1. Moving West

2. Push-Pull Factors
Led people to push (forced) or pull (attract) them to move west
Southeastern farmland (expensive)
Sheltered outlaws on the run
Adventure, fresh start, imagination

3. Homestead Act Signed by Lincoln
Small fee = 160 acres of land (1/4 mile)
Rules:
At least 21 years old or head of a family
American citizen or immigrant filing for citizenship
Build house a minimum size (12 feet by 14 feet)
Live in house 6 months out of year
Farm land 5 yrs in a row before ownership set
372,000 new farms ,000land claims – 80 million acres

4. Morrill Land-Grant Act (1862)
Congress gave millions of acres to state governments
Goal was to sell land and raise money to create “land grant” colleges (agriculture and mechanical arts)
States sold land to banks and land speculators
Land speculator: people who buy up land in the hope of selling it for profit in the future.

6. Native American Conflict
Great Plains: area of land between Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains.
Native Americans vs. New Settlers
Deemed settlers as invaders
Sacred land invaded
Indians were nomads
Move from place to place…why?
Food, survival, buffalo

7. Reservations Federal land set aside for Native Americans
Native Americans fought back
Sandy Creek Massacre (1864) - Colorado
Battle of Little Big Horn (1876) – Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana
Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) – South Dakota

8. Assimilation: Dawes Act (1887):
attempt in which one society becomes a part of another, more dominant society by adopting its culture
Dawes Act (1887):
Divided reservations into individual plots.

9. Boomers and Sooners
Two million unsigned acres of land of native americans
Bought by Congress
April 22, 1889
Boomers:
legally staked claims on this land
Sooners:
snuck passed government officials early in the morning hours to mark their claims.
By sundown, 2 million acres claimed!!

10. Far and Away We will now watch a scene from the movie, Far and Away
with
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
Westward Expansion
Oklahoma in the late 1800s.

11. Hardships Lived in soddies Livable homestead cost ($1000)
Homes made of sod: grass, root and dirt. ($3.00)
Livable homestead cost ($1000)
Difficulty farming for five years to claim land
Bugs:
grasshoppers, locusts
ate wheat, rye barley fields
mosquitos
Carried disease
Drought
Reduced land productivity

12. New Farming techniques
Barbed wire
Dry farming
Steel plow
Steel windmill
Hybridization
Grain Drill

13. Mining, Ranching, Farming
GOLD RUSH
“gold everywhere you stick your shovel”
$400 million in gold and silver
Placer mining: running water over boxed dirt looking for gold and silver particles

14. Cowboys 25 million buffalo killed (1840-1889) Long drive:
Herding of thousands of cattle from one cattle ranch to another
1867: 35,000 cattle driven
1881: 250,000 cattle driven