The Taming of the Frontier Notes

The Taming of the Frontier

Native Americans and the Disappearing Lands

• The rapid disappearance of "unused lands" led to increased competition between whites and Native Americans.
• This destruction undermined Native American economic structures, which were based on a balance with nature.
• Native economies relied on crops, livestock, hunting/fishing, and trading/raiding.
• The balance was delicate: if hunts failed, they relied on crops; if crops failed, they relied on buffalo; and if both failed, they resorted to raiding.
• Examples:
  • Southwest: sheep
  • Northwest: salmon
  • Plains: buffalo
• This delicate balance began to unravel around the 1850s.

Slaughter of the Buffalo

• General Philip Sheridan's view: "…kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance."
• Buffalo trains were sponsored by rail companies, paying 1-$3 per hide (if they bothered to pick them up).
• Native Americans also participated in commercial buffalo hunting.
• The buffalo population was already stressed due to dry years in the 1840s-50s, leading to competition between settlers, Native Americans, and herds for scarce river basins.
• Increased competition for grasslands came from cattle, sheep, and horses.
• Lethal bovine diseases, introduced by domestic herds, further weakened the buffalo.
• Mass killings were the final blow, leading to near extinction by the 1880s.
• By the 1880s, only a few hundred buffalo remained out of an estimated 25 million in the 1820s.
• This effect mirrored the decline experienced in the Northwest by fishermen and canneries.

Transformation of Native Cultures

• Human demographics played a significant role on the frontier.
• The frontier population was predominately male (20-30s), unmarried, and prone to violence.
• Occupations included explorers, traders, trappers, soldiers, prospectors, and cowboys.
• These individuals were often armed and had few moral qualms about using them against anything or anyone in their way.
• The prevailing opinion of Native Americans as heathen, devious, and cruel made violence easier.
• Raids and tales of mutilations and kidnappings reinforced that image.
• Native American counterparts were young, armed, and valued bravery and vengeance against white interlopers.
• Conflict was the natural outcome of such a mix.

Lack of Unity Among Native Tribes

• Whites failed to recognize the diversity of Native cultures.
• Native societies were divided into hundreds of bands, villages, and confederacies, not large tribes.
• There were 200+ languages and dialects within the Native tribes.
• Tribal chiefs seldom held wide-ranging powers, a fact often misunderstood or ignored by whites.
• Native Americans often fought each other more than they fought whites.
• Treaties were not viewed as a guarantee of future rights and were often violated soon after being signed.
• Tribes were seen by whites as an annoyance or a hindrance to expansion.

Reservation Policy

• Prior to 1880, attempts were made to 'civilize' the tribes.
• Relocation onto less desirable lands was offered in exchange for protection, food, clothing, and necessities.
• Trade initially served as a basis for the relationship. In the 1760s, horses and guns were traded for furs, jewelry, and military assistance.
• By the 1870s, trade was no longer on equal footing due to US economic power.
• The market economy forced a dependent relationship, with whites dictating terms.
• Dependency aided in imposing the reservation policy, increasing degradation, depression, or anger.
• Supreme Court decisions of 1884 and 1886 classified Native Americans not as citizens but as ‘wards of state.’
• They had no citizenship and no protection under the 14th and 15th amendments.
• Policies combined historically hostile bands on the same reservation.
• Continued encroachment of farmers, miners, and herders made keeping reservations intact difficult.
• This led to increasing levels of hostility and resistance.
• In the end, Native Americans were not so much conquered as harassed and starved into submission.

Indian Policy Reform

• The goal was to uplift Native Americans through land holding and education.
• This required Native Americans to abandon traditional cultures for American middle-class work ethic and values: ambition, thrift, and materialism.
• The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 reversed Indian policy.
• Community-owned properties were dissolved in favor of individually owned allotments.
• Land was held in trust by the government for 25 years.
• Citizenship was granted to all who accepted their allotments.
• All unused allotments were to be sold to whites.
• The purpose was to ‘Americanize’ and fight tribal relations by individualizing them and introducing the notion of private property.
• Children were to be educated in boarding schools.
• This left generations caught between two worlds, inferior in both.
• Despite program safeguards, speculators moved in.
• Native American land holdings were reduced from 138 million to 52 million acres by 1930.

Extraction of Resources

• The prospecting frontier advanced rapidly.
• Mining of gold, silver, and copper, as well as timber extraction occurred.
• The expense and transportation difficulties turned these operations into corporate operations.
• Engineers, heavy machinery, and rail lines followed the lone prospector who sells out (e.g., the Comstock Lode).
• Copper, lead, zinc, and tin became equally lucrative.
• Vast tracts of NW forests were sacrificed in the rush, driven by the ever-increasing demands of construction and heating industries.
• Oil reserves were found in California and Eastern Texas, beginning to be used for fuel, lubrication, and lighting.
• This led to a complex and racially diverse society: Negro, Indian, Mexican, and Chinese populations all added to the mix.
• Expansion led to new states coming into the union:
  • 1889: North and South Dakota, Washington, and Montana
  • 1890: Wyoming and Idaho
  • 1896: Utah added (after assurances on giving up polygamy)

Conservation Movement

• The conservation movement emerged in response to the economic explosion.
• It argued that as its owner, the federal government had a role in the protection of the land and resources in the public domain, which was most of the land west of the Mississippi River.
• 1864: Yosemite Valley was granted to California and designated for public use.
• 1872: Yellowstone River in Wyoming was created as the 1st National Park.

Transportation: Railroads

• Railroads boomed from 1865 to 1890, increasing from 35,000 to over 200,000 miles of rail track.
• By 1900, the US contained 1/3 of all the track in the world.
• This boom fueled numerous complementary industries: steel, coal, freight and passenger cars, depot construction.
• It spawned western urbanization in cities like Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle.
• Huge government subsidies spurred on growth.
• Over 180 million acres of public domain land were granted to help finance the rails, with accompanying right of way (20-80 mile wide strip along the route).
• Land was sold or used as security for bonds sold to the public.
• States and Localities joined in with further grants and purchases of bonds (additional 50 million acres).
• This had mixed effects, making some towns and bankrupted others.

Technological and Organizational Reforms in Railroads

• 1880s: Standardization of gauges was achieved.
• Air brakes, electric switches, and automatic couplers made travel safer and more efficient.
• The need for tunnels, accurate grading, and bridges led to a boom in US university engineering programs.
• Coordination of passenger and freight schedules led to a new sense of time and space.
• 1883: Without authority from Congress, 4 separate time zones were established, with Rail Time becoming the National Time!

Farming the Plains

• Irrigation and mechanization made farming possible.
• Agriculture became big business with transport and scientific cultivation methods.
• This enabled the US to become the world's breadbasket.
• Settlement occurred rapidly in the 1870s-80s, with migrants pouring onto the plains.
• The number of farmers increased from 2 million in 1860 to 6 million in 1919.
• Railroads were instrumental in the development of the land, offering cheap land, easy credit, and free transport to the plains.
• Advertising offices all over Europe spread the word, making it seem like the perfect opportunity for a better life.

Hardships of Farming

• Lack of resources: wood, fuel, and water were scarce, as was well-digging machinery and windmills.
• Weather: conditions were harsh and variable, with blizzards leading to spring floods and summer droughts, as well as fires, tornados, and locusts.
• In 1874, a swarm of locusts 198,000 square miles in area, made up of 12.5 trillion insects with a total weight of 27.5 million tons, was recorded.
• Isolation: The 1862 Homestead Act provided free land to those who resided and improved their rectangular 160 acre plots.
• This was mitigated by mail-order companies and the extension of free rural delivery, bringing isolated farmers into touch with consumer society.
• Letters, newspapers, and catalogs brought the outside world closer. RFD was introduced in 1896 and parcel post was delivered in 1913.

Mechanization of Agriculture

• Demand and prices remained high in the postwar era.
• Wartime spurred innovations in harvesting and planting.
• Seeders, combines, binders, mowers, and rotary plows arrived on the rails and increased production.
• Dairy and poultry farming also benefited, with the invention of the centrifugal cream separator (1879) and mechanized incubator (1885).
• Steam and animal power increased the land under cultivation.
• 1890: 7.5 acres could be cultivated by hand vs. 135 acres with mechanization.
• Labor cost decreased from $3.65$ to .66/bushel.
• Science created new strains of wheat, alfalfa, and corn, as well as means to combat plant and animal diseases.
• This resulted in more production/acre with less labor needed!

Ranching

• Ranching was started by the Spanish in the 16th century.
• Vaqueros taught their craft to whites in the 19th century.
• The 1860s saw huge profits due to growing food demands.
• A 5 calf in Texas could be sold for $$40 at a Kansas market.
• By 1870, thousands of cattle were driven to rail heads in Kansas, Missouri, and Wyoming, destined for St. Louis or Chicago.
• The cattle population exploded from 130,000 to 4.5 million from 1860-1880.
• Ranching was dependent on Open Range lands.
• Ranchers purchased just a few hundred acres with water access while making use of thousands of acres for grazing.
• This quickly led to conflict with sheep herders and farmers.

Barbed Wire and the End of Open Range

• The question arose: "Good fences make for good neighbors?"
• There was a lack of an economical means of enclosing lands until Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Ill. invented barbed wire in 1873.
• 80.5 million pounds of barbed wire were sold in 1880 alone!
• Barbed wire ensured farming’s dominance on the plains and killed the cattle drive business as quickly as it had started.

The Impact of Ranching

• Science still had a place in ranching.
• Half of the carcass was marketable meat.
• Hides were used for leather.
• Blood was used for fertilizer.
• Hooves were used for glue.
• Fat was used for candles and soap.
• The remainder was made into sausages.
• The environmental impact of the industry was huge.
• However short-lived, the cattle drives established beef as a staple of the US diet, where it remains today!

The Closed Frontier

• The Census of 1890 declared the frontier closed.
• Some saw the source of US power and uniqueness as gone.
• Some, including TR, would see this as a beginning to a new phase of US history!