1. Looking to the West:
During the late 1800s, due to a number of factors, many Americans began migrating west. This shifted the American frontier westward and reformed the identity of the country.

2. Why move? Push Factors Displacement Increasing costs in East
For many of the same reasons people move today, settlers moved due to various push-pull factors
Push Factors
Displacement
The Civil War displaced many farmers and former slaves
Increasing costs in East
Ethnic or religious repression
Crime
Pull Factors
A New Start
Cheap Land
New Transportation
Railroad development
Government grants

3. Government Incentives
In an effort to promote western migration, the federal government passed a series of acts that gave or sold land cheaply to those willing to inhabit the west.

4. Pacific Railway Acts
In 1862 and 1864, the government gave large land grants to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads.
Railroads received more than 175 million acres of land.
Railroads sold portions of their land to arriving settlers.

6. Morrill Land-Grant Act
Gave states millions of acres of western land.
States could then sell the land to raise money for the creation of “land grant” colleges specializing in agriculture and mechanical arts.
States sold their land to bankers or land speculators.
Land speculators- people who bought up large areas of land in hope of selling it later for a profit.

7. Land Grant Colleges

8. Land Grant Colleges
Most state universities were founded and financed by these land grants.

9. Homestead Act Created 372,000 farms.
By 1900, settlers had filed 600,000 claims for more than 80 million acres under the Homestead Act.

10. Homestead Act What it gave: Conditions:
160 acres- a quarter-mile square
Conditions:
At least 21 years old
American citizen (or filing for citizenship)
Build a house on the land (must live there 6 months of the year)
Must farm the land for 5 consecutive years before claiming ownership.

11. The American Dream
The belief in private property and land ownership has long been a tenet of the American identity.
The Homestead Act helped solidify this value in land/home ownership and individualism.

12. From far and wide… The west claimed people from all walks of life…
European Immigrants
Germans, Scandinavians looked for farm land.
Brought Lutheranism to Midwest
Irish, Italians, European Jews and Chinese settled in West Coast cities initially and slowly migrated inland.

13. Denominational demographics

14. Exodusters
After the Civil War thousands of African Americans rode or even walked westward.
Benjamin, “Pap” Singleton led southern blacks on a mass “Exodus”.
Calling themselves Exodusters, some 50,000 migrated west.

15. Section 2: Conflict with Native Americans
With westward expansion came increased conflict between settlers and Native Americans.
Both settlers, who had purchased the land, and Indians, who had lived there for centuries, felt they had claim to the land.

16. “They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.”
–Sitting Bull

17. Great Plains Indians Relied heavily on hunting buffalo
Buffalo provided…
Meat for food
Hides for shelter and clothing
Many were nomadic, traveled from place to place, following the buffalo herds.

18. Conflicts
Many settlers felt justified in taking Indian land, thinking they could make it more productive.
Indians perceived settlers as invaders.
Settlers and Native Americans had different perspectives of the land.
Settlers considered land privately owned according to purchase and deed.
Native Americans had little concept of land ownership or private property. Land was collectively shared and cared for.

19. Making Treaties
Adding to confusion, Native American groups also didn’t have the same type of hierarchical power structures as settlers.
Sometimes the “leader” of one tribe would sign a treaty that settlers assumed all tribes would recognize, which wasn’t the case.
Treaties usually offered for federal purchase of NA land, or restricted them to reservations, federal land set aside for them.

20. Perpetual Conflict “Give an inch, take a mile”
Given rapid western expansion, when one treaty was signed, settlers often continued pushing further onto Native Americans land.
Treaties were signed, broken, and new ones made, each time pushing Native American land further back.

21. Sand Creek Massacre: 1864
Southern Cheyenne occupied the central plains.
After Cheyenne raids on settlements near Denver, Colorado, settlers signed a peace campaign with Cheyenne chief, Black Kettle.
Promised protection, Black Kettle and the Cheyenne were told to camp at Sand Creek.

22. Sand Creek Massacre
On November 29, 1864, Col. John Chivington attacked the Cheyenne and Arapaho with 700 men. Black Kettle tried to wave a white flag of surrender.
Chivington’s men slaughtered people, largely women and children.

23. Battle of Little Bighorn: 1876
The Sioux inhabited the northern plains- Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana.
Sioux powerfully resisted white expansion.
Government built road through prime hunting ground.
Treaty protecting the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming is abandoned when gold is discovered there in 1874.

24. Battle of Little Bighorn:
Sioux chiefs, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refuse to negotiate.
General Custer sent to round up Indians in 1876.
Expecting a smaller army, Custer comes with a divided force of 200 soldiers.
They were met by 2,000 furious Sioux warriors and massacred within an hour.

25. Battle of Little Bighorn:
The Battle of Little Bighorn that followed, or “Custer’s Last Stand,” sent a huge army to force Indians back onto the reservation.
Crazy Horse was killed after surrender in 1877.
Sitting Bull and remaining Sioux escaped to Canada, but starvation forced them to surrender and return to the reservation 4 years later.
“I am the last Indian” –Sitting Bull

26. Battle of Wounded Knee: 1890
With encouragement from Sitting Bull, Teton Sioux living on a reservation began performing the “Ghost Dance”-a ritual where peopled joined hands and whirled in a circle.
Frightened by the Natives’ restlessness, Custer’s old unit, the Seventh Cavalry came to arrest Sitting Bull.
When Sitting Bull hesitated to surrender, officers shot and killed him.

27. Battle of Wounded Knee
His followers surrendered and were rounded up at Wounded Knee.
As they were being disarmed, someone fired a shot.
Soldiers then opened fire and massacred more than 200 Sioux.

28. Helen Hunt Jackson
While some supported government destruction of Native Americans, others protested.
In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, protesting the government’s broken promises and treaties.
“It makes little difference… where one opens the record of history of the Indians, every page and every year has its dark stain.” –Hunt Jackson

29. Attempts to Changes Dawes Act
Divided reservation land into individual plots.
Each Native American family received a plot of land within the reservation.
Attempted to force Native Americans to assimilate and accept Americans principle of private property.
Many Native Americans were offended at the idea of farming, and most reservation land was not suitable for it.

30. Opening of Indian Territory
Even after the Indians were forced into certain territories, the government tried to buy out a remaining 2 million acres of unused farmland.
On April 22, 1889, settlers, called boomers, rushed the land to stake claim on this land.
Much of the best land was already taken by “sooners,” those who snuck past government officials and marked claims prior to April 22.

31. Carlisle Indian School – 1879 - 1918
-Plains Indian children sent by their parents to Carlisle.
-Indian identity is stripped away from these young people alone and far from home.

32. Students at Carlisle Indian School

33. Section 3: Mining, Ranching, Farming
Settlers found their livelihood almost exclusively in either mining, ranching, or farming.

34. Western Mining
Early mining consisted of various gold rushes, both on the west coast and inland.
Over time, miners became more interested in ore
Placer mining- shoveling dirt into a box and pouring water in to reveal the ore, gold, or silver
Most ore deposits were deeply covered and needed big business and sophisticated machinery to be mined.

35. The Cattle Boom
Americans learned cattle ranching from Mexicans in the early 1800s.
Initially used the Texas longhorn which thrived in dry, grassy plains.
Beef demand and prices soar after the Civil War, driving the cattle market.

36. Destruction of the Buffalo
Room for cattle ranching was made possible due to the destruction, even near extinction, of the buffalo.
million buffalo
,100 buffalo
Buffalo hunting was popular sport, and supported by the government in an effort to subjugate Native Americans.

37. Buffalo x 8
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Is a grammatically correct sentence.

38. Buffalo x 8 Adjective- the place; Buffalo, NY Noun- the animal
Verb- the act; to buffalo means to bully or to intimidate.
The sentence is equivalent to the following…
Chicago deer, Chicago deer bully, bully Chicago deer.

39. Cow Towns Towns established specifically for receiving cattle.
Wild, rough places that sprang up along railroad stations.

40. Cattle Drive: The Chisholm Trail
Cowboys led cattle along the Chisholm trail to cow towns in order that they could be shipped east.

41. The Cowboy
The men of the Chisholm Trail were a rough lot, a mixture of Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants, African Americans and Mexicans.
Cowboys were portrayed as rugged, tough, individuals able to survive in harsh conditions and work long days.

42. Farming the Plains
Prairie life is romanticized in novels and films, but realistically life was very hard.
Land was often less than ideal for farming, and floods, droughts, prairie fires or dust storms could ruin an entire years work.
Falling crop prices and tough conditions forced many farmers to give up and return east.

43. “Soddie”
Many homesteaders constructed their houses out of sod blocks, strips of grass with thick roots and earth attached. These houses became known as “soddies”.

44. Dry Farming
Due to the dry Midwestern climate, farmers adopted techniques known as dry farming.
Techniques included planting crops that required less water, keeping fields free from weeds, and digging deep furrows so water could reach plant roots.
Farming knowledge improved with the creation of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

45. Farming goes Big
New farm machines and techniques increased farm output.
Those who did well adopted the same model of those controlling industrial development: expansion.
Owners of large farms hoped to reap a “bonanza” by supplying growing east coast populations
Large farms often focused on one single cash crop.

46. The Wild West:
Much of American identity came to be formed upon the western frontier, whether based on fact or mythology.
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in what became known as the Turner thesis, claimed that the frontier created Americans who were socially mobile, adventurous, and bent on individual self-improvement.

47. Section 4: Populism
Economic difficulties and issues surrounding money supply and taxation created a new political party; the populists.

48. The Farmers’ Complaint
During the late 1800s, crop prices went into a prolonged decline.
Many farmers were heavily indebted, and were hurt by the decline in prices.
Unable to pay back their debt, many lost their farms.
Graph on 277

49. Business Cycles Economic recessions cause chain reactions
In both 1873 and 1893, two different railroads collapsed.
Banks failed
Businesses went under
Unemployment soared
Farmers suffered from falling crop prices and high debt.

50. Tariffs A tariff is a tax on imported goods.
Tariffs helped American industry (limited competition)
Tariffs hurt farmers (needed to pay more for goods)
Because of high tariffs, farmers saw the government as siding with manufacturers over farmers.

51. Money Supply- inflation
Increased money supply = inflation
People who borrow money benefit from inflation because the amount borrowed becomes worth less.
Example: I borrow $100,000 to buy a house. After I borrow the money there is an increase in money supply, Now the house is worth $150,000 but I am only paying back $100,000, the amount I borrowed.

52. Money Supply- deflation
Reduced money supply = deflation
Deflation helps those who lend money because they receive money worth more then that which was borrowed.
Example: I borrow $100,000, then money supply is reduced causing deflation. My $100,000 borrowed money is now only worth $50,000, but I still need to pay back $100,000. This is bad for me but good for the bank/lender.

53. Money Supply- summary
Increased money supply causes inflation, which helps farmers by
diminishing the value of their debt
increasing the price of their goods/crops
Decreased money supply causes deflation, which helps lenders but hurts farmers, by
increasing the value of the farmers debt
decreasing the price of crops

54. The Gold Standard
Until 1873, the US currency had a bimetallic standard, meaning currency was backed by both gold and silver.
In 1873, Congress eliminated silver backing and moved to gold-only standard.
They eliminated the amount of currency in circulation now that money could only be backed by gold. This caused significant deflation.

55. Free Silver
The gold standard enraged many western farmers because it would depress their farm values while simultaneously lowering crop prices.
Opponents to the gold standard proposed free silver, the unlimited coining of silver dollars to increase money supply and cause inflation.

56. Sherman Silver Purchase Act: 1890
Required the Treasury to buy silver with notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold.
Didn’t fully satisfy proponents of free silver, but viewed as a step in the right direction.
President Cleveland repealed the act in 1893.

57. The Grange
In 1866, Department of Agriculture sent Oliver H. Kelley on an inspection tour of southern farms.
Kelley founded a cooperative farming network that became known as “the Grange”.
The Grange helped farmers organize and cooperate by buying goods in large quantities at lower prices.
The Grange pressured state legislators to regulate businesses.

58. Farmers’ Alliances
The cooperative, organized concept of the Grange sparked a network of new Farmers’ Alliances formed around the nation.
Through the more powerful alliances, farmers could petition to legislators and businesses about their interests and concerns.

59. The Populists
In 1890, groups of people associated with Farmers’ Alliances joined together to form a radical new political party: the Populists.
The Populists founded their platform on the following…
An increased circulation of money
The unlimited minting of silver
A progressive income tax (the more income, the greater percentage taxed)
Government ownership of communications and transportation systems

60. William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan, a congressman from Nebraska led the Populist Party
Nominated by both the Democratic and Populist Party for President in 1896
Very popular and sought to unite all poor, working class citizens across racial lines (African Americans and white farmers).

61. Cross of Gold Speech
At the 1896 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Bryan gave an emotional, appeal for free silver in what is one of the most famous speeches in US History…
“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” -Bryan

62. Election of 1896 Bryan lost the 1896 election to William McKinley.
Bryan dominated the western and southern vote, but lost the urban and industrial northeastern states.

63. Conclusion
By 1900, new gold discoveries allowed the for the gold standard to increase the money supply.
Crop prices began a slow rise
The silver movement died, as did populism.
Ideals of populism have lived on, however, such as progressive income tax and government regulation of big business.