Exploring American Histories: A Survey with Sources, 3rd ed. – Volume 2 Chapter 15 Book Notes PDF

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Book notes from Chapter 15 that go with information for exam 1. Provides bullet points that highlight key points from each section within the chapter...

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Opening the West ● Stories about the frontier have romanticized both cowboys and Indians. They have also glorified individualism, self-help, and American ingenuity and mimized cooperation, organization, and the role of foreign influence in developing the West ● In areas known as the Great Plains and the far West, women took on new roles and new cities emerged to accommodate the influx of miners, ranchers, and farmers ● Area west of the Mississippi was not hospitable to farmers and other adventurers lured but the appeal of cheap land and a fresh start ● Federal policy and foreign investment played a large role in encouraging and financing the development of the West ○ Railroads were also essential

The Great Plains ● In the mid-nineteenth century, the western frontier lay in the Great Plains ○ Prospects for sedentary farmers in this dy region did not appear promising ● 1878: John Wesley Powell issued a report that questioned whether the land beyond the easternmost portion of the Great Plains could support small farming ○ Lack of rainfall would make it near impossible for farmers to support their families with family farms of 160 acres ○ He recommended that settlers work with larger stretches of land (2,560 acres) to provide room to raise livestock under dry conditions ○ His words did little to diminish American’s conviction ● Dana Wilber along with millions of others had faith in America’s ability to turn the Great Plains into a place where Jefferson’s republican vision could take root and prosper

Federal Policy and Foreign Investment ● Federal government played a large role in facilitating the settlement of the West ○ National lawmakers enacted legislation offering free or cheap land to settlers and to mining, lumber, and railroad companies

○ Provided subsidies for transporting mail and military supplies, recruited soldiers to subdue the Indians who stood in the way of expansion, and appointed officials to govern the territories ○ Provided a necessary measure of safety and stability for new businesses to start up and grow as well as interconnect transportation and community systems to supply workers and promote opportunities to develop new markets across North America ● Foreign investment helped fuel development of the West ○ The United States lacked sufficient funding so it turned to Europe to finance the sale of public bonds and private securities ○ European firms also invested in American mines, with the British leading the way ○ The development of the western cattle range- the symbol of the American frontier and the heroic cowboy- was also funded by overseas financers ○ 1880s: height of cattle boom ■ British firms supplied $45 million to underwrite ranch operations ○ The largest share of money that flowed from Europe to the United States came with the expansion of railroads, the most important ingredient in opening the West

Indians and Resistance to Expansion ● Through treaties (most of which Americans broke) and war, white Americans conquered the Indian tribes inhabiting the Great Plains during the nineteenth century ● After the native population was largely subdued, those who wanted to reform Indian policy focused on carving up tribal lands and forcing Indians to assimilate into American society

Indian Civilizations ● The many native groups who inhabited the West spoke distinct languages, engaged in different economic activities, and competed with one another for power and resources

● By the end of the Civil War, around 350,000 Indians were living west of the Mississippi ● Given the rich assortment of Indian tribes, it is difficult to generalize about Indian culture and society ○ The tribes each adapted in unique ways to the geography and climate of their home territories, spoke their own language, and had their own history and traditions ○ These groups included hunters, farmers, nomadics, sendentaries ○ Indians on the southern plains gradually became enmeshed in the market economy for bison robes, which they sold to American traders ● The lives of Indian people were affected by the arrival of Europeans ○ Whites trampled on Indian hunting grounds, polluted streams with acid run-off from mines, and introduced Indians to liquor ○ Inflicted the greatest damage through for which Indians lacked the immunity that Europeans and white Americans had acquired ○ 1870: smallpox had wiped out half the population of Plains Indians, and cholera, diphtheria, and measles caused serious but lesser harm ● Indians were not pacifists and they engaged in warfare with their enemies in disputes over hunting grounds, horses, and honor ○ Introduction of guns by European and American traders transformed Indian warfare into a much more deadly affair ● By mid-nineteenth century, some tribes had become so deeply engaged in the commercial fur trade with whites that they had depleted their own hunting grounds ● Native Americans had their own approach toward nature and the land they inhabited ○ Most tribes did not accept private ownership of land like white pioneers ○ Recognized the concept of private property in ownership of their horse, weapons, tools, and shelters, but they viewed land as the common domain of their tribe ● Indians considered human beings not as superior to the rest of nature’s creations, but rather as part of an interconnected world of animals, plants, and natural elements ● Bison (buffalo) played a central role in the religion and society of many Indian tribes ○ By the mid-nineteenth century, approximately thirty million bison grazed on the Great Plains ● Used a variety of means to hunt (bows and arrows), some rode their horse and chased bison to stampede them over cliffs

● Men hunted, but women refused to think of their role as passive, they saw themselves as sharing in the work of providing food, shelter, and clothing for the members of their tribe

Changing Federal Policy Toward Indians ● 1851: Treaty of Fort Laramie ○ Sought to confine tribes on the northern plains to designate areas in an attempt to keep white settlers from encroaching on their land. In 1868, the second Treaty of Fort Laramie gave northern tribes control over the “Great Reservation” in parts of present-day Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota ■ A treaty two years later applied these terms to southern tribes ○ Indians kept their part of the agreement, but whote miners racing to stroke it rich did not. They roamed through Indian hunting grounds in search of ore and faced little government enforcement of the existing treaties ● November 29, 1864: a peaceful band of 700 Cheyennes and Arapahos under the leadership of Chief Black Kettle gathered at Sand Creek, Colorado, supposedly under guarantees of U.S. protection. Instead, Colonel John M. Chivington and his troops launched an attack, despite a white flag of surrender hoisted by the Indians, and brutally killed 270 Indians, mainly women and children ○ The government did nothing to increase enforcement of its treaty obligations ● In almost all disputes between whote settlers and Indians, the government sided with the whites regardless of the Indians’ legal rights ● 1867: government once again signed treaties with Indian tribes in the southern plains, with similar results ● Treaty of Medicine Lodge: provided reservation lands for the Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, and southern Arapaho to settle. Despite this agreement, white hunters soon invaded this territory and decimated the buffalo herd ● The Sand Creek Massacre unleashed Indian wars throughout the central plains, where the Lakota Sioux led the resistance from 1865 to 1868 ○ After two years of fierce fighting, both sides signed a second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which gave northern tribes control over the “Great Reservation” set aside in parts of present-day Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Another treaty placed the southern tribes in a reservation carved out of western Oklahoma

● 1877: Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce out of the Pacific Northwest, directing his people in a daring march of 1,400miles over mountains into Montana and Wyoming as federal troops pursued them. They were intercepted just short of Canada and were relocated to the southwestern territory of Oklahoma. In 1879, Chief Joseph pleaded with lawmakers in Congress to return his people to their home and urged the U.S. government to live up to the original intent of the treaties. They were able to return home under armed escort ● Though most tribes relocated onto reservations, some refused ○ Commander of the military ordered forces against the Indians and to wage a merciless war of annihilation ● Battle of the Little Big Horn: battle in Montana in which Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his troops were massacred by Lakota Sioux ○ Lakota Sioux retaliation to the merciless war of annihilation ○ Final victory for the Lakota nation, as the army mounted an extensive and fierce offensive against them that shattered their resistance ● Among the troops that battled the Indians were African Americans (buffalo soldiers) ○ Represented a cross section of the postwar black population looking for new opportunities that were now available after their emancipation ○ Some black enlisted to learn how to read and write or to avoid unpleasant situations back home ● 1880: Sergeant George Jordan of the Ninth Cavalry led troops under his command to fend off Apache raids in Tularosa, New Mexico, for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor

Indian Defeat ● In the late 1870s, Indians had largely succumbed to U.S. military supremacy ○ The tribes contained agile horsemen and skilled warriors, but the U.S. army was backed by the power of an increasingly industrial economy ○ Telegraph lines and railroads provided logistical advantages in the swift deployment of U.S. troops and the ability of the central command to communicate with field officers ○ The diversity of Indians and historic rivalries among tribes also made it difficult for them to unite against their common enemy ○ The federal government exploited these divisions by hiring Indians to serve as army scouts against their traditional tribal foes

● Even the most sensitive white administrators of Indian affairs considered Indians a degraded race ● As railroads pushed their tracks beyond the Mississippi, they cleared bison from their path by sending in professional hunters with high-powered rifle to shoot the animals ● By the mid-1800s, hunters had killed more than thirteen million bison ○ As a result of the relentless move of white Americans westward and conspicuous consumption back east, bison herds were almost annihilated ● Faced with decimation of the bison, broken treaties, and their opponents’ superior military technology, Native Americans’ capacity to wage war collapsed ○ Indians had little choice but to settle on shrinking reservations that the government established for them ● Late 1870s: gold discoveries in the Black Hills of North Dakota ignited another furious rush by miners onto lands supposedly guaranteed to the Lakota people ○ U.S government forced the tribes to relinquish more land ● 1889: Congress opened up a portion of western Oklahoma to white homesteaders ○ Although this land had not been assigned to specific tribes relocated in Indian Territory, more than eighty thousand Inidans from various tribes lived there ○ A decade later, Congress officially ended Indian control of Indian Territory

Reforming Indian Policy ● Reformers can to believe that the future welfare of Inidans lay not in sovereignty but in assimilation ● Lewis Morgan concluded that all cultures evolved through three stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization ● Reformers argued that by adopting white values, Indians could become civilized ○ Faced opposition from white Americans who doubted that Indian assimilation was possible ● Henry Dawes had the same paternalistic attitude toward Indians as he had toward freed slaves. He believed that if both degraded groups worked hard and practiced thrift and individual initiative in the spirit of Dawe’s New England Puritan forebears, they would succeed ● 1887: Dawes Act ○ Ended federal recognition of tribal sovereignty and divided India land into 160 acre parcels to be distributed to Indian heads of household.The act

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dramatically reduced the amount of Indian-controlled land and undermined Indian social and cultural institutions The government held the lands in trust for the Indians for 25 years and at the end of this period, the Indians would receive American citizenship Indians had to abandon their religious and cultural rites and practices, including storytelling and the use of medicine men Whatever land was left would be sold on the open market and the profits would be put in an educational fund for Indians This act was detrimental to Indians, Indian families received inferior farmlands and inadequate tools to cultivate them

Indian Assimilation and Resistance ● Ghost dance: tribal ritual that was said to make the white men disappear ● December 29, 1890: Seve the cavalry chased three hundred ghost dancers to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. A gunshot accidently rang and the cavalry killed 250 Native Americans

The Mining and Lumber Industries ● By 1900 the mining rush had peaked ● Lumber industry was less demographically diverse but also followed the pattern of domination by big business

The Business of Mining ● Comstock Lode: massive deposit discovered in the Sierra Nevada in the late 1850s ● Many who flocked the Comstock Lode were men with nearly have being foreign-born (many from Mexico or China) ● Western mining operations became big business run by men with the financial resources necessary to purchase industrial mining equipment

● When mining became an industry, prospectors became wageworkers ● Mid-1860s: unions formed ○ They had some success, but they also caused violent backlash from mining companies determine to resist union demands

Life in the Mining Town ● Most employed women near Comstock Lode worked long hours as domestics in boarding houses, hotels, and private homes. Prostitution accounted for the single largest segment of the femal workforce (it was legal at the time) ● As early as the 1880s, gold and silver deposits dwindled ○ They made the shift from gold and silver to copper, lead, and zinc ● Mining cities settled into urban living ○ Residents lived in neighborhoods divided by class and ethnicity

The Lumber Boom ● The mining industry and railroads lines created a huge demand for timber ● By 1990 large corporations took over the industry

The Cattle Industry and Commercial Farming ● Foreign investors from England, Scotland, Wales, and South America poured in money to fund the cattle industry and placed day-to-day control of their ranches in the hands of experienced corporate managers

The Life of the Cowboy ● Commonly operated in an industrial setting dominated by large cattle companies ● Long Drive: cattle drive from the grazing lands of Texas to rail depots in Kansas. Once in Kansas, the cattle were shipped eastward to slaughterhouses in Chicago ● Black and Mexican cowboys faced discrimination

The Rise of Commercial Ranching ● By the mid-1880s, cattle ranching had become fully integrated into the national commercial economy ● Then, ranchers who were already raising more cattle than the market could handle, increasingly faced competition from cattle producers in Canada and Argentina. Prices spiraled downward ○ Another source of competition came from homesteaders who moved into the plains and fenced in their farms with barbed wire, thereby reducing the size of the open range ● 1885-1887: Two frigid winter and torrid summer destroyed 90% of the cattle on the northern plains. Led to economic bankruptcy

Commercial Farming ● Falling crop prices led to soaring debt and forced many farmers into bankruptcy and off their land ● Improvement in mechanization led to a significant expansion in agricultural production, which helped to lower food prices for consumers ● Immigrant car: train car where people traveling west would load their possession, supplies, and livestock and ride to their new home ○ They would complete their journey by wagon or stagecoach

Women Homesteaders ● Mothers and daughters were in charge of household duties, cooking the meals, canning fruits and vegetables, and washing and ironing clothing ○ Occasionally sold milk, butter, and eggs to help financially ● Directed some of their energies to moral reform and extending democracy on the frontier ● Women tried to remove the source of alcohol-induced violence that disrupted both family relationships and public decorum ● 1884: established the statewide Equal Suffrage Association in Kansas

Farming on the Great Plains ● Individuals engaged in subsistence farming with the aid of wives and children ● Few farmers were independent or self-reliant, they depended on barter and short-term credit ● Western agriculture was increasingly commercialized and consolidated over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century ● The government sought to make bigger plots of land available in regions where small farming had proved impractical ○ The Desert Land Act (1877) offered 640 acres to settlers who would irrigate the land ○ The Timber and Stone Act (1878) allowed homesteaders to buy 160 acres of forestland at $2.50 an acre

Diversity in the Far West ● The intertwining among diverse cultural groups sparked clashes that produced more oppression than opportunity for nonwhites

Mormons ● Sought refuge in the West for religious reasons ● In the late 1840s, they had come under attack from opponents of their religion and the federal government for several reasons ○ Believed in polygamy ○ Strayed from belief in private property ● In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Supreme Court upheld the criminal conviction of a polygamist Mormon man

Californios ● Besides Indians, the largest group that lived in California consisted of Spaniards and Mexicans ● Californios: Spanish and Mexican residents of California. Before the nineteenth century, Californios made up California’s economic and political elite. Their

position, however, deteriorated after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848 ● Californio landowners lost their holdings to squatters, settlers, and local officials ○ These once wealthy Californios had been forced into poverty and the low-wage labor force ● 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 migrant combined to greatly reduce the political influence of the Californio population ● Spaniards and Mexicans living in the Southwest met the same fate as the Californios

The Chinese ● Economic dislocation related to the British Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860), along with bloody family feuds and a decade of peasant rebellion from 1854 to 1864, propelled migration ● Faced with unemployment and starvation, the Chinese sight economic opportunity overseas ● Chinese immigrant were first attracted by the 1848 gold rush and then by jobs building the transcontinental railroad ● 1870s: Amti-Chinese clubs mushroomed in California and they soon became a substantial political force in the state ● The Workingmen’s Party advocated laws that restricted Chinese labor ● The Workingmen’s Party and the Democratic Party joined forces in 1879 to craft a new state constitution that blatantly discriminated against Chinese residents ● Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882: banned Chinese immigration into the United States and prohibited those Chinese already in the country from becoming naturalized American citizens ○ Did not stop Anti-Chinese assaults

Conclusion: The Ambiguous Legacy of the West ● Men and women pioneers encountered numerous obstacles posed by difficult terrain, forbidding climate, and unfamiliar inhabitant of the land they sought to harness ● As producers of staple crops and livestock and consumers of manufactured goods, they contributed to the expansion of America’...