American West

2-American West Questions for Today Why did such vast geographical expansion take place in this period? How did the needs and wants of the white settlers clash with the people who previously occupied the land as well as other ethnicities who expanded into the west? How were these tensions resolved? I. Lure of the West Homestead Act Railroads Cattle Natural resources A. Homestead Act Gave 160 acres of ?unappropriated lands? to heads of families after 5 years occupation for very small fee Created > 372,000 farms Sod home of John and Marget Bakken, Milton, N.D., circa 1895. B. Railroads Pacific Railway Acts, 1862 & 1864 1850-1871, railroads received 131 million acres of land 1st transcontinental railroad completed 1869, Promontory Point, UT By 1890, 4 transcontinental lines 1866: 37,000 miles of track; 1900: 193,000 miles of track Promontory Point, UT 1869 C. Cattle Ranching Brief boom in 1870s-early 1880s Commercial cattle frontier - result of Civil War Facilitated postwar by RR?s Cattle ranch in western North Dakota, ca 1885 D. Natural Resources California Gold Rush 1849 Iron, copper, lead, zinc, silver, tin Mining was usually big business Open pit steam shovel mining in Jerome, AZ in 1900 Black Hills views--View of the famous Homestake Mines and the big mining town, Lead City, South Dakota, c. 1891 Black Hill Mines Conservation Movement John Muir (1838-1914) Yosemite, 1890 Sierra Club, 1892 II. Farming in the West 1870-1900: farming acreage west of Mississippi tripled Industrial innovations Barbed wire Windmills Improved plows Homestead Act Railroad land Rise of Agri-business Bonanza wheat farms in late 1870s in Dakotas Often owned by corporations Required large capital investments (technology) Productivity rose 40% from 1869-1899 Prices dropped First boom ended by early 1890s By 1900, 2/3 of homestead farms failed9 Cass-Cheney Farm, near Fargo, ND 1877 III. Race Relations in the West Hispanics in the West Chinese Japanese Manifest Destiny and Racism Belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority Belief in permanent inferiority of Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians, blacks Railroads, mining, large ranches, homesteading = evidence of expanding world economy that displaced NA?s and Hispanics A. Hispanics Californios: original white colonizers U.S. citizens Systematically swindled Las Gorras Blancas: Hispanic resistance in the 1880s & 1890s Andres Pico, San Fernando Valley landowner, 1845-1872 B. Chinese 200,000 Chinese came to western ports 1876-1890, mostly men Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 "Why She Married Ching-a-Ling" ?Children of High Class,? Chinatown, San Francisco, ca 1905 by Arnold Genthe C. Japanese 100,000 Japanese came to U.S. 1900-1910 Gentleman?s Agreement 1906-San Francisco ordered segregated schools for Asians Developments in the West were in line with racial attitudes in the rest of the U.S. Japanese picture brides IV. Indian Big picture Wars and Theaters Dawes Act Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee A. Indian Policy: Big Picture One big reservation: lands west of Mississippi Huge geographic acquisitions ca 1825-1848, parts or all of CA, AZ, NM, UT, CO Concentration Treaty of Fort Laramie 1851: smaller reservations for individual tribes w/ boundaries Civilization campaign mid-1860s moment of peace Assimilation - Dawes Act 1887 B. Wars Treaty of Medicine Lodge 1867 - moment of peace Renewed fighting after US broke promises Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868 - Sioux ?victory? Second Sioux War; Sitting Bull surrendered 1881 Destruction of buffalo ?Shooting buffalo from the trains of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, HW, 1867 C. Dawes Act 1887 Reservations now seen as obstacles to progress Goal: assimilation Dissolution of tribes as legal entities Individual farms U.S. citizenship 1887: 138 million acres 1900: 78 million acres 1934: 38 million acres & policy ended D. Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee Pauite prophet Wovoka Ghost Dance - Cheyenne and Arapahoe, 1898 Ghost Dance would revitalize NA life Sioux leader Sitting Bull killed 12/15/90 Battle of Wounded Knee 12/29/90: final episode in Plains Wars Sitting Bull GREAT PLAINS NATIVE AMERICAN TIMELINE: 1851: Treaty of Fort Laramie 1867: Treaty of Medicine Lodge 1868: Treaty of Fort Laramie 1869: Transcontinental RR completed 1883: Destruction of buffalo virtually complete 1880s: Ghost Dance movement 1887: Dawes Act 1890: Wounded Knee, South Dakota 1934: Allotment ended Key Terms Homestead Act Chinese Exclusion Act Dawes Act