1. The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896
Cover Slide
The American Pageant
Chapter 26
The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution,
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2. Coxey's Army
Coxey's Army
Jacob Coxey's "army" of the unemployed reaches the outskirts of Washington, D.C., in Note the new electrical or telephone poles. (Library of Congress)
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3. Gold miners with sluice, c. 1850
At first, gold miners worked individually, each with a shovel and pan. By the 1850s devices like the one shown here, a "long tom," were making mining a cooperative venture. Miners shoveled clay, dirt, and stone into a long and narrow box, hosed in water at one end, stirred the mixture, and waited for the finer gravel, which might include gold, to fall through small holes and lodge under the box. (The Hallmark Photographic Collection, Hallmark Cards, Inc. Kansas City, Missouri)
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4. King Debs
King Debs
This famous cartoon about the Pullman strike, originally published July 14, 1894, in Harper's Weekly, shows Eugene Debs, head of the American Railway Union, sitting atop a railway bridge that has been turned to cut off all rail traffic. The railroad cars behind him are labeled "fresh vegetables," "beef," and "fruit," to emphasize the perishable nature of the products that could not be delivered, and others are identified as "U.S. Mail." In the background, factories have "closed" signs on them. This cartoon, and others like it, helped to mobilize opinion against the strikers. (Library of Congress)
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5. Red Cloud's Delegations, 1868
Red Cloud (seated, second from left), with other Oglala Sioux, visited President Grant at the White House to argue for his people's right to trade at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. His clothing, unlike the traditional Native American dress of the other chiefs, reflected his desire to negotiate with whites on equal terms. ( National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
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6. Map: Agricultural Regions, 1889-1900
In the Pacific Northwest and east of the 28-inch-rainfall line, farmers could grow a greater variety of crops. Territory west of the line was either too mountainous or too arid to support agriculture without irrigation. The grasslands that once fed buffalo herds now could feed beef cattle.
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7. Map: Mining and Cattle Frontiers, 1860-1890
The western mining and ranching bonanzas lured thousands of Americans hoping to get rich quick.
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8. Map: Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1860-1890
The West was not settled by a movement of peoples gradually creeping westward from the East. Rather, settlers first occupied California and the Midwest and then filled up the nation's vast interior.
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9. Map: The Development and Natural Resources of the West
By 1890 mining, lumbering, and cattle ranching had penetrated many areas west of the Mississippi River, and railroads had linked together the western economy. These characteristics, along with the spread of agriculture, contributed to the Census Bureau's observation that the frontier had disappeared; yet, as the map shows, large areas remain undeveloped.
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10. Map: The Oklahoma Land Rush, 1889-1906
Lands in Oklahoma not settled by "Sooners" were sold by lotteries, allotments, and sealed-bid auctions. By 1907 the major reservations had been broken up, and each Native American family had been given a small farm.
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11. Map: U.S. Territorial Expansion in the Late Nineteenth Century
The major period of U.S. territorial expansion abroad came in a short burst of activity in the late 1890s, when newspapers and some politicians beat the drums for empire.
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12. Map: Western Indian Reservations, 1890
Native-American reservations were almost invariably located on poor-quality lands. Consequently, when the Dawes Severalty Act broke up the reservations into 160-acre farming tracts, many of the semiarid divisions would not support cultivation.
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