SETTLING THE WEST 1865 1900

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SETTLING THE WEST1865 - 1900
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Mining Industry

• 1st wave of settlers
• Henry Comstock
• Boom towns/vigilance committees
• Virginia City
• Pikes Peak
• Leadville

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Manifest Destiny

• Turner Thesis
• American history has
• been in a large degree the history of the
  colonization of the Great West. The existence of
  an area of free land, its continuous recession,
  and the advance of American settlement westward
  explain American development.
• The frontier Americanized Americans. The
  individual was rapidly acclimatized, though the
  process lasted 300 years. Cheap or even free land
  provided a "safety valve" which protected the
  nation against uprisings of the poverty-strcken
  and malcontent.

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Cattle Industry/Cowboys

• Mexican cow hands
• Texas Longhorn
• Civil War/Railroad

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Long Drive

• Trail system
• Dime novels
• Barbed Wire
• Buffalo Bills Wild West Show

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Farming the Plains

• American Desert
• Low rainfall, sod homes,
  deep wells
• Homestead Act
• Wagon Train
• Commercial Farming
• Improved techniques
• Bonanza farms

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Colt 45 -Repeating Rifle Gatling Gun
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Indian Policies

• Concentration
• Reservation
• Indian Peace Commission
• Frederic Remington (Art)

• Dawes Act
• 1887
• Forced assimilation
• Americanization

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Indian Leaders

• Geronimo
• Sitting Bull

• Chief Joseph
• Crazy Horse

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SCALPING

• Fettermans Massacre
• Increasing hostilities

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Sand Creek Massacre

• Miners/Settlers attacked
• Surrender or
• subject to attack
• Chief Black Kettle negotiate
  peace
• Indians attacked

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Little Big Horn Custers Last Stand

• Mining the Black Hills
• George A. Custer
• 2,500 to 210
• Indians kill ALL soldiers

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Wounded Knee

• Use of Ghost Dance prohibited
• Sitting Bull defied arrest
• Ghost Dance participants hunted down
• The frozen body of Chief Big Foot (December,
  1890)

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Influential Literary Figures

• Mark Twain
• Regional color
• Helen Hunt Jackson
• A Century of Dishonor
• Mary Cassatt
• Impressionist paintings

• Edith Wharton
• Age of Innocence
• Thomas Nast
• Political cartoons