The Conquest of the Far West
Chapter 16
Societies of the Far West
•
The Western Tribes
–
Pacific coast (Chumash, Pomo, Serrano, Maidu, Yurok, Chinook,
Ohlone) wiped out by Spanish disease
– Plains, Sioux Indians
•
Hispanic New Mexico
– Stephen Kearney tries to establish a gov’t in NM
with 1,000 whites that excludes the 50,000
Hispanics
•
Hispanic California and Texas
– Missionaries influence
The Chinese Migration
–
by 1880 200,000 Chinese in the US, mostly in
CA, large numbers in SF
The Chinese Migration Cont’d
– Urban Life “Chinatowns”
•
railroad completion = increase in Chinese urban
population
Anti-Chinese Sentiments
– Anti-Coolie clubs, Democrat Party,
Workingmen’s Party
•
=
Migration from the East
– post war migration = much larger than
previous decades
– Homestead Act of 1862 –
The Changing Western Economy
•
Labor in the West
–
–
–
–
The Arrival of Miners
– mining boom was a brief period 1860-1890
(California, 1849)
*Fake Smile*
The Cattle Kingdom
–
long before US citizens invaded the SW, Mexican
ranchers had developed the techniques and equipment
that the cattlemen and cowboys of the great Plains later
employed
The Cattle Kingdom Cont’d
–
Most cowboys in early years were Confederate Army
veterans…second largest group was African Americans
The Romance of the West
•
The Western Landscape
– New, natural painting landscapes lured many
west
•
The Cowboy Culture
– rugged, free-spirited lifestyle romanticized =
contrast structured world of the East
•
The Idea of the Frontier
– Frederick Jackson Turner -
Dispersal of the Tribes
•
White Tribal Policy
– Bad history
– “concentration” of Indian tribes in Indian
territory w. “treaty chiefs”
•
White Tribal Policy Cont’d
– Indian Peace Commission
– Buffalo was essential to Indian way of life…
slaughtered by whites
•
The Indian Wars
– Retaliation: originally on encroachers, later on
soldiers
– Little Crow (Sioux) in Minnesota: 700 whites
dead / 38 Natives hanged
– Miners encroachment in Colorado
•
The Indian Wars Cont’d
–
Montana and Bozeman trail
–
California and “Indian Hunters”
–
1867 Peace, but 1870s tensions rise again
•
The Indian Wars Cont’d
– Nez Perce and Chief Joseph 1877
•
The Indian Wars Cont’d
–
Apaches and Geronimo
•
one of the last tribes to resist
•
The Indian Wars Cont’d
–
Ghost Dance
–
Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890)
The Dawes Act (1877)
–
The Dawes Severalty Act provided for the
gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land
and the allotment of tracts to individual owners
What must be understood:
The Rise and Decline of the
Western Farmer
•
Farming on the Plains
–
Significance of the railroad
Farming on the Plains Cont’d
–
Problems
•
Grazing Cattlemen herds (barbed wire)
Commercial Agriculture
–
independent farmer, self sustaining farmer,
replaced with commercial farmer similar to what
industrialists were doing in the manufacturing
economy
Farmers Grievances
(Granger’s  Farmer’s Alliances  Populist Party )
–
farmers generally had little understanding of world
markets, thus concentrated their anger on immediate
areas
Agrarian Malaise
– Isolation of farm life