Chapter 17: Remaking the West

Conquest and Incorporation

• Mapping the Land

  • Federal government was most important for expansion westward

  • Mexican-American War expanded concept of “Manifest Destiny”

  • During Civil War, the Union designated western lands as federal territories

  • Needed to survey subregions (to conquer, lay railroads, start mining, begin dividing, and selling land)

  • Specified geology of territories was principal objective of expeditions

  • Stimulated western development

  • Surveys brought photographs, paintings, and literature

  • West = raw materials waiting to be harvested, used, and/or sold

• Railroading the West

  • Federal government laid first transcontinental railroad

  • Encouraged conquest, settlement, and economic development

  • Railroad companies receive capital and unclaimed land as government bonds

  • Vital to economic development

  • State/local governments joined. Bought bonds and made land cheap

  • Small settlements wanted railroad routes to be near them so they could develop

  • Northeastern bankers also bought into the rail enterprise

  • US Army provided security western and otherwise

  • Railroad and economic developers had large and cheap sources of labor

  • Chinese laborers especially was common

• The Contested Plains

  • Plains bison: commonly known as buffalo

  • European horses revolutionized plains life for Native Americans

  • US government forced Native Americans out

  • Government and white settlers showed little interest in plains until the price of wheat grew during the Civil War

  • To meet demands, many settlers moved there

  • Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged expansion

  • Santee Sioux of Minnesota agreed to reside in reservations for yearly payment

  • Reservation was too small and payments were less than what the government promised

  • Requested food and other aid, but rejected

  • Raided surrounding farms and hung Anglo families: “the Santee Rebellion”

  • Other plains Native Americans followed suit and attacked settlers

  • Some raided farming settlements

  • Constant fighting took its toll (should they negotiate?)

  • Settlers’ militia was pursuing violence

  • November 29, 1864: John M Chivington leads bloody rampage through Indian camp “Black Kettle”: Native Americans waved the US flag and white flag to surrender, but militia advanced and had a massacre. Settlers cheered
    Sand Creek Massacre”, but back East, most newspaper and Congress condemn it

• War Relocation

  • Native Americans believe that settlers or the US gov can be trusted and negotiation would not work. Violence spreads.

  • Tribes like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fight back. The US army has 60k reinforcements including 2 African American battalions. Troops became lost, hungry… US victory not enough to secure a win

  • General William Techumseh Sherman negotiates Sioux Treaty of 1868, reserving land for Sioux tribe in the Dakota Territory and adjoining land to the Black Hills. Other treaties follow, all including agreement to move to reserved lands.

• Fighting Back

  • The Black Hills reservation had gold in them. Sacred of Sioux, so Native Americans defended them. Lakota rejected government offer to buy hills, General Philip Sheridan persuaded President Grant that natives had no right to this land

  • The Sioux, as lead by Lakota chiefs, had an early victory when General Custer thought he was facing a small army, not troops of 2.5K

  • Thousands of US troops were deployed and then slayed most Sioux warriors within a few months

  • Sitting Bull fled to Canada

  • 23 bison survived after General Sheridan ordered eradication. These 23 bisons were the ancestors of the thriving population today

  • Native Americans were outgunned and outnumbered even though they inflicted heavy casualties on American forces

  • Native Americans who were rebellious were in reservations away from the population. Native Americans loyal were allowed to stay in their homeland, but were expected to stay there or be hunted down and/or killed

• Hunters into Farmers

  • Federal reservation policy in the 1870s to 1880s wanted to turn Native Americans to farmers

  • Missionaries and agents tried to civilize and Christianize the Native Americans. They believed they were doing good. However, their attempts failed

  • Reservations were too barren to farm

  • White activists argue reservations were poverty traps and were being badly treated

  • Congress poised to implement a system of private property. Indian chiefs didn’t like this as it attacked the cultural foundation of their societies (the whole tribe owned the land together)

• The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

  • Surge of religion and ritual within Native Americans

  • Ghost Dance was a way of morning, a prophecy, and resistance

  • Pacifist, but Ghost Dance because more confrontational

  • Many Sioux people were killed when a cavalry caught up with them, and the Ghost Dance ritual died

Bonanzas, Fevers, and Busts

• Men, Women, and Mining

  • Americans usually moved eastward

  • Entrepreneurs raised money for mining operations by selling SF securities exchange stock

  • Some con artists sold shares in nonexistent mines, etc… thousands of people lost their money

  • Once the transcontinental railroad was finished, more people set up near stations. Strikes followed a boom-and-bust model similar to the California gold rush

  • Placer mining: when a site had one precious metal found, thousands of others would come and extract what they could

  • Placer miners were especially diverse with lots of immigrants

  • Placer miners had relative success in the beginning, but soon turned less so

  • Commercial mining enterprises: businesses that offered a waged position in the company

  • Prostitution and gambling were common in these camps. Sometimes sex workers were forced into the trade and for a poor wage.

• Farmers and Land Fever

  • Farming frontier: the frontier which was similar to the one envisioned by north easterners

  • Moved westward along railroad and trails

  • Farming frontiers were under federal incentives and gifted land

  • Sent livestock, gain, and produce to large urban markets via transportation networks

  • Helped settle farmers on the frontier

  • Funded mortgages, carried settlers, educated migrants

  • Founded towns to service farming communities

  • Over 800K settlers had been granted land under Homestead Act of 1862 by 1873

  • Women also saw more independence

  • High percentage of nation’s women owned land

  • Ideal of the fiercely independent female homesteader became a trope

  • Homesteaders had too small land sections of 160 acres

  • The Timber Culture Act of 1873 doubled land, popular misconception that trees would attract rain to dry regions. Same conception then wanted to Desert Land Act of 1877

  • Only half of new migrants able to continue farming due to infertile land or competition

  • Mining companies also was another option

  • Isolated farming families slowly formed communities

  • Grangers: members of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry

  • Grangers held meetings and lobbied state legislatures to regulate railroad transportation prices and grain storage facilities

  • Munn v. Illinois: The Supreme Court declared that the states could regulate commerce in the name of public interest

• Cattlemen and Cowboys

  • Ranching frontier: originated in Texas and western Louisiana.

  • Loss of Louisiana railroad during Civil war drove cattlemen north

  • Wartime demand so high, cattlemen moved to free-ranging herds in Native American land

  • 1865, Texas cattle fetched 10x more money in Chicago because Northern consumers could afford to eat meat

  • Federal government purchased meat for increasingly dependent Native Americans

  • Mid 1870s: ranching frontier was controlled predominantly by white cattle barons

  • Range was racially and ethnically diverse (Mexican, Indian, African American, former slaves)

  • Popular literature and media depicted being cowboy as romantic and ideal

  • However, cowboys had to face extreme environmental conditions and were poorly compensated

• The Cattle Wars

  • End of the era of long cattle drives ends on the late 1880s

  • Cattle barons ran so many cattle that grasslands were not enough to sustain them

  • Rapid growth of herds decreased price of beef

  • Old-style cattle drives weren’t possible with enclosures

  • Wyoming Territory legislature passed a Maverick Law that made all wild maverick battle property of the cattlemen’s association

  • Small number of ranchers prosecuted under law, but juries did not convict

  • Courts offered barons no relief so violence occurred

  • When Ellen Liddy Watson and James Arvell refused to sell their land, cattlemen lynched them

  • Johnson County War (a monopoly) hired fifty Texas gunmen to kill those associated with small ranchers. Locals formed their own vigilante force

  • President Benjamin Harrison sent the Army to restore order

Reinventing the West

• Excluding the Chinese

  • Fifteenth Amendment prohibited racial disenfranchisement

  • Many West Coast whites worried that Reconstruction would lead to enfranchisement of immigrants (Chinese, Hispanic, Native Americans)

  • Anti-Chinese sentiment had been building through 1860s

  • Workers concentrated in citrus belt, where a packing system was developed for fruits

  • Democrats used the issue of minority rights to scare white farmers and workers

  • Anti miscegenation laws: prohibited white people from marrying people from Asian Descent

  • Chinese Exclusion Act: barred Chinese laborers from entering the country and prohibited people of Chinese descent becoming citizens. Arson and beatings flared

• Wilding the West

  • Wild West was common in media

  • “The Scouts of the Prairie”; blended history, patriotism, and action-adventure

  • The idea of this frontier helped the advance to the west

  • Frontier thesis: Turner’s thesis that said the western frontier was essential to the American democratic spirit

• California Dreaming

  • Tons and tons of “mythology” of California

  • “Gold Mountain” of immigrants, or ``Golden State”, etc..

  • Depicted California as more than wealth but personal freedom, modern technology, and instant wealth

  • Free Californians that were depicted were white and male. Immigrants kept under covers.

  • California also had violent beginnings and its share of racism

  • Books still proved influential, creating a “California fable”

  • Most Americans still believed that beginnings and equal opportunity were possible on earth. California would be most likely to be discovered in the United States as this place.