1. NOTES: “The West"

2. The Railroads

3. Transcontinental Railroad
1. Railroad that connects the continent east
to west
2. Contributes to the growth of towns & cities
3. Built with Irish & Chinese laborer
Promontory Point, UT (May 10, 1859)_

5. Who Went West?
FARMERS
RANCHERS
MINERS

6. Growth of Population
1. Gold rush 1849  California

8. 2. Cattle ranchers / cowboys
a. Open range system = property not fenced in  cattle roamed free (cows identified by branding)
b. Refrigerated RR cars – transport beef to cities, lower costs

9. 3. Homestead Act
a. land from government
b. must improve land over a period of 5 years

11. African-Americans moving to the west during & after Reconstruction
4. Exodusters
African-Americans moving to the west during & after Reconstruction

12. Impact on Native Americans

13. Impact on Native Americans 1. Buffalo Soldiers
a. African American cavalry units
b. job to keep NA on reservations, & control hostilities
Name from NA for curly black hair

14. 2. The Battle of Little Big Horn 1876
Gen. George Armstrong Custer
Chief Sitting Bull

15. 3. Sitting Bull

16. 4. Wounded Knee Massacre (Dec. 29, 1890)
a. Reservations: Indians moved off land & forced to give up way of life
b. Ghost Dance: ceremony that promised to rid the land of whites & restore the Indians’ way of life
-white have fears of mass uprising
-Sioux arrested for dancing
c. Wounded Knee Camp
-Big Foot
-weapon fired in confusion
-153 Sioux are massacred
**Importance = marks the end of the Indian wars**
“the earth would soon perish and then come alive again in a pure, aboriginal state, to be inherited by the Indians, including the dead, for an eternal existence free from suffering.” 

17. 5. Assimilation (adopting of another culture)
Native Americans were forced to attend government schools as young children to ‘be white.’
Purpose: destroy Indian culture.

18. 6. Purposeful/systematic destruction of the Buffalo
a. Buffalo = center of NA livelihood (food, clothing)
b. gov’t supported killing as war tactic
c. “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone”
– Colonel Dodge US Army