WesternMovement

Manifest Destiny Renewed

1) The decades following the Civil War settlement of the Great Plains and the Western frontier would greatly increase (region between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast)

What is driving this western

push?

American Exceptionalism

The idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world.

Causes• Manifest Destiny• Excess of Land• Abundant

resources• Oceans East to

West• Peaceful frontiers

to the North and South

Proviso“Things that go wrong are glitches, not examples of larger trends.”

The Homestead Act (1862)

1) Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862 to encourage settlement and farming in the Western territories

2) The Act gave free public land (160 acres to each family) if they agreed to live on and farm the land

The Homestead Act (1862)

Many Americans had to rebuild their lives after the Civil War and they moved west to take advantage of the Homestead Act

Morril Land Grand Act

• Gives federal government funds to start agricultural schools and research

Native American Culture

• American Indian cultures vary greatly in clothing, religion, language, traditions, etc.

• The tribes in this time period are referred to as “The Plains Indians”

Native American Culture

The Buffalo

• American Indians in the plains rely on the Buffalo as a source of food, clothing, bone (for tools), etc.

• Around 1750, there are approximately 40 to 50 million buffalo in North America

American Indian Culture

• Mobility – they have very few established towns– Move from place to place following buffalo

herds

• No system of land ownership– General locations where certain tribes

hunt, but no established borders

Trail of Tears

The Five Causes of Indian Sorrow

• Published by the Native American Handsome Lake

– Cards– Money– Fiddle– Whiskey– Blood corruption

• “Suppose the people living beyond the great sea come and tell you that you must stop farming, and kill your cattle, and take your houses and lands, what would you do? Would you not fight them?” - Gall

The Plains Wars (1860s - 80s)

1) The Native American tribes of the Plains begin to attack settlers and the US Military to protect their land and their way of life

2) Many of the tribes were fighting to keep the land that had been promised to them 10 years earlier in a treaty

The US Military

1) Many believe that the United States had an official extermination policy toward Native Americans

Sand Creek (Chivington) Massacre

• Poorly trained Colorado militia, led by Col. John Chivington, massacre and mutilate 200 American Indians

The Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

1) Sioux Chiefs “Sitting Bull” and “Crazy Horse” led attacks against miners and the military in the Black Hills

Sitting Bull Crazy Horse

The Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

2) General George Custer led the American troops

3) The Native Americans defeated and killed Custer and all 240 of his men at the battle of Little Big Horn

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Wounded Knee (1890)

1) The US Military came upon a group of 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota

2) One Sioux fired a gun and the Military proceeded to systematically kill all 300 Sioux (Men, Women, and Children)

3) Wounded Knee marked the end of the Plains Wars

Assimilation

• The process where a minority group gradually adopts the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.

Xenophobia

• Fear and contempt of strangers or foreign peoples.

Nativism When current residents fear the arrival of

new immigrants

1) Americans feared that immigrants would take jobs for lower pay than Americans

2) Americans were also discriminated on the basis of cultural and religious reasons (Jews, etc)

Impact on Native Americans

• Buffalo population drops to about 10,000– Up to 25,000 in the wild now

• Native American population drops from about 5-10 million to around 250,000 in 1900 because of disease, warfare, etc

Population growth

The Dawes Act (1887)

1) This was passed by Congress to give each Native American family 180 acres to farm

2) This failed to work

The Dawes Act (1887)

A)Plains Indians were Nomadic (life was based on the moving Buffalo hunt)

B) Between 1887 and 1943, Native Americans lost 86 million acres of the 138 million acres promised to them in the Dawes Act

The Age of the American Cowboy

1) This was during the years immediately before, during, and after the Civil War

2) Great cattle herds began in the Texas territory and began to rapidly move into the Great Plains

Cattle industry “cowboy mentality”

• Causes – Demand for beef in growing cities in the North.

• Beef replaces pork as major meat consumed

• Longhorn cattle

raised in South

Texas

Bonanza Farm

• These farms were huge acreages created from the sale of land by the Northern Pacific Railroad to its investors to cover its debts.

• They covered thousands of acres and produced large wheat crops.

A Bonanza Farm

Richard King’s Ranch

• Texas ranch was 825,000 acres– bigger than the state of Rhode

Island

Rancheros

• Move the cows from farms in Texas north to the railroads in Kansas.

• Who were these cowboys?– ½ of the cowboys were

Hispanic– ¼ were Black

The Cash Cow

• Cost - $3-5 to drive the cattle – only $1 to feed

• Profit - $20-30 for each cow on slaughter

Meatpacking• Began in Cincinnati

and Chicago

• Unskilled labor

• Dangerous and dirty work

• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair describes conditions

• Refrigerated railroad cars

Technology makes farming more prosperous

• Iron bladed plows make it easier to dig into hard prairie soil

Technology makes farming more prosperous

1)The cast iron wind mill and drilled wells made it possible for farmers on the Great Plain to have a constant water supply

2)The invention of the mechanical reaper made it much easier to harvest crops

Barbed Wire• Designed by Joseph Glidden

• Defines boundaries of land and keeps cattle from escaping– Changes concept of land ownership out

west