WESTWARD EXPANSIONChapter 6

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WEST

THE WHY AND HOWCAUSES/REASONS

PUSH FACTORS:

• Civil War Destruction

• Eastern Farmland Costs

• Failed Entrepreneurs

• Race and Religious Persecution

• Competition for Jobs in the East

• These are Economic, Social, Cultural

PULL FACTORS:

• Free land

• Opportunity to strike it rich

Manifest Destiny Ideology: justify American desire to expand the United States to the Pacific Ocean

Land: inexpensive - attractive to Americans and

immigrants from East and

Mid West

Religion: free to practice beliefs – Mormons

Railroad: expand = money

TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADConnect East coast to West coast = transport goods and people

-another form of transportation

-helps in unifying country

-helps in communication

Railroad companies pressuring Congress:

*removal of Native Americans

*financial help = Congress provided loans and land grants for private building of the Transcontinental Railroad

Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 & 1864

*federal subsidies in land and loans for the construction of a

transcontinental railroad across the United States

(1862) - granted 10 alternate sections of public domain land per mile on both sides of the railway, and it provided loan bonds for each mile of track laid

(1864) - doubled the size of the land grants and allowed the railroads to sell their own bonds

Granted to: Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad)

*Railroad company sold land closest to tracks

Interstate Commerce Act 1887

*to regulate the railroad industry

*rates be "reasonable and just”

*railroads had to charge all customers the same

fee for shipping goods

REMOVAL OF NATIVE AMERICANS

By 1840s and 1850s West attractive to white man

- gold, silver, and other minerals

- land opportunity

Federal Indian Removal Policy – Native Americans resettled in the West in reservations/reserves

*Indians promised food and clothing but not always received

these

*U.S. Army in charge of removal and keeping Indians on

reservations/reserves

Confrontation between White Settlers and Indians

Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado 1864* Cheyenne & Arapaho encamped in Sand Creek after gold discovered

in their area

*Colorado militia clubbed and scalped Indians even women & children while they slept

*Colorado militia under Methodist minister, John Chivington

Battle of Little Bighorn 1876

*gold in the Black Hills brought people to Dakotas on Sioux hunting land

*Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull lead Indians to drive out the settlers

*George Custer with 211 men verses 2,000 Indians

*Crazy Horse led the charge and killed Custer and his men

Wounded Knee December 29, 1890

*on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota

*Came about in response to the Ghost Dance-Paiute prophet named Wovoka -Christian Messiah, Jesus Christ, had returned to earth in the form of a Native

American-Messiah would raise all the Native American believers above the earth-white man would disappear from Native lands, buffalo herds and all the other

animals would return in abundance, and the ghosts of their ancestors would return to earth

-They would then return to earth to live in peace.

*Government was trying to arrest Sitting Bull*Confrontation ensued and Sitting Bull was killed December 15, 1890*Troops then went after Indians who fled*Hostilities at Wounded Knee *100 innocent lives lost*Ended the Indian Wars

DAWES ACT (1887)Native Americans - Assimilation

• Native Americans to be Americanized - adopted the white man’s ways

• Encouraged to go to boarding schools

Dawes Act: to turn Indians into farmers and land owners

• 160 acres of reservation land for farming or

• 320 acres for grazing to each head of an Indian family

• Land held by the government for 25 years in trust

• Indians be granted citizenship and the land would be theirs

MINING INDUSTRY

• Gold discovered at Sutters Mill California = Gold Rush

• Other minerals were silver, lead, and copper

• Towns spring up and merchants follow

• Some towns were “boomtowns” meaning they were there as long as the Gold and Silver was there.

• Originally used Placer mining: ancient method of using water to excavate, transport, concentrate, and recover heavy minerals from alluvial or placer deposits(natural concentration of heavy minerals caused by

the effect of gravity on moving particles)

• Once surface ores had been mined big businesses came in and mined deep seams with dynamite and Hydraulic Drill.

• New type of mining/technology caused damage to environment

• hydraulic mining washed away hillsides; deposited debris in canyons & valleys; or caused rivers to clog & flood

• hazardous to miners• lead poison; toxic fumes; cave-ins, or explosions• New machinery reduced need for skilled laborer

– Many immigrants (Mexicans and especially Chinese) were used to do these dangerous jobs for low wages.

CATTLE INDUSTRY - RANCHING• Learned from Mexicans

• Cattle was inexpensive and grass was mostly free since grazing lands were public lands

• Open-Range System

– Branded cattle, roamed freely, cowboys rounded them up and drove them to cow towns.

• Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire ending open-range system

• Gustavus Swift invents refrigerated railcar to ship meat more efficiently

• Reasons suffered economically: ranchers overstock range with more cattle than land could support; overgrazing produced less nutritious grasses like sagebrush since land no time to replenish self with original nutritious grass; droughts in mid 1880s; blizzards of 1886 & 1887

• Adjustments to environment so cattle would not die: ranchers reduced size of herd; fed hay during winter; ranchers grew drought resistant grasses; built water wells and installed wind mills to pump water

Exit Ticket: Match the word with the correct definition

• Allotment• Mechanization• AlturisticDefinitions:A. To equip with machinery or producing something

with machineryB. Showing an unselfish concern for the wellbeing of

othersC. The amount of something allocated to a person

ARGRICULTURE

• Homestead Act - for American settlers *to benefit small farmers & urban workers *160 acres for $10.00 registration fee *Live on land for five years and cultivate it *Or pay $1.25 an acre after six months of living on land & cultivating it

• Former Slaves looking for new life, “exodusters” moved to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado

*Settled the plains and built sod houses

• Morrill Land Grant Act *purpose of the land-grant colleges was: *to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts *States sold land to create “land grant” colleges specializing in agriculture and mechanical arts

Adjustments to environment:

• semi arid and arid area• not much timber so built houses out of sod brick• lacked firewood so burned corncobs, twisted wheat, and buffalo or

cattle chips • used barbed wire for fencing. • built water wells and installed wind mills to pump water• Planted hardier crops & able to survive cold winters as drought

resistant wheat & hard winter wheat • grain elevators to store grain for shipment• special plows to break tough sod

• Innovations– Dry farming – Windmill – Barbed Wire

• problem of the offer of free land was that the land the settlers received was usually the worse public lands

• People were encouraged to settle West by land companies, railroad companies (since they wanted settlers to make their investments in this new area profitable), and steam line companies which advertised to Europeans the opportunities in the American West. These steamship companies wanted to sell tickets.

• Also religious and ethnic groups urged people to migrate westward.

• The largest European groups that went West were English, Irish, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Czechs, French, Italians, and Russians, but also there were Japanese’s and Mexicans