cultures - making of america (1877-1900)

describe why reservations were unpleasant places to live for Native Americans

• often badly run by government agents who had little respect for different Indigenous cultures

• medical supplies and food rations were inadequate

describe the decline of buffalo

• killing a single buffalo earned hunter US $3-20

  • the cost of a cartridge to kill the buffalo was US $0.25

• 1880 - 16 million kilos of buffalo bones had been sent east to become fertiliser

• 1880s - 3 million buffalo had been killed by white hunters

• 1883 - vast herds of buffalos, prevalent in the 1840s, had all but disappeared

• some hunters killed up to 100 buffalos a day

explain why they buffalo were exterminated

• to ‘deal’ with Native Indians by:

  • disrupting their lifestyle/hunting patterns (nomadic → sedentary)

  • making them become reliant on white settlers (buffalos, the Native Americans’ main food and shelter source, had been decimated)

• killing buffalos was extremely lucrative

  • hunter could earn US $3-20 for killing a single buffalo

• to decease competition on the Plains between Native Americans and homesteaders

what led to the forcible movement of Native Americans onto the reservations

• southwest - ranchers fenced off the area where the Pueblo peoples drove their sheep herds

  • without the grass in these fenced off areas, the Pueblo sheep herds soon died

• homesteaders in the central Plains fenced in water supplies, stopping tribes such as the Cheyenne from being able to roam freely, for long periods of time, on their horses without stopping

• big factories paid people to pick wild foods (such as berries) on the Plains

  • these wild foods were canned in factories in the growing western cities

  • this led to the rapid depletion of useable food supplies on the Plains

how did the government seek to dilute Native American independence and identity

late 1870s - more Indigenous peoples were confined to reservations

how did the US government attempt to destroy Native American culture

• US government forced the Native Americans to become farmers (instead of hunting buffalo) through the imposition of reservations and US culture

  • hunting outside of reservations was banned from Native American nations

  • Lakota, Dakota and Cheyenne nations were encouraged to plant corn and squash to survive

• atomised the Native American communities, breaking down their cultures and lifestyles

  • destruction of buffalo

• many Native American children were sent away to be educated in boarding schools run by white Americans

  • they were taught to speak English as their first language

  • they were taught their own Indigenous beliefs and practices were ‘backwards’ and ‘outdated’

  • some children had their names changed to be more ‘American’

    • One Lakota Sioux child (named Otá Kté) was told to "take a pointer and select a name […] I (Otá Kté) placed the pointer on the name Luther"

who were the ‘Friends of the Indian’ and when were they formed

• 1883 - Friends of the Indians was formed

• formed to campaign for Native Americans’ rights

• they wanted to help Native Americans become educated and Christian citizens of the US

how did the ‘Friends of Indians’ ‘help’ Native Americans

• helped root out and remove corrupt agents from reservations

• set up more off-reservation boarding schools so that Indigenous children could ‘escape’ their roots

  • 1889 - Susan La Flesche Picotte graduated from one of these schools and became the first female Native American doctor in the US

• 1887 - persuaded the government to pass the Dawes Act

  • the Dawes Act offered individual Native Americans 160 acres of land and full US citizenship as long as they gave up their right to hold land as part of a tribe

  • the Dawes Act meant that many Native American tribes lost millions of acres of land

  • 1889 - government offered land given up by Native American tribes for sale - 1.92 million acres of Native American land in Oklahoma was sold to homesteaders

what was the Ghost Dance

• 1890s - religion of the Ghost Dance was spreading rapidly through reservations

• Ghost Dancers followed the teachings of a Paiute named Wovoka

• Ghost Dancers believed that if they danced and prayed long enough, a saviour would come to return the buffalo and sweep white Americans from the land ‘like a great flood’

  • significant as it demonstrates how affected Native Americans were by the decimation of the buffalo

what happened to Ghost Dancers

• US army was sent to arrest Ghost Dancers

  • “we need protection and we need it now. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy”

• Sitting Bull, a Native American leader, was rumoured to be part of the Ghost Dancers

  • the Lakota Sioux police were told to arrest him

  • 40 police men entered his cabin, dragged him out into the snow and shot him

reasons African Americans saw improvement in their lives, 1877-1900

• the increase in black churches in the South allowed African Americans social and religious freedom, even if only within its walls

• 1900 - 26 black bishops, shared congregations gave an overwhelming sense of unity in the black community

• cultural freedoms through the publication of literature and art, 1865-1893 - 100+ major books and 206 journal articles were published by black authors

• William DuBois, part of an educated, northern Black elite who gained degrees from Harvard and Berlin

• time of black cultural prosperity

reasons African Americans saw no improvement in their lives, 1877-1900

• political policies aimed to protect African Americans were redundant

  • Southern states overcame them (redeemer governments)

  • redeemer governments set out to 'undo' the 'damage' by abolitionists

  • African Americans' political freedoms were oppressed through systems of violence (KKK, lynching) and injustice

  • 1892 - 161 black citizens were lynched

  • LOUISIANA - 1896 - 130,334 black voters, 1905 - 1342 black voters due to unfair literacy test for African Americans

     

• African Americans were still held indebted to the US economically, due to the large proportion of economy that the 'peculiar institution' generated

  • 1870s collapse of cotton prices left many black Americans living in poverty

  • black sharecroppers had to share their income with white Americans (50%-66%)

  • 1900 - southern income was half of the north's

• Lack of education access meant African Americans were less able to get good jobs

• 22,866 teachers, 417 doctors, 300 lawyers, 26 bishops

• even when African Americans got desirable jobs, they were paid less than their white counterparts

• it was prosperity for the few, not the many

explain how Jim Crow laws worsened African Americans’ lives

• 1896 - Jim Crow laws led to segregation on race, affirmed by the Supreme Court

• segregation based on this legislation was widespread through many different industries

  • transport

  • schools

  • shops

  • parks

• facilities for white Americans were funded much better than for black Americans (often 10x more)

1879

• Exodus of black slaves to the West

  • they became ‘Exodusters’

1892

• 161 black citizens lynched

• American’s main immigration station, Ellis Island, opened

1896

Supreme Court ruled segregation was legal, despite the 14th Amendment

1900

• America had:

  • 23,866 black teachers

  • 417 doctors

  • 300 black lawyers

1880

• surge in mass migration of white settlers, influenced by the romanticisation of the ‘American Dream’

  • this dream was represented in events such as the Chicago World’s Fair

1887-1900

• cities offered freedom and entertainment such as theatres (theatre in nearly every district)

  • citizens gained political and social freedoms by being able to choose between dozens of newspaper outlets and being able to attend political rallies

1900

70% of children were going to public school

1890s

600,000 migrants came to the US from Italy alone

explain the surge in migration to cities

• economic prosperity in cities, leading to an increase in leisure and entertainment

• cities promised the opportunity of new, better-paying jobs in construction, manufacturing and transport etc

• romanticisation of the ‘American Dream’

• cities offered a more secure method of increasing quality of life for many failed homesteaders

explain the disadvantages of cities, 1877-1900

• most people who migrated for work opportunities lived in poorly-designed, overcrowded apartments

  • it wasn’t uncommon to find 32 families crammed into 6-8 storey buildings

• child mortality rates were far higher in cities

  • in one poor Chicago neighbourhood, ~60% of babies died before their 1st birthdays

• there was an inherent lack adequate sanitation and public hygiene

• some migrants faced anti-immigration violence due to the fact that businesses fired white Americans in order to hire immigrants for lower wages

  • 1887 - the American Protective Association was set up to 'protect' Protestant Americans from the 'dangers' of the Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist immigrants

  • 1870s - Chinese immigrants faced violence from anti-Chinese riots, leading to many murders and parts of Tacoma being burnt to the ground

  • 1882 - US government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which limited the number of Chinese workers entering America

Ella Oblinger - homesteader’s daughter

• “most of the good land was bought up by speculators”

• “getting a piece of land with water access was nearly impossible”

• “railroad companies would promise to build on particular routes so that the new farmers would buy up land, then they would build somewhere else”

• “many of our good friends couldn’t pay the mortgage”

• “only about half of us hardy souls stuck the five years to claim our land”

• “most of the land around us belongs to the Chicago meat packing company”

Teddy Blue Abbott - cowboy & rancher

• “1880s, the cattle industry on the Plains was booming”

• “sometimes there was violence between the ranchers and the homesteaders over access to water”

• “By 1886, there was little grass and over-supply of cattle meant that beef prices dropped”

• “investors began pulling their cash out and putting it into the new city industries”

Collis P Huntington - businessman

• “I set out for California in 1849 for the gold but soon realised that it was businesses who got rich”

• “I could make my fortune by selling supplies to the fools who thought they might strike it rich”

William Pinkerton - worker and immigrant

• “Polish and Russian immigrants are a threat to our work and chances of getting a job”

• “freeing the slave would take away our jobs”

Henry Huntington - land speculator

• “when I was boy there were 5,300 manufacturing firms in the USA; no they are owned by just 318 corporations and 26 super-corporations”

• “census shows that 40% of people in the West now live in cities”

Chung Sun - Chinese immigrant

• “In Wyoming, 28 Chinese were murdered in a riot”

• “Seattle Chinese immigrants were put on ships and floated out to sea”

• “1880, we Chinese made up 10% of the population of San Francisco”

Emmeline Wells - women’s equality campaigner

• “1856, Republicans planned to end the Mormon practice of polyamy”

• “1857, Brigham Young had to step down”

• “1870 Utah gave women the right to vote”

• “1882 … government banned polygamy”

• “1887, women in Utah were banned from voting”

• “1896, the right for women to vote was written into the constitution”