I. Introduction
Between 1870 and 1890, the population of the trans?Mississippi West expanded to nearly 17 million people. Nevertheless, much of the United States remained unsettled, providing Americans with the faith that they could always move on to another opportunity.
II. The Economic Activities of Native Peoples
A. Subsistence Cultures
Western Indians had distinct cultures, but they all lived in subsistence economies. On the Plains, buffalo provided the basis for survival, while the southwestern tribes depended on livestock and those of the Northwest on salmon.
B. Slaughter of Buffalo
White hunters slaughtered millions of buffalo, thus contributing to a complex combination of circumstances that doomed the bison and destroyed the economic and social foundations of the Plains tribes.
C. Decline of Salmon
Commercial fishing in the Northwest was one of several factors that led to the decline of the salmon population.
III. The Transformation of Native Cultures
A. Violence
Most of those who migrated to the West in the late nineteenth century were young males who had few qualms about using their weapons against animals or humans who got in their way.
B. Lack of Native Unity
The Indians of the Southwest and Northwest were separated by some two hundred languages and dialects, making it difficult for them to unite against white intruders.
C. Territorial Treaties
Most treaties that recognized Indian territory were violated.
D. Reservation Policy
From the 1860s to the 1880s, the federal government pursued a policy of placing Indians on reservations.
E. Native Resistance
Tribes reacted against white encroachment in a variety of ways.
F. Indian Wars
Whites responded to resistance by the western Indians through the use of military force.
G. Reform of Indian Policy
Several groups worked to acculturate Indians, but these organizations often tried to force Native Americans to accept middle?class values.
H. Dawes Severalty Act
In 1887, Congress began making individual, rather than tribal, grants of land.
I. Attempts at Assimilation
The government’s Indian policy stressed private ownership of property and education programs in boarding schools away from the reservation.
J. The Losing of the West
The Dawes-Severalty Act, along with political and ecological crises, led to the decline of the western tribes.
IV. The Extraction of Natural Resources
A. Mining and Lumbering
Unlike Indians living in subsistence economies, white Americans brought extractive economies to the West.
B. Women in Mining Regions
Some frontier communities had a substantial white female population, but their independence was limited.
C. A Complex Population
The West was a multiracial and multicultural society.
D. Significance of Race
White settlers made race a distinguishing social characteristic in the West.
E. Conservation Movement
Many Americans believed that federal land should be open to private development.
F. Admission of New States
Several new western states entered the Union by 1890.
G. Legends of the West
The West gave rise to legends that became part of American folk culture.
V. Irrigation and Transportation
Rights to Water
The English heritage of riparian rights placed restrictions on individual access to water resources. Many westerners advocated prior appropriation, which gave the original claimant control over water.
B. California’s Solution
California experienced the most dramatic water?related problems. Largely arid, yet potentially productive, the state led the way in irrigation and reclamation policies.
C. Newlands Reclamation Act
The reclamation law of 1902 allowed the federal government to control the use of western water.
D. Post-Civil War Railroad Construction
As the result of a railroad construction boom after the Civil War, the United States contained one-third of the railroad track in the world by 1900.
E. Rails and Markets
Railroads in the United States accelerated the growth of western and southern regional centers. To encourage construction, all levels of government provided bountiful subsidies to the railroad companies.
F. Standard Time
Railroad construction brought technological and organizational reforms. Railroads also altered American concepts of space and time and led to a nationwide standardization of time through the establishment of time zones.
VI. Farming the Plains
A. Settlement of the Plains
Hundreds of thousands of emigrants moved into the Great Plains during the 1870s and 1880s.
B. Hardships of Life on the Plains
Settlers on the Plains lived in an extremely harsh climate where the terrain was inhospitable and swarms of insects could ravage entire farms.
C. Social Isolation
Pioneers also faced severe social isolation, living lives of loneliness and monotony.
D. Mail?Order Companies and Rural Free Delivery
Plains dwellers benefited from the advent of mail?order catalogues and the extension of federal postal service.
E. Mechanization of Agriculture
After the Civil War, continued demand and high prices for farm commodities encouraged the use of machinery.
F. Legislative and Scientific Aids to Farmers
Congress passed several acts designed to enhance agricultural development. Scientific innovation also helped improve farm output.
VII. The Ranching Frontier
A. Longhorns and the Long Drive
The long drive¾the herding of longhorn cattle from Texas to the West and Midwest¾gave rise to romantic lore but was inefficient.
B. The Open?Range
Many operators ran huge herds on unfenced public lands. These giant operations captured the imaginations of easterners, but ultimately cattle began to overrun the range.
C. Grazing Wars
Use of the public land by both sheepherders and ranchers led to conflict between the two groups.
D. Barbed Wire
The invention of barbed wire in 1873 gave ranchers and farmers an economical means by which to enclose their herds and fields.
