Ms. Costas
The U.S. in 1860
Northwest Ordinance
1787
 Created the Northwest territory
 Established a precedent by which the Federal
gov’t would be sovereign and expand westward
 Determined qualifications for statehood
 Population must reach 60,000
 Delegates would vote to write a state government
and constitution
 Elected representatives for government
Texas’ History
 Settled by Spanish missionaries
 War of Mexican Independence and Rev. War
 Responsible for populating Texas
 Annexation of Texas (1845)
 Leads to Mexican War
 Ends with Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
 Gadsden Purchase (1854)
 Connected parts of the east to California
 Military bases
 Cattle
 Farming
Railroads in 1860
 How could railroad companies be encouraged by
the government to build a railroad to service part
of the country where there were as yet no
significant numbers of United States citizens?
 Conversely, why should settlers come when there
was no railroad?
Homestead Act

Read “The Homestead Act” – with a partner, answer the following
questions:
1. What is the purpose of this act?
2. What is meant by the term “public domain”?
3. Who is entitled to secure a grant of land from the Federal
Government? Can women secure such a grant in their own names,
and if so, how?
4. What is the largest amount of land a person can secure from the
Federal government through this act?
5. How would one go about applying for land under the act (filing the
affidavit)?
6. How long would one have to wait in between filing an affidavit and
securing final title to the land one settled? What did a settler need to
do in the meantime?
7. How much per acre did land under the Homestead Act cost?
8. The Homestead Act was meant to insure that US citizens who actually
wanted to farm land were the recipients of the government’s largess.
Who else might have wanted to profit from this deal, and how? How
is the law trying to prevent various abuses?
Pacific Railway Act

Read the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 – with a partner answer the
following questions
1. What is the purpose of this act?
2. What is the Union Pacific Railroad Company empowered by
this act to do?
3. What difficulties do you foresee in terms of crews of men living
and working in a variety of environments as they lay tracks?
4. Why do you think the government is providing for the building
of telegraph poles along the length of the railroad?
5. The act is giving the railroad the right of way on public lands.
What does the government promise to do if American Indian
tribes claim title to this land?
6. In Section 3 the act provides the railroad with more land than
what is needed to give it a right of way. Why will this land
fronting the railroad tracks be even more valuable than land
given to homesteaders at a distance from the railway?
7. What method of financing the railway does the bill propose in
Section 5?
Make a Plan
 Railway Owners
 As railway owners you will want to maximize your profits. Your
lawyers are ready to look over both acts to see how your
company can make the most money. As a group plan whatever
strategies you can to do so. (In your thinking, be sure to include
use of the land you will acquire.)
 Land Speculators
 You are neither settlers nor railway owners, but people who
want to buy land as cheaply as possible and then re-sell it at a
much higher rate. Your lawyers will look at both these acts to
find as many loopholes as possible for ways in which you can
purchase land for re-sale.
 Each group will present their
strategies to the class. What conflicts
are evident? What problems do
students foresee, if any?
Transcontinental Railroad
 Pre-Civil War, railroad stopped at Missouri River

1,775 miles of track from Omaha to Sacramento
 Cut paths through mountains and deserts
 1862 Congress gives charters to two companies
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Central Pacific Railway
Union Pacific Railway

Race to lay the most tracks
 May 10, 1869 CPR and UPR met at Promontory Summit, Utah
 Impact
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Time zones
Economic boom
Advanced technology
Quick travel from coast to coast
New jobs
Ken Burns – “The West”
 Questions
 How did the building of the railway change the life of the
plains Indians in ways that would prove to be unalterable?
 Were the Chinese at first considered to be suitable workers
on the railway? Why were they eventually chosen in such
large numbers? What credit is due them for building the
railway?
 In what way was the joining of the rails at Promontory, Utah
a national, rather than a local, event?
 How did technology itself play a role in transmitting the
event to the nation?
 Envision yourself as a citizen of the U.S. in 1869. How would
this event make you feel about your country? About
technology? About the future?
The Completion of
the Railroad
 May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah
 Transcontinental Railroad is completed
The Lure of the West
 Scholars study the reasons for migration and call it push-pull
factors
 Events and conditions that either force (push) people to move elsewhere
 Events and conditions that strongly attract (pull) them to move
elsewhere
 Push Factors
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Civil War displaced farmers, former slaves, and other workers
Eastern farmland costly
Failed entrepreneurs
Ethnic and religious repression
Outlaws
 Pull Factors
 Government incentives
 Pacific Railway Act
 Morrill Land Grant Act
 Homestead Act
 Private Property
Settlement of the Last Frontier
 Western frontier
 Great Plains
 Rocky Mountains
 Western Plateau
 Great American Desert = land between the Mississippi
River and Pacific Coast
 Few trees
 Less than 15’ of rainfall per year
 Not enough to support farming
 Not ideal for settlement
 15 million bison
 Settlement of the frontier was achieved by 3 groups of
pioneers:
 Miners
 Cowboys
 Farmers
The Mining Frontier
 California Gold Rush (1848)
 Gold strikes in other parts of west brought miners
 Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona,
South Dakota
 Most gain statehood because of mining boom
 Large gold strikes led to overnight boomtowns
 Most miners were foreigners
 European, Latin American, or Chinese
 Leads to taxes on foreigners and Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
 First act passed by Congress that restricts immigration based on race
and nationality
 Impact of mining
 Increase in silver leads to debate over the value of gold and
silver backed currency
 Environmental scars
 Loss of land for Natives
Gold Veins in Rock – known as “lode”
Comstock Lode
Comstock Lode Frenzy
Cowboy Frontier
 Cowboys came looking for jobs
 Cattle/herding techniques came from Texas
 Vaqueros = Spanish cowboys
 Railroads allowed cattle to be shipped eastward
 Cattle drives came to an end in the 1880s
 Overgrazing
 Blizzard/drought of 1885 – 1886
 Barbed wire fencing
 New sciences led to ranch-raised cattle
The Farming Frontier
 Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged farming on the Great
Plains
 160 acres of free land to those who settle on it for 5+ years
 In 30 years 500,000 Americans took advantage of the
Homestead Act
 Many challenges for Homesteaders
 Sod houses, insects, lack of lumber,
severe weather, lack of water
 Many find that 160 acres is not enough land
 2/3 of the people turn back east
 Farming techniques and irrigation fueled the survival
Farming on the
Great Plains
The Removal of
Native Americans
 Dozens of Native American tribes occupied the West in 1865
 Lost both their land and freedom to live according to
their traditions
 Variety of tribes lived in many different settlements
 Farmers, ranchers, hunters, gatherers, fishermen
 2/3 of western tribal groups lived on the Great Plains
 Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, Comanche
 Became skilled horsemen
 Hunted buffalo
 Lived in smaller bands of 300-500
Indian Policies of Some
Famous Americans

Read Indian Policies of Some Famous Americans in
partners or small groups

Answer the following questions:
1. What do these quotes tell you about White
Americans’ views on Native Americans?
2. What do these quotes tell you about White
Americans’ views on land?
3. Which one of these quotes makes the greatest
impact? Why?
Reservations
 Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian Removal (1830)
 Trail of Tears
 Lands west of Mississippi River would permanently
remain “Indian Country”
 In 1851 federal government assigned the Plains
Tribes land – reservations – with definite
boundaries
 Fort Laramie (1868)
 Many Native American tribes refused to comply
and continued to follow buffalo
Indian Wars
 Warfare between settlers and Native Americans became inevitable
 Sand Creek Massacre
 Colorado militia massacred an encampment of Cheyenne
woman, children, and men
 Attempted treaties
 Failed due to gold mining and desire for fertile land
 Led to Native Americans returning to ancestral lands
 Sioux War @ Little Big Horn (1876)
 Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse vs. Custer
 Nez Perce War (1877)
 Pressure from US Army forced tribes to comply with Washington’s
terms
 Slaughter of buffalo also destroys Native American Culture
Sand Creek
Massacre
Overview: Major
Indian Treaties
Signed illegally on behalf of the entire tribe; Nez Perce
abandoned 6 million acres of land in return for small
reservation in Northern Oregon. Led to Nez Perce Wars,
ended in 1877 with surrender of Chief Joseph
1863
Nez Perce
Treaty
1867
Medicine
Lodge Treaty
Assigned reservations in existing Indian Territory to
blend many different tribes
1868
Treaty of Fort
Laramie
Ends Red Cloud’s war; evacuates federal troops from
Sioux Territory along the Bozeman Trail; additionally
gives Sioux ownership of Western half of South Dakota
and rights to use Powder River country in Wyoming and
Montana
Congress declares end of treaty system
1871
1887
Dawes
Severalty Act
Divided communal tribal land, granting right to petition
for citizenship to those Indians who accepted the
individual land allotment of 160 acres.
Dawes Severalty
Act (1887)
 Designed to break up tribal organizations
 Believed to prevent Native Americans from becoming
“civilized”
 Divided the tribal lands into plots of 160 acres or less
 US citizenship = stay on land for 25 years
 “adopted the habits of civilized life”
 47 million acres distributed to Native Americans
 90 million acres of former reservations land was sold to
white settlers
 Plan turns out to be a failure
 Disease and poverty decreases population
 Only 200,000 Native Americans in the west by 1900
Ghost Dance
Movement
 Native American religious movement
 Effort to resist settlers from taking their land
 Government arrested Sitting Bull to suppress
the movement
 Killed during his arrest
 Battle of Wounded Knee (1890)
 Marks the end of American Indian Wars on
the prairie
Assimilation
 Part of the US policy on Native Americans was
assimilation
 Assimilate = to take in and incorporate as one’s
own
 Idea was to “civilize” the Native Americans by
adopting American culture
 Used education as primary tool
 Carlisle, PA boarding school
 “Kill the Indian, save the man”
 Outlawed tribal practices
Aftermath: US Policy
in 20th Century
 Native Americans were granted US citizenship in 1924
 Government reorganized the failure of assimilation
 Indian Reorganization Act (1934)
 Promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and
culture
 Passed by FDR as part of the New Deal
 Native Americans today
 1.8 million Native Americans
 Belong to 116 tribes consisting of 1,000 or more members