Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century

1. Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century Expansion and development of western railroads Competitors for the West: miners, ranchers, homesteaders, and American Indians Government policy toward American Indians Gender, race, and ethnicity in the far West Environmental impacts of western settlement

2. Introduction • Western settlement and development was slowed somewhat by the diversion of the Civil War, but immediately following the war Americans turned considerable attention toward developing the vast expanse of the West. • Continued expansion of the railroads spurred economic activitieslike mining and ranching, while also facilitating a wave of homesteading- which received federal sanction even before the Civil War was over. • These developments had a tremendous impact on Native American populations in the West, and a number of government policies were instituted to reconcile Indians to the American vision for Western settlement and development. • Guided by the boom and bust of economic opportunities and far removed from the centers of power and culture in the East, western society took on some unique characteristics with regard to gender, race, and ethnicity. • Rapid settlement and economic development also left a lasting environmental legacy throughout the West.

3. Expansion and development of western railroads • The single most important event with regard to western settlement and economic development was the expansion of railroads. In the decades following the Civil War railroads grew tremendously throughout the West. • Most significantly, a trans-continental line was completed in 1869. Enticed by massive subsidies of land from the federal government, two companies were formed to simultaneously build lines from Sacramento eastward, and from Omaha westward, meeting in the middle. After a long and difficult construction, the lines met at Promontory Point Utah in May 1869. • The completion of the transcontinental line was so monumental because it linked the tremendous resources of the West with eastern markets, while also moving goods and people from coast to coast. What had taken weeks and months to traverse western prairies and mountains, the trans-continental shortened into days. In many ways, the railroad was the definitive step in the settlement and economic development of the West.

4. Competitors for the West: miners, ranchers, homesteaders, and American Indians • As people flooded westward, competition for land and resources arose between various economic interests and the still substantial Native American populations throughout the West. Predictably, the Native Americans fared worst among these competing interests. • The mineral riches of the West were a primary draw for many. The California Gold Rush of the late 1840s was but the first of many such mining booms, including the famed Comstock Lode in Nevada in the 1860s, and the Black Hills rush of the 1870s. Numerous other lesser-known mining rushes brought untold thousands to remote corners of the West. The rough and tumble boom towns that grew up around the mineral strikes often appeared to spring up overnight, and when the ore played out, could as quickly vanish. • Ranching, especially cattle, was also a major economic force through most of the West. Initially, wild “longhorns” in Texas were herded and driven to railheads in Kansas and elsewhere, on their way to mid-western processors and urban eastern markets. The growth of railroads made getting western cattle to market feasible, and ranching spread with the railroads. Cattle ranching boomed through the 1870s, but over-speculation in stock and land, and over-grazing, combined with a devastating winter in 1886-7, scaled the boom back to more sustainable levels.

5. Competitors for the West: miners, ranchers, homesteaders, and American Indians • Yet another group vying for Western lands and resources was the homesteaders, who would soon outnumber all other interests combined. The Homestead Act, introduced in the 1860s to encourage western settlement, offered citizens land for a nominal fee and a promise to make improvements on their homestead. Through 1900, close to 1 million homesteaders claimed 200,000,000 acres of federal lands in the West. • Even before the completion of the trans-continental, pressures on Native American groups in the West was growing. The flood of settlers unleashed with the coming of the railroad forced various Native American groups to confront permanent settlements in their midst. Responses to this encroachment varied widely among different cultures and regions of the West , but whether acquiescent or hostile, the end result was almost always the same: dispossession of native lands, economic marginalization, and attempted destruction of native culture itself.

6. Government policy toward American Indians • In 1860, close to 400,000 Native Americans remained in the United States, many in small bands scattered across the trans-Missouri West. Prior to completion of the trans-continental railroad, contact with whites had been sporadic and transient, but as homesteaders and others were drawn into the deep West, Indians had to confront the prospect of permanent white settlement in their midst. • Even before the Civil War, the federal government had begun “negotiating” with Indians in the West to reduce their traditional territories. The Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851 was the first of many dubiously derived agreements between the Indians and the US government, and marks the birth of the western reservation system, as well as the beginnings of Indian dependence on the government for subsistence. Initially generous Indian reserves in parts of the West were often further reduced as soon as whites became interested in the land . A second Ft. Laramie Treaty in 1868 again significantly reduced Indian reserves. Swiftly dwindling buffalo populations had also begun to put pressure on the nomadic plains tribes that depended on them, and through the 1860s and 1870s buffalo numbers plummeted even more dramatically, hastening the dependence of plains tribes on federal assistance.

7. Government policy toward American Indians • Other episodes are indicative of the general hostility toward Indians throughout the West. In 1864, a group of nearly 400 Indians seeking immunity from Indian/white hostilities in Colorado were mercilessly massacred by a militia. Similarly arbitrary atrocitiesoccurred on smaller scales throughout the period. • While some groups accepted the inevitability of reservations, others resisted. When the government failed to prevent a rush of gold-hungry whites into the Black Hills (part of the Sioux reservation), the Sioux, along with their Cheyenne allies, struck back, most famously at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. • Beginning in the 1880s, major reform of Indian policy began to take shape. Cloaked in the rhetoric of compassion and benevolence, advocates began pushing to “civilize” and Christianize the Indians of the West. Indian schools were formed to educate Native Americans in agriculture and mechanical arts, while attempting to destroy native languages and culture. This thrust toward civilizing the Indians culminated with federal policy introduced in the Dawes Act, which again reorganized Indian lands. The main focus of the Dawes Act was “allotment,” whereby communally held tribal lands were split into individual 160 acre allotments, with most of the excess being sold to white settlers.

8. Gender, race, and ethnicity in the far West • Common perception often omits the roles of women, immigrants, and non-whites in the settlement of the West, but women, African- Americans, Chinese, and a host of other foreigners made important contributions in nearly every aspect of western development. • Women’s roles and contributions through western history are often over-simplified. While it is true that (especially early on) some women moved west to “service” mining towns and the like, as cities and towns sprang up and especially as homesteading brought families westward (as opposed to the male-dominated mining and ranching endeavors), women took on many new roles in the development of the West. The fierce individualism and sense of equality (for whites) allowed opportunities for western women that were not always seen as appropriate in the more conservative east. There are numerous examples of enterprising, successful western businesswomen. Moreover, several western states, beginning with Wyoming in 1869, were the first to extend the vote to women- nearly a half century before women gained the right to vote in federal elections. • African-American also left their mark on western development. For example, in the years immediately following the Civil War, a substantial number of African-Americans organized a mass migration to Kansas. Dubbed the “Exodusters,” this group saw more promise on the western prairie than on the shattered plantations of the deep South. African-Americans also made considerable contributions to cowboy culture, especially in Texas and the southern plains, where as many as 1 in 5 were Black. African-Americans also served in the US Army in the West- so called “Buffalo Soldiers.”

9. Gender, race, and ethnicity in the far West • Chinese immigrants were an even more conspicuous presence in the cultural milieu of the West. The California Gold Rush, coupled with unrest in China, enticed thousands of Chinese to immigrate to America in the 1850s. Although some were able to set up small mining and merchant operations, strong nativist sentiments in California led to economic marginalization for most Chinese, who became known especially as launderers. Thousands more Chinese immigrants were recruited by the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s, forming the bulk of the labor force for the CP’s eastward portion of the trans-continental railroad. • Despite this contribution to an important national goal, discrimination against the Chinese continued unabated. Fear of unchecked Chinese immigration led to passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s, which specifically barred Chinese from immigrating to the US. This legislation remained in place until after WWII. Other episodes indicate the often violent treatment toward Chinese immigrants already in the West . In the 1885 “Rock Springs Massacre,” dozens of Chinese coal miners were murdered by mostly Welsh and Irish immigrant miners, who complained that the Chinese undercut their wages.

10. Environmental impacts of western settlement • The impact of sustained development and settlement on the ecosystems and natural environment of the West was tremendous. Through most of the 19th century, western economic development proceeded with little regard to environmental impact. The once innumerable Plains Buffalo had been hunted to near extinction by the 1880s. Industrial mining scarred the land and poisoned entire watersheds in some areas of the West. Ranchers overgrazed grasslands, while homesteaders churned up the thick sod and natural grasses on the prairies to cultivate wheat and corn. Later in the 19th century commercial logging began clear-cutting enormous swaths of old growth forests through the West. • Even as early as the 1870s, there was an awareness that the wholesale rape of western lands needed to be checked. In 1872, forward thinking individuals at the federal level succeeded in setting aside “preserves” in the West- the first of which became Yellowstone National Park. Elsewhere, individuals like John Muir advocated for preservation and conservation of some pristine western areas like the Yosemite Valley in California. • Despite these limited examples of preservation and conservation, most economic activities were unhindered by any sort of environmental regulations, permanently altering ecosystems in many areas of the West. The full scope of these environmental impacts sometimes took decades to unfold, as in the case of agricultural development on the southern plains. There, soil that was once held firm by deep rooted natural grasses and the underlying sod, turned to pulverized dust after years of over-cultivation. A severe drought in the early 1930s turned the entire area into a “Dust Bowl” causing untold misery through an area already hit hard by the economic collapse of the Great Depression.