CHAPTER 17
THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
LEAN BEAR’S CHANGING WEST
The author uses the visit of a Cheyenne chief, Lean Bear, to New York and Washington in 1863 to
illustrate the lawless and brutal way the West was settled. Lincoln assured Lean Bear that the
government wanted a peaceful and orderly migration into the West, but warned that many of the
pioneers could not be restrained. A year later, U.S. soldiers killed Lean Bear in cold blood.
BEYOND THE FRONTIER
Beyond the Mississippi lay, according to contemporary maps, “The Great American Desert,” long
thought to be uninhabitable by anyone but aborigines. By 1840 white settlement had paused at the
edge of timber country in Missouri. Beyond lay the forbidding sea of grass that was the Great Plains. The
eastern Prairie Plains had rich soil and good rainfall, but the rough High Plains were semiarid. The
formidable Rockies and other mountain ranges held back rainfall, which rarely reached fifteen inches a
year. The lack of water and timber and the ineffectiveness of traditional farming tools and methods led
most early settlers to head directly for the more temperate Pacific Coast.
CRUSHING THE NATIVE AMERICANS
By 1867 nearly a quarter of a million Indians inhabited the western half of the United States. Some
tribes were originally from the East, displaced by relentless waves of settlers. Others were native to the
region, with cultures suited to their environments. By the 1880s, confrontations with still more white
settlers had driven the Indians onto increasingly small reservations, and diseases introduced by whites
had decimated the California Indians. By the 1890s the Indian cultures had crumbled.
A. Life of the Plains Indians
By the 1700s the availability of the horse had led the Plains Indians to abandon farming almost
completely for a nomadic lifestyle, following and living off the vast herds of buffalo. The Plains Indians
became skilled horse people, and tribes developed a warrior class, although their wars were usually
limited to brief skirmishes and “counting coups,” touching the enemy’s body with the hand or a special
stick. Tribes were divided into smaller, independent bands governed by a chief and council of elders.
This loose organization within tribes confounded federal attempts to deal with the Indians. Tasks were
divided between the sexes, but among tribes like the Sioux there was little difference in status between
men and women.
B. “As Long as Waters Run”: Searching for an Indian Policy
Until the 1850s the lands west of the Mississippi were of no interest to whites. The United States
government, therefore, regarded the trans-Mississippi West as one great Indian reservation, and as a
final destination for the eastern Indians. When gold was discovered in California, however, the Great
Plains became a thoroughfare to the Pacific, and the federal government began to attempt to confine
the Indian tribes within specific areas. This attempt led to wars and massacres. As a result of the Sioux
War of 1865-1867, Congress adopted a “small reservation” approach, designed to keep the Indians out
of the path of white migration westward.
C. Final Battles on the Plains
The small reservation policy proved unsuccessful. Young warriors refused to be restrained, and white
settlers encroached on Indian lands. The final series of wars featured a notable Sioux victory at Little
Bighorn in 1876, but for the most part the Indians were defeated and often massacred. Such a massacre
occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890, when the army became determined to stop the “Ghost Dances.”
D. The End of Tribal Life
The final step in the Indian policy was the assimilationists’‘ plan to use education, land policy, and
federal law to eradicate tribal authority and culture. In 1887 Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act,
which destroyed communal ownership of land and gave small farms to each head of a family. Those
Indians who left the tribe became United States citizens. A final, devastating blow to tribal life came
when the buffalo, the very basis of the Plains Indians’‘ way of life, were exterminated by professional
and amateur white hunters. Only about 250,000 Indians still inhabited the United States in 1900, and
most lived in poverty.
SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST
Americans settled more land between 1870 and 1900 than at any other time in their history. Contrary to
the safety-valve theory, most people moved west during periods of prosperity. Their timing was right,
for as the nation’s population grew, so did the demand for the livestock, agricultural, mineral, and
lumber products of the expanding West.
A. Men and Women on the Overland Trail
The great migration over the Plains began with the 1849 California Gold Rush. Large groups of settlers,
including many families, usually started out from the area of St. Louis, Missouri, in April so that they
could get through the Rocky Mountains before snow closed the passes. The trek to the Pacific Coast
took at least six months and left in its wake epic stories of heroism and trails of garbage.
B. Land for the Taking
Between 1860 and 1900, the federal government distributed one-half billion acres of western land.
Much was sold to states, private corporations, and individuals. About one hundred twenty-eight million
acres were granted to railroad companies, and forty-eight million acres were given away through the
Homestead Act of 1862. Although the act set off a mass migration of land-hungry Europeans and
Americans, the size of the tracts granted was not suited to Plains conditions. The Timber Culture Act of
1873, which granted larger tracts to settlers who agreed to plant trees, was a success, but the Desert
Land Act of 1877, which granted still larger tracts to settlers installing irrigation systems, invited fraud.
Ultimately, most of the land in the West wound up in the hands of speculators, large ranchers, timber
companies, and railroads. To boost their freight and passenger business, the railroads actively recruited
immigrants and helped them buy, settle, and farm railroad property.
The most important limit on population growth in the West was the scarcity of water. In 1902, in the
Newlands Act, Congress set aside federal money for irrigation projects, transforming the arid West into
a “hydraulic” society.
C. Territorial Government
Until statehood, the western territories functioned almost like colonies in which appointed governors
and judges ruled without the consent of the settlers. These appointed officials became the center of
patronage systems that continued even after statehood, and many Westerners made a living serving
Congress. The territorial experience gave western politics a distinctly different character from the rest of
the nation.
D. The Spanish-Speaking Southwest
The settlements of Spanish-speaking people concentrated in the Southwest and California made many
cultural and institutional contributions, including irrigation, stock management, cloth weaving, and a set
of laws for managing limited natural resources. Although the Californians began to lose their vast
landholdings after the 1860s, the Spanish-Mexican heritage shaped politics, language, society, and law.
THE BONANZA WEST
The quest for mining, cattle, and land bonanzas led to uneven growth, boom-and-bust economic cycles,
wasted resources, and “instant cities” like San Francisco. People came to get rich quickly and adopted
institutions based on that mentality.
A. The Mining Bonanza
Mining first attracted settlers to the West, many to mine and as many to provide services to the miners.
The mining frontier moved from West to East in a pattern first established by the California Gold Rush of
1849. First individual prospectors used simple placer mining to remove the surface gold. Then Easternand European-financed corporations moved in with the heavy, expensive mining equipment needed to
remove metal from the deep lodes. The final fling came in the Black Hills rush of 1874-1876, in which
miners overran the Sioux hunting grounds.
Mining camps and germinal cities sprouted with each first strike, and urbanization quickly
followed. The camps were governed by simple democracy and, when that failed, vigilantes. Men
outnumbered women two-to-one, and “respectable” women were a rarity. Some women worked
claims, but most earned wages as cooks, housekeepers, and seamstresses.
Between one-quarter and one-half of camp citizens were foreign-born, and hostility was often
directed against the French, Latin Americans, and Chinese. California’s 1850 Foreign Miner’s Tax drove
foreigners out, and the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten
years.
The great mining boom ended in the 1890s. The western mines contributed millions to the economy,
helped finance the Civil War and industrialization, and, through the new influx of silver, changed the
relative value of silver and gold, the basis of American currency. Mining populated portions of the West
and led to early statehood for Nevada, Idaho, and Montana. In its wake, however, it left invaded Indian
reservations, pitted hills, and ghost towns.
B. Gold from the Roots Up: The Cattle Bonanza
The Far West offered an ideal region for cattle grazing. The buffalo grass of the Plains fattened the
longhorn steers that provided meat for the cities of the East. Large herds grazed on the open range,
then were driven to railheads, Abilene, or Dodge City, Kansas, most likely, where they then were taken
by train to Chicago. The profits were enormous for the large ranchers, but cowboys, many of whom
were African American or Mexican, worked long, hard hours for little pay. The cowboys, like the miners,
governed themselves, and there was, contrary to popular legends, remarkably little violence among
them.
By 1880, the day of the cowboy was ending. Wheat farmers were beginning to fence off the
open range, and mechanical improvements modernized the industry. As improved breeds proved
profitable, more and more large ranches controlled by absentee owners opened on the northern ranges
of the High Plains. Following the devastating winter of 1886 when thousands of cattle died, ranchers
reduced the size of their herds or switched to raising sheep.
C. Sodbusters on the Plains: The Farming Bonanza
In the decades after 1870, millions of farmers moved west to seek crop bonanzas and a new way of life.
By 1900, the Far West was a settled area and held 30 percent of the nation’s population.
The farming frontier moved westward slowly, but steadily, and the population of the Plains tripled
between 1870 and 1890. Of special interest was the migration of African Americans from the South,
seeking to live free of discrimination and terror. All farmers on the Plains battled a harsh environment.
Surface water was scarce, and digging deep wells and building windmills were both expensive
operations. Lumber for fences and houses was scarce and expensive to import. Many started frontier
life in dreary sod houses and endured extremes of heat and cold, an endless, enervating wind, and
hordes of omnivorous grasshoppers.
D. New Farming Methods
Several important innovations allowed Americans to farm the Plains, such as barbed wire, which allowed
fencing without wood, dry farming, which meant deeper farming and the use of mulch, and new strains
of wheat that were resistant to harsh winters. Even so, the huge bonanza farms that cultivated
thousands of acres were ruined by a period of drought between 1885 and 1890. It became apparent to
most that small-scale, diversified farming was safer and more profitable.
E. Discontent on the Farm
Discouraged by droughts, some settlers abandoned their farms, and the ones who remained were
restless and angry. They complained about declining crop prices, rising rail rates, and heavy mortgages.
The Grange, originally founded to provide social, cultural, and educational opportunities for Southern
farmers, grew and often acted as a political lobby. Farmers beyond the Mississippi also became more
commercial, scientific, and productive. By 1890, they were exporting large amounts of wheat and other
crops.
F. The Final Fling
Oklahoma, the last large area reserved for the Indians, was opened for white settlement in 1889. At
noon on April 22, thousands of people rushed in to grab whatever they could, the epitome of Western
history.
CONCLUSION: THE MEANING OF THE WEST
Historians have long interpreted the history of the Far West through the concept of the famous “frontier
thesis.” More recently, however, the West is seen as a place where different ethnic and economic
interests came into sharp conflict, and where rapid population growth eroded the environment, themes
that continue to describe the West.