The Closing of the Western Frontier

• Essential Questions
  • What national issues emerged int he process of closing the western frontier?
  • Why does the west hold such an important place in the american imagination?
  • In what way is the west romanticized in American culture?
• Subordination of the American Indians
  • Background
    • The Great Plains go from 100 degrees W to the Rocky Mountains
    • pretty high elevation, but very very flat. Also a dry climate (about 15 inches of rain annually compared to our 60 inches).
    • after 1860, only 300,000 American Indians remained from the previous millions who inhabited the continent. 2/3 of these indians lived in the Great Plains.
    • The Plains Indians were nomadic and followed the buffalo. Their hunting was revolutionized with the arrival of the horse, brought by the Spanish. Later, the winchester rifle also caused hunting to be much more efficient.
    • The Lakota or the Lakota-Sioux Indians were perhaps the biggest group of Indians.
  • The Treaty of Ft. Laramie
    • Policy of Concentration: in exchange of $50,000 the Plains tribes would stay out of the way of the white people, and let the railroad workers do their jobs.
• The Inevitable Conflict/ The Indian Wars 1860-1890
  • The Indians didn't mind the white people just passing through, but this good feeling went away because of the Colorado Gold Rush (1859-1861). White people were encroaching on the Indian's land, and conflict was inevitable. "Pike's Peak or bust" was the popular slogan of the 59er's, which was a nickname for the Colorado miners.
  • Colonel John Chinvington and the Sand Creek Massacre 1864
    • Chivington decides to make the area "safe" and kills women, children, and scalps his enemies. The Indians were Arapaho Indians, and the chief was chief Black Kettle.
  • Red Cloud's War 1966-1868
    • The Sand Creek Massacre was partially a cause for Red Cloud's War
    • The Northern Wyoming, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne Indians were the American Indians fighting in the war, and Colonel Henry Carrington and Captain William J Fetterman were the Americans fighting.
    • Chief Red Cloud wiped out Fetterman's troops on the Bozeman Trail. This led to the 2nd Treaty of Ft. Laramie in 1868, which put the Indians on reservations.
  • Grant's Reservation Program and Grant's Peace Policy 1869-1874
    • The churches would "adopt" a tribe and send them blankets and medicine in order to keep them alive, since they weren't allowed to hunt themselves.
    • If an Indian was caught wandering off the reservation, they would be shot. This became known as "War of Extermination" 1969-1874.
    • Very ironic, since the blacks were struggling to gain rights in the south while the indians were being exterminated.
  • Gold in Black Hills
    • When gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the miners didn't care about any treaty rights or sacred lands of the Indians. This led to the Great Sioux War 1876-1877.
    • The most famous battle of this confrontation is in Lakota Village at Little Big Horn.
      • General George Armstrong Custer was the American military leader. He was very arrogant and kind of an asshole, so he rode ahead of all the other commanders, and refused to carry a Gatling gun, even though that was what was requested. He greatly underestimated the ability and numbers of the Indians. The two Indians leaders' names were Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
      • All 265 men of Custer's regiment were killed, except for one horse. This was considered the biggest defeat the US Army had ever had against the Indians.
  • The Nez Perce War 1877
    • Indian leader of the Nez Perce was Chief Joseph. Ironically that when the Nez Perce Indians were trying to escape into Canada, it was Oliver Howard, the freedman's advocate, who caught them and sent them back to the reservations.
  • Military Groups/Leaders
    • Geronimo, the Apache Chief: Hopeless Cause. Geronimo was a great warrior and gave the US Army lots of trouble
    • The Buffalo Soldiers on the Great Planes, later nicknamed the 10th Cavalry. Ironically the blacks were fighting to kill the Indians. Jack Pershing is the famous leader of the black regiment, who also became very famous in WW1.
• What caused the end of the Indian way of life?
  • The Ghost/Sun dance was a very controversial Indian dance, invented by Paiute Wovoka, that was banned by the Americans who wanted the Indians christianized. The dance was a mixture of christian and Indian tradition, and said that if you were killed in battle, you were only asleep and that you would come back and fight a final battle against the white man and banish him from North America.
  • The Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota was more like a slaughter of women, children, and old men. The 7th cavalry, who were already angry from their defeat at Little Big Horn, just went berserk on the unarmed indians. Chief Big Foot was shot and left to freeze in the snow.
  • The Killing of the Buffalo: the American government encouraged the overkilling of the Buffalo because it eliminated the need for the Indians to leave the reservation.
  • The Spread of Railroad, telegraph, and population all attracted white people to the Great Plains
  • Modern Technology and Weaponry left the Indians at a great disadvantage.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson's book: A Century of Dishonor in 1881 was about 100 years in American History of mistreating American Indians.
  • The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887: Assimilation Policy by Eastern Humanitarian
    • dissolved the tribes
    • gave each head of the family 160 acres of land, which wasn't really enough
    • also provided for citizenship after 25 years, even though the indians didn't really care much about citizenship
    • Native Americans since the Dawes Act
      • Howard- Wheeler Act of 1934, FDR creates jobs and encourages the Native American culture and language
      • "Termination Policy" 1953 Eisenhower, very conservative made the reservations a state responsibility
      • "Self-Determination without Termination" 1970: things went from bad to awful! Nixon said that Indians could determine their lifestyle, and the Federal gov would pick up the tab from the reservations; however, Nixon lied, and the Indians got really mad and started to organize into the American Indian Movement (AIM)
      • AIM 1968 took over the small town in South Dakota where the Battle of Wounded knee occurred. 2 FBI agents were killed, and Leonard Peltier was the Native American scapegoat sentenced to life in a Florida jail.
• The Closing of the Western Frontier Part 2
  • Mining in the West
    • 49er's- Sutter's Mill
      • Streams and rivers of the Sierra Nevada
      • placer mining- pan- cradle
      • hydraulic mining and the sluice
    • 59er's- Pike's Peak in Colorado, Virginia City, Nevada, and Black Hills, South Dakota (1859-1879)
      • Quarts mining: the gold was locked up in Quartz rocks
      • Stamp Mills were used for crushing ore and extracting the gold, which was different from the 49er's.
    • The First gold strike was in Pike's Peak, then Virginia City, and finally Black Hills.
      • The Comstock Lode was named after the guy who discovered the mine, Henry Comstock. It was discovered in Virginia City, Nevada around the Sierran Nevada Mountains.
      • Mark Twain wrote a book called Roughing It about the mining life. Outcasts of the Poker Flat and The Luck of Roaring Camp were adventure stories written by Bret Harte. Their books made Virginia City very famous.
      • Mining "Boom" towns, were towns that popped up around the gold, and once the gold was gone, they turned into ghost towns.
      • Black Hills, South Dakota was the last major gold strikes in the 48 states.
  • The Cattle Trails
    • The wild cow, or the longhorn, roamed free in Texas through Kansas.
    • The North provided industrial items, the South provided fruits and vegetables, and now, the West provides meat.
    • A new occupation cropped up in Texas called the cow boy, who would drive the cows north to the closest railroad spot which was in Sedalia, Missouri.
    • The Chisholm Trail was the most famous open range trail created by Joseph G. McCoy. He built his own stockyard in Abilene, Kansas to hold the cows while waiting for the train, and a town popped up around it. It was the most famous "cow town"
    • The Cattlemen's Association made sure that brands were not copied.
    • Frederick Remington famously painted the Western Cowboy.
    • Jesse James and Billy the Kid were two famous gunslingers/ trainrobbers
    • William F Cody nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" brought a wild west show to the East. Legendary Female Stars include Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley
• End of the Cowboy and the Open Range
  • Why did the cowboys fade away?
    • Bad weather
      • Freezing winters and dry summers. Unpredictable weather and droughts made it dangerous to drive cows.
    • Expansion of Railroads
      • when the railroads expanded to the farms, there wasn't a need for cattle ranchers anymore.
    • Fighting between the sheep herders, cattle ranchers, and the sodbusters. This conflict is called the "Range Wars"
      • everybody hated the sheepherders since they ruined the land. Barbed wire was used to enclose areas and keep the sheep off.
  • How did the cowboys go from boring occupations to legends?
    • The Virginian by Owen Wister turned the boring occupation into an exciting/adventurer sounding job
    • Also, movies made the cowboys famous, for example, "The Great Train Robbery." It was a silent film in 1903.
      • Spaghetti Westerns, filmed in Italy, were westerners with more violence, action, and less mortality than earlier ones.
      • The Zapata Westerns were a spin off of Spaghetti Westerns, filmed in Mexico, with more of a political westerners with a message for the 1960s.
      • The Hollywood Western from 1980s-today
• The Farmers
  • The Homestead Act of 1862: basically gave away 160 acres of land in order for people's farming in the West to be productive
  • The Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Desert Land Act of 1877, and the Timber and Stone Act of 1878 were all meant to help farmers in the West; however, it only helped the speculators and timber companies.
  • The Exodusters
    • Former slaves who wanted to escape the South moved west to Kansas. They were stopped when the ferry people refused to take them across the Mississippi.
    • "Pap" Singleton was the Stephan Austin of the Exodusters
  • The Transcontinental Railroad 1862-1869
    • Railroad Operations
      • The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific were the two companies that the grant was given to to build the railroad. Signed into law during the Civil War by President Lincoln.
      • The Irish, Chinese, Whites, and freedman were all hired to work on the railroad. "Coolie"s were Chinese immigrants working on the railroads
      • Blacks and Irish didn't get along since they were competing for the same jobs.
      • The Railroads were great colonizers since they speculated the land granted to them around the railroads to farmers who wanted to move out west and start farms.
    • Land Operations
      • Turnkey operations were popular, which were houses that all you had to do was "turn the key." Advertised in Germany, Romania, and other places in Eastern Europe.
      • The Oklahoma Land Rush