The Transformation of the West, 1860–1900 Chapter 15 Conflict and Conquest The Transformation of the West, 1860–1900

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CONFLICT AND CONQUEST: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WEST, 1860-1900 How did the notion of “progress” shape Americans’ vision of western settlement?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CONFLICT AND CONQUEST: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WEST, 1860-1900 Native and Newcomers The Economic Transformation of the West Native Americans Under Siege Resistance and Romanticism

Native and Newcomers Congress Promotes Westward Settlement The Diversity of the Native American West Native American Tribes of the Great Plains The Great Westward Migration

Congress Promotes Westward Settlement What factors led to the uneven results of the Homestead Act? Why was the federal government so eager to assist the companies that built the transcontinental railroad?

Congress Promotes Westward Settlement Trans-Mississippi West - The region of the United States west of the Mississippi River. Homestead Act - Passed in 1862, it provided 160 acres of free land to any settler willing to live on it and improve it for five years; promoted massive westward migration.

Congress Promotes Westward Settlement Transcontinental Railroad - A line spanning the continental United States. Congress helped the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads build it by providing land grants, cash incentives, and loans.

15.1 Claiming a Piece of the American West On January 1, 1863, Daniel Freeman became the first American to file a claim under the Homestead Act. Five years later he received this title, which gave him full ownership of 160 acres of Nebraska farmland. Freeman, shown here more than thirty years after he received a homestead, prospered as a farmer and doctor and served stints as county coroner and county sheriff.

15.2 The Continent Spanned Conscious of the historic significance of the event, workers and officials of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads pose for a photograph while celebrating the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

The Diversity of the Native American West What was the impact of European contact with Indians in the trans-Mississippi West before 1850? What is significant about the diversity of Native American life in the trans-Mississippi West?

15.3 The Major Tribes of the Trans-Mississippi West More than 360,000 Native Americans, constituting some five hundred tribes, lived west of the Mississippi River.

Native American Tribes of the Great Plains How did the introduction of horses change the lifestyle of some Plains Indians?

Native American Tribes of the Great Plains Great Plains - Vast open territory stretching east to west from present-day Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and north to south from North Dakota to Texas.

15.4 Plains Indians Hunting the Buffalo This 1844 painting by George Catlin shows Native American hunters pursuing the buffalo, which they relied upon as a major source of food, clothing, tools, and fuel.

The Great Westward Migration What motivated the many groups that participated in the great migration into the West? Why did railroads promote the migration of immigrants to the West?

The Great Westward Migration Exodusters - More than twenty thousand ex-slaves who in 1879 left violence and poverty in the South to take up farming in Kansas. Mormons - A religious sect founded in upstate New York in 1830. Driven by persecution they headed west in 1846 and settled in a valley in Utah near the Great Salt Lake.

15.5 Seeking a Better Life in the West In response to poverty and mounting violence in the South, more than twenty thousand African Americans known as “Exodusters” migrated to Kansas in 1879–1880 to acquire homesteads and start new lives as independent farmers.

15.6 The Railroads Promote Westward Settlement Railroads placed promotional posters such as this one from 1883 in Eastern cities to entice settlers to head west to settle on land owned by the railroads, much of it acquired in land grants from the federal government.

The Economic Transformation of the West The Railroad Fuels Western Development Hard Times for Farmers The Cattle Kingdom Fortunes Beneath the Ground: The Mining Booms The Environmental Legacy

The Railroad Fuels Western Development How was the development of the American West linked to the economy of the eastern United States? What was the significance of railroad building to the West as a region and to its peoples? How did the railroad shape western economic development?

15.7 The Spread of the Railroad Government loans and land grants helped spread a railroad network across the nation, facilitating economic development and settlement in the West.

Hard Times for Farmers What challenges did American farmers face in their attempts to establish successful farms in the West? What challenges did western farmers face? What aspects of the railroads did western farmers resent?

Hard Times for Farmers The Grange - Originally founded in the fall of 1867 by Oliver H. Kelley as a social and educational society for farmers, it became a major political force in the Midwest in the mid-1870s.

15.8 Homesteading on the Plains Western farmers received 160 acres of free land through the Homestead Act, but success required years of hard work and sacrifices such as living in crude sod houses. This one, in Nebraska, was owned by one of the four Chrisman sisters shown here.

15.9 Warning of the Perils of Monopoly The Grangers saw themselves as reformers trying to warn the American public about the growing danger of powerful railroads to the survival of democracy and individual liberties.

The Cattle Kingdom How did the reality of cowboy life differ from that presented in popular culture?

The Cattle Kingdom The Long Drive - The annual cattle drives of more than 1,000 miles from Texas to the Great Plains that started in 1866 and established the ranching industry in the West.

15.10 African American Cowboys Despite the popular image of cowboys as white men, many were African American and Hispanic.

Fortunes Beneath the Ground: The Mining Booms What significant industries, other than agriculture, developed in the West?

The Environmental Legacy How was the environment of the West altered by human settlement and economic development?

15.11 The Price of Unchecked Economic Development Western states bowed to the powerful and profitable mining industry, leaving its practices unregulated. As a result, methods such as open-pit mining led to serious environmental damage.

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868

Click here to view a larger version of this page. Why did few people heed the warnings of writers like Marsh? Click here to view a larger version of this page.

Native Americans Under Siege Mounting Problems for Native Americans Wars on the Plains War and Conflict in the Far West In Pursuit of a Solution

Mounting Problems for Native Americans What were the critical factors that led to the conquest of Native American tribes and their forced relocation to reservations? What did the government hope to accomplish by signing treaties with Native American tribes? How did negative stereotypes of Native Americans influence government policy?

Mounting Problems for Native Americans Sand Creek Massacre - A massacre of some two hundred Cheyenne Indians on November 29, 1864, in Colorado by a military outfit known as the Colorado Volunteers under Colonel John M. Chivington.

15.12 Promoting an Image of Indian Savagery This 1853 sculpture by Horatio Greenough promoted the idea among white Americans that Native Americans were violent savages.

15.13 Seeing Savagery Greenough’s image became so widely known that a dime novel artist easily adapted it to a Daniel Boone story.

15.14 Evidence of Extermination This mountain of buffalo skulls athered by a fertilizer company attests to the scale of wanton killing of buffalo in the 1870s and 1880s.

Wars on the Plains How did the dependence of the Plains Indians on the buffalo weaken their ability to resist the loss of their lands? How did the victory over Custer and his men ultimately prove very costly to the Plains Indians?

Wars on the Plains Battle of Little Bighorn - Lt. Col. George A. Custer and the Seventh Cavalry are wiped out by a force of Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors on June 25, 1876; hardens white attitudes toward Native Americans.

15.15 The Negative Fallout from Little Bighorn After the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians defeated Custer and the Seventh Cavalry in the Battle of Little Bighorn, negative press coverage hardened white attitudes toward Native Americans. This image appeared in the New York Graphic (August 15, 1876).

War and Conflict in the Far West Why did U.S. government officials embrace a policy of forced assimilation for Native Americans in the late nineteenth century? How did they implement it? Why were Native Americans so resistant to the government’s demand that they settle on reservations?

In Pursuit of a Solution What led reformers like Dawes to believe the break up of reservations would be beneficial to Native Americans? How did the Dawes Act play a key role in the loss of Native American land?

In Pursuit of a Solution Dawes Severalty Act - 1887 law that started the breakup of reservations by offering Native Americans allotments of 160 acres of reservation land to encourage them to become independent farmers.

15.16 Speaking Out for Native American Rights Sarah Winnemucca, a member of the Paiute tribe in California, drew attention to the injustices being suffered by Native Americans through a speaking tour of the Eastern United States and the publication of a book.

15.17 Selling off Reservation Lands This advertisement issued by the federal government in 1911 vividly illustrates the Dawes Severalty Act in action as it exuberantly proclaims a sale of 350,000 acres of Indian land.

15.18 The Loss of Native American Lands Native American land possessions shrank steadily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a combination of treaties, sales, and forced expulsion by white settlers and soldiers. In 1887 the Dawes Severalty Act accelerated this trend by encouraging the breakup of reservations

Before-and-after photos of Chiricahua Apache children at the Carlisle Boarding School, circa 1890.

Click here to view a larger version of this page. What assumptions about Native American culture influenced the boarding school program? Click here to view a larger version of this page.

Resistance and Romanticism Persecution and Persistence Creating Mythical Heroes and Images The West in Art and Literature Historians Reinterpret the American West

Persecution and Persistence What made Wovoka’s message so appealing to Indians and so frightening to military officials?

Persecution and Persistence Wounded Knee Massacre - U.S. soldiers open fire on a group of Sioux Indians on December 29, 1890, killing between two hundred and three hundred.

15.19 Massacre at Wounded Knee In an incident that came to symbolize American brutality toward Native Americans, U.S. soldiers killed between two hundred and three hundred Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, after a tense standoff over the Ghost Dance movement.

Creating Mythical Heroes and Images “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” - A circuslike production begun in 1883 that helped create a romantic and mythological view of the West in the American imagination.

The West in Art and Literature Why did the West become such a popular topic in entertainment and literature? Why did Americans develop and embrace a romanticized vision of the American West in the late nineteenth century? How close was this image to reality?

15.20 The Making of an American Icon Artists such as Charles Russell, who painted this scene, The Herd Quitters, in 1897, played a central role in promoting the cowboy as a symbol of the West as a place of heroism, daring, and manly individualism.

Annie Oakley poses for one of her many studio portraits depicting an idealized image of a frontier woman.

Click here to view a larger version of this page. What traits did Annie Oakley portray to present an ideal woman of the West? Click here to view a larger version of this page.

Historians Reinterpret the American West In what ways did the New Western History differ from traditional accounts of the settlement of the West? How have new Western historians changed the way many Americans understand the history of the West? Why are Native Americans so committed to reshape the interpretation of historic sites like Little Bighorn?

Historians Reinterpret the American West Frontier Thesis - Historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 theory that extolled the positive role the frontier had played in shaping the American character and consequently American institutions.

15.21 Reinterpreting the History of the West After more than 125 years of only commemorating Custer and his men, in 2003 the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn added an Indian Memorial to honor the Native Americans who fell in the battle.