Chapter 11

The South and West Transformed

1865-1900

• After the CW, the South started to industrialize by producing textiles, cigars, lumber, coal, iron, steel.

• Some urban centers rose up in Nashville and Birmingham.

• RR helped to connect the South but the South still lagged behind b/c of the lack of labor (education) and investment (not that many banks and the ones that were around had a tough time getting poor farmers to invest deposits

•Cash Crop – a crop that’s grown to be sold for cash…cotton remained this in the South after the CW•The problem was that relying on one crop could be risky as demonstrated when the boll weevil beetle destroyed cotton in the 1890’s•TX farmers banded together and formed the Farmers Alliance to negotiate better prices and get the gov’t to get the RR co. to lower rates. •At first, farmers asked AA farmers to join thinking it would be stronger.

Native Americans

• They relied on buffalo for clothing, food and tools and they roamed the mid-west plains but in the 1870’s white settlers slaughtered buffalo for fun and for hides

• In the 1860’s the gov’t set up reservations (areas set aside for Indian use that they had to stay on) b/c they found gold and silver on the land that had been given to them and they wanted to build RR.

Sand Creek Massacre

• In 1862, the government started pushing the Sioux off their land.

• In 1864, some CO militia destroyed a group of Cheyenne and Arapaho’s even though they tried to raise the US flag.

• Now Natives started joining together but the gov’t sent troops out to stop the revolts

Assimilation

• The gov’t was going to build a road through the Sioux land but the Sioux ambushed some troops and killed them.

• Indian Peace Commission wanted the Indians to assimilate to white culture and farm.

• They signed the Fort Laramie treaty in 1868 that said the gov’t wouldn’t build the road and the Sioux should live on the reservation and farm.

Battle of Little Big Horn

• Sioux chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull tried to drive out the settlers looking for gold in the Dakotas.

• In June of 1876, George Custer led 250 of his men to surprise 2k Indians on the Little Big Horn river and Crazy Horse killed them all with his men.

• Sitting Bull retreated to Canada and Crazy Horse surrendered

• In 1877 in ID, the Gov wanted to move the Nez Perces to make room for whites even though these people had become Christian and started raising horses and cattle

• Chief Joseph led his people 1300 miles to Canada but was stopped at the border and moved to OK

Wounded Knee

• The Natives started a religious revival called the Ghost Dance in which they thought whites would be banished and buffalo would come back.

• Gov didn’t like this so they tried to stop it.

• In 1890, they tried to arrest Sitting Bull but killed him

• They then went to Wounded Knee, SD and killed 100 more men, women and children

RESPONSES

•Helen Hunt Jackson and A Century of Dishonor – She wrote this book to defend Natives tell of all the broken gov’t treaties•In response to some of these critiques the gov’t passed the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887•This replaced the reservation system and gave each Indian family 160 acres of land and it could not be sold or transferred for 25 yrs•Missionaries also helped the assimilation process by providing boarding schools for Native American Children

Ch 11.3

• Where ever gold and silver were found, towns sprang up like Pikes Peak, CO and Carson River (City), NV

• There was a lot of lawlessness and vigilantes like Wyatt Earp were hired to protect the towns

• Some towns were boomtown – towns that only thrived while there was something to mine but others continued like Denver

Economic Competition

• Big companies came in a made mining a big business.

• W/ more mining you needed more water to rinse out the good minerals

• The bad water would wash into farmers crops and so there was a dilemma.

• The gov’t supported mining though

TRANSCONTINENTAL RR

•US gov’t gave money to companies and land grants•In 1863, Central Pacific built eastward from Sacramento while Union Pacific built West from Omaha with the work of Chinese and Irish immigrants. •The two track met in 1869 at Promontory Point, UT•Towns sprouted up and between 1864 and 1896 10 territories b/cm states.

Beef…It’s what’s for dinner!

• Since there was a lot of grass and there were RR to transport meat, cattle ranching boomed.

• At first, there was the open-range system where the longhorns (a TX cow) would roam freely and people would brand their cows so they knew whose was whose.

• The Mexican Vaqueros (cowboys) had developed the culture.

• Cattle drives – Around spring, the cowboys would round up the cattle to bring them up to the closest RR to go to the East or West markets…it was a tough job and trek

• This and open range went away b/c of barbed wire and branding and supply of beef exceeded demand

• Homestead Act – 1862, gov’t gave 160 acres to anyone willing to live there for 5 yrs, dig a well and build a road.

• AA who moved out to the land were called “exodusters” after Moses going to the promised land

• Women tended to the family, worked in a boardinghouse, baked, laundry

Lonely Pioneers: Farmers

• B/c many farmers couldn’t afford wood, they would build Sod Houses – stacks of sod in the form of a house.

• Morrill act of 1862 – Granted land to states to establish agricultural colleges and hopefully spur better ways to farm.

• Barbed wire, the plow and windmill all helped.

MANIFEST DESTINY FULFILLED

•The land in the West spawned rivalries between the different farmers/industrialists on how to use it…some wanted it for grazing, some for mining and so on. •There was a lot of ethnic tension in the West as 80% of the US’s Asian, Mexican and Native pop lived there.•Some of the “homesteaders” were called sodbusters to mock their way of life. •This bias did not deter some to come for land in 1889 in the Oklahoma Land Rush where the gov’t was offering free land in the OK territory. •Some had already come and taken it though – they were the “sooners”.• By 1890, the national census said there was no longer a square mile that did not have a white person on it (in the US)