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31 Cards in this Set

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When was the transformation of the west?
How was the lands west of the Mississippi viewed as before 1840
as a great, untamed and dangerous wilderness of rugged terrain, extreme temperatures, wild animals, and hostile Native Americans.
When was the transcontinental railroad established?
1869 which helped people move west as well as moving resources west
By 1900 what had been established in the west?
Fencing, farms, telegraph lines that crisscrossed the landscrape, networks of railroads, ranches, Cities like SF, Denver that rivaled their eastern counterparts. Also confined 100's of Native American tribes to a series of reservations.
What were the three major bills passed by congress designed to promote westward movement?
1962 The Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 raised funds by the sale of land to establish colleges specializing in agriculture and technoligical education. The Homestead Act: provided 160 ancres of free land to any settler willing to live on it and improve it for 5 yrs (open to imigrants, landless farmers, ex-slaves, single women)
The Pacific Railway Act: created two corporations of build the transcontinental railroad, a line spanning the continent. The government granted them cheap loans for every track laid.
Who laid the tracks and what happened to them?
It was dangerous and scores were killed. Irish and Chinese
What happened to the Native American's out west?
WIth the arrival of dozens of Europeans that exposed the indians to diseases, they died. Also, the Hupa, Karok, Northern Oaiute, Pomo, Wintun, Yuki tribes were disrupted by the move west. Many were subdued by the spanish and made as laborers. The AZ, NM, and TX fell to spanish colonial rule.
What happen to the Pueblos?
they descended from the ancient Anasazi people, included the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo tribes. They settled in farm communities in western NM and eastern AZ.
What happened to the Jicarilla Appache and Navajo?
They loved in Eastern NM and western Texas where they lived in isolation of the Spanish Missions and successfully retained their traditional religion, language, and culture.
Native American Tribes of the Great Plains
The group that constitutes 2/3rds of all Native Americans today in the west lived on the Great Plains. They varied culturally. They varied from 300 to 500 men and women governed by a counsil. Comanches divided their 7000 into 13 bands.
What were the plains indians religious beliefs?
They varied among tribes but most shared imporant fundamental elements, beginning with the worship of one primary god who the sioux called Wakan Tanka (The Great Spirit). They believed in spirits in everything from plants to animals, stars, moon, sun, burial grounds...etc.. A shaman deemed wakan or blessed lef religious ceremonies, healed sick, and decided where to hunt.
Where did the Plains tribes live?
Many lived in settled villages near rivers where they tended fields of corn, beans and squash. fished, hunted bear, dear and buffalo, traded with white settlers, explorers, and trappers which allowed them to procure guns, kettles, and tools. THey included the Wichitas of N. TX and OK, Pawnees of W KS, the Dakota Sioux of Minn, the Mandans of ND, the Omahas of NB, and the Arikawas of SD.
What was the great westward migration?
In the late 1840's the Mexican War and the discover of gold in CA, a steady flow of migrant settlers into the trans-Mississippi West commenced.
Who was Henry Adams?
An ex-slave, who became a land promoter after emancipation, who helped more than 20,000 "Exodusters: on the "Exodus of 1879" from the south to farms in KS.
The new well dressed ex slaves were much like the Isrealites in the Bibles book of Exodus, they were heading to the "promised land" The inclusion of a black veteran of the Union army symbolizes emancipation wond during the war. Unfortunatley most settled on land that was poor that lacked the capital necessry to make successful farms. 1/3 stayed and the rest returned to the south.
Native Born whites
constituted a 2nd, much larger segment of the westward migration. Most thru purchase or Homestead Act. A large part were Easterners that were stationed in the west and elected to stay.
The Mormons
Joesph Smith founded a religious ssect in upstate NY in 1830. Smith was killed by a mob in 1844. THat prompted mormons to move west in 1846 in search of an isolated homeland. THey chose Utah by the great salt lake, under Mexican rule. 1850 US aquired it after the Mexican-American War. Polugamy officially banned in 1896.
The Chinese
There were more than 75,152 chinese settlers in CA in 1880 and 30,000 elsewhere in the west. Racism surged and whites blamed them for forcing wages down and it turned to violence often. Railroad companies when overseas enticing imigrants to come. CA pased the Chines Exclusion Act that barred Chinese immigration to the US
The railroad fuels western devolopment
between 18+0 and 1900 tge country witnessed growth in the agricultural output increasing from 1.6 billion in 1860 to 4.3 billion in 1900. Technologies like the steel plow and the mechanical reaper increased the acreage a farmer could till. Agricultural schools were established. The transcontinental railroad began a vast network that spread across the west.
What are Granger Laws?
in 1867 a former clerk in the department of Agriculture named Oliver H Kelley founded the Patrons of Husbandry or Grange. This social and educational society was dedicated to alleviation some of the problems faced by farmers by promoting fellowship, fraternity, and education. Shared ideas about farming, lectures and in the 1870's had several 1000 loyal members. It transformed into a powerful political group due to the depression triggered by the Panic of 1873. Hundreds of thousands face ruin, prices plummetted, while the creditors demanded payments for loans. RR charged high fees for transporting. They created the Granger Parties which in 1874 won control of legislatures of IL, WI, IA, MN and influenced others. Enacted granger laws which were the earliest regulation on banks and corporations/railroads. THe Granger movement faded after the economy stabilized and both parities added pro farmers to their campaigns.
What was the cattle kingdom?
When Texas was annexed in 1845, millions of longhorn cattle (introduced into the central americas by the spanish), roamed the range. Americans developed a taste for beef in the 1860s ranchers cam to great profits. Cattle in TX went for $4 but in the North it went for $40. 1866 lasting 2 decades, began the first of the annual Long Drives of more than 1000 cattle to market. Rail lines were established which ended the cattle herding. It established the cowboy of the old west. The image of the cowboy is incorrect. More than 1/3 were non whites and most of the gear and clothing were dubbed by the spanish. Faced weather, heat, lack of food, flash floods... The invention of barbed wire ended open rang ranching. Range wars. Flooding of beef markets caused a collapse of beef prices sending ranchers into bankruptcy
What happened with the minning booms?
1859 in NV yielded 400 million in silver. Four Irishmen (the silver kings) hit the big bonanza that yielded $100 million. Many women became prostitutes.
The Enviromental Legacy
Mining left behind scared landscape. Open Pit Mining wiped out forest in MN, these changes shattered local ecosystems and choked waterways. Hydrolic Mining washed away soil and gravel. Toxins dumped into rivers. Hunting nearly eliminated elk, bear, wolf and buffalo. Foriegners introduced foriegn plants and animals that didn't have proper predators which spread. Manifest destiny goggles.
Native Americans Under Siege
Westward expansion devistated Native Americans. The result of native americans in the last third of the nineteenth century was broken treaties, devatation wars, relocation of reservations and a polic of forced assimilation. 1851 congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act. It set asside vast tracks in OK for dozens of Native American tribes. Americans characterized Indians as backwards, pagan, violent, avages who did not have right to the land. Resistance led to violence. The worst incident was Sand Creek Masacre. 11/29/1864 a peacefull encampment of 800 Cheyenne was raided. Killed 200 indians, mostly women and kids, mutilating their bodies and returning with their scalps. Indians were exposed to Small Pox and Measles which they had no defenses against. Tribes were at war with each other and used against each other by the white man. Buffalo were slaughtered due to the indains dependance on the buffalo.
Wars on the Plains
The US government signed many treaties and never honored them. The Red River War broke out in 1874 on the southern plains in present day TX, OK and KS and the US army crushed them in 1875. Battle of Little big horn proved devistating to the US Army. The US government pushed back the indians.
War and conflict for the indians in the far west.
Apache warrior named Geronimo had emerged in 1860 and 70's as a fearless opponent. Captured by authorities in 1874, were sent to reservations in San Carlos, CA. He continued to escape and was taken back continuously which led to his popularity. He finaly gave up in in 1886. Hispanos and Mexican farmers were opressed too. Las Gorras Blancas, or the White Caps, a secret militant vigilante group fo Mexican men who in the late 1880s and early 1890s wore white masks and cut fences, destroyed train tracks, building and crops.
Solving the problem with Native Americans.
Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881 published a book on the plight of the native americans and started lobbying on their behalf. The book prompted congress to appoint a commission to study indian affairs and seek new humane policies. Sarah Winnemucca the granddaughter of a Northern Chief in 1870 began lecturing in the East demanfing more humane treatment, as she portrayed herself as an indian princess (pocahontas) Jackson believed in elavating the indians by assimilating them and by establishing boarding schools. In contrast Winnemucca believed in cultural preservation, formal education. Jackson ideas prevailed. 1887 he wroke and congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, a measure designed to break up the reservations and assimilate the Native Americans into dominant white christian culture. Offered indians 160 acres of reservation land, encouraged then to become farmers, remaining reservation land would be sold off. They could apply for US citizenship. This act proved devistating the in the indians, the land was poor q
The Ghost Dance Movement
one last final attempt to reverse the fortunes of native Americans. It ended badly at a place called wounded Knee in the late 1880s. A northern paiute shaman named wovokas began preaching of Native American revival based on a vision he had during an eclipse. In the vison in 1889, he saw a great flood that coured the land clean of all white settlers leaving behind Indians who had remained true to traditional teaching and renewed herd of buffalo. He told his followers to do a Ghost Dance ritual, dancing in circles that would protect them from the white mans bullets. It spread among the native americans from the rocky mountains to the great plains. 200-300 indians were slaughtered.
Creating Mythical Heros and Images
Fiction took hold. Two early heros: Deadwood Dick and his girlfiend Calamity Jane. Buffalo Bill, King of the border Men. Buffalo Bills Wild Wild West, a circus like production. Annie Oakly, Sioux Chief Sitting Bull
The West in Art and Literature
Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens emerged in the late 19th century. he headed west in 1860s when his older brother Orion became secretary of the Nevada territory. Western Art found it realist in Frederic Reminton from Yales art school, sketched battle scenes. Charles Russell also emerged as an artist during that period.
Historian reinterpret the American west.
Historian Fredrick Jackson Turner in 1893 he published and essay, the significance of the frontier in american history. The west based on the census bureau was considered closed and settled from coast to coast. He set forth the Frontier Thesis. Frontier life fostered values of individualism and innovation, deveoloped a rugged spirit such as equality, democracy, and that success was deterined not by ones background but rather by ones ability to work hard, sacrafice, and command the respect of others. A historian in 1987 somewhat challenged his visions to be more realistic painting the picture of conquest of the indians, and reality. The memorial at Little Bighorn was redone portraying the indian in a good light.