1. Tricksters and Trailblazers
Unit 4, Part 2
The Vanishing Frontier

2. Unit Focus Life in the West 1800-1900s Westward expansion
The lure of the west
Interpret the influences of historical contexts on a literary work

3. Pre-Expansion west of Mississippi
Frontier populated by Native American tribes
Great Plains: Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche.
Southwest: Apache, Navajo
Great Plains: Relied on Buffalo
Southwest: Sheep, goats, and crops (Spanish influence)

4. The American Dream
1841: First caravan of pioneers headed for California and Oregon.
Within 2 years <1,000 people made the trip
1849: California Gold Rush
1,000s traveled to find the American dream
1860s: Plains begin to be settled
1862: Homestead Act = Free Land
Construction of Railroads = 8 mil settlers in 2 years.

5. Expansion = Doom Native American way of life doomed
White belief that they were bringing “civilization” to the savages
Didn’t believe that Native Americans had any legitimate right to the land.
Gained land through force and treaties
Tribes relocated to Reservations on terrible land

6. Post-Civil War Literature
Romanticism a Realism
Truth of ordinary life
“Local-color Realism”
Realistic stories about places or events close to home
Mining camps, farming communities, cattle ranches, frontier towns.
“Wild West”: Influence of current literature

7. “No white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the territory, or without the consent of the Indians to pass through the same.”
- Treaty of 1868

8. “Our land here is the dearest thing earth to us
“Our land here is the dearest thing earth to us. Men take up land and get rich on it, and it is very important for us Indians to keep it.”
- White Thunder

9. “I did not know then how much was ended
“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.”
- Black Elk

10. What do these quotations say about the role of the land in the lives of Native Americans?
What do you think is the dream referred to by Black Elk?
What do these quotations suggest about conflicts between Native Americans and whites?