Transcript The Conquest of the Far West - Pleasanton Unified School

The Conquest of the Far
West
Chapter 16
Societies of the Far West
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The Western Tribes
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Pacific coast (Chumash,
Pomo, Serrano, Maidu,
Yurok, Chinook, Ohlone)
wiped out by Spanish
disease
Pueblos of SW form alliance
with Spaniards, but
subordinate
Plains, Sioux Indians
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strongest, most fierce and
brave
strict reverence to nature
dependent on buffalo
lack of unity early but later
formed alliance with Arapaho
and Cheyenne
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Hispanic New Mexico
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most stayed in American territory after US/Mexico war
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Transformed by arrival of Anglo-Americans and capitalist
society
Stephen Kearney tries to establish a gov’t in NM with
1,000 whites that excludes the 50,000 Hispanics
“territorial rings” spread Anglo influence, territory and
wealth
US Army breaks the power of the Navajo and Apache
Railroad brings more people
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Anglo and Mexicans seeking different opportunities
Mexicans restricted to the lowest-paying and least stable jobs
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Hispanic California and Texas
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Missionaries influence
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Californios lose land (Benicia, Vallejo)
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excluded from Gold Rush
corrupt business deals
corrupt courts
squatters
Rancheros struggle
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self-sustaining communities
Spanish presence
Oppression of natives
survive due to booming cattle industry
1860s drought devastating
by 1880s Hispanic aristocracy ceases to exist in
California
Texas follows similar post war pattern to CA despite the
fact that they consisted of ¾ the pop.
Anglo treatment of Mexicans v. Natives
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The Chinese Migration
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by 1880 200,000 Chinese in the US, mostly in
CA, large numbers in SF
CA gov. in 1852 “one of the most worthy
classes of our newly adopted citizens”
Jobs
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industrious and hardworking = “threat” to white
society
“foreign miners” tax excluded them from the mines
during gold rush
transcontinental railroad, Chinese = 90% of
workforce (Central Pacific)
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work through winter
strike suppressed by force/starvation
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The Chinese Migration
Cont’d
– Urban Life
“Chinatowns”
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railroad completion =
increase in Chinese
urban population
“Six Companies”
Tongs
2/3 of laundry workers
were Chinese; cheap to
start, little language
requirement
50% of Chinese women
in California were
prostitutes
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Anti-Chinese Sentiments
– Anti-Coolie clubs, Democrat Party,
Workingmen’s Party = violence and oppression
of Chinese
– Chinese Exclusion Acts in US Congress 1882,
1892, 1902
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Migration from the East
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post war migration = much larger than
previous decades
Homestead Act of 1862 – permitted settlers to
buy plots of 160 acres for a small fee if the
occupied the land they purchased for five
years and improved it… easier said than done
10 states join the Union from 1864 – 1896
The Changing Western Economy
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Labor in the West
– unstable and shifting labor market
– 10% of population was single…
– multi-racial working class…but white
workers dominated upper tiers of
employment
– areas of work: mining, ranching and
commercial farming
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The Arrival of Miners
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mining boom was a brief period 1860-1890 (California,
1849)
gold in Pike’s Peak, CO (1858)… Denver established
silver in Nevada (1858)… Comstock Lode
gold in Black Hills of Dakota Territory
Process
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Individual surface, placer, mining
Corporate quartz mining
Ranchers establish permanent economy or desertion
“Bonanza Kings” – lucky miners who did become
enormously wealthy off a strike
Rise in outlaws or “bad men” = increase in vigilante
activity
Dangers of working in mines (1 worker in 30 died)
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The Cattle Kingdom
– railroads gave birth to range cattle industry
because it allowed access to larger markets
– long before US citizens invaded the SW,
Mexican ranchers had developed the
techniques and equipment that the cattlemen
and cowboys of the great Plains later employed:
branding, roundups, roping, leather chaps and
spurs… very important to note that Texas
“Cowboys” followed the Mexican “Gaucho” or
“Ranchero” model
– huge price offerings in the East for steers for
people who could bring steers to railroad
centers
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The Cattle Kingdom Cont’d
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drive from south Texas to Sedalia, Missouri
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caused cattle to gain weight
risk factors: outlaws, Indians, farmers, Texas fever
success lead to “cattle kingdom”
Most cowboys in early years were Confederate Army
veterans…second largest group was African Americans
ranches = permanent settlements for employers and
employees
sheep vs. cows
Corporate Cowboys
harsh seasons wiped out the cattle run, replaced it with
trains
250,000 female ranch owners, Wyoming = first state to
grant women suffrage
The Romance of the West
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The Western
Landscape
– New, natural painting
landscapes lured
many west
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“Rocky Mountain
School”
early tourist industry,
“wilderness” hotels
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The Cowboy Culture
– rugged, free-spirited lifestyle romanticized =
contrast structured world of the East
– promotion of the “natural man”
– Owen Wister’s “The Virginian” = a semieducated man whose natural, decency,
courage, and compassion made him a powerful
symbol of frontier virtues
– Wild West Shows
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The Idea of the Frontier
– Mark Twain – writer
– Frederic Remington – painter
– Theodore Roosevelt – “Winning the West”
writer
– Frederick Jackson Turner – “four centuries from the discovery of America, at
the end of a hundred years of life under the
Constitution, the frontier has gone and with it’s
going has closed the first period of American
history.” Debatable
– Loss of Utopia or “myth of the garden”
Dispersal of the Tribes
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White Tribal Policy
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Bad history
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prior to 1860, tribes were considered wards of the
President
treaties ratified by Senate
desire to establish permanent frontier between whites and
natives
as whites moved west, strength of treaties rarely held from
pressure of settlers
“concentration” of Indian tribes in Indian territory w.
“treaty chiefs”
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divided tribes, thus easier to control
allowed whites to move Indians off desirable lands
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White Tribal Policy Cont’d
– Indian Peace Commission established to come
up with a different plan than concentration…
move all Indians into one of two reservations:
Dakotas or Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
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White management of Indian matters was run by
Bureau of Indian Affairs – horrible track record
– Buffalo was essential to Indian way of life…
slaughtered by whites
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demand for hides from the East
railroad shootings
killing was condoned and encouraged by Bureau of
Indian Affairs
1865: 15 million buffalo / 1875: less than a thousand
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The Indian Wars
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Retaliation: originally on
encroachers, later on soldiers
Little Crow (Sioux) in Minnesota:
700 whites dead / 38 Natives
hanged
Miners encroachment in Colorado
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governor urged friendly Indians to
congregate at army posts for
protection
Black Kettle leads Cheyenne and
Arapaho to camp
Colonel J.M Chivington orders an
attack with drunk militia soldiers
133 people dead /105 women and
children
Black Kettle escapes, slaughtered
with his people later in Texas by
Colonel George A. Custer
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The Indian Wars Cont’d
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Montana and Bozeman trail
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white effort to connect Wyoming to mining centers in Dakotas
Indian harassment prevents trail from being used
California and “Indian Hunters”
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bounty for scalps or skulls
goal of “elimination”
disease, poverty and vigilantes reduced CA Indian population from
150,000 before 1860 to 30,000 in 1870
1867 Peace, but 1870s tensions rise again
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Gold in the Black Hills
Federal gov’t stops negotiations with tribal chiefs two goals
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“civilization” through assimilation
annihilation of Native cultures
1875 bands of warriors left reservations and were ordered to return
gathered in Montana under two great leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull
George Custer and Seventh Calvary sent to round up renegade
Indians
Battle of Little Bighorn: 2,500 Natives kill Custer and all 264 men
Native organization weak, group breaks up into bands
Crazy Horse killed on reservation (Sitting Bull?)
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The Indian Wars Cont’d
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Nez Perce and Chief Joseph 1877
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a few members sign a treaty all are forced onto a reservation
4 settlers killed
Chief Joseph leads his group in an effort to escape punishment
White Bird Canyon/ Blue Hen River
Leads 200 men and 350 women in an effort to reach Canada:
1,321 miles in 75 days
Some make it across the border, most are caught just before
Chief Joseph “I will fight no more forever”
General Nelson Miles makes a deal with Joseph, but Federal
gov. refuses to honor it
Nez Perce shipped from reservation to reservation facing
disease and malnutrition
Chief Joseph of Nez Perce
Geronimo
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The Indian Wars Cont’d
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Apaches and Geronimo
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one of the last tribes to resist
Arizona and Mexico
1871 white atrocities on Apache
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women and children killed / sold into slavery
offering peace conference, and then killing them: poisoned
food
Geronimo fights efforts to assimilate
Geronimo’s troops and tribe down to 30: Geronimo
surrenders
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The Indian Wars Cont’d
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Ghost Dance
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many tribes recognized their traditions were fading
turned to spirituality
Wavoka = Paiute who emphasized
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coming of a messiah
retreat of white forces
return of the buffalo
ecstatic visions and dances
white agents feared “Ghost Dance” as a preliminary to
hostilities
Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890)
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effort to round up Sioux and put down the “Ghost Dance”
350 cold and starving Sioux
machine gun factor: 200 Sioux (women and children) 40 white
soldiers dead
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The Dawes Act (1877)
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The Dawes Severalty Act provided for the gradual elimination of
tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual
owners
concept of a “vanishing race” in need of rescue from white society
desire to turn tribes into farming communities
took Indian children away from families and forced them into
boarding schools
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children were educated to abandon tribal ways and rituals
encouraged spread of Christianity
Harsh change from concept of collective society to capitalist
individualism
Plan abandoned due to inept and corrupt leadership
What must be understood:
The success of white settlement into the American
West came at great expense of the region’s indigenous
peoples
The Rise and Decline of the
Western Farmer
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Farming on the Plains
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Significance of the railroad
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Irish built from the East, Chinese built from the west
Met at Promontory Point, Utah in the Spring of 1869
prior to Civil War, only way west was via wagon / railroad made
white settlement easier
although operated by private corporations, railroads were
essentially public projects because the government gave
corporations loans and land for the track and land as incentive
railroad companies wanted settlers to settle the West
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customers for railroad
they owned the lands the settlers would buy
railroad fares were cheap
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Farming on the Plains Cont’d
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Problems
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Grazing Cattlemen herds (barbed wire)
Falling prices due to decrease in demand
Shortage of water (illusion that water was plentiful in
1870s due to unordinary amount of rainfall)
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irrigation projects
dry land farming
drought resistant crops
lack of government infrastructure for funding
land bought at a good rate on credit… but dry years
sent tens of thousands of farmers into abandonment
of their farms
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Commercial Agriculture
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independent farmer, self sustaining farmer, replaced
with commercial farmer similar to what industrialists
were doing in the manufacturing economy
dependent upon
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bankers and interest rates
railroads and freight rates
national and European markets
significance of communication and transportation
global increase in farm output… but lead to a drop in
prices
1890s 27% of the farms in country were mortgaged; by
1910 33%
In 1880 25% of all farmers were tenets, but 1910 37%
Some people became very rich, most suffered
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Farmers Grievances (Granger’s  Farmer’s Alliances 
Populist Party )
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farmers generally had little understanding of world markets, thus
concentrated their anger on immediate areas
inequitable train freight rates: cost more in the South and West than
in the NE, some charged arbitrary storage rates
high interest rates: 10 to 25% loans having to be paid during a time
when prices were dropping and currency was becoming scarce.
Increasing the volume of currency would eventually become an
important agrarian demand
prices: a farmer could plant a crop at a moment when prices were
high and find that by harvest the price had declined. The most
significant reason was the unsteadiness of the world market,
however farmers had their own theories that weren’t entirely
without reason
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“middlemen” (bankers, speculators, etc.) were conspiring to fix prices
so as to benefit themselves at the growers expense
Eastern manufacturers were conspiring to keep the prices of farm
goods low and the prices of industrial goods high
• Agrarian Malaise
– Isolation of farm life
• limited medical facilities
• harsh winters
• lack of access to education for children
– “hayseed” ridicule
– West used to be romanticized, now the position
of the western farmer declined in relation to
urbanized, industrial society of the East
– Anger would lead to a powerful political
movement in the 1890s… called Populist
Movement.