Chapter 17: The Contested West, 1870-1900

I. Conquest and Empire in the WestA. Indian Removal and the Reservation System1. Policy of Indian Removal of eastern tribes west of the Mississippi. 2. Manifest Destiny - government control of Indian lands in exchange for

annuities and place for Indians on reservations.3. Plains Indians at Fort Laramie, Wyoming treaty to cede land to allow passage

of wagon trains - the U.S. government never kept their end of the bargain.4. Indian wars against white settlers in the West - last resistance of a Native

American population devastated by disease and demoralized by Indian removal policy - Dakota Sioux in Minnesota under Chief Little Crow killed more than 1,000 white settlers before American troops quelled the uprising – In Sand Creek, Colonel John Chivington and his local Colorado militia savagely killed 270 Cheyenne, including children, after Indians raised a white flag to surrender.

5. Grant - advocated reservations to segregate and control Indians - opened up land to white settlers - U.S. army herded Indians onto reservations - U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs badly managed and corrupt - Indians in reservations suffered from poverty and starvation - cultural battlegrounds - outside bureaucrats attacked Indian ways of life – assimilation of Indian tribes - Indians resisted -held on to their identities.

I. Conquest and Empire in the West

I. Conquest and Empire in the West

B. Decimation of the Great Bison Herds and the Fight for the Black Hills1. The Sioux staked survival on buffalo - by nineteenth century Eastern

demand for buffalo hides, transcontinental railroad, systematic buffalo hunting - buffalo herds fell into decline - End of traditional way of life for many Plains Indians tribes, forcing them onto reservations.

2. Cheyenne and Sioux united in 1866 to protect their hunting grounds in the Powder River Valley - United States negotiated second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 - Indian control of their sacred land in the Black Hills.

3. Gold fever - conflict between Indians and European Americans on the Northern plains - discovery of gold in the Black Hills of the Dakotas - miners and the Northern Pacific Railroad invaded the region - Sioux tribes under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull mounted a resistance, victory against Lieutenant Colonel George Custer in 1876 - Five years later Crazy Horse was killed, Sitting Bull surrendered, U. S. government took Black Hills – the Lakota confined to the Great Sioux reservation - Sioux filed suit and demanded compensation for lands illegally taken - in 1980, Supreme Court granted $122.5 million in monetary compensation to the tribes, Sioux refused settlement and continue to press for the return of Black Hills.

I. Conquest and empire in the West

I. Conquest and Empire in the West

C. Dawes Act and Indian Land Allotment1. Relocating Indians onto reservations lost momentum in 1880s

- new policy to encourage assimilation through farming and private ownership of property.

2. Dawes Allotment Act (1887) abolished reservations, allotted lands to individual Indians as private property.

3. Indian rights groups viewed the Dawes Act as a positive initiative - act effectively reduced Indian lands from 138 million acres to a scant 48 million.

4. Eventually Dawes Act dealt a damaging blow to traditional tribal cultures.

I. Conquest and Empire in the West

D. Indian Resistance and Survival 1. Facing extinction of traditional ways of life, different groups of Indians

responded in different ways.2. The Crow, Arikara, Pawnee, and Shoshoni fought alongside the U.S. army

against their old enemies the Sioux in an effort to hold onto their lands.3. The Nez Perce attempted to flee to Canada to escape confinement on a

reservation but surrendered to U.S. army soldiers after a five-day siege.4. The Apache tribes resorted to armed resistance - perfected a hit-and-run

guerrilla warfare - terrorized white settlers and the army - Geronimo led Apache raiding parties off the reservation - surrendered to General Nelson Miles - government arrested nearly 500 Apaches - though fewer than three dozen had been hostile - sent them as prisoners to Florida - more than a quarter of them died - In 1892 Apaches moved to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, later to New Mexico.

5. Many tribes turned to nonviolent form of resistance - new Ghost Dance religion - generally nonviolent, the Sioux militant - President Benjamin Harrison sent federal troops to Sioux country - December 1890 Indian police killed Sitting Bull who joined the Ghost dancers in South Dakota - melee ensued - army opened fire on Indians - more than two hundred Sioux killed - massacre at Wounded Knee ended way of life for Indians.

II. Gold Fever and the Mining West

A. Mining on the Comstock Lode1. 1859 – some California gold miners discovered Comstock Lode in

Washoe basin Nevada - richest silver ore on the continent - Silver mining an expensive operation – capital and technology - Speculation, misrepresentation, and outright thievery rampant in the mining West.

2. Promise of gold and silver drew thousands of men to the mines of the West, honest as well as the unscrupulous - international array of immigrants - Irish and Irish American women on the Comstock – Chinese community overwhelmingly male.

3. In 1873, Comstock miners uncovered new vein of ore - transition from small-scale industry to corporate enterprise – a radically new social and economic environment - New technology eliminated some of the dangers of mining - not all – in the 1870s - one out of 30 miners was injured on the job and one out of 80 killed - mining towns of the Wild West lawless outposts but often urbanized and industrialized.

II. Gold Fever and the Mining West

II. Gold Fever and the Mining West

B. Territorial Government1. Federal government practiced benign neglect toward territorial

government in the West - Nevada with many mines became a state in 1864 - many areas remained territories with underpaid territorial governors - often unqualified, and largely ignored by Washington - long delays in receiving their salaries - often paid government expenses out of their own pockets - maintained business connections in the East or invested in the West.

2. Underfunded and overlooked, territorial government rife with conflicts of interest and corruption - mirroring political and economic values (or lack thereof) of the late nineteenth century.

II. Gold Fever and the Mining West

C. The Diverse Peoples of the West1. Widely diverse place populated by New Englanders, Mormons, African-

Americans, Mexicans, and Latinos as well as immigrants from Europe, Asia and Canada - complex blend of racism and prejudice - African Americans faced hostile settlers determined to keep the West for “whites only” - Hispanics suffered from discrimination - fraud, chicanery, and intimidation dispossessed them of their land and forced them into segregated urban barrios - Mormons ostracized for their practice of polygamy.

2. Chinese suffered brutal treatment by employers and other laborers - by 1870, over 63,000 Chinese immigrants lived in America - denied access to citizenship - In 1876, the Workingman’s Party formed to fight Chinese exclusion - in 1882, Congress passed Chinese Exclusion Act - barred further Chinese immigration - predominantly male Chinese population declined - eventually replaced by Japanese immigrants.

3. The American West in the nineteenth century witnessed more than its share of conflict and bloodshed - Violent prejudice against Chinese and other Asian immigrants remained common - conflicts also broke out between cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers, between ranchers and farmers, between striking miners and their bosses, among rival Indian groups, and between whites and Indians.

III. Land Fever

A. Moving West: Homesteaders and Speculators1. People who ventured west faced hardship, loneliness, and deprivation -

Blizzards, tornadoes, grasshoppers, hailstorms, draught, prairie fires, accidental death, and disease were only a few of the catastrophes that could befall even the best farmer.

2. Homestead Act of 1862 promised 160 acres free to any individual who settled on the land for five years - homesteaders still needed $1,000 for a house, a team of farm animals, a well, fencing, and seed – by 1870s only least desirable tracts were left for homesteaders.

3. For women on the frontier, simple daily tasks such as obtaining water and fuel meant backbreaking labor.

4. Railroads biggest winners in the scramble for western land. 5. As land grew scarce on the prairie in the 1870s, farmers moved into western

Kansas, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado - the Great American Desert.6. Farmers woes - cyclical droughts in the 1880s and 1890s - starving farmers

back from the plains.7. Oklahoma territory in 1889 brought 10,000 settlers in one day.

III. Land Fever

B. Ranchers and Cowboys1. Between 1865 and 1885 cattle ranchers followed the railroads onto

the plains - cattle kingdom from Texas to Wyoming.2. Barbed wire revolutionized cattle business - Texas ranchers built

fences - “fence cutters,” resented the end of the free range.3. On the range, the cowboys (many of whom were African-American)

gave way to the cattle king – cowboys became wage laborers.4. By 1886, cattle overcrowded the range - severe blizzards during the

winters of 1886–87 and 1887–88 decimated the herds - aftermath of the storms - new and more labor-intensive forms of cattle ranching replaced open-range model.

III. Land Fever

III. Land FeverC. Tenants, Sharecroppers, and Migrants1. Many who followed the American promise to the West prospered -

land ownership elusive goal for freed slaves, immigrants from Europe and Asia, and Mexicans in California and on the Texas border - Some freed slaves with enough resources to go west remained property less farm laborers.

2. In California, skilled horsemen - Mexican cowboys called vaqueros - commanded decent wages until the 1870s - railroads ended the long cattle drives and the need for the vaqueros’ skills – became migrant laborers, often on land their families had once owned.

3. After the heyday of cattle ranching ended in the late 1880s, cotton production began its rise in southeastern Texas, and ranch life soon gave way to growing army of agricultural wageworkers.

4. In California, land monopoly and large scale farming fostered tenancy and migratory labor.

III. Land Fever

D. Commercial Farming and Industrial Cowboys1. Late nineteenth century - America’s population overwhelmingly rural -

new technology and farming techniques revolutionized American farm life - rural population decreased – number of farms rose - American agriculture entered the era of agribusiness - farming moved onto the prairies and plains, mechanization took control and farming emerged as big business - Like cotton farmers in the South, western grain and livestock farmers increasingly depended on foreign markets for their livelihood.

2. Commercial farming and mining in which the West developed its own brand of industrialism - Two immigrants - Henry Miller and Charles Lux - pioneered West’s mixture of agriculture and business - investment strategies and corporate structures to control California land and water rights - corporate consolidation, vertical integration, and schemes to minimize labor costs and stabilize the workforce.

3. By the end of the nineteenth century, agriculture transformed - the typical farmer no longer a self sufficient yeoman but was tied to global markets as either a businessman or a wage laborer.

III. Land Fever