Lesson 19.3: Life in the West

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Lesson 19.3 Life in the West

• Today we will compare and contrast the reality of
  the Old West to the myth of the Old West.

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Vocabulary

• myth widely-held belief in something that is
  not true
• territory what a state usually is before it is
  officially admitted to the Union
• transcontinental across an entire continent

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Check for Understanding

• What are we going to do today?
• What was Wyoming before it was a state?
• What is a transcontinental railroad?

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What We Already Know

• Tens of thousands of people poured into
  California, Colorado, and other western
  territories where gold or silver had been
  discovered.

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What We Already Know

• When the war with Mexico ended, 80 thousand
  citizens of Mexico suddenly found themselves
  living as a minority in a nation with a strange
  culture, language, and legal system.

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What We Already Know

• Women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
  Stanton had worked unsuccessfully for years to
  win voting rights for women.

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Women in the West

• In their letters and diaries, many women recorded
  the harshness of pioneer life. Others talked
  about the loneliness.

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Women in the West

• While men went to town for supplies or did farm
  chores with other men, women rarely saw their
  neighbors.

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Women in the West

• Living miles from others, women were their
  familys doctorssetting broken bones and
  delivering babiesas well as cooks.

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Women in the West

• Western lawmakers recognized the contributions
  women made by giving them more legal rights than
  women had in the East.
• In most territories, women could own property and
  control their own money.

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Women in the West

• In 1869, Wyoming was the first territory in the
  nation to give women the vote.
• When Wyoming sought statehood in 1890, Congress
  demanded that the state repeal its woman suffrage
  law.

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Women in the West

• But Wyoming law-makers stood firm and Congress
  backed down.
• By 1900, women had also won the right to vote in
  Colorado, Utah, and Idaho.

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Raaisel my hierdie, Batman!
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How were womens contributions to the West
recognized by Western lawmakers?

1. They were given the right to vote before Eastern
   states did.
2. They were appointed to serve in several
   territorial governments.
3. Statues of prominent pioneer women were erected.
4. They were honored with state holidays in several
   states.

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The Rise of Western Cities

• Cities seemed to grow overnight in the West. Gold
  and silver strikes made instant cities of places
  like Denver and San Francisco.
• These cities prospered, while much of the area
  around them remained barely settled.

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The Rise of Western Cities

• Miners who flocked to the Pikes Peak gold rush
  of 1859 stopped first in Denver to buy supplies.
• By 1867, Denver was the capital of Colorado
  Territory and the state capital when Colorado was
  admitted into the Union.

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The Rise of Western Cities

• The key to Denvers growth the construction of a
  railroad link to the transcontinental railroad.
• Between 1870 and 1890, its population grew from
  about 4,800 residents to nearly 107,000.

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The Rise of Western Cities

• The railroads also brought rapid growth to other
  towns in the West.
• Omaha, Nebraska, flourished as a meat processing
  center for cattle ranches in the area.
• Portland, Oregon, became a regional market for
  fish, grain, and lumber.

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Riddle tôi di?u này, Batman!
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What factors led to the growth of cities in the
West?

1. Gold and silver strikes
2. Tourism
3. Expansion of railroad lines
4. Introduction of the meat-packing and food
   processing industries
5. Publication of Western 'dime novels'

Choose all that are true!
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Mexicanos and Buffalo Soldiers

• The Southwest included what are now New Mexico,
  Texas, Arizona, and California and had been home
  to Mexicanos, people of Spanish descent whose
  ancestors had come from Mexico.

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Mexicanos and Buffalo Soldiers

• After the Mexican War brought much of the
  Southwest under U.S. control, English-speaking
  white settlers began arriving.
• These Anglo pioneers were attracted to the
  Southwest by opportunities in ranching, farming,
  and mining.
• Their numbers grew in the 1880s and 1890s, as
  railroads connected the region with the rest of
  the country.

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Mexicanos and Buffalo Soldiers

• As American settlers crowded into the South-west,
  the Mexicanos lost economic and political power.
• Many also lost land they claimed through grants
  from Spain and Mexico, because U.S. courts did
  not usually recognize these grants.

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Mexicanos and Buffalo Soldiers

• In 1866 the U.S. Army created African-American
  regiments to serve mainly in the West and
  Southwest.
• Nicknamed buffalo soldiers by the Indians,
  African-American troops helped keep the peace on
  the frontier and fought in campaigns against the
  Indians.

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Mexicanos and Buffalo Soldiers

• Although there were still racial conflicts within
  the military and among civilians, Army life
  provided opportunity and a basic education for
  many African Americans.

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The Myth of the Old West

• Americas love affair with the West began just as
  the cowboy way of life was vanishing in the late
  1800s.
• To most Americans, the West had become a
  larger-than life place where brave men and women
  tested themselves against hazards of all kinds
  and won.

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The Myth of the Old West

• Dime novels told tales of daring adventure.
• Even when the hero was a real person like Wyatt
  Earp, Kit Carson, or Calamity Jane, the plots
  were fiction or exaggerated accounts of real-life
  incidents.

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The Myth of the Old West

• Even serious works of fiction still showed little
  of the drabness of daily life in the West.
• White settlers played heroic roles in novels,
  plays and, later, in movies.
• Indians generally appeared as villains, and
  African Americans were not even mentioned.

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The Myth of the Old West

• Buffalo Bill Cody, a buffalo hunter turned
  showman, brought the West to the rest of the
  world through his Wild West show.
• His show, with its reenactments of frontier life,
  played before enthusiastic audiences across the
  country and in Europe.

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• The myth of the Old West overlooked the
  contributions of Mexicanos and African Americans
  to cattle ranching.
• The railroads would not have been built without
  Chinese immigrant labor.

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The Real West

• Western legends often highlighted the attacks by
  Native Americans on soldiers or settlers without
  considering the broken treaties that led to the
  conflicts.
• Even the self-reliant Westerner who tamed the
  Wild West needed the help of the government to
  fight Indians, to help build the railroads, and
  to give the free land that drew homesteaders to
  the West.

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Lesson 19.4a The Farming Frontier

• Today we will describe farming life on the Great
  Plains.

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Vocabulary

• sod the thick top layer of soil
• Exoduster African Americans who left the South
  and settled on the Kansas prairie
• homestead the land your family owns and lives on

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Check for Understanding

• What are we going to do today?
• Where did Exodusters live before relocating to
  the Great Plains?
• Can an apartment be your homestead? Splain it
  Rucy

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What We Already Know

• After the Civil War, angry Southerners still
  abused African Americans and tried to keep them
  down.

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What We Already Know

• By 1890, all the Native American tribes had been
  defeated and exiled to remote reservations,
  leaving nearly all Western lands open to white
  settlement.

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What We Already Know

• The Great Plains were treeless, dry, and so
  different from any other lands theyd ever seen,
  settlers initially called it the
• Great American Desert.

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The U.S. Government Encourages Settlement

• For years, people had been calling on the federal
  government to sell Western land at low prices.
• Before the Civil War, Southern states fought such
  a policy.

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The U.S. Government Encourages Settlement

• They feared that a big westward migration would
  result in more non-slave states.

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The Homestead Act Passes

• During the Civil War, with no Southern
  Congress-men to oppose it, the government passed
  the Homestead Act.
• This 1862 law offered 160 acres of free land to
  anyone who would live on the land and work it for
  five years.

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New Settlers Move West to Seek a New Life

• Thousands of African Americans left the South to
  escape continuing discrimination.
• A large group that migrated to Kansas compared
  themselves to the Biblical Hebrews leaving
  slavery in Egypt, and called themselves
  Exodusters.

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The Railroads Encourage Settlement

• Hundreds of thousands of European immigrants
  Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, Ukrainians, and
  Russians also settled in the West.
• The immigrants often first learned about the West
  from agents for American railroad companies, who
  traveled throughout Europe with pamphlets
  proclaiming Land for the Landless! Homes for the
  Homeless!

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The Railroads Encourage Settlement

• From 1850 to 1870, the government gave millions
  of acres of public land to the railroads to
  promote railroad expansion.
• The railroad companies resold much of the land to
  settlers, not only making themselves rich, but it
  also creating new customers for their services.

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Adivina esto, Batman?
45
How did railroads cause more Europeans to come to
America?

1. The railroads advertised in Europe that land in
   America was cheap, or even free.
2. They came to help build the railroads.
3. They used the railroads to sneak into the country
   illegally.
4. Railroad car manufacturers recruited factory
   workers in European cities.

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How did the federal government encourage and
support settlement of the Plains?

1. It sold land at low prices to railroad companies
   so they could re-sell it to settlers.
2. It guaranteed loans for settlers to buy
   privately-owned land.
3. It offered free land to settlers who agreed to
   live on it and improve it.
4. It purchased railroad tickets to help settlers
   families relocate to the West.

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What TWO groups settled in the West in large
numbers?

1. Civil War veterans
2. African American Exodusters
3. Chinese railroad workers
4. Northern Copperheads
5. Southern scalawags
6. European immigrants

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Who were the Exodusters?

1. Former slaves
2. European immigrants
3. Settled on the Kansas Plains
4. Civil War veterans
5. Helped build the transcontinental railroad
6. Victims of the Homestead Act

Choose all that are true!
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What was true about the Homestead Act?

1. It was passed by Congress during the Civil War.
2. It was supported strongly by Southerners.
3. It made free land available to settlers.
4. It required settlers to live and work on it for
   five years.
5. African Americans were excluded from the offer.

Choose all that are true!
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Life on the frontier was a challenge.

• The Plains were nearly treeless, so farmers had
  to build their first homes with blocks of sod,
  which is why they were called sodbusters.

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Farmers had to burn corn cobs and dried manure
for fuel.
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• They often had to dig deep into the ground for
  water.
• Settlers also had to face blizzards, prairie
  fires, hailstorms, tornadoes, grasshoppers, and
  drought.

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New inventions helped farmers to meet some of
their challenges.

• John Deeres steel plow let farmers slice through
  tough soil.
• Improved windmills pumped water from deep wells
  to the surface.

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New inventions helped farmers to meet some of
their challenges.

• Barbed wire allowed farmers to fence in
  livestock.

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New inventions helped farmers to meet some of
their challenges.

• Reapers made the harvesting of crops much easier,
  and threshers helped farmers to separate grain or
  seed from straw.

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New inventions helped farmers to meet some of
their challenges.

• These inventions also made farm work more
  efficient.
• From 1860 to 1890, farmers doubled their
  production of wheat.

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Eazzzy Robin easy little Buddy
Holy 19th Century, BATMAN!! I cant see out of
my mask!!
58
Which inventions aided farmers on the Plains in
the late 19th Century?

1. Steel plow
2. Hay baler
3. Reaper
4. Thresher
5. Seed drill

Choose all that are true!
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What challenges did Plains farmers face?

1. Droughts and prairie fires
2. Tornadoes and hailstorms
3. Cattle rustlers
4. Indian raids
5. Grasshopper swarms
6. Blizzards

Choose all that are true!