Emigrants Crossing the Plains by Alfred Bierstadt, 1846

Manifest Destiny

The Spirit of the Frontier by John Gast, 1872

What can you notice about patterns of settlement?

From immigrants to migrants…there were all types!

The American Dream

Black Homesteaders

Segregated schoolhouse

The West:

freedom for opportunity… fresh start?

Californios / 10% of the population of Mexico migrated north looking for a better life.

Mormons continued to

pioneer to the Great Salt Lake

Mining

Farming

Ranching

Open Range:

1860s and 70s

Long Drives:

Herding Cattle to R.R. Centers and

then markets

Railroad Refrigerator Cars and barbed wire fences ended the Long Drives

Ended in mid 80s

Cattle Boom=Cowboys

The closing of the frontier and the end to the open range.

Barbed Wired! “This land is mine!”

Boom to Bust – Mining Towns

Chinese and American Miners in California

Leadville, Colorado

Mining = Big Business $$$

Miners = poor laborers… few “struck

it rich”

Bonanza farming:

Needed large amounts of land

Farms controlled by big business / cash crops/ investors expected a profit

Modernization of equipment

McCormick and John Deere

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How do you move natural resources and people far distances?? Connect the east and the west??

It’s all about the…

Promontory Point,

Utah

1869The

Chinese laid the

tracks from the west

end and the Irish from

the east end.

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Railroad is in, Buffalo are out

Hides for sale!

Up to 30 million buffalo at one time…

By 1900, less than 1,000 left

Buffalo skulls…

…human skulls (scalping)

Since the Plains Indians relied on buffalo to survive, they fought back:

US military and white settlement vs. Plains Indians

Native tribes fight back and a variety of conflicts become known as:

“The Indian Wars”….it was total war.

“Fleeing women holding up their hands and praying for mercy were shot down; infants were killed and scalped; men were tortured and mutilated.” Congressional Committee (investigating Sand Creek Massacre)

“It was of no unfrequent occurrence for an Indian to be shot down in cold blood, or a squaw to be raped by some brute. Such a thing as a white man being punished for outraging an Indian was unheard of.” General Crook

“The only good Indians I ever saw were dead” General Sheridan

Natives were left with two choices:

defend their way of life and fight OR

be removed and assimilate onto reservations

George Armstrong Custer

Fought the Sioux and Cheyennes in the North

Kit Carson

Fought Apache and Navajo in South

Photos by

Mathew Brady

1876:

Black Hills South Dakota

“Custer’s Last Stand”

Sioux vs. Military… military lost this one. Custer becomes hero anyway!

Battle of Little Big

Horn

Sitting BullSioux

“I hate all white people. You are thieves and liars”

Defeated Custer at Little Big Horn

Shot during the Ghost Dance Movement

Red CloudOglala Sioux

“Are…sacred graves to be plowed for corn?

Dakotas, I am for war!”

GeronimoApache Leader

“I think I am a good man, but…all over the world

they say I am a bad man”

Chief JosephHinmatowyalahtqit

(Thunder Coming Up over the land)

Nez Perce

“My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now

stands I will fight no more”

Tipi is a Lakota (Sioux) word meaning “used for a dwelling” They were made out of hide and easily moved to travel with the buffalo.

SOD is an English word for lame white guy. Settlers built houses out of it because it was one of the few resources on the Plains.

Sod houses of the great plains

Sod: one-room school house

Civilizing The Natives…

…Extreme Makeovers @ the carlisle school in Pennsylvania: an example of many off-reservation schools in the east. “Kill

the Indian, save the man”.

Meanwhile, back on the reservation:

U.S. government hands out rations to the Sioux.

Lakota men join the police force

Assimilation:

Taught to abandon everythin

g “indian”

and become white.

Wovoka-

Paiute shaman

founder of the “Ghost

Dance” Movement

Pawnee ghost dancer’s shirt

Only known photograph of the Lakota ghost dancers , 1890

Native revival

Return to traditional

culture

Unified tribes

Scared white man

Hotchkiss guns that did the deadly work.

Burying the dead-200? men, women,

and children

What do you get when you mix Cowboys and Indians together?

Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Shows!

And…

Myths of the west!

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill,

1889Wild West Show

What do you think of when you think of The West?

What are some myths of the west?

What has the image of the west done for our national character?

1939 movie poster

What ways have we tried to preserve the

west?

The End?