Lesson 1

The American West

One of the most dramatic developments in U.S. history in the last half of the nineteenth
century was the migration of Euro-Americans and Asians into the American West. This
migration profoundly altered the western environment with far-reaching consequences
not only for the migrants but for the Native and Hispanic populations of the region. In
this lesson, we will examine western settlement and its consequences. For decades,
dominant narratives of western settlement and development followed the interpretive
pattern established by Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian who, in the 1890s, argued
that the distinctive culture of the United States and its democratic traditions were forged
as settlers came and conquered a succession of western frontiers. Turners narrative
was largely triumphal and celebratory, stressing the political liberty and economic
opportunity that the West extended to white settlers.

In the final decades of the twentieth century, revisionist historians emphasized an

underside of western history that Turner and his followers had neglected: the
decimation of American Indians through disease and warfare, the dispossession of
Indians from their lands, and the creation of a socioeconomic underclass rather than a
genuine egalitarian society in the West. In this lesson, you will find evidence to support
the positions taken by both the traditionalists and the revisionists. By and large, greater
opportunity existed in the West than elsewhere in the nation for economic and social
mobility. This was true for African-Americans and for white women as well as for white
men. However, the opportunities were not equally available to all, and a caste of poorly
paid wage laborers along with impoverished Indians on reservations struggled to
survive in the region.

Learning Outcomes
1. Understand and be able to discuss general consequences of Euro-American settlement
in the West for Indian tribes and specific consequences for the Nez Perce and the Teton
Sioux.
2. Evaluate the quality and extent of economic opportunity that existed on the West's
ranching, farming, and mining frontiers, and support your assertions with specific
evidence.
3. Describe the opportunities and challenges faced by Hispanics, Chinese workers, and
women in the West.

Reading Assignments
Read chapter 16 The American West in your textbook, along with the discussion
material that accompanies this lesson.

1.1: Settlement of the West

Understand and be able to discuss general consequences of Euro-American
settlement in the West for Indian tribes and specific consequences for the Nez
Perce and the Teton Sioux.

Your textbook discusses the culture of the 100,000 Native Americans living on the Great
Plains during the middle of the century, including an in-depth discussion of the Teton
Sioux. It is risky to generalize regarding the world view of tens of thousands of people
from dozens of bands and tribes. Nevertheless, the renowned anthropologist Wilcomb
Washburn indicates that the following specific elements of the world view held by most
Indian peoples distinguish their culture from Euro-American culture.

Coronation of Powhatan
Courtesy of the American Gallery

Close identification with nature, including the animal kingdom

Tradition of usufructuary property rights (users' rights rather than exclusive and permanent
possession of real estate)
 Respect for the independence of individuals reflected in decentralized political authority
Relatively permissive approaches to child rearing
Retributive justice in which revenge was considered to be a noble pursuit
Generosity and sharing
Sensitivity to dreams and visions as a source of supernatural power and communication
(Washburn 1975)

As you read in your textbook about the conflicts that arose between Indians and Euro-
American settlers, consider the role that different values, beliefs, and outlooks played in
fomenting those conflicts. When you add the following factors, you have a recipe for
frequent misunderstanding, sustained conflict, and displacement of native populations
from their lands.

The impact of diseases, such as measles, introduced through contact with Euro-Americans
Conflicting modes of subsistence that separated many Euro-Americans from nomadic hunters
and gatherers
The lack of a shared language
And the growth of the Euro-American population west of the Mississippi River from 1.4 million in
1860 to 8.5 million in 1890

As your textbook indicates, during a series of raids and counter raids from the 1860s to
1890, local militia and federal troops clashed with Indians who were resisting relocation
on reservations. Three of the most dramatic conflicts are highlighted in your text.

The Storming of Teocaliby Leutz

BYU Independent Study

1. The resistance of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876
2. The Nez Perce flight toward Canada under the leadership of Chief Joseph in 1877
3. The Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890
Accounts of the latter two are often used to illustrate the futility of Indian resistance in
the face of overwhelming American military power. Because these battles were
chronicled in the contemporary press, they contributed to the illusion of what historian
Brian Dippie calls the vanishing Indian, and they increased white sympathy,
particularly in the East, for the Indians plight (Dippie 1982). For instance, the most
famous version of Chief Josephs surrender to military officers (near the Canadian
border in Montana) comes to us from Charles Erskine Scott Wood, a military aide to
General Oliver O. Howard. Howard drafted a report of the surrender, and then handed
the draft to Wood, who penciled in an alleged speech by Joseph. Wood claimed to have
transcribed the speech verbatim as it was relayed by an interpreter.
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of
fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Ta-hool-hool-shoot is dead. The old men
are all dead. It is the younger men who say yes or no. He who leads the young men is dead. It is
cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them,
have run away into the hills and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are
perhaps freezing to death. I want time to look for my children and see how many of them I can
find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me my chiefs; I am tired. My heart is sick and
sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever (Lavendar 1992).

The purported speech attracted tremendous attention after it was printed in the popular
magazine, Harpers Weekly.

The West: Fight No More Forever

Go to
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/six/ to learn about Chief Joseph and the
Nez Perce flight to Canada.

Although we cannot be certain what Joseph saidhe may have said say something
close to what Wood wrotehistorian David Lavender doubts that the speech accurately
represents Josephs words; the phrase hear me my chiefs is suspect, he believes,
since fellow chiefs were not present when Joseph surrendered. Moreover, Lavender
points out, the sense of resignation dripping from Woods prose is contradicted by Nez
Perce warrior Yellow Wolf and his recollection of the terms of surrender. We were not
captured. It was a draw battle. . . . We expected to return to our homes. That was
promised us by General Miles. That was how he got our rifles from us. It was the only
way he could get them. Joseph two years later said much the same thing. General
Miles had promised that we might return to our country with what stock we had left. . . .I
believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered.
If Lavender is correct, the words written by Wood and attributed to Joseph may have
poorly reflected the Indians views, yet as a symbol of Indian decline, the speech
dovetailed with white imaginations. The poet in Charles Erskine Scott Wood had
plumbed deep. He probably knew it; hence, his manipulations. Whatever the actual
provenance of his words, he had touched with them the infinite sadness of a races
defeat and death. And so the fiction stood unchallenged, writes Lavender (Lavender
1992). We can appreciate the mythic dimension and dramatic power of Woods prose,
but we must resist the inclination to be seduced entirely by the implication that the Nez
Perce spirit of resignation and unconditional surrender was complete. The Nez Perce
and their spirit of resistance did not vanish after Josephs surrender, and similarly, as
your text points out, Wounded Knee was not the end of the Sioux as a people. Glance
at the index of your text under the entry Native Americans to see how the authors
continued to follow the story of Indians in the twentieth century.

1.2: Economic Opportunity

Evaluate the quality and extent of economic opportunity that existed on the
Wests ranching, farming, and mining frontiers, and support your assertions
with specific evidence.

Chapter 16 also discusses opportunities for ranchers, homesteaders/farmers, and

miners in the West. On the ranching frontier, where cowboys were paid $2530 a month
(the same wages as a common day laborer), the greatest economic opportunities were
available to creative, resourceful individuals with money to invest. As your textbook
indicates, the return on a $5 steer could be as high as $60. But money was also to be
made in other enterprises on the ranching frontier. Joseph G. McCoy had amassed a
fortune during the Civil War by selling livestock to the Union Army. After the war, McCoy
established a stockyard in the tiny town of Abilene, Kansas, a remote outpost on the
railroad. He chose Abilene because that area was entirely unsettled, well watered,
excellent grass, and nearly the entire area was adapted to holding cattle, he recalled
(Ridge 1969). McCoy arranged for the construction of a hotel, stock pens, and facilities
for loading the cattle onto railroad cars. He also brokered a deal with the railroad that
gave him a commission for each cow loaded onto the train at his facilities. He and his
agents then traveled south into Texas trying to persuade ranchers to market their
animals at Abilene. That first year, 35,000 cattle were driven to Abilene. Five years later,
500,000 longhorns were shipped east from McCoys corrals and loading pens, and
McCoy was one of the wealthiest men on the Plains.

By the 1890s, large ranching operations firmly controlled the cattle business. In
Wyoming, where there were between 3,500 and 5,000 cattle herds, a tiny minority of
two hundred ranchers owned 85 percent of the cattle. These ranchers formed the
Wyoming Stock Growers Association; anyone could join the association by paying $15,
but its policies favored the wealthy. Wealthy ranchers and those who were less
fortunate clashed in an episode of class conflict known as the Johnson County War.
The war occurred after the association secured passage of a state law that declared
all mavericks (unbranded calves separated from their mothers) the property of the
association. At roundups sponsored by the association (all others were illegal), the
mavericks would be auctioned to the highest bidder. Those who branded their cattle
outside of the association roundup could be charged with rustling (stealing cattle), and
their animals could be impounded.

The West: Grandest Enterprise Under God

Learn more about the experiences of homesteaders in the West by going
here: www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/five/. You can read the transcript by
clicking on the How Do You Like Nebraska tab.

In Johnson County in north-central Wyoming, seventy small ranchers decided to defy

the association and hold their own roundup. Some cowboys also branded cattle
independently. They admitted that this was thievery, but justified it as a matter of
stealing from the rich. The association retaliated by hiring twenty-five gunmen to go
north in search of the seventy suspected rustlers, who were to be shot on sight.
Approaching an abandoned ranch that was rumored to hold fourteen of those men, the
gunmen surrounded the cabin and shot two cowboys, Nate Champion and Nick Ray.
When word of the gunmens arrival reached the county seat, a posse of several
hundred armed men marched south to lynch them, laying siege to a ranch where the
gunmen had taken refuge. One of the hired gunmen managed to escape under cover of
darkness with a horse, and made his way eastward one hundred miles to a telegraph
station, where he wired the governor of Wyoming for help. The governor in turn
contacted Wyomings Senators in Washington, who persuaded President Benjamin
Harrison to intervene. Harrison wired the commander of Fort McKinney and asked for
troops to prevent further violence. The soldiers arrived at the ranch and rescued the
Texas gunmen by promising that they would be arrested and tried. But the cases
against them were eventually dismissed. As you ponder this story, consider what it tells
us about law and order, and political and economic opportunity, on the ranching frontier.

1.3: Hispanics, Chinese, and Women

Describe the opportunities and challenges faced by Hispanics, Chinese
workers, and women in the West.

As your textbook indicates, a profound transformation turned the Great Plains into the
nations breadbasket late in the nineteenth century, and agricultural exports helped the
United States achieve a favorable balance of trade in every year but two, between 1873
and 1900. Would-be farmers could purchase land from investors or the railroads, but
they could also obtain it from the government. Under the Homestead Act, any citizen or
immigrant who declared their intention to become a citizen and who was a single adult
or the head of a household could obtain one hundred and sixty acres by paying a $10
filing fee, living on the land for five years, farming it, building a home, and making other
improvements on it. Although nearly 90 percent of the lands disposed of under the
Homestead Act were acquired by speculators rather than the small family farmers for
whom the Act had been passed, one-third of the farms that were established in the
nation between 1863 and 1920 were homesteads.

The great myth of the farming frontier was that any person who was willing to work hard
could obtain a productive western farm. By comparison to Europe, the opportunities for
land acquisition were prodigious, and immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and
Russia poured into the West to avail themselves of opportunity. Still, homesteading was
not an option for the poorest class of industrial laborers in the nations cities. At a time
when a common day laborer earned $360 per year, a homesteader needed at least
$700 for transportation, seed, livestock, machinery, and building materials to commence
homesteading. Many city dwellers also lacked farming experience and knowledge.
Drought, plant disease, fire, and consumption of crops by wild animals made
homesteading a gamble. Only about half of those who filed a claim on a homestead in
the nineteenth century actually obtained title to the land under the provisions of the
Homestead Act. Economic opportunity, in short, was genuine on the western farming
frontier, but failures were also common.

Map 16.5 in your text highlights the key regions that made up the mining frontier in the
American West through 1890. Between 1848 and 1900, the United States produced
three and a half billion dollars worth of gold and silver. As your textbook points out, the
era of individual prospecting on each mining frontier passed rather quickly as ores close
to the surface were uncovered and depleted. By 1902, corporate mines produced 90
percent of the ore that was being extracted. Wages were relatively high in the mining
camps compared to agricultural districts. A skilled miner could earn as much as $2,000
a year during a time in history when $650 was a decent salary. However there were
mitigating factors: the cost of living was high in mining camps, mine closure and
unemployment were real possibilities in a boom-and-bust economy, and mining was
dangerous work.

Was dramatic upward economic mobility (rags to riches) more common in western
mining camps or in eastern industry? The historian Richard Peterson investigated the
backgrounds of fifty mining magnates in the late nineteenth century. He discovered that
over one-third came from lower-class backgrounds and that 44 percent came from the
middle class. Conversely, 95% percent of Americas leading capitalists early in the
twentieth century came from middle or upper class backgrounds (Peterson 1977).

Your textbook describes the vicissitudes of Hispanic and Chinese workers in the West,
but it only briefly discusses the experiences of women who settled in the West. Historian
Sandra Myres identifies several avenues of economic opportunity for women in the
West. They earned money by making and selling goods such as candles and clothes
(domestic manufacture) or by performing domestic work (e.g. sewing, washing, cooking,
keeping hotels, and taking in boarders). Professions such as teaching, journalism, law,
and medicine were also more open to women in the West than elsewhere and
prostitutiona dangerous and generally miserable occupationenabled some women
to amass small fortunes (Myres 1982).

As your textbook points out, single women and widows were also eligible to homestead
their own claims. On the farming frontier, most married women worked alongside their
husbands and children. Historian John Faragher estimates that women produced
between 1/3 and 1/2 of the food grown on family farms in the nineteenth century
(Faragher 1981). A shortage of labor in newly settled regions where land was readily
available made womens farm labor a necessity rather than a choice. Mary Abell, who
homesteaded with her husband in Kansas in 1871, was five months pregnant when she
wrote to her mother in October of 1873, I helped Rob in with the last of his hay Friday. .
. . Everything has been neglected since Ive been helping Robert. I have been his sole
help in getting up and stacking at least 25 tons of hay and oatssome of the time I was
deathly sick and faint while loading, but finally got through with it. My right limb is very
bad. I have thousands of work to do this fall. The following spring she wrote to her
sister, I am beginning to look old. . . . Work and care soon tell on a bodys looks
though I hope I shall be relieved after a while (Lorence 1993). Most women on western
farms, like Mary Abell, described their exhausting work regimen as oppressive rather
than exciting or liberating in their diaries and letters, yet Sandra Myres has found that in
their retrospective writings, these same women often expressed great pride in their
accomplishments.

For women who desired political liberty as well as economic opportunity, it made sense
to move west. Wyoming granted women the right to vote in 1869, followed by Utah in
1870. By 1914 all the states in the western third of the nation had granted women full
suffrage whereas only one other state (Kansas) had done so. Womens suffrage was an
idea whose time had come, and it was easier, suffragist Susan B. Anthony of New York
believed, to write womens suffrage into law in places where the cake of custom was not
hardened.

If women enjoyed greater liberty in politics, were they also freer in the household? How
were decisions regarding migration, sexuality, reproduction, money, land, child
discipline and religion made? Research by John Faragher indicates that married women
who moved west generally had a say in the decision to move (Faragher 1979).
According to English visitor Anthony Trollope, ranch women wielded substantial power.
Trollope wrote in 1862 that they were sharp as nails and just as hard. . . . They know
much more than they ought to. If Eve had been a ranch woman, she would never have
tempted Adam with an apple. She would have ordered him to make his own meal
(Myres 1982). To the extent that western women possessed greater economic
opportunities or resources, they may have possessed greater leverage in escaping from
unhappy marriages; but womens power in some western households was apparently
offset by male brutality. Violence and physical force may have also been exercised
more frequently on the frontier, with its rough-and-tumble lifestyles where physical
strength was at a premium. Writer Mari Sandoz claimed that in the Nebraska Sandhills,
where she was reared, wife and child beatings were the community norm. If the
conditions Sandoz described prevailed on the frontier, they generally reflect a sinister
underside to frontier living for some women (Sandoz 1935).

Lesson 1 Self Check

 As you prepare for the exam, be sure that you are able to identify each of the following
terms and can describe each terms historical significance, furnishing as much relevant
detail as possible within a maximum of four sentences.

Key Terms
Great American Desert
Long Drive
William F. Cody/Buffalo Bill
Exodusters
National Grange
Chief Joseph
Battle of the Little Bighorn
Dawes Severalty Act
Zitkala-Sa
Battle of Wounded Knee
Virginia City
Los pobres/Tejanos
Six Companies
Chinese Exclusion Act
John Muir
Joseph G. McCoy
Johnson County War
Homestead Act

As you prepare for the exam, prepare to respond to the following study question:

Was the Old West a land of liberty and economic opportunity? Defend your opinion in a
wide-ranging essay that probes the experiences of a wide variety of groups of people in
the West. Be sure to support each assertion that you make with evidence.