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What is “the west”? – Myths vs. Realities
 Who were major actors?
 What were their interests?
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What were main conflicts?
How and why did “the west” change over time?
 How did late-19 th c. history of west affect later history of region and nation?

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“The West” can be defined as part of a longer historical process
 Also an identifiable region and period
 Both were defined by particular people with particular interests , vying with others for control of the region and future history

John Gast, Manifest Destiny , 1872

 What does image represent?

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Donald Worster: “the story of men and women trying to wrest a living from a condition of severe natural scarcity and, paradoxically, of trying to survive in the midst of entrenched wealth .”
J.W. Powell (1878): arid, need irrigation to make region habitable and useful
 Immense mineral and timber wealth
 Enviro. conditions necessitated new economic techniques, new patterns of ownership, new social relations

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Railroad-building made west accessible
Transcontinental railroad finished 1869
Routes spurred development
Profit motive – spurred new ways of thinking about and exploiting land and region
Led to diff. industries – cattle, towns, mining, agriculture
Necessitated diff. strategies of removal – Native
Americans and bison would interfere with white settlers’ goals

The American West “empty” for white settlement: the power of images/maps to shape imagination and ideas of the region

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Question: when you think of “the west,” how visible is the power of fed. govt.?
Govt. often perceived as absent from west – made invisible
Reality:
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National imperial ambitions, goal/process of accession of new territories, then incorporation into nation
Loans and land grants to railroads
Homestead Act, 1862, 160 acres to head of household
National war on Native Americans
Govt. set up and administered reservations
Provided Water – irrigation, dams, water rights
Economic and immigration policies that benefited west

 Appropriation of Native American land; crowding them out
 Part of longer process/history of taking land, moving or killing Native Americans
 Change from borderlands relations (no clear dominance = compromise/trade/better relationships) to dominance (killing/removal relationships)
 Population pressure combined with highlytrained small military (27,000 soldiers)
 Environmental pressures: killing of bison

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Shift from removal before Civil War to reservation system
Beginning of reservation system (1867) – N.A. were wards of govt. until they changed their ways
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Sioux/Cheyenne defeat
Custer at Little Big Horn (1876) Link
Plains Indian resistance – Nez Perce and Chief Joseph fight, flee, then surrender (1877)
Shrinking reservations in SD and Oklahoma (Sooners)
Dawes Act, 1887 – carved up reservations, individual plots of land, make N.A. become white
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, Ghost Dance, Sioux, predicted whites would disappear in spring 1891 Link

 Whites pushed goal of making N.A. become white: private property, farming, Indian schools = civilization, new language, beliefs, way of life

Lakota Sioux boys at Carlisle (PA) Indian School

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Centrality of rail lines and new technologies
Cattle – western long drives only lasted short time (myth much longer); fencing and ranches
Agriculture – grain on Plains; fruits/vegs. in
CA
Mining – from prospecting to industry – important to labor history
Women’s roles – western scarcity and life allowed women to break out of Victorian gender roles – worked outside home in nontrad. jobs (farming, merchants, prostitution)

 Three Frontiers: Mining, Cattle, Farming
 Short period of individual social mobility
 Each frontier quickly changed and consolidated – high capital $$$ needs – companies took over all 3 areas
 Need for cheap labor: former cowboys, prospectors, African Americans, Chinese, and other immigrants
 As a result, the west became site of class and racial conflict – fought over the spoils

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Endangering native species – bison and others
Unsustainable agriculture – wet years raised expectations, then drought, stripping of native grasses
Ag. susceptible to world market, fluctuating prices for grain
Overexpansion; boom and bust in railroads, ag., and mining
Cattle and farming = monoculture, pestilence, introduction of invasive species
Conflicts over land and resources, labor conflicts
Solutions: agricultural cooperation (Grange and
Populists); labor unions and parties

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West was place for whites to prove superiority
Whites vs. Native Americans
Similarities to Reconstruction South – white supremacy, control of land, labor, resources
Appropriation of Hispanic lands
Use of migrant or immigrant labor – Irish, African
American, Chinese, Japanese, then Mexican
Labor castes and control
Labor conflict – CA, SanFran’s Workingman’s
Party in 1870s and 1880s – who has the right to earn a living? – republicanism/exclusio n

Depicting the racial
“other” – dehumanizing immigrant Chinese
Making Chinese immigrants expendable
Rationalizing exclusion
(from nation, from work, etc.) –
“they” don’t belong here

White Workers Feared the Chinese Worker “Horde”

Chinese Railroad Workers Erased from History of West
Thomas Hill, "The Last Spike," c. 1881, completion of the transcontinental railroad

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Beginnings of Conservation/ Environmental
Movement conflicted with prior visions/uses/methods
John Muir and Yosemite Park, 1864
Romantic wilderness ideals
Conflicts over water and land – should resources be used or preserved? – where does best “value” lie?
Conservation vs. Preservation
Issues of public land use – who had right to use lands?

Link to more info. on Buffalo Bill, myths and realities

 Bucking Bronco , Edison Film, 1894
 Buffalo Dance , Edison Film, 1894
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Sioux Ghost Dance , Edison Film, 1894
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Parade , 1902

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Case study: Columbian Exposition, 1893: a site where American racial and frontier ideas were worked out, exhibited
Chicago: western city, railroad city, cattle, grain, immigration
1893 Exposition: 400 th Anniv. of Columbus/New
World – festival commemorating Euro. settlement
The White City – white progress, civilization – architecture, tech., arts
The Midway offered comparisons to other “races”,
“primitives”
Expo. offered vision of what whites wanted the rest of the west to become

1893 Chicago World’s Fair

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2 versions, 2 men – enactment of western myth in 1893
F.J. Turner – historian, “frontier thesis”
 Moving frontier, progress, farm families, Indians irrelevant, democracy, individualism, new Americans, econ./phys. mobility
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Used images from history: free land, log cabins, stage coaches
1890 U.S. Census declared frontier closed – Turner wondered about what that would mean for American character
Buffalo Bill – frontier conflict, whites and N.A., whites under attack, justified fight against N.A.
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Real and imaginary; used images of conflict, heroic martyr
(Custer)
White frontier men “know” Indians, then beat them

 Similarities:
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Whites justified in taking over “empty” continent
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Conquest = a good thing
A “clean” story of “progress”
Use of prominent symbols and images, even if not historically correct
 Turned attention away from Reconstruction and
‘nigger problem’

Chicago --
The Frontier
West
Reenacted:
Buffalo Bill,
The White City,
The Midway, and
F.J. Turner

 If American west closed in 1890, and it meant so much to American psyche, then what?

 Connections to Reconstruction?
 Similar themes or issues?
 Connections to later U.S. history?