The Old West

So we have a host of these myths and legends that surround the Old West. Our questions today are: Which Old West are we talking about, and whose Old West, and how old was the Old West? If we are to deal with these issues, there are, I think, three significant ways of answering our questions.

1) Space. Where was the Old West?

2) Time. When was the Old West--over what period of years?

3) The images that crowd our minds when we hear the phrase "the Old West."

What was going on over here??

What was found here?

SPACE

Area 1- Canada to Texas

Area 2- The Far West- Pacific Mountain Ranges, The Sierra Nevada's up to the Cascade Range

Area 3- The area that lay between the Pacific Mountain ranges and the back of the Rocky Mountain ranges

These three areas--three separate terrains, three separate kind of climates--have been lumped together, both in the nineteenth century and in the present, as the "space" of the Old West.

TIME

The "Old West" was a post-Civil War phenomenon. It lasted a very brief time, roughly from about 1865 to about 1890.

Between the years immediately following the Civil War and about 1900, we populated over 430,000,000 acres of land. We more than doubled the land space of the United States.

Also, during these years at least three empires grew,

Mining

Cattle Ranching

Farming

IMAGES of THE OLD WEST

What are the images of the Old West?

Who lived there? – Make A List

Popular culture materials. In the 1870s and 1880s, one of the new genres for a growing reading public was the genre of the dime novel.

They churned out hundreds of titles per year, most of which, early on, were fictionalized, romanticized accounts of the Old West.

Buffalo Bill Cody

• Buffalo Bill was born William Cody in 1846 in Iowa

• He rode with wagon trains, cattle drives, and the Pony Express.

• He earned his nickname hunting buffalo to feed the Kansas Pacific Railroad workers.

• New York magazine writer, Ned Buntline, went to Nebraska in search of a model for a protagonist for stories of the West. He zeroed in on Cody and later that year introduced his hero to the readers of the New York Weekly in "Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men." Over 500 Buffalo Bill dime novels followed.

• The success of the Buffalo Bill stories led Cody to develop a stage version of the hero's exploits in the 1870s

• The shows depicted the dramas of frontier life in Native American horse races, buffalo hunts, and battle scenes, such as Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn and the fight at Warbonnet Creek. It also included a review of the world's best gunmen. Re-enactment of Custer’s last stand.

Assignment:to create a dime store novel that tells the story of a wild west town or event.You should have a cast of characters For Example:The SheriffThe Cattle Baron Saloon OwnerFarmerSchool TeacherDance Hall GirlThe gold minerThe gun slinger The dime store novel should exaggerate the myths of the wild west.The story have a beginning, middle and an end. The story should have some sort of conflict that is in the end resolved. While I want to exploit the myths there should be a back page that then deals with myth busters. Busting the myth means telling the truth about what the west was really like 

Dime Store Novel

Requirements

Everyone in groups is to complete a page

At least 1 drawing per page

The pages should either be NEATLY written in INK or typed

You need to have a cover that includes a title and names of the authors

You will be reading your story to the class and then busting some of the myths that you included in your story.

For Example: John Wesley Hardin in your story is known to have killed 30-40 men.

The best historians can discover is that he did shoot one man perhaps and kill one man, and that totally by accident. Hardin was in a hotel room, he was cleaning his six-gun, he didn't realize there was a bullet in the chamber, it went off and killed the poor character in the room next door.

DUE MONDAY April 9th

Over Coming Geography

Migration West Examples

Kansas

1860 had population of 107,000

1890 population 1.4 million

Nebraska

1860= 28,000

1890= over 1 million

What could be some possible reasons that people populated the West after 1860? Why not before 1860?

Follow the clues in the next few slides…….

What are these folks doing?

Clue #1

Clue #2

Clue #3

Clue #4

Clue #5

Sod House

Windmills

Irrigation

Screen Windows

Buffalo Chips

Homestead Act

Transcontinental Railroad

Government Indian Policy

All of these made possible the settling of the West after 1860.

The Great Plains

The Rocky Mountains

Great American

Desert

Land Water Timber Climate

How should events from the Indian Wars be commemorated by the federal government?

http://www.historynow.org/09_2006/lp2b.html

Lesson Plan

http://www.historynow.org/09_2006/pdf/American_perspective_Images.pdf

American perspective of the battle

http://www.historynow.org/09_2006/pdf/Native_American_perspective_Images.pdf

Indian Perspective of the battle

The West and Native Americans

Native American Tribes had been “asked to move west since the establishment of colonies in the 1600-1700s.

Indian Removal Act 1830 States were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the "Five Civilized Tribes"

Indian Wars

Why were these wars happening if Indians had been given plenty of land? What is prompting these clashes?

Sand Creek Massacre

Gold had been found in the area.

White settlers flooded the area.

Some Cheyenne and Arapahos made traveling dangerous for white settlers

Black Kettle went to Sand Creek near fort Lyon to sign a peace treaty. It was then that Colonel Chivington and his 800 troops of the First Colorado Cavalry, marched to their campsite in order to attack the Indians.

Around 200 Cheyenne were killed, most women, children and elderly men

Battle of the Little Bighorn

Custer vs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse

Thousands of Indians had slipped away from their reservations through early 1876. Military officials planned a three-pronged expedition to corral them and force them back to the reservations

2000 Native America force

About 800 Cavalry

Wounded Knee Massacre 1890

Before the MassacreThe Dakota were to be transferred to Omaha, Nebraska. February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations. This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east. Once on the reservation they were made to farm. The weather and soil were poor and many ended starving

The Massacre

Sitting Bull’s half brother, Big Foot

last major armed conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States

Troops were to disarm the Dakota

Ghost Dance

A shot is fired

153 Lakota/Dakota were killed

Big Foot-dead

1. List the different names that are found on the maps.

2. Compare the two maps. What differences do you find? Use a ruler or a scale to compare distances and sizes.

3. How had the area changed in the years between the two maps, 1885 and 1891?

4. How can you account for the differences?