Westward Expansion: Settling the West (1865-1900)

The Indian Wars

Native Americans once occupied all of the present U.S. The factors eroding Native American control of the West were forced removal of the Indians by the U.S. government, superior weapons used by U.S. troops in warfare, large number of white settlers, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the destruction by settlers of the natural environment on which the Native Americans depended for their livelihood. The frontier was the line between areas of settlement and those areas dominated by nature and Native Americans. Many Native Americans living on the Great Plains lived in teepees because they were easy to move when following the buffalo, their main source of food. Native Americans were an obstacle to westward expansion. Railroads went through Indian hunting grounds and destroyed herds of buffalo on the Great Plains. U.S. troops were sent to force Native Americans onto reservations. Reservations were specified land set up for Native Americans and supervised by the federal government. The U.S. Army encouraged killing buffalo to force Native Americans onto reservations. In a Native American victory at the Battle of Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated General Custer and his troops. The end of the Indian Wars came with the Native American defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee (the last Indian battle) where U.S. troops slaughtered unarmed Sioux men, women, and children. The Native Americans were forced onto reservations. This contributed to poor health and an increase in the death rate of Native Americans because reservations were largely unproductive. One of the purposes of the Dawes Act was to assimilate (absorb into the dominant culture) or Americanize Native Americans. The Dawes Act gave tribal land to individual Indians, made Indians farmers, and promised the Indians U.S. citizenship and the vote. The American Indian Citizenship Act (1924) granted U.S. citizenship to all Native American Indians born in the U.S. Many said this act was passed in appreciation of Native Americans for their service in World War I.

Railroads to the West

In the beginning of our country, most Americans lived on the East Coast. Because of Manifest Destiny and economic opportunities, Americans began migrating to the West. Migration is the movement of people within the United States. Expansion of railroads was the most significant improvement to transportation in the late 1800s. During this time, the federal government gave subsidies (government assistance to businesses) of land grants and money to railroads to support the economic development of the West. With government help of land and money, the Transcontinental Railroad (across the continent) was built by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads to help populate the West. The Union Pacific started building from the middle of the country westward and the Central Pacific started building from California eastward. The two railroads connected at Promontory Point, Utah. The Transcontinental Railroad reduced the journey from coast to coast from several months to a few weeks. The Central Pacific hired Chinese to help construct their part of this railroad. Other railroads, trunk lines, were connected to the main transcontinental line. Railroads helped the economy by transporting people, raw materials, and manufactured goods across the nation. By selling land around the tracks and employing a huge number of workers, railroads helped encourage the settlement of the West.

Mining, Farming, Ranching

People moved west because of the transcontinental railroad, raw materials (gold, silver, timber, etc.), and the Homestead Act. Miners found gold in the California Gold Rush and the Klondike Gold Rush (near Alaska). The Homestead Act and the sale of railroad land grants stimulated the movement of farmers westward. A governmental measure taken by the U.S. to encourage settlement of new areas in the West was to give away free land. Under the Homestead Act, people were given 160 acres of government land. To keep the land, the settlers had to build a home, grow crops, and live there for at least five years. As a result of the Homestead Act, the Great Plains (Midwestern region of America) developed into a major agricultural center and increased our country's agricultural output. Great Plains farmers were usually immigrants or children of farmers from the East and Midwest. Railroads were used to ship farm crops to the East. Great Plains farmers adapted to the lack of wood on the Great Plains with sod houses, barbed wire, and buffalo chips (used for fuel). Steel plows, water wells, drilling equipment, harvesters, and threshers made it possible to farm more acres with fewer workers. Farmers fenced in the land with barbed wire to keep livestock out of crops. The open range was government land that anyone could use. Farmers and cattlemen fought over the open range. The farmers won because there were more of them and they enclosed the land with barbed wire. Millions of longhorn cattle roamed free in the Great Plains of Texas. Mexican vaqueros taught the cowboys how to handle cattle. Because beef was scarce in the East, ranchers could make more money selling their cattle in the East. On the long drive through Indian territory, ranchers walked their cattle across the open range to railroad lines to take their beef to the East. By 1886, overgrazing, fencing in the land, and bad weather ended the long drives. In the 1900s, the new migration trend was the movement of people from rural (countryside) areas into the urban (city) areas and surrounding suburbs (nice areas right outside of cities).