Important Keywords

• Homestead Act (1862): A bill that did much to encourage settlers to move west; 160 acres of land were given to any settler who was an American citizen or who had applied for citizenship, who was committed to farming the land for six months of the year, and who could pay the $10 registration fee for the land.

• Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890): A battle that was the last large-scale attempt by Native Americans to resist American settlement in the Great Plains region.

  • Federal soldiers opened fire on Native Americans, killing more than 200.

• Dawes Act (1887): An act designed to break up Native American tribes by offering individual Native Americans land to be used for either farming or grazing.

• Farmers’ Alliances: An organization that united farmers at the statewide and regional levels; policy goals of this organization included more readily available farm credits and federal regulation of the railroads.

• Populist party: Formed in 1892 by members of the Farmers’ Alliances, this party was designed to appeal to workers in all parts of the country.

  • Populists favored a larger role of government in American society, a progressive income tax, and more direct methods of democracy.

• Turner Thesis (1893): A thesis by Frederick Jackson Turner suggesting that the innovations practiced by western settlers gradually became ingrained into the fabric of American society

Key Timeline

• 1859: Silver discovered in Comstock, Nevada

• 1862: Homestead Act, Morrill Land-Grant Act

  • Department of Agriculture created by Congress

• 1867: Founding of the Grange

• 1869: Transcontinental Railroad completed

• 1870s: Popularity of Deadwood Dick stories by Edward L. Wheeler and other dime-store novels on the West

• 1874: Barbed wire invented by Joseph Glidden

• 1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn

• 1879: Exoduster movement leaves the South for the Great Plains

• 1880s: Large movement of immigrants westward

• 1883: “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” begins

• 1886: Beginnings of harsh weather that would help destroy the cattle industry

• 1887: Dawes Act

• 1889: Native American territories open for white settlement

• 1890: Massacre at Wounded Knee

  • Wyoming women get the vote

  • High point of political influence of the Farmers’ Alliances

• 1893: Beginning of great depression of the 1890s

  • Publication of the Turner Thesis

• 1896: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech

Government Encouragement of Western Settlement

• The Homestead Act encouraged farmers to move west.

  • This legislation provided a settler 160 acres of land; to be eligible for this land:

    • the settler had to be an American citizen, or, if an immigrant, to have applied for American citizenship;

    • the settler had to be the head of a family and at least 21 years old;

    • the settler had to commit to improving the property, building a house or other structures there, and residing on the property for at least six months during the year; and

    • the settler needed to be able to pay a $10 registration fee for the land.

  • The farmer would receive the title to the 160 acres after working it for five years.

    • Homesteaders flooded into the western lands.

  • By 1900, 610,000 plots of land had been distributed to settlers, privatizing 85 million acres of public land.

• The Morrill Land-Grant Act passed in 1862.

  • This bill promoted state higher education.

  • To fund "land-grant" colleges, state governments sold hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land.

  • Settlers and land speculators bought this land for 50 cents an acre.

Challenges for Western Farmers

• Conditions on the western plains were harsh.

• Winters were bitterly cold and summers often reached 100 degrees.

• Many settlers built sod homes due to a lack of trees and wood.

  • Sod houses were less comfortable in winter and summer than traditional homes.

• Water was scarce and typhoid-carrying.

• Currier and Ives prints and other East Coast media depicted western farming as idyllic, but settlers faced locusts, dust storms, and deadly blizzards.

• By 1900, two-thirds had abandoned their farms. Many moved to cities or returned East.

• Farmers on the arid Great Plains needed neighbors to survive.

• Barn-raising and fencing were collective enterprises.

• Farmwomen shared chores and children.

• Rugged individualism didn't work on this new agricultural frontier.

Agricultural Innovation

• New business and technology helped Great Plains farmers succeed.

• Farmers received agricultural news from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, founded in 1862.

  • The 1860s and 1870s saw the introduction of new and better plows and threshers, some of them steam-powered.

• Bonanza farms replaced many Great Plains family farms.

  • These larger agricultural concerns grew only one or two cash crops.

  • Bonanza farms, true agribusinesses, sold bulk produce to Eastern or foreign markets.

  • Bonanza farms could afford cutting-edge technology to boost yields.

• By the 1870s, bonanza farms reflected economic shifts in America.

  • They were the agricultural equivalent of American big businesses.

  • Bonanza farms produced more efficiently than smaller farms.

  • Larger farms reduced the number of farmers even as agricultural output increased.

  • American farmers dropped from 60% to 37% between 1860 and 1900.

• The productivity of American agriculture led to problems for farmers, both big and small.

  • Grain oversupply in the 1880s and 1890s caused sharp price drops.

  • Most farmers increased crop production in response to this income drop, which made matters worse.

  • Many farmers fell into debt.

  • Banks foreclosed farms of mortgage defaulters.

  • Distressed farmers organized politically and sought answers.

Women and Minorities on the Agricultural Frontier

• Most farms on the Great Plains were worked by families.

  • Western women's diaries and letters show that they often felt lonely in a world where neighbors were miles away while the men worked in the fields.

• Giants in the Earth (1927) by O. E. Rolvaag describes how the prairie's bitter struggle for survival drives an immigrant settler's wife to insanity and death.

• Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) provides a more positive picture of farming life in Nebraska.

  • The novel's immigrant protagonists build farms and achieve the American dream despite many hardships.

• A female character holds the family together and guides them to their material success.

• Women first got the vote in the West, possibly because of their farm work.

• In 1887, two towns in Kansas allowed women to vote in local elections, and one elected a woman mayor.

  • Wyoming led the way in giving women the right to vote in statewide elections.

• After the Civil War, many African Americans moved west to escape Southern oppression.

  • Due to financial hardship and racial discrimination, few African American emigrants were able to start profitable farms.

  • Some African Americans did become successful western farmers.

• The most famous group of African Americans to leave the South for the West were the Exodusters.

  • They followed the Israelites' exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land.

  • Only 20% of Exodusters were successful farmers in the West.

The Mining and Lumbering Frontier

• Farmers were not the only people traveling west.

• Gold and silver prospectors flocked to many locations.

• Miners sought gold at Pike's Peak, Nevada, and silver at Comstock, Nevada.

• Eastern mining companies like the Anaconda Copper Company dominated mining.

  • Like Anaconda, these companies found that industrial copper and tin mining was just as profitable as precious metal mining.

• In the 1870s, Northwest lumber companies arrived.

  • The 1878 Timber and Stone Act allowed these companies to buy unsuitable government land cheaply.

  • Lumber companies hired front men to buy cheap woodlands and transfer the titles to them.

  • Lumbering a fast-growing nation made fortunes. that was building at a frantic pace.

The Ranching Frontier

• Western settlers inherited a cattle-ranching culture from the Mexicans.

  • After the Civil War, Texas ranchers had plenty of cattle but no easy way to get them to Eastern markets.

• In 1866, Texas ranchers drove their herds to Kansas' nearest railroad.

  • This began the "long drive" celebrated in countless westerns, as bands of cowboys, up to a third of whom may have been Mexican or African American, braved bandits, hostile Native Americans, stampedes, and bad weather to move vast numbers of cattle across the Plains to an ever-growing number of rail depots.

  • The cattle were rail-shipped to Chicago or other cities for slaughter and processing.

  • Due to newly invented refrigerated rail cars, the beef could be shipped east for marketing.

• Cattlemen grazed their animals on the “open range,” unsettled public lands.

  • Farmers and ranchers clashed as homesteaders moved in.

  • Farmers were planting crops on land where ranchers wanted to drive their cattle.

• In 1873, Joseph Glidden invented barbed wire to protect farmers' land.

• Traditional "open range" ranching was hit again by weather.

  • The harsh winters of 1885–1887 killed up to 85% of Plains cattle.

  • The survivors fenced their land and used science to improve their stock.

The End of Native American Independence

• In 1869, the transcontinental railroad enabled massive western settlement.

  • Whether tribes cooperated or attacked the settlers, they lost most of their land and were forced onto reservations under government supervision.

  • The federal government did not want to exterminate Plains tribes, but it did not want them to hinder settlement and economic development.

  • The government hoped missionaries and schools would "civilize" Native Americans and integrate them into American society.

• The Sioux famously resisted settlers.

  • In 1865, the government announced a road through Sioux lands.

    • This started a war that the Sioux waged very effectively.

  • In 1866, they ambushed and killed 88 soldiers. The government began negotiations.

  • In 1868, the Sioux accepted a reservation in South Dakota's Black Hills.

  • In June 1876, General George Custer's Seventh Cavalry found the Sioux's main encampment.

    • He and over 200 of his men died at the Little Bighorn.

  • Nez Perce and other tribes tried to escape their reservations but were defeated and forced to return.

• The disappearance of the buffalo forced Native Americans to rely on government support even if they had won more battles.

  • The Plains tribes lived to hunt buffalo herds for food and other needs.

  • Settlers nearly exterminated the buffalo with government support.

  • They destroyed the Great Plains Native American foundation.

• By the late 1880s, most Western Native Americans lived on reservations and received government rations.

• Eastern humanitarians pushed the 1887 Dawes Act to help these people become self-sufficient.

  • This law assumed Native Americans would benefit from farming like their white neighbors.

  • The Dawes Act split reservations among tribe members.

  • Ironically, this well-intentioned bill hurt the Native Americans.

  • Few Native Americans became thriving farmers.

  • Many sold their farms to settlers or land speculators.

  • Much Native American land was permanently lost as a result.

• An 1890 religious movement reflected Plains Indian despair.

  • Ghost Dances were believed to cause white settlers to leave, buffalo to return, and warriors to rise.

  • When Sitting Bull promoted Ghost Dance among the Sioux, the military became alarmed. Indian police killed Sitting Bull during his arrest.

  • A band of Ghost Dancers fled the reservation. They were surrounded by troops of the Seventh Cavalry.

  • As soldiers disarmed the Sioux camp, someone fired a shot.

  • The Massacre at Wounded Knee killed over 200 Native Americans.

• On April 22, 1889, the “Indian territory” of Oklahoma was opened to settlement.

  • "Boomers" rushed to claim unclaimed land. People who had entered Oklahoma a day early to grab land were called “sooners.”

  • The opening of Oklahoma was the last act in a process that saw settlers displace the Native Americans on the Great Plains.

Agrarian Anger and Populism

• By the 1880s many Western farmers faced severe economic problems.

• Many Southern farmers were in a similar situation.

• These farmers blamed government policies for their troubles.

• Since the Civil War, the federal government had imposed high tariffs on imported goods to protect American industries.

• The farmers believed that these high tariffs hurt their ability to export their products abroad.

• Farmers were also angered by government fiscal policy and the state of the currency.

The Gold Standard

• After the Civil War, the federal government "tightened money" by removing wartime "greenbacks" from circulation.

• Government economists believed a stable currency was best for business.

• They put the US on the gold standard, where every dollar in circulation could be exchanged for an equivalent amount of government-held gold.

• This limited money supply and prevented inflation.

• Due to its limited supply, the currency deflated as the country grew.

• Deflation increased debts for distressed farmers as crop prices fell.

• They called for various measures to increase the money supply and drive up the price of their produce.

• Fiscally conservative presidents didn't increase currency.

The Grange and Farmers’ Alliances

• Western farmers founded the Grange in 1867.

• By 1875, over 800,000 farmers had joined the organization.

  • Grangers formed farmer cooperatives to buy and sell products in bulk.

  • The Grange organized politically and sponsored state railroad and grain elevator regulation laws.

  • In 1878, many farmers supported the Greenback party, which advocated for paper money to inflate the currency.

    • They won some congressmen and local officials but failed to change American fiscal policy.

• The Grange usually organized farmers on the local level.

  • The Farmers’ Alliances linked farmer associations on a statewide and regional level.

  • In 1889, the Southern Alliance represented a million members.

  • An African American association, the Colored Farmers National Alliance also had a million members.

  • Two million farmers joined Farmers’ Alliances in the Plains states.

  • The Farmers’ Alliances demanded federal regulation of the railroads, currency reform, easily accessible farm credits, and agriculture departments in every state.

  • Another proposal called for federal warehouses where farmers could store grain for credit when prices were too low.

  • In 1890, this program was summarized in the Ocala Platform, which was issued at an Alliance Convention held in Ocala, Florida.

• By 1890, Farmers' Alliance leaders considered national political power.

  • In the South, the Alliance helped elect four governors and forty-seven congressmen.

  • Women were crucial to the Farmers' Alliances' political power in the West.

  • Mary Lease became a popular speaker, telling farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.”

• The federal government did respond to the unrest amongst farmers.

  • The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads, though initially, this did not prove effective.

  • The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed any business that exercised a “restraint of trade.”

The Populist Revolt

• On July 4, 1892, a convention of Farmers’ Alliances launched the People’s Party.

  • Supporters of the party became known as Populists.

• Populists argued that the federal government needed to be more involved in American life due to powerful economic forces.

• The Populist platform called for increasing currency, a progressive income tax on the wealthy, direct senatorial elections, government ownership of railroads, telegraph, and telephone systems, the eight-hour workday, and immigration restrictions.

• James Weaver, a Civil War Union general and currency expert, was nominated for president.

• In 1892, the Populists received a million popular and 22 electoral votes.

  • Populists failed in the Northeast, and Democrats ruled the South.

Populism and the Election of 1896

• The Populists remained a political force after 1892.

  • They opposed Grover Cleveland because he supported the gold standard.

  • Nationwide hardship began in 1893 with the great depression.

  • The Populists kept criticizing government fiscal policy and Eastern business interests.

• William McKinley, the Republican nominee in 1896, supported the gold standard, a high tariff, and a "full dinner pail" for industrial workers.

• William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee, declared, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”

  • Bryan's passionate support for coining more silver to expand the currency earned him the Populist nomination.

• Bryan lost the Northeast and Midwest to McKinley in a bellwether election.

  • Bryan and the Populists' agrarian vision lost to the urban and industrial order.

• Prosperity returned in the late 1890s.

  • Farmer finances improved.

  • As big cities grew, American society changed.

  • The Populist party disbanded, but most of their 1892 platform was enacted.

The Idea of the West

• Modern mass media grew alongside trans-Mississippi settlement.

  • Dime novels introduced millions to trappers, miners, and cowboys.

• One of the most prolific dime novel authors was Edward L. Wheeler.

  • Wheeler romanticized gamblers and gunmen in Deadwood Dick: The Prince of the Road**.**

  • In 1883, traveling Wild West shows began.

  • Buffalo Bill Cody, a former buffalo hunter and Army scout, became famous as the impresario of a show that featured cowboys doing rodeo tricks, staged Native American-cavalry battles, and trick shooting by stars like Annie Oakley.

  • Cody even persuaded Sitting Bull to tour with his show for a season.

  • Cody and others immortalized the West in movies and TV.

• Frederick Jackson Turner's West interpretation was also significant.

  • He wrote in 1893 that the westward movement shaped American culture.

  • He believed the frontier fostered American democracy and self-reliance.

  • The Turner Thesis proved to be enormously influential.

  • It also raised serious questions for Turner’s contemporaries.

  • The 1890 census had recently declared the frontier closed.

  • How, wondered some, could Americans maintain their democratic traditions in an increasingly urban and industrial nation?

Chapter 18: America Transformed into the Industrial Giant of the World (1870– 1910)