The American Frontier

1
The American Frontier

• Unit VD
• AP United States History

2
Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis (1893)

• Frontier is the meeting point between savagery
  and civilization.
• "begins with the Indian and the hunter it goes
  on with the disintegration of savagery by the
  entrance of the trader... the pastoral stage in
  ranch life the exploitation of the soil by the
  raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in
  sparsely settled farm communities the intensive
  culture of the denser farm settlement and
  finally the manufacturing organization with the
  city and the factory system.
• The frontier defined the American identity
• "that coarseness and strength combined with
  acuteness and acquisitiveness that practical
  inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients
  that masterful grasp of material things... that
  restless, nervous energy that dominant
  individualism"
• U.S. Census of 1890 claims American frontier is
  closed
• "And now, four centuries from the discovery of
  America, at the end of a hundred years of life
  under the Constitution, the frontier has gone,
  and with its going has closed the first period of
  American history.

3
Homestead Act of 1862

• Parameters
• 160-acre plots for minimum of 5 years
• File application, improve the land, file for deed
• Demographics
• Eastern families
• Exodusters
• Old Immigrants

4
Morrill Land Grants

• Purpose
• to teach such branches of learning as are
  related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in
  such manner as the legislatures of the States may
  respectively prescribe, in order to promote the
  liberal and practical education of the industrial
  classes in the several pursuits and professions
  in life.
• Parameters
• 30,000 acres of federal land
• Colleges
• University of Florida
• Florida AM
• MIT
• Cornell

5
Transcontinental Railroad

• Pacific Railway Acts
• First Transcontinental Railroad
• Central Pacific and Union Pacific
• Promontory Point (1869)
• Impact
• Communication
• Settlement and Expansion
• 35,000 miles (1865)
• 193,000 miles (1900)
• Commerce
• Innovations
• Standardized gauges
• Time zones

6
Settling the WestCattle Frontier and Mining
Frontier
7
Settling the WestFarming Frontier

• Western Society
• Mostly families settled in Frontier
• Promotion of gender equality
• Innovation
• Barbed wire
• Dry farming
• National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
  (Grangers) (1867)
• Cooperatives

8
The Frontier and Natives

• Plains Natives Lifestyle
• Buffalo hunt
• White hunters decimated buffalo herds for fur,
  sport, pests
• Reservations
• Concentrations of tribes through separate
  treaties
• Tribal chiefs selected by white officials
• Oklahoma Land Rush (April 1889)
• Sooners and Boomers

9
Americanization of Natives

• A Century of Dishonor (1881)
• Helen Hunt Jackson
• It makes little difference...where one opens the
  record of the history of the Indians every page
  and every year has its dark stain. The story of
  one tribe is the story of all, varied only by
  differences of time and place....Colorado is as
  greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830,
  and Ohio in 1795, and the United States
  government breaks promises now as deftly as then,
  and with the added ingenuity from long
  practice....
• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
• 160-acre plots of land from tribal territory
• Designed to encourage farming among natives
• Ghost Dance Movement
• Wovoka

10
Indian Wars

• Native American Leaders and Warriors
• Cochise and Geronimo (Apache)
• Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull (Lakota)
• Chief Joseph (Nez Perce)
• Sand Creek Massacre (1864)
• Little Big Horn (1876)
• Custers Last Stand
• Wounded Knee (1890)

10th Calvary Buffalo Soldiers
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)