Trans-Mississippi West Settlement and Native American Histories PDF

## Learning Objectives - Analyze the motives and incentives that led to the settling of the trans-Mississippi West and the technological developments that encouraged it. - Evaluate the strategies used by the U.S. government to control the lives of Native Americans in the West and Indians' reactions...

## Learning Objectives - Analyze the motives and incentives that led to the settling of the trans-Mississippi West and the technological developments that encouraged it. - Evaluate the strategies used by the U.S. government to control the lives of Native Americans in the West and Indians' reactions to these efforts. - Compare the roles of the mining and lumber industries in the economic and social development of the West. - Summarize the factors that led to the rise of commercial ranching and contrast the image of life in the West for ranchers and farmers with the reality. - Analyze the cultural diversity of the far West and the ethnic tensions that followed from this diversity. ## Comparing American Histories - Phoebe Ann Moses (born 1860) was one of seven surviving children who grew up east of the Mississippi, north of Cincinnati, Ohio. - Following the death of her father, she was sent to an orphanage. - At the age of nine, Phoebe ran away and found a new home with a married widow. - She learned to ride and hunt and became an expert shot with a rifle. - At 15, she participated in and won a shooting contest, defeating a professional marksman, Frank Butler. - In 1876 the two married, and Phoebe Ann changed her professional name to Annie Oakley. - Oakley and Butler toured the Midwest and featured precision shooting. - In 1884, Oakley and Butler met William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody in New Orleans. - In 1883, the U.S. government began relocating Native Americans who lived in the trans-Mississippi West. - Cody attempted to recapture and reinvent the frontier experience by staging "Wild West" shows. - In 1885, he hired Oakley, with Butler serving as her manager. - Oakley became the star of the show, performing feats of marksmanship and toured Europe. - When the census of 1890 reported that no open land was left to settle and thus no western frontier was left to conquer, Oakley's popularity soared. - Oakley continued performing in Wild West shows until her death in 1926. ## Geronimo Geronimo was born a Chiricahua Apache. - He was born in what was then northern Mexico (now Arizona and New Mexico), and led Apaches in a constant struggle against Spain, Mexico, and the United States. - In 1851, he experienced a personal tragedy when a band of Mexicans raided an Apache camp, murdering his mother, wife, and three children. - After fighting Mexicans, Geronimo clashed with U.S. troops and evaded capture until 1877 when he was arrested in his home in New Mexico. - Sent to a reservation, Geronimo escaped in 1877 and for eight years led daring raids on his foes. - In 1886, Geronimo surrendered to U.S. troops and was relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. - Geronimo sold photos of himself and pieces of clothing and appeared at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis to sell bows and arrows and autographs. - Geronimo considered himself a "prisoner of war" and never gave up the idea of returning to his birthplace. - He remained until 1909, when he died. ## Opening the West - The area west of the Mississippi was originally not hospitable to farmers. - Pioneers demonstrated rugged determination, but they needed help to settle the West. - Railroads were essential in transforming the region. ### The Great Plains - The Great Plains lay on both sides of the Rocky Mountains. - The plateau was a semiarid territory with an average yearly rainfall sufficient to sustain short grasslands but not many trees. - In 1878, geologist John Wesley Powell issued a report questioning whether the land beyond the easternmost portion of the Great Plains could support small farming. - Poverty was anticipated because of the lack of rainfall. - Powell recommended larger stretches of land for livestock. - The region was not a perpetual desert. - Farmers and land speculators would eventually populate the Great Plains. ### Federal Policy and Foreign Investment - The federal government played a huge role in facilitating the settlement of the West. - National lawmakers enacted legislation offering free or cheap land to settlers. - The government also provided subsidies for transporting mail and military supplies and recruited soldiers to subdue Indian people. - The government appointed officials to govern the territories. ### Federal Policy - The government provided necessary measures of safety and stability for new businesses to start up and grow as well as interconnected transportation and communication systems to supply workers. ### Foreign Investors - The government did not have enough funds on its own and turned to Europe to finance the sale of public bonds. - European firms also invested in American mines. ## Indians and Resistance to Expansion - American pioneers moved into a region inhabited by a large population of Native Americans. - Treaties created to separate Native Americans and white settlers from each other were disregarded by Americans, leading to warfare. - The U.S. government sought to reform Indian policy by forcing Indians to assimilate into American society. ### Indian Civilizations - Before white settlers appeared, the frontier was already home to diverse peoples. - Native Americans spoke distinct languages, engaged in different economic activities, and competed with one another for power and resources. - The Spaniards established the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the late sixteenth century. - By the end of the Civil War, 350,000 Native Americans were living west of the Mississippi. ### Indian Tribes - Native Americans lived in the Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, the Great plains, and the Southwest. Some tribes were forced from their original locations by the U.S. government. - Native American tribes had to adapt to the geography and climate of their home territories. - Tribes had their own cultures, languages, histories, and traditions. ### Arrival of European Settlers - The arrival of Europeans disrupted the lives of all Native American peoples. - Whites trampled on Indian hunting grounds, polluted streams, and introduced liquor. - Whites also brought illnesses to which Native Americans had no immunity. - As a result of the arrival of European settlers, by 1870, smallpox had wiped out half the population of Plains Indians, and cholera, diphtheria, and measles caused serious but lesser harm. - The balance of power among Plains tribes shifted to the more mobile Sioux as a result of the deaths of various tribes. - The Indian population, however, suffered even more damage from American guns. - By the mid-nineteenth century, some tribes were so deeply engaged in the commercial fur trade that they had depleted their own hunting grounds. - Native Americans had their own approach toward nature. Most tribes did not accept private ownership of land. - They recognized the land as the common domain of their tribe. ### Federal Policy toward Indians Before 1870 - The U.S. Government initially recognized western Indians as autonomous nations over the land they occupied. - The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 confined tribes to designated areas on the northern plains. - The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1853 applied these terms to tribes on the southern plains. - The U.S. army, however, did not enforce the treaties, instead conducting raids on tribes, and the U.S. military became increasingly hostile toward Native Americans. - The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 was especially brutal, as Colonel John M. Chivington and his troops launched an attack on a peaceful band of 700 Cheyenne and Arapahos despite flying a white flag of surrender and killed some 270 Indians. - In 1867, the government signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which provided reservation lands for the Comanche, the Kiowa-Apache, and the Southern Arapaho. - Despite the agreement, white hunters soon invaded the territory and decimated the buffalo herds. - The government continued to promote segregation and assimilation of all Native American tribes. ### Federal Policy Toward Indians After 1870 - The U.S. government sought to destroy and subjugate native tribes. - The Nez Perce tribe was coerced to sign a treaty ceding most of its land to the United States. - In 1877, Chief Joseph led the Nez Percé tribe on a 1,400-mile march to Canada. - After being intercepted by U.S. troops, Chief Joseph argued with U.S. lawmakers to allow his people to return home, but the treaties never produced a lasting peace and were disregarded by the U.S. government. - General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the military forces against the Indians, ordered the army to wage a merciless war of annihilation "against all hostile Indians till they are obliterated or beg for mercy." - In 1868, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a Cheyenne village, killing more than one hundred Indians. - In 1876, the Lakota Sioux, exacted revenge by killing Custer and his troops at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. - By the late 1870s, the U.S. army was increasingly technologically advanced, with logistical advantages being provided by telegraph lines and railroads, and unlimited supplies of superior weapons. - The federal government continued to exploit divisions among tribes. - The professional destruction of bison herds was the final blow to Indian independence. - professional hunters began killing bison, and by the mid-1880s, hunters had killed more than thirteen million bison, ultimately resulting in the decimation of bison herds across the Great Plains. - Native Americans had little choice but to settle on shrinking reservations. - The government did not honor the treaties and instead forced tribes to relinquish even more land. ### Reconstruction and Indians - President Ulysses S. Grant pledged to support the goals of the Military Reconstruction Act in the South and the proper treatment of the original occupants of the land, the Indians. - The Fourteenth Amendment, however, excluded tribal Indians from citizenship. - The government continued to shrink tribal lands. ### Reforming Indian Policy - A movement arose to reform Indian policy. - Helen Hunt Jackson, published A Century of Dishonor, which exposed the unjust treatment that Native Americans had endured. - The Women's National Indian Association advocated the transformation of native peoples into full-fledged Americans. - Some anthropologists believed that Indians could only be saved from their past suffering by assimilating into white culture. ### The Dawes Act - The Dawes Act ended tribal rule and divided Indian lands into 160-acre parcels. - The government held the lands in trust for the Indians, and they became U.S. citizens. - The act required Indians to abandon their religious and cultural rites and practices. - The Dawes Act did not prove beneficial for Native Americans, as they received inferior farmlands and inadequate tools to cultivate them. ### Indian Assimilation and Resistance - Indian peoples rejected the government’s attempt at forced acculturation. - Through close family ties, they communicated their languages, histories, and cultural practices. - Geronimo and Sitting Bull participated in pageants and Wild West shows but refused to disavow their heritage. - Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) attended boarding school, graduated from Dartmouth College, and earned a medical degree from Boston University, but he still spoke out against the government's corruption. - Disaster loomed for Indians who refused to assimilate. - The Ghost Dance, a spiritual revival spread to thousands of Lakota Sioux. - The military attempted to stop the dance, resulting in the Massacre at Wounded Knee. ## The Mining and Lumber Industries - Settlers poured into Indian Territory in the Rocky Mountains in search of gold and silver. - Most found only backbreaking work, danger, and frustration. - Industrial mining operations overtook individual prospecting. ### The Business of Mining - The discovery of gold in California in 1848 began the mining frenzy. - Gold and silver strikes were discovered over the next thirty years in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas. - One of the biggest finds came with the Comstock Lode. - Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, was one of those who came to try to share in the wealth, but, like most of his fellow miners, he did not find his fortune. - When mining became an industry, prospectors became wageworkers. - The work was extremely dangerous. - Mine shafts extended more than a thousand feet, and working temperatures regularly exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. ### Unions - Unions began forming in the mid-1860s and provoked a backlash from mining companies. - Companies hired private police forces to help break strikes. - In 1892, the governor of Idaho crushed a strike by calling up the National Guard. ### Life in the Mining Towns - Mining towns were predominantly young and male at first, but as the industry shifted to copper, lead, and zinc in Montana and Idaho, these miners eventually became wageworkers for giant consolidated mining companies. - Towns that survived settled into a more complex pattern of urban living, with schools, churches, theaters, and opera houses. - Residents lived in neighborhoods divided by class and ethnicity. - The Irish, Finns, Swedes, Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes formed their own social, fraternal, and religious organizations. ### The Lumber Boom - The mining industry created a huge demand for timber and sawmills. - By 1900, a few large firms came to dominate the industry. - Frederick Weyerhaeuser purchased 900,000 acres of prime timberland in the Western Cascades of Oregon. ## The Cattle Industry and Commercial Farming - Cattle ranching and farming became dominated by big businesses. - Foreign investors from England, Scotland, Wales, and South America poured in money to fund the cattle industry. - Cowboys functioned as industrial laborers, working long hours in tough but boring conditions. - Farmers endured great hardships in trying to raise crops in rough climates, but extreme weather and falling crop prices forced many ranchers and farmers out of business. ### The Life of the Cowboy - The cowboy was a romanticized symbol of the frontier West. - Cowboys are often pictured as independent figures who fight for justice. - In reality, their lives were much more mundane. - In the late 1860s, cowboys moved cattle from ranches in Texas through Oklahoma to rail depots in Kansas towns such as Abilene and Dodge City; from there, cattle were shipped by train eastward to slaughterhouses in Chicago. - They worked for paltry monthly wages, put in long days herding cattle, and spent part of the night guarding them on the open range. - Most cowboys were white southerners who had fought for the South during the Civil War. - Besides experiencing rugged life on the range, black and Mexican cowboys faced racial discrimination. - Mexican vaqueros earned one-third to one-half the wages of whites, and blacks were usually paid on par with whites. - The Civil War influenced racism and segregation. ### The Rise of Commercial Ranching - By the end of the nineteenth century, five million Texas longhorn steers grazed in the Southwest. - The extension of railroads across the West opened a quickly growing market for beef in the East. - Refrigerated railroad cars guaranteed that meat from slaughtered cattle would reach eastern consumers without spoiling. - Fewer than 40 ranchers owned more than 20 million acres of land. - Easterners and Europeans invested money in giant ranches. - By the mid-1880s, approximately 7.5 million head of cattle roamed the western ranges. - The industry faced several challenges, such as competition from cattle producers in Canada and Argentina, as well as the movement of homesteaders into the plains and the fencing of their farms with barbed wire. - In 1885 and 1887, two frigid winters and a torrid summer drought destroyed 90 percent of the cattle on the northern plains, and many of the great cattle barons went into bankruptcy. - The economic collapse consolidated the remaining cattle industry into even fewer hands. ### Commercial Farming - The American West was characterized by harsh climates that made it difficult for farm families to make a living. - Farmers struggled to raise crops, and falling crop prices led to soaring debt and forced many farmers into bankruptcy. - The federal government played a major role in opening up the Great Plains to farmers. ### Homestead Act - The Homestead Act was passed in 1862 during the Civil War. - It granted 160-acre lots to western settlers who would develop and farm their land. - The harsh climate and dry conditions made 160 acres an insufficient amount of land. ### Agricultural Innovations - The decade after 1878 witnessed an exceptional amount of rainfall west of the Mississippi, and new innovations helped to increase crop yield. - Steel-tipped plows, threshers, combines, and harvesters expanded agricultural production, which helped lower food prices for consumers. ### Settlers - The Great Plains attracted immigrants from Europe, Minnesota and the Dakotas welcomed communities of settlers from Sweden and Norway. - Nebraska housed a considerable population of Germans, Swedes, Danes, and Czechs. - About one-third of the people who migrated to the northern plains came directly from a foreign country. ### Railroads and Land Companies - Railroads and land companies lured settlers to the plains with tales of fabulous possibilities. - The federal government had given generous grants of public land for railroad construction as well as parcels surrounding the tracks. - Settlers often journeyed together and rented an entire car on the train, known as "the immigrant car," in which they loaded their possessions, supplies, and even livestock. ### The Life of Homesteaders - Homesteaders found their optimism and spirits sorely tested. - Despite the company of family members and friends, settlers faced a lonely existence on the vast expanses of the plains. - Homesteads were spread out. - Early settlers constructed sod houses. - The climate posed even greater challenges. - The late 1870s and early 1880s were marked by unusually plentiful rainfall followed by severe drought. - Grasshoppers ravaged the northern plains in the late 1870s. - Intense summer heat alternated with frigid temperatures in the winter. ### Women Homesteaders - The women of the family were responsible for making homesteads more bearable. - Mothers and daughters were in charge of household duties. - Women contributed significantly to the economic well-being of the family by occasionally taking in boarders and selling milk, butter, and eggs. - Many single women staked out homestead claims by themselves. - Some were young, unmarried women seeking economic opportunity. - Others were widows attempting to take care of their children. - Women directed some of their energies to moral reform and extending democracy. - Law enforcement in newly established communities was not always successful in combating the saloons that catered to a raucous and drunken crowd. - Women tried to remove the source of alcohol-induced violence that disrupted both family relationships and public decorum. - Women flocked to the state's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. - Women vigorously campaigned for a constitutional amendment that banned the sale of liquor. - In 1884, women established the statewide Equal Suffrage Association, which delivered to the state legislature a petition with seven thousand signatures in support of women's suffrage. - Women were integral to the success of the westward expansion. ## Diversity in the Far West - The Far West attracted diverse cultural groups. - This interweaving sparked clashes that produced more oppression than opportunity for nonwhites. ### Mormons - Mormons sought refuge in the West for religious reasons. - They traveled to Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young. - The arrival of Mormons was controversial due to the practice of polygamy. - Non-Mormons denounced polygamy as a form of involuntary servitude. - Mormons also departed from the mainstream American belief in private property. - They believed in farming as a communal enterprise. - The federal government took increased measures to control Mormon practices by banning plural marriages. - It was not until 1896, after the Mormons officially abandoned polygamy, that Congress accepted statehood for Utah, and women were given the right to vote. ### Californios and Mexican Americans - Mexican Americans were the largest group that lived in California. - They established themselves as farmers and ranchers. - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, supposedly guaranteed the property rights of Californios and granted them U.S. citizenship, but it was not a reality. - Mexican American miners had to pay a "foreign miners tax," and Californio landowners lost their holdings to squatters, settlers, and local officials. - By the end of the nineteenth century, about two-thirds of all land originally owned by Spanish-speaking residents had fallen into the hands of Euro-American settlers. - The loss of land was matched by a diminished role in the region's government, as economic decline, ethnic bias, and the continuing influx of white migrants combined to greatly reduce the political influence of the Californio population. - Anglos began forcing Mexican Americans off their land near Las Vegas, New Mexico. - Juan Jose Herrera assembled a band of masked night riders, Las Gorras Blancas, to protect the rights and interests of the people in general and especially those of the helpless classes. - The White Caps burned Anglo fences, haystacks, barns, and homes, but in the end, Spanish-speaking inhabitants could not prevent the growing number of whites from pouring onto their lands. - Mexican Americans remained a majority of the territorial population, but Congress refused New Mexico's application for statehood twice in the 1870s and 1880s. ### The Chinese - Chinese immigrants migrated to California and the West Coast. - The migration was part of a larger movement in the nineteenth century out of Asia that brought impoverished Chinese to Australia, Hawaii, Latin America, and the United States. - The Chinese migrated for several reasons in the decades after 1840, such as economic dislocation related to the British Opium Wars, family feuds, and peasant rebellion. - The Chinese looked for economic opportunity overseas, seeking jobs building the transcontinental railroad. - By 1880, the Chinese population in the West had grown to 200,000, most of whom lived in San Francisco, which became the center of the transplanted Chinese population. - The Chinese faced hostility from white workingmen who believed that Chinese laborers in the mines and railroads undercut their demands for higher wages. - Anti-Chinese clubs mushroomed in California during the 1870s and soon became a substantial political force in the state. - The Workingmen's Party advocated laws that restricted Chinese labor, and it initiated boycotts of goods made by Chinese people. - Vigilantes attacked Chinese in the streets and set fire to factories. - The Workingmen's Party and the Democratic Party joined forces in 1879 to craft a new state constitution that blatantly discriminated against Chinese residents. - The U.S. government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration into the United States and prohibited those who had been here from becoming naturalized American citizens. - Anti-Chinese assaults continued in the late 1880s, and white mobs drove Chinese out of Eureka, California; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; and Rock Springs, Wyoming. ## Conclusion: The Ambiguous Legacy of the West - The legacy of the pioneering generation of Americans has proven mixed. - Pioneers encountered challenges related to terrain, climate, unfamiliar inhabitants, and the land itself. - They sought to harness the land, build their homes, till the soil to raise crops, and mined the earth to remove the metals it contained. - They developed cities that would one day rival those back east: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver. - As producers of staple crops and livestock and consumers of manufactured goods, they contributed to the expansion of America's factories, railroads, and telegraph communication system. - Individual initiative and self-determination were essential for setting of the West. - Federal government support was necessary. Without the direct involvement of the federal government, settlers would not have received free or inexpensive homesteads and military protection to clear native inhabitants out of their way. - Without territorial governors and judges appointed by Washington to preside over new settlements, there would have been even less law, order, and justice than appeared in the rough-and-tumble environment of the West--as well as with large-scale ventures such as in mining and cattle ranching. - Pioneers brought with them their great sense of individualism and self-reliance. - They found it difficult to achieve success on their own and became wageworkers. - The story of westward expansion was predominantly framed as male dominated, but pioneers also depended largely on women. - Pioneers did not fully understand the land and the people they encountered. - Their practices damaged fragile ecosystems, and resulted in the near extinction of bison, and negatively impacted Native Americans both economically and culturally. - Some Native Americans willingly adopted white ways, but most of them fiercely resisted acculturation. - Chinese immigrants also experienced harsh treatment at the hands of whites and suffered greatly. ## The Significance of the Frontier - The expansion of the American West beyond the Mississippi River to the West Coast has become a symbol of freedom, democracy, and national renewal. - The development of the West has been romanticized in popular novels, films, and television shows that depict adventurous pioneers rebuilding their lives economically, politically, and spiritually by moving to the vastness of the Great Plains and Far West. - In these stories, righteous cowboys spread civilization and maintain law and order so that others might settle peacefully. - American Indians, who already inhabited these supposed open lands, are considered enemies of American progress and collateral damage as the government reneged on its treaty obligations and the military defeated them. - The historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote about the significance of the West in 1893, just three years after the Census Bureau reported that the frontier was closed and amid concerns for its disappearance. - In 1987, historian Patricia Limerick, influenced by new research on and changing attitudes towards Native Americans and Latino Americans, reconceived how scholars view the significance of the West.