Lecture: The West (1865-1900) PDF

THE WEST  I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk... Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and gr...

THE WEST  I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk... Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me. 3 CHIEF JOSEPH  Sitting Bull - Sioux medicine man, chief, and political leader of his tribe at the time of the Custer massacre during the Sioux War Geronimo - Apache chief who raided white settlers in the Southwest as resistance to being confined to a reservation Chief Joseph - Leader of Nez Perce. Fled with his tribe to Canada instead of reservations but US troops came and forced them back NATIVE CHIEFS 4 to reservations  CONFLICTS BETWEEN NATIVES AND THE US After Civil War, Plains indians surrendered land when government promised* they would be left alone and provided with supplies A Century of Dishonor (1881) - Helen Hunt Jackson recounts abuse, broken promises by the government, forced removals and massacres Dawes Severalty Act (1887) designed to promote assimilation: dissolved tribes as legal entities & eliminated tribal ownership of land, promoted ideas of “rugged individualism” by granting individual heads of family 160 acres of land to farm (abandoning nomadic lifestyle) & promised Indians U.S. citizenship... in 25 years. Humanitarians disrespected native culture: “kill the indian; save the man” 5  BATTLES ON THE PLAINS Cruelties on both sides: “battle” = a white victory but “massacre” = native victory ○ Custer’s Last Stand - (Battle of Little Bighorn) Custer’s 400 soldiers decimated by Crazy Horse & Sitting Bull's s 2500 warriors ○ Battle of Wounded Knee to stamp out the Ghost Dance adopted by the Dakota Sioux ○ Buffalo Soldiers (⅕ of frontier troops were black) Plains Indians forced to surrender due to near extermination of the buffalo & railroad allowing easy transport of troops & settlers 6 7  UNREST IN THE WEST Grange Movement - initial goal was to enhance farmers’ isolated lives by organizing social activities. Shifted goals to improvement of the farmers’ collective plight. Farmers’ Alliance ○ GOAL: break the strangling grip of the railroads and manufacturers through cooperative buying & selling ○ opposed monopolies & supported relief for debtors (prelude to Populism) ○ weakened itself by ignoring the plight of landless tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and farmworkers & excluding blacks 8  THE POPULISTS 1892 - Populists won congressional seats & over 1 million votes for presidential candidate, James B. Weaver. Racial divisions limited success in the South, but electoral success in the West. SUPPORTERS: frustrated farmers fed up with Wall Street (debts) & industrialists (monopolies) who seemed to control the government called for nationalizing railroads, telephones, & telegraph; a graduated income tax; free and unlimited coinage of silver (to answer debtors’ demands for inflationary policies) OPPONENTS: Republicans, industrialists, “Gold bugs” 9  THE MINING INDUSTRY CONTEXT- DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST due to the building of railroads, discovery of mineral resources & government policies (Homestead Act) 1858 gold discovered in Colorado too → “Pike’s Peak or Bust” 1859 - Comstock Lode in NV led to boom & a quick path to statehood (& 3 votes for Lincoln) Boomtowns, known as “Helldorados,” sprouted from the desert sands → lawlessness → often turned into ghost towns EFFECTS: wealth helped finance the Civil War & build railroads. The silver and gold enabled the Treasury to resume specie payments (metal coinage vs. paper) and injected the divisive silver issue into American politics. 10  THE MEAT INDUSTRY RANCHING - problems getting meat to Eastern markets before the Transcontinental Railroad → then shipped to meatpackers in Chicago & Kansas City ○ Long Drives: cattle drives across the open Plains from Texas to railroad depots in Kansas → cowboys threatened by harsh weather (no grass to graze) and encroachment of homesteaders who fenced in their plots 1866 - 1888 over 4 million steers driven north by these white, black & Mexican cowboys 11  AGRICULTURE Homestead Act (1862) - up to 160 acres of land for $30 for living on it for five years & “improving” it ○ Before: public land was sold primarily for revenue ○ Now: it was given away to encourage a rapid filling of empty spaces and to provide a stimulus to the family farm—“the backbone of democracy” People mistakenly thought the Plains were barren ○ “sodbusters” use heavy iron plows & barbed wire ○ by 1890, mechanization led to bonanza farms (large farms of over 15,000 acres) that drove smaller farmers out of business 1889 Oklahoma opened for settlement: “sooners & “boomers” → 60,000 inhabitants by the end of the year federally financed irrigation projects helped develop agriculture 12 13