Transforming the
West
1860-1900
Native Americans and the West


Plains Indians – many tribes that live on the
Great Plains
Diversity:
 Some
were settled farmers
 Others used horses to hunt buffalo

Similar culture:
 Life
revolves around extended families, cooperation,
consensus
 Religious and harvest celebrations
Native Americans and the West

Threats to their way of life:
 Miners
and settlers start moving to the plains
in the 1850s
Exhausted the grassland that buffalo needed
 Railroads hire people to kill buffalo


9 million killed!
 Ruins
the Native way of life
Native Americans and the West

Conflicts with the military:
 After
the Civil War, military troops sent West to protect
new settlers
 Misunderstandings  brutality




Sand Creek – Gold rush brings 100,000 settlers, who take all
the Indians’ resources
Natives are starving, government won’t fulfill its treaties
Leave their reservations to hunt buffalo, steal livestock
Military massacres a peaceful band of Indians at Sand Creek
Native Americans and the West

New government policies:
 Government
sets up new reservations, ‘persuades’
Natives to move there
 Fort Laramie Treaty – Sioux agree to move to South
Dakota for $ and provisions


Treaties are deceptive, unfair
But still lots of skirmishes in the Plains
 Government
stops signing treaties and just makes
executive orders
Native Americans and the West

Custer’s Last Stand
 Sioux
who refuse to sign the Fort Laramie Treaty
and move - led by Sitting Bull
 Colonel Custer is sent to drive them out of the
Black Hills to the reservation
 Custer is outnumbered, reckless

Troops are wiped out
 Now
people want to crush the Indian rebellion
Native Americans and the West

“Saving” the Indians:

Some Americans are outraged at the government’s actions


Helen Hunt Jackson - A Century of Dishonor
Want to ‘save’ them

Create schools, make them give up their customs



Backfires
Break up reservations and tribes, make them citizens and
independent farmers
Dawes Severalty Act – gives individual Indians 160 acres, taught
to farm


Outcome – speculators buy up all the best Indian land
Leaves Native Americans worse off
Native Americans and the West

The End of Resistance:
 Sioux
are starving in the 1880s
Turn to a prophet – Wovoka – who sees the
apocalypse coming
 Tells Indians to return to traditional ways


The Ghost Dance
 Military
is afraid of this movement
Sitting Bull is killed
 Massacre at Wounded Knee

Settling the West
The Railroads

Pacific Railroad Act 1862
 Transcontinental
railroad is built
 Chinese, Irish workers build it

Benefits of the railroads:
 Can
fight Indians more easily
 Railroad companies sell their land


Settlers from the East, immigrants
Encourage them to grow cash crops – wheat, corn, cotton
Homesteads

Homestead Act of 1862
 160
free acres if you farm the land for 5 years
 400,000 people move
 But railroads, speculators take the best land
 In dry plains, you need more than 160 acres to
survive



Timber Culture Act – 160 more acres if you plant trees
Desert Land Act – 640 acres if you irrigate it
Difficult psychological adjustment
New Farms, New Markets

Improvements in farming:




Cash crop farming:



New strains of wheat and corn
Steel plows, better planters, other tools
Barbed wire
Increased demand for crops
Dangerous – if you only sell one crop, you are
dependent on the railroads, the market
Unpredictable weather
New States & Societies

New states: Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, etc.


Socially conservative, but allow women to vote
Mormonism spreads:


Communities in conflict with non-Mormons
Mormons try to be independent, but…



U.S. v. Reynolds
Government forces them to integrate into society
Mexican Americans in the Southwest


Discrimination, exclusion
Most are left in poverty
Exploiting the Land
Mining

Gold discovered throughout the West
 Comstock
Lode in Nevada
 Starts with individuals trying to get rich

Need expensive equipment, huge
investments to mine it
 Boom-and-bust
towns
 Environmental costs
Cowboys and the cattle frontier

Open-range cattle boom – 1860s and 70s
 Ranchers
can make fortunes raising cattle in Texas,
driving them north to ship to the east
 Cities grow where the railroads are


Early periods of violence
Not as violent as movies like to show
 Cowboys

don’t see the $$
Short-lived
 Railroads end long-range
 Cattle prices decline
 Barbed
wire
drives
The Oklahoma Land Rush, 1889

Settlers are pushing for land in Indian Territory
(now called Oklahoma)
 Government

People rush in to claim homesteads
 Curtis Act

makes 2 million acres available
– 1898 – dissolves the Indian territory
The myth of land
 Americans
want it!
 But later they will pay…
The Myth of the
West
The ‘Myth’ of the West

The Turner Thesis
 Frederick
Jackson Turner’s lecture
 Says that the frontier is closed
 Idealized view of the West

Popular culture spreads this image
– the ‘frontier’ is a place of adventure,
romance, escape
 Wild West Shows
 Writers
The National Parks Movement

People are awed by the beauty of the West
 Some
call for saving the land
 Regulation of water, public lands
 Doesn’t happen

Yellowstone National Park – 1872 – to preserve
it from settlement
the conservation movement – led by John Muir
and the Sierra Club
 Starts