The Conquest of the Far West

Chapter 16

Societies of the Far West

• The Western Tribes– Pacific coast (Chumash, Pomo, Serrano, Maidu, Yurok, Chinook,

Ohlone) wiped out by Spanish disease

– Plains, Sioux Indians

• Hispanic New Mexico– Stephen Kearney tries to establish a gov’t in NM

with 1,000 whites that excludes the 50,000 Hispanics

• Hispanic California and Texas– Missionaries influence

The Chinese Migration– by 1880 200,000 Chinese in the US, mostly in

CA, large numbers in SF

The Chinese Migration Cont’d– Urban Life “Chinatowns”

• railroad completion = increase in Chinese urban population

Anti-Chinese Sentiments– Anti-Coolie clubs, Democrat Party,

Workingmen’s Party • =

Migration from the East– post war migration = much larger than

previous decades– Homestead Act of 1862 –

The Changing Western Economy

• Labor in the West– –

–

–

The Arrival of Miners– mining boom was a brief period 1860-1890

(California, 1849)

The Cattle Kingdom– long before US citizens invaded the SW, Mexican

ranchers had developed the techniques and equipment that the cattlemen and cowboys of the great Plains later employed

*Fake Smile*

The Cattle Kingdom Cont’d– Most cowboys in early years were Confederate Army

veterans…second largest group was African Americans

The Romance of the West • The Western Landscape

– New, natural painting landscapes lured many west

• The Cowboy Culture– rugged, free-spirited lifestyle romanticized =

contrast structured world of the East

• The Idea of the Frontier– Frederick Jackson Turner -

Dispersal of the Tribes • White Tribal Policy

– Bad history

– “concentration” of Indian tribes in Indian territory w. “treaty chiefs”

• White Tribal Policy Cont’d– Indian Peace Commission

– Buffalo was essential to Indian way of life… slaughtered by whites

• The Indian Wars– Retaliation: originally on encroachers, later on

soldiers– Little Crow (Sioux) in Minnesota: 700 whites dead

/ 38 Natives hanged– Miners encroachment in Colorado

• The Indian Wars Cont’d– Montana and Bozeman trail

– California and “Indian Hunters”

– 1867 Peace, but 1870s tensions rise again

• The Indian Wars Cont’d– Nez Perce and Chief Joseph 1877

• The Indian Wars Cont’d– Apaches and Geronimo

• one of the last tribes to resist

• The Indian Wars Cont’d– Ghost Dance

– Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890)

The Dawes Act (1877)– The Dawes Severalty Act provided for the

gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners

What must be understood:

The Rise and Decline of the Western Farmer

• Farming on the Plains– Significance of the railroad

Farming on the Plains Cont’d– Problems

• Grazing Cattlemen herds (barbed wire)

Commercial Agriculture– independent farmer, self sustaining farmer,

replaced with commercial farmer similar to what industrialists were doing in the manufacturing economy

Farmers Grievances (Granger’s Farmer’s Alliances Populist Party )

– farmers generally had little understanding of world markets, thus concentrated their anger on immediate areas

Agrarian Malaise– Isolation of farm life