CHAPTER 8

Pages 286 - 291

PLACER MINING• The original rush to the American West was for the California Gold Rush in 1849. • Thousands of people went west to seek their fortunes in 1849, but also throughout

the Civil War, so the West started to go through big changes in the years 1865 – 1900.

• The first miners were usually poor people that wanted a new start, so they used Placer Mining to get the gold.

• In this type of mining, you use pans, screens, sluices to separate the heavy gold from the silt in the streams. This was cheap and could be done without a lot of money or machinery.

QUARTZ MINING

• Quartz mining involves digging into the ground to get to the lodes or veins of ore.

• This requires a lot of money and equipment. Most quartz mining in the west was done by large corporations.

COMSTOCK LODE

• The Comstock Lode was the first major U.S. discovery of silver and gold ore, located under what is now Virginia City, Nevada.

• After the discovery was made public in 1859, prospectors rushed to the area and scrambled to stake their claims. Mining camps soon thrived in the vicinity, which became bustling centers of fabulous wealth

Review

• True or False? Many prospectors became rich when the mines they created generated huge profits.

• 1. Early prospectors would extract shallow deposits of ore by:

• A) quartz mining. B)strip mining. • C) placer mining D) surface mining.• 2. The Comstock Lode was a rich deposit of• A) gold B) silver C) copper D) diamonds.• 3. Many of the first miners in the Colorado mountains did

not find minerals because::• A) there were no minerals.B) the areas were too remote.• C) mining companies had claimed them D) the minerals

were too deep.

THE WILD, WILD WEST

• Boom towns had reputations from when a ore or animal ruled the world. Astoria was built by John Jacob Astor and his fur trading company.

• A number of towns in Kansas became temporary Boom Towns for cattle until the railroad was extended past the town or the town people did not want to put up with all of the commotion and cowboys.

• Mining towns were built, the ore was used up and then people moved on to the next ore strike.

VIGILANCE COMMITTEES

• A Vigilance Committee was a group of private citizens who organized themselves for self-protection.

• Vigilance committees were often established in areas where there was either no local law or the local law enforcement was ineffective or corrupt.  Vigilance committees were popular within the United States in the 19th Century.

Colorado and Black Hills

• In Colorado, the mining led to over 1 billion in silver and gold produced. This led to railroads through the Rockies and transformed Denver

• Gold in the Black Hills meant railroads being built leading to farmers and others flooding into the area.

Leadville

• Street scene in Leadville, Colorado

Black Hills Placer Mining

• Black Hills Gold

The Cowboy Life

• The Civil War was great for Texas ranchers. They supplied food to the Confederacy and built their herds.

• When the war broke out, most ranchers went to war and left the ranches. During the war, the herds multiplied without controls, so that when the soldiers came home after the war, there were cattle everywhere.

• This made it easy for someone with very little money to get a herd together and become a rancher.

The Cowboy Life

• Most of these ranches were small and benefitted from the Open Range policy.

• In the open range, there were no fences. Cattle were left to graze where they could and were rounded up in the spring for branding. This allowed all the ranchers, big and small to benefit from the land.

The Texas Longhorn

• The real secret of successful ranching in Texas was the breeding of the Longhorn.

• The Longhorn was a result of breeding ordinary American Angus cows and Mexican breeds.

• They were hardy and could live in the tough Texas climate. They were disease and drought resistant.

The Open Range

• The Open Range idea made ranching boom in the years after the Civil War. The East wanted meat and the West had the cattle.

Cattle Boom

• Two developments worked together to cause the market for beef to boom after the Civil War.

• The first was the war itself. All the cattle east of the Mississippi had been slaughtered to feed the armies. After the war, people still wanted beef but couldn’t get it.

• The Second was the railroads. There weren’t cattle in the east, but there were in the west and the railroads could transport them to eastern markets.

THE LONG DRIVE

The Goodnight/Loving Trail

• Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were partners in a south Texas ranch. They weren’t making much money so they decided to try their luck at something new.

• The railroads in the west stopped at Dodge City Kansas. Goodnight knew that if he could get his cattle to Dodge City, he could sell them at a profit.

• They took a herd up through the Texas panhandle into Oklahoma and then Missouri. Cattle they bought for 2 dollars in South Texas could be sold for 9 dollars in Sedalia, Missouri.

• This is usually considered the first of the Long Drives. This was in 1866.

Chisholm Trail

• Between 1867-1871 over 1.5 million head of cattle were driven into Abilene, Kansas.

Mavericks

• Maury Maverick was one of the original Texas ranchers. He was from San Antonio.

• Maverick, unlike the other ranchers, didn’t brand his cattle. He let them roam free and when they mixed in with other herds, they could be cut out because they didn’t have a brand.

• After awhile, any unbranded cattle was called a “Maverick” and could be taken for free.

Nat Love

• Nat Love was one of many ex slaves that came west after the Civil War.

• He became an expert roper and cowboy and is usually credited with inventing the sport of “bulldogging” cattle.

Two Reasons the Long Drives Ended

Review

1) At first, ranchers saw barbed wire as a threat because it• a.harmed their cattle. b.kept their herds from roaming

freely.• c.required much effort to maintain.• d.kept their herds away from food.2) The fencing of the open range resulted in all of the

following EXCEPT• a.the end of long cattle drives.

b.the transition of cowboys to ranch hands.• c.the replacement of longhorns with new European

breeds.• d.the decline of the cattle industry in favor of sheep

ranching.

Pages 292 - 295

FARMING THE PLAINS

HOMESTEAD ACT

• The 1862 Homestead Act was passed to encourage people to move to the Great Plains. This act gave anyone 160 acres of land to anyone that moved onto the land and LIVED there for 5 years. This was to prevent corporations from simply registering the land and not using it. The idea was to get people out there.

• Many people called this area the “Great American Desert” because it was flat and didn’t have any trees. They thought it was impossible to grow anything there. Were they ever wrong.

Farming the Great Plains

• There were a number of reasons why so many moved to the Great Plains.

• One was the huge flow of immigrants that were coming into America with the Industrial Revolution. The Great Plains served as a safety valve for population.

• The second was it was very profitable. The period after the Civil War saw American wheat selling overseas for record prices.

Dry Farming

• Dryland farming is an agricultural technique for non-irrigated cultivation of land which receives little natural rainfall.

• The early settlers tried to use their old ways of farming by plowing deep into the soil. The problem with eastern soil is that it is wet and must be dried.

• The soil of the Great Plains was just the opposite. New methods of farming had to be developed before the plains could be efficiently farmed.

Sodbusters & Technological Advances

• Farmers on the Great Plains were able to utilize new advancements in farming – steel plows, seed drills, reapers, and threshing machines.

Bonanza farms are huge corporate farms

Closing of the Frontier• The 1890 census reported that the

settlement of the West had been so rapid that there was hardly a frontier line. This concerned many as it was thye end of an era and that the idea that Americans could make a fresh start was ending.

Review

• White settlement of the Great Plains west of the Mississippi River occurred because of:

• A) All of the answers below• B) The discovery of gold and silver

deposits• c) Encouragement by the Federal

government• D) Passage of the Homestead Act

Dakota Sioux rebel – 1862Little Crow

• The US had put the Dakota Sioux on a reservation in Minnesota. They were to pay the Sioux money for their land – about 5-30 cents an acre. By Auygust 1862, the US was late with the payments and Chief Little Crow asked the American traders to provide food on credit.. A trader, Andrew Myrick said, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung.”

Sioux – 1862 contd.

• Myrick was found shot to death with grass in his mouth two weeks later. Little Crow led an uprising resulting in many deaths. Lincoln reduced the number of executed to 38 after reviewing the facts.

CRAZY HORSE

• Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories, including leading a war party at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. After surrendering to U.S. troops in 1877, Crazy Horse was fatally wounded by a military guard while allegedly resisting imprisonment

SITTING BULL

• Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man who led his people as a war chief during years of resistance to United States government policies. he was killed during an attempt to arrest him and prevent him from supporting the Ghost Dance movement.

• He is notable in American history for his role in the major victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn

SAND CREEK MASSACRE

• The Sand Creek massacre occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory,killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children.

Custer

• George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was the commander of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

• Led the 7th to its’ destruction

What destroyed the Plains Buffalo

The Ghost Dance

• The Ghost Dance was a native American religious movement.

• it was first practiced for the Ghost Dance among the Nevada Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the American West, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma.

• The chief figure in the movement was Jack Wilson, known as Wovoka among the Paiute.

• He prophesied a peaceful end to white American expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans.

• Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance.

ASSIMILATION

• Americanization was an assimilation effort by the United States to transform Native American culture to American culture between the years of 1790–1920.

• Believers in assimilation formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process

• This policy tried to completely change Native American culture.

• The idea was in the long run, to destroy it.

The Dawes Act

• The Dawes Act divided up the land on the Indian reservations into individual parcels.

• The idea was to get each Indian family to farm their own plot and eventually assimilate into American society

• This was disastrous for Native American culture.

Century of Dishonor• Written by Helen Hunt Jackson, the book, A

Century of Dishonor, described events such as the massacre at Sand Creek and other events that told Americans of the treatment of Native Americans.

Review

• 1) In choosing Indian removal, white society of the 1830’s was rejecting the concept of:

• A) Establishing Indian reservations• B) Creating a shared world with the

Indians• C) Segregating Indian and white

societies• D) Treating the territories as virgin land

Review

2) The Dawes Act attempted to help Native Americans by

• a.selling land and building a trust of money for them.

• b.returning them to their native lands.

• c.reintroducing the buffalo to reservation lands.

• d.training them to become farmers.