1. The West and Agricultural Revolution Chapter 26
AP US History
Michael Perreault
Gloucester High School

2. Culture Clash on the Plains
Native Americans
No Formal Leadership
Land to be used: not owned
Polytheism
White Settlers
Elected Representatives
Land to be developed: Since NAs weren’t it was free to take
Monotheism
Christianity

3. 1934 Indian Territory
The Great American Desert: Land wasn’t useable because wooden plows couldn’t crack the surface

4. Reservation System
When settlers begin moving in: puts pressure to negotiate with NAs
Treaties of Fort Laramie 1851 and Fort Atkinson 1853 negotiated with ”Chiefs”
Problem: NAs normally didn’t recognize the authority of the “chiefs” and didn’t follow the treaties
Settlers would ignore treaties if they wanted the land
NAs would be forced on to smaller reservations in the 1860s: Great Sioux Reservation in Dakota Territory and the Indian Territory in Oklahoma

5. Why Push West? Gold and silver: California, Dakotas, and Arizona
Farming in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon Trail)
Steel Plow makes the land desirable
Extension of RR
Mormons

6. Bison
After the Civil War, over 15 million bison grazed the western plains.
By 1885, fewer than 1000 were left after the bison had been slaughtered for their tongues, hides, or for amusement.
Primary source of food, clothing, shelter, tools
Led to more competition between the NA tribes
Put NAs at the mercy of the government to supply them with food

8. Receeding Native Populations
1864 Sand Creek, Colorado Colonel J. M. Chivington's militia killed 400 innocent Indians.
1866 The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a rare Indian victory in the plains wars.
In 1876, Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry was slaughtered by Sioux, searching for gold in the "Great Sioux reservation."
The Nez Percé Indians were sent to a dusty reservation in Kansas in 1877.

9. Conscience . . . too little too late
By the 1880s, the nation began to realize the horrors it had committed on the Indians.
Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor in 1881 which told of the record of government ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians.
She also wrote Ramona in 1884 which told of injustice to the California Indians.

10. The Massacre at Wounded Knee
NAs were desperate, land, culture, and people were being taken away
Medicine men promised a return to the way of life if they did the Ghost Dance
Word spread among the reservations and they began heading to the Pine Ridge Reservation
Army kills 400ish Mostly unarmed men women and children
Marks an end to the Indian Wars

11. Why were the NAs so “easily” Defeated?
Loss of Bison
Loss of Warriors: Battle of Diminishing Returns
RR allows the settlers and military to move around quickly
Better Weapons
Disease and alcohol
No support from government

12. Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
Dissolved many tribes as legal entities, wiped out tribal ownership of land, and set up individual Indian family heads with 160 free acres.
If the Indians behaved like "good white settlers" then they would get full title to their holdings as well as citizenship (after 25 years).
The Dawes Act attempted to assimilate the Indians with the white men. The Dawes Act remained the basis of the government's official Indian policy until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

13. Indian Schools
1879, the government funded the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
NA children taken East to be taught “the White Man’s Ways”
Beaten for speaking anything other than English.
Became children of two worlds and neither. Didn’t fit in NA culture and wouldn’t be accepted by white society.

14. Mining and Migration West
1858, gold and silver were discovered in the Rockies, prompting many "fifty-niners" or "Pike's Peakers"
1859 after gold and silver were discovered at Comstock Lode.
Women gained the right to vote in new western states
Frontier mining played a vital role in bringing people and wealth to the West.
The discoveries of gold and silver also allowed the Treasury to resume specie payments in 1879 (payments for silver).

15. Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive
Transcontinental railroads enabled live cattle to be transported to the East from Texas.
To get them to the rail yards cowboys would take the cattle along the Chisolm Trail to the rail yards
The cattle “graduated from Bovine University” once they arrived in an Eastern city.
Cattle-raisers organized the Wyoming Stock-Growers' Association to make the cattle-raising business profitable.

16. End of the Cowboy Way of Life
Cowboys end because of
Closing off of routes through barbed wire
Blizzards in that starved or froze cattle
Ranchers closed off the ranches and rails came closer to them

17. Homestead Act of 1862
160 acres of land by living on it for 5 years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of about $30.
Instead of public land being sold primarily for revenue, it was now being given away to encourage settlement
Much of the land given away by the Act had terrible soil and the weather included no precipitation.
Many homesteaders were forced to give their homesteads back to the government.

18. Types of Farming
The 100th meridian was an imaginary line running from the Dakotas to Texas that separated the wet East from the dry West.
"Dry farming" was the practice of using shallow cultivation to grow crops in the dry western environment. Over time, it depleted and dried the soil.
Tough strains of wheat flourished in the West, and new federally-financed irrigation projects caused the Great American Desert to bloom.

19. The Far West Comes of Age
The West experienced tremendous population growth from the 1870s to the 1890s.
Colorado was admitted as a state in 1876 after the Pike's Peak gold rush.
From , the Republican Congress, seeking more Republican electoral and congressional votes, admitted six new states: ND, SD, MT, WA, ID, and WY. Utah was admitted in 1896, after the Mormon Church formally banned polygamy in 1890.

20. Native American Land Given Away
Many "sooners" illegally entered the Indian lands in the district of Oklahoma.
On April 22, 1889, the district was opened to the public and thousands came.
In 1907, Oklahoma was admitted as the "Sooner State."

21. Closing Off of the Frontier
In 1890, an American frontier line was no longer evident; all the unsettled areas were now broken up by isolated bodies of settlement.
Western migration may have caused urban employers to maintain high wages to discourage workers from leaving to go farm the West.

22. Growth of Western Cities
Western cities grew as failed farmers, failed miners, and unhappy easterners sought fortune in cities.
By 1880, the area from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast was the most urbanized region in America, measured by the percentage of people living in cities.

23. The Farm Becomes a Factory
High prices caused farmers to concentrate on growing single "cash" crops, such as wheat or corn, and use their profits to buy produce at the general store and manufactured goods in town.
The speed of harvesting wheat dramatically increased in the 1870s by the invention of the twine binder and the in the 1880s by the combine.
This mechanization of farms brought about the idea that farms were "outdoor grain factories."

24. Deflation Dooms the Debtor
One-crop economy, meant farmers' livelihoods depended on the price of their single product, which was unpredictable and out of their control.
In the late 1800s, deflation caused the relative prices of crops to decrease. Thousands of farms foreclosed, and some farmers became tenant farmers, renting instead of owning the land that they farmed.

25. Challenges for Farmers
In the late 1800s, poor soil and droughts forced many people to abandon their farms and towns.
Farmers sold their produce in an unprotected world market, but they had to buy their manufactured equipment in a tariff-protected home market.
At the mercy of various corporations: harvester trust, barbed-wire trust, fertilizer trust, and railroad trust.
Farmers made up half the population in 1890, but they failed to organize until they were forced to do so by the federal government 50 years later.

26. National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
AKA, The Grange, 1867, was led by Oliver H. Kelley. nhance the lives of isolated farmers through social, educational, and fraternal activities.
The Grangers also sought to improve the farmers' collective troubles.
They established cooperatively owned stores for consumers and cooperatively owned grain elevators and warehouses for producers.

27. Moving into Politics
Some Grangers entered politics and made Grange Laws, which tried to force public control of private business for the general welfare.
The Grangers' influence faded after courts reversed their laws.
The Greenback Labor Party sought to improve the working conditions of laborers.

28. Prelude to Populism
Farmers formed the Farmers' Alliance in the late 1870s. They cooperated in buying and selling to gain control over the railroads and manufacturers.
The Alliance had limited power because it excluded blacks and landless tenant farmers. The Colored Farmers' National Alliance was formed in the 1880s to attract black farmers.

29. cont.
The People's Party, also known as the Populists, grew out of the Farmers' Alliance.
It called for nationalizing the railroads, telephones, and telegraph; instituting a graduated income tax; and creating a new federal subtreasury, in which harvested crops were stored until crop prices rose.
Populists also wanted free and unlimited coinage of silver, later: bimetallism

30. Workers Demand Change
The Panic of 1893 strengthened the Populists' stance that farmers and laborers were being oppressed by the economic and political systems.
"General" Jacob S. Coxey led a protest in Washington in 1894, demanding that the government start a public works program.
Eugene V. Debs helped to organize the American Railway Union.
The Pullman strike of 1894 was started when the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages. Federal troops broke up the strike.

31. Election of 1896
William McKinley, R. believed the prime function of government was to aid business, and he believed in the "trickle down effect" (laborers do well if the business does well).
The Republican platform supported the gold standard.
William Jennings Bryan, D. supported inflation through the unlimited coinage of silver, which caused many Populists to support him as a candidate.

32. Campaign of Opposites
McKinley: wealthy/powerful campaigned for him, appeals to wealthy
Bryan: Campaigns city-by-city, not many rich and powerful support the poor found support as the Populist candidate after The Cross of Gold Speech
Stumping or On the Stump: going from town to town giving campaign speeches, in old days people literally stood on tree stumps to be heard
Who would the middle class support?

33. Results
William McKinley won the election of 1896, votes came from the East.
Bryan's votes came from the debt-stricken South and the trans-Mississippi West.
Businesses and wage earners in the East voted for their jobs and had no reason to favor inflation, which was the heart of Bryan's campaign.
The last election in which a candidate tried to win the election with help from the farmers.
No one cares about the farmers but the farmers

34. Elections for the Future
Future elections focused on trying to win the urban vote.
The political era from 1896 to 1932 was called the "fourth party system."
This time period was characterized by lower voter turnout, weakening of party organizations, and the fading of issues like civil-service reform.
New political issues became concern for industrial regulation and the welfare of labor.