American west key dates :)
American west 1835-1895.
1830 - The Indian removal act, (President Jackson) American Indians moved west of the Mississippi river, They are split up from the Americans.
1834 - Trade and intercourse act, Permanent Indian frontier established Everything west of the Mississippi river was the natives land (Plains), Kept settlers and natives apart.
1836 - Oregon trail now open, The US government encouraged people to move to Oregon, they wanted to establish it as american territory, It was the only practical way for migrants to get over mountains with wagons.
1840 - USA gains new territories in the west, Indian territory was surrounded by american territory from all sides.
1846 - The Donner party migration ends in disaster, Mormons successfully migrate to Utah.
1848 - The US now wants the natives land, the US has gained Texas, These events had massive impacts for the native Americans.
1849 - California gold rush, Thousands travelled along the Oregon trail, Thousands more travelled from all over the world, Californiaâs population reached 300,000 by 1855.
1851 - Indian appropriation act (1) - Provided money for moving the plains Indians, Hunting lands were also allocated in some reservations, Belived they would become like the white Americans (Assimilate), and Fort Laramie treaty (1).
1861-65 - The American civil war, During this time slavery was abolished and the Jim crow laws began, Confederacy was defeated by the union And railroads linked the agricultural West with the industrial cities of the North and East.
1862 - Homestead act, Small family farms : 160 acres, Over 6 million acres was homesteaded by 1876, 80 million acres was homesteaded by the and of the act (1930âs), Half of all settled land in Nebraska was homesteaded, And the Pacific railroad act, Set up the union pacific railroad company to lay track west to east
1862 - Little Crowâs War, Little Crow chief of the Santee Sioux lived on a reservation in Minnesota, the previous year crops failed on the reservation and the food promised didnât arrive so they faced starvation, In August 1862, Little Crow and others attacked the agency that ran the reservation, They stole food and burned the agency building, They also killed several US soldiers, By October most had surrendered or been captured and 38 were executed, The santee had been moved to a smaller reservation, Crow Creek its barren landscape caused many deaths that winter.
1864 - Sand Creek Massacre, The Cheyenne on the Sand Creek reservation were starving after crop failures, Led by their chief Black Kettle attacked wagon trains and stole food but didnât harm travellers, After three years of attacks, Black Kettle negotiated with government officials and the army, On November 29 1864 Colonel Chivington led a dawn raid on their camp, More than 150 Natives were massacred even though they waved white flags, Some escaped and told other tribes, A US senate committee of enquiry condemned Chivington and both white men and natives were horrified.
1866 - Goodnight - loving trail is established, Drive cattle to fort summer, New Mexico.
1866-68 - Red Cloudâs War, Miner John Bozeman established the Bozeman trail connecting the Oregon trail to gold in Montana, The Trail broke the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 because it crossed the hunting grounds of the Sioux, Red Cloud a chief of the Lakota Sioux led attacks on the trial travellers, in 1866 the government talked with him but he stormed out when he learned that two more forts were planned to be built along the trail, In December 1866, Captain William Fetterman and 80 soldiers rode into a trap and were massacred by the Sioux who blocked the rout so no traveller could use it, The US Army then negotiated a second Fort Laramie treaty.
1867 - Abilene, Kansas becomes the first cow town Joseph McCoy, He had the idea of cattle dealing at railroads in the west, This meant that buyers and settlers would meet on neutral ground, undisturbed by mobs, rustlers or Indians, He became very rich from taking a commission on every heard of cattle sold in his town.
1868 - Fort Laramie treaty (2), The US government agrees to abandon three forts and the Bozeman trail, Red Cloud agrees to move his tribe to a reservation stretching from the Black Hills of Dakota to the Missouri River, Both parties are in favour of the treaty, However, The Natives, now split into reservations on separate sites, find it hard to act together, And President Grantâs Peace Policy, Replace the corrupt man on the reservations with religious men, Ely Parker (An American Indian) is appointed commissioner of Indian affairs, The US government puts aside 2 million to ensure the plains Indians are properly looked after.
1869 - First Transcontinental railroad completed, This railroad would let Americans think they had fulfilled manifest destiny (racist/prejudiced and discriminatory view), Would allow all Americans to keep in touch (national unity), Enable troops to be moved around to control Native uprisings, Railroads would also let federal law officers reach new settlements that were having problems with law and order, And they would transport goods to ports in Oregon and California, which were well positioned to trade with the far east.
1870 - Ranching on the plains, Start of the open range, The first ranches were open range, Ranchers claimed rights to land and water but didnât own anything, At the centre were bunkhouses fro cowboys, Stables for horses and barns for storage, Land was un-fenced and cattle roamed freely, Every cow was branded, The peak of the beef industry was between 1800 and 1885.
1871 - Indian appropriations act (2), Now the Natives were being viewed as no longer an independent nation so the government could easily take land from them.
1873 - Timbre and culture act, This gave homesteaders an additional 160 acres of land for free if they agreed to plant trees on 40 acres of this.
1874 - Mass production of barbed wire begins, Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden got the patent for a manually produced fencing material that made barbed wire so now he could begin to mass produce it.
1876 - Battle of the Little Big Horn, In the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty the Sioux were given a large reservation in South Dakota and could roam freely in the Black Hills (Sacred for the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux), Whites were not allowed to settle there, As the northern Pacific Railroad got closer to the land, General George Custer led cavalrymen to protect the railroad builders and look for gold, He found it and prospectors staked their claims, the US government offered the Sioux $6 Million a year for the black hills or $400,000 a year for the mineral rights, However they refused both offers and many bands left the Sioux reservation, In December 1875 the Sioux were given 60 days to get back to their reservation or be attacked, The deep snow made this impossible, By spring over 7000 Natives were ready for war, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and their people defeated General Crook at the Rosebud River on June 17th 1876 they then travelled west towards the Little Big Horn river, On June 25th 1876 General Custer attacked the Native camp at the Little Big Horn, General Custer and his men were badly defeated, 225 men died and many were stripped, disfigured and scalped, Views of the Natives had changed from trying to reach an agreement with them to The White wanting to destroy their way of life and make them assimilate to the ways of the settlers.
1879 - The Exoduster movement, Benjamin Singleton a former slave pioneered the move to Kansas (However others like Henry Adams helped to), He set up a settlement there in 1873, He promoted Kansas in newspapers and at meetings this helped create the foundations for a large full scale migration in 1879, In 1879 40,000 had set of west, Heading to Kansas and also Missouri as well as Indiana and Illinois.
1880 - The extermination of the Buffalo, By 1840 there were around 13 million buffalo on the great plains, And by 1885 just 200 survived, Their destruction meant the destruction of the Natives way of life too, Buffalo Bill (William Cody), was employed by the Kansas Pacific Railroad company to clear buffalo from the tracks and supply workers with meat, He claimed he had killed 4280 buffalo in 17 months, The Buffaloâs habitat was crossed by railroads so the companies used hunters to kill them, they were also killed by tourists, special excursion trains brought people on the plains to hunt them for sport, Their hides were made into good quality leather goods, White hunters earned good money supplying them and the grasslands they fed on were destroyed or eaten by other animals when Settlers built houses, towns, trails and railroads, They also caught new diseases spread by the Settlersâ cattle and horses, Some suspected the government encouraged the destruction of the buffalo.
1881 - Billy the Kid is killed by Pat Garrett, In April 1881, Billy escaped Lincoln County Jail and a bounty of $500 was put on his head, He was tracked down and shot by Pat Garrett in July 1881, He took the reward for himself, However many people liked Billy the Kid, They felt he stood up for the poorer people, He has been romanticised in history.
1881- the gunfight at the OK Corral, On October 26th 1881, Vigil Earp had disarmed and arrested Ike Canton, He was then released and he joined his family at the OK Corral (A cow pen), They were told by Wyatt and Vigil Earp to hand over their weapons, A shootout followed, People are unsure what happened, But Franck McLaury and Billy Canton were killed, and there families claimed they were murdered, They decided to avenge these murders, Eventually forcing the Earp brothers out of Tombstone (The town it took place in), However they didnât win as law and order improved, new courts and jails were set up and gun control laws were enforced.
1886-87 - The great Die up, The end of the Open Range, The winter of 1886-87 was incredibly harsh with temperatures dropping to -55 degrees, Deep snow prevented cattle from reaching the grass and around 15% of Open Range cattle herds died so did many cowboys, Many more cattlemen went bankrupt.
1887 - The Dawes act (General allotment act), The end of the reservation system, This divided Native reservations into farms for Native families, Sold any left over land to the White Settlers, This was to make Natives act like White men and farm the land instead of roaming and hunting, Some Natives did become farmers but many refused the land or sold it, Which made them dependent on White people for food and shelter.
1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre, In 1890, Sioux rations were cut and a drought meant that their crops failed, A Native had a vision that if they all kept dancing, The great spirit would bring back the dead and a great flood would carry white people away, More and more Natives began to dance which worried the Indian agents and Whites, The army moved in to stop them, Sitting Bull who supported them dancing was killed when Sioux police tried to arrest him, His followers fled south to join the band of Big Foot, Who had also fled when the army moved in, December 29th 1890, Snow and pneumonia slowed Big Footâs band down and the army caught them, They were taken to Wounded Knee Creek where the army began to disarm them, The Natives started dancing and shooting broke out, After 10 minutes 250 Natives (Men, Women and Children) and 25 soldiers were dead, It was the end of Native resistance.
1890 - The Indian Frontier closed, The US Census Bureau announced the closure of the Indian Frontier, The west had formally been settled by White Americans as Homesteads, Ranches, Cow-towns, Mining-Cities, Cities and States.
1892 - The Johnson County War, As a result of the killing of Ella Watson and Jim Averill and three more murders, The small ranchers announced they they would hold a spring round up earlier then the WSGA (Wyoming Stock Growers Association), The big ranchers (WSGA Members) were sure that the small ranchers would use this round up to steal more cattle from them, The WSGA hires 22 gunmen from Texas to âinvadeâ Johnson County and kill 70 suspected rustlers, $100,000 Was raised: Most of it would be used to pay for legal costs after the invasion, The invasion failed, The âinvadersâ got held up in a shoot-out with Nate Champion, Word reached Sheriff Angus of Johnson County, And residents of the countyâs main town, Buffalo, The âinvadersâ were surrounded and arrested, The WSGAâs $100,000 was used to hire the best Chicago lawyers, the lawyers got the trial moved to Cheyenne, Juries here favoured the WSGA, The WSGA lawyers delayed the trial until Johnson County could no longer afford to keep the prisoners in jail, The state government, Full of WSGA supporters, Refused to help with the costs of the trial, The âinvadersâ were set free.
1893 - The largest Oklahoma land rush, 8 Million acres opened up, The land rush itself began at noon on September 16th 1893, With an estimated 100,000 participants hoping to stake claim to part of the 8 million acres and 40,000 homesteads on what had been formerly Cherokee grazing land, It would be Oklahomaâs fourth and largest land rush.