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39 Cards in this Set
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Americans’ settlement moved westward, particularly in the nineteenth century.
• Until the 1840s, the overwhelming majority of Americans lived east of the Mississippi River, but by 1850 the boundaries of the United States stretched to the Pacific and the nation had more than doubled its size. • The revolution in transportation and communication, a growing population, and a booming economy propelled the western surge. • The cost of westward expansion was bloody wars with both the native populations and the Spanish in addition to the conflict over slavery prior t the Civil War. |
Westward Expansion
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Large scale migration to the United States started after the 1848 Gold Rush.
• Worsening political and economic conditions as well as the search for opportunity resulted in over 200,000 Chinese migrating by 1880. They primarily came to the West Coast. • They worked in prospecting and mining for gold and other precious metals until the California Miner’s Tax (see below) forced them out of the field. • They Chinese also worked in orchards, vineyards, and fishing. • Chinese laborers made up 90% of the Central Pacific’s work force that built the transcontinental railroad. • Native American backlash resulted in “anti-coolie” clubs by the 1860s and 1870s and culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States and was renewed in 1892. |
Chinese Migration / Chinese Exclusion Act
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Region between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. Vast domain became accessible to Americans wishing to settle there. Atlases in the 1820s-1850s called the region the "Great American Desert" and many people were convinced this land was a Sahara habitable only to Indians. The phrase was coined by a Major Long during his exploration of the middle of the Louisiana Purchase region.
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Great American Desert, 1820-1850
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Founder and editor of the New York Tribune. He popularized the saying "Go west, young man." Greeley maintained people who were struggling in the East could make their fortunes by going west.
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Horace Greeley, 1840s-1873
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As a result of white “American” miners interest California passed two taxes against foreign miners.
• The first was the Foreign Miners License Law (1850), charging all non-U.S. citizens $20 per month. The fee proved so high the law was repealed the next year. • However, prior to the repeal of the law many Chinese had already left the mining camps for San Francisco, where they soon established themselves in the city's business community and created America's first "Chinatown." • Some new Chinese immigrants continued to prospect (approximately 1/3 of immigrants to California in 1852 were Chinese). Chinese prospectors faced increasingly harsh treatment at the hands of their fellow miners. The legislature adopted the California Miner’s Tax which charged non-U.S. citizens a tax of $4 per month. • Both of these taxes illustrated the strength of Nativism and racism in the American West (white miners were usually willing to tolerate non-English speaking white Europeans). |
California Miner’s Tax, 1852
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Construction of the Railroad started with the passage of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862. Many Irish and Chinese immigrants worked on the railroad. The two companies hired to build the railroad, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific completed the line in Promontory, Utah, in 1869. The railroad aided the development of the Great Plains and the integration of the western territories into the rest of the Union.
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Transcontinental Railroad, 1862-1869
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In December, 1866, the U.S. offered to buy Alaska from Russia.
• Russia was eager to give it up, as the fur resources had been exhausted, and, expecting friction with Great Britain, they preferred to see defenseless Alaska in U.S. hands. • Since Americans viewed Alaska unfit for farming or settlement, Alaska was called "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox" since Secretary of State William Seward, an eager expansionist, was an energetic supporter of the Alaskan purchase and negotiator of the deal. The U.S. brought it in 1867 for $7,200,000 and this gave the U.S. Alaska's resources of fish, timber, oil and gold. |
“Seward’s Icebox” / “Seward’s Folly” / Purchase of Alaska, 1867
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Former Indian territory was opened to white settlement in 1889. Possession was through a land run – whoever could stake their claim first. Some 50,000 settlers competed in the race and it marked the last of the govt. lands being opened for settlement in the West.
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Oklahoma Land Rush, 1889
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The opinion offered by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, arguing that the existence of a frontier shaped American identity.
• Turner feared that westward expansion had eroded the frontier and that, without it, American would lose the high drama of struggle that made it unique. • Jackson’s thesis was also sometimes referrer to as the “safety-valve thesis” as he argued the frontier, as a place of opportunity and escape, acted as a “safety valve” to defuse social discontent in America. |
Frederick Jackson Turner / “Frontier thesis” / “Safety valve thesis,” 1893
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Republican act passed during Lincoln’s first term.
• Granted 160 acres of land to anyone who paid a $10 fee and pledged to live on and farm it for five years. • Although there was a good deal of fraud, the act encouraged a large migration to the West. Between 1862-1900, almost 600,000 families claimed homesteads under its provisions. • Many homesteaders do not make a go of it due to difficult farming conditions 160 acres was not really enough land for a viable farm in the arid West) and low crop prices. |
Homestead Act of 1862
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The 1862 Act was passed by the Republicans during the Civil War.
• Each state govt. was given substantial grants of public land, based on their number of representatives in Congress, to sell and use the proceeds to endow and maintain public colleges. • At least one college had to be founded in each state. Besides the classical subjects the college also had to offer mechanical and engineering programs. • A second Morrill Act in 1890 provided annual federal appropriations to help support the colleges. • The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 was responsible for the creation of many new state colleges and universities – the land grant colleges. • Land-grant colleges include the state universities of California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Ohio. • Texas A&M got its start as a small land grant college founded in 1876 named the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. |
Morrill Land Grant Acts, 1862 and 1890
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This was passed partially on the false theory that growing timber increased humidity and maybe rainfall. The act encouraged tree planting and increased the number of acres a homesteader could claim.
• Any settler who planted at least 40 acres in trees could get an additional 160 acres of land. • 10 million acres were given out under this act, but fraud prevented real tree growth. The act was repealed in 1891. |
Timber Culture Act, 1873
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Settlers could buy 640 acres at $1.25 an acre if they irrigated part of their land within three years
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Desert Act, 1877
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Land that was labeled unfit for farming was sold to settlers who wanted to use it for logging and mining.
• Western timberland was sold in 160 acre blocks at $2.50 an acre. • Theoretically, the purchasers had to swear he was buying it for his own use and could buy no more than 160 acres. • Though fraud, wealthy companies obtained title for thousands of acres by hiring men to buy 160 acres blocks and then deeding the land to the companies. |
Timber and Stone Act, 1878
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Little resistance was offered to the occupation of New Mexico by U.S. forces under the command of Gen. Stephen Kearny during the Mexican-American War, largely because most of the local elite cooperated with the American army.
• What resistance was given came from the poorer Mexicans and the Pueblo Indians who feared their land would be confiscated. • The largest uprising, ruthless put down, was the Taos Rebellion, led by Jesus Trujillo and Tomasito, a Pueblo chieftain. • The significance of the Rebellion is the high cost paid by indigenous people for American expansion. In short, the American West was not “empty” and waiting for Americans to occupy it. |
Taos Rebellion, 1847
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New federal govt. policy that divided Indian Territory into defined reservations for each tribe through individual treaties.
• The treaties were often negotiated with Indians who were not acknowledged as leaders by their own people. • The purpose of the policy was to divide the tribes and make them easier to control. • This was replaced in 1867 by the division of all tribes into two large reservations – one in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the other in the Dakotas. |
“Concentration” Indian Policy, 1851-1867
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Infamous massacre of Cheyenne women, children, and men by the Colorado militia at Sand Creek, Colorado.
• Recent gold discoveries pushed Cheyenne and Apache Indians off land the federal govt. had recently guaranteed to them. Instead of enforcing Indian land rights, the govt. forced Indians to relinquish the land except for a small piece designated as the Sand Creek Reservation. • White settlers wanted the Reservation land too and sent Colorado militia under the command of Colonel John Chivington to the Sand Creek camp of a band of Cheyennes. • Chivington ordered his men to “kill and scalp all, big and little.” The sleeping Indians were attacked and slaughtered and their bodies mutilated. • The Massacre outraged many easterners, but westerners, however, justified the brutality as necessary for white opportunity. |
Sand Creek Massacre / John Chivington, 1864
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In 1866 there was an army campaign against the Sioux that failed completely. No Plains Indian tribe was more powerful than the Sioux and entire units deserted in fear and frustration during this offensive.
• The worst defeat of the campaign happened when an army force of 80 men under Captain Fetterman is killed by Cheyenne and Sioux Indians when he led his men into an ambush on the Bozeman Trail. • The Fetterman massacre, as the incident became known, was second only to Custer’s defeat in 1876. |
Fetterman Massacre, 1866
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Name American Indians gave to African American cavalrymen, most of them Civil War veterans stationed in the West to fight the Indians of the 1870s-1880s. Buffalo soldiers served in segregated units and made up the Ninth and Tenth Calvary Units.
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Buffalo soldiers, 1870s-1880s
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Leader of the Chiricahua Apaches which was the last Indian tribe that maintained organized resistance.
• When the United States government attempted to move the Chiricahua Apache people to San Carlos Reservation from their traditional land, Geronimo started a series of raids on white settlements that lasted ten years. • In 1886 Geronimo finally surrendered and this ended the warfare between whites and Indians. Federal troops then moved the Apache and many other tribes to Oklahoma Territory. Geronimo died in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, three years after he published his memoirs. |
Geronimo, 1875-1886
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General George Custer and his regiment of 264 men were killed in Montana by a combined force of 2500 Sioux under the leadership of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
• The Sioux had left the reservation over anger at white miners coming into the Indian Black Hills and the corrupt administration of the reservation by Bureau of Indian Affairs agents. • One of the last great battles because the Sioux lacked the material and political resources to keep their force intact and the bands were then hunted down individually by the U.S. Army. • The Sioux were unable to follow up their victory because they had to divide their forces to find grass for their horses and to hunt for food. The Army hunted down the separate bands. |
Battle of Little Big Horn, 1876
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When the United States govt. attempted to enforce a 1863 treaty to confine the Nez Perce tribe to a reservation, fighting broke out.
• Ordered to take his people out of the Wallowa Valley of the Oregon territory and relocate to a reservation in Idaho, Joseph reluctantly agreed to do so. • However, following the attack of a few Nez Perce warriors on a group of whites, he decided to lead several hundred people on a march to find refuge in Canada. • He defeated United States Army units that tried to stop him on the Big Hole River in Montana, but was stopped a few miles from the border by a U.S. army force. The Nez Perce surrendered after a five-day battle. • His speech “I will fight no more forever” mourned the young Indian men killed in the fighting. • The govt. broke its promise that the band could return to their original reservation and sent them to Oklahoma. Eventually, the few survivors were returned to Washington and Idaho. |
Chief Joseph and Nez Perce War, 1877
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Writer whose book A Century of Dishonor exposed the unjust manner in which the U.S. government had treated the Indians.
• Jackson noted that while several American presidents appointed commissions to find solutions to the problems of the Indians, no real actions were taken on the their findings. • She argued one key was to make Indians citizens so their property and civil rights were protected. It was 1924 before Indians were made citizens. • Jackson’s book was one of the first to argue the Indians’ case and ignore white stereotypes about Indians. |
Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881
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Act intended to force American Indians to assimilate into white culture.
• It provided for tribal land to be divided among individual Indians. • Each head of the family received 160 acres, each single adult or orphan received 80 acres, and each dependent child 40 acres. • Indians did not want to farm or ranch and no instruction was given to them. In conjunction with the distribution of land, Indian children were sent to boarding schools to be educated to abandon tribal culture. • The act was a failure and ultimately abandoned by the govt. due to incompetent and corrupt administration of the program. Under this “reform” the amount of land held by Indians declined by more than half by 1900. |
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
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Created in 1824, it was added to the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1849. The Bureau was responsible for distributing land, making payments, and overseeing the shipment of supplies. It was corrupt and most of the agents were appointed through patronage. The agents were incompetent and corrupt, but even the honest ones had no understanding of Indian culture. The Bureau’s corrupt and incompetent administration of the reservations was responsible a great amount of the conflict between whites and Indians.
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Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1824
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A religious movement among the Plains Indians. As part of the effort to assimilate Indians and also due to the influence of Protestant religious groups the federal govt. began suppressing Indian religions in the 1880s.
• Indians believed the Ghost Dance would reunite them with friends and relatives in the ghost world. • Eventually, desperate Indians began dancing and singing the songs they believed would cause the world to open up and swallow all other people while the Indians and their friends would remain on this land, which would return to its beautiful and natural state. • The unity and fervor that the Ghost Dance Movement created fear and hysteria among white settlers which ultimately contributed to the events ending in the massacre at Wounded Knee. |
Ghost Dance, 1890
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assacre that occurred when the U.S. Army, jittery over the Indian religious revival that promised a restoration of Indian power and featured a “Ghost Dance,” were sent to round up 350 starving Sioux. Whoever fired the first shot, it ended with 200 Indians, included women and children, dead from machine gun fire.
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Wounded Knee, 1890
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The absorption of dominant cultural values and customs by a minority group. Immigrant groups and Indians throughout U.S. history have struggled with pressures to assimilate into U.S. society
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Assimilation
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Cattle drives consisted of 2000-5000 head of cattle and covered hundreds of miles from Texas to northern railheads.
• By 1866 Texas longhorns numbered about 5 million head, but cattle prices in Texas were at rock bottom. • However, industrial expansion in the East and Midwest meant there was a market for beef. The key was to establish a shipping point on the railroads west of the settled farming regions. • The first step was taken by Joseph McCoy who established stockyards at Abilene, Kansas which was the western railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. |
“Long Drives” / Cattle Drives, 1866-1887
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Referred to the great grasslands of public land on the Great Plains where ranchers could graze their cattle at no charge. It ended by the late 1880s when farmers moved into the region and the open range is destroyed. The end of open range ranching hurt small, independent farmers
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Open Range Ranching, 1866-late 1880’s
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He marketed the first barbed wire, solving the problem of how to fence cattle in the vast open spaces of the Great Plains where lumber was scarce, thus changing the American West.
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Barbed wire, / Joseph Glidden, 1873
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Frontier settlements created practically overnight following the news of a gold or silver strike. A high ratio of men to women and a transient population contributed to their rough-and-tumble atmosphere. An 1879 business census of Leadville, Colorado reported 10 dry-goods stores, 4 banks, 4 churches, but 120 saloons, 19 beer halls, and 118 gambling houses
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Boomtowns, 1850s -1890s
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Gold was discovered in what would soon be the the territory of Colorado. 50,000 prospectors came in from Calfornia and the East. Denver and other mining camps became “cities” overnight, although the boom ended as quickly as it started.
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Pike’s Peak, 1859
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A rich deposit of gold and silver discovered in Nevada on Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range.
• It was named for the California prospector Henry T. P. Comstock, who first laid claim to the land on which the lode was found. • Following the discovery prospectors rushed to the area, and mining camps in the vicinity, such as the boomtown Virginia City (now a virtual ghost town), became thriving centers of fabulous wealth. • Over $300 million in gold and silver were extracted from the lode in the first 20 years. • Wasteful and intensive exploitation of the mines and the halt in silver dollar coinage started a decline in excavations about 1874 that ended in the virtual abandonment of the lode in 1898. |
Comstock Lode, 1859
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Gold was discovered in the Black Hills of southwestern Dakota Territory. Just as with other strikes the boom period is shortlived and the Dakotas ultimately has a largely agricultural economy.
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Black Hills, 1874
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Wrote humorous short stories about the American West, popularized the use of regional dialects as a literary device. Notable stories included “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.” Harte set a style in America fiction that veered away from preachy characters to sketchier characters with a heart of gold.
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Bret Harte, 1860s-1902
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Garland grew up on farms and knew the hardships of Midwest farming.
• His personal experiences prompted his advocacy of economic reform and furnished the central themes of his numerous short stories. These stories, bitter denunciations of the grim conditions of American farm life, were collected and published under the titles Main-Travelled Roads (1890) and Other Main-Travelled Roads (1910). • His best-known work is Son of the Middle Board (1917) and Daughter of the Middle Border (1921) autobiographical novels about the frustrations of farm life. • Garland was also a supporter of Indians and was one of the first authors to write accurately and sympathetically about them. |
Hamlin Garland, 1880s-1940
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Wister was a Harvard educated lawyer who established a literary career by the mid 1890s. His best known work was The Virginian (1902), a Western novel which romanticized the cowboy as a man at ease with nature, little formal education, but endowed with a natural decency and courage. One of the most known and best of the new western literature that became so popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
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Owen Wister, early 1900s
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Painter and sculptor whose work romanticized the Old West. His works were action-packed and colorful, often containing heroic portrayals of cowboys, Indians, soldiers, prospectors and the settlers of the Great Plains.
His paintings are admired for their unsentimental naturalism. Two of his best known sculptures are Bronco Buster (1895) and Comin' Through the Rye (1902) in which four cowhands on horseback charge at the observer in glee. |
Frederic Remington, (1861-1909)
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