Chapter 3 Closing the Frontier

Section 1: Moving WestLand of New Settlers

1. Federal Government began to encourage people to move westa. They owned over 1 billion acres of public landb. Offered at low prices for sale

2. Homestead Act of 1862a. Any citizen could claim 160 acres of landb. Just had to pay $10 filing feec. Pledge to live on and farm the land for 5 yearsd. 60,000 families claimed homesteads

3. Some people couldn’t because they couldn’t afford the money to move, buy equipment or sustain the couple of years working until the farm produced

a. On the Great Plains, water sources were needed.4. Additions to the Homestead Act

a. Timber Culture Act of 1863 – people could claim an additional 160 acres if they planted trees on a quarter of their land within 4 yearsb. Desert Land Act of 1877 – people could buy 640 acres of land for $1.25 an acres if they promised to irrigate part of it

1. People were dumping a bucket of water on the land and saying they irrigated it

Continue Section 1…5. Lands in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington

a. Unfit for cultivation (farming) offered for $2.50 an acre (lumbering), maximum, 180 acres

1. Lumber companies would fraudulently get sailors on the waterfront to file claims, then pay them a small amount and take their claims

6. Lots of land went to railroad companiesa. By 1900, ½ of the federal lands had been claimed or soldb. Land grants were given to railroad companies to encourage the completion of the transcontinental railroad – the tracks that would cross America from coast to coast

Rails Across the Continent1. Since the acquisition of California, many people dreamed of a railroad that went from the Atlantic to the Pacific

a. Congress approved the route and the railroad in 1862b. The Central Pacific Railroad would start in California and go east, the Union Pacific Railroad would start in the Nebraska Territory and go west.c. Each company received a 200 foot right of way – strip of land where the tracks would be laid

Continue Section 1…d. Each railroad company was also given 40 square miles of land along the route to sell to settlerse. Government loaned money to the railroad companies based on the amount of track they laid

2. Working on the railroada. Thousands of workers were needed: Irish, Chinese, Japanese and Mexican immigrants joined, as well as former slavesb. Faced Indian attacksc. Challenge of the sheer cliffs and winter storms of the Sierra Nevadad. Chinese workers did most of the work, losing hundreds of peoplee. Worked from dusk to dawn for between $2.50 and $4.00 a day

3. Uniting East and Westa. Thousands of workers were needed: Irish, Chinese, Japanese and Mexican immigrants joined, as well as former slavesb. Faced Indian attacksc. Challenge of the sheer cliffs and winter storms of the Sierra Nevadad. Chinese workers did most of the work, losing hundreds of peoplee. Worked from dusk to dawn for between $2.50 and $4.00 a day

Continue Section 1…4. Railroads met on May 10, 1869 in Promontory, Utah

a. Union Pacific had laid 1086 miles of trackb. Central Pacific had laid 689 miles of track

5. Finished by driving in a ceremonial golden spike6. Famous picture of the event:

Section 2 – The Mining FrontierGold and Silver Rushes

1. Western boom began by the California gold rush of 1849 (remember the San Francisco 49’ers)2. Fresh strike of gold at Pike’s Peak in 1858, led 50,000 people into the area3. Most people struck out and found nothing4. Some that stayed did well

a. Henry Comstock and his partner found a vein of silver and goldb. Became known as the Comstock Lode – a vein of ore, such as silver or goldc. Within 10 years, John Mackay and partners bought up the surrounding mining claims and dug deep into the mountains; they discovered the richest discovery of silver and gold in the history of mining

5. See the map on page 93 for mining regions by types of ore

The Mining Camps1. Rules regulated the size, boundaries and sale of claims – an area of land that a person marked out with stakes and recorded at a land office2. They also had to deal with crooks and cheats; some were simply run out of the district, otherwise, the entire camp gathered and they held a trial

Continue Section 2…4. If a trial didn’t satisfy the people, vigilantes (people who take it upon themselves to maintain order and punish criminals) would hang lawbreakers as a warning to others5. Men outnumbers women in the area

a. Some women worked as cooks, housekeepers or seamstresses. Some worked in saloons, dance halls or gambling debts. Others became famous like Calamity Jane

who wore men’s clothes, carried a rifle and wore pistols; she worked as a stagecoach driver, Pony Express riders and a cavalry scout.6. In most camps, ¼ to ½ of the people were foreign born; many Chinese

Mining the ore1. Many used deep tunnels and machines or even explosives, then other machines for separating the ore from the dirt

a. Others had to hand sift it in a process called panning2. Larger companies would move in with huge, expensive machinery

a. Dug deep shafts and hundreds of miles of tunnels1. The Comstock Lode had about 600 miles of tunnels

b. Many miners became employees of these huge companies3. Very dangerous work

a. People died of falls, explosions, cave-ins and other accidentsb. The temps rose 3 degrees for ever 100 feet of depth

Continue Section 2….c. The deeper the mine, the less air, the hotter it got, the more

dangerous the job; many times water would seep in d. The Comstock tunnels reached 3000 feet and sometimes flooded

with water so hot it burned the miners

The Impact of Mining1. By 1890, the mining boom was over2. Many mines, including the Comstock mine, had been mined out3. Western mines had produced over $2 billion worth of gold and silver between 1860 and 19004. Helped finance the Civil War and helped build new industries5. Few individual miners became rich, most of the wealth went to corporations that did large scale mining

a. In fact Henry Comstock sold his claim for $11,000 and died 11 years later brokeb. John Mackay and his partners became quite wealthyc. George Hearst who became rich as an investor in the Comstock Lode, spread his inheritance amongst his family. His son, William Randolph Hearst, started a powerful newspaper enterprise and a tremendous estate at San Simeon

Section 3: The Last Indian WarsIn 1865, more than 250,000 American Indians lived in the Western half of the country

1. Some of these being the remnants of the 5 Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) who had lost their lands and had been forced West2. The rest were those that had long lived in the West

Plains Indians1. Nearly 2/3 of the western Indians live on the Great Plains, more than 30 tribes2. See the map on page 97 for a list of locations for those tribes3. Most tribes had several thousand Indians

a. These were broken into bands of 300 to 500 peopleb. Most bands followed the herds of buffalo that live on the Plains

1. Buffalo gave the Indians: meat, furs/clothes, tools, bow strings from its carcass

4. Horses were another prize from the Plainsa. Brought over by the Spanishb. Made it easy to move locationsc. Became skilled hunters and fighters on the horses

1. Could fire 20 arrows in the time it took a settler/soldier to load and fire a rifle

Continue Section 3…5. Warfare amongst tribes

a. Brief raidsb. Small number of warriors would steal a few horses or performing coups – touching or hitting an enemy with the hand or a special coup stick (meant you were very brave)c. Headdresses of Plains Indians contained the record (count) of their coups with a feather representing each one

6. White intrusiona. White travelers disrupted the buffalo heard migrationb. Spread deadly diseases that the Indians weren’t used to c. Would lead to skirmishes and war

Changing Indian Policies1. The government tried to keep the peace between the Indians and the settlers2. Invited tribes to a meeting at Fort Laramie in September of 1851

a. More than 10,000 Indians show upb. Indians signed a treaty not to attack settlers on the Oregon Trailc. Set up boundaries for each tribed. Each tribe was promised $50,000 per year for 10 yearse. Promised Indians their land would always be theirs

Continue Section 3…3. Lasted only a few years

a. Most tribes refused to stay within their boundariesb. Settlers continued to pour into their lands for settling and for resourcesc. Led to violence between the 2d. Indians usually lost the battles and their land

1. Sand Creek Massacre – gold rush at Pike’s Peak led to fighting of settlers with the Cheyenne and Arapaho

a. White troops attacked peaceful Cheyenne slaughtering 200 Indians, 2/3 being women and childrenb. The Cheyenne and Arapaho would also lose their lands

2. The Sioux went to war, raiding forts and wagon trains, because the government was building a trail through their lands

a. Chief Red Cloud at one point, lured 80 soldiers into an ambush and killed them all

e. Led the US to confine the Indians onto reservations in the Dakotas and what’s now Oklahoma

1. Many major tribes agreed with this2. Some resisted the change

a. The US basically said those the oppose the new policy would be killed off entirely

Continue Section 3…Final Battles

1. Some chiefs and young warriors refused to honor the treaties2. In late 1868 until roughly 1876, the Indians and federal soldiers fought some 200 battles; one of the most famous being:

a. In 1875, the Sioux fought with settlers who illegally came into the Black Hills to mine gold

1. That land was sacred to the Sioux and theirs, by treaty, forever2. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull vowed to crush the whites3. US sends in troops, including 1 led by General George Armstrong Custer4. Custer led his 265 men into an Indian village along the Little Bighorn River, stumbling upon some 2,000 warriors ready for him5. Upon hearing the news, the white public demanded revenge

b. In 1876, 3,000 Indians surrendered1. Smaller bands began to give up one by one2. Sitting Bull held out in Canada until 1881 with a small band of Sioux

3. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce moved some 1300 miles our running 2000 soldiers (peacefully rather than fighting); lasted 75 days until 30 miles from the Canada, they had to surrender due to lack of food and being tired

Continue Section 3…The End of Tribal Life

1. Some white’s were angered by the government’s Indian policiesa. 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson writes A Century of Dishonor, tracing the US government’s long history of broken promises to the Indiansb. 1887, Congress passes the Dawes Act – divided tribal lands into small farms, each family head received 160 acres, a single adult 80 acres and children 40 acres

1. Any land leftover would be bought by the government and sold to white homesteaders2. Indians would become American citizens if they accepted the land and the way of whites3. Indian families received some 47 million acres of land4. The US government would hold all of the Indian’s land in trust for 25 years to keep it out of the hands of speculators

a. Wouldn’t you know that even in the hands of the US government, the speculators still got their hands on most of it

Section 4: The Cattle KingdomBy 1865, white settlers had decimated the buffalo of the Great Plains and had moved against the Indians. This opened the land to cattle ranches and the growth of the legend of the cowboy.

Beginnings in Texas1. American cowboys adopted the techniques, clothing and equipment of the Mexican vaqueros (Spanish word for cowboy)2. Since the 1820’s and 1830’s, settlers in Texas had used the Spanish-Mexican

methods and techniques for raising cattle, mainly the same longhorn cattle breeda. Longhorns were able to survive the in the wild with the dry conditionsb. Huge herds, by 1865 about 5,000,000 head of cattle in Southern Texas

3. Source of income for people in Texasa. Demand for beef on the East coastb. Could be bought for $3 to $4 a head, sold for 10 times that amountc. Driven on trails to the railroads in Kansas then shipped by rail to Chicago for slaughterd. Abilene became the major cattle market

1. Pens could hold 3000 cattle2. Could weigh 20 at a time

Continue Section 4The Trail Drive

1. Trail Drive – long trip to a market or railroada. A trip could last 100 miles and have 2,000 – 3,000 head of cattleb. had 8 to 12 cowboys, a wrangler, a cook and a trail boss

1. Average age of a cowboy was 24, some being Indian or part Indian; 1/3 being black or Mexican Americans

c. Woke up at daybreak for beans and biscuits and hot coffee; then went right to work driving cattled. Herd might be 2 miles long; given time to graze and drink watere. Could cover 15 miles in a day

2. Problemsa. Floods could occasionally block river crossingsb. Droughts dried up streams and water holes; water for the cows and horsesc. Stampedes – sudden, headlong rush of frightened cattle

1. Lightning or a coyote’s howl could set them off3. Could take 2 to 3 months to drive the cattle to market

Continue Section 4 Open-Range Ranching

1. By 1880, 4.5 million head of cattle grazed the Great Plainsa. Open range – unfenced grasslandb. Government owned nearly all the land but people could let their cattle graze on itc. Some shrewd ranchers bought areas that contained sources of water and could cut off the flow of water

2. In the spring, the cowboys would round up all the cattle, separate them by owner and then brand the new calves with a branding iron that had a mark specific to the owner

a. Steers ready to be sold were separated and driven to market, the rest were left loose on the open range until the next spring

The End of the Open Range1. Sheepherders starting moving in on the grasslands, increasing the number of sheep from 200,000 to 1.5 million

a. Sheep ate the grass to the roots leaving nothing for the cattleb. Sheep and cattle ranchers fought range wars over this

2. Barbed wire makes it’s first appearance with the farmers that came to the Great Plains; separated the grazing animals from the crops

Continue Section 4 3. Bad weather was what killed the open range

a. In 1886 summer, a heat wave dried waterholes and killed the grassb. Cattle grew sick, thin and weak, not ready to face the winterc. That winter was known as the “Great Die-Up”

1. Blizzard after blizzard hit the Plains2. By spring there were thousands of cattle carcasses littering the Plains3. Some ranchers lost 90% of their herd

4. To combat this in the future, ranchers changed their methodsa. Fenced in lands with barbed wireb. Reduced the size of their herdsc. Grew hay for winter feedd. Bred longhorns with European breeds to produce bigger, more meaty beef

Section 5: The Farming Frontier

Adapting to the Great Plains1. Very different conditions from what settlers were used to

a. Water was scarceb. Some regions got less than 20 inches of rain per yearc. If a farm didn’t have a stream or river nearby, the farmer had to use ground water – water stored deep beneath the surface of the earth

1. To get to the water they had to dig wells 50 to 500 feet deep and use windmills to pump the water to the surface; expensive

New Settlers on the Plains1. Homestead Act of 1862 set off mass migration west

a. Blacks and whites both moved out westb. In 1879, 20,000 to 40,000 former slaves went to Kansas or further westc. Known as the Exodusters – like the Israelites in the book of Exodus that left in large numbers for a new home and new life

2. In some parts of the West, 15% of the settlers were single, either unmarried or widowed3. Railroad involvement in settlement

a. Encouraged single women to go west to find husbandsb. Recruited immigrants as settlers

1. Offered credit2. Offered free farming courses

Continue Section 5 2. No local source of lumber (for houses or fences) due to the dry climate

a. It could cost up to $1000 to fence in 160 acres of homesteadb. Barbed wire replaced wood as a fencing

1. Glidden’s barbed wire factory produced 600 miles of wire per day by 1883

3. Most houses started out as sod housesa. Sliced into 3 foot thick sections and then laid like brickb. Dust filled, dirty and stuffy in the hot climatec. Leaked when rainy

4. Weathera. Blizzards in the winterb. 110 degree weather for weeks at a time in the summer timec. Summer rainstorms pounded the freshly planted corn and wheat

5. Other issuesa. Clouds of grasshoppers so think it could choke a human and kill

livestock1. Ate everything: crops, clothing and handles from tools

b. Loneliness of the Plains; it was flat and windswept and went on forever

1. Neighbors could be 20 miles away

Continue Section 5 New Farming Methods

1. Plowing furrows 12 to 14 inches deep to loosen the soil to allow water to seep up to the plant roots2. Turning over the soil after every rainfall to bury the newly moistened soil under a layer of dust

a. Kept the water from evaporating too quickly3. Planting seeds further apart so that fewer plants completed for the scare moisture in the soil4. Lastly, the famers allowed some of their fields to remain fallow (unplanted) each year to allow water to build up in the soil5. These techniques were called dry farming, often used where precipitation was from 10 to 20 inches per year

a. Also began to use European grains that could withstand the harsh climate of the Great Plains

6. Also began to use new machinesa. By 1890, 900 companies made farm machineryb. Steel plows were used to break up the tough sodc. The reaper allowed farmers to harvest large crops of wheat

7. Droughtsa. Began in 1886, between 1888-1892 half the population in western Kansas gave up and left; Nebraska lost 15,000 people and 6,000 farms in the 1890’s

Continue Section 5 Closing the Western Frontier

1. As people moved west, people wanted the government to open up the territory that belonged to the Indians and give it to the white settlers2. The Five Civilized Tribes and the Plains Indians were again driven from their land3. 2,000,000 acres of the Oklahoma District was Indian Territory

a. Was opened to white settlers on April 22, 1889 at noonb. By sunset that day, 12,000 homesteads had been claimed

1. There were also smaller lots that were claimedc. Oklahoma City was founded in a number of hours with a population 10,000

4. Over the next couple of years, even more Indian Territory was opened to whitesa. Dawes Act of 1887 which took away much of the Indian lands did not apply to the Five Civilized Tribesb. The Five Civilized Tribes kept their government until 1906

1. The US government/Congress forced them to take homesteads like the other tribes had to

c. By 1907, Oklahoma had become a state5. In 1909, another Homestead Act had been passed giving 320 acres of land per settler

a. Set off another surge of settlementsb. See map on page 113