Centennial America and the

Fate of the Frontier

Image: Alfred Stieglitz, The Hand of Man (1902)
Centennial America and the Fate of the Frontier
This slide: Albert Bierstadt, The Last of the Buffalo (1888)
 Centennial America
and the Fate of the
Frontier

This slide: Alfred Hart,

Indian viewing railroad
from top of Palisades.
435 miles from
Sacramento (c.1867)
 Centennial America and the Fate of the Frontier

• What is the “frontier?”

• The railroad in the American mind
• “Crazy Ted” Judah and the Transcontinental Line
• Walt Whitman’s West
• The fate of the bison
• “In defeat, there was victory:” Custer’s “last stand,” 1876
What is the “frontier?”
 The Railroad in the American Mind

• Oliver Evans, 1800: “The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines from one
city to another, almost as fast as birds can fly, 15 or 20 miles an hour.”
• Thomas Jefferson, 1802: “The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam to a carriage on wheels will make
a great change in the situation of man.”
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844: “the railroad is a work of art which agitates, and drives mad the whole people as
music, sculpture, and picture have done in their great days…,railroad iron acts as a magician’s rod…with the
power to awake the sleeping engines of land and water.”
• Henry David Thoreau, c.1847: “The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter,
sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city
merchants are arriving. Here come your groceries, country! Your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so
independent on his farm that he can say them nay.”
U.S. railroads, 1860
Theodore “Crazy Ted” Judah,
railroad visionary….
• A “true believer” in America’s railroad future,
Theodore Judah (left) built canals, bridges, and
railroads in the eastern U.S.
• 1855: hired to build the Sacramento Valley
Railway, which he completed in two years
• Venture collapsed due to high debts
• This did not keep Judah from pursuing his
dream of breaching the Sierra Nevada
Mountains.
Sierra Nevada region
Theodore “Crazy Ted” Judah,
railroad visionary….
• “Everything he did from the time he went to
California to the day of his death was for the
great continental Pacific railway. Time, money,
brains, strength, body, and soul were absorbed.
It was the burden of his thought day and night,
largely of his conversation, till it used to be said
'Judah's Pacific Railroad crazy,' and I would say,
'Theodore, those people don't care,' or 'you give
your thunder away.' He'd laugh and say, 'But we
must keep the ball rolling.’” –Anna Pierce Judah
• Image: monument to Ted Judah, Sacramento, CA
 “Crazy Judah” and the “Big
4”
•
His passion earned him the nickname
“Crazy Judah”
•
He needed a minimum of $115,000 to
form a rail corporation but had barely
$3,000
•
He enlisted Collis Huntington, Mark
Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland
Stanford, all Sacramento businessmen.
•
They agreed to buy enough stock to
jumpstart Judah's company
•
Judah, as chief engineer, saw his Central
Pacific Railroad incorporated in June 1861.
 “No easy task....” Questions

•
The engineering, financing, and
construction all were without
precedent
•
How could locomotives haul
tonnage over the Sierra and
surpass the arctic conditions?
•
How much would it cost to ship
the raw materials and
machinery around Cape Horn?
•
How could these materials be
obtained in wartime?
•
Who would build it? Where
would labor come from?
 Pacific Railway Act, 1862

•
To assure CPR and not a rival company would gain favor, Stanford ran for and won the CA gubernatorial race
in 1861
•
July 1862: Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act, giving the CPR sole right to build a line from SF to the
eastern border of CA.
•
Union Pacific (UP) would build west from Council Bluffs, IA
•
Given the terrain (plains, mountains, desert), the Act appropriated an average cost of $32,000 a mile.
 Founding the “UP,” 1862

• Union Pacific Railroad was incorporated July 1,

1862, under the Pacific Railroad Act.
• Approved by Pres. Lincoln, and provided for the
construction of railroads from the Missouri
River to the Pacific mainly as a war measure for
the preservation of the Union
Philadelphia’s ties to the Railroad:
Baldwin Locomotive Works
The Transcontinental Route
 “No easy task….”
• Working conditions were
abysmal
• Below-zero temps and 40-ft
snowpacks halted work for
weeks at a time
• In summer, workers were
harried by insects, rats, and
rattlesnakes whose dens were
disturbed during construction
• Cave-ins and misfired
explosions killed and maimed
scores
• Central Pacific “snow shed” (this
slide)
Alfred A. Hart, Near Summit Tunnel, Donner Peak
 Completing the
Transcontinental Line

•
Labor shortages were a
problem
•
Few answered the call for
5,000 workers
•
With most men fleeing
after a few days (working
in deep snow and earning
$35 a month), Crocker
demanded that Chinese
laborers be implemented
•
Crocker hired 50 Chinese
as an “experiment”
 •
Smaller in stature than
whites, the Chinese learned
Chinese Labor quickly, worked tirelessly,
and the Railroad: and excelled at skilled tasks

“Crocker’s pets” •
Paid 60 to 90% of what
whites earned, they eagerly
accepted the work
•
May 1865: Chinese made up
2/3 of the CPR's labor force
and until 1870, the CPR
relied on them in its race to
meet the Union Pacific
•
Before long, nearly all
western railroads employed
Chinese
 Connecting the continent

• May 10, 1869: With engines No. 119 and Jupiter touching "noses," the Central Pacific and Union Pacific
joined with a ceremonial golden spike driven by Stanford.
• In the world's first live mass-media event, the hammer and spike were wired to the telegraph so that each
hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide.
 Promontory, UT to Chicago,
IL
• 2:27 PM: “Almost ready. Hats off; prayer is
being offered. We have done praying. The spike
is about to be presented.”
• Chicago: “We understand. All are ready in the
East.”
• Promontory: “All ready now. The spike will soon
be driven. The signal will be three dots for the
commencement of blows.”
• 2:47 PM: “DONE!”
 The “golden spike,”
May 10, 1869
• 17.6-karat gold spike driven by Stanford to
connect the Transcontinental Railroad
• “Last spike” now refers to one driven at the
ceremonial completion of any new railroad
project, particularly those where construction
is undertaken from two disparate origins
• Spike is now displayed at Stanford University
Promontory, UT, May 10, 1869
• Ceremonies were held as the CPR and UP joined together the nation’s first transcontinental line
• Embarrassingly, Stanford missed when he swung a sledgehammer to drive in the “golden spike”
• The announcement of completion went out by telegraph as America was “unified by an iron
roadway”
• One could now travel from San Francisco to New York in less than a week….
A continent connected….
“Does not SUCH a meeting make amends?”
“The Last Spike,” May 10, 1869
 The Transcontinental Railroad,
May 1869

• “The long looked for day has arrived.

The inhabitants of the Atlantic
seaboard and the dwellers on the
Pacific slopes are no longer separated
as distinct peoples, they are
henceforth members of the same great
family, united by great principles and
general interests. At noon yesterday
the great event was achieved, and the
celebration of the occasion was
unmarred by the slightest accident or
circumstance to cause it to be
remembered by any with either sorrow
or pain. The weather was propitious,
and the best of order prevailed.” -Salt
Lake Telegram, May 11, 1869
 • Judah died of yellow fever on November 2, 1863.
Judah • He contracted the disease in Panama during passage across
dies….before the isthmus
realizing his • He was traveling to New York to seek alternative financing to
buy out the major investors.
dream
• His wife Anna took his body back to Massachusetts, where he
was buried in the Pierce family plot
U.S. railroads, 1870
U.S. railroads, 1880
U.S. railroads, 1890
U.S. railroads,
c.1901
Compressing
Time and
Space….into
zones
• Nov. 18, 1883: U.S. railroads began
using a standard time system
involving four time zones, Eastern,
Central, Mountain and Pacific, and all
clocks were synchronized
• By 1950, most of the world had
adopted an international system, with
the planet divided into 24 zones
spaced at intervals of approximately
15 degrees of longitude
• Who has the most zones today?
• Who has the least?
 Leaves of Grass (1871) – Walt
Whitman

• “Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains—the

hirsute and strong-breasted bull; Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced—
stars, rain, snow, my amaze; Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the
mountain-hawk’s, And heard at dusk the unrival'd one, the hermit thrush
from the swamp-cedars, Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New
World.”
 “Leaves of Grass (1871)–Walt
Whitman

• “See revolving the globe, The ancestor-continents

away group'd together, The present and future
continents north and south, with the isthmus
between. See, vast trackless spaces, As in a dream
they change, they swiftly fill, Countless masses
debouch upon them, They are now cover'd with the
foremost people, arts, institutions, known.”
• After 1865, the “vast trackless spaces” of the West
were absorbed into the national economy
• Not only did the West contain large amounts of
resources, it also contained at least 250,000 Indians
Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra
Mountains of California (1868)
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1871)
Indian Wars in the American West, 1862-1890
 U.S. Grant’s “new policy”
• 1869: Pres. U.S. Grant announces a
“peace policy” in the West but
hostilities continued
• Replicating the “scorched Earth”
tactics used to defeat the
Confederacy, former Union generals
destroyed the foundations of the
Indian economy (villages, horses, and
esp. the buffalo)
U.S. Grant’s “new policy”
• One historian: “In reality, the [peace]
policy rested on the belief that
Americans had the right to dispossess
Native peoples of their lands, take
away freedoms, and send them to
reservations, where missionaries
would teach them how to farm, read
and write, wear Euro-American
clothing, and embrace Christianity. If
Indians refused to move to
reservations, they would be forced off
their homelands by soldiers.”
 • 1866: Gen. Sherman told U.S.
Grant “we must act with
vindictive earnestness
against the Sioux, even to
their extermination, men,
women and children.”
• 1867: Sherman to Grant, “we
are not going to let thieving,
ragged Indians check and
stop the progress of the
railroads.”
• 1869: Pres. Grant appointed
Sherman Commanding
General of the Army, and
Clearing the American West Sherman was responsible for
U.S. engagement in the Indian
Wars.
 Native Americans and the “Iron Horse”

• Indian efforts to block railroads were

extremely rare.
• Summer 1867: a party of Cheyenne derailed
a train in Nebraska, killed several trainmen,
and rode off with some plunder.
• There is no record of other such attacks.
• The advance of the railroad was virtually
unimpeded by those who had the most
reasons to resist it.
• 1883: Sherman wrote, “The railroad has
become the greater cause. The recent
completion of the fourth transcontinental
line has settled forever the Indian
question.”
The American Bison

• Millions of buffalo once roamed the American West.

• From Mexico to Canada, bison populated the continent long before people
settled there.
• As herbivores, bison adapted to the Eastern woodlands and Great Plains,
receiving nourishment from the rich grasses.
The American Bison

• In the U.S., "bison" and "buffalo" are used interchangeably, although bison is the
most accurate term
• “Buffalo” technically refers to species from Africa and Asia, such as the cape and
water buffaloes.
 The American
Bison

• “What strikes the stranger with most

amazement is their immense numbers. I
know a million is a great many, but I am
confident we saw that number
yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could
not have stood on ten square miles of
ground. Often, the country for miles on
either hand seemed quite black with
them.” -Horace Greeley, 1860
 Clearing the postwar American West
• When miners discovered gold in Montana, the Sioux fought settlers rushing to extract it from their
land.
• That escalated into “The Fetterman Fight,” named after the U.S. Army captain leading the troops.
• Sioux killed Fetterman and all of his men, the worst loss the U.S. ever suffered on the Great Plains.
• 1868: Gen. Sherman signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux and outlined for them a
reservation.
• Part of the treaty allowed the Sioux to hunt buffalo north of the Platte River
 Clearing the postwar American West

• One historian: “Sherman hated the idea. He

was utterly opposed to that clause of the
treaty. He was determined to clear the
central plains region between the Platte
and the Arkansas of Indians so that the
railroads, stage lines, and telegraph could
operate unmolested.”
• Sherman knew that if the Sioux hunted
buffalo, they’d never surrender to life with a
plow.
• May 10, 1868: Sherman wrote, “I think it
would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of
England and America there this fall for a
Grand Buffalo hunt and make one grand
sweep of them all.”
• The railroad industry wanted bison herds culled or eliminated.
• Herds could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in
time. Bison and the
• Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of
the track winding through hills and mountains. Railroads
 The Bison Hunts

• Hunting parties came west by train, with thousands of men packing .50 caliber rifles, and leaving carnage in
their wake.
• Unlike Native Americans who killed for food, clothing, and shelter, hunters killed mostly for sport.
• Native Americans looked on with horror as prairies were littered with rotting carcasses.
• Railroads advertised “hunting by rail,” where trains encountered herds alongside or crossing the tracks.
 The Buffalo Hunts

• “Nearly every railroad train which leaves or arrives at Fort Hays on the
Kansas Pacific Railroad has its race with these herds of buffalo; and a most
interesting and exciting scene is the result. The train is “slowed” to a rate
of speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers get out fire-arms
which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and
open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a
brisk skirmish. Frequently a young bull will turn at bay for a moment. His
exhibition of courage is generally his death-warrant, for the whole fire of
the train is turned upon him, either killing him or some member of the
herd in his immediate vicinity.” -Harper’s Weekly
• The Texas legislature, sensing buffalo
were in danger of being wiped out,
proposed a bill to protect the species.
• Gen. Sheridan opposed it: “These men
have done more in the last two years,
and will do more in the next year, to
settle the vexed Indian question, than
the entire regular army has done in the
last forty years. They are destroying the
Indians’ commissary. And it is a well-
known fact that an army losing its base
of supplies is placed at a great
disadvantage. Send them powder and
lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace,
let them kill, skin and sell until the
buffaloes are exterminated. Then your
prairies can be covered with speckled
cattle.”
• Similar laws were proposed (but never
Attempts to halt
adopted) in Arizona and Montana
• By 1900, only 300 buffalo were left in the
the Buffalo Hunts
wild.
 U.S. Grant’s second inaugural address,
Mar.4, 1873
• “…..by a humane course, to bring the aborigines of the
country under the benign influences of education and
civilization. It is either this or war of extermination: Wars
of extermination, engaged in by people pursuing
commerce and all industrial pursuits, are expensive even
against the weakest people, and are demoralizing and
wicked. Our superiority of strength and advantages of
civilization should make us lenient toward the Indian. The
wrong inflicted upon him should be taken into account
and the balance placed to his credit. The moral view of
the question should be considered, and the question
asked, Can not the Indian be made a useful and
productive member of society by proper teaching and
treatment? If the effort is made in good faith, we will
stand better before the civilized nations of the earth and
in our own consciences for having made it.”
Exterminating the Buffalo
Exterminating the Bison
• Hides were shipped east and to Europe (mainly
Germany) for processing into leather.
• Bones were used in refining sugar, and in
making fertilizer and fine china.
• Bones ranged from $2.50 to $15.00 a ton.
Henry Francois Farny, The Last of the Herd (1906)
Saving the bison • 1905: zoologist William
Hornaday forms the American
Bison Society to replenish wild
herds.
• Pres. Teddy Roosevelt
persuaded Congress to establish
wildlife preserves, and, with the
help of private bison owners, the
Society stocked many preserves
and parks.
• This organization supplemented
the existing herd of about 20
bison that lived in the newly
formed Yellowstone National
Park.
• 2020s: Yellowstone herd stands
at over 3,000 animals and is
thought to be the country’s last
free roaming bison herd.
The
“unresolved
Indian
question”
 “There were no white
survivors....”
•
June 1876: Lt. Col. George Armstrong
Custer and 209 cavalrymen perished
against the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne
on the Little Big Horn River in Montana
•
There were no white survivors of
“Custer's Last Stand”
•
The “last stand” may be one of the
greatest, enduring myths about the
American past
•
Defeat was victory, affirming the
bravery of American pioneering and the
willingness to pay any price for progress
 Custer’s Last
Stand, 1876

• U.S. was desperate for Indian land, including the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, land
sacred to the Lakota, that the U.S. government had only years before granted them
“forever.”
• One historian: “The stakes were literally life and death for the Lakota. Their buffalo
population, upon which they depended, had been decimated. The last
remaining significant herd was in Montana. And that's why the Battle of Little Bighorn
would be fought in that location.”
“There were no white survivors....”

• Tensions had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American land.
• When several tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army
was dispatched to confront them.
• Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting under Sitting Bull
• His forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed
 • In less than an hour, Indians at Little Bighorn,
“There were massacring Custer and every one of his men.
no white • The battle has been ennobled as “Custer’s Last
Stand”
survivors....” • In truth, Custer and his men never stood a
chance.
• President Grant, who was never fond of Custer,
referred to the battle as “wholly unnecessary.”
 •
A battle with no
survivors had
hundreds of
survivors.....Indians
•
Indians remembered
not romanticized
The mythic images but realities:
creation of •
Panicked soldiers
Custer's Last fleeing in disarray
Stand •
Weapons dropped in
terror
•
Men sobbing at death
•
In a sense, Custer's
Last Stand did not exist
for Indians
 “There were no white survivors....”

• Custer suffered two bullet wounds, one

near his heart and one in the head.
• It is unclear which wound killed him.
• After the battle, Indians stripped,
scalped, and dismembered their
enemies’ corpses, possibly because
they believed souls of disfigured bodies
were doomed to walk the earth forever.
 Custer’s Last
Stand
• Custer's mutilated
body was recovered
days later.
• According to Lakota
oral tradition, his
ears had been
pierced with awls so
that he could hear
better in the afterlife
Frederic Remington,
The Last Stand (1890)
F. Otto Becker, Custer’s Last Fight (1889)
 An American hero and
an American beer
• “Adolphus Busch obtained ownership of
the original Cassilly Adams painting in
1888. In 1896, the company began
distributing thousands of lithographic
renditions to saloons, hotels, restaurants
and stores. It was one of Anheuser-
Busch's most famous and recognized
wall hangings, and one of its most
successful advertising pieces.” -
Anheuser-Busch press release
The Last Stand: in memoriam....
The Custer • “Fifty years ago today Colonel GEORGE A. CUSTER and 207
officers and men of the Seventh United States Cavalry fell in
legend….and battle against 3,000 Sioux and Northern Cheyennes on a ridge
mythology over-looking the valley of the Little Big Horn in Montana. An
Indian scout with CUSTER'S command escaped, but he seems to
have been as inarticulate as the other survivor, a white horse.” -
New York Times, June 25, 1926
• “Eighty-seven years ago, Lieut. Gen. George A. Custer led troops
of the United States Seventh Cavalry up Rosebud Creek in
southeastern Montana and across a low divide into the valley of
the Little Bighorn River. He led them also into immortality,
compounded of tragedy and mystery.” -New York Times, Apr.28,
1963
• “In 1876 we were invited to a similar gathering. In 1976 we were
not invited. We would like you tp observe with due respect our
sacred pipe. One hundred years ago there was not time to
present that pipe to the invaders. Tomorrow is our day of
celebration. In your Bicentennial year, we, the Indian people have
a centennial year to celebrate —a year that gives us pride and
dignity. We bear no ill will.” -Russell Means, AIM leader, June
1976
Custer does
Hollywood
 Indian Wars end: Kicking Bear
surrenders
•
Days after Harper's Weekly published the cover
image of Custer, Kicking Bear (seated, left), a
leading Lakota apostle, surrendered to U.S.
troops
•
This ended the last major Indian War in U.S.
history
•
Instead of exile (or worse), Kicking Bear and the
Lakota opted to tour with Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Tour in Europe
•
Their punishment was that they would be
“routed” at every show by Cody himself
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
Taking the West on tour....
Buffalo Bill show,
Oakland, CA
 Buffalo Bill and Custer’s Last
Stand
• Buffalo Bill did not re-enact
Custer’s Last Stand until 1888,
in deference to Custer’s widow,
Elizabeth.
• She saw it performed in 1888
and wrote Cody appreciatively,
describing its “terrible” realism.
• “The Last Stand” became a
regular feature in Cody’s shows,
sometimes employing actual
battle participants.
 Modern reactions to “Custer’s
Last Stand” or “Battle of the
Greasy Grass”
• For generations, Custer was portrayed
as a dashing hero.
• The American Indian Movement
(AIM) in the 1970s chipped away at
Custer’s image and recast the
narrative of the American West.
• He went from heroic martyr to
loathed symbol of Manifest Destiny.
• 1991: to more accurately portray the
role of Indians at Little Bighorn,
Congress passed a law stripping
Custer’s name from the battlefield
• 2003: a memorial to Indians who died
there was dedicated.