Chapter 17

Treaty of Ft Laramie (1868)

Sioux agreed to live on a reservation along the Missouri River. Sioux leader, Sitting Bull, never signed the treaty and they continued to use their traditional hunting grounds.

The Dawes Act

"Americanize" the Native Americans. It broke up the reservation. By 1932, whites had taken 2/3 of the native land.

The West in Popular Culture

"The American West" conjures visions of tipis, cabins, cowboys, Indians, farm wives in sunbonnets, and outlaws with six-shooters. Such images pervade American culture, but they are as old as the West itself: novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows mythologized the American West throughout the post-Civil War era.

Chief Joseph on Indian Affairs (1877, 1879)

-He is angry the government is making promises and not fulfilling them -He basically says the government can talk the talk but can't walk the walk -"Words do not pay for my dead people" -broken promises

Laura C. Kellog on Indian Education

-Indians did not get the respect they deserved when they were educated

Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor (1881)

-about 300 registered tribes of Native Americans -According to her, Native Americans got the short end of the stick -She believed Native Americans deserve the same human rights as everyone else -thought the time period was only successful for white men

Chester A. Arthur on American Indian Policy

-talks about how he encouraged Natives to live free and not be easily influenced by the white Americans - 1880s: there starts to be a turn around for the natives

The Homestead Act

1862 - Provided free land in the West to anyone willing to settle there and develop it. Encouraged westward migration.

The Long Walk

300 mile march the Navajo were forced to walk across the desert to a reservation in Bosque Redondo, New Mexico

Assimilation

A plan where Native Americans would give up their beliefs to become part of white culture

The Ghost Dance

A ritual the Sioux performed to bring back the buffalo and return the Native American tribes to their land. It worried military leaders.

Red River War (1874-1875)

Army herded people of friendly tribes onto reservations, opening fire onto other Indians. General Phillip Sheridan said "to destroy their villages and ponies, to kill and hang all warriors, and to bring back all women and children

The Dakota War (Sioux Uprising)

Clash between Dakota Sioux and Minnesota white settlers- new farms caused starvation and enrages Sioux, leading to war. Indian resistance eventually lost after many ambushes on the settlers.

What can the Turner thesis teach us about the late nineteenth century?

He suggests that the discovery of the frontier (unexplored area) was an important factor in national development

The Sand Creek Massacre

In 1864, Cheyenne tribe, assuming they were under protection from the government, returned to Sand Creek Reserve, CO. The army attacked at Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, killing over 150 Indians, mostly women and children

The Bozeman Trail

It ran through Sioux hunting grounds in the Bighorn Mountains. Crazy Horse ambushed Captain William J. Fetterman's men, killing over 80 soldiers. Attacks continued until the government agreed to close the trail.

Life of the Plains Indians

Lived in small family groups. Men became hunters/warriors. Women became butchers, food/clothing preparers. They believed in powerful spirits.

Wounded Knee

Military leaders, worried about the spreading of the Ghost Dance, ordered the arrest of Sitting Bull, who was shot and killed. The army rounded up 350 starving and freezing Sioux and took them to Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. 300 unarmed natives were killed and they left the corpses to freeze on the ground, ending the era of the Indians.

How did technology shape the west?

Ranching was just one of many western industries that depended on the railroads. By linking the Plains with national markets and rapidly moving people and goods, the railroads made the modern American West.

The West

The Great Plains (grassland extending through the west-central portion of the U.S.), by the mid 1700s most tribes have left their farms to roam the plains and hunt buffalo

Whites Move West

The Natives had lost their claim to land, because they had not settled down to "improve" it. Since the Plains were "unsettled", migrants moved westward along the railroads to claim land.

The Cattle Drives

They were difficult tasks for the crews of men who managed the herds. Historians estimate the number of men who worked as cowboys in the late-nineteenth century to be between twelve thousand and forty thousand. Perhaps a fourth were African American, and more were likely Mexican or Mexican American. Much about the American cowboys evolved from Mexican vaqueros: cowboys adopted Mexican practices, gear, and terms such as rodeo, bronco, and lasso." While most were men, there are at least sixteen verifiable accounts of women participating in the drives. Some, like Molly Dyer Goodnight, accompanied their husbands. Others, like Lizzie Johnson Williams, helped drive their own herds. Williams made at least three known trips with her herds up the Chisholm Trail.

Turning Hawk and American Horse on the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890/1891)

Turning Hawk -Americans took their guns -men and women were seperated American Horse -Women were killed with their children -He feels that killing the men was somewhat acceptable, but killen the women and children crossed a line -Both men were civil

The Treaty of Bosque Redondo

Unprecedented treaty permitting the Navajo to return to their homeland.

What caused the so-called "Indian Wars"?

a series of conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers over land and natural resources

Battle of Little Bighorn (June 1876)

also known as "Custer's Last Stand". Sioux leaders, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, killed Custer and his army within an hour. However, by late 1876, the Sioux were defeated

Wild West Shows

arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s. Wildly popular across the country, the shows traveled throughout the eastern United States and even across Europe and showcased what was already a mythic frontier life.

the transcontinental railroad

crossed western plains and mountains and linked the West Coast with the rail networks of the eastern United States. Constructed from the west by the Central Pacific and from the east by the Union Pacific, the two roads were linked in Utah in 1869 to great national fanfare. But such a herculean task was not easy, and national legislators threw enormous subsidies at railroad companies, a part of the Republican Party platform since 1856. The 1862 Pacific Railroad Act gave bonds of between $16,000 and $48,000 for each mile of construction and provided vast land grants to railroad companies. Between 1850 and 1871 alone, railroad companies received more than 175,000,000 acres of public land, an area larger than the state of Texas. Investors reaped enormous profits. As one congressional opponent put it in the 1870s, "If there be profit, the corporations may take it; if there be loss, the Government must bear it."

Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce

in the Pacific Northwest, a branch of the Nez Perce (who, generations earlier, had aided Lewis and Clark in their famous journey to the Pacific Ocean) refused to be moved to a reservation and, under the leadership of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, known to settlers and American readers as Chief Joseph, attempted to flee to Canada but were pursued by the U.S. Cavalry. The outnumbered Nez Perce battled across a thousand miles and were attacked nearly two dozen times before they succumbed to hunger and exhaustion, surrendered, were imprisoned, and removed to a reservation in Indian Territory. The flight of the Nez Perce captured the attention of the United States, and a transcript of Chief Joseph's surrender, as allegedly recorded by a U.S. Army officer, became a landmark of American rhetoric. "Hear me, my chiefs," Joseph was supposed to have said, "I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Chief Joseph used his celebrity, and, after several years, negotiated his people's relocation to a reservation nearer to their historic home.

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody

the first to recognize the broad national appeal of the stock "characters" of the American West—cowboys, "Indians," sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers—and put them all together into a single massive traveling extravaganza. Operating out of Omaha, Nebraska. launched his touring show in 1883. Cody himself shunned the word show, fearing that it implied an exaggeration or misrepresentation of the West. He instead called his production "Buffalo Bill's Wild West." He employed real cowboys and Native Americans in his productions. But it was still, of course, a show. It was entertainment, little different in its broad outlines from contemporary theater. Storylines depicted westward migration, life on the Plains, and Indigenous attacks, all punctuated by "cowboy fun": bucking broncos, roping cattle, and sharpshooting contests.

Railroads in the West

transformed the United States and made the American West -If railroads attracted unparalleled subsidies and investments, they also created enormous labor demands. By 1880, approximately four hundred thousand men—or nearly 2.5 percent of the nation's entire workforce—labored in the railroad industry. Much of the work was dangerous and low-paying, and companies relied heavily on immigrant labor to build tracks. Companies employed Irish workers in the early nineteenth century and Chinese workers in the late nineteenth century. By 1880, over two hundred thousand Chinese migrants lived in the United States. Once the rails were laid, companies still needed a large workforce to keep the trains running. Much railroad work was dangerous, but perhaps the most hazardous work was done by brakemen.

Buffalo

used to make teepees, clothing, shoes, blankets, tools. Indians used the meat to make jerky and pemmican