Looking to the West: 1860-1900

Looking to the West: 1860-1900 During the late 1800s, due to a number of factors, many Americans began migrating west. This shifted the American frontier westward and reformed the identity of the country.

Why move? • For many of the same reasons people move today, settlers moved due to various push-pull factors • Push Factors • Displacement • The Civil War displaced many farmers and former slaves • Increasing costs in East • Ethnic or religious repression • Pull Factors • A New Start • Cheap Land • New Transportation • Railroad development • Government grants

Government Incentives • In an effort to promote western migration, the federal government passed a series of acts that gave or sold land cheaply to those willing to inhabit the west.

Pacific Railway Acts • In 1862 and 1864, the government gave large land grants to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. • Railroads received more than 175 million acres of land. • Railroads sold portions of their land to arriving settlers.

From 1850 to 1871 the railroads received more than 175 million acres of land- an area more than 10% of the whole United States, and bigger than the state of Texas.

Morrill Land-Grant Act • Gave states millions of acres of western land. • States could then sell the land to raise money for the creation of “land grant” colleges specializing in agriculture and mechanical arts. • States sold their land to bankers or land speculators. • Land speculators- people who bought up large areas of land in hope of selling it later for a profit.

Land Grant Colleges

Land Grant Colleges • Most state universities were founded and financed by these land grants.

Homestead Act • Signed by President Lincoln in 1862, the Homestead Act created the biggest incentive to westward expansion. • Created 372,000 farms. • By 1900, settlers had filed 600,000 claims for more than 80 million acres under the Homestead Act.

Homestead Act • What it gave: • 160 acres- a quarter-mile square • Conditions: • At least 21 years old • American citizen (or filing for citizenship) • Build a house on the land (must live there 6 months of the year) • Must farm the land for 5 consecutive years before claiming ownership.

The American Dream • The belief in private property and land ownership has long been a tenet of the American identity. • The Homestead Act helped solidify this value in land/home ownership and individualism.

From far and wide… • The west claimed people from all walks of life… • European Immigrants • Germans, Scandinavians looked for farm land. • Brought Lutheranism to Midwest • Irish, Italians, European Jews and Chinese settled in West Coast cities initially and slowly migrated inland.

Denominational demographics

Exodusters • After the Civil War thousands of African Americans rode or even walked westward. • Benjamin, “Pap” Singleton led southern blacks on a mass “Exodus”. • Calling themselves Exodusters, some 50,000 migrated west.

Section 2: Conflict with Native Americans • With westward expansion came increased conflict between settlers and Native Americans. • Both settlers, who had purchased the land, and Indians, who had lived there for centuries, felt they had claim to the land.

“They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.” –Sitting Bull

Great Plains Indians • Relied heavily on hunting buffalo • Buffalo provided… • Meat for food • Hides for shelter and clothing • Many were nomadic, traveled from place to place, following the buffalo herds.

Conflicts • Many settlers felt justified in taking Indian land, thinking they could make it more productive. • Indians perceived settlers as invaders. • Settlers and Native Americans had different perspectives of the land. • Settlers considered land privately owned according to purchase and deed. • Native Americans had little concept of land ownership or private property. Land was collectively shared and cared for.

Making Treaties • Adding to confusion, Native American groups also didn’t have the same type of hierarchical power structures as settlers. • Sometimes the “leader” of one tribe would sign a treaty that settlers assumed all tribes would recognize, which wasn’t the case. • Treaties usually offered for federal purchase of NA land, or restricted them to reservations, federal land set aside for them.

Perpetual Conflict • “Give an inch, take a mile” • Given rapid western expansion, when one treaty was signed, settlers often continued pushing further onto Native Americans land. • Treaties were signed, broken, and new ones made, each time pushing Native American land further back.

Sand Creek Massacre: 1864 • Southern Cheyenne occupied the central plains. • After Cheyenne raids on settlements near Denver, Colorado, settlers signed a peace campaign with Cheyenne chief, Black Kettle. • Promised protection, Black Kettle and the Cheyenne were told to camp at Sand Creek.

Sand Creek Massacre • On November 29, 1864, Col. John Chivington attacked the Cheyenne and Arapaho with 700 men. Black Kettle tried to wave a white flag of surrender. • Chivington’s men slaughtered 150-500 people, largely women and children.

Battle of Little Bighorn: 1876 • The Sioux inhabited the northern plains- Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. • Sioux powerfully resisted white expansion. • Government built road through prime hunting ground. • Treaty protecting the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming is abandoned when gold is discovered there in 1874.

Battle of Little Bighorn: • Sioux chiefs, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refuse to negotiate. • General Custer sent to round up Indians in 1876. • Expecting a smaller army, Custer comes with a divided force of 200 soldiers. • They were met by 2,000 furious Sioux warriors and massacred within an hour.

Battle of Little Bighorn: • The Battle of Little Bighorn that followed, or “Custer’s Last Stand,” sent a huge army to force Indians back onto the reservation. • Crazy Horse was killed after surrender in 1877. • Sitting Bull and remaining Sioux escaped to Canada, but starvation forced them to surrender and return to the reservation 4 years later. • “I am the last Indian” –Sitting Bull

Battle of Wounded Knee: 1890 • With encouragement from Sitting Bull, Teton Sioux living on a reservation began performing the “Ghost Dance”-a ritual where peopled joined hands and whirled in a circle. • Frightened by the Natives’ restlessness, Custer’s old unit, the Seventh Cavalry came to arrest Sitting Bull. • When Sitting Bull hesitated to surrender, officers shot and killed him.

Battle of Wounded Knee • His followers surrendered and were rounded up at Wounded Knee. • As they were being disarmed, someone fired a shot. • Soldiers then opened fire and massacred more than 200 Sioux.

Helen Hunt Jackson • While some supported government destruction of Native Americans, others protested. • In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, protesting the government’s broken promises and treaties. “It makes little difference… where one opens the record of history of the Indians, every page and every year has its dark stain.” –Hunt Jackson

Attempts to Changes • Dawes Act • Divided reservation land into individual plots. • Each Native American family received a plot of land within the reservation. • Attempted to force Native Americans to assimilate and accept Americans principle of private property. • Many Native Americans were offended at the idea of farming, and most reservation land was not suitable for it.

Opening of Indian Territory • Even after the Indians were forced into certain territories, the government tried to buy out a remaining 2 million acres of unused farmland. • On April 22, 1889, settlers, called boomers, rushed the land to stake claim on this land. • Much of the best land was already taken by “sooners,” those who snuck past government officials and marked claims prior to April 22.

Carlisle Indian School – 1879 - 1918 -Plains Indian children sent by their parents to Carlisle. -Indian identity is stripped away from these young people alone and far from home.

Students at Carlisle Indian School

Section 3: Mining, Ranching, Farming • Settlers found their livelihood almost exclusively in either mining, ranching, or farming.

Western Mining • Early mining consisted of various gold rushes, both on the west coast and inland. • Over time, miners became more interested in ore • Placer mining- shoveling dirt into a box and pouring water in to reveal the ore, gold, or silver • Most ore deposits were deeply covered and needed big business and sophisticated machinery to be mined.

The Cattle Boom • Americans learned cattle ranching from Mexicans in the early 1800s. • Initially used the Texas longhorn which thrived in dry, grassy plains. • Beef demand and prices soar after the Civil War, driving the cattle market.

Destruction of the Buffalo • Room for cattle ranching was made possible due to the destruction, even near extinction, of the buffalo. • 1840- 25 million buffalo • 1889- 1,100 buffalo • Buffalo hunting was popular sport, and supported by the government in an effort to subjugate Native Americans.

Buffalo x 8 Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Is a grammatically correct sentence.

Buffalo x 8 • Adjective- the place; Buffalo, NY • Noun- the animal • Verb- the act; to buffalo means to bully or to intimidate. • The sentence is equivalent to the following… Chicago deer, Chicago deer bully, bully Chicago deer.

Cow Towns • Towns established specifically for receiving cattle. • Wild, rough places that sprang up along railroad stations.

Cattle Drive: The Chisholm Trail • Cowboys led cattle along the Chisholm trail to cow towns in order that they could be shipped east.

The Cowboy • The men of the Chisholm Trail were a rough lot, a mixture of Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants, African Americans and Mexicans. • Cowboys were portrayed as rugged, tough, individuals able to survive in harsh conditions and work long days.

Farming the Plains • Prairie life is romanticized in novels and films, but realistically life was very hard. • Land was often less than ideal for farming, and floods, droughts, prairie fires or dust storms could ruin an entire years work. • Falling crop prices and tough conditions forced many farmers to give up and return east.

“Soddie” • Many homesteaders constructed their houses out of sod blocks, strips of grass with thick roots and earth attached. These houses became known as “soddies”.

Dry Farming • Due to the dry Midwestern climate, farmers adopted techniques known as dry farming. • Techniques included planting crops that required less water, keeping fields free from weeds, and digging deep furrows so water could reach plant roots. • Farming knowledge improved with the creation of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Farming goes Big • New farm machines and techniques increased farm output. • Those who did well adopted the same model of those controlling industrial development: expansion. • Owners of large farms hoped to reap a “bonanza” by supplying growing east coast populations • Large farms often focused on one single cash crop.

The Wild West: • Much of American identity came to be formed upon the western frontier, whether based on fact or mythology. • Historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in what became known as the Turner thesis, claimed that the frontier created Americans who were socially mobile, adventurous, and bent on individual self-improvement.

Section 4: Populism • Economic difficulties and issues surrounding money supply and taxation created a new political party; the populists.

The Farmers’ Complaint • During the late 1800s, crop prices went into a prolonged decline. • Many farmers were heavily indebted, and were hurt by the decline in prices. • Unable to pay back their debt, many lost their farms. • Graph on 277

Business Cycles • Economic recessions cause chain reactions • In both 1873 and 1893, two different railroads collapsed. • Banks failed • Businesses went under • Unemployment soared • Farmers suffered from falling crop prices and high debt.

Tariffs • A tariff is a tax on imported goods. • Tariffs helped American industry (limited competition) • Tariffs hurt farmers (needed to pay more for goods) • Because of high tariffs, farmers saw the government as siding with manufacturers over farmers.

Looking to the West: 1860-1900