Chapter 26: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution (1865-1896)

Native Americans in the late 19th Century

• In 1860, there were about 360,000 Indians.
• They would eventually stand in the way of expanding white pioneers and ran into many conflicts.
• Government tried to silence the problems by signing treaties with the "chiefs" of various "tribes"
• this marked the beginning of the reservation system
• During this era there was much fighting between the Native Americans and the Whites.
• Many strong Indian chiefs became well-known such as Geronimo and Sitting Bull.

Causes for decline of Natives in West:

• Whites killed peaceful Indians.
• Indians "tamed" by railroads that brought troops, disease, supplies, buffalo extinctiion.

Sand Creek:

• November 29, 1864, Colorado militia attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped on the eastern plains.
• Killed some 400 Indians who thought they had been promised immunity

Fetterman Massacre:

• In 1866 a Sioux war party attempting to block construction of the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields ambushed Captain William J. Fetterman's command of 81 soldiers and civilians
• The Indians left not a single survivor
• This led to the one of the few Indian triumphs in the plains wars

Custer & the Black Hills: Events leading to the battle of Little Big Horn

Little Big Horn:

• Colonel Custer's Seventh Calalry set out to suppress the Indians and to return them to the reservation
• When they arrived they were surprised to find a force of 2,500 well-armed Indian warriors
• Custer was vastly outnumbered with his mere 264 officers
• Custer's men were completly wiped out when two supporting columns failed to come to their rescue

Chief Joseph

• surrendered his band of 700 Indians after a tortuous 1,700 mile, 3 month trek across the Continental Divide through Canada.
• Was betrayed into believing they would be returned to their ancestral lands in Idaho, the Nez Perces were sent to a reservation in Kansas where 40% or them died from disease.
• Survivors were allowed to return to Idaho.

Geronimo:

• Prominent Chiricahua Apache leader
• helped prevent the encroachment of the U.S. on their tribal lands for over 25 years
• hated Mexicans.
• was actually drove into Mexico by federal troops.
• persuaded to surrender after the Apache women had been exiled to Flordia.
• ultimately became successful farmers in Oklahoma

The Role of Bison:

• Were slain for their hides, tongues, and choice cuts of meat, or for sheer amusement.
• Such killing left less than a thousand buffalo alive by 1885.

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody

• Killed over 4,000 animals in 18 months while employed by the Kansas Pacific.

The End of the Native American Resistance (in the West)

A Century of Dishonor

• Book published by Helen Hunt Jackson, a Massachusetts writer of children's books.
• Chronicled the sorry record of government ruthlessness and chicanery in dealing with the Indians.

"Ghost Dance"

• An Indian dance taught by a Messiah
• This dance was meant bring to back dead Indians, bury white men, protect them from bullets, and bring herds of buffalo
• The white men failed to realize that this dance was basically Christian, and they tried to stop it

Wounded Knee

• Big Foot's tribe is captured at Wounded Knee Creek
• Soldiers disarm Indians, but there is confusion and violence begins
• The tribe started with 350 people and after the violence only 51 were left alive

Dawes Act (1887)

• Gave land to the Indians as Individuals
• each family recieved 160 acres
• if Indians acted like "good white citizens" they would recieve citizenship, later did in 25 years.
• Got full citizenship in 1924
• Land not given to Indians was sold for settlement and proceeds went to "civilize" the Indians.
• By 1900, Indians had lost 50% of their 156 million acres held 2 decades earlier.

Mining: From Dishpan to Orebreaker

• next big industry
• brought population, wealth, and advertisment of west
• women were equal in west (could vote before Eastern women)

Effects of mining

• Helped fund Civil War
• Build RR
• Built conflict between whites and Indians

Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive

• Cattle roamed throughout the prairie and became an important mean of income for ranchers.
• They had to bring their cattle to the closest railroad station where they could ship them to market and make a profit, but many times it was hard just getting them there.
• At the stations they could get supplies that they needed and trade it for their possessions such as cattle.

The Farmer's Frontier

The Homestead Act of 1862 -

• a family would get 160 acres of land and have to live on it for five years.
• land used to be about revenue, now it became about filling up space and stimulating family farms
• Hoax; couldn't live in desert of Great Plains
• created "sod busters"-used sod to build houses

             "dry farming"- tilling just top of soil, led to Dust Bowl

• 100th meridian- West=dry; East=wet

Pros:

• Railroad helped develop West, immigrants to buy land.
• Land was very fruitful, built sod houses.
• People filled up the spaces.

Cons:

• Great Plains were very susceptible to drought, farming techniques devastated already dry West.
• There was fraud, corporations used dummies to get good land.

"Sooners":

• The federal government said that whites could settle in Oklahoma starting on April 22, 1889
• Over 50,000 people entered Oklahoma that day

Significance of 1890:

"safety valve" theory

Frederick Jackson Turner:

• known as one of the two most influential historians of the 20th century
• best known for "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"

The Farm Becomes a Factory

The problematic debt cycle of farmers:

Perennial problems facing the farmer:

The Grange - (National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry)

• created to enhance the lives of isolated farmers
• held social activites
• established cooperative owned stores, grain elevators, and warehouses
• started in 1867 by Oliver Kelley

Farmer's Alliance:

• designed to promote higher commodity prices through collective action by groups of individual farmers
• most effective in the south and great plains
• United States Populist Party formed.
• excluded the blacks which counted for half of the south's farmers

Rise of the Populists (The People's Party)

Check out this link of author and newspaper columnist (and former Texas Agriculture Commissioner) Jim Hightower, today's self-proclaimed leading Populist. I used to read his column in the Spokanesman Review, Spokane's (WA) paper that I read when I lived in Pullman, WA.

Platform of the Populists:

• nationalize telephone, RR, and telegraph
• subtreasury and income tax
• black farmers in south were against this party

Coxey's Army

• Jacob S. Coxey and 500 men marched into Washington D.C. in 1894 to protest unemployment

The Pullman Strike

Causes:

• Pullman Palace Car Company was hit hard by the depression
• It cut wages by one-third.

In 1897, Eugene V. Debs led several Pullman Palace Car Company workers in a strike, which stopped railroad traffic from Chicago to the Pacific

Outcomes:

• Grover Cleveland declared that the strikers were interferring with the transit of U.S. mail
• Federal troops were called in and they crushed the Pullman Strike.
• raised the AF&L respectablity, but lowered laborers cause

The Election of 1896 - "Golden McKinley vs. Silver Bryan"

                                   City vs. Country

McKinley-

• gold standard, help buisnesses

Bryan-

• silver
• people didn't like him; only South and West voted for him
• people thought they'd lose their job if the voted for Bryan

Mark Hanna

Cross of Gold speech

Outcomes of McKinley's win

Gold Standard Act of 1900