1. Settling the West: How The West Was Won
US History
Objectives:
Explain the relationship among territorial expansion, westward movement of the population, new immigration, growth of cities, the role of the railroads, and the admission of new states to the United States.
Describe the transformation of the American economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern industrial economy and identifying major inventions that improved life in the United States.
Timeline – 1870s-1920s

2. Why Go West? New Life after the Civil War Opportunity
Mining – Gold and Silver
Free Land – Farming
Cattle Ranching

3. Geography of the Great Plains
Grassland region (Midwest)
Tall, thick grass
Hot in the summer, cold in
the winter
Little water
Few trees
Lots of buffalo

4. Technology Facilitates Migration West
New Methods create a Wheat Belt
Sodbusters - homes
Dry farming
Windmill – consistent water source
Steel plow
Mechanical harrow – harvest wheat
Mechanical Reaper
RAILROADS

5. Technology Creates New Markets
Farming and Ranching become profitable
Railroads bring crops and cattle to cities
Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions no longer unsettled frontier by 1900

6. Homestead Act (est. 1862)
Free land to settlers who live on land for 5 yrs and farm
poor Southerners and African Americans go West seeking opportunity after the Civil War

7. The American Cowboy
Cattle Ranching becomes profitable – BUT – gotta get the cows to the markets
Cattle drives
take longhorns hundreds of miles to train depots in Kansas/Missouri to be transported to larger cities for “SOME GOOD EATING”
Open Range – no fences yet – cattle roam the
plains feeding

8. Barbed Wire (invented 1874)
Open range changed to fenced-in ranches
Ends the Cowboy and cattle drive era

9. Plains Indian Wars (1860s-1890s)
USA vs. Natives for control of Plains

10. The Buffalo Natives main food source
Hunted to near extinction by US Gov’t to eliminate the Native Americans

11. The Battle of Little Big Horn (June 25, 1876)
Custer’s Last Stand – attacked thousands of Sioux Indians and lost
Angered Americans against Natives

12. Violent Intensifies US sends in more troops
Slaughter Native American tribes
Sand Creek / Wounded Knee – unarmed women and children killed by US troops

13. The Reservation System
Native Americans lose land and their way of life
Forced onto Reservations
Dawes Act – created to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American Culture