settling the west. there’s gold in them there hills placer mining was used to extract gold &...
TRANSCRIPT
Settling the West
There’s Gold In Them There Hills• Placer Mining was used to extract gold & minerals from the
ground, but only the shallow level of ground was penetrated with this method.
Equipment like picks, shovels & pans were used in Placer Mining.
Diggin’ Deeper• After Placer Mining, corporations would move in to begin
Quartz Mining.• Quartz Mining dug deep beneath the surface.
• When there were no more deposits to dig, the corporations that mined disappeared.
THE BIG STRIKEIN NEVADA
1859 BOOMTOWN
• The blue-gray mud there turned
out to be pure silver!
News of this strike caused a boom of 30,000 people to crowd into Virginia City, Nevada almost overnight!
Henry Comstock claimed someLand in Six-Mile Canyon, Nevada!
Virginia City, Nevada had been only a frontier outpost.
Suddenly, the town had1.Opera house2.Shops with European clothes & furniture. 3.Several Newspapers4.A 6 story hotel with the west first “rising room”..
What Was A Boomtown Like?
Ranching & Cattle Drives
While some were mining silver and digging for gold, other people headed out west to build ranches on the Great Plains.
In the early 1800s, no one thought building a cattle ranch on the Great Plains would be successful because the cattle from the east couldn’t live on the tough prairie grass.
A breed of cattle that descended from Mexico had emerged in Texas!
This breed of cow was adapted to the tough grass and climate of the Great Plains. The government offered freeRange to all cattle. The grazing land was owned by the American government. It was free & unrestricted by theownership of private farms.
Mexican cowhands taught the American herders the art of rounding up & driving cattle. They helped to create America’s first Cowboys.
Before the Civil War, there wasNo reason to round up theTexas Longhorns because beef prices were so low!
1.The Civil War2.Construction of the Railroads
During the Civil War, the Cattle were needed in the east to feed the soldiers.
A trade route such as the Chisholm Trail The desire for beef during the Civil War allowing the cattle ranchers to Earn enough money from the sale of their cattle.
Between 1867 & 1871 nearly1.5 million head of cattle traveledOn the Chisholm trail.
When Abilene was full of cowboys, it rivaled any mining town in rowdiness!
TheThe
CattleCattle
TrailsTrails
TheThe
CattleCattle
TrailsTrails
With the prosperity of the cattlemen
came an era of lawlessness. The famed served as Abilene 's marshal in 1871 and is reputed to have killed more than 50 alleged lawbreakers during his brief tenure. The appearance of homesteaders and fenced ranges discouraged the Texas cattle trade, much of which was diverted to Wichita. Winter-wheat cultivation was introduced in Abilene in the mid-1870s and remains economically important. Abilene is still a shipping point for livestock, as well as for grain and other agricultural products, and it has some light industry.
Abilene." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 1 Jan. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9003356>.
In 1876 Hickok married a widow, Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher, but he soon left her (in Cincinnati) to visit the goldfields of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory. It was there, at a poker table in Nuttall & Mann's No. 10 saloon in Deadwood, that Hickok was shot dead by a drunken stranger, Jack McCall. The cards Hickok was holding—a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights plus an unknown fifth card—became known as the dead man's hand. McCall's motive was never learned; he was tried, convicted of murder, and hanged on March 1, 1877.
Hickok, Wild Bill." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 1 Jan.
2008 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9040358>.
*Thousands of Cattle were rounded up & gathered from the open ranges.*The brands on the cattle was the only thing that distinguished one from the other.*The ranchers branded their cattle before moving them.*Stray calves with no brand were divided up between the different ownersand branded.
Most of the cowboys on the cattle drives were former Confederate soldiers who after the war were trying to rebuild their lives.
Many were Mexican & some were AfricanAmericans who had been freed after the CivilWar.
The open range would end when ranch owners began to build fences toprevent sheep herders from grazing the land meant for cattle.The price of beef fell due to oversupply & many went bankrupt.Then, in the winter of 1886, blizzards covered the ground so deep thatCattle could not graze any grass. Temperatures fell to 40 degrees below zero.
The fences were usually made of barbed wirenot wood fences.
Barbed WireBarbed WireBarbed WireBarbed WireJoseph Joseph GliddenGliddenJoseph Joseph GliddenGlidden
The Range WarsThe Range WarsThe Range WarsThe Range Wars
SheepHerders
CattleRanchers
Where was the man who invented this technique from and did he get rich off of his invention?
In the early 1800s, why was building ranches on the Great Plains considered a bad idea?
What are 2 developments that made cattle drives worth while?
Who taught the skills of being a cowboy to the Americans?
Which breed of cow could survive well on the tough grass of the Great Plains?
What stopped the open range grazing of cattle?
What happened in 1886 & affected cattle on the Great Plains?
How did the Cattle Industry change forever?
Settling the WestChapter 5
Created by Ronna Williams
•Extends all the way to the Rocky Mountains to about the center of Abilene ,Texas.•Rainfall is about 20 inches each year on theGreat Plains & trees grow only along the banks ofRivers & Streams.•Many people considered the Great Plains to be aDesert unfit for farming or grazing.
•People could claim up to 160 acres of public land & get the title to the landif they lived there for 5 years.
The people who decided to take the offer faced many challenges!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MczAqe_s8AQ
No trees to build a homeNo water to drink People were forced to build homes from
sod cut from the ground.They had to dig wells 300 feet deep to tapdrinking water.
Summer temperatures soared to over 100 degrees!Prairie fires were a constant threat.Grasshopper swarms swept over farms & destroyed entire crops.Winter brought blizzards and bitter cold!
The Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SDThe Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SD The Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SDThe Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SD
Why were women so important to the settlement of the West? What was life like for them?Why were women so important to the settlement of the West? What was life like for them?
New AgriculturalNew AgriculturalTechnologyTechnologyNew AgriculturalNew AgriculturalTechnologyTechnology
““Prairie Fan”Prairie Fan”Water PumpWater Pump
Steel Plow [“Sod Buster”]Steel Plow [“Sod Buster”]
McCormick ReaperMcCormick Reaper
Farmers weren’t familiar with the prairie soil & when they used dry farming to plant seeds during the dry season, all the soil just blew away with the wind.
These farmers were called sodbusters!
Most lost their homesteads through because of drought, wind erosion, and overuse of the land.
They had the same problem with the wind, but they were able to make quick profits by using mechanical reapers to speed harvests.
Wheat became to the Great Plains like cotton was to the south!
Many farmers moved toThe Great Plains Region toFarm wheat producing theWheat Belt.
New machines allowed a single family to bring in a huge harvest!Some of these wheat farms were 50,000 acres.They were called Bonanza Farms because they made so much profit!
The United States became the world’s largest exporter of wheat in the 1880s.
Other Nations trying to competeCaused an oversupply of wheat &Prices crashed!
A terrible drought in the late 1880s also strained the farms.
Most farmers had to borrow moneyOn their lands. When they couldn’t pay, the bank took their ranches.
Some were given the chance to stayAnd work on the farms they once owned, as tenant workers.
By 1900, 1/3 of the farms were tenant farms in the Wheat Belt.
Much of the land in the west was still unoccupied by 1890, but the Government reported that it was nearly full when it took a census of people living in the west.It was upsetting to some people who always had the hope of being able to go West and make a new start.
Even though news spread that the frontier was closing, many more people traveled west in the 1900s making their new starts, but unlike the stories of “getting rich quick”, the work was hard in their new environment.
Write the question & answer completely for a grade.
Explain the Homestead Act.
Name 5 problems people who took advantage of the Homestead Act faced.
What is dry farming?
List 2 new advances in agricultural technology that helped the farmers.
What were the huge farms called?
What were 2 things that led to difficult times for the farmers causing theprice of wheat to fall & crops to fail?
Settling the WestChapter 5
Native Americans resisted by attacking wagons, trains,stage coaches and ranches. The first major clash happened in 1862 when the SiouxPeople in Minnesota launched an uprising.
The Dakota Sioux had been moved to a reservation in Minnesota with the promise of the United States government paying them each year for the land they left bhind.
The money was called annuities because it came once each year.
American traders in the area made up fake debts owed to them by theSioux & took the annuities meant for the Sioux.
Colonel John ChivingtonColonel John ChivingtonColonel John ChivingtonColonel John Chivington
““Kill and scalp all, big Kill and scalp all, big and little!”and little!”
Sandy Creek, COSandy Creek, CO
Sand Creek MassacreSand Creek Massacre
November 29, 1864November 29, 1864The Cheyenne were waiting at a fortto negotiate a peace treaty with the Americans. Because they had been attacking women & children, Chivingtonkilled them.
The Cheyenne were flying a white flag & an America flag, butChivington ignored the symbolsof peace.
Capt. William J. FettermanCapt. William J. FettermanCapt. William J. FettermanCapt. William J. Fetterman80 soldiers 80 soldiers massacredmassacred
December 21, 1866December 21, 1866
Fetterman’s MassacreLakota Sioux leader, Crazy Horse led Fetterman into a trap. Crazy Horse tricked Fetterman into following a small band of Lakota, & lured him into an ambush where hundreds of Lakota Indians waited to massacre him & his men.
Mt. Rushmore: Black Hills, SDMt. Rushmore: Black Hills, SDMt. Rushmore: Black Hills, SDMt. Rushmore: Black Hills, SD
GOLD had been discovered in Black Hills, South Dakota. So many Americans had rushed to the area killing buffalo so rapidly they were disappearing.Professional hunters hunted the buffalo to sell the hides. Many hunters killed buffalo by the hundreds just for sport leaving their bodies to rot. The Railroad companies hired sharp shooters to kill large numbers of buffalo who were blocking the railways’ traffic.The Lakota Sioux & Cheyenne Indians were not supposed
to leave the reservation, but left to hunt for food near the Bighorn Mountains in Montana.
Lt. Colonel George A. Custer underestimated the 2,500Native Americans & attacked them in daylight as they camped by theLittle Bighorn River.
The Lakota Sioux & Cheyenne Indians killed all of Custer’s men. NewspapersReported Custer as the victim. Lakota Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull tried to flee with his people to Canada, but the Americans forced him & his peopleback onto the reservation in the Black Hills.
The Battle of Little Big The Battle of Little Big HornHorn18761876
The Battle of Little Big The Battle of Little Big HornHorn18761876
Chief Sitting BullChief Sitting Bull
Gen. GeorgeGen. GeorgeArmstrong Armstrong
CusterCuster
Click here for Battle SceneClick here for Battle Scene
Crazy Horse Monument:Crazy Horse Monument:Black Hills, SDBlack Hills, SD
Crazy Horse Monument:Crazy Horse Monument:Black Hills, SDBlack Hills, SD
Lakota ChiefLakota ChiefLakota ChiefLakota Chief
Chief JosephChief Joseph!!Chief JosephChief Joseph!!Nez Percé Nez Percé
“Our Chiefs are killed…The littleChildren are freezing to death. MyPeople…have no blankets, no foodHear me, my chiefs; I am tired; myHeart is sick and sad. From whereThe sun now stands I will fight noMore forever.”
When Americans tried to force Chief Joseph’s tribe onto a smaller reservation in Idaho, he fled running for than 1300 miles before being captured.
““Ghost Dance”, 1890Ghost Dance”, 1890““Ghost Dance”, 1890Ghost Dance”, 1890
The Native Americans were notsupposed to practice this type of ritualwhich would cause the settlers to disappear& bring back the buffalo.
A terrible battle took place atWounded Knee Creek as theParticipants of the Ghost dance Were attacked.
Chief SittingBull Was Blamed
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Tragedy at Wounded Knee• The government sent police to arrest ChiefSitting Bull for leading the Ghost Dance.Sitting Bull’s people tried to stop the arrest, and an exchange of
gunfire killed manyincluding Chief Sitting Bull.
• After Chief Sitting Bull was killed, the People who were part of the Ghost DanceRan from the reservation.• On Dec. 29, 1890, American troops caughtUp with the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee Creek & tried to force a
surrender.• A terrible battle took place by WoundedKnee Creek.
Chief Big Foot’s Lifeless Chief Big Foot’s Lifeless BodyBody
Wounded Knee, SD, 1890Wounded Knee, SD, 1890
Chief Big Foot’s Lifeless Chief Big Foot’s Lifeless BodyBody
Wounded Knee, SD, 1890Wounded Knee, SD, 1890
Helen Hunt JacksonHelen Hunt JacksonHelen Hunt JacksonHelen Hunt Jackson
A Century of DishonorA Century of Dishonor (1881) (1881)A Century of DishonorA Century of Dishonor (1881) (1881)
She described allThe broken promises
The American government
Had given to the Native
Americans includingFacts from the
MassacreAt Sand Creek.
Dawes Act (1887):Dawes Act (1887):Assimilation PolicyAssimilation PolicyDawes Act (1887):Dawes Act (1887):Assimilation PolicyAssimilation Policy
Carlisle Indian School, PACarlisle Indian School, PA
Assimilation wasThe process of Forcing NativeAmericansTo abandonTheir culture &become Americanized.
William “Buffalo Bill” William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Cody’s Wild West
ShowShow
William “Buffalo Bill” William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Cody’s Wild West
ShowShow
““Buffalo Bill” Cody & Sitting Buffalo Bill” Cody & Sitting BullBull
““Buffalo Bill” Cody & Sitting Buffalo Bill” Cody & Sitting BullBull
Geronimo, Geronimo, Apache Chief: Apache Chief: Hopeless CauseHopeless Cause
Geronimo, Geronimo, Apache Chief: Apache Chief: Hopeless CauseHopeless Cause
Indian Reservations TodayIndian Reservations TodayIndian Reservations TodayIndian Reservations Today