1. Settling the West 1859 Boomtown Silver in Nevada 30,000 people
Quick growth
Silver in Nevada
30,000 people
Almost overnight in Virginia City, Nevada
1864 Nevada - State
$230 million

2. Gold Rush 1848 Gold discovered in California
Population under 1,000
Treaty with Mexico gives U.S.
California & Oregon
Manifest Destiny Complete
1849 over 100,000 in California
Peaks in 1852

3. Ranching/Cattle Drives & the Cowboy
Texas long-horns
Roaming the plains
Civil War
Increased demand for beef
Drive cattle to rail lines in the North
Cowboys…Myth?

4. Vaqueros, Spanish word for “cowboys,” taught American cowboys their trade and enriched the English language with words of Spanish origin- “lariat,” “lasso,” and “stampede.”

6. Clash of Cultures Native Americans – Savages???
Settlers – Greedy Conquers???
                           

7. Native American Culture
Spiritual
Revered the Land
sacred
Common use
No private property
Lived off the land
Buffalo
Basic Needs
Central to life
Rivers - mobile
Horse - mobile

8. Native American Culture
Pride in Culture
Meaning in items created
Decorated
Stories in Pictures
Tools
Language highly developed
Civil
Tribal Laws
Leaders ruled by Counsel/Council

9. Settlers Culture Opportunity Access Private ownership of land
Land plowed and fenced (improved)
1862 Homestead Act
Tract of public land available for settlement
21 years old
Free land - plowed
Manifest Destiny
Access
Railroads
Quick and efficient
1869 Transcontinental

10. Wheat Belt Steel Tools/Machinery 1880’s U.S. largest wheat exporter
Mortgages
Droughts
$$$$$$

12. Oklahoma Land Rush 1889 U.S Government 10,000 people
Open land for settlement in Oklahoma
Stake claim
Free land
10,000 people
Within hours

13. Oklahoma Map – open land
“The Last Frontier”

14. Disruption of Native American Culture and way of life
Decrease in hunting grounds
Forced to relocate
Reservations
Rebelled
Attacked wagon trains/settlements
Refused to move

15. U.S. Gov’t v. Native Americans
1864 Sand Creek
Colorado
1876 Black Hills
Lakota Sioux
Cheyenne
1876 Battle of Little Big Horn
Custer’s Last Stand
210 U.S. Calvary killed

16. “Our chiefs are killed…. The little children are freezing to death
“Our chiefs are killed….The little children are freezing to death. My people….have no blankets, no food…. Hear me, my chiefs; I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”
--Chief Joseph surrendering to General Oliver Howard at Bear Paw Mountain, MT in 1877
Chief Joseph

17. Ghost Dance
Out of desperation, many Native Americans found hope in the Ghost Dance. They
believed the dance would make settlers disappear, buffalo return, and that Native Americans would reunite with their dead ancestors. Fearing violence, federal authorities banned the ceremonial dance in the 1880’s.

18. Tragedy at Wounded Knee
Burial Party
7th Cavalry Hotchiss Gun
Chief Big Foot Frozen to Death
Slaughtered Lakota Sioux
When a group of Lakota Ghost Dancers fled the reservation to dance in Dec. 1890, the U.S. Government sent troops to Wounded Knee Creek (South Dakota) to round them up. A deadly “battle” ensued where approximately 200 Lakota men, women and children were killed.

19. The Dawes Act 1887
Dawes Act or General Allotment Act,1887, passed by the U.S. Congress to provide for the granting of landholdings (allotments, usually 160 acres/65 hectares) to individual Native Americans, replacing communal tribal holdings. …Allotments could be sold after a statutory period (25 years), and “surplus” land not allotted was opened to settlers.
The Dawes Act was an attempt to assimilate, or absorb, Native Americans into American society by offering them a chance to be landowners. This meant dividing reservations into individual allotments where families could be self-supporting.

20. Failure of the Dawes Act
Navaho Tom Torlino
Before
After
In the end, the assimilation policy proved a dismal failure. The Native Americans were doomed because they were dependent on buffalo for food, clothing, fuel, and shelter. When the herds were wiped out, Native Americans on the Plains had no way to sustain their way of life, and few adopted American settler’s lifestyles in place of their traditional cultures.