The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution 1865-1896

APUSH Period 6, lecture 6.3

Benjamin Harrison

President 1889-1893

Horse Creek (1851) and Fort Atkinson (1853)

Attempt to pacify Plains Indians by signing those treaties, establishing the early foundations of the reservation system

1860

federal government intensified its policy of confininf the nomadic Plains indians to smaller territories, despite cultural resistance to such confinement

Great Sioux Reservation

Located in Dakota territory present day Oklahoma, was created as result to confinement

Buffalo Soldiers

Approximately 1/5 were African american troops titled this. U.S. Armies consisted of a lot of immigrants

Sand Creek Massacre

Colorado (1864) Chivington’s Militia killed 400 Indians, including women and children who were brutally attacked

Fettermans annihilation

Indian retaliation - violent slaughter

Battle of the Little Big Horn

Custer wiped out by well-armed warriors in 1876, Indians taken to the warpath and gold seeking

Massacre of Wounded Knee

1890, brutal suppression of the Ghost dance, whites where scared and outlawed their praying and resulted in large massacre

Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

Dissolved many tribes as lethal entities and wiped out tribal ownership of the land

Set up individual Indian family head with 160 free acres and if the Indians farmed like settlers they would get full title to their holdings as well citizenship, in 25 years

Former reservation land not allotted to the Indian under the Dawes Act was sold to railroads and white settlers

Essentially 160 acres were given to each man to farm, the rest sold off. If they failed, which happened because they weren’t used to it, not cultural, they had to sell it to non native individuals

1900

Indians lost 50% of the 156 million acres they once had

Mining

Played crucial role in settling America from coast to coast. The precious metals contributed to financing the Civil War, supporting railroad construction, intensifying conflicts between conflicts between whites and Native americans

Women

women took advantage of frontier equality and ran boarding houses , laundresses, in saloons or as prostitutes. Women gained voting rights in Western states - Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho before women in the east.

Dry farming

Only took top soil off, no deeply rooted things - no water - contributed to the dust bowl in the 1920-1930