chapter 18 conquest and survival the trans-mississippi west 1860-1900 chapter 18 conquest and...

Chapter 18Conquest and SurvivalThe Trans-Mississippi West

1860-1900

Chapter 18Conquest and SurvivalThe Trans-Mississippi West

1860-1900

OUT OF MANY

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Part One:

Introduction

2© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter Focus Questions

What was the impact of U.S. western expansion on Indian societies?

In what ways was the post-Civil War West an “internal empire,” and how did its development depend on the emergence of new technologies and new industries?

How can the history of the American West be told as the creation of new communities and the displacement of old communities?

How did agribusiness differ from forms of family farming?

What place did the West hold in the national imagination?


Part Two:

American Communities: The Oklahoma Land Rush


American Communities: The Oklahoma Land Rush

Map: Oklahoma TerritoryThousands gathered for the Oklahoma land rush. Land promised to Indians who had been forcibly relocated in the 1830s was first opened to white settlement in 1889. In a little over two months settlers filed 6,000 homestead claims. The land rush symbolized the movement toward white settlement and the reconstruction of the West. This transformation came at the expense of Indian peoples.


MAP 18.1 Oklahoma Territory Land openings to settlers came at different times, making new land available through various means.

SOURCE: From Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 3rd edition, by John W. Morris, Charles R. Goins, and Edwin C. McReynolds. Copyright © 1965, 1976, 1986 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.


Part Three:

Indian Peoples under Siege


On the Eve of Conquest

Indians had occupied the plains for more than 20,000 years, developing diverse ways of adapting themselves to the environment. The Europeans brought disease and the need for Indians to adapt to European ways. The surviving tribes adapted to the changing conditions.

The Plains Indians learned to ride horses and shoot guns.Some tribes learned English and converted to Christianity.

Legally, tribes were supposed to be regarded as autonomous nations residing within American boundaries.

Treaties were negotiated but force was often used instead.


Reservations and the Slaughter of the Buffalo

Map: Major Indian Battles and Indian Reservations, 1860-1900

The federal government had pressured Indian tribes to migrate West into a permanent Indian Territory.

Whites’ desire for western land led the federal government to pressure western Indians to move to reservations.

The tribes that moved to reservations found federal policies were inadequate for their needs.

Nomadic tribes found their freedom curtailed and their buffalo destroyed both by the railroad and white hunting.


MAP 18.2 Major Indian Battles and Indian Reservations, 1860–1900 As commercial routes and white populations passed through and occupied Indian lands, warfare inevitably erupted. The displacement of Indians to reservations opened access by farmers, ranchers, and investors to natural resources and to markets.


The Indian Wars

A treaty granted the Black Hills to the Sioux.The discovery of gold brought prospectors to the hills.The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho aligned to protect the Black Hills, wiping out Custer’s regiment before being defeated by the army.

One of the bloodiest conflicts was the Red River War of 1874–1875. Under the leadership of Geronimo, the Apaches gained a reputation as intrepid warriors.


The Oglala Sioux spiritual leader, Chief Red Cloud in an 1868 photograph. Here he is seen with (l. to r.) Red Dog, Little Wound, interpreter John Bridgeman (standing), (Red Cloud), American Horse, and Red Shirt. He ventured to Washington with this delegation to discuss with President Ulysses S. Grant the various provisions of the peace treaty, just signed, to end the violent conflict over the Bozeman Trail.


The Nez Perce

Tribes like the Nez Perce, who tried to cooperate with whites, were betrayed. Promised Oregon, the Nez Perce were sent to a disease-ridden land in Kansas.


Kiowa Preparing for a War Expedition, ca. 1887. This sketch on paper was made by an Indian artist, Silverhorn, who had himself taken part in the final revolt of the Kiowas in 1874. He later became a medicine man, and then served as a private in the U.S. Cavalry at Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory. SOURCE: Silverhorn (Native American), “Kiowa Preparing for a War Expedition.” From Sketchbook , 1887. Graphite ink and crayon on paper. Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Terrell Bartlett.


Part Four:

The Internal Empire


The Internal Empire

Map: Railroad Routes, Cattle Trails, Gold and Silver Rushes, 1860–1900

Settlers found themselves subjects of an “internal empire” controlled from the East.


MAP 18.3 Railroad Routes, Cattle Trails, Gold and Silver Rushes, 1860–1900 By the end of the nineteenth century, the vast region of the West was crosscut by hundreds of lines of transportation and communication. The trade in precious metals and in cattle helped build a population almost constantly on the move, following the rushes for gold or the herds of cattle.

SOURCE: Encyclopedia of American Social History.


Mining Towns

Mining fostered western expansion. Gold discoveries brought thousands of fortune seekers.Most fortunes went to corporations that bought out the smaller claims.Although some mine communities eventually became permanent settlements, most were short-lived boomtowns.


William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) was the first person to photograph the Yellowstone region in the Wyoming Territory. Documenting the Grand Tetons, including the magnificent waterfalls and geysers, his images caught the public’s attention and likewise helped to convince Congress to create Yellowstone National Park in 1872. Jackson then joined up with the U.S. Geological Survey to photograph various sites in the Rocky Mountains. Here he captures, “John, the Cook” baking slapjacks in a mining camp in 1874.


Mining Towns

The western labor movement emerged in this rough and often violent climate.

Unions refused membership to Chinese, Mexican, and Indian workers.

Unions were unable to stop owners from closing down mines when the ore ran out, leaving empty towns and environmental blight.


Mormon Settlements

Map: Mormon Cultural Diffusion, ca. 1883

Mormons migrated to the Great Basin in Utah beginning in 1846.

They shared land and water as they built agricultural communities.

The federal government assumed control of the Utah territory. Mormon society soon resembled the individualist East the original settlers had sought to escape.


MAP 18.4 Mormon Cultural Diffusion, ca. 1883 Mormon settlements permeated many sparsely populated sections of Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Built with church backing and the strong commitment of community members, they survived and even prospered in adverse climates.

SOURCE: Mormon Cultural Diffusion, ca. 1883, Donald W. Meinig, “The Geography of the American West, 1847-1964” from The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55, no. 2, June 1965.


Mexican Borderland Communities

The Southwest saw a series of clashes between Anglos and Mexicanos over control of the land. Some Mexicano elites continued to maintain wealth and power. The majority of Mexicans found themselves trapped in poverty and turned to migratory work or moved to urban areas to work for wages. Mexicanos maintained key elements of their traditional culture.


Mexican Americans in San Antonio continued to conduct their traditional market bazaar well after the incorporation of this region into the United States. Forced off the land and excluded from the better-paying jobs in the emerging regional economy, many Mexicanos, and especially women, sought to sell the products of their own handiwork for cash or for bartered food and clothing.

SOURCE: Thomas Allen, Market Plaza, 1878 –1879. Oil on canvas, 26 x 39 ½. Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas.


Part Five:

The Open Range


The Open Range

The destruction of buffalo opened the path for the western cattle industry.


The Long Drives

Cowboys rounded up herds for $30 a month (at best) and lived under harsh circumstances, stimulating efforts to unionize.

Workday lasted from sunup to sundown with night shifts to watch the cattle.There was no protection from the elements.Poor diet often led to disease.The drive could be as far as 1,500 miles.

One-fifth to one-third of cowboys were Indian, Mexican, or African American. Few women worked on the open range.


© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. 28

Seeing History The Legendary Cowboy: Nat Love, Deadwood Dick

The Sporting Life

Prostitution served as the largest source of income outside the home for women.

There were few jobs for women and many resorted to prostitution simply to pay the bills.

Their life was quite harsh and seldom paid well.


Community and Conflict

Personal violence was commonplace in the cattle towns and mining camps. Horse theft and cattle rustling rose rapidly during the peak years of the cattle drives. During the 1870s, range wars turned violent when farmers, sheep ranchers, and cattle ranchers battled over the same land. By the mid-1880s the cattle business went bust.

Overstocking led to herds depleting sparse grasslands. Bad weather from 1885 to 1887 killed 90 percent of western cattle, and prices plummeted.



As early as 1879, the local newspaper described Leadville, Colorado, as a town that never sleeps: “The dancing houses and liquoring shops are never shut….The streets are full of drunken carousers taking the town.” This photograph of a typical saloon was taken shortly before the silver mining town reached its peak, with a population topping 60,000 in 1893. That year, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act forced thousands of out-of-work miners to search for jobs elsewhere in the West.SOURCE: Photography Collection, Denver Public Library.

Part Six

Farming Communities on the Plains


The Homestead Act160 acres were given to any settler who lived on the land for at least 5 years and improved it.

Homesteaders had their greatest success in the central and upper Midwest where the soil was rich and the weather was relatively moderate.

This act sparked the largest migration in U.S. history but only 10 percent of all farmers got their start under its terms (most farmers bought their land outright) and nearly half the homesteaders lost their claim.

• Farmers were willing to pay hefty prices.33© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Populating the Plains

Railroads held great power in developing and settling the West.

Railroads delivered crops and cattle to eastern markets and brought back goods.

Railroads put communities “on the map.”Railroads in the West preceded settlement.Professional promoters were sent to Europe and throughout the United States to recruit settlers.

Immigrants formed tight-knit communities.Many groups retained their native languages and customs.


In 1887, Lizzie Chrisman filed the first homestead claim on Lieban Creek in Custer County, Nebraska. Joined by her three sisters, she is shown here standing in front of her sod cabin. “Soddies,” as these small houses were called, were constructed of stacked layers of cut prairie turf, which were eventually fortified by a thick network of roots. The roofs, often supported by timber, were usually covered with more sod, straw, and small branches.


Work, Dawn to Dusk

Farm families survived and prospered through hard work.

Men’s work tended to be seasonal.Women’s activities were usually more routine.Children worked running errands and completing chores by about age nine.

Community was an important part of life.People depended on neighbors for help in times of need and for a break from the hard work and harsh climate.

The barter system developed due to lack of cash.


Part Seven:

The World’s Breadbasket


New Production Technologies

Preparing western lands for cultivation was a difficult process because of the tough sod. New technologies greatly increased the amount of land that could be farmed. Through federal aid, land-grant colleges, and other sources of scientific research, farmers developed new techniques for cultivation. Table: Hand v. Machine Labor on the Farm, ca. 1880


Producing for the Global Market

Most farmers produced primarily for the cash market and adapted their crops.Wheat farmers, in particular, prospered. Startup costs for a farm could keep a family in debt for decades.

The large capitalized farmer had the advantage over the small one.


This “thirty-three horse team harvester” was photographed at the turn of the century in Walla Walla, Washington. Binding the grain into sheaves before it could hit the ground, the “harvester” cut, threshed, and sacked wheat in one single motion.


California Agribusiness

California led the way toward large-scale commercial farming that defined agribusiness.

By the turn of the century California had become the showcase for heavily capitalized farm factories employing large numbers of tenant and migrant workers.

Fruit and vegetable growers manipulated consumer tastes to create new markets for their products.


This painting by the British-born artist Thomas Hill (1829–1908) depicts workers tending strawberry fields in the great agricultural valley of Northern California. Chinese field hands, such as the two men shown here, supplied not only cheap labor but also invaluable knowledge of specialized fruit and vegetable crops. SOURCE: Thomas Hill, Irrigating at Strawberry Farm, Santa Clara, 1888. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.


The Toll on the Environment

Map: The Establishment of National Parks and ForestsFarmers destroyed existing plant and animal species and introduced new ones.Replacing buffalo with cattle and sheep, introduced animals that ate grasses down to the roots and created the possibilities of huge dust storms. Commercial agriculture took a heavy toll on existing water supplies.The federal government created the Forest Service to safeguard watersheds.


MAP 18.5 The Establishment of National Parks and Forests The setting aside of land for national parks saved large districts of the West from early commercial development and industrial degradation, setting a precedent for the later establishment of additional parks in economically marginal, but scenic, territory. The West, home to the vast majority of park space, became a principal site of tourism by the end of the nineteenth century.


Part Eight:

The Western Landscape


Nature’s Majesty

Writers described in great detail the wonder of nature’s majesty in the West. The federal government created national parks in 1872, naming Yellowstone the first. Landscape painters from the Rocky Mountain School piqued the public’s interest in the West.


Albert Bierstadt became one of the first artists to capture on enormous canvases the vastness and rugged terrain of western mountains and wilderness. Many other artists joined Bierstadt to form the Rocky Mountain School. In time, the camera largely replaced the paintbrush, and most Americans formed an image of these majestic peaks from postcards and magazine illustrations.


The Legendary Wild West

More popular presentations emphasized the West as a source of “vigorous manhood.”

Thousands of “dime novels” appeared that portrayed the region in romantic, heroic terms.

Wild West show promoters like “Buffalo Bill” Cody brought the legendary West to millions of people around the world.



Born Phoebe Ann Moses in 1860, Annie Oakley was a star attraction in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Dubbed “Little Sure Shot” by Chief Sitting Bull, Oakley traveled with Cody’s show for seventeen years. This poster from 1901 advertises her sharp-shooting talents.

“American Primitive”

The West continued to captivate American imagination.

The public sought depictions of bold cowboys and exotic savages.

Charles Schreyvogel, Charles Russell, and Frederic Remington helped to shape Americans’ perception of the region.

Scholars like Lewis Henry Morgan and Alice Cunningham Fletcher studied Indians and began to develop a scientific understanding of their lives.

The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts incorporated a large dose of tribal lore into their character-building programs.


Part Nine:

The Transformation of Indian Societies


Reform Policy and Politics

Reformers like Helen Hunt Jackson advocated policies designed to promote Indian assimilation and eradicate distinct tribal customs.

The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was a disaster for most Indians and undermined tribal sovereignty.

Individuals were granted land if they chose to sever from their tribes.

Indian religions and sacred ceremonies were banned along with the telling of Indian myths.

“Indian schools” forbade Indian clothing styles, language, and even hair fashions.


The Ghost Dance

A Paiute prophet, Wovoka, had a vision that a divine judgment was coming and led the Sioux to practice the Ghost Dance.

White authorities grew fearful and demanded an end to the practice.

An incident led whites to gun down 200 people at Wounded Knee.



The celebrated artist Frederic Remington (1861–1909) produced this sketch of Oglala Sioux at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Published in the popular magazine Harper’s Weekly, Remington’s depiction of the ghost dance of 1890 showed dancers in vividly patterned robes and shirts, some decorated with stars symbolizing the coming of a new age for the Indians.

SOURCE: Oglala Sioux performing the Ghost Dance at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Illustration by Frederic Remington, 1890. The Granger Collection.

Endurance and Rejuvenation

Those tribes that survived best were those living on land unwanted by whites. A majority of tribes dwindled to the brink of extinction; some even disappeared. The Navajo, Hopi, and northwestern tribes managed to adapt to the new situation or were sufficiently isolated to survive. The traditional way of life for most was gone. It was several generations before a resurgence of Indian sovereignty occurred.


Part Ten:

Conclusion


chapter 18 conquest and survival the trans-mississippi west 1860-1900 chapter 18 conquest and...

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