Westward Expansion in the mid to
late 19th Century
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848)
California Gold Rush (1848-1852)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi9i4ag
Gmkw&feature=results_main&playnext=1
&list=PL8766D1F46BB7C508
California admitted as a free state in 1850
– Part of the Compromise of 1850
Gadsden Purchase (1853)
Named for James Gadsden
1839-Named president of the South Carolina
Railroad Company
Gadsden wanted to extend railroad all the way to the
Pacific Ocean
Quickest route through present day Southwest
United States
1852-Appointed Minister of Mexican affairs by
President Franklin Pierce
1853-Purchase completed for $10 million
Settlement of the Great Plains
Custer’s Last Stand, 1876
The Sioux refused to report to the govt.-run
agencies on their reservations
They also refused to sell the Black Hills part of
their reserve
– the army made war against them
The most famous casualties in that campaign were Colonel
George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry
The Sioux annihilated at the battle of the Little Bighorn in
1876
Custer's Last Stand summary
Custer’s Last Stand, 1876
(cont.)
Despite their brief
triumph, the Sioux were
subsequently forced to
settle near the govt.
agencies and to
surrender the Black
Hills
In the late 1870’s, the
army crushed brief
resistance by Chief
Joseph’s Nez Perce
and Chief Dull Knife’s
northern Cheyennes
“Saving” the Indians
Humanitarian reformers in the East began to cry
out against govt. mistreatment of the Indians
A Century of Dishonor
–
–
–
–
1881
Helen Hunt Jackson
Called attention to the sorry record of the govt.
A Century of Dishonor
“Saving” the Indians (cont.)
These reformers thought the best way to end the
injustice was to assimilate Indians quickly into
mainstream white society
Dawes Severalty Act
– 1887
– Ended collective tribal ownership of land
Split the reservation into 160-acre farms
– Assigned to the head of each Indian family
– Any remaining reservation land was sold to whites
– At the end of 25 years, the Indians were to receive full
title to their farms and U.S. citizenship
Building of railroad leads to extinction of
buffalo
Homestead Act (1862)
–
–
–
–
–
160 acres of land
Had to be 21 years old
Work on land for 5 years
Show evidence of improvement
Act also applied to freed slaves
Settling on this new land
Not great for farming
– Dry land and limited rainfall
Winter blizzards and long droughts were also
common
Family farms
“Bonanza farms”
Cowboys
Growth of new cities
Economy also based on mining and the growth
of the railroad
Settling the West
The First Transcontinental Railroad
–
–
–
–
May 1869
Promontory Point, UT
The meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
Construction had been authorized by the Pacific
Railroad Act of 1862
– Much of the labor was performed by Chinese and
Irish immigrants along with Mexican-Americans and
African-Americans
– Summary of transcontinental railroad
Far and Away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxaJY8
UZxn4
Oklahoma Land Rush (1893)
Federal government makes land available
First come, first serve basis
This wave of westward expansion caused new
problems for Native Americans
Displacement from their native lands
Death of the buffalo
Creation of reservations by the federal
government
Problems for Plain Indians
Ceding of land after Civil War
Dawes Act (1887)
– An attempt by federal government to solve
“Indian problem”
– Broke up land of nearly all tribes into small
parcels to be distributed to Indian families
– Indians who accepted farms would
become full American citizens
– Remaining land to white settlers
Act was a big disaster for Indians
White settlers poured into this territory
Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota
(1890)
Several day Sioux Indian festival
Mysticism- “Ghost Dance”
Led by Big Foot and Sitting Bull
Federal troops open on Indians
150 to 200 Indians killed including Big Footmostly women and children
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Taiping Rebellion in China
Massive immigration to west coast of United
States
Labor (workers) needed in many industries
including mining and railroads
Anti-immigration backlash towards Chinese
C.E.A. bans Chinese from entering country
C.E.A. repealed in 1943
The West of Life and Legend
The American Adam
and the Dime-Novel
Hero
– Writers in the middle of
the 19th century often
presented the West as a
place to escape from the
corruptions of civilization
– Huckleberry Finn by
Mark Twain
1885
Description of life along
the Mississippi River
The American Adam and the
Dime-Novel Hero (cont.)
In the 1860’s and 1870’s, eastern dime-novel
writers created the western novel
– Frontiersman hero who fights Indians and “bad guys”
for right and justice
– “Buffalo Bill”
Character made famous by Ned Buntline
Modeled after William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody
– Cashed in on the fame by founding a Wild West touring show
that became extremely popular
Beginning a National Parks
Movement
The frontier legend
aroused some public
interest in protecting the
West’s natural beauty
and wonders
John Wesley Powell,
Henry D. Washburn,
George Perkins Marsh,
John Muir
The nation created its
first national parks
– Yellowstone and
Yosemite
Yellowstone and Yosemite
Beginning a National Parks
Movement (cont.)
Sierra Club
– First organization
dedicated to
conservation
– Muir was first
president
– Sierra Club website
Frederick Jackson Turner
“Significance of the Frontier in American
History” (1893)
Western frontier represented what America is
about
Freedom, democracy, economic mobility
Turner-The West was “safety valve”
West-Great Plains, Rocky Mountains,
Nevada, parts of California
1890 Census-frontier is completely settled
American Imperialism-late 19th and early 20th
century
Conclusion
As Americans struggled to adjust to the
disruptive changes brought by industrialization
and urbanization
They embraced the myth of the West as a
paradise
– Life was simple, moral right and wrong were clear-cut,
and opportunity abounded
That myth was created by popular writers,
journalists, artists, railroad publicists, and
politicians
Conclusion (cont.)
The myth ignored the darker elements of
westward expansion:
– The use of the army to destroy the way of life of the
Native Americans and force them onto reservations
– The heedless exploitation of the environment
– The fact that the individual prospectors, ranchers, and
homesteaders were increasingly overtaken by big
eastern-financed companies in mining, ranching, and
agribusiness
Conclusion (cont.)
It was also true that the creation of new western
settlements:
– enhanced the image of the United States as a land of
opportunities
– Fostered certain democratic ideas
Extending the vote to women
– Gave birth to the conservation movement
The development of the vast western resources
made the nation one of the world’s richest
powers by 1900