The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad on Migration to the West

1. consider: What have we seen or heard about the “Wild West?” The West after the Civil War (1860-1896)

2. essential question: What caused migration to the West after the Civil War? PART 1: TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD trans = across continental = continent (i.e. North America)

3. Instructions: Read the questions first. Then, read the selection and/or watch the video about the transcontinental railroad. Finally, answer the questions. • What is the transcontinental railroad? • The purpose of technology such as railroads is to make life easier. How did the transcontinental railroad make life easier? • What problems and dangers were faced in creating the transcontinental railroad? • Where were immigrants from that worked on the transcontinental railroad? • What was the significance of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, also known as Promontory Point, Utah? • What were some effects of the transcontinental railroad on the country? (begin at 10:15; 37:30-44:55 to end)

4. What is the transcontinental railroad? • The purpose of technology such as railroads is to make life easier. How did the transcontinental railroad make life easier?  Union Pacific Central Pacific 

5. What problems and dangers were faced in creating the transcontinental railroad?

6. Where were immigrants from that worked on the transcontinental railroad? many Chinese worked on the Central Pacific; many Irish and German on the Union Pacific

7. What was the significance of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, also known as Promontory Point, Utah?

8. What were some effects of the transcontinental railroad on the country? connecting the east and west

9. What were some effects of the transcontinental railroad on the country? more settlers = less buffalo and displacement of Native Americans

10. What were some effects of the transcontinental railroad on the country? more settlers = less buffalo and displacement of Native Americans

11. What were some effects of the transcontinental railroad on the country? four standard time zones and new terms

12. A lot of the hardships that the transcontinental railroad workers faced involved the physical environment. The environment will play a very large role in the changing west, so we need to answer the essential question… REVIEW: What were the landscape and people like in the West like before the Civil War?

13. Label the following on the map (see pages 1010-11 in the back of the textbook): Mississippi River Rocky MountainsGreat Plains

14. What was the status of American Indians when we last discussed them? (i.e. Where were they? What were they doing?) Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota chief in the 1880s. In the 1860s, he led the Sioux to military victory over the United States, forcing the government, in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, to abandon army posts and withdraw from Sioux territory.

15. The Plains Indians • no land ownership (just use); nomadic

16. buffalo played central role in lives

17. had traded for horses and some guns

18. essential question: What caused migration to the West after the Civil War? PART 2: PUSH AND PULL FACTORS • Push factors are what push you out of the place you are (i.e. no jobs available where you are) • Pull factors are what pull you to where you move (i.e. lots of jobs available in the new location)

19. Which would be push factors and which would be pull factors? Write them in the proper location. Define the Homestead Act and the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. You can find these by looking in the index. • Homestead Act • cheap, “available” land for farming or ranching • gold being discovered • expensive, overcrowded land in the east • discrimination of blacks in the east • Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 • new inventions that made farming possible on the Great Plains • new railroads built in the American West • government disregard for Native American land

20. consider:How will the settler’s movement West affect Native Americans?

21. The “Indian Problem” • the government in the east’s term for Indians being in the way of settlers continuing to move west

22. government policy evolves from extermination to reservations

23. consider: Fight or flight is how animals respond to conflict. As humans, what other choice do we have?

24. How did U.S. citizens’ migration West change the lives of Native Americans? essential question: Fighting the Plains Indians would be the last of the U.S. government’s wars against Native Americans. This would change the Native Americans’ lives forever.

25. Make sure you understand these terms— reservation: land set aside for Native Americans

26. Make sure you understand these terms— assimilation: making a minority culture like the dominant culture Top: A group of Chiricahua Apache students on their first day at Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pa. Bottom: The same students four months later.

27. Make sure you understand these terms— assimilation: making a minority culture like the dominant culture Tom Torlino, a Carlisle School student, before and after spending time at a Denver school.

28. the Sand Creek Massacre • proved that the settlers would have no mercy in removing Native Americans from the land that they desired

29. the Sand Creek Massacre • no real punishment to settlers who killed Native Americans, though many upset • U.S. government proved it would tolerate a massacre if it helped solve the “Indian problem”

30. the Battle of Little Big Horn(also known as Custer’s Last Stand) • Native Americans winning a battle against the U.S. was not enough for them to keep their lands out West vs.

31. Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé • fighting nor fleeing would prevent the Native Americans from being ultimately forced onto reservations

32. exposed how badly Native Americans had been treated by the U.S. government over the years Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor

33. helped convince U.S. citizens that assimilation was the answer to the “Indian problem” Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor

34. the Dawes Severalty Act • example of assimilation • changed tribal ownership of land to individual ownership of land on reservations

35. the Ghost Dance • ritual that showed the Native Americans’ desperation for a return to the old ways • caused the Battle of Wounded Knee

36. Wounded Knee • massacre that would end the Indian Wars

37. Wounded Knee • photos from this massacre helped convince U.S. citizens that assimilation was the answer to the “Indian problem” Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow, among the first to die on December 29, 1890.

38. Wounded Knee • photos from this massacre helped convince U.S. citizens that assimilation was the answer to the “Indian problem”

39. Follow-up questions: 1. Answer the question below using the terms buffalo, assimilation, and reservation.How did U.S. citizens’ migration West change the lives of Native Americans? 2. Is there anything that Native Americans could have done to avoid losing their land and their way of life? Explain. Jimmy Smith, and Loretta Store stand in front of their dilapidated wooded shack that sits in a small canyon in Arizona. Native Americans participate in the 100th memorial ride to Wounded Knee.

40. The Hot Seat • one person volunteers to be in the hot seat • He or she answers a series of multiple choice questions • 1 question right = sense of self-satisfaction • 2 questions right = fist bump • 3 questions right = gum • 4 questions right = prize box • You have two opportunities to “poll the class” where you can see how the class answered

41. consider: What would life be like without police? How would this idea lead to people being fascinated with the west? essential question: How was the fantasy of the “Wild West” compare to the reality of the American West?

42. Fill out the left side of the chart about the portrayal of the Wild West as seen. After each clip, we will discuss the reality of the West. gunfight scene from My Name is Still Trinity beginning of Enterthe Lone Ranger bar scene from Hang ‘em High final showdown in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly preview of Red Dead Redemption scene from Blazing Saddles scene from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre scene from Wild Wild West

43. consider: If you drew a picture of the West before the Civil War, what would you include? If you drew a picture of the West after the Civil War, what would you include? essential question: How did settlers change the West? Read the chart from left to right, filling out the right column for each theme using the textbook. Overall, notice how the American West will look increasingly like the East, with cities and big businesses.

44. social change The Old West

45. social change The New West Prospective settlers crowd the U.S. Land Office in Garden City, Kansas, in 1885. The rush of people into the West from throughout the world contributed to the diversity of the region’s population. One Methodist missionary expressed his horror of early mining town saloons and their patrons: “The utter recklessness, the perfect ‘Abandon’ with which they drink, gamble, and swear is altogether astounding.” By the 1890s, when a photographer took this carefully posed picture of Crapper Jack’s Saloon in Cripple Creek, Colorado, saloon society was still popular but seemed more restrained.

46. economic change 1. mining Gold miners with sluice, c. 1850: At first, gold miners worked individually, each with a shovel and pan. By the 1850s devices like the one shown here, a "long tom," were making mining a cooperative venture. Miners shoveled clay, dirt, and stone into a long and narrow box, hosed in water at one end, stirred the mixture, and waited for the finer gravel, which might include gold, to fall through small holes and lodge under the box.

47. economic change 1. mining Chinese miners in Idaho operate the destructive water cannons used in hydraulic mining.

48. economic change 2. cattle ranching

49. economic change 2. cattle ranching

50. economic change 3. farming