htm
Source: James Monteith, Comprehensive Geography (New York, NY: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1872) 40-41
The States of the Midwest
Environment: The Great Lakes
The Great Lakes Drainage Basin
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
http://www.epa.gov/oaqps001/gr8water/xbrochure/lakes.html
The Canal Corridor Association provides a website that describes
the history and significance of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, as
well as photos of reconstructed canal boats:
http://www.canalcor.org/CCA2005/CCA_Hist.html
The Great Lakes Historical Society website offers helpful links to
historical background and images, as well as information on the
National Great Lakes Museum , scheduled to open in 2013:
http://www.inlandseas.org/
Drawing depicting the opening of the Illinois &
Michigan Canal in 1848 – the canal connected
Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and helped
transform Chicago into a regional and national
center for transportation and industry. Travelers
could now move entirely by waterway from the
Mississippi River basin to New York City on the
Atlantic coast using rivers, canals, and lakes.
Source: “Chicago History,” DePaul University.
http://condor.depaul.edu/chicago/info_hst/earl
ychi.html
The Great Lakes Today
Duluth, Minnesota iron ore
docks ship iron ore mined from
the Mesabi Range ; see the
“Minnesota Mining History”
website for historic photos of
mining (see the open pit mine
photo below) and shipping:
http://www.miningartifacts.org
/IndexMinnesotaMiningHistory.
html; the “Visit Duluth” website
also has a brief video entitled
“Seaport City” showing ships
operating in the harbor area:
http://visitduluth.com/duluthis
openforyou/#
Photo of the Lake Erie
Islands; the five Great
Lakes rank among the
world’s 20 largest lakes
and are often described
as inland seas
Chicago, Illinois is the
largest Great Lakes city
with a population of over
2.6 million, making it the
third largest U.S. city
Environment: The Central Plains
100° West
longitude
Pictured above: A 1907 postcard image of a
steamboat near St. Louis, Missouri. Steamboats
played a vital role in transporting Midwest farm
goods along the Mississippi and other major
rivers from the mid-1800s on into the 1900s.
Source: http://steamboats.com/museum/u.html
Pictured below: Iowa farm scene.
The Central Plains extend from eastern Ohio to the edge of the Great
Plains in the west; they are lower in elevation and receive more annual
average rainfall than the Great Plains to the west of the 100° West
meridian; the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers traverse this area
Environment:
The Great Plains
Above: A bison herd crosses the Great Plains. Once the
primary resource of Plains Indian tribes, bison herds were
nearly wiped out in the buffalo hunts of the 1870s-1880s.
Their near extinction helped contribute to the demise of
the Plains Indians way of life, as depicted below in artist
Albert Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo (1888). Source:
http://collection.corcoran.org/collection/work/last-buffalo
The Ogallala Aquifer (depicted here in a
U.S. Geological Survey map) is one of
the world’s largest underground
sources of water, making Great Plains
farming and ranching possible. The
USGS provides a site dedicated to
learning about U.S. water resources at
http://water.usgs.gov/.
Environment:
“The Great American Desert?”
While considered an important part of the nation’s “breadbasket” today,
Americans in the early 1800s viewed the Great Plains as a forbidding “desert”
and preferred crossing over it to make the long and dangerous trek to Oregon
and California rather than attempt to settle on this virtually treeless
grassland. The Oregon, Mormon, and Santa Fe trails all crossed this region.
Washington Irving, in his Astoria, published in 1836, wrote:
"This region which resembles one of the ancient steppes of Asia has not inaptly
been termed 'The Great American Desert.' It spreads forth into undulating and
treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their
extent and monotony. It is a land where no man permanently abides, for at
certain seasons of the year there is no food for the hunter or his steed.“
Source: http://www.legendsofkansas.com/greatamericandesert.html
Left: Chimney Rock,
Nebraska – a major
landmark on the Oregon
Trail. Right: Image of
Oregon Trail wagon ruts
that still exist today
near Rock Creek,
Nebraska. Source:
http://www.legendsofa
merica.com/neoverlandtrails.html
Print entitled “Caravan of Emigrants for
California: Crossing the Great American
Desert in Nebraska” (c. 1850)
Source: Library of Congress,
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/935
06241/
Environment: The Dust Bowl
In the 1930s, the Great Plains witnessed one of the world’s greatest
manmade ecological disasters, as a series of severe droughts struck
the Midwest region. In prior decades, farmers had plowed up the
native prairie grass in order to grow more wheat and other grains to
meet growing world demand. With native grasses gone and crops
withering in the fields, nothing remained to hold down the thin layer
of topsoil, which blew away and created massive dust storms.
See Ken Burns’ PBS
documentary series
on the Dust Bowl.
http://www.pbs.org/
kenburns/dustbowl/
The photographic images on this page are available on the website for
Wessels Living History Farm in York, Nebraska. The website includes a
description of Dust Bowl conditions as well as videotaped interviews
with several Dust Bowl survivors. Source:
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_01.html
Economy: Agriculture
The Midwest is one of the most agriculturally productive
regions in the United States. Both the “Corn Belt” and the
“Wheat Belt” are located in the Midwest. The region is also
one of the leading producers of soybeans in the country. The
National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture produces maps that show crop production by
county. The map below shows the “Corn Belt” in dark green.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/i
ndex.asp
Technology has played a critical role in the farming
history of the Midwest. Pictured above is an original
John Deere steel plow (first invented in Illinois in
1837); a modern John Deere tractor and plow are
pictured below. The Illinois State Museum’s exhibit on
the history of Illinois agriculture provides images,
background, and activities on the subject:
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/agriculture/
Economy: Railroads
Railroads have played a vital role in the settlement and
economic development of the Midwest region since the mid1800s. The Pacific Railroad Act, signed into law by President
Abraham Lincoln in 1862, provided for the incorporation of
the Union Pacific Railroad and the construction of the
nation’s first railroad linking the eastern United States to the
Pacific West. Building west from Council Bluffs, Iowa, the
Union Pacific (UP) eventually met up with the Central Pacific
line working east from California at Promontory Point, Utah
in May 1869, thus creating the Transcontinental Railroad. A
journey that once took pioneers nearly six months along the
westward trails could now be made in six days. Today, UP is
headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska and operates the
nation’s largest railroad network.
Above: A Chicago railroad freight yard.
Left: A map depicting the progress of the
Union Pacific’s construction progress in
the 1860s. Below: A UP freight train
Union Pacific maintains current & historical maps of its system:
http://www.up.com/aboutup/reference/maps/index.htm
Economy:
Meatpacking
In the years following the Civil War, the meatpacking industry
emerged as a major part of the nation’s economy. Ranchers
shipped their beef cattle east on railroads to stockyards in cities
such as Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Omaha. Several
major meatpacking companies, including Swift and Armour,
were headquartered in Chicago and used advertising (see the
image below) to help promote the sale of meat products.
Above: View of the Chicago stockyards c. 1880.
Below: Slaughterhouse workers, c. 1892. Both
images are from the Chicago History Museum’s
online exhibit “Slaughterhouse to the World.”
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/stock.html
Source: Library of Congress.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classr
oommaterials/presentationsandacti
vities/presentations/branding
Author Upton Sinclair
exposed abuses in the
meatpacking industry
in The Jungle, first
published in 1906.
Economy: Manufacturing
The Midwest is home to some of the most important manufacturing
centers in the nation. Perhaps the most important Midwest industry is
automobile manufacturing, which started in the Detroit area around
1900. The steel and tire industries have also played a critical role in
Midwestern economic development. Since the 1960s, the industrial
Midwest has suffered a gradual decline due to foreign competition and
the movement of factories and jobs from the “Rust Belt” to the
warmer states of the “Sun Belt” in the southern and western U.S.
Below: Ford’s assembly line in 1913,
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/es/
mi/es_mi_detroit_1_e.html
Henry Ford (pictured above) founded the
Ford Motor Company in 1903 and began
producing the Model T in 1908 using
mass production techniques.
Left: Ford’s River Rouge Plant in
Dearborn, Michigan, c. 1930s.
Right: Ford assembly line
workers today. The Henry Ford
Museum has an extensive
collection of images and lesson
plans on the auto industry at
http://www.thehenryford.org/.
People: The Lakota
Above: Citizenship ceremony at Fort Yates,
North Dakota. The U.S. government
encouraged the Lakota to assimilate as
American citizens and give up their cultural
identity. Citizenship rituals required that the
Lakota recite an oath like the following:
The Lakota (Sioux) of the north central plains region attempted to retain
their independence in the face of westward settlement and U.S. policies
that eventually forced them on to reservations in the Dakotas. Their
leaders, such as Sitting Bull (pictured above left), challenged U.S. treaty
violations and successfully confronted the U.S. military at the Battle of
Little Bighorn in 1876 (aka, “Custer’s Last Stand” pictured above right).
However, this victory was short-lived,
as the Lakota were eventually forced to
accept life on reservations operated by
the U.S. government. In 1890, the socalled “battle” of Wounded Knee in
South Dakota resulted in a massacre of
Lakota (pictured right) and represented
the last violent confrontation between
Native Americans and the U.S.
government.
Click on photos for Library of Congress links.
“_________________ (white name). What
was your Indian name? (Gives name.)
_________________ (Indian name). I hand
you a bow and an arrow. Take this bow and
shoot the arrow. (He shoots.)
_________________ (Indian name). You have
shot your last arrow. That means that you are
no longer to live the life of an Indian. You are
from this day forward to live the life of the
white man. But you may keep that arrow, it
will be to you a symbol of your noble race and
of the pride you feel that you come from the
first of all Americans…” Source:
http://www.ndstudies.org/resources/IndianS
tudies/standingrock/docs_citizenship.html
Wounded Knee
After being forced on to reservations by the late
1880s, Native Americans across the West responded
to the call of Wavoka, a Pauite mystic known as “the
Messiah”, to revive Native American traditions
through the Ghost Dance ritual. Wavoka’s prophecy
that a day would soon come when the white man
would disappear and the buffalo would return gave
hope to a desperate people. However, the Ghost
Dance movement also created concern that Native
Americans were planning a general uprising against
U.S. authority. Increasing tensions led to the
massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee. The picture
below from The Illustrated London News of January
3, 1891, depicts a Ghost Dance ceremony. Source:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006681363/
The Lakota leader, Bigfoot,
thought he was leading his
people to safety when they
entered the Pine Ridge
Reservation in December 1890.
Instead, they were attacked
and massacred by soldiers.
The following ballad was composed by Private W.H. Prather, an
African-American cavalryman, to commemorate the military’s
actions at Wounded Knee. This source and the photo of Bigfoot’s
frozen corpse above are from the PBS website for The West, which
also has an archive of documents and images related to the Lakota:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/
“The Red Skins left their Agency, the Soldiers left their Post,
All on the strength of an Indian tale about Messiah's ghost
Got up by savage chieftains to lead their tribes astray;
But Uncle Sam wouldn't have it so, for he ain't built that way.
They swore that this Messiah came to them in visions sleep,
And promised to restore their game and Buffalos a heap,
So they must start a big ghost dance, then all would join their land,
And may be so we lead the way into the great Bad Land.
Chorus:
They claimed the shirt Messiah gave, no bullet could go through,
But when the Soldiers fired at them they saw this was not true.
The Medicine man supplied them with their great Messiah's grace,
And he, too, pulled his freight and swore the 7th hard to face…”
People:
Homesteaders
The Homestead Act of 1862 opened up western lands in
the Plains region to farm families in the late 1800s.
Homesteaders could obtain up to 160 acres of land for a
$10 registration fee and proof of residence. Railroad
companies also sold land to prospective farmers and
profited from storing their grain and shipping their
produce to market. The image pictured to the right is an
1872 railroad company ad aimed at enticing prospective
land owners. Source: Library of Congress.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbpe.13401300)
The photo above is of the Bakken family standing in front of
their sod house near Milton, North Dakota, c. 1895; from
the Fred Hulstrand History in Pictures Collection available at
the Library of Congress website:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ndfahtml/hult_h
ome.html
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Perhaps no homesteader is more famous than Laura Ingalls Wilder, the credited
author of the famous “Little House” series of eleven books published between
1932 and 1974. The books recount Laura’s childhood and early adulthood in the
late 1800s and provide a firsthand glimpse of the challenges of living on the
Midwestern frontier, from the north woods of Wisconsin to the plains of Kansas,
Minnesota, and South Dakota. After moving many times around the country
and experiencing great financial and physical hardships, Laura and her husband,
Almanzo, settled in the Missouri Ozarks in 1894 and remained there until their
deaths – Almanzo in 1949 at the age of 92 and Laura in 1957 at the age of 90.
Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an accomplished writer, likely had a hand in
helping to author her mother’s books.
By the 1970s, the “Little House” series had achieved
widespread national popularity and inspired the longrunning Little House on the Prairie television series (pictured
above). For background and primary resources on Laura
Ingalls Wilder, check out the following sites:
http://www.liwfrontiergirl.com/
http://lauraingallswilderhome.com/
The National Archives also has a collection of documents
related to Charles Ingalls’ (Laura’s father) homestead claims:
http://www.archives.gov/research/land/ingalls/index.html
People: Immigrants
Midwestern cities and rural areas attracted a growing number of
immigrants in the late 1800s and through the 20th century. Large
numbers of Germans and Scandinavians settled the north central plains
and a diverse mix of European immigrants helped to create a “melting
pot” of cultures in large cities such as Chicago. The Chicago Historical
Society’s “The History Files” has resources on topics such as the Chicago
Fire of 1871: http://www.chicagohs.org/history/index.html
Below Left: 1916 aerial view of Chicago. Source:
http://www.worldmapsonline.com/historicalmaps/1W-IL-C3-1916.htm
Pictured above left: Social reformer Jane Addams founded Hull
House in 1889 on Chicago’s southwest side. The institution was
America’s first “settlement house” designed to help newly-arrived
immigrants adapt to urban American society. The University of
Illinois - Chicago has created a web site on Hull House and the
immigrant experience in Chicago that provides helpful background
and multiple primary source documents:
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/urbanexp/
Above: Photograph of the Pettersens, a Norwegian
immigrant family, in front of their farm home near
Lodi, Wisconsin, c. 1870; from photographer
Andreas Larsen Dahl’s collection; available on the
Wisconsin Historical Society’s website:
http://wiscohisto.tumblr.com/post/35638753045/
the-pettersen-family-in-front-of-their-home-lodi
People: The Great Migration
U.S. involvement in the world wars of the early
1900s increased the demand for industrial labor in
Northern factories, including those of the Midwest.
The lure of jobs and new economic opportunities
drew thousands of African-American families from
the rural South to Midwestern cities such as Chicago,
Detroit, and Cleveland. The “Great Migration”
resulted in the establishment of large AfricanAmerican communities in areas such as Chicago’s
“South Side” and the emergence of a vibrant culture
in which blues and jazz music played a central role.
The Library of Congress online exhibit entitled
“Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration”
includes related maps, photos and letters:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html
Above: African-American family photographed arriving in
Chicago, c. 1919, from BlackPast.org, an online resource for
African-American history developed by Dr. Quintard Taylor of the
University of Washington.
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/great-migration-1915-1960
Right: Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration, published in 1940, is a
collection of Lawrence’s paintings inspired by the experiences of
African-American families and includes a foreword by the author,
as well as the poem “Migration” by Walter Dean Myers.
Geography of the Great Migration