Mining and Settlement of the American West

1. Mining done using high pressure water • Hydraulic mining • Hispanic settled neighborhoods • Barrios • Name for Quickly growing towns • Boomtowns • A group of ordinary citizens formed by local law enforcement officers whose goal is to find criminals and bring them to justice • Vigilance committee • Vast areas of grassland owned by the federal government • Open Range • What was the cost of filing for a homestead in the Great Plains? • $10 • Planting seeds deep in the ground where there was enough moisture to grow them is known as? • Dry farming • How many acres could you claim for a homestead? • 160 • Name for those who plowed the Great Plains • Sodbusters • Farms that covered 50,000 acres were know as • Bonanza farms • Gave Native Americans back reservation land and allowed them to elect tribal governments • Indian Reorganization Act • A person who continually moves from place to place • nomad • How many people survived the Battle of Little Bighorn • One • To absorb a group into the culture of a larger population is to.. • assimilate  • -------------------- • K • K • k

2. Chapter 11 Settling the West

3. Notes • Video Settling the West Growth of the Mining Industry • In 1859 a prospector Henry Comstock staked a claim in Six-Mile Canyon, Nevada. • He didn’t find gold and sold his claim; however, the land was full of pure silver ore. • The Comstock Lode attracted so many prospectors that Nevada was admitted as the 36th state.

4. Notes • Strikes like the Comstock Lode created cities overnight, referred to as boomtowns. • Law and order was enforce by vigilance committees. • self-appointed volunteers who would track down and punish wrongdoers • Once the mines that supported the boomtowns were used up, the population dwindled -become a “ghost-town.”

5. Notes • Mining also spurred the development of Colorado, Arizona, the Dakotas, and Montana. • Some famous mining areas: • Pikes Peak • Leadville • The Black Hills • Tombstone • Video

6. Notes • Miners used many different methods to extract minerals from the rugged mountains of the American West: • placer mining • sluice mining • hydraulic mining • quartz mining

7. Notes Ranching and Cattle Drives • While many Americans headed to the Rocky Mountains to mine gold and silver, others began herding cattle on the Great Plains. • Texas longhorn had adapted to the harsh conditions of the Great Plains. • Cattle ranching also prospered on the Plains because of the open range.

8. Notes • open range, a vast area of grassland that the federal government owned. • After the Civil War, beef prices soar • want to sell cattle to eastern businesses. • Need to get them to the railroad, - LH could be sold for a huge profit and shipped east to market. • long drive trails soon opened.

9. Notes • Had to get LH to Kansas or Missouri • First Drive – 1866 - 260,000 cattle- most die • But those that did sold for 10x normal price • Between 1867 and 1871, cowboys drove nearly 1.5 million head of cattle up the Chisholm Trail • “Range wars” broke between Sheep herders, farmers and ranchers. • The long drives ended due to barbed wire barriers, an oversupply of animals on the market, and the blizzards of 1886–1887.

10. Notes Settling the Hispanic Southwest • landowners owned vast haciendas. • After the California gold rush-Hispanic Californians were vastly outnumbered. • As they had done with the Native Americans, settlers from the East clashed with the Mexican Americans over land.

11. Notes • More railroads in the 1880s and 1890s • Population continued to swell with American, European, and Mexican immigrants. • Growing cities in the Southwest – • Hispanics settled in neighborhoods called barrios.

12. Notes Sec 2 The Beginnings of Settlement Video The population of the Great Plains grew steadily in the decades after the Civil War. Land once thought to be worthless for farming was transformed into America’s wheat belt. Major Stephen Long called the region the “Great American Desert” when he explored it in 1819.

13. Notes • Not so uninhabitable: • Railroad companies sold land along the rail lines at low prices and provided credit to prospective settlers. • Pamphlets and posters spread the news to city dwellers across Europe and America that cheap farm land was theirs to claim.

14. Notes • For more than a decade beginning in the 1870s, rainfall on the Plains was well above average. • 1862- government encouraged settlement on the Great Plains – passes Homestead Act. • For a $10 registration fee- could file for a homestead of up to 160 acres of land. • Title after planting the land for five years

15. Notes • The Wheat Belt • nineteenth century revolutionized agriculture • new farming methods and inventions • Dry farming • planting seeds deep in the ground, where there was enough moisture for them to grow • Prairie soil often blew away during a dry season • Many sodbusters eventually lost their homesteads • Drought • wind erosion • overuse of the land

16. Notes • Innovations • mechanical reaper • steam tractor • threshing machine • mechanical binder • make harvesting wheat possible • The Wheat Belt -eastern edge of the Great Plains and encompassed much of the Dakotas and parts of Nebraska and Kansas. • Some wheat farms—or bonanza farms—covered up to 50,000 acres.

17. Notes • A severe drought, coupled with competition from farmers in other countries, brought an end to the thriving Wheat Belt. • On April 22, 1889, the government opened one of the last large territories for settlement. • Oklahoma Land Rush - 10,000 ppl • Although there was a lot of unoccupied land, and new settlement continued into the 1900s, the “closing of the frontier” marked the end of an era.

18. Notes Sec 3 • Video Struggles of the Plains Indians • Great Plains -home to many groups of Native Americans. • Many lived in communities as farmers and hunters, but some were nomads. • The ranchers, miners, and farmers who moved onto the Plains often forced them to relocate to new territory.

19. Notes • The first major clash - 1862, • Dakota Sioux launched a major uprising in Minnesota. • The Sioux had agreed to live on a reservation in exchange for annuities (annual payment from the government); many payments never reached them. • Little Crow reluctantly lead uprising • The rebellion was eventually suppressed, and 38 Dakota were sentenced to death.

20. Notes • Lakota • The Lakota did not want settlers to take their hunting grounds. • The army suffered a major defeat during “Red Cloud’s War” of 1866–1868. • US Abandoned its posts along this trail in Montana

21. Notes • In the 1860s tensions began to rise between the miners coming into Colorado in search of silver and gold and the Cheyenne and Arapaho who already lived there. • In November 1864, Chief Black Kettle brought several hundred Cheyenne to Fort Lyon to negotiate a peace deal. • Told to camp at Sand Creek for an answer • were mercilessly attacked in what became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. • 15 soldiers killed and anywhere from 69 to 600 NA killed

22. Notes • In light of escalating conflict with Native Americans on the Great Plains, Congress formed an Indian Peace Commission • proposed creating two large reservations—one for the Sioux and another for Native Americans from the southern Plains. • The plan was not good - those who did move to reservations faced many hardships.

23. Notes The Last Native American Wars By 1889, very few buffalo remained on the Plains; eventually the herds were wiped out. In 1876, prospectors overran the Lakota Sioux reservation in the Dakota territory to mine gold in the Black Hills. The Lakota left the reservation to hunt near the Bighorn Mountains in southeastern Montana.

24. Notes • Little Big Horn • The government sent an expedition commanded by General Alfred H. Terry; Lieutenant ColonalGeorge A. Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were with him. • Custer ignored orders and attacked one of the largest groups of Native Americans ever assembled on the Plains. • Custer and 210 soldiers were killed • One survivor (A Horse Named Comanche) • Causing a public outcry in the East.

25. Notes • Native American resistance came to a final and tragic end on the Lakota Sioux reservation in 1890. • Federal authorities had banned the Ghost Dance, but the Sioux continued to perform the dance. • The army killed Chief Sitting Bull, as well as approximately 200 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek

26. Notes • Some Americans believed the solution to the mistreatment of Native Americans was to assimilate them into American society as landowners and citizens. • This meant dividing reservations into individual allotments, where families could become self-supporting. 160 Acres • This policy became law in 1887 when Congress passed the Dawes Act. • However, this act failed to achieve its goals.

27. Notes • Not until 1924 did Congress pass the Citizenship Act, granting all Native Americans in the U.S. citizenship. • Some states did not grant Native Americans the right to vote until after World War II. • Under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the policies of assimilation and allotment finally ended in 1934. • The Indian Reorganization Act- Gave back reservation land • Allowed them to elect tribal governments