Chapter 16 Conflict in the West (1865-1914) Notes

The Tribes of the West and the U.S. Government

• Post-CCivil War context: rapid white settlement, new technologies (railroads), and new political/economic arrangements transformed the West from 1865 to 1890.
• Chapter objective: understand post-Civil War changes in the American West.
• Learning focus: Indian development from perspectives of indigenous peoples; impact of the transcontinental railroad; interactions among indigenous peoples, ranchers, farmers, miners, outlaws, politicians, and mythmakers.
• Key takeaway: by 1890, most plains tribes were defeated or confined to shrinking reservations; whites built a new West around rails, markets, and farming, reshaping culture, economy, and law.

The Comanche Empire

• In 1860 the Comanches were arguably the West’s most powerful tribe; they became known as the Lords of the South Plains due to horses and rifles.
• 1700s–early 1800s: Comanches built a buffalo-hunting empire, formed alliances (notably with Utes), traded widely, and fought fiercely (Apache, Europeans).
• By the late 1850s, decline began as U.S. Army and Texas Rangers gained the upper hand in Texas; Comanches needed vast hunting/trading spaces and showed little interest in permanent settlement.
• Civil War era opportunities: Comanches raided Texas postwar; traded stolen cattle with Union agents in New Mexico; the end of the war reduced federal military presence in Texas.
• Early trading (mid-1860s): great annual comanchero gatherings with traders from the East; goods exchanged for cattle and captives (including women) for sale in New Mexico.
• Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty (October 1867): U.S. peace commissioners (led by Thomas Sherman) sought to end Comanche warfare; promised a reservation and farming opportunities in exchange for ending old ways and buffalo hunting.
  • Government terms emphasized farming on a reservation and hunting only on plains below the Arkansas River in Indian Territory.
  • Comanches expected to continue buffalo hunts and cattle trading; reservations not aligned with their view of winter camps.
  • After initial ceremonies (gifts including coffee, bread, tobacco), the treaty’s interpretation diverged; Comanches saw reservations as temporary and winter camps, not permanent farming settlements.
• Treaty interpretation conflict: 1866–1873 raiding continued; 6,255 horses and 11,395 cattle were reported stolen in Texas between 1866 and 1873.
• 1871–1873: U.S. Army campaigns intensified as buffalo herds collapsed due to hunting by white hunters, undermining Comanche life.
• Quanah Parker and Isa-tai: Quanah Parker (son of a Comanche chief and a white captive mother) emerged as a leader opposing wholesale surrender; Isa-tai (a spiritual leader) rose in 1874 with a message against whites.
• 1874–75: U.S. Army counteroffensive; Parker’s main encampment destroyed; many Comanches fled but surrendered in waves during the winter at Fort Sill; Parker later became principal chief and a negotiator for expanded land allotments.
• Aftermath: Parker’s later life (late 19th century) included cooperation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs; he facilitated a shift toward farming and ranching, while seeking greater land rights.

The Navajos and the Apaches

• Navajos (Diné) and Mescalero Apaches were major groups in New Mexico; both faced U.S. military campaigns after the Civil War.
• Bosque Redondo (1862–1868): Bosque Redondo reservation established to confine Navajos and Mescalero Apaches; 400 Apaches confined in 1863–1864; 6,000 Navajos surrendered; about 8,000 Navajos were moved 300 miles south during the Long Walk.
• Carson’s campaign: Kit Carson led the assault on the Navajos, destroying crops, orchards, and livestock; the Bosque Redondo experiment was a disaster.
• 1868 treaty and return: Congressional peace commission found Bosque Redondo a failure; Navajos returned to home lands in a reservation (1868 treaty) and Mescalero Apache reservations were established later (1873; expanded 1883).
• Navajo Nation formation: expanded land in New Mexico and Arizona (Four Corners area) 1868–1886; avoided Dawes Act’s allotment division; grew from about 10,000 in 1864 to ~30,000 in 1900.
• Outcome: Navajos stopped raiding and preserved core spiritual and cultural practices; lands important to their sacred geography.

The Modocs, Nez Perce, and the Pacific Coast Tribes

• California tribes faced rapid white settlement after the Gold Rush; federal treaties with 139 tribes were largely ignored.
• Modoc War (Lost River, 1872–1873): Kintpuash led Modoc resistance after leaving a shared reservation with Klamaths and Snakes; used lava beds for guerrilla warfare; army defeated Modocs, relocating survivors to Indian Territory.
• Nez Perce conflict: divided between “progressives” (agreed to reservation life in Idaho) and “nonprogressives” (resisted); Chief Joseph led a long retreat from Idaho into Montana, then Canada, pursued by U.S. Army; nearly all surrendered within 40 miles of Canada; many sent to reservations in Indian Territory; Joseph later allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest but not to ancestral lands.
• Map reference: strategic routes and battles across Oregon, Idaho, Montana (Cedar Creek 1876; Bear Paw 1877; Cut into the Great Plains via the Northern Pacific and Great Northern rail corridors).

The Lakota Sioux: From Fort Laramie to the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee

• Lakota Sioux fought extensively on the Northern Plains; 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty promised peace and territorial guarantees; Red Cloud led a successful resistance before the 1868 treaty.
• 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty: Lakota agreed to avoid war; government agreed to abandon three forts; Sitting Bull and other leaders derided the treaty and annuities, viewing it as a loss of autonomy.
• Gold in the Black Hills spurred renewed white encroachment; Lakota resistance to relocation near agency headquarters intensified.
• Great Sioux War (1876–1877): U.S. Army sought to compel retreat; 1876 Little Bighorn: Custer’s detachment attacked a large Lakota–Cheyenne force and was defeated; Sioux and Cheyenne victory celebrated briefly but followed by massive retaliation.
• Aftermath: Sheridan led a massive campaign that defeated the Sioux; the Great Sioux Reserve in the Black Hills was broken up into six smaller reservations: Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Pine Ridge, and Rosebud; white settlement expanded into “surplus” lands.
• Ghost Dance (1890): spiritual movement led by Wovoka promising a return of buffalo and the disappearance of whites if Sioux returned to traditional ways; frightened whites and prompted military action at Pine Ridge.
• Wounded Knee (1890): last major Indian resistance; 100–200 (some estimates up to 300) Sioux killed in the confrontation; marked end of major armed Indian resistance in the West.

Ghost Dance

• Religious awakening among the Lakota Sioux (1890) promising a return to traditional ways and a buffalo return; whites interpreted as a prelude to revolt.
• Federal response: U.S. Army sent to Pine Ridge to investigate; Valentine McGillycuddy urged calm and suggested not to suppress native religious practices.
• Outcome: a faction under Big Foot left the reservation; on the day after surrender talks, a skirmish erupted, leading to the Wounded Knee massacre and a decisive end to armed resistance.

Government Policy: The Grant Peace Policy and the Dawes Act

• Postwar assimilation strategy: reorganize Indian policy around reservations and reduce army presence in Indian affairs; emphasize directed assimilation through missionaries and schooling rather than military force.
• Grant Peace Policy (1869): attempt to end Plains Indian wars by establishing large reservations and placing Indians under protection; Ely S. Parker (a Seneca) appointed as Commissioner of Indian Affairs; reservations made off-limits to the Army; Christian missionaries led reservation management (e.g., Lawrie Tatum).
• Challenges: supply delays, inconsistent implementation, and ongoing resistance from tribes who preferred treaty obligations and continued traditional lifeways.
• Army violations: Sherman’s campaigns against the Comanche (1874–75) violated the Peace Policy but were not reprimanded; policy waned by the late 1870s.
• Dawes Act (1887): General Allotment Act that divided reservations into 160-acre parcels for individual Indians; after a 25-year waiting period, land could be sold to whites; Indians who took homesteads became U.S. citizens.
  • Immediate aims: break tribal communal landholding; promote farming and citizenship; reduce tribal sovereignty to ease white settlement.
  • Consequences: culture shifts toward individual landholding and farming; surplus land sold to whites; Navajos and Senecas managed to retain communal ownership; overall, vast land loss from 155 million acres in 1881 to 78 million acres by 1900.
  • First Amendment rights and religion: federal policy often treated Indian religion as not protected; it wasn’t until 1978 that Congress recognized traditional Indian religions as having First Amendment rights.

Carlisle Indian School

• Carlisle School (Pennsylvania) established as a model for assimilating Native American children into white society; 1875 government actions moved captive Indian children to Carlisle and later to other boarding schools (Catholic and Protestant).
• Lt. Richard Henry Pratt ran the Carlisle model; Sarah Mather assisted; children learned English, Protestant Christianity, and Western dress.
• Soaring Eagle (Cheyenne) and others publicly supported schooling as a pathway to home acceptance, though many resisted and retained tribal language and stories in private.
• Legacy: 25 Indian boarding schools modeled on Carlisle (1879–1902); funding via federal dollars; schools aimed to eradicate tribal cultures and promote citizenship and assimilation, often through coercive discipline.
• Zitkála-Šá (Gertrude Bonnin) documented harsh experiences on her first day at boarding school (1900).

The Transcontinental Railroad, 1869

• Context: Government support via the Pacific Railway Act (1862) enabled Central Pacific (SF to the east) and Union Pacific (east to west) to build a continental railroad.
• Promontory Summit, Utah (May 1869): the two lines met, completing the first transcontinental railroad; it knit the nation together like never before.
• Construction details: Irish workers on Union Pacific; Chinese laborers on Central Pacific; rail laying pace and challenges across the Sierra Nevada.
• Impacts: standardization of time zones (Day of Two Noons, November 18, 1883) to coordinate schedules; four time zones established; rapid cross-country travel dropped to about 10 days; improved safety/mechanics with new technology.
• Railroads connected West with national and global markets, enabling beef, grain, and mineral exports; rail networks reshaped settlement, politics, and economic life.
• Engineering advances: Westinghouse air brakes (1873) enabled synchronized stopping; Eli Janney couplers improved safety; steel rails improved durability; faster locomotive production.
• Economic geography: railroads created a national market for cattle, wheat, and minerals; Western towns grew as rail hubs; time economy and scheduling transformed daily life.

The Transformation of the West

• The West shifted from vast open ranges to integrated agricultural and urban economies; large cattle ranches gave way to smaller farms and diversified communities.
• Key actors and tensions:
  • Indigenous peoples and tribes; ranchers; farmers; miners; outlaws; mythmakers; politicians.
  • Cattle industry: open range, branding, and then barbed wire fencing changed land use and led to range conflicts.
  • Farmers and homesteaders: 160-acre parcels under the Homestead Act; 25-year enforcement; roads, railroads, and market integration.
  • Outlaws and gunfighters: violence as a form of political/economic resistance (outlaw gangs; civil conflicts like Lincoln County War; Tombstone’s O.K. Corral; James-Younger Gang legacy).
• Economic shifts in cattle:
  • 1865 cattle herds rebounded after Civil War; Longhorns adapted to Western ranges; Texas to Kansas/Nebraska cattle trails; 2 million cattle moved along the Chisholm Trail (roughly 1867–1884).
  • Transport innovations: Chuck Wagons; open range management; later, barbed wire fences restricted cattle movement and led to rancher clashes.
  • Brand identification and cattle markets integrated with rail hub towns (Abilene, Dodge City).
  • Labor shifts: Cowboys increasingly became workers; labor killed by harsh winters; later, ranching moved toward family-based operations.
• Beef industry and processing:
  • Refrigerated rail cars (Gustavus Swift, 1882) transformed meatpacking; by 1900, roughly $82 ext{\%}$ of cattle were killed in centralized packing houses (Swift, Armour, Morris, Hammond).
  • Chicago’s Union Stock Yards (opened 1865) became central to meat distribution.
  • By 1890s, meatpacking and cattle supply connected national and world markets.
• Mining and mineral wealth:
  • California Gold Rush; Nevada silver (Comstock Lode, 1859); Black Hills gold rush (1874) spurred thousands to Dakota Territory; Prospectors rose to prominence in towns like Deadwood, Leadville, Carson City, etc.
  • 1882 Anaconda Copper Mine (Montana) and copper mining wealth; large mining corporations dominated, often employing immigrant labor with significant ethnic segregation in jobs.
  • Mining towns were often single-sex, rugged, and violent; Chinese workers faced discrimination and were pushed into low-paid jobs.
• Social and cultural dynamics:
  • West became a site of mythmaking (outlaw legends, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show) that distorted the realities of Indigenous warfare and the realities of reservation life.
  • Buffalo Bill Cody’s show popularized frontier myths; Sitting Bull participated briefly, adding perceived authenticity; shows reinforced a white-dominated frontier myth while employing Indigenous performers under coercive conditions.
  • Original Western inhabitants—Indians, Mexicans, African Americans, and Asians—faced marginalization, discrimination, and forced assimilation in schooling and land policies.

Latino and Mexican-American Resistance in the Southwest

• San Miguel County, New Mexico: land conflicts between Mexicanos (local campesinos) who viewed land as communal open grazing land, and Anglo settlers who pursued private private property.
• White Caps (Gorras Blancas) movement (March 1890): organized to defend communal grazing and to protest fences; issued Nuestra Plattforma; sought to settle Las Vegas Grant for community benefit; used fence-cutting as a tactic to reopen ranges.
• Political shift in New Mexico: Latino resistance influenced local elections and policy; in Texas, Rangers symbolized Anglo-dominated enforcement, contributing to tensions between Mexican-American communities and state authorities.
• Case of Gregorio Cortez (1901–1916): shot a sheriff in Texas; pursued by Texas Rangers; later pardoned; became a symbol in corridos and Mexican-American cultural memory.
• El Fronterizo (New Mexico Spanish-language newspaper, 1878–1914): promoted Mexican cultural identity and cross-border connections and supported Mexican-American political influence.
• Broader significance: Latino communities navigated resistance through political participation and local activism, shaping western politics and balancing ethnic relations with Anglos.

Farms and Farm Towns; Cattle, Barbed Wire, and Open Range Conflict

• Westward expansion of farming:
  • Postwar homesteads enabled by the Homestead Act of 1862; 160-acre tracts; rise of farming in Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, California, Oregon, Washington; large-scale ranching spread across the Southwest.
  • Demographics: farmers from diverse backgrounds—Eastern U.S., Europe, Mexico, former slaves, and Native Americans—migrated to Western lands.
• Agricultural development and crops:
  • Hard drought-prone climate prompted experimentation with crops; Canadian hard winter wheat (Mennonites) became common in the Golden Belt; drought-resistant crops like sorghum adopted in high plains; local adaptation crucial to success.
  • Cost to start a farm was high (approx. $968$ in a cited 1862 pamphlet), covering land, sod breaking, fencing, implements, livestock, seed, and house.
  • By 1910 there were about $6.4 ext{ million}$ farms in the United States (many west of the Mississippi).
• Land and fences:
  • Shared grazing lands faced pressure from fenced private property; disputes over fence-cutting led to federal troop deployment on occasion.
  • The White Caps and other resistance movements reflected conflicts between communal/open access norms and private property rights.
• Social and gender dynamics:
  • Ranch life was gendered: men did most cattle work; women managed households, gardens, and domestic labor; women in ranch towns could sometimes participate in economic life, but faced social constraints.
• Notable figures and communities:
  • Exodusters like Thomas Johnson settled Nicodemus, Kansas; other families (the Ises, Samaniego, Steven Arrow, Big Eagle) also established homesteads in the West.
  • Diverse immigrant groups contributed to West’s farming and ranching economy, often facing discrimination but also achieving lasting community development.

Quick Review: The West as a Connected Economic System

• Railroads link to global markets; post offices and federal presence expand; the West integrates into a national and international economy.
• Population growth and migration: widespread homesteading, mining booms, and farm settlements; by 1900 substantial westward population growth and agricultural output.
• The West’s transformation linked to technological changes (railroads, standard time zones, refrigeration, steel rails), and to policy decisions (Homestead Act, Dawes Act, Grant Peace Policy) that reshaped land ownership, governance, and cultural life.

Major Dates and Milestones

• 1858: Homestead Act opens, setting the stage for western settlement and land distribution.
• 1862: Homestead Act enacted; 160 acres to settlers for 5 years.
• 1864: Bosque Redondo confinement begins for Navajos and Mescalero Apaches; fostered a humanitarian crisis.
• 1865: Civil War ends; U.S. Army reorients to the West; white settlement accelerates.
• 1867: Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty; Comanche, Kiowa, and others sign under Sherman’s delegation.
• 1868: Bosque Redondo treaty allows Navajos to return to their homeland; Mescalero Apaches reservation established.
• 1869: Transcontinental railroad completed at Promontory Point, Utah; Promontory summit marks a national weaving of the continent.
• 1871–1873: U.S. Army campaigns against Comanche; buffalo hunting declines; buffalo hides become economic goods.
• 1874–1875: Custer campaigns against the Lakota and Cheyenne; General Sherman defeats the Comanche.
• 1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn; Custer dies; a pivotal conflict on the Great Plains.
• 1877: Nez Perce surrender; Chief Joseph’s famous line: “I will fight no more forever”; widespread Indian resistance declines.
• 1879: Beginning of the Carlisle Indian School; Oklahoma Land Rush begins opening Indian Territory.
• 1881: Dawes Act impact begins with land allotments; Dawes Act later consolidates individual land ownership across reservations.
• 1882: Gustavus SwiftDevelops refrigerated railcar technology; meatpacking saturates U.S. markets.
• 1883: Four standard time zones adopted widely (Day of Two Noons) as railroads standardize time.
• 1887: Dawes Act authorizes 160-acre allotments; citizenship after 25-year waiting; aims to erode tribal landholding patterns.
• 1889–1890: Western states admission: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming; Utah (1896); Oklahoma (1907); New Mexico (1912); Arizona (1912).
• 1890: Ghost Dance movement peaks; Wounded Knee massacre (1890) ends major armed resistance.
• 1900: Navajo Nation expands and stabilizes; reservation systems remain in place; U.S. policies shift toward assimilation and citizenship.
• 1912: New Mexico and Arizona statehood; the West’s territorial era ends as states enter the Union.

Notable People, Terms, and Documents to Know

• Paruasemena (Ten Bears), Speech at Medicine Lodge Creek, 1867: critique of government demands; calls for a free life on the prairie; emphasizes cultural conflict over land and lifestyle.
  • Key ideas: Native preference for open land and buffalo hunting; treaty misunderstandings; request to maintain traditional lifeways.
• Chief Red Cloud, Speech after Wounded Knee, 1890: context of ongoing grievances and resistance; critiques late-era U.S. policy.
• Zitkála-Šá (Gertrude Bonnin), “Zitkala on Her First Day” (1900): firsthand account of Carlisle School experience; shows the push to assimilate and control Indigenous youth.
• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the American Frontier in American History (Turner’s frontier thesis, 1893): influence on narrative about American identity and westward expansion.
• Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade (1874): overview of cattle industry and its social/economic networks; Abilene and the Chisholm Trail.
• Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show (1880s): popular mythmaking about the West; whitened representation of Indigenous people; helped shape public imagination of frontier life.
• Dawes Act (1887): key policy piece affecting land ownership and citizenship; 160-acre allotments; 25-year waiting period; potential sale of surplus land; impact on tribal cohesion and identity.
• Carlisle Indian School (1879–1902): model boarding school; Pratt and Mather; focus on English, Protestant Christianity, and Western dress; resistance and cultural loss alongside adaptation.
• Major land and transport policies:
  • 160-acre Homestead Act allotments; 25-year cultivation requirement; citizenship as incentive.
  • Dawes Act legacy: massive loss of tribal land; tribal sovereignty reduced; some tribes (Navajo, Seneca) preserved communal ownership longer.
  • Railroads: standard time, national market integration, and new spatial understandings of time and distance.

Connections to Prior and Real-World Context

• The post-Civil War era in the West mirrors broader U.S. tensions between expansion and ethnic/cultural coexistence; federal policy oscillated between assimilation, extermination of indigenous lifeways, and attempts at protection via reservations.
• The transcontinental railroad created a national economy that integrated regional markets, accelerated population movements, and reshaped political power. It also created conflicts over land use, time standards, and environmental management (e.g., water rights, fencing, grazing rights).
• The Dawes Act and the Carlisle School illustrate early federal attempts to enforce assimilation, with long-term consequences for Native American cultural integrity and sovereignty.
• The rise of mining, ranching, and farming industries in the West shows how technology, capital, and migration combined to transform a frontier into a complex economy with global linkages.

Key Ethical, Philosophical, and Practical Implications

• Ethically, the West’s expansion involved displacing indigenous populations, breaking treaties, and imposing governance that often prioritized white settlement over Native sovereignty and cultural survival.
• Philosophically, the frontier narrative celebrates individualism and national destiny while masking violence against marginalized groups and the destruction of traditional lifeways.
• Practically, railroads, land policies, and industrial growth produced economic opportunities for some but created lasting inequalities and ecological changes (buffalo depletion, ecosystem disruption).

Formulas, Numbers, and Timelines (LaTeX-ready)

• Homestead Act: $160$ acres of land granted to a family that would settle and farm for $5$ years.
• Dawes Act: 160-acre allotments per family; after a $25$-year waiting period, land could be sold to whites; citizenship granted to those who took homesteads.
• Barred and changed land holdings: from $155 ext{ million acres}$ (1881) to $78 ext{ million acres}$ (1900) under the Dawes Act.
• Great Sioux War: 1876–77; Little Bighorn on $June 25, 1876$; Wounded Knee on $December 29, 1890$ (in some accounts, December 1890).
• Transcontinental railroad completion: $May 1869$ at Promontory Point, Utah.
• Time zones established: Day of Two Noons, $November 18, 1883$; four standard time zones across the continental United States.
• Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show era: prominent in the 1880s; Sitting Bull toured with the show in the 1880s; later, Cody contributed to Hollywood’s portrayal of the West.

Quick Reference: Map and Visuals Mentioned

• Map 16-1: The Plains Indian Wars (locations of major battles and trails; railroads and trails shown as drivers of conflict).
• Map 16-2: Connecting the Nation (railroads and cattle trails forming a national network; international linkages via ports and Pacific markets).
• Map 16-3: Cattle Trails and Rail Lines (Chisholm Trail, Abilene, Dodge City, and other cattle towns; railheads and cattle routes).
• Map 16-4: Early States Granting Women Suffrage (Westward states often granted suffrage earlier than the East; Wyoming first in 1869, Colorado in 1893, etc.).

Chapter Reflection Questions

• How did post-Civil War government policy toward Native Americans shift from protective reservations to assimilation through the Dawes Act and boarding schools?
• In what ways did the transcontinental railroad reshape the American West’s economy, population, and identity?
• How did frontier myths (e.g., Buffalo Bill’s show) influence public perception of the West, and how did they diverge from the lived realities of Indigenous peoples, cowboys, miners, and farmers?
• What were the economic drivers that transformed the West’s landscapes (cattle, mining, farming), and how did technology and policy alter these industries over time?

Final Takeaway

• The American West transformed dramatically between 1865 and 1912: indigenous sovereignty waned under policy shifts and military action; settlers and industrial-capital dynamics reshaped land use, settlement patterns, and political life; railroads knit the West into a national and global economy; and the West’s social fabric became a complex mix of triumph, violence, adaptation, and mythmaking that continues to influence American identity today.