Chapter 13 The American West

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Chapter 13 The American West
Section Notes
Video
The American West
The Fight for the West Mining and
Ranching Farming the Plains
Maps
Major Battles and Native American Territory in
the West, 1890 Cattle Trails
History Close-up
Oklahoma Land Rush
Quick Facts
Images
Challenges for Farmers Visual Summary The
American West
Hunting on the Plains Lakota Boys Family with Sod
House Land Poster
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The Fight for the West

• The Main Idea
• Native Americans fought the movement of settlers
  westward, but the U.S. military and the
  persistence of American settlers proved too
  strong to resist.
• Reading Focus
• How was the stage set for conflict between white
  settlers and Native Americans in the West?
• What were the Indian Wars and their consequences?
• How did Native American resistance to white
  settlement end?
• What was life like on the Indian Reservation?

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Stage Set for Conflict

• Culture of the Plains Indians
• Buffalo provided food, clothing, and shelter for
  the nomadic lifestyle of the Indians. They did
  not believe land should be bought and sold, and
  white farmers felt it should be divided.
• Government policy
• Instead of continuing to move the Indians
  westward, the government changed its policy.
  Indian land was seized, and they were forced onto
  reservations.
• Destruction of the buffalo
• The buffalo-centered way of life was threatened,
  with vast herds driven to extinction by reduced
  grazing lands and hunting for sport and profit.

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The Indian Wars
Army troops attacked and massacred surrendering
Cheyenne. Congressional investigators condemned
the Army actions, but no one was punished in the
Sand Creek Massacre.
Sand Creek Massacre
After the massacre, Cheyenne and Sioux stepped up
their raids. In return for closing a sacred
trail, the Sioux agreed to live on a reservation.
Other nations signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty
and were moved to reservation lands in western
Oklahoma.
Treaties
George Armstrong Custer led his troops in
headlong battle against Sitting Bull and lost.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a temporary
victory for the Sioux. The U.S. government was
determined to put down the threat to settlers.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn
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The Indian Wars
The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon ended the Indian
Wars on the southern Plains. With their ponies
killed and food stores destroyed, surviving
Comanches moved onto the reservation.
Palo Duro Canyon
The Ghost Dance was a religious movement that
inspired hope among suffering Native Americans.
Newspapers began suggesting that this signaled a
planned uprising. The military killed Sitting
Bull while attempting to arrest him in a
skirmish.
The Ghost Dance
The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred the day after
the surrender. Shooting began after a gun went
off, and the fleeing Sioux were massacred. This
action marked the end of the bloody conflict
between the army and the Plains Indians.
Wounded Knee
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Resistance Ends in the West

• Resistance in the Northwest
• The government took back nine-tenths of the Nez
  Percé land when gold miners and settlers came
  into the area.
• Fourteen years later they were ordered to abandon
  the last bit of that land to move into Idaho.
• Chief Joseph tried to take his people into
  Canada, but the army forced their surrender less
  than forty miles from the Canadian border.
• Chief Joseph and many others were eventually sent
  to northern Washington.

• Resistance in the Southwest
• The Apache people were moved onto a reservation
  near the Gila River in Arizona.
• Soldiers forcefully stopped a religious gathering
  there, and Geronimo and others fled the
  reservation.
• They raided settlements along the Arizona-Mexico
  border for years before finally being captured in
  1886.
• Geronimo and his followers were sent to Florida
  as prisoners of war. His surrender marked the end
  of armed resistance in the area.

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Life on the Reservation
The government wanted control over all the
western territories and wanted Indians to live
like white Americans.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs began to erase the
Indian culture through a program of
Americanization. Indian students could speak only
English and could not wear their traditional
clothing. They learned to live like Americans.
The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up many reservations
and turned Native Americans into individual
property owners. Ownership was designed to
transform their relationship to the land. The
Indians received less productive land, and few
had the money to start farms. Most of the land
given to the Indians was unsuitable for farming.
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Mining and Ranching

• The Main Idea
• Many people sought fortunes during the mining and
  cattle booms of the American West.
• Reading Focus
• How did mining lead to new settlements in the
  West?
• Why did mining become big business?
• How and why did the cattle boom come to an end?

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Striking Gold and Silver

• Discovering gold and silver
• After the California gold rush, Colorado was
  next. Most who went there were disappointed, but
  the silver in the Comstock Lode in Nevada lasted
  for more than 20 years.
• The Klondike gold rush
• The Yukon Territory was the site of a huge gold
  rush, but getting there was treacherous.
  Canadians required miners to bring a years worth
  of supplies with them, and that was a difficult
  task. Reports of gold for the taking were
  false.

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Development of Communities

• Mining camps and towns
• Thousands of men poured into mining areas. Camps
  were hastily built and had no law enforcement.
  Vigilante justice was used to combat theft and
  violence.
• Camps become towns
• Some camps developed into towns, with hastily
  constructed buildings of stores and saloons.
• As towns developed, women and children came to
  join the men, making the towns more respectable.
  Townspeople established churches, newspapers, and
  schools.

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Mining as Big Business
Placer mining allowed individuals to pan for
gold, but soon equipment was needed to dig deeper
within the earth.
Large companies were formed to invest in
hydraulic mining and hard-rock mining.
Prospectors became employees, working dangerous
jobs for these companies.
Miners began to organize unions to negotiate
safer working conditions and better pay. Mining
companies resisted, and violence broke out. At
Cripple Creek, Colorado, the Western Federation
of Miners faced off against the corporate mining
interests. When it was over, 30 men were left
dead and the union was defeated.
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The Cattle Boom
The Spanish were the first ranchers in the West,
raising cattle under dry and difficult
conditions. They bred the hardy Texas longhorn
and started sheep ranching. Grazing lands were
needed for both.
Origins of ranching
Growing populations in the East needed food. The
age of the cattle drive had arrived. Cowboys
drove the cattle to towns with railroads to be
shipped to meatpacking centers such as Chicago.
One of the most famous cattle trails was the
Chisholm Trail.
Demand for beef
Joseph Glidden invented barbed wire, allowing
ranchers to enclose grazing lands. Privately
owned ranches spread quickly, and investors
transformed the cattle business into big
business. Two years of severe winters brought
huge losses to the industry.
Ranching as big business
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Farming the Plains

• The Main Idea
• The government promoted the settlement of the
  West, offering free or cheap land to those
  willing to put in the hard work of turning the
  land into productive farms.
• Reading Focus
• What incentives encouraged farmers to settle in
  the West?
• Which groups of people moved into the West, and
  why did they do so?
• What new ways of farming evolved in the West?

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Incentives for Settlement

• New legislation
• In 1862, Congress passed three acts to turn
  public lands into private property.
• The Homestead Act gave 160 acres of land to heads
  of household.
• The Pacific Railway Act gave land to the railroad
  companies to build lines.
• The Morrill Act gave lands to states for colleges
  for agriculture and the mechanic arts.

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Incentives for Settlement

• Railroads encourage settlement
• Railroads reaped profits by selling some of their
  land to settlers. They placed ads to lure
  homesteaders to the West. The Oklahoma Land Run
  of 1889 opened unassigned Indian land to
  settlers. Over 50,000 people took part in the
  rush to stake a claim on these 2 million acres of
  land.
• Closing of the frontier
• In 1890 the Census Bureau issued a report, there
  can hardly be said to be a frontier line.
  Historian Frederick Jackson Turner stated in a
  famous essay that the existence of the frontier
  made the United States distinctive.

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Migrating West

• White settlers
• Middle-class businesspeople or farmers from the
  Mississippi Valley moved west.
• They could afford money for supplies and
  transportation.
• African American settlers
• Benjamin Singleton urged his own people to build
  communities.
• Some fled the violent South.
• Rumors of land in Kansas brought 15,000
  Exodusters who also settled in Missouri, Indiana,
  and Illinois.

• European settlers
• Lured by economic opportunity, they came from
  Scandinavia, Ireland, Russia, and Germany.
• They brought their farming experience with them.
  
• Chinese settlers
• Initially came for the gold rush or to build
  railroads
• They turned to farming, especially in California,
  establishing the fruit industry there.
• Most Chinese were farm laborers because they were
  not allowed to own land.

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New Ways of Farming
New farmers faced harsh climate, scarce water,
and lack of lumber. Farmers installed
windmill-driven pumps and used irrigation
techniques. They used the earth for shelter,
first building dugouts into hillsides, then
making sod houses.
New farming equipment helped. James Oliver
developed a sharper plow edge. Combine harvesters
used one operation to cut wheat, separate grains,
and remove the husks.
Giant bonanza farms operated like factories, and
they reaped great profits during good seasons.
However, they could not handle the boom-and-bust
farming cycles well, and by the 1890s, most
bonanza farms had been broken up.
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