1. Ch. 24: Tensions in the West

2. Objectives Students will
Describe the purpose, challenges, and economic incentives associated with westward expansion, including accounts of the removal of Indians and the settlement of the Great Plains.
Identify the reasons for the development of federal Indian policy and the wars with American Indians and their relationship to agricultural development and industrialization.

3. Manifest Destiny & Territorial Expansion
From 1803 to 1853, the U.S. expanded from coast to coast.
It had achieved Manifest Destiny, the belief that God had wanted the U.S. to reach from one end of the continent to the other.

4. Introduction
Thousands of Americans moved West following the Civil War.
Many were miners, ranchers, farmers, and railroad builders.
The railroad made it easier for people and goods to travel to and from the West.
But as people and the railroads moved West, they pushed Native Americans off their lands.
Some Native Americans tried to resist by fighting back, but most ended up living in small areas of land known as reservations.

5. The Nez Percé
The Nez Percé were among the friendliest of all western Indians toward whites.

6. The Nez Percé
In 1805, they had saved Lewis and Clark and their expedition from starvation and had never killed a white person.
But their friendship with whites was broken in the 1860s when miners moved into their land looking for gold. Settlers soon followed.

7. Some groups of Nez Percé signed treaties in which they agreed to give up their land and move to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho.
When other groups of Nez Percé refused to sign any treaty, the U.S. government threatened to remove them by force.

8. One Nez Percé leader, Chief Joseph, agreed to move because he feared fighting a war he could not win.
However, some Chief Joseph’s young warriors were upset by this decision and slipped out of camp one night and murdered several whites.
Chief Joseph knew that the killings would bring soldiers to punish his people.
“I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever” – Chief Joseph

9. For three months, Chief Joseph led his people north to Canada, hoping that it might offer his people a chance to live free.
At the same time, the U.S. Army chased them over more than 1,000 miles of rugged mountain country.
They crossed the treacherous Great Divide three times.

10. The chase ended less than 40 miles from the Canadian border.
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce warriors fought valiantly, but they were greatly outnumbered. Eventually, Chief Justice was forced to surrender after losing over half of his men.

11. Chief Joseph’s and his followers were sent to a barren reservation in Oklahoma where they began to fall sick and die.
Chief Joseph begged the government to allow his people to join the rest of the Nez Percé people in Lapwai.
While some did go to Lapwai, others, including Chief Joseph, were sent to the Colville Reservation in Washington.

12. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce (This picture was taken Spring 1877 – Just months before they surrendered)

13. The Homestead Act
In 1861, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which offered farmers 160 acres of public land in the West for free. All the farmer had to do was clear the land and farm it for five years.
The promise of free land drew many settlers west and greatly increased the number of American farms.
Between 1860 and 1910, the number of farms in the U.S. tripled from 2 million to more than 6 million.

14. The Pacific Railroad Act
In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, which called for the building of a transcontinental railroad to link the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. In other words, a railroad that would stretch from one end of the country to the other.
Two railroad companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, were given the job of building this railroad.
Congress loaned them more than $60 million to get started and offered them free land for every mile of track they laid.

15. The Pacific Railroad Act
By 1900, the railroads had laid 170,000 miles of track and “rail barons” like the Central Pacific’s Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker made vast fortunes.
The railroads greatest effect was opening the West to new settlers, including farmers, ranchers, and miners – all of whom had dreams of getting rich out west.

16. The Railroad Builders

17. The Union Pacific Builds West

18. The Railroad Builders Groups Involved
The Union Pacific started in Nebraska and built tracks westward across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
Most of the workers were Irish immigrants from the slums of eastern cities.
Other workers were other immigrants,
ex-soldiers, Mexicans, and freed slaves.

20. Railroad vs. the Buffalo

21. The Railroad Builders Why They Moved West
All were young men who needed and craved adventure
Mostly they wanted to start new lives in the open spaces of the west.

22. The Union Pacific Builds West: Some Problems they Faced
The workers lived in tent cities that followed the tracks west. These portable towns were tough and dangerous and many died. There were many accidents.
As the railroad moved west, it invaded the homeland of the Plains Indians and led to the slaughter of millions of buffalo.
The buffalo were the Plains Indians main source of food, so to stop the slaughter many Native American warriors attacked the work crews and derailed supply trains by prying up sections of track.
In response, the U.S. government sent in 5,000 troops to guard the crews as they worked.

23. The Central Pacific Builds East

24. The Central Pacific Builds East
As the same time that the Union Pacific was building west, the Central Pacific was building east, starting in California and laying tracks across the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Great Basin.
Soon after the company began laying track, many of the workers left to newly discovered silver mines in Nevada.

25. The Central Pacific Builds East
Charles Crocker, the head of construction, hired 50 Chinese workers out of desperation.
They worked so well that he sent agents to China to recruit more.
More than 12,000 Chinese laborers would go on to work on the railroad with more than a 1,000 of them losing their lives from explosions, snow slides, and other accidents.

26. The Two Lines Meet at Promontory Point, Utah

27. The Unofficial Photo

28. Railroad Builders Role in Western Development
These network of railroads would…
- bring new settlers to the west
- encourage the building of towns and cities
- allow mail and supplies to be shipped clear across the country.

29. The Transcontinental Railroad

30. The Miners
In the West, miners moved into areas and quickly set up towns.
They were fortune hunters seeking
gold and silver
These instant towns had no govt., no
law and little order. Robbery and murder were
common.
Mining damaged the land and displaced Native Americans, but it also created cities and opened the West’s mountains and deserts to other settlers.
Some old mining towns, like Reno and Denver, are prosperous cities today.

31. Ranchers and Cowboys
Another group of settlers in the West were ranchers and the cowboys who tended their herds of cattle.
Many were young adventurers (Texans, Mexican Americans and African Americans)
They were looking to make profits from cattle sales (Cattle worth $5 in Texas was worth $50 in New York or Chicago.

32. The Extermination of the Buffalo
The railroads made the rancher’s task easier.
As the railroads moved onto the Great Plains, buffalo hunters followed.
The hunters killed huge numbers of buffalo for their hides and bones, which they shipped by rail for sale in the East.
In 1874, Congress tried to stop the slaughter of the buffalo, but President Grant refused to sign the bill into law.
By 1880, almost all of the buffalo had vanished.
With their food gone, the Plains Indians had little choice but to move to reservations.

33. Ranchers and Cowboys: Problems they Faced
Being a cowboy was dangerous and low paying work.
They worked long hours, they often were stampeded by herds of cattle, cow towns were dangerous (drinking, gambling and fighting) and the freezing weather made life difficult for the cowboy and the cattle. Whole herds of cattle froze to death.

34. Ranchers and Cowboys: Their Role in Western Development
They had much to be proud of…
- they opened the Great Plains to settlement
- they created an industry that remains an important part of life in the West today.

35. Homesteaders Arrive
By 1900, around 500,000 homesteaders had moved onto the Great Plains.
Many were farm families from the East who came because of the promise of free or cheap land.
Others were former slaves or European immigrants, seeking land to help them start new lives.
One group of immigrants, Russian Mennonites, came west looking for religious freedom.

36. Challenges & Solutions: Housing
CHALLENGE: The plains had few trees, so there was little wood for homes.
SOLUTION: Instead of using wood, they built their houses out of chunks of sod (mats of soil held together by grassy roots).

37. Challenges & Solutions: Water
CHALLEGE: There was unreliable rainfall on the Great Plains.
SOLUTION: They used windmills to pump water from deep in the ground.

38. Challenges & Solutions: Crops
CHALLENGE: Some years the crops withered under the hot prairie sun. Other years clouds of locusts, or large grasshoppers, swept across the plains, eating everything in their path.
SOLUTION: The Russian Mennonites introduced a type of winter wheat that thrived on the plains.

39. The Homesteaders: Their Role in Western Development
With hard work and the right crop, homesteaders made the Great Plains the most productive wheat-growing region in the world.

40. Congress’s New Indian Policy
In 1867, Congress tried to separate Indians and settlers by moving the Indians onto reservations (areas of land set aside by the government for Native Americans – generally on poor land that settlers didn’t want).
In exchange for their land, the Native Americans were promised food, farm tools, and schools where their children would learn to “live like whites.”

41. Reservation Life
The Plains Indians were nomadic, meaning that they often moved from place to place following the herds of buffalo that were their primary source of food.
They didn’t like being forced to stay on a reservation.

42. Reservation Life
In addition, the food promised them by the U.S. government often failed to arrive.
Sometimes dishonest Indian agents sold it to settlers instead.
Other times, the food was spoiled by the time it reached the Indians.

43. Native American Resistance
Many Native American warriors left the reservations to look for game or to attack settlers, while many Native Americans not yet on the reservations fought to keep their land.
The U.S. Army was authorized to use force to round up Indians and keep them on reservations.
In the 1870s, several wars were fought between Native American tribes and the U.S. government over this issue of land.

44. The Battle of Little Big Horn

45. The Battle of Little Big Horn

46. The Battle of Little Big Horn
This was the most famous battle between the U.S. government and Native Americans.
Indian fighter George Custer led his troops against several thousand Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.

47. The Battle of Little Big Horn
Instead of waiting for reinforcements, Custer attacked and found himself surrounded.
He and his men were all killed in only a few minutes.
Over the following few months, the U.S. army tracked down the Sioux and Cheyenne and forced them onto reservations.

48. Open Your Textbook to pg. 348

49. By 1887, most Native American peoples had been moved onto reservations, leaving almost the entire west open to American settlers.