The West1860-1910

Bierstadt, Albert - Sunset in the Yosemite Valley (1868)

Bierstadt, Albert - Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA (1868)

Bierstadt, Albert - Emigrants Crossing the Plains (1867)

Remington, Frederic - The Smoke Signal (1905)

Moran, Thomas - Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872)

The Frontier

The settlement of the West "the existence of an area of free land …. and the advance of American settlement westward" was the central story of American history. The process of westward expansion had transformed a desolate and savage land into modem civilization. It had also continually renewed American ideas of democracy and individualism and had, therefore, shaped not just the West but the nation as a whole.

The Significance of the Frontier in American HistoryFrederick Jackson Turner

Did our frontier make Americans different from Europeans? Why?

Sand Creek Massacre (1864)Colonel John Milton

Chivington of the Colorado Militia

“I have come to kill Indians …. and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians.”

The Cheyenne

Among the group were 500 women and children and only 200 warrior. Chivington led his cavalry of 750 in a surprise attack on the Indians, killing 105 women and children and 28 men, as well as mutilating the dead and wounded.

“But what do we want to live for? The white man has taken our country, killed all of our game; was not satisfied with that, but killed our wives and children too…”

Chief Black Kettle 1863

Chief Black Kettle

Battle of Little Big Horn (1876)

General Custer Chief Sitting Bull500 troops 2000 warriors

Ghost Dance

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

The Lakota were on their way toward the Pine Ridge Reservation. The US cavalry intercepted them and ordered them to hand over their weapons. A shot was fired, and the Cavalry opened fire. The Lakota sought to escape the troops, who chased them for miles across the prairies. By the end of fighting, which lasted less than an hour, at least 150 Lakota had been killed and 50 wounded. In comparison, US Army casualties numbered 25 dead and 39 wounded.

Chief Joseph – of the Nez Percé

“I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. ….. The old men are all dead. …. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

A Navajo boy named Tom Torlino as he entered the Carlisle Indian School and a short time after

the "reforming" process had begun

ASSIMILATION OF NATIVE AMERICANS

How the west was lost

The Indian Wars1861 Pacific Railroad Act

Gave companies land in exchange for building railroadTranscontinental Railroad (1869)

1862 Homestead ActOffered 160 acres of land to western settlersMorrill Land Grant ActSet aside land for colleges in the West

1876 Sioux Wars – Battle of Little Big HornChief Sitting Bull defeats General Custer’s Army

1881 A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt JacksonCriticized Indian mistreatment & broken promises by gov’t

1887 Dawes General Allotment ActAim: Assimilation of Indians (Breaking-up tribes)

1890 Battle of Wounded KneeSoldiers massacre 200 Sioux

‘Move On!’ Has the Native American no rights that the naturalized American is bound to respectThomas Nast

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody

In 1972, protesting against economic and political discrimination, the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied

Native American occupation of Alcatraz, CA

ECONOMYOF THE WEST

Virginia City, Nevada

I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier. I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte,carrying freight and passengers. I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring...

Walt Whitman

A golden spike was driven at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869, to signal the completion of the first linkage of railroads across the American continent.

Invented by Joseph Glidden in 1874

Exodusters waiting for a steamboat to carry them westward in the late 1870's

The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889

Life on the Great Plains – The Sod House

Homesteading on the Great Plains

Imagine life in North Dakota…