• 1844 Election of Polk – Manifest Destiny
• 1845 Annexation of TX, 1846 M/A War, 1849 CA Gold
Rush
• 1850s Compromise, KS Neb Act, RR Improvements
• 1860s Civil War, Homestead Act, Reconstr, Mass
Migration, Reservation system,
• 1870s Little Bighorn, Nez Perce Surrender
• 1880s – BIG immigration begins
• 1890s End of the frontier Establishment of Grange /
Mary “Yellin”
– Wounded Knee, Carlisle School
• 1898 Spanish American War
– Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Phillipines

“Tell your people that since the Great Father promised that we should never be removed we have been moved five times….
I think you had better put the Indians on wheels and you can run them about wherever you wish.” – Anonymous 1876

• Push / Pull factors for
Migrants
• Impact on Native
American Population
• Myths v. Realities
• Eastern View of
Western Life

• Morril Land Grant Act
• Homestead Act
• Civil War
• Immigration
• “Free” Land
•
• Eastern Urbanization
• Romanticism

Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our
Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool
Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food.
No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death.
I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands
I will fight no more forever.
Chief Joseph - Thunder Traveling to the Loftier
Mountain Heights - 1877

• Land Use
• Broken Treaties
• Near Constant Wars
• Nez Perce Example
• Sioux Example
• Reservations
• Schools / New Land
Ownership Laws

We rode past what but recently had been the site of a far-flung camp of white and brown army tents and the grimy old canvas of torn tepees; now marked only, here and there, by the bended willow frames and shattered poles of what so lately were shelters for the living. Near by was the debrisstrewn grass where lay the lonely dead.
This photograph was taken five or six days after the tragedy while the bodies of the Lakota victims were being collected for burial. ( Nebraska State Historical Society RG2845.ph. The photo has been digitally enhanced.)
Wounded
Knee

The Carlisle
School

• Carlisle Example of
“Civilizing”
• Turner’s Thesis
• Jackson’s Expose
• Remington Paintings
• T. Roosevelt

• Arid - “Great American Desert”
• Size of Rockies / Sierras / Wasatch
• Separation / Isolation – Distance to neighbors
• Expectations v. Realities
– Donner Party Example
• Short term booms in RR crossings, mining towns etc.
– “Wild West” image was episodic / localized
• Rugged individuals v. neighborly cooperation
• Failure / Death Rate
• Gender ratios
– Opportunities for egalitarianism
• Changing the geography
• Farming cooperatives v. Big
Ranchers v. Railroads
• The Grange
– M. E. Lease

• Homesteaders
• Bonanza Farms
• Boomers
• Squatters
• Sooners
• Exodusters
• Sodbusters
• Soddies
• Land Rush
• Sitting Bull (Sioux)
• Custer
• Little Bighorn
• Wounded Knee
• Chief Joseph (Nez Perce)
• Carlisle School
• A Century of Dishonor
(Helen Hunt Jackson
• Frederick Jackson Turner
• Remington