To the West 1800s

Apaches Natives

The West was very diverse

  • many diff

  • white indigeneous, Mexican, Chinese, African American

  • natives much mroe diverse and each, including AA served their own purpose, turning on the other tribes that oppressed them, even pairing with the settlers to beat

easterners preferred civil ways to assimilate in the US

Mexicans

  • Economy in Mexico suffered until a bunch of them left and went to the US

Arizona citizens

attacked my Mexicans

African Americans

Kansas Fever

Exodusters

  • African Americans who would flee slavery across dusty west

  • heading to Kansas after the Civil War

  • ¼ of cowboys African American

Norwegians

Germans

  • a lot in Texas

Chinese

  • worst discrimination by all other races

  • gold rush

  • 1865

    • transcontinential RR labor

  • took jobs for very, very, very, very little money

Dates

1871

assimilation policy was put in place

1879

Carlyle Indian school

vocational education….

taught farming, how to fix machines…etc.

cutting hair, taught English…trained to adjust to White Culture

1887

  • Dawes Severality Act

  • opened Native American territories to US citizens after wars

  • meant something different during this time

Forced into agricultural farms

Myths

  • rugged individualists

    • Thomas Jefferson Yoman Ideal…individual lots

Truth

  • more like mutual assistance and strong communities

    • Threshing ranks

    • help different families build farms

    • individuals received subsidies

    • most common travel is wagons and need to avoid winter

  • Got attached to land

Truth

  • would flip land and then sell it, then look for cheap land to cultivate again

  • West was a new start for the poor

truth

  • Took at least a little money to go west

  • Manifest destiny

truth

  • manifest destiny was in part a propaganda ploy for Democrats and President Andrew Jackson (pro slavery, pro South, pro getting more land)

  • Whig party rejected idea of manifest destiny

    • term was controversial or unheard of in some aspects

  • confused with the booms due to TCRR and Gold rush

Real Reasons to Move West

Community

  • want to continue way of life but free of laws or

  • improve freedom (more liberal…be more free)

Utopia

  • area free from sinful society

    • slavery, piety,

    • e.g. Mormons (Utah) and Oneida community

    • fleeing slavery,

Modern

  • desire to accumulate riches, property,

    • California gold rushes, homesteading, cattle raising, RR work

Western Economy

cattle

  • driven by the cattle drive

    • 1870s-80s

  • stereotype of the west is a cowboy

    • were ranch hands who lived hard lives

      • cattle can be hostile at time….weighed tons and run fast

    • confederate veterans who fleed south that was destroyed by the war (RRs in the upper ‘west’, cattle more in the south or TX)

    • led to them rounding up millions of cattle roaming lands from destroyed fences

    • sold them to RR, rounded them to get them to the RR market

  • ran mostly through Texas

  • Chisolm trail, Western trail, Baxter Springs Trail (find other names of them)

    • 10 miles a day, 2-3 months per trip/trail, 600 miles

  • the heavier the cattle/steer, the more you make

  • ended by other countries becoming competition and food supplies for cattle eaten up on trails

    • worsened by winter of 1887 (cattle died off)

    • then taken over by railroad industry

clothes

  • broad hat for sun

    • scoop up water

  • boots

    • protect from animals

  • denim and chaps

    • good for protecting from foliage (thistle and Mesquite…poisonous) and saddle burn

    • baggy pants needed

  • bandanas

    • protect from dusty

music

  • calm and slow

    • sad due to life

    • also kept cattle calm

mining

  • gold

    • late 1840s

    • surface/pacer mining died out, needed to dig deeper

      • led to extractive industries

        • hydraulic mining

          • water cannons used to bring dirt down…..

          • build sluices to find ore

          • left holes in land and polluted local water bodies (flooding)

    • paid laborers

  • silver

    • found in n

  • copper

    • led more to unions….IWW (industrial workers of world)

      • Joe Hill….accused of murdering one of bosses

      • executed by I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night (Poem but sing by Pete Seeger)

  • lead, zinc

  • then oil

  • led European settlers to fight deeper for more Native territories to claim resources

  • needed to be careful for destroying local environment

  • union activism kicked up by mining

    • labor rights, safety mins

Farming

further west = harsher terrain

  • Great Plains and Sierra Nevada Mountains

  • Montana, wyoming, texas

middle border

  • montana, idaho, ND, SD, wyoming (beyond 100th meridian)

was a more leisurely source of income than mining

housing and Technology

built houses out of sod

  • used barbed wire for fences

  • replaced with wood when RR brought materials

  • barbed wire caught on….sturdy, very cheap, kept animals in and others out, easy to use.

Dry Farming

  • The Newlands act of 1902

    • funding irrigation for farmers

  • John Deere steal plow

    • get undre dirt more

  • sallis mccormin mechanical reaper

    • plant seeds easier

  • use of fertilizers

  • became bread basket of US

homestead Act of 1862

  • wanting to keep people in union through giving land…

  • get people to move west to stimulate economy

  • 160 acres of land if you build something (big or small) on it

  • blocks of land were set aside for schools and government buildings

benefitted big farmers more

  • farms became bigger if they were better farmers

    • would buy smaller farms or plots from people who weren’t successful

    • overproduction

      • prices dropped because demand was very high as more citizens farmed….

      • production remained high, but prices fell

      • People’s (Populous) party

  • Some men born to farming families

    • left to join mining communities

    • wouldn’t bring wives and kids….mostly prostitutes in those communities because they environment was so harsh (gender imbalances)

    • families more likely to be prevalent in farming communities

      • standards of victorian clothing fell because of climate…nothing fancy bc of distance….clothes more simple to not get torn up if pretty, needed mobility to work the land and animals

        • came back when slavery was employed

      • women acted as doctors….reason why so much more self sufficient in these regions

      • labor much more consistent (crops and animals need attention every day)

      • mining areas much more industrial….jobs less focused on the home, so women may have had more industrial jobs…

issues of farming

  • had a lot of insect infestations

    • grasshoppers

  • exhaustion of plants and soil

    • mineral leeches….can’t support plants anymore…ran out of fields to rotate

  • Native Americans

    • actually destroyed the environment sometimes

  • RR and political people advertised to people and people overseas to make industries profitable

    • a trend in history….how can we change that in the future?

    • beliefs that if people moved West that rain would follow them

      • a lt of folklore in American culture, still is….

        • nowadays…very hated on and not connected that human interests do not match folklore, Americans more skeptical these days and create their own special memories in comparison

Female Suffrage Before 1920

  • Woodrow Wilson opposed women’s suffrage

  • western states much more liberal or progressive, but in practical instead of political senses

    • slide 21

  • states made laws about voting for women before the constitution made the 19th amendment

Original Transcontinental Railroad

  • california (sac), Nevada, Utah,

    • central pacific

  • Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois

    • union pacific

  • Gadsden purchase (1854)

    • served south more than the west and east

    • fees for farmers in west were more than in the east and south

      • made people upset

      • needed to make up for the undercuts and overproduction made in the east

      • RR were monopolized

        • interstate commerce commission (1887)

          • used to regulate the prices to transport through states

          • led to more RR being built

Farmers began buying land near the RR because it was cheaper to transport, became more desired than land from Homestead Act

  • Southern Pacific

  • Santa Fe

  • Northern Pacific

  • Great Northern

Big Business, Big Labor

  • banks not insured during this time….FDIC not made until 1930s

  • Economic panic (1896-1897 cleared up)

  • population boom during this time

  • unions became big bc population growth led to cities getting big and lots of jobs forming

Evolutions in Communication

  • railroads let travel to be so much faster that time zones basically had to be created….

    • before, travel was so slow that it did not matter, communication was super slow regardless….weeks or months

  • morse code and telegrams developed

    • transatlantic cable created…America able to communicate with Europe

      • Washington D.C. could communicate with London