1. Conquest and Survival The Trans-Mississippi West 1860-1900

2. Conquest and Survival The Trans-Mississippi West 1860-1900
Indian Peoples Under Siege
The Internal Empire
The Open Range
Farming Communities on the Plains
The World’s Breadbasket
The Western Landscape
The Transformation of Indian Societies
Conclusion
Conquest and Survival
The Trans-Mississippi West

3. Chapter Focus Questions
What was the impact of U.S. western expansion on Indian societies?
In what ways was the post-Civil War West an “internal empire,” and how did its development depend on the emergence of new technologies and new industries?

4. Chapter Focus Questions (cont’d)
How can the history of the American West be told as the creation of new communities and the displacement of old communities?
How did agribusiness differ from forms of family farming?
What place did the West hold in the national imagination?

5. North America and Oklahoma

6. MAP 18.1 Oklahoma Territory
Land openings to settlers came at different times, making new land available through various means.
SOURCE: From Historical Atlas of Oklahoma by Morris, Goins, McReynolds. Copyright © 1965 University of Oklahoma Press. Reprinted by permission.

7. The Oklahoma Land Rush Thousands participated.
Land promised to Indians who had been forcibly relocated in the 1830s was first opened to white settlement in 1889.
In a little over two months settlers filed 6,000 homestead claims.
The land rush symbolized the movement toward white settlement and the reconstruction of the West.

8. The Oklahoma Land Rush (cont'd)
This transformation came at the expense of Indian peoples.

9. Indian Peoples Under Siege

10. the Battle of Sand Creek
This painting depicts the Battle of Sand Creek, fought in November Colorado militia volunteers, under Colonel John Chivington, led the deadly attack on the Cheyennes and their allies in southeastern Colorado Territory.

11. Indian Territory
Indians occupied the plains for more than 20,000 years.
The Europeans brought disease and the need for Indians to adapt to European ways.

12. Indian Territory (cont'd)
Surviving tribes adapted:
The Plains Indians adapted, using horses and firearms.
Some tribes learned English and converted to Christianity.

13. Indian Territory (cont'd)
Legally, tribes were supposed to be regarded as autonomous nations residing within American boundaries.
Treaties were negotiated but force was often used instead.

14. MAP 18.2 Major Indian Battles and Indian Reservations, 1860–1900
As commercial routes and white populations passed through and occupied Indian lands, warfare inevitably erupted. The displacement of Indians to reservations opened access by farmers, ranchers, and investors to natural resources and to markets.

15. Reservation Policy and the Slaughter of the Buffalo
The federal government had pressured Indian tribes to migrate West into a permanent Indian Territory.
Whites’ desire for western land led the federal government to pressure western Indians to move to reservations.

16. Reservation Policy and the Slaughter of the Buffalo (cont’d)
The tribes that moved to reservations found federal policies were inadequate for their needs.
Nomadic tribes found their freedom curtailed and their buffalo destroyed both by the railroad and white hunting.
Diseases such as smallpox ravaged weakened Indian populations.

17. Kiowa Preparing for a War Expedition, ca. 1887.
Kiowa Preparing for a War Expedition, ca This sketch on paper was made by an Indian artist, Silverhorn, who had himself taken part in the final revolt of the Kiowas in He later became a medicine man and then served as a private in the U.S. Cavalry at Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory.
SOURCE: Silverhorn (Native American), “Kiowa Preparing for a War Expedition.” From “Sketchbook,” Graphite, ink, and crayon on paper. Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Terrell Bartlett.

18. The Indian Wars 1860s War: against Cheyenne (Colorado)
Sand Creek Massacre.
1868: Fort Laramie Treaty
granted the Black Hills to the Sioux
The discovery of gold brought prospectors to the hills.
The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho aligned to protect the Black Hills, wiping out Custer’s regiment before being defeated by the army.
Red River War of 1874–1875

19. The Indian Wars (cont'd)
Under the leadership of Geronimo, the Apaches gained a reputation as intrepid warriors.

20. The Nez Perces
Tribes like the Nez Perce, who tried to cooperate with whites, were betrayed.
Promised Oregon, the Nez Perce were sent to a disease-ridden land in Kansas.
After violence broke out over Indian mistreatment, Chief Joseph led his people on a long march toward Canada.

21. The Nez Perces (cont'd)
Defeated in northern Montana, the Nez Perces surrendered and were forced onto a reservation in Washington.

22. The Internal Empire
The Internal Empire

23. Map 18.3 Railroad Routes, Cattle Trails, Gold and Silver Rushes, 1860–1900
By the end of the nineteenth century, the vast region of the West was crosscut by hundreds of lines of transportation and communication. The trade in precious metals and in cattle helped build a population almost constantly on the move, following the rushes for gold or the herds of cattle.
SOURCE: Encyclopedia of American Social History.

24. The Internal Empire
The settlement of the West was one of the largest human migrations in history
Settlers found themselves subjects of an “internal empire” controlled from the East.
Older populations were pushed aside by white expansion.

25. “Stampeders,”
After news of the discovery of gold in the Klondike reached the United States in July 1897, tens of thousands of “stampeders,” hoping to strike it rich, rushed to the Yukon Territory. Among them were more than twenty commercial photographers who made good livings selling photographs, such as this image of prospectors weighing gold nuggets. Many prospectors themselves also used roll film cameras and contributed to the production of thousands of photographs of their adventures.

26. Mining Towns Mining fostered western expansion.
Gold discoveries brought thousands of fortune seekers.
Most fortunes went to corporations that bought out the smaller claims.
Although some mine communities eventually became permanent settlements, most were short-lived boomtowns.

27. Mining Towns (cont’d)
The western labor movement emerged in this rough and often violent climate.
Unions refused membership to Chinese, Mexican, African American and Indian workers.
Unions were unable to stop owners from closing down mines when the ore ran out, leaving empty towns and environmental blight.

28. MAP 18.4 Mormon Cultural Diffusion, ca. 1883
Mormon settlements permeated many sparsely populated sections of Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Built with church backing and the strong commitment of community members, they survived and even prospered in adverse climates.
SOURCE: “THE MORMON CULTURE REGION: STRATEGIES AND PATTERNS IN THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAN WEST, 1847–1964” by Donald W. Meinig, from The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55, no. 2, June 1965, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group,

29. Mormon Settlements
Mormons migrated to the Great Basin in Utah beginning in 1846.
They shared land and water as they built agricultural communities.
The federal government assumed control of the Utah territory.
Disputes over polygamy delayed Utah statehood until 1896.

30. Mormon Settlements (cont'd)
Mormon society soon resembled the individualist East the original settlers had sought to escape.

31. Mexican Borderland Communities
The Southwest saw a series of clashes between Anglos and Mexicanos over control of the land.
Some Mexicano elites continued to maintain wealth and power.
The majority of Mexicans found themselves trapped in poverty and turned to migratory work or moved to urban areas to work for wages.

32. Mexican Borderland Communities (cont’d)
Mexicanos maintained key elements of their traditional culture.
In the 1890s, Las Gorras Blancas arose as agrarian rebels in the Southwest.
New immigration from Mexico reinforced traditional culture.

33. Mexican Americans in San Antonio continued to conduct their traditional market bazaar well after the incorporation of this region into the United States.
Mexican Americans in San Antonio continued to conduct their traditional market bazaar well after the incorporation of this region into the United States. Forced off the land and excluded from the better paying jobs in the emerging regional economy, many Mexicanos, and especially women, sought to sell the products of their own handiwork for cash or for bartered food and clothing.
SOURCE: Thomas Allen, Market Plaza, 1878–1879. Oil on canvas, ⁄2. Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas.

34. The Open Range
The Open Range

35. The Legendary Cowboy: Nat Love, Deadwood Dick
How does Nat Love fit into the legendary Wild West? How readily would you expect nineteenth-century readers of the Deadwood Dick dime novels to accept the hero’s identity as a black man?
How does Nat Love’s identity as an AfricanAmerican line up with the image of the heroic cowboy in modern American popular culture?

36. The Open Range
The destruction of buffalo opened the path for the western cattle industry.
After the Civil War, entrepreneurs like Joseph McCoy began driving longhorn cattle from Texas to the Kansas railroad towns for shipment East

37. The Long Drives
Cowboys rounded up herds for $30 a month (at best) and lived under harsh circumstances, stimulating efforts to unionize.
Workday lasted from sunup to sundown with night shifts to watch the cattle.
There was no protection from the elements.
Poor diet often led to disease.
The drive could be as far as 1,500 miles.

38. The Long Drives (cont’d)
One-fifth to one-third of cowboys were Indian, Mexican, or African American.
Few women worked on the open range.
Elizabeth Collins, the “Cattle Queen of Montana” who took over her husband’s ranch, was a rare exception.

39. The Sporting Life
Cattle towns and mining camps offered saloons, bars and dance halls where cowboys could spend their pay and blow off steam.
Prostitution served as the largest source of income outside the home for women.
There were few jobs for women and many resorted to prostitution simply to pay the bills.

40. The Sporting Life (cont'd)
Their life was quite harsh and seldom paid well.

41. As early as 1879, the local newspaper described Leadville, Colorado, as a town that never sleeps
As early as 1879, the local newspaper described Leadville, Colorado, as a town that never sleeps: “The dancing houses and liquoring shops are never shut The streets are full of drunken carousers taking the town.” This photograph of a typical saloon was taken shortly before the silver mining town reached its peak, with a population topping 60,000 in That year, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act forced thousands of out-of-work miners to search for jobs elsewhere in the West.

42. Frontier Violence and Racism
Personal violence commonplace
Horse theft and cattle rustling rose rapidly
1870s: Range wars turned violent when farmers, sheep ranchers, and cattle ranchers battled over the same land.
Mid-1880s: cattle business went bust
Overstocking
Bad weather

43. Farming Communities on the Plains

44. “Soddies”
In 1887, Lizzie Chrisman filed the first homestead claim on Lieban Creek in Custer County, Nebraska. Joined by her three sisters, she is shown here standing in front of her sod cabin. “Soddies,” as these small houses were called, were constructed of stacked layers of cut prairie turf, which were eventually fortified by a thick network of roots. The roofs, often supported by timber, were usually covered with more sod, straw, and small branches.

45. Farming Communities on the Plains
Easterners struggled to adapt to the Plains, with few trees and limited water.
Improvements in technology and transportation were vital to the growth of the West.

46. “Thirty-three horse team harvester”
This “thirty-three horse team harvester” was photographed at the turn of the century in Walla Walla, Washington. Binding the grain into sheaves before it could hit the ground, the “harvester” cut, threshed, and stacked wheat in one single motion.

47. The Homestead Act
160 acres were given to any settler who lived on the land for at least 5 years and improved it.
Homesteaders had their greatest success in the central and upper Midwest where the soil was rich and the weather was relatively moderate.

48. The Homestead Act (cont.)
This act sparked the largest migration in U.S. history but only 10 percent of all farmers got their start under its terms (most farmers bought their land outright) and nearly half the homesteaders lost their claim.
Railroad and land speculators profited from selling off cheaply bought or free land.

49. Populating the Plains
Railroads held great power in developing and settling the West.
Railroads delivered crops and cattle to eastern markets and brought back goods.
Railroads put communities “on the map.”
Railroads in the West preceded settlement.
Professional promoters were sent to Europe and throughout the United States to recruit settlers.

50. Populating the Plains (cont’d)
Immigrants formed tight-knit communities.
Many groups retained their native languages and customs.
Tight social hierarchies, religion and ethnic habits persisted for generations in these communities.

51. Work, Dawn to Dusk
Farm families survived and prospered through hard work.
Men’s work tended to be seasonal.
Women’s activities were usually more routine.
Children worked running errands and completing chores by about age nine.

52. Work, Dawn to Dusk (cont'd)
Community was an important part of life.
People depended on neighbors for help in times of need and for a break from the hard work and harsh climate.

53. Work, Dawn to Dusk (cont'd)
The barter system developed due to lack of cash.
Many small farms failed, lost to low incomes, debt and foreclosure.

54. The World’s Breadbasket

55. New Production Technologies
Cultivation a difficult process because of tough sod
New technologies
plows, reapers, threshers
increased amount of farm land
Through federal aid, land-grant colleges, and other sources of scientific research, farmers developed new techniques for cultivation.

56. New Production Technologies (cont'd)
Weather and plagues of locusts continued to challenge Plains farming.

57. TABLE 18.1 Machine Labor on the Farm, ca. 1880

58. California Agribusiness
Larger farms which produced for global markets came to dominate the West.
California led the way toward large-scale commercial farming that defined agribusiness.
By the turn of the century California had become the showcase for heavily capitalized farm factories employing large numbers of tenant and migrant workers.

59. California Agribusiness (cont’d)
Fruit and vegetable growers manipulated consumer tastes to create new markets for their products.
Chinese tenants and farm workers were exploited by white owners.

60. MAP 18.5 The Establishment of National Parks and Forests
The setting aside of land for national parks saved large districts of the West from early commercial development and industrial degradation, setting a precedent for the later establishment of additional parks in economically marginal, but scenic, territory. The West, home to the vast majority of park space, became a principal site of tourism by the end of the nineteenth century.

61. The Toll on the Environment
Farmers destroyed existing plant and animal species and introduced new ones.
Replacing buffalo with cattle and sheep introduced animals that ate grasses down to the roots and created the possibilities of huge dust storms.
Commercial agriculture took a heavy toll on existing water supplies.

62. The Toll on the Environment (cont’d)
The federal government created the Forest Service to safeguard watersheds.
The Newlands Act and other laws sought to balance agribusiness and the protection of the environment.

63. The Western Landscape
The Western Landscape

64. Albert Bierstadt became one of the first artists to capture on enormous canvases the legendary vastness and rugged terrain of western mountains and wilderness
Albert Bierstadt became one of the first artists to capture on enormous canvases the legendary vastness and rugged terrain of western mountains and wilderness. Many other artists joined Bierstadt to form the Rocky Mountain School. In time, the camera largely replaced the paintbrush, and most Americans formed an image of these majestic peaks from postcards and magazine illustrations.
SOURCE: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, Oil on canvas, in. ( cm). © Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, Ny.

65. Nature’s Majesty
Writers described in great detail the wonder of nature’s majesty in the West.
The federal government created national parks in 1872, naming Yellowstone the first.
Landscape painters from the Rocky Mountain School and Albert Bierstadt’s photographs piqued the public’s interest in the West.

66. Nature’s Majesty (cont'd)
By 1910, more than a dozen national parks had been created in the West.

67. The Legendary Wild West
More popular presentations emphasized the West as a source of “vigorous manhood.”
Thousands of “dime novels” appeared that portrayed the region in romantic, heroic terms.
Wild West show promoters like “Buffalo Bill” Cody brought the legendary West to millions of people around the world.

68. The Legendary Wild West (cont'd)
Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “frontier thesis” reinforced mythic views of the West.

69. Annie Oakley
Born Phoebe Ann Moses in 1860, Annie Oakley was a star attraction in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Dubbed “Little Sure Shot” by Chief Sitting Bull, Oakley traveled with Cody’s show for seventeen years. This poster from 1901 advertises her sharp-shooting talents.

70. The “American Primitive”
The West continued to captivate American imagination.
The public sought depictions of bold cowboys and exotic savages.
Charles Schreyvogel, Charles Russell, and Frederic Remington helped to shape Americans’ perception of the region.

71. The “American Primitive” (cont’d)
Scholars like Lewis Henry Morgan and Alice Cunningham Fletcher studied Indians and began to develop a scientific understanding of their lives.
The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts incorporated a large dose of tribal lore into their character-building programs. 

72. The Transformation of Indian Societies

73. Powell appears alongside Tau-gue, Chief of the Paiutes, overlooking the Virgin River.
The explorer John Wesley Powell led an expedition of ten men in 1869 to map the Colorado River, its tributaries, and its canyons. He became fascinated with the culture of the tribespeople he encountered and learned to speak the Ute language. In 1871–1872 Powell, accompanied by a photographer, remade the trip to the Grand Canyon, which he named. In this image, Powell appears alongside Tau-gue, Chief of the Paiutes, overlooking the Virgin River.

74. Reform Policy and Politics
Reformers like Helen Hunt Jackson advocated policies designed to promote Indian assimilation and eradicate distinct tribal customs.
Racist assumptions and indifferent government treatment drove Plains culture to the brink of destruction.

75. Reform Policy and Politics
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was a disaster for most Indians and undermined tribal sovereignty.
Individuals were granted land if they chose to sever from their tribes.
Indian religions and sacred ceremonies were banned along with the telling of Indian myths.
“Indian schools” forbade Indian clothing styles, language, and even hair fashions.

76. The Ghost Dance
A Paiute prophet, Wovoka, had a vision that a divine judgment was coming and led the Sioux to practice the Ghost Dance.
White authorities grew fearful and demanded an end to the practice.
An incident led whites to gun down 200 people at Wounded Knee.

77. The Ghost Dance (cont'd)
400 years after Columbus, the Massacre seemed to signal the final conquest of native peoples.

78. Endurance and Rejuvenation
Those tribes that survived best were those living on land unwanted by whites.
A majority of tribes dwindled to the brink of extinction; some even disappeared.
The Navajo, Hopi, and northwestern tribes managed to adapt to the new situation or were sufficiently isolated to survive.

79. Endurance and Rejuvenation (cont'd)
It was several generations before a resurgence of Indian sovereignty occurred.

80. Conclusion
Conclusion

81. Conquest and Survival: The Trans-Mississippi West: 1860–1900
Oklahoma’s rapid development stands as a microcosm of the 19th-century West. As railroads, mining, cattle and farming “tamed” the region and its challenging environment, white settlers adapted their culture to the frontier.

82. Conquest and Survival: The Trans-Mississippi West: 1860–1900 (cont'd)
Marginalized in national economics and politics, Westerners, along with Southerners, would turn restive by century’s end and demand their fair share of national wealth, challenging the political system.

83. Chronology
Chronology