The American West, c1835–c1895
What's covered
Key facts
The Dawes Act 1887 broke up communal tribal reservations into 160-acre individual allotments, with the explicit goal of forcing assimilation into white agrarian society.
Joseph Glidden's 1874 barbed-wire patent provided cheap fencing that finally allowed homesteaders to enclose plots on the treeless Plains, ending the open range.
The bison/buffalo supplied Plains tribes with food (meat), clothing and shelter (hides for tipis), tools (bones, horns, sinew) and fuel (dried dung).
Geronimo led Apache resistance to Mexican and US forces through the 1880s, finally surrendering in September 1886.
Open-range cattle ranching collapsed in the late 1880s because of the catastrophic winter of 1886–87, overgrazing, the spread of barbed-wire enclosure, and falling beef prices.
The 1849 California Gold Rush, triggered by James Marshall's 1848 find at Sutter's Mill, attracted around 300,000 migrants ("forty-niners") within a few years.
On 25–26 June 1876 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse annihilated Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and roughly 210 men of the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn river in Montana.
Cattle ranching was profitable because of soaring beef demand from Eastern cities and the railways that could carry cattle east cheaply.
Plains chiefs led by persuasion and counsel rather than absolute command; warriors won status through acts of personal bravery, especially "counting coup" (touching an enemy in battle).
Plains tribes lost the Great Plains by the 1890s due to near-extermination of the buffalo, US Army superiority, the railroads opening the West, the reservation system, and introduced disease.
Sample questions
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What was the 'reservation system' imposed on Native Americans?
- •A military policy of building forts on Native American land to monitor movements
- •A voluntary programme where tribes could register claims to land they already occupied
- •Native Americans were paid annual cash payments in exchange for their land
- ✓Tribes forced onto defined land areas, denied their nomadic way of life
What was the 'long drive' in the cattle industry?
- ✓Cowboys driving longhorn herds hundreds of miles from Texas to Kansas railheads
- •The annual migration of buffalo herds from southern to northern grazing grounds
- •The military patrol route protecting settlers from Native American raids
- •The wagon-train journey settlers took from Missouri to Oregon across the Plains
What did 'Manifest Destiny' mean, and how did it drive westward expansion?
- •A government policy paying settlers to move west and farm unused land
- •A military doctrine requiring the US Army to occupy all land west of the Mississippi
- •A Mormon religious movement believing the West was their promised land
- ✓The belief it was God's will for America to expand from Atlantic to Pacific
What happened at the Sand Creek Massacre (1864)?
- •A Cheyenne raid on a settler wagon train prompted Congress to pass the Indian Appropriations Act
- •An accidental confrontation at a trading post escalated into a battle between soldiers and the Sioux
- •Sioux warriors attacked a US cavalry patrol at Sand Creek, starting the Great Sioux War
- ✓US militia massacred around 200 peaceful Cheyenne at Sand Creek, Colorado (1864)
Why did the cattle industry decline in the late 1880s?
- •Eastern demand for beef collapsed as consumers switched to Midwest pork
- •Native American raids destroyed the cattle herds and made long drives too dangerous
- •The government taxed cattle ranching heavily to fund the transcontinental railroad
- ✓The severe winter of 1886–87, overgrazing, barbed wire, and falling beef prices
Why did thousands of Americans travel the Oregon Trail in the 1840s?
- •Congress required all citizens to relocate west to reduce overcrowding in the East
- •Eastern cities were devastated by cholera, forcing mass migration to escape disease
- ✓Reports of fertile Oregon farmland, the 1849 California Gold Rush, and religious groups like Mormons
- •The US government paid families $5 per acre of land settled west of the Mississippi
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