OUT WEST

(UNIT 1.1)
US settlers meet the Great Plains Indians
WHAT THE HECK IS A GREAT
PLAIN?!
▪ The Great Plains is the grassland in western-central US
▪ What’s missing in the picture?
THE GREAT PLAINS INDIANS
▪ In 1598 the Spanish brought a “good” to New
Mexico that changed life in NA-→
▪ the HORSE
▪ Before Euro’s brought horses and guns, the GPI
farmed and, hunted, gathered
▪ After guns/horses GPI stuck only to hunting--
▪ →BUFFALO (BISON)
BUFFALO FOR BREAKFAST,
LUNCH, DINNER, AND...
SHOES
▪ The Buffalo were literally the entire
livelihood of the GPI
▪ Skin used for teepees, clothes, shoes,
blankets
▪ Bones used for tools, eating utensils
▪ Meat was dried to make jerky or
pemmican
When you have no trees to burn
THE CULTURE OF THE GREAT
PLAINS INDIANS
▪ Families were small (hint: tepee size)
▪ Men: hunter/warriors
▪ Women: butchered meat/ prepped hides
▪ Children: learned assigned roles
▪ Believed spirits controlled everything (medicine man/shaman= priest)
▪ Government was communal (no dominant leader)
▪ “Leaders” ruled the people by counsel instead of force 
LAND: the thing that divides
▪ GPI believed that land could NOT be owned
(nomadic/followed buffalo/viewd themselves as caretakers of the earth)
▪      -Settlers believed owning land was CRUCIAL; gave them a stake in the
country, ability to farm, status...
▪ Consider the size of Europe vs the US
▪ (This is why settlers were called “settlers”; the GPI were “unsettled” or always
moving)

VS
THESE GOLD RUSHERS ARE
MESSY
▪ The Gold Rush forced 100’s of thousands of
American miners out west to look for gold
▪ These “gold diggers” would only set up
temporary towns with slovenly shacks and
wooden streets called “boomtowns”
▪ Gold rushers not only destroyed the beauty of
the prairies, but imposed on GPI hunting land
▪ GPI became upset
GREAT PLAINS BEFORE GOLD
RUSH
AFTER
US GOVERNMENT RESTRICTS GPI
▪ In 1834 US gov’t made one large
reservation for the GPI (pres. Jackson)
▪ In 1850’s, gov’t changed policy to
creating specific boundaries per tribe
▪ GPI ignored ridiculous boundaries and
clashed w/ white settlers (they can’t
hunt buffalo in one place!!)
  Review
1. When Spain introduced the ______ in the 17th
Word Bank:
century to America, it essentially caused the GPI
to forget how to farm.  ● Ghost
2. _______ viewed land as potential private ● GPI
property. ● Settlers
3. _______ viewed land as a shared, communal ● Boom
resource. ● Horse
4. Gold Rushers would build ______towns to
temporarily accommodate them while they
mined. When the Gold dried up, the towns were
deserted and referred to as _______towns.
BACK AND FORTH
VIOLENCE
Great Plains Indians and the US military
MASSACRE AT SAND CREEK
(FIRST MASSACRE)
▪ 1864 (winter)
▪ General S.R. Curtis wrote to a
Colonel, “I want no Peace till
the Indians suffer more.”
▪ US Army of the West led a
company to attack Cheyenne
and Arapaho in CO.
▪ 150 GPI were slaughtered Native American/US military Peace
Delegation meeting 2 months before
(mostly women and children) Sand Creek massacre
 GPI “MASSACRE BACK” (1866)
▪ Fetterman’s Massacre/Battle of the 100 slain 1866
▪ White settlers settled on trail that ran through Sioux
hunting grounds called Bozeman Trail
▪ Sioux asked US gov’t to end white settlement there, but
gov’t did nothing (where Sioux hunted)
▪ In Dec. 1866, Crazy Horse (GPI warrior) led an
ambush on a nearby army company killing 80
soldiers
 CUSTER’S LAST STAND
▪ The Battle of Little Bighorn was the height of the Sioux Wars
▪ 1876; The tenacious Lt. Colonel Custer led the 7th regiment on an attack
of the Sioux
▪ Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and many other Sioux were ready and
enraged
▪ At Little Bighorn River in Montana the Sioux slaughtered Custer AND
his entire Army regiment!! (268 US dead)
▪ Only 36 Sioux were killed
▪ Vengeful mutilation of soldiers
▪ US still redrew boundaries for more white settlers
 SURRENDER OF THE SIOUX
▪ Years after the Battle, Sitting Bull surrendered
the Sioux to the US in 1885 to avoid starvation
of his people
▪ Sitting Bull ended up in a Wild West Show
▪ (from great leader/warrior TO cheap entertainer)
☹
So… What do we do with all of
these conquered people?
▪ Despite hostilities, many sympathized with the
GPI
▪ ASSIMILATION: the term used for
“americanizing” the GPI (they’d have to
abandon beliefs, cut their hair, and be educated)
I like him better all Native Americany
Boom. Assimilated.
Americanized.
ALL OVER UNIT TEST...
▪ One way the gov’t practiced assimilation was by passing the Dawes
Act in 1887...
▪ This Act broke up the reservation land given to the GPI into small
pieces.
▪ 160 acres per family, 80 acres for single adult
▪ There was plenty of reserve land left over after giving pieces to GPI
▪ So gov’t sold the rest of GPI reserve land to
▪ US SETTLERS!!!
Can you find
the Dawes
Act?
 SO NOW WHAT?..
▪ GPI hunt buffalo for everything.
▪ THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO FARM
▪ Some GPI sell their “Dawes” land to settlers for little money
▪ This creates huge problems for GPI (forced to live like white settlers,
but can’t)
▪ GPI still impoverished today
▪ But at least the gov’t made some money, settled out west, and opened up
some land for railroads...
INSULT TO INJURY
▪ Not only are GPI restricted to small
plots, but bison are made (almost)
extinct
▪ 1800: 65,000,000 bison in NA
▪ 1890: 25 bison in NA
▪ 1900: 1 herd preserved in Yellowstone
▪ Tourists, fur traders, and sport hunters
destroyed GPI’s livelihood
 STOP DANCING LIKE THAT
YOU'RE FREAKIN’ ME OUT!
▪ The poor, embittered Sioux turned to their tribal prophet for advice
▪ He proposed what anyone would propose in the midst of complete
annihilation:
▪ a dance.
▪ THE GHOST DANCE
▪ Ghost Dance catches on w/ 25,000 Sioux in 1890
▪ becomes a social movement
▪ Settlers are freaked out US orders arrest of Sitting Bull
▪ SB is shot dead when his bodyguard opens fire on police (1890)
*BATTLE* OF WOUNDED
KNEE...THE END
▪ Dec. 28, 1890
▪ US soldiers (7th Cavalry!) round up 350
starving/freezing Sioux in Wounded Knee Creek in SD
▪ All guns were taken from Sioux, except one...
▪ An unknown shot is fired...
▪ US opened fire on all 350 men women children with
cannon, gatling guns, and rifles
▪ All dead were left to freeze on ground
▪ Sioux wars and GPI violence end as a result
BUFFALO SOURCES ASSIGNMENT
ON TEAMS...

Wed/Thurs
8-26 & 27
 US CITIZENS FILL UP THE
WEST QUICK!
▪ By 1900 over 25 million people had moved
to the West
▪ 4 Reasons:
1 Free Land
2 Gold
3 The Railroad
4 Fleeing discrimination
▪ RR companies began laying tracks in the
1860’s (Union Pacific went West to Omaha
and Central Pacific went East from CA)
 CONNECTING THE EAST TO
THE WEST
▪ US Gov’t granted land (used by GPI) to RR to connect
the east and west (manifest destiny)
▪ 10-20 square miles were given to RR for every MILE of
track laid.
▪ In the end the gov’t gave RR 170 million acres!! Worth
half a BILLION dollars!! (manifest destiny)
▪ By 1869 the US had a transcontinental RR
▪ FIRST IN THE WORLD!!
▪ RR sold extra gov’t-given land to farmers (by now
you can tell RR owners were greedy)
Manifest Destiny
US GOV’T URGES WESTERN
SETTLEMENT WITH FREEBIES
▪ HOMESTEAD ACT of 1862: Congress
GAVE 160 acres of free land on the Great
Plains to anyone heading west to settle
▪ Land today in a suburban neighborhood runs
about $160,000 an acre!!!!
▪ From 1862 to 1900, 600,000 families took this
offer
▪ These families are referred to as
HOMESTEADERS
Homestead Act and Dawes Act
open up former Indian land for
sale to American settlers and
businesses

https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=k5IRCC
CPOzI
Not just settlers...
▪ 600,000 families acquired free land from
the Homestead Act of 1862
▪ They only took up 10% of all
Homestead Act land 
▪ Business owners such as miners and
woodcutters would claim free land for
its natural resources and make huge
PROFITS!
 NO RACISTS ON THE QUIET
PRAIRIES
▪ A large portion of homesteaders who were
granted gov’t land were African Americans
from the South—former slaves who were being
tormented by the South’s Jim Crow system
▪ African Americans who left the post-
Reconstruction south for settlement out west
on the Great Plains were called,
EXODUSTERS
▪ EXODUS - TERS
CHALLENGES FOR SETTLERS

▪ Floods, fires, locusts, droughts, and

Indian raids were all real threats for new
settlers
▪ But by 1900, 1/3 of US population had
settled west for new opportunities
▪ US population in 1900
▪ 77 million (25 million out west!)
▪ 318 million today
NO, THEY DIDN’T LIVE IN
PRETTY LOG CABINS
▪ Because of the lack of trees on the Great
PLAINS, many settlers did either 1 of 2
things for housing
▪ 1. dig a “cave” out of the side of a hill
and make it a home (dugouts)
▪ 2. stack pieces of the dry sod from the
ground to make a house (soddies)
▪ Soddies were well insulated (dirt), but
frequently had snakes and leaked
EVERY time it rained
Summing up thus far...
▪ GOLD and FREE LAND enticed
Americans to move west
▪ The Railroad made it much
easier to get there (by 1869-
transcontinental RR)
▪ Some moved to escape
discrimination
▪ 25 million people would live in
the West by 1900
▪ Now what?
▪ Economy?
▪ How do they make $$?
 NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR
FARMERS (GOOD AND BAD)
▪ As a farmers filled the Great Plains, an AGRARIAN MOVEMENT took
place (c. 1890)
▪ 35% of the country farmed the Plains!
▪ Increased farming spurred the need for more productive farm technology
▪ Steel Plow (1837) broke tough roots
▪ Reaper (1847) made harvest quick saving crops
▪ Grain Drill (1841) planted seeds quickly
▪ New farm tools changed 3 hour tasks down to 10 minutes (seeding a field)
▪ So this is the Good part of farming technology
Steam Plow
Steam Tractor
Reaper
 THE BAD SIDE OF NEW
TECHNOLOGY
▪ Farming Equipment was expensive, therefore farmers had to get loans to buy them
▪ This put farmers in debt to…
▪ BANKS!!
▪ Also with new technology gave greater production (25% more output per farm)
▪ More production meant…
lower prices!!!!
▪ This meant that farmers were paid less per crop
▪ Farmers were now in debt AND receiving LESS pay!!
SUM UP THAT LAST SLIDE
▪ Better technology→
▪ more crops produced→
▪ higher supply of crops in market→
▪ demand of those crops stays constant→
▪ prices go down
 CITY-FOLK CAN’T FARM…
▪ ToYET
educate the many new western settlers trying
to farm on their own, the gov’t passed the Morrill
Act of 1862
▪ The Morrill Act gave federal land to states so the
states could finance agricultural colleges
▪ Because the plains were usually dry, new
irrigation techniques like the windmill came out of these
colleges
 THE EFFECT OF WESTERN
EXPANSION ON THE CHINESE
▪ In 1849 (gold rush), Chinese immigration to San
Francisco spiked dramatically
▪ 12 million between 1850 and 1882
▪ By 1860, the rush ended and many Chinese took RR
jobs
▪ Once TCRR was complete, anti-Chinese sentiment grew
as they began to take what few jobs existed in the west.
CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 1882
▪ In resisting discrimination, the Chinese formed enclaves
throughout CA
San Francisco,
c. 1900