Chapter 17: Wild, Wild West

West before Settlement

  • White population

    • increased in new states of Utah, Arizona, NM, and OK

  • Native population:

    • Plains Indians

    • Eastern natives are also here, driven from the East.

    • Spanish influence

The Native Problem

  • Reservation System: places designed for Natives

  • Indian Wars: massacre, breeds, massacre

    • Sand Creek Colorado (U.S military massacres a group of Native Americans)

    • Little Big Horn( send military to SD in search of gold, Shu massacred military)

    • Wounded Knee: natives having revivals, under a flag of truce, American military gun them all down. this is the end of native American defense / wars

  • A Century of Dishonor:

    • Helen Hunt Jackson: author of ^

Attempted Destruction of Native Culture

  • Dawes Severity Act - 1887

    • gives land grants to native Americans, but put them in nuclear families. attempted destruction of Native American tribes

    • We will grant you citizenship, treating them like immigrants.

  • Reasons for downfall: kills off buffalo, 15 million - 5 Thousand buffalo: hunter-gatherer lifestyle revolves around buffalo. Westward expansion and railroads cause the decline to be faster and faster. Disease also serves a major purpose in this downfall. Most native Americans had a gene for alcoholism.

Reasons for Westward Expansion

  • People find gold in the 1850s and 1860s, which brings in a lot of people and businesses in the West. Gold mine towns spring up overnight, little law and orders due to towns popping up so fast.

  • Free Land

    • Homestead Act- 1862

      • 160 Acres:

      • Requirements: create a land that goes thru the land, u have to dig a well

  • Livestock:

    • Effect of Railroads:

    • Cattle drives: taking of crops and things and people westward by means of landstock

    • Effect on American culture: cowboys & cowgirls

    • Downfall

      • Barbed wire: as a means of keeping away cattle from crops (protection), ends cattle drives

The End of Westward Expansion

  • Life west of the 100th Meridian:

    • “dry farming”: farmers forced to dig deep for water

  • The last land grab: the state of Oklahoma. In 1889, with the Dawes Act, they open up Oklahoma,

    • “Sooners”, They came too soon, (people alr were in OK)

  • 1890- end of an era (Westward Expansion)

    • Turner Thesis: the U.S is done, what do they do now?