Westward Expansion

Westward Expansion Manifest Destiny?

Load up the wagon, Ma! • Many Eastern seaboard cities are overcrowded. There are not enough jobs, homes, or land for all the immigrants pouring into US from Europe, or for the poor and middle class people of America. So…they load up the Conestoga wagons and begin moving to “empty” lands east of the Mississippi River. • Empty? Not hardly. The “Indian Wars” go into full swing during the early 1800’s as settlers begin pushing ever westward, displacing &/or killing • millions of Native Americans in the process.

Louisiana Purchase • In 1803 Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor, for $15 million. The territory of the US doubles overnight! • To explore the new territory, Jefferson sends a scientific expedition to catalogue the area. The team is led by Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson’s private secretary, and William Clark, a friend of Lewis. Both were amateur scientists and had previous experience with Native Americans. • The team also included 2 mixed French & Native American interpreters, an African American slave of Clark’s named York, and eventually a Shoshone translator named Sacagawea, her French husband, and their infant son. Sacagawea was invaluable to the expedition in their dealings with Native tribes, as well as in living off the land and surviving in previously unknown lands. • Zebulon Pike led 2 expeditions from Mississippi into Colorado and Texas (Hello, Pikes Peak!) • With the purchase of Louisiana, many Americans begin to feel that it is America’s manifest destiny to stretch from coast to coast. Which worked out well for Americans, but…not so much for the millions of Native Americans that lived between the Eastern and Western Coasts of America. By this time most Eastern tribes had been decimated, many to the point of complete annihilation. The only thing that stood in the way of America’s “manifest destiny” were hundreds of tribes.

Building America • Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, then applied to be a state in 1846. US got in a war with Mexico in 1848 over where the border should be (Nueces or Rio Grande) and US won. Mexico agreed to sell California to US for $15M. • 1848-gold discovered in California kicks off a gold rush in 1849, Americans begin pouring into the west in search of their fortunes. • Gadsden Purchase-US purchased New Mexico & Arizona from Mexico, agreed to honor the land grants of Spanish settlers living in the area if they chose to become US citizens. Did not honor the land grants. • 1846-US and Britain sign Oregon Treaty, setting northern border of US/Canada at 49th parallel. US got Oregon, Washington, parts of Idaho and Montana. Continental US is now complete. • Comstock Lode-silver found in Nevada, miner pour into towns like Carson City and Virginia City. • “Pike’s Peak of Bust”-1859, gold was discovered in Colorado, mining boom towns popped up all over CO. • 1874-gold is discovered in Black Hills of South Dakota, which US had promised to the Lakota tribe in a previous treaty. Treaty was broken as thousands of miners clamored for gold, establishing such towns as Deadwood, SD, where Buffalo Bill Cody was killed while playing poker in a local saloon. • Prior to 1900, Oklahoma was known as Indian Territory (where Cherokee, Choctaw, Shawnee, Seminole, and Creeks had been removed to on the Trail of Tears). In 1900, under pressure from Texas ranchers & white migrants, US took back large portions of the Indian lands and opened it up for homesteading.

Indian Wars The indigenous tribes of the West did not go quietly, and a century of brutal, bloody war ensued as America pushed ever westward toward her “manifest destiny.” Atrocities were committed on both sides, including scalping (originally a French fur trapper practice), massacres, rape, mutilation, torture, biological warfare (deliberate infection of tribes with smallpox), and a long series of broken treaties. Eventually all of the tribes succumbed to the sheer, overwhelming numbers of the white settlers, and were moved onto reservations across the West. These were usually the land that no one else wanted because they were not productive and could not easily be farmed or grazed, leaving the tribes dependent on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was supposed to supply them with food, clothing, shelter, and other needs. The food was often rotten by the time it reached the reservations, if it reached them at all, because BIA agents were frequently corrupt and sold the rations for their own profit. Housing was little better than tin shacks, and Indian children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to boarding schools far from the reservations in order to learn to be more “white.” Notable events: Battle of Little Bighorn Wounded Knee Sand Creek Navajo Wars (1846-1863) Sioux (Lakota) Wars (1854-1890) Apache Wars (1861-1900) Nez Perce War in Oregon 1877 The Apache of Arizona were the last tribe to officially surrender to the US Army in 1910.

Reservations in US

Who settled the West? • Homestead Act of 1862 gave any adult (21+) or head of family who had never taken up arms against US 160 acres, which they had to build a home on and work for 5 years before it became their property. Encouraged western settlement. • Largely immigrants, as well as families from the East Coast looking for better opportunities in the West. • The face of immigration changed in the 1800s: • Irish potato famine sent hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women to the US, most of whom settled in eastern cities & took factory jobs in growing US industries. Many also worked on the eastern half of the transcontinental railroad, often settling in the West when it was completed. • Germans, usually with enough money to buy or homestead land came to farm in the open plains of central states (Kansas, Nebraska-where homestead claims were 640 acres, eastern Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota) • Scandinavians (Sweden, Finland, Norway) came to farm also, many settling in the harsher farmlands of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. • Chinese-imported to work on the western half of transcontinental railroad and in the mines. Suffered tremendous discrimination and further Chinese immigration was banned by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. • Freed blacks-looking for homes and opportunities not available to them in the South. • Women often made the trip as well, usually widows with children to support (both mom and oldest male child could sometimes qualify for 160 acres). Single women did not often migrate, as few “respectable” jobs were available to young ladies in the West.

Early Denver, CO

Making a Living in the West • Many men came to pan for gold or mine small claims, hoping to strike it rich. Very few did. • Mining towns were a goldmine for entrepreneurs, however-general supply stores, brothels, hotels & boarding houses, restaurants, blacksmiths, laundry services (often run by Chinese women), saloons, gamblers, and ranchers that supplied beef to the miners were often the only ones getting rich in mining towns. • The Chinese brought opium with them (which the British had gotten China hooked on in order to open up Chinese trade for themselves), thus opium dens were also commonplace in frontier towns. • Mining towns were boom or bust, sometimes lasting as little as six months. • Cow towns like Fort Worth, TX, Abilene, TX, and Dodge City, KS, made their money as railroad depots for shipping cattle to the East. Cowboys would drive cattle hundreds of miles to these cow towns to ship their herds to markets on the coasts. Stockyards would hold the cattle, feed them to put weight back on them, then ship them to meat packing plants-usually in Chicago, IL, which became the hub of agricultural markets in the US.

Creating the “Wild West” Myth • Dime store novels • Self-promotion • Hollywood

Buffalo Bill Cody “Wild Bill” Myths & Legends Big Nose Kate Doc Holliday Annie Oakley Wyatt Earp Calamity Jane Belle Starr Josephine Earp Bat Masterson Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch Jesse James Billy the Kid

Westward Expansion