the great west and the agricultural revolution, 1865 - 1896 ap u.s. history chapter 26
TRANSCRIPT
The Great West and the Agricultural
Revolution, 1865 - 1896
AP U.S. History
Chapter 26
THE CLASH OF CULTURES ON THE
PLAINS • Flood of whites to the area of Great Plains after Civil War
• Plains Indians: 360,000 in 1860. • By 1890, entire area carved into states except for five
territories. • Pioneers poured into the area in one of the most rapid settlements of such a vast area in all history.
Plains Indians …
• Horse (Spanish) , Guns (British) – nomadic – war-like
• buffalo-hunting
Indians and the Government
• Federal gov’t - treaties – frequently violated• Pressure for Indian lands• Policy intensified 1860s; Indians - smaller areas –
"relocation."
• Bureau of Indian Affairs • Some peacefully, others (about 100,000) resisted…
RECEDING NATIVE POPULATION
• 1868-1890 - constant warfare - Indians
& whites.
• U.S. troops largely made of Civil War veterans – Led by Sherman, Custer
Chief Black Kettle
• Sand Creek Massacre - CO, 1864– Chivington’s militia massacred about 400 Indians
(promised immunity and protective custody by the gov’t.)
Sioux Battles
• Gold - Black Hills of S.D., RR attract settlers
• Sitting Bull • George A. Custer
• Battle of Little Big Horn – Custer’s forces clashed with
2,500 well armed warriors in eastern Montana led by Crazy Horse
– Custer/264 men completely wiped out.
•Ghost Dance – reaffirm culture
Battle of Wounded Knee
Wounded Knee (1890): last major clash between U.S. troops & Indians.
300 Sioux men, women, & children massacred; 60 U.S. soldiers killed
BELLOWING HERDS OF BISON • 15 million in 1868; less
than 1,000 by 1885
• food supply, skins, etc.
• Railroad construction – food supply
• “What strikes the stranger with most
amazement is their immense numbers. I know a million is a great many, but I am confident we saw that number yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could not have stood on ten square miles of ground. Often, the country for miles on either hand seemed quite black with them.”
• An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859Horace Greeley, 1860
• “Suddenly a cloud of dust rose over its crest, and I heard a rushing noise as of a mighty whirlwind, or the charging tramp of ten thousand horse. I had not time to divine its cause, when a herd of buffalo arose over the summit, and a dense mass, thousand upon thousand, gallopped, with headlong speed, directly upon the spot where I stood. . . . Still onward they came—Heaven protect me! it was a fearful sight.”
• "Scenes in the West; or, A Night on the Santa Fe Trail, No. III,"Philip St. George Cooke, Southern Literary Messenger, February 1842
2,000 pounds, six feet tall at the humped shoulders - the Buffalo-"Bison"...Its spirit was praised before every hunt with a tribal ritual dance. The buffalo supplied virtually everything that the Plain Indians needed to stay alive; food, clothing, tools, and housing.A. Brains - hide, preparationB. Skull - ceremonies, sun dance, prayerC. Horns - cups, fire carrier, powderhorn, spoons, ladles, headdresses, signals, toysD. Tongue - best part of meatE. Rawhide - containers, clothing, headdresses, food, medicine bags, shields, buckets, moccasin soles, rattles, drums, drumsticks, splints, cinches, ropes, thongs, saddles, stirrups, knife cases, bull boats, quirts, armbands, lance cases, horse masks, horse forehead ornaments, bullet pouches, beltsF. Buckskin - moccasin tops, cradles, winter robes, bedding, breechclouts, shirts, leggings, belts, dresses, pipe bags, pouches, paint bags, quivers, tipi covers, gun cases, lance covers, coup flag covers, dollsG. Hoof & Feet - glue, rattlesH. Meat - (every part eaten) pemmican (converted), hump ribs - immed., jerky (converted), inner parts eaten on the spotI. Four Chambered Stomach - first stomach content: frostbite & skin diseases, liner: container for carrying and storing water, cooking vesselJ. Bladder - sinew pouches, quill pouches, small medicine bagsK. Skin of hind leg - moccasins or bootsL. Buffalo Chips - fuel, signals, ceremonial smokingM. Tail - medicine switch, fly brush, lodge exterior decorations, whipsN. Bones - knives, arrowheads (ribs) , shovels, splints, winter sleds, arrow straighteners, saddle trees, war clubs, scrapers (ribs), quirts, awls, paint brushes (hipbones), game diceO. Muscles - sinew: bows, thread, arrows, cinches, glueP. Hair - headdresses, saddle pad filler, pillows, ropes, ornaments, halters, medicine ballsQ. Whole Animal - totem, clan symbol, white buffalo sacred, adult yellow rare-prized
Source:Akta Lakota MuseumChamberlain, South Dakota
“Saving” the Indians• Growing number of Americans – outraged by massacres,
abuse of Indian treaties
• Helen Hunt Jackson: A Century of Dishonor (1881)– gov’t ruthlessness, deceit toward Indians.
– Inspired assimilation "for their own good."
• Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 - Dissolved many tribes as legal entities
– Wiped out tribal ownership of land - allotment of
160 free acres – (turn Indians into landowners/farmers!)
– ASSIMILATION!!!!!– If Indians "behaved" like "good white settlers," -
citizenship in 25 years.
• By 1934 – Indian acreage decreased by 65%, what was given to Indians was dry/gravelly and couldn’t farm
MINING: FROM DISHPAN TO ORE BREAKER
• Mineral-rich areas of the West - first to be settled. • Pike’s Peak, Colorado - 1858 • Comstock Lode (Nevada) - 1859 (gold and silver) • Boom towns then Ghost towns
– Example – Virginia City, NE
• Corporations
Ghost Town in Arizona
Tombstone, AZ
Significance of mining
• Attracted population and wealth to the Wild West • Finance Civil War • Facilitated building of the railroads• Intensified conflict between whites and Indians• Enabled gov’t to resume specie payments in 1879
• Introduced silver issue into politics
BEEF BONANZAS AND THE LONG DRIVE
• TX - several million cattle• Transcontinental railroad facilitated
transportation of meat to cities • Beef tycoons like the Swifts
and Armours emerged
• Refrigerator cars
• Who feeding???An early refrigerator car design, circa 1870. Hatches in the roof provided access to the ice tanks at each end of the car.
"Long Drive" • Mexican ranchers • Cowboys - railroad terminal • Challenges to the “long drive”
– Homesteaders built barbed-wire (invented by Joseph Glidden) fences - too numerous to be cut down by the Cowboys.
– Terrible winter of 1885-86 & 1886-1887 followed by scorching summer killed thousands of steer.
– Overgrazing
Cowboys herd cattle on a ranch in Colorado.
THE FARMERS’ FRONTIER
• Homestead Act of 1862 • 160 acres of land by living on it 5 yrs,
improving it, paying a small fee averaging about $30 (as low as $10)
• Land given away to
encourage settlement of West
Requirement – improve the land!!
Application for Homestead Proof of Improvements
Daniel Freeman
• About 500,000 pioneer families migrated west. • 2/3 - forced to give up - inadequate plots – too dry
and 160 acres not enough. • Good land went to Railroads, land speculators
(only 1 out of every 9 acres went to the people for whom it was intended!!)
A homesteader family stands near their home in Florissant, Colorado.
Living in a “soddy”
THE FAR WEST COMES OF AGE
• 1888-1889: 6 new States
• Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889 - Nearly 100, 000 "boomers" – "Sooners" – land-grabbers who claimed land illegally
before land rush began.
• In 1890, census - first time in U.S. History, a frontier line no longer existed! – Once frontier was gone, farmers could not move west
in significant numbers.
The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889.
Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, five days after the Oklahoma land rush of April 22, 1889. Perhaps as many as 20,000 prospective landowners surged into what was formerly Indian Territory.
THE FADING FRONTIER
• "Safety valve" theory - Americans known for their mobility – farmers rarely remained in same place –hard times - moved west.
• Free acreage did lure immigrant farmers who would otherwise have lived in overcrowded eastern slums. There was the POSSIBILITY of westward migration.
• Frederick Jackson Turner - argued closing of the frontier had ended an era in American history.
THE FARM BECOMES A FACTORY
• Farmers - single cash-crop
• World’s breadbasket
• Massive migration of white and black Americans out of Southern Cotton Belt.
• Commercial agriculture run by big businesses – “Bonanza Farms”
DEFLATION DOOMS THE DEBTOR
• "Crop lien" system - impossible for farmer to get out of debt.
• Deflated currency, low food prices chief worries among farmers.
• Natural disasters – bugs, floods, drought• Government-added woes:
– Farmers’ land often overvalued – high taxes– Protective tariffs – trusts – Railroads – high rates ignored
UNHAPPY FARMERS • Mother Nature unleashed powerful forces
on the farmers:– Grasshoppers and cotton-boll weevil– Floods led to erosion in south – Droughts in west
THE FARMERS TAKE THEIR STAND
• National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (The Grange) 1867 - social & educational activities – Oliver Kelley
• Granger (state) Laws - wanted gov't control over big business to benefit the people.
• Munn vs. Illinois (1877)• Wabash case (1886)• Greenback Labor Party
Rise of Populist Party • Farmers’ Alliances - like Grangers, sponsored
social events, political action, cooperatives, and gov't regulation of railroads and manufacturers.
• The People’s Party (Populist Party) early 1890s through the
Farmer’s Alliances (started in
Topeka, Kansas).• Ignatius Donnelly • Mary E. Lease Populist Party convention held
at Columbus, Nebraska, July 15, 1890
COXEY’S ARMY AND THE PULLMAN STRIKE
• Coxey’s Army (1894) - unemployed on Washington, DC – Coxey’s platform included a demand for gov’t to
relieve unemployment by an inflationary public works program + increase money supply by $500 million
• Pullman Strike, 1894 Eugene V. Debs helped organize American Railway Union
– First time gov’t used an injunction to break a strike
GOLDEN MCKINLEY AND SILVER BRYAN
• Election of 1896 • William McKinley - Republican • William Jennings Bryan – Democrat• Democrats refused to endorse Cleveland for his
silver-purchase repeal, Pullman Strike action, and Morgan bond deal; move suicidal to the party’s hopes in 96’ -- Cleveland left office an extremely unpopular man.
• Cross of Gold speech given at Democratic convention in
Chicago -- "We will answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them: ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
• Democratic platform: unlimited coinage of silver (16 to 1). Bryan - People’s party
Cynical political cartoon of the speech from the magazine Judge.
CLASS CONFLICT: PLOWHOLDERS VERSUS BONDHOLDERS
• Silver issue at the forefront • McKinley defeated Bryan 271-176 • McKinley won Northeast and North (HOW?????);
Bryan in South & West • Legacy of Populism - Populism failed as a 3rd
Party • Populist ideas that carried forward during the
Progressive Era (1900-1920): railroad legislation, graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, initiative, referendum and recall
REPUBLICAN STAND-PATTISM
ENTHRONED • Tariff rates – 46.5%
• Gold Standard Act of 1900 - Paper money was to be redeemed freely in gold; end to pro-silver movement