The Old West

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The Old West
The Wild West
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• 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.
• 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."

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What was found here?
What was going on over here??
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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.
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• 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

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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.
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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.

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• 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.

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

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• 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 Custers last stand.
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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 Sheriff The Cattle Baron Saloon
Owner Farmer School Teacher Dance Hall Girl The
gold miner The 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  
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• 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
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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.
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Clue 1
What are these folks doing?
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Clue 2
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Clue 3
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Clue 4
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Clue 5
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All of these made possible the settling of the
West after 1860.
Sod House Windmills Irrigation Screen
Windows Buffalo Chips Homestead
Act Transcontinental Railroad Government Indian
Policy
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Land
Water
Timber
Climate
The Great Plains
The Rocky Mountains
Great American Desert
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How should events from the Indian Wars be
commemorated by the federal government?
http//www.historynow.org/09_2006/lp2b.html Less
on Plan http//www.historynow.org/09_2006/pdf/Amer
ican_perspective_Images.pdf American perspective
of the battle http//www.historynow.org/09_2006/pd
f/Native_American_perspective_Images.pdf Indian
Perspective of the battle
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• 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"

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• 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

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• 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

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• Wounded Knee Massacre 1890
• Before the Massacre
• The 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 Bulls 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
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• 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?

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