Aim: How was the West settled?

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• Aim How was the West settled?
• Weve talked about the impact industrialization
  had on the city, but what impact do you think it
  had on the west?

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Settlement of the West

• US govt encouraged settlement
• Homestead Act 1862 160 acres of land to anyone
  who wanted it (and could survive the trip)
• RR helped movement out west
• Advertisements in Europe

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Life out West

• Harsh weather and hard work
• Insects
• Entire families helped run their lands
• Sod houses

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Change in Art Literature Added Allure

• Rock Mountain School celebrated the West on
  large canvases led to tourism of the west
• Fredric Remington
• The Virginian, Roughing It, Huckleberry Finn,
  the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Winning of the
  West

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Technological Advances

• Iron Plow for thicker ground
• Barbed Wire keep cattle in
• Reapers harvest crops
• Wind Mills wells

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Frederick Jackson Turner

• Frontier Thesis the existence of the frontier
  has been a key factor in shaping the US
• End of the frontier no more good land left
• Safety value escape the east
• Growth of democracy
• govern themselves
• Universal suffrage

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Disappearance of the Frontier

• 1890s- no more free land
• Change in prices of crops
• People become dependant on banks
• Formation of Populist Party to help the farmers

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• Aim How did the Populist Party try to solve the
  problems of the farmers?

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Economic Problems of Farmers

• The more they harvested the less they earned
• Borrow to purchase machinery and seed when
  prices fell debt because of high interest
• No more free land
• RR charge high rates for shipping

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Grange Movement

• 1867 farmers try to help each other
• Form cooperatives pool to buy seed and tools
• They urge farmers to vote and participate in
  government

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Success of Populist Party

• Did not win an election
• BUT bring forward ideas that major parties could
  not ignore

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• Aim What changes did the Populists want to make?
• Do Now Describe the Grange Movement

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Financial Demands

• Coin silver increase supply
• Graduated income tax
• Establish a fed loan program to allow farmers to
  store products in govt warehouses

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Transportation Demands

• Get govt to own and operate RR
• Is this necessary?

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Demands for Govt Reform

• Elect US senators by popular vote
• Limit Pres to single term
• Secret ballot
• Initiative people introduce bills
• Recall remove corrupt officials
• Referendum allow people to pass bills with the
  vote

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Elections of 1896

• William Jennings Bryan-Dem (pop)
• William McKinley Rep
• McKinley wins
• 271/176 electoral votes
• 7 mill to 6.5 mill popular vote
• Cross of Gold Speech

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• Having behind us the producing masses of this
  nation and the world, supported by the commercial
  interests, the laboring interests, and the
  toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand
  for a gold standard by saying to them You shall
  not press down upon the brow of labor this crown
  of thorns you shall not crucify mankind upon a
  cross of gold.

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The WestThe Populists

• The Right Way Is Not Necessarily The White Way

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Aim How did white settlers affect the life of
Indians on the Great Plains?

• Weve talked about the impact industrialization
  had on the city, but what impact do you think it
  had on the west?

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Horses and Buffalo

• Horses Allowed Indians to become better hunters
• Nomadic warriors
• Traveled to look for Buffalo
• Used buffalo for everything

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Destruction of Buffalo

• Rifle v. Bow and Arrow
• 1865 15 mill Buffalo
• 1880 600
• White settlers killed them for profit, sport,
  food for migrant miners traveling west, fad,
  demand for buffalo leather for machine belts

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Fight Removal

• Settlers move west and have conflict with the
  Native Americans
• Good farmland
• Intercontinental RR
• Govt set up reservations
• Indians fight back

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Sand Creek Massacre

• Cheyenne clashed with local militia in 1864.
• Chief Black Kettle, tired of fighting, planned to
  surrender.
• Camped along Sand Creek on the way to Ft. Lyon
• U.S. Army 700 volunteer arrived.
• Chief Black Kettle raised the U.S. flag -
  reassured his people would be safe
• Suddenly, the troops opened fire ? 133 of Black
  Kettles tribesmen (105 women children), were
  killed
• Chivington defeated his actions, declaring, it s
  right and honorable to use any means under Gods
  heaven to kill Indians.
• American public deemed it a massacre

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Dawes Act1887

• Congressman Henry Dawes, author of the act, once
  expressed his faith in the civilizing power of
  private property with the claim that to be
  civilized was to "wear civilized
  clothes...cultivate the ground, live in houses,
  ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to
  school, drink whiskey and own property."

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• The Dawes Act, authorized by the President, had a
  negative effect on American Indians, as it ended
  their communal holding of property by which they
  had ensured that everyone had a home and a place
  in the tribe. It was followed by the Curtis Act,
  which dissolved tribal courts and governments.
  The act "was the culmination of American attempts
  to destroy tribes and their governments and to
  open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians
  and to development by railroads.
• 160 acres per family were allotted
• Land owned by Indians decreased from 138 million
  acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934.

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• The stated objective was to stimulate
  assimilation of Indians into American society.
  Individual ownership of land was seen as an
  essential step.
• In 1868 the Gov. admitted its failure and granted
  the Navajo reservations in AZ NM. ? they
  rebuilt their communities, concentrating on sheep
  raising, weaving and silversmithing ? by the
  1880s their economy had stabilized and
  population began to increase

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Sitting Bull the Black Hills

• Dakota Territory
• Gold ? Black Hills
• Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 ? Great Plains off
  limits to white settlers
• U.S. Gov. did not uphold the treaty ? Sitting
  Bull had a vision ? inspired Crazy Horse others
  to plan an attack at Rosebud creek
• General Custer ? surprised and defeated by Crazy
  Horse and his men

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Battle of Little Bighorn

• Crazy Horse 3,000 more Indians, camped at the
  valley of Little Bighorn
• Few days after Rosebud, Custer attacked (although
  out numbered). Standing on a near by ridge,
  Custer was badly defeated

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Result of Little Bighorn

• Led to outrage of the general public, and
  inspired thousands of cavalrymen to cover the
  area and force chief, after chief to surrender.
• Sitting Bull remained defiant refused to
  surrender
• 4 yrs later ? unable to feed his people, Sitting
  Bull went south to surrender.

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• On July 19, 1881, he had his young son hand his
  rifle to the commanding officer in Montana,
  explaining that in this way he hoped to teach the
  boy "that he has become a friend of the
  Americans." Yet at the same time, Sitting Bull
  said, "I wish it to be remembered that I was the
  last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle." He
  asked for the right to cross back and forth into
  Canada whenever he wished, and for a reservation
  of his own on the Little Missouri River near the
  Black Hills. Instead he was sent to Standing Rock
  Reservation, and when his reception there raised
  fears that he might inspire a fresh uprising,
  sent further down the Missouri River to Fort
  Randall, where he and his followers were held for
  nearly two years as prisoners of war.

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• Aim Did the US Govt abuse their relationship
  with the Native Americans?
• Do Now Who do you think the Great Plains belong
  to?

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Assimilation

• Absorption o American Indians into white
  America.
• Indian schools ? some on reservations, many were
  boarding schools
• Proper clothes, no more native language, cut
  their hair, etc.

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Wounded Knee
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Cowboys

• Myth symbol of life in the west, freedom,
  natural, rugged
• Reality Loneliness, no family, exposure to the
  elements
• Origin techniques from Mexican cattlemen, use of
  horses to control cattle, confederate veterans
• Generalities young, unmarried, mostly white,

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• All in all, my years on the trail were the
  happiest I ever lived. There were many hardships
  and dangersbut when all went well, there was no
  other life so pleasant. Most of the time we were
  solitary adventures in a great landand we were
  free
• full of zest of darers.

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Long Drives

• Consisted of about 10 cowboys
• About 3,000 heads of cattle
• Covered hundreds of miles, over a several month
  span
• Had to try to keep the cattle safe
• cowboys and their cattle had to cross rivers,
  some times loosing hundreds of cattle along the
  way.

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Range Wars

• Sheep herders from the west coast started to move
  further east to compete for grass water
• Farmers threw up fences to protect their claims.
  Blocking trails, and breaking up the open range.
• Law, the government or military could not be
  everywhere at all times, so ranchers farmers
  had to take matters into their own hands.
  Informal, undeclared, violent conflicts erupted
• Farmers argued that the sheep destroyed the land,
  and left no food for cattle to graze.

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Arizona Range Wars

• Pleasant Valley War between two feuding AZ
  families, lasted for about a decade.
• Both sides suffered several murders
• Hit-men were hired

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End of the Cowboy

• Several factors led into the end of the life of
  the stereotypical cowboy
• Supply Demand
• Barbed wire
• Extremes in weather

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The Mining Boom

• Life cycle of a mining boom discovery, miners
  flood in creating an instant town, extraction by
  hand, extraction by corporations, depletion,
  ranchers and farmers move in and establish a more
  permanent economy.
• Some mining camps blossomed into cities nearly
  over night.

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Mining

• The corporate miners, who were sent far under
  ground ? overwhelmingly minorities.
• Extremely hot? Death of heat stroke. Or
  pneumonia.
• Poor ventilation ? accumulations of CO2, stagnate
  air ? lung cancer or disease
• Frequent cave-ins, explosions, fire, injury/death
  from heavy machinery
• Until safety measure ? 1 in30 miners were
  disabled, 1 in 80 were killed

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Mining Methods

• Within a few yrs after a strike, most of the
  easily accessible mineral deposits were
  worked-out ? mining deeper ores required
  resources technology far beyond the means of
  the average prospector ? well-financed companies
• Hydraulic Mining high-pressure water ripped away
  gravel dirt to expose minerals ? devastated
  environment
• Hard-Rock Mining sinking deep shafts to obtain
  ore locked in veins of rocks

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• Mining camps ? violent
• Tensions between ethnicities
• Gamblers and swindlers
• Conflicts over claims
• Absence of law enforcement
• Deadwood, South Dakota ? Wild Bill Hitchcock

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