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Settlers Native Americans in the West, 1865 -
1900

• U.S. History II

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Buffalo Hide Painting
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The Plains Indians

• Approx. 250,000 Indians in Great Plains in 1865
• smallpox, tuberculosis malaria killed many
  reduced fertility among survivors
• women outnumbered men 21 in some tribes
• destroyed cultures as well when elders killed
  before they could pass on oral traditions
• 2 main groups
• semi-sedentary farmers living in earthen lodges
  along Missouri R. (Arikaras, Hidatsas, Mandans,
  Pawnees Omahas)
• horse-mounted, nomadic buffalo hunters on high
  plains (Arapahoes, Blackfeet, Cheyennes,
  Comanche, Crow, Kiowas Sioux)

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The Indian Wars

• Ft. Laramie Treaty (1851) set boundaries for
  Northern tribes, but soon violated
• Cheyenne Arapaho annihilated at Sand Creek
  (1864)
• Oglala Sioux Chief Red Cloud fought U.S. to
  stalemate in 1866-67 war received guaranteed
  boundaries in 1868 treaty
• when George Custers expedition verified gold in
  Black Hills, U.S. tried to back out of treaty, so
  war broke out with Sitting Bull
• Custers 7th Cav. wiped out at Little Bighorn in
  1876

Sitting Bull
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Sand Creek Massacre
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The Southern Plains Indians

• Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867) set boundaries
  for southern plains tribes, but govt failed to
  supply them as promised, so Indians resumed
  hunting war broke out
• Sheriden Custer destroyed villages pony herds
• Resistance broken by 1875
• 72 leaders imprisoned in Florida subject to
  experimental civilization by immersion program
  run by Capt. Richard Pratt
• Wovokas Ghost Dance movement crushed by massacre
  of 200 Sioux at Wounded Knee in Dec. 1890

Gen. Phil Sheridan
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Wovoka the Ghost Dance
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Big Foot Killed at Wounded Knee
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The Reservations

• Reservations seen as temporary - designed to
  civilize Christianize Indians
• Run by Bureau of Indian Affairs (est. 1824)
• controls schools legal system, grants
  recognition
• agents white, but lesser officials Indian, which
  deflected hostility onto traitors
• Traditional practices communal work replaced by
  individualism, because whites believed indiv.
  land ownership was bedrock of democracy
• Children often sent to boarding schools
  punished for speaking native tongue

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General Allotment

• Dawes Severalty Act (1887) broke up reservations
  to encourage individualism
• each head of household given 160 acres (320 if
  suitable only for grazing)
• could pick own land, but held in trust by govt
  for 25 years
• would become citizens after 25 years if gave up
  tribal ways
• reduced Indian-owned acreage from 138 to 48
  million - rest opened up to white settlement
• Curtis Act (1898) terminated tribal govts that
  rejected allotment

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Shrinking Reservations
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Denying Tribal Sovereignty

• Legal status as nations with treaty rights
  stripped by Congress, with Supreme Courts
  approval
• 1871 Congress declared tribes no longer
  sovereign nations, but wards of govt
• Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) Court ruled
  Congress had plenary power over tribes - could
  act unilaterally to violate treaties dispose of
  Indian lands as it saw fit
• Indian Citizenship Act (1924) granted citizenship
  to all Native Americans

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The Great American Desert

• Great Plains long considered Great American
  Desert - too arid for agriculture
• average annual rainfall too low to support crops
  without irrigation
• unusually rainy years in mid-1880s ads
  encouraged settlers, but drought at end of decade
  ruined many
• Open-range livestock grazing ended after bad
  winters of 1886-87
• 25-30 of cowboys were African Americans or
  Mexican Americans
• after demise of open range, many became cheap
  labor on farms

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Home on the Range

• Families, not individuals, settled west for the
  most part
• couples had many kids - needed them as labor
• fathers did heaviest work sodbusting,
  construction, mining, etc.
• mothers did housework, cared for livestock,
  gardened earned extra cash by washing, cooking
  sewing for single men
• kids helped out by hunting, weeding, herding,
  cooking caring for younger siblings
• related families frequently settled together,
  which especially helped women

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Farming

• Cereal farming, but as agribusiness (capitalist
  agriculture)
• 1873- barbed wire invented to fence in fields
  protect from herds
• Mechanization increased production dramatically -
  4 times as much corn, 5 times as much hay, 7
  times as much wheat oats as before Civil War
• Tariff kept cost of goods farmers bought high,
  leading to perpetual debt
• by 1890s, 70 of farmland west of Mississippi
  River owned by Eastern investors

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Government Assistance

• Homestead Act (1862) - stake claim to quarter
  section (160 acres) occupy five years, or buy
  after six months at 1.25/acre
• Transcontinental railroads given over 180 million
  acres in alternating plots along routes - sold to
  settlers to insure steady freight business
• Newlands Act (1901) - federal Bureau of
  Reclamation set up in Interior Dept. to build
  interstate irrigation projects

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Mining

• Pan prospecting ran out quickly - required
  capital to sink mine shafts
• Chinese immigrants as well as whites, though
  former usually squeezed out
• Major strikes
• Comstock Lode (1859) - silver
• Cripple Creek (1891) - gold silver