HIST 1302 Part One. 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire

Transcription

1 HIST 1302 Part One 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire

2 The Subjugation of the Plains Indians

3 Until mid-century, the U.S. Government treated the Great Plains and Mountain West region as One Big Indian Reservation.

4 In 1851 the U.S. government instituted a new Concentration Policy.

5 To carry out this policy, the government made treaties that required the Indians to give up large tracts of tribal lands and to live on reservations.

6 Some Indians resisted the White Man s encroachment. The resulting warfare led to tragedy on both sides.

7 Racism and a belief in Manifest Destiny enabled most Americans to justify unfair treatment of the Indians. Three hundred thousand savages, cowardly, blood-thirsty, jealous, revengeful; entirely destitute of any moral principle; trained from their most ancient traditions to look upon every form of labor as degrading to know no method of acquiring property so honorable as that of stealing. The Indians do not make the best use of the soil their interests can not be allowed to stand in the way of the development of the country. --John H. Carmany, Overland Monthly, February 1870

8 General Phil Sheridan, in charge of the Army of the West, put the feelings of many Americans more bluntly. "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead. - Gen. Phillip Sheridan

9 Racist attitudes resulted in tragedies such as the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. 11 min. 47 sec.

10 No one was punished for Sand Creek and many people, including some fellow Methodist ministers, approved Chivington s actions.

11 The White Man s slaughter of the bison or buffalo accelerated the process of removing the Indians from their tribal lands. 5 min. 38 sec. Kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone. --Col. Richard I. Dodge, U.S. Army

12 In 1868 a new Fort Laramie treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation in present-day South Dakota.

13 The Sioux were told the Black Hills would be theirs forever, which lasted until white men discovered gold there.

14 The 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn (a.k.a. Custer s Last Stand ) was the result of Indians refusing to re-negotiate a treaty so that whites could have the Black Hills. 9 min. 14 sec.

15 By 1890 almost all American Indians were confined to reservations, where they were often at the mercy of corrupt government agents.

16 In the 1870s the federal government established reservation boarding schools for the purpose of civilizing young Indians.

17 Thousands of young Indians were also sent to off-reservation boarding where they were forbidden to speak Indian languages or practice their own native religions.

18 One of the largest Indian Boarding Schools was located in in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (est Before and After

19 10 min. 41 sec. The Indian is DEAD in you Let all that is Indian die! You cannot become truly American citizens, industrious, intelligent, cultured, civilized until the INDIAN within you is DEAD! --Rev. A. J. Lippincott, Carlisle Graduation Ceremony Address, 1898

20 In 1890 a medicine man named Wovoka encouraged reservation Indians to do a Ghost Dance to bring back their old way of life and resurrect their dead relatives.

21 When Sitting Bull was suspected of encouraging the ghost dance, he was killed when friends and relatives resisted an attempt by reservation police to arrest him. 7 min. 09 sec.

22 The Indians unhappiness with reservation life combined with white misunderstanding to produce the Wounded Knee Massacre of Dec min. 11 sec.

23 The Settlers Experience

24 The Homestead Act of May 20, 1862 gave 160 acres of free public domain land to any settler who paid a nominal registration fee and pledged to live on the land for at least 5 years. The act took effect on January 1, Claimants could take title sooner by paying $1.25 per acre.

25 Between 1863 and 1890 the federal government gave away 48 million acres to nearly 600,000 families.

26 Although most states held homestead land, the largest amount was located on the Great Plains and in the Desert and Mountain West.

27 Partly because they lived in sod houses Western Plains homesteaders were derisively called Sodbusters.

28 Unfortunately, the success rate of the Homestead Act was low. Storms, lack of rain, and other hardships led 60% of homesteaders to give up.

29 Many would-be Plains farmers packed up and returned home, went further west, or moved into the cities. 7 min. 40 sec.

30 Exodusters were the thousands of African-American homesteaders who followed Benjamin Pap Singleton to Kansas. 7 min. 25sec.

31 The Dawes Act and the Oklahoma Land Rushes

32 Senator Henry Dawes (R-MA) The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 assigned land to individual Indians.

33 The purpose of the Dawes Act was to destroy tribal identities by turning Plains Indians into individual self-sufficient farmers. 2 min. 2 sec.

34 The 1887 Dawes Act also had the effect of opening up more former Indian land to non-indian settlement, mainly in present-day Oklahoma.

35 After the Dawes Act, half of Indian Territory was reorganized as Oklahoma Territory and opened to settlement in a series of Land Rushes.

36 Boomers participated in the races for the last free land in the West; Sooners cheated by sneaking onto the land ahead of the race. 4 min. 55 sec. Yee-Ha! Let s go get some of that free land!

37 The Chinese Experience

38 The 1849 California Gold Rush attracted Chinese immigrants.

39 In 1852 racist attitudes toward the Chinese led the State of California to pass a Foreign Miners Tax of $4 per month. Until 1870, when the law was repealed, this tax brought in 50 percent of the state s revenues!

40 In 1868 the U.S. and China signed the Burlingame Treaty, which encouraged Chinese immigration and guaranteed the safety and civil rights of Chinese immigrants in America. Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience, and shall be exempt from all disability and persecution on account of their religious faith or worship. Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation.

41 After the Burlingame Treaty went into effect, Chinese laborers were specifically recruited to build the western half of the first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869.

42 But anti-chinese sentiment (particularly among Irish immigrants) and racist attitudes led to boycotts of Chinese businesses and anti-chinese riots in the West.

43 In 1882, in response to growing anti-chinese sentiment in the West, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. 5 min. 34 sec. Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended.

44 The Hispanic Experience

45 In 1850, Hispanic people in the sparsely-populated Southwest numbered only 82,500 (60,000 in New Mexico, 14,000 in Texas, 7,500 in California, and 1,000 in Arizona). In Texas and California, they were less than 10% of the population.

46 Racially-prejudiced Anglo newcomers held a low opinion of the original Hispanic settlers of the Southwest. In every way a poor apology of European extraction; as a general thing, incapable of reading or writing, and knowing nothing of science or literature, nothing of government but its brutal force, nothing of virtue but the sanction of the Church In a word an imbecile race of men unfit to control the destinies of that beautiful country. --Thomas Jefferson Farnham

47 Often unable to speak or understand English, many Hispanic-Americans lost their lands to Anglo newcomers who not only outnumbered them but also possessed a better knowledge of the law. 4 min. 32 sec.

48 Cowboys and Cattlemen: The Era of the Open Range

49 After the Civil War, Abilene, Kansas businessman Joseph G. McCoy encouraged Texas cattlemen to drive their steers across the open range for shipment by rail to the East.

50 A Longhorn steer that cost $4 in Texas could be sold for $30 to $40 at the railhead.

51 All the major cattle trails led north out of Texas to railheads in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. 11 min. 00 sec.

52 What ended the great cattle drives? Overgrazing Homesteaders establishing farms on the Great Plains The invention of barbed wire The coming of the railroads to Texas