1. SSUSH12 Evaluate how westward expansion impacted the Plains Indians and fulfilled Manifest Destiny. a. Examine the construction of the transcontinental railroad including the use of immigrant labor. b. Evaluate how the growth of the western population and innovations in farming and ranching impacted Plains Indians. c. Explain the Plains Indians’ resistance to western expansion of the United States and the consequences of their resistance.

2. a. Examine the construction of the transcontinental railroad including the use of immigrant labor.
One of the most important events in the history of railroads and transportation in the US was the completion of the transcontinental rail route in 1869.
There had been various efforts to fund and build a transcontinental rail line since the early 1850s, but the monumental cost and difficulty of construction, and the onset of the Civil War delayed the project. In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, which provided generous subsidies and land grants as an inducement to build the railroad.
Eventually, two companies ( the Union Pacific and Central Pacific) were formed to simultaneously construct a line from Omaha westward, and from Sacramento eastward. The two lines met at Promontory Point, Utah in May Goods and people could now move by rail from coast to coast, shortening the arduous journey across the vast plains and Rocky Mountains from months to days.
Acute labor shortages, especially in the western portions of the railroad, caused a need to import several thousand Chinese laborers to aid the construction of the transcontinental line. These workers helped to build the most dangerous portions of the line through the Sierra Nevada.

7. b. Evaluate how the growth of the western population and innovations in farming and ranching impacted Plains Indians.
Following the adoption of the horse, a unique Native American culture arose on the Great Plains. Plains Indians were dependent on the buffalo, which provided food, clothing and shelter for the largely nomadic Plains groups.
Although Western populations had been steadily growing throughout the mid-1800s, many of the early immigrants were transients on their way to somewhere else: Oregon, California or one of the many mining booms that periodically brought substantial numbers of white Americans westward.
Following the Civil War, several events transpired to significantly increase the number of settlers on the Plains. The Homestead Act encouraged settlement in the west by offering essentially free land to those who would move there, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad made that settlement imminently more possible.
Innovations in farming and ranching also dramatically increased the feasibility of farming on the Plains. John Deere’s steel plow allowed the dense natural sods of the Plains to be uprooted and re-planted with crops, while the development of the mechanical reaper allowed wheat and other cereal crops to be grown on a scale that would be commercially viable. Demand for meat in the growing eastern cities also spurred the introduction of large scale cattle ranching to the Plains.

8. Homesteaders

9. Innovations in Farming

10. b. Evaluate how the growth of the western population and innovations in farming and ranching impacted Plains Indians.
Rapid population growth brought white Americans in much closer contact with Indians on the Plains, often displacing them from their traditional migration routes and causing conflict. Most devastatingly for the Plains Indians, the buffalo herds, once numbering in the millions, had been reduced to near extinction in less than a generation.
White American farmers and ranchers saw the buffalo as a nuisance and impediment to agricultural development in the West, and buffalos were unsparingly slaughtered, depriving Plains Indians of their primary means of subsistence in the process. This left many Plains groups with no choice but to abandon their traditional ways of life and succumb to the demands of the US government.

11. Buffalo Slaughter

12. c. Explain the Plains Indians’ resistance to western expansion of the United States and the consequences of their resistance.
The Indians’ reactions to the flood of homesteaders, ploughing up of the Plains, and the decimation of the buffalo varied from group to group. A series of treaties with the Indians in attempted to address the rapid changes occurring on the frontier by creating reservations of land, and encouraging Indians to adopt white American farming and civilization.
Facing the complete destruction of their former ways of life, some groups felt they had no choice but to adopt sedentary life on the reservations, almost wholly dependent on the US government for their subsistence. Other groups refused to acquiesce, and engaged in armed resistance.
One of the most famous examples of Indian resistance occurred in 1876, at the Battle of Little Big Horn. In a treaty negotiated some years before, the Sioux, a powerful group on the northern Plains, had been granted a large reservation in the Dakota Territory including the Black Hills, which they considered sacred. When gold was discovered there, white prospectors flooded the region, and the Sioux along with some other Indian groups chose to take up arms and resist white encroachment.
At Little Big Horn, the 7th Cavalry of the US Army, led by Civil War hero George Custer, were ambushed by a much larger Indian force. Custer and almost all of his men were killed, leading the army to send a larger force to subdue the Sioux and their allies. Most were eventually forced back onto their reservation, and with the increased army presence in the West, there were subsequently very few victories for the Indians.
Some years later, a spirit of resistance was again kindled among the Sioux and other groups on the Northern Plains, when a shaman (holy man) prophesied an Indian awakening through what became known as the Ghost Dance Movement. Alarmed by the possibility of conflict, the army was again dispatched. In 1890, several hundred Sioux, including women and children, encamped near Wounded Knee Creek were slaughtered by US soldiers. This Massacre at Wounded Knee is often considered the closing chapter of the Plains Indians’ resistance.

14. Little Big Horn-1876

15. Ghost Dance

16. Wounded Knee Massacre-1890