Chapter 26
The Great West and the
Agricultural Revolution
1865 – 1896
Indians
Embattled
in
the
West
After the Civil War, the West was open for settlement
– Untamed land, buffalo, mostly Native inhabitants
As white pop. grew, they moved West onto Indian lands
– Indians fought vs. each other—vs. whites—fewer buffalo to live on—
white diseases
Natives justified their actions (vs. other tribes & whites) because of
the way the whites had treated them
Fed. Govt. tried to pacify the Indians by signing treaties at Fort
Laramie in 1851 and Fort Atkinson in 1853 with the chiefs of the
tribes
Native Americans didn’t recognize authorities outside of their tribes
1860s - the U.S. government intensified its effort into herding
Indians into still smaller and smaller reservations (like the Dakota
Territory)
Empty promises were made to the Indians
–
–
–
–
Wouldn’t be bothered
Could stay on your land
Will be paid well for the land
Treaties will be made (good for both sides)
1868-1890 - Native frustration led to confrontations called the
“Indian Wars”
1864 - Sand Creek
– 400 Indians—who thought they had been promised safety—were
massacred
1866 - a Sioux war party ambushed 81 soldiers and civilians
constructing the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields,
leaving no survivors
Gold in the Black Hills of SD gave whites an excuse to invade
Indian Territory (again)
– Battle of Little Bighorn—Col. Custer’s men were decimated
– Sioux leader, Sitting Bull escaped
Gold seekers shrank the Indian Territory by 90%
– Most resistant Indian leaders: Nez Perce-Chief Joseph; ApacheGeronimo
– They were tamed due to the railroad, which shot through the heart of
the West, the White man’s diseases, and the extermination of the
buffalo
– By 1885, fewer than 1000 buffalo were left (tens of millions prior to
European settlement), mostly in Yellowstone National Park
End
of
the
Trail
Whites were never going to stop heading West onto Indian land
– Tried to assimilate them into the white culture
– Some whites felt they had to convert these savages— “White Man’s
Burden” (Rudyard Kippling)
1884 - the government to outlawed the sacred Sun Dance
Battle of Wounded Knee, the “Ghost Dance,” as it was called by
the Whites, as brutally stamped out by U.S. troops, who killed
women and kids
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
– dissolved the legal entities of all tribes
– if the Indians behaved “properly”, could become U.S. citizens in 1912
– full citizenship to all Indians was granted in 1924
Carlisle Indian School founded to integrate Native American white
American culture
By 1900 they had lost half the land than they had held 20 years
before
– Native pop. would never get back what was taken from them
Gold
discovered in California in the late 1840s
1858, the same happened at Pike’s Peak in Colorado
within a month or two, it was all out
Some areas were huge for a while—as gold & silver ran out—so
did the people (ghost towns)
Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive
Transcontinental railroad made marketing beef possible
– cattle could now be shipped bodily to the stockyards
“Long Drive” now emerged as Texas cowboys herded cattle across
desolate land to railroad terminals
Dodge City, Abilene, Ogallala, and Cheyenne became favorite
stopovers
Railroads helped the industry & killed it
– As they brought the cattle in, people moved onto land & put up barbed
wire—Cowboys couldn’t get cattle through it all
– blizzards in the winter of 1886-87 left dazed cattle starving & freezing
Homestead Act of 1862
folks to get as much as 160 acres if:
– living on it for five years
– improving it
– paying a nominal fee of about $30.00
allowed folks to get land after only six month’s residence for
$1.25 an acre
act led half a million families to buy land and settle out West
(too good to be true?)
– 160 acres was rarely enough for a family to earn a living and survive
– families were forced to give up their homesteads before the five years
were up
– droughts, bad land, and lack of necessities forced them out
– A lot of land ended up in the hands of cheats—said they had a 12 X
14 home—didn’t live there—was actually 12 X 14 inches
Taming Western Deserts
people rashly pushed further west, past the 100th meridian, to
grow wheat
successful farming could only be attained by massive irrigation
farmers developed the technique of “dry farming,” or using
shallow cultivation methods to plant and farm
– method created a finely pulverized surface soil that contributed to the
notorious “Dust Bowl” several decades later
dams that tamed the Missouri and Columbia Rivers helped
water the land
West Comes of Age
1889-90 - Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana,
Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were admitted into the Union
Govt. made land available in Oklahoma (used to belong to Natives)
– Many sooners came in before they were supposed to
– Troops had to evict them
April 22, 1889 - Oklahoma was legally opened
– 1907 - Oklahoma became the “Sooner State.”
1890 - the U.S. census announced that a frontier was no longer
discernible
People later realized that land was not infinite & they’d have to
take care of what they had
– Set up parks like: Yellowstone, founded in 1872, followed by
Yosemite and Sequoia (1890)
Folding Frontier
frontier was a state of mind and a symbol of opportunity
“safety valve theory”--frontier was like a safety valve for
folks who, when it became too crowded in their area, could
simply pack up and leave, moving West
West became a place for people (who couldn’t farm) to find
work
– lure of the West may have led to city employers raising wages to keep
workers in the cities
Farms started focusing on single cash crops
Aaron Montgomery Ward catalogue (1872) made it possible
to order the other things they needed
New inventions allowed farming to be done quicker & with
less people (plow, seeder, and harrow, the new twine binder,
and the combined reaper-thresher)
– Stage was set for farmers to suffer & fail
Deflation
So many crops were produced - prices drop
Paying back debts was especially hard
– not enough money to go around for everyone
– thousands of homesteads fell to mortgages and foreclosure
1880s and early 1890s - droughts, grasshopper plagues, &
heat waves made the toiling farmers miserable and poor
Farmers were forced to pay taxes (city, state, fed.)
– Other things affected farmers: fixed freight $$ by RR; middlemen
cutting into profit
National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
founded by Oliver H. Kelley to improve the lives of isolated
farmers through social, educational, and fraternal activities
– most success in the upper Mississippi Valley
managed to get Congress to pass a set of regulations known
as the Granger Laws