Western Expansion: History

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Bureau of Indian Affairs: -Established within War Department(1824), worked close with Army.

-Significance: sent message - "Indians who resisted confinement on reservations woudlb e delt with by force."
-Rarely lived up to side of bargain.
-Supplies for Native Americans sold elsewhere.
Sitting Bull: (Iyotake, Tatanka)
Sioux medicine man.
-Opposed reservation life
-Inspired Battle of Rosebud & Little Bighorn
-Joined Ghost Dance Religion.
-Killed after ordered for arrest.
Battle of the Little Bighorn: -Army's decision to strike first
-Crazy Horse and native americans outnumber troops 3 to 1
-General George Armstrong Custor and battalion of over 200 men killed in less than an hour.
Sand Creek Massacre: -Conflict in Colorado Territory.
-Cheyennne leader Black Kettle, and group tired of fighting, making way to Fort Lyon to surrender.
-Camp along Sand Creek.
-700 troops under Colonel John Chivington attack camp.
-Kill 200, most women and children.
-Significance: Prompted raids by Arapahos and Cheyennes. Sioux engange long-standign war against U.S. Army.
General George Armstrong Custer: Lead batallion of 200 men, and killed at battle of Little Bighorn.
Wounded Knee Massacre, 1891: -South Dakota
-Militant tone added to Wovoka's Christian/Native American proclaimation that white settlers woudl vanish and the buffalo woudl return, the ghost dance. Believed Ghost Shirts could stop bullets.
-Sitting Bull killed during skirmish that broke out after order for his arrest for joining the religion.
-Tensions break at wounded knee creek between the indians led by Sioux leader Big Foot and Ghost Shirt Fighter, red Cloud. Rifle fired.
Chief Joseph: -Leader of Nez Percés who led his group away towards canada from Wallowa River Valley, fleding govenrment control.
-Significance: Leader of one of the main (700-800 members) Native American groups to actually surrender.
Helen Hunt Jackson: -Troubled by treatment of American indians.
-Wrote influencial book "a Century of Dishonor"
-attacked government for years of broken promises and corrupt dealings with Native Americans.
Sarah Winnemucca: -Reformer
-Paiute woman, publicized the plight of American Indians.
-Had served for years as an interpreter at U.S. forts. Briefly taught school on Paiute Reservation.
-Preached Cause before Presedent Rutherford B. Hayes, who granted request - not carried out by bureau's agents.
-"Life Among the Piutes"
Assimilation: -Cultural Absorbtion of one group into another.

-Laws forcing Indians to abandon traditional apperances.
-"Kill the indian and save the man"
-Cut off long hair.
-Outlawed Indian Religion
-System of Indian schools
-Speek english only
-Proper Clothing
-American names
Pacific Railway Act: -Gave land to railroad companies to develope a transcontinental railroad linking East and West Coasts.

-Significance: One of the three land acts. Encouraged western expansion
Homstead Act: Granted a 160-acre homestead, or farm, to any american citizen or prospective citizen willing to live in the Great Plains and cultivate the land for five years.

-One of 3 land acts, encouraged western expansion.
Morrill Act: Provided land grants to all states to help finance agricultural colleges, which would train young farmers and thus help develope the west.
Exodusters: Black Americans/Freedmen looking for jobs or gold/silver opportunities.
-Trying to get away from Jim Crow Laws
-Racism
-Lack of economic mobility

-one of the main groups settling in west.
Texas longhorn: Important cattle usefull for horns and immune to Texas fever.

Significant: Main type of cattle demand existed for.
Open Range: -Free grazing land.
-Gov. provided public land to be used in this way.

-Significance: made cattle ranching profitable
Joseph Glidden: Pattened barbed wire, responsible for open-range ranching's decline.
Barbed Wire: Invented by Jospeh Glidden as a cheap method of fencing

-Limited open grazing and the amount of open land available.
Klondike Gold Rush: -Prospectors discover gold in Klondike district of Canada's Yukon Territory, border with Alaska.
-Yukon miners extract gold deposits worth more than a million dollars.

-Significance: 100,000 people traveled through alaska to seek fortunes in the Klondike. Attracted settlers who established fish canneries, lumber companies, and coal and copper mining enterprises.
Alaska Purchase: Purchase of Alaska from the russians who needed money and feared a territorial dispute.
-$7,200,000
-Considered worthless
-Started Klondike Gold Rush
William Seward: U.S. Secretary of State
0Responsible for the Alaska Purchase - "Sewards Folly"
Why did the U.S. government adopt the reservation policy?: -Get native Americans out of Great Plains.
-Promote positive relationsihps.
Dawes Act: -Gave 160 acres of free land to Native American Families.
-They would be private land owners instead of having a nomadic lifestyle.
-Failed.
4 Groups moving west and why: Native Americans - pushed out by Whites and US Government - looking for buffalo

Immigrants - pushed out by potatoe Famine and Catholic Discrimination - Pulled out by lack of eastern economic promises, prospect of jobs with railroads
Exodusters - racism and lack of economic mobility - gold/silver and jobs
White Easterners - economic recession - gold/silver/jobs
Why Cattle demand increased: Population increased: immigrants and improvements in the medical technology.
Transportation of cattle to eastern and western cities: Long Drives: Cattle herded (as many as 3000) by cowboys. Meant to reach railroads
-Taken to missouri, but later kansas because of lack of immunity to texas fever in missouri.

Railhead: Town located along railroad. Brokers bought cattle and shipped them east.
Why cattle boom ended after 20 years: Overgrazing
-damaged grasslands
-too many cattle (supply and demand)

Barbed Wire invention
-Cattle couldnt graze wtih territory marked off

Bad Weather
-Severe winter and drought
Description of life in mining communities: -Wide range of Backgrounds
-Simple Democracy/law and order
-Camps mostly males, and few women
-Occasionally violence from competition
-Conflict between ethnic groups
-Eventually families move into camps, become permanent communities
Why mining turned into a big business enterprise: Most easily accessible mineral deposits were eventually worked out. Miners required expensive methods of exposing minerals underneath.

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