HIS104 Discussion
CHAPTER 17
Go West Young Man! Westward
Expansion, 1840-1900
Figure 17.1 Widely held rhetoric of the nineteenth century suggested to Americans that it was their divine right and
responsibility to settle the West with Protestant democratic values. Newspaper editor Horace Greely, who coined the
phrase “Go west, young man,” encouraged Americans to fulfill this dream. Artists of the day depicted this western
expansion in idealized landscapes that bore little resemblance to the difficulties of life on the trail.
Chapter Outline
17.1 The Westward Spirit
17.2 Homesteading: Dreams and Realities
17.3 Making a Living in Gold and Cattle
17.4 The Loss of American Indian Life and Culture
17.5 The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens
Introduction
In the middle of the nineteenth century, farmers in the “Old West”—the land across the Allegheny
Mountains in Pennsylvania—began to hear about the opportunities to be found in the “New West.” They
had long believed that the land west of the Mississippi was a great desert, unfit for human habitation.
But now, the federal government was encouraging them to join the migratory stream westward to this
unknown land. For a variety of reasons, Americans increasingly felt compelled to fulfill their “Manifest
Destiny,” a phrase that came to mean that they were expected to spread across the land given to them by
God and, most importantly, spread predominantly American values to the frontier ( Figure 17.1 ).
With great trepidation, hundreds, and then hundreds of thousands, of settlers packed their lives into
wagons and set out, following the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trails, to seek a new life in the
West. Some sought open lands and greater freedom to fulfill the democratic vision originally promoted
by Thomas Jefferson and experienced by their ancestors. Others saw economic opportunity. Still others
believed it was their job to spread the word of God to the “heathens” on the frontier. Whatever their
motivation, the great migration was underway. The American pioneer spirit was born.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 483 17.1 The Westward Spirit
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the evolution of American views about westward migration in the mid-
nineteenth century
• Analyze the ways in which the federal government facilitated Americans’ westward
migration in the mid-nineteenth century
While a small number of settlers had pushed westward before the mid-nineteenth century, the land
west of the Mississippi was largely unexplored. Most Americans, if they thought of it at all, viewed this
territory as an arid wasteland suitable only for Indians whom the federal government had displaced
from eastern lands in previous generations. The reflections of early explorers who conducted scientific
treks throughout the West tended to confirm this belief. Major Stephen Harriman Long, who commanded
an expedition through Missouri and into the Yellowstone region in 1819–1820, frequently described the
Great Plains as a arid and useless region, suitable as nothing more than a “great American desert.” But,
beginning in the 1840s, a combination of economic opportunity and ideological encouragement changed
the way Americans thought of the West. The federal government offered a number of incentives, making
it viable for Americans to take on the challenge of seizing these rough lands from others and subsequently
taming them. Still, most Americans who went west needed some financial security at the outset of their
journey; even with government aid, the truly poor could not make the trip. The cost of moving an
entire family westward, combined with the risks as well as the questionable chances of success, made
the move prohibitive for most. While the economic Panic of 1837 led many to question the promise of
urban America, and thus turn their focus to the promise of commercial farming in the West, the Panic also
resulted in many lacking the financial resources to make such a commitment. For most, the dream to “Go
west, young man” remained unfulfilled.
While much of the basis for westward expansion was economic, there was also a more philosophical
reason, which was bound up in the American belief that the country—and the “heathens” who populated
it—was destined to come under the civilizing rule of Euro-American settlers and their superior technology,
most notably railroads and the telegraph. While the extent to which that belief was a heartfelt motivation
Figure 17.2 (credit “barbed wire”: modification of work by the U.S. Department of Commerce)
484 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 held by most Americans, or simply a rationalization of the conquests that followed, remains debatable, the
clashes—both physical and cultural—that followed this western migration left scars on the country that
are still felt today.
MANIFEST DESTINY
The concept of Manifest Destiny found its roots in the long-standing traditions of territorial expansion
upon which the nation itself was founded. This phrase, which implies divine encouragement for territorial
expansion, was coined by magazine editor John O’Sullivan in 1845, when he wrote in the United States
Magazine and Democratic Review that “it was our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions.” Although the context of O’Sullivan’s
original article was to encourage expansion into the newly acquired Texas territory, the spirit it invoked
would subsequently be used to encourage westward settlement throughout the rest of the nineteenth
century. Land developers, railroad magnates, and other investors capitalized on the notion to encourage
westward settlement for their own financial benefit. Soon thereafter, the federal government encouraged
this inclination as a means to further develop the West during the Civil War, especially at its outset, when
concerns over the possible expansion of slavery deeper into western territories was a legitimate fear.
The idea was simple: Americans were destined—and indeed divinely ordained—to expand democratic
institutions throughout the continent. As they spread their culture, thoughts, and customs, they would,
in the process, “improve” the lives of the native inhabitants who might otherwise resist Protestant
institutions and, more importantly, economic development of the land. O’Sullivan may have coined the
phrase, but the concept had preceded him: Throughout the 1800s, politicians and writers had stated the
belief that the United States was destined to rule the continent. O’Sullivan’s words, which resonated in the
popular press, matched the economic and political goals of a federal government increasingly committed
to expansion.
Manifest Destiny justified in Americans’ minds their right and duty to govern any other groups they
encountered during their expansion, as well as absolved them of any questionable tactics they employed
in the process. While the commonly held view of the day was of a relatively empty frontier, waiting for the
arrival of the settlers who could properly exploit the vast resources for economic gain, the reality was quite
different. Hispanic communities in the Southwest, diverse Indian tribes throughout the western states, as
well as other settlers from Asia and Western Europe already lived in many parts of the country. American
expansion would necessitate a far more complex and involved exchange than simply filling empty space.
Still, in part as a result of the spark lit by O’Sullivan and others, waves of Americans and recently arrived
immigrants began to move west in wagon trains. They travelled along several identifiable trails: first
the Oregon Trail, then later the Santa Fe and California Trails, among others. The Oregon Trail is the
most famous of these western routes. Two thousand miles long and barely passable on foot in the early
nineteenth century, by the 1840s, wagon trains were a common sight. Between 1845 and 1870, considered
to be the height of migration along the trail, over 400,000 settlers followed this path west from Missouri
(Figure 17.3 ).
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 485 Figure 17.3 Hundreds of thousands of people travelled west on the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trails, but
their numbers did not ensure their safety. Illness, starvation, and other dangers—both real and imagined— made
survival hard. (credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)
DEFINING "AMERICAN"
Who Will Set Limits to Our Onward March?
America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no
reminiscences of battle fields, but in defense [sic] of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations,
of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no
scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one
another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called
heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to crowns
or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked
ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might
be placed on a seat of supremacy. . . .
The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden
space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear
conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what
can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.
—John O’Sullivan, 1839
Think about how this quotation resonated with different groups of Americans at the time. When looked
at through today’s lens, the actions of the westward-moving settlers were fraught with brutality and
racism. At the time, however, many settlers felt they were at the pinnacle of democracy, and that with
no aristocracy or ancient history, America was a new world where anyone could succeed. Even then,
consider how the phrase “anyone” was restricted by race, gender, and nationality.
486 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Visit Across the Plains in ‘64 (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/iowaoregon) to follow
one family making their way westward from Iowa to Oregon. Click on a few of the
entries and see how the author describes their journey, from the expected to the
surprising.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE
To assist the settlers in their move westward and transform the migration from a trickle into a steady flow,
Congress passed two significant pieces of legislation in 1862: the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway
Act. Born largely out of President Abraham Lincoln’s growing concern that a potential Union defeat in the
early stages of the Civil War might result in the expansion of slavery westward, Lincoln hoped that such
laws would encourage the expansion of a “free soil” mentality across the West.
The Homestead Act allowed any head of household, or individual over the age of twenty-one—including
unmarried women—to receive a parcel of 160 acres for only a nominal filing fee. All that recipients were
required to do in exchange was to “improve the land” within a period of five years of taking possession.
The standards for improvement were minimal: Owners could clear a few acres, build small houses or
barns, or maintain livestock. Under this act, the government transferred over 270 million acres of public
domain land to private citizens.
The Pacific Railway Act was pivotal in helping settlers move west more quickly, as well as move their
farm products, and later cattle and mining deposits, back east. The first of many railway initiatives, this
act commissioned the Union Pacific Railroad to build new track west from Omaha, Nebraska, while the
Central Pacific Railroad moved east from Sacramento, California. The law provided each company with
ownership of all public lands within two hundred feet on either side of the track laid, as well as additional
land grants and payment through load bonds, prorated on the difficulty of the terrain it crossed. Because
of these provisions, both companies made a significant profit, whether they were crossing hundreds of
miles of open plains, or working their way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. As a result,
the nation’s first transcontinental railroad was completed when the two companies connected their tracks
at Promontory Point, Utah, in the spring of 1869. Other tracks, including lines radiating from this original
one, subsequently created a network that linked all corners of the nation ( Figure 17.4 ).
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Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 487 Figure 17.4 The “Golden Spike” connecting the country by rail was driven into the ground in Promontory Point,
Utah, in 1869. The completion of the first transcontinental railroad dramatically changed the tenor of travel in the
country, as people were able to complete in a week a route that had previously taken months.
In addition to legislation designed to facilitate western settlement, the U.S. government assumed an active
role on the ground, building numerous forts throughout the West to protect and assist settlers during their
migration. Forts such as Fort Laramie in Wyoming (built in 1834) and Fort Apache in Arizona (1870) served
as protection from nearby Indians as well as maintained peace between potential warring tribes. Others
located throughout Colorado and Wyoming became important trading posts for miners and fur trappers.
Those built in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas served primarily to provide relief for farmers during
times of drought or related hardships. Forts constructed along the California coastline provided protection
in the wake of the Mexican-American War as well as during the American Civil War. These locations
subsequently serviced the U.S. Navy and provided important support for growing Pacific trade routes.
Whether as army posts constructed for the protection of white settlers and to maintain peace among Indian
tribes, or as trading posts to further facilitate the development of the region, such forts proved to be vital
contributions to westward migration.
WHO WERE THE SETTLERS?
In the nineteenth century, as today, it took money to relocate and start a new life. Due to the initial cost of
relocation, land, and supplies, as well as months of preparing the soil, planting, and subsequent harvesting
before any produce was ready for market, the original wave of western settlers along the Oregon Trail in
the 1840s and 1850s consisted of moderately prosperous, white, native-born farming families of the East.
But the passage of the Homestead Act and completion of the first transcontinental railroad meant that, by
1870, the possibility of western migration was opened to Americans of more modest means. What started
as a trickle became a steady flow of migration that would last until the end of the century.
Nearly 400,000 settlers had made the trek westward by the height of the movement in 1870. The vast
majority were men, although families also migrated, despite incredible hardships for women with young
children. More recent immigrants also migrated west, with the largest numbers coming from Northern
Europe and Canada. Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish were among the most common. These ethnic
groups tended to settle close together, creating strong rural communities that mirrored the way of life
they had left behind. According to U.S. Census Bureau records, the number of Scandinavians living in the
United States during the second half of the nineteenth century exploded, from barely 18,000 in 1850 to
over 1.1 million in 1900. During that same time period, the German-born population in the United States
grew from 584,000 to nearly 2.7 million and the Irish-born population grew from 961,000 to 1.6 million. As
they moved westward, several thousand immigrants established homesteads in the Midwest, primarily in
Minnesota and Wisconsin, where, as of 1900, over one-third of the population was foreign-born, and in
North Dakota, whose immigrant population stood at 45 percent at the turn of the century. Compared to
488 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 European immigrants, those from China were much less numerous, but still significant. More than 200,000
Chinese arrived in California between 1876 and 1890, albeit for entirely different reasons related to the
Gold Rush.
In addition to a significant European migration westward, several thousand African Americans migrated
west following the Civil War, as much to escape the racism and violence of the Old South as to find
new economic opportunities. They were known as exodusters , referencing the biblical flight from Egypt,
because they fled the racism of the South, with most of them headed to Kansas from Kentucky, Tennessee,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Over twenty-five thousand exodusters arrived in Kansas in 1879–1880
alone. By 1890, over 500,000 blacks lived west of the Mississippi River. Although the majority of black
migrants became farmers, approximately twelve thousand worked as cowboys during the Texas cattle
drives. Some also became “Buffalo Soldiers” in the wars against Indians. “Buffalo Soldiers” were African
Americans allegedly so-named by various Indian tribes who equated their black, curly hair with that of
the buffalo. Many had served in the Union army in the Civil War and were now organized into six, all-
black cavalry and infantry units whose primary duties were to protect settlers from Indian attacks during
the westward migration, as well as to assist in building the infrastructure required to support western
settlement ( Figure 17.5 ).
Figure 17.5 “Buffalo Soldiers,” the first peacetime all-black regiments in the U.S. Army, protected settlers from
Indian attacks. These soldiers also served as some of the country’s first national park rangers.
The Oxford African American Studies Center (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
homesteads) features photographs and stories about black homesteaders. From
exodusters to all-black settlements, the essay describes the largely hidden role that
African Americans played in western expansion.
While white easterners, immigrants, and African Americans were moving west, several hundred thousand
Hispanics had already settled in the American Southwest prior to the U.S. government seizing the land
during its war with Mexico (1846–1848). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war in
1848, granted American citizenship to those who chose to stay in the United States, as the land switched
from Mexican to U.S. ownership. Under the conditions of the treaty, Mexicans retained the right to their
language, religion, and culture, as well as the property they held. As for citizenship, they could choose
Click and Explore
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 489 one of three options: 1) declare their intent to live in the United States but retain Mexican citizenship; 2)
become U.S. citizens with all rights under the constitution; or 3) leave for Mexico. Despite such guarantees,
within one generation, these new Hispanic American citizens found their culture under attack, and legal
protection of their property all but non-existent.
17.2 Homesteading: Dreams and Realities
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the challenges that farmers faced as they settled west of the Mississippi River
• Describe the unique experiences of women who participated in westward migration
As settlers and homesteaders moved westward to improve the land given to them through the Homestead
Act, they faced a difficult and often insurmountable challenge. The land was difficult to farm, there
were few building materials, and harsh weather, insects, and inexperience led to frequent setbacks. The
prohibitive prices charged by the first railroad lines made it expensive to ship crops to market or have
goods sent out. Although many farms failed, some survived and grew into large “bonanza” farms that
hired additional labor and were able to benefit enough from economies of scale to grow profitable.
Still, small family farms, and the settlers who worked them, were hard-pressed to do more than scrape
out a living in an unforgiving environment that comprised arid land, violent weather shifts, and other
challenges ( Figure 17.6 ).
Figure 17.6 This map shows the trails (orange) used in westward migration and the development of railroad lines
(blue) constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.
THE DIFFICULT LIFE OF THE PIONEER FARMER
Of the hundreds of thousands of settlers who moved west, the vast majority were homesteaders. These
pioneers, like the Ingalls family of Little House on the Prairie book and television fame (see inset below),
490 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 were seeking land and opportunity. Popularly known as “sodbusters,” these men and women in the
Midwest faced a difficult life on the frontier. They settled throughout the land that now makes up
the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. The weather and
environment were bleak, and settlers struggled to eke out a living. A few unseasonably rainy years had
led would-be settlers to believe that the “great desert” was no more, but the region’s typically low rainfall
and harsh temperatures made crop cultivation hard. Irrigation was a requirement, but finding water and
building adequate systems proved too difficult and expensive for many farmers. It was not until 1902 and
the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act that a system finally existed to set aside funds from the
sale of public lands to build dams for subsequent irrigation efforts. Prior to that, farmers across the Great
Plains relied primarily on dry-farming techniques to grow corn, wheat, and sorghum, a practice that many
continued in later years. A few also began to employ windmill technology to draw water, although both
the drilling and construction of windmills became an added expense that few farmers could afford.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 491 AMERICANA
The Enduring Appeal of Little House on the Prairie
The story of western migration and survival has remained a touchstone of American culture, even
today. The television show Frontier Life on PBS is one example, as are countless other modern-day
evocations of the settlers. Consider the enormous popularity of the Little House series. The books,
originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, have been in print continuously. The television show, Little
House on the Prairie , ran for over a decade and was hugely successful (and was said to be President
Ronald Reagan’s favorite show). The books, although fictional, were based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s
own childhood, as she travelled west with her family via covered wagon, stopping in Kansas, Wisconsin,
South Dakota, and beyond ( Figure 17.7 ).
Figure 17.7 Laura Ingalls Wilder (a) is the celebrated author of the Little House series, which began in
1932 with the publication of Little House in the Big Woods . The third, and best known, book in the
series, Little House on the Prairie (b), was published just three years later.
Wilder wrote of her stories, “As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things
that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage
and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.” While Ingalls
makes the point that her stories underscore traditional values that remain the same over time, this is not
necessarily the only thing that made these books so popular. Perhaps part of their appeal is that they are
adventure stories, with wild weather, wild animals, and wild Indians all playing a role. Does this explain
their ongoing popularity? What other factors might make these stories appealing so long after they were
originally written?
The first houses built by western settlers were typically made of mud and sod with thatch roofs, as there
was little timber for building. Rain, when it arrived, presented constant problems for these sod houses ,
with mud falling into food, and vermin, most notably lice, scampering across bedding ( Figure 17.8 ).
Weather patterns not only left the fields dry, they also brought tornadoes, droughts, blizzards, and insect
swarms. Tales of swarms of locusts were commonplace, and the crop-eating insects would at times cover
the ground six to twelve inches deep. One frequently quoted Kansas newspaper reported a locust swarm
in 1878 during which the insects devoured “everything green, stripping the foliage off the bark and from
the tender twigs of the fruit trees, destroying every plant that is good for food or pleasant to the eye, that
man has planted.”
492 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Figure 17.8 Sod houses were common in the Midwest as settlers moved west. There was no lumber to gather and
no stones with which to build. These mud homes were vulnerable to weather and vermin, making life incredibly hard
for the newly arrived homesteaders.
Farmers also faced the ever-present threat of debt and farm foreclosure by the banks. While land was
essentially free under the Homestead Act, all other farm necessities cost money and were initially difficult
to obtain in the newly settled parts of the country where market economies did not yet fully reach.
Horses, livestock, wagons, wells, fencing, seed, and fertilizer were all critical to survival, but often hard to
come by as the population initially remained sparsely settled across vast tracts of land. Railroads charged
notoriously high rates for farm equipment and livestock, making it difficult to procure goods or make a
profit on anything sent back east. Banks also charged high interest rates, and, in a cycle that replayed itself
year after year, farmers would borrow from the bank with the intention of repaying their debt after the
harvest. As the number of farmers moving westward increased, the market price of their produce steadily
declined, even as the value of the actual land increased. Each year, hard-working farmers produced ever-
larger crops, flooding the markets and subsequently driving prices down even further. Although some
understood the economics of supply and demand, none could overtly control such forces.
Eventually, the arrival of a more extensive railroad network aided farmers, mostly by bringing much-
needed supplies such as lumber for construction and new farm machinery. While John Deere sold a
steel-faced plow as early as 1838, it was James Oliver’s improvements to the device in the late 1860s
that transformed life for homesteaders. His new, less expensive “chilled plow” was better equipped to
cut through the shallow grass roots of the Midwestern terrain, as well as withstand damage from rocks
just below the surface. Similar advancements in hay mowers, manure spreaders, and threshing machines
greatly improved farm production for those who could afford them. Where capital expense became a
significant factor, larger commercial farms—known as “ bonanza farms ”—began to develop. Farmers in
Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota hired migrant farmers to grow wheat on farms in excess
of twenty thousand acres each. These large farms were succeeding by the end of the century, but small
family farms continued to suffer. Although the land was nearly free, it cost close to $1000 for the necessary
supplies to start up a farm, and many would-be landowners lured westward by the promise of cheap land
became migrant farmers instead, working other peoples’ land for a wage. The frustration of small farmers
grew, ultimately leading to a revolt of sorts, discussed in a later chapter.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 493 Frontier House (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/homesteader) includes information on
the logistics of moving across the country as a homesteader. Take a look at the list of
supplies and gear. It is easy to understand why, even when the government gave the
land away for free, it still took significant resources to make such a journey.
AN EVEN MORE CHALLENGING LIFE: A PIONEER WIFE
Although the West was numerically a male-dominated society, homesteading in particular encouraged the
presence of women, families, and a domestic lifestyle, even if such a life was not an easy one. Women faced
all the physical hardships that men encountered in terms of weather, illness, and danger, with the added
complication of childbirth. Often, there was no doctor or midwife providing assistance, and many women
died from treatable complications, as did their newborns. While some women could find employment in
the newly settled towns as teachers, cooks, or seamstresses, they originally did not enjoy many rights.
They could not sell property, sue for divorce, serve on juries, or vote. And for the vast majority of women,
their work was not in towns for money, but on the farm. As late as 1900, a typical farm wife could expect
to devote nine hours per day to chores such as cleaning, sewing, laundering, and preparing food. Two
additional hours per day were spent cleaning the barn and chicken coop, milking the cows, caring for the
chickens, and tending the family garden. One wife commented in 1879, “[We are] not much better than
slaves. It is a weary, monotonous round of cooking and washing and mending and as a result the insane
asylum is a third filled with wives of farmers.”
Despite this grim image, the challenges of farm life eventually empowered women to break through some
legal and social barriers. Many lived more equitably as partners with their husbands than did their eastern
counterparts, helping each other through both hard times and good. If widowed, a wife typically took over
responsibility for the farm, a level of management that was very rare back east, where the farm would fall
to a son or other male relation. Pioneer women made important decisions and were considered by their
husbands to be more equal partners in the success of the homestead, due to the necessity that all members
had to work hard and contribute to the farming enterprise for it to succeed. Therefore, it is not surprising
that the first states to grant women’s rights, including the right to vote, were those in the Pacific Northwest
and Upper Midwest, where women pioneers worked the land side by side with men. Some women seemed
to be well suited to the challenges that frontier life presented them. Writing to her Aunt Martha from their
homestead in Minnesota in 1873, Mary Carpenter refused to complain about the hardships of farm life: “I
try to trust in God’s promises, but we can’t expect him to work miracles nowadays. Nevertheless, all that
is expected of us is to do the best we can, and that we shall certainly endeavor to do. Even if we do freeze
and starve in the way of duty, it will not be a dishonorable death.”
17.3 Making a Living in Gold and Cattle
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the major discoveries and developments in western gold, silver, and copper
mining in the mid-nineteenth century
• Explain why the cattle industry was paramount to the development of the West and
how it became the catalyst for violent range wars
Click and Explore
494 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Although homestead farming was the primary goal of most western settlers in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, a small minority sought to make their fortunes quickly through other means.
Specifically, gold (and, subsequently, silver and copper) prospecting attracted thousands of miners looking
to “get rich quick” before returning east. In addition, ranchers capitalized on newly available railroad lines
to move longhorn steers that populated southern and western Texas. This meat was highly sought after
in eastern markets, and the demand created not only wealthy ranchers but an era of cowboys and cattle
drives that in many ways defines how we think of the West today. Although neither miners nor ranchers
intended to remain permanently in the West, many individuals from both groups ultimately stayed and
settled there, sometimes due to the success of their gamble, and other times due to their abject failure.
THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH AND BEYOND
The allure of gold has long sent people on wild chases; in the American West, the possibility of quick
riches was no different. The search for gold represented an opportunity far different from the slow plod
that homesteading farmers faced. The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, set a pattern
for such strikes that was repeated again and again for the next decade, in what collectively became known
as the California Gold Rush . In what became typical, a sudden disorderly rush of prospectors descended
upon a new discovery site, followed by the arrival of those who hoped to benefit from the strike by
preying off the newly rich. This latter group of camp followers included saloonkeepers, prostitutes, store
owners, and criminals, who all arrived in droves. If the strike was significant in size, a town of some
magnitude might establish itself, and some semblance of law and order might replace the vigilante justice
that typically grew in the small and short-lived mining outposts.
The original Forty-Niners were individual prospectors who sifted gold out of the dirt and gravel through
“panning” or by diverting a stream through a sluice box ( Figure 17.9 ). To varying degrees, the original
California Gold Rush repeated itself throughout Colorado and Nevada for the next two decades. In 1859,
Henry T. P. Comstock, a Canadian-born fur trapper, began gold mining in Nevada with other prospectors
but then quickly found a blue-colored vein that proved to be the first significant silver discovery in the
United States. Within twenty years, the Comstock Lode , as it was called, yielded more than $300 million
in shafts that reached hundreds of feet into the mountain. Subsequent mining in Arizona and Montana
yielded copper, and, while it lacked the glamour of gold, these deposits created huge wealth for those who
exploited them, particularly with the advent of copper wiring for the delivery of electricity and telegraph
communication.
Figure 17.9 The first gold prospectors in the 1850s and 1860s worked with easily portable tools that allowed anyone
to follow their dream and strike it rich (a). It didn’t take long for the most accessible minerals to be stripped, making
way for large mining operations, including hydraulic mining, where high-pressure water jets removed sediment and
rocks (b).
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 495 By the 1860s and 1870s, however, individual efforts to locate precious metals were less successful. The
lowest-hanging fruit had been picked, and now it required investment capital and machinery to dig mine
shafts that could reach remaining ore. With a much larger investment, miners needed a larger strike to be
successful. This shift led to larger businesses underwriting mining operations, which eventually led to the
development of greater urban stability and infrastructure. Denver, Colorado, was one of several cities that
became permanent settlements, as businesses sought a stable environment to use as a base for their mining
ventures.
For miners who had not yet struck it rich, this development was not a good one. They were now paid a
daily or weekly wage to work underground in very dangerous conditions. They worked in shafts where
the temperature could rise to above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and where poor ventilation might
lead to long-term lung disease. They coped with shaft fires, dynamite explosions, and frequent cave-ins. By
some historical accounts, close to eight thousand miners died on the frontier during this period, with over
three times that number suffering crippling injuries. Some miners organized into unions and led strikes
for better conditions, but these efforts were usually crushed by state militias.
Eventually, as the ore dried up, most mining towns turned into ghost towns. Even today, a visit through
the American West shows old saloons and storefronts, abandoned as the residents moved on to their
next shot at riches. The true lasting impact of the early mining efforts was the resulting desire of the
U.S. government to bring law and order to the “Wild West” in order to more efficiently extract natural
resources and encourage stable growth in the region. As more Americans moved to the region to seek
permanent settlement, as opposed to brief speculative ventures, they also sought the safety and support
that government order could bring. Nevada was admitted to the Union as a state in 1864, with Colorado
following in 1876, then North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889; and Idaho and
Wyoming in 1890.
THE CATTLE KINGDOM
While the cattle industry lacked the romance of the Gold Rush, the role it played in western expansion
should not be underestimated. For centuries, wild cattle roamed the Spanish borderlands. At the end of the
Civil War, as many as five million longhorn steers could be found along the Texas frontier, yet few settlers
had capitalized on the opportunity to claim them, due to the difficulty of transporting them to eastern
markets. The completion of the first transcontinental railroad and subsequent railroad lines changed the
game dramatically. Cattle ranchers and eastern businessmen realized that it was profitable to round up the
wild steers and transport them by rail to be sold in the East for as much as thirty to fifty dollars per head.
These ranchers and businessmen began the rampant speculation in the cattle industry that made, and lost,
many fortunes.
So began the impressive cattle drives of the 1860s and 1870s. The famous Chisholm Trail provided a quick
path from Texas to railroad terminals in Abilene, Wichita, and Dodge City, Kansas, where cowboys would
receive their pay. These “cowtowns,” as they became known, quickly grew to accommodate the needs of
cowboys and the cattle industry. Cattlemen like Joseph G. McCoy, born in Illinois, quickly realized that the
railroad offered a perfect way to get highly sought beef from Texas to the East. McCoy chose Abilene as a
locale that would offer cowboys a convenient place to drive the cattle, and went about building stockyards,
hotels, banks, and more to support the business. He promoted his services and encouraged cowboys to
bring their cattle through Abilene for good money; soon, the city had grown into a bustling western city,
complete with ways for the cowboys to spend their hard-earned pay ( Figure 17.10 ).
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Figure 17.10 Cattle drives were an integral part of western expansion. Cowboys worked long hours in the saddle,
driving hardy longhorns to railroad towns that could ship the meat back east.
Between 1865 and 1885, as many as forty thousand cowboys roamed the Great Plains, hoping to work
for local ranchers. They were all men, typically in their twenties, and close to one-third of them were
Hispanic or African American. It is worth noting that the stereotype of the American cowboy—and indeed
the cowboys themselves—borrowed much from the Mexicans who had long ago settled those lands. The
saddles, lassos, chaps, and lariats that define cowboy culture all arose from the Mexican ranchers who had
used them to great effect before the cowboys arrived.
Life as a cowboy was dirty and decidedly unglamorous. The terrain was difficult; conflicts with Native
Americans, especially in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), were notoriously deadly. But the longhorn
cattle were hardy stock, and could survive and thrive while grazing along the long trail, so cowboys
braved the trip for the promise of steady employment and satisfying wages. Eventually, however, the era
of the free range ended. Ranchers developed the land, limiting grazing opportunities along the trail, and
in 1873, the new technology of barbed wire allowed ranchers to fence off their lands and cattle claims.
With the end of the free range, the cattle industry, like the mining industry before it, grew increasingly
dominated by eastern businessmen. Capital investors from the East expanded rail lines and invested in
ranches, ending the reign of the cattle drives.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 497 AMERICANA
Barbed Wire and a Way of Life Gone
Called the “devil’s rope” by Indians, barbed wire had a profound impact on the American West. Before
its invention, settlers and ranchers alike were stymied by a lack of building materials to fence off
land. Communal grazing and long cattle drives were the norm. But with the invention of barbed wire,
large cattle ranchers and their investors were able to cheaply and easily parcel off the land they
wanted—whether or not it was legally theirs to contain. As with many other inventions, several people
“invented” barbed wire around the same time. In 1873, it was Joseph Glidden, however, who claimed the
winning design and patented it. Not only did it spell the end of the free range for settlers and cowboys, it
kept more land away from Indian tribes, who had never envisioned a culture that would claim to own land
(Figure 17.11 ).
Figure 17.11 Joseph Glidden’s invention of barbed wire in 1873 made him rich, changing the face of
the American West forever. (credit: modification of work by the U.S. Department of Commerce)
In the early twentieth century, songwriter Cole Porter would take a poem by a Montana poet named Bob
Fletcher and convert it into a cowboy song called, “Don’t Fence Me In.” As the lyrics below show, the
song gave voice to the feeling that, as the fences multiplied, the ethos of the West was forever changed:
Oh, give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride thru the wide-open country that I love
Don't fence me in . . .
Just turn me loose
Let me straddle my old saddle underneath the western skies
On my cayuse
Let me wander over yonder till I see the mountains rise
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses
I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 VIOLENCE IN THE WILD WEST: MYTH AND REALITY
The popular image of the Wild West portrayed in books, television, and film has been one of violence and
mayhem. The lure of quick riches through mining or driving cattle meant that much of the West did indeed
consist of rough men living a rough life, although the violence was exaggerated and even glorified in the
dime store novels of the day. The exploits of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and others made for good stories,
but the reality was that western violence was more isolated than the stories might suggest. These clashes
often occurred as people struggled for the scarce resources that could make or break their chance at riches,
or as they dealt with the sudden wealth or poverty that prospecting provided.
Where sporadic violence did erupt, it was concentrated largely in mining towns or during range wars
among large and small cattle ranchers. Some mining towns were indeed as rough as the popular
stereotype. Men, money, liquor, and disappointment were a recipe for violence. Fights were frequent,
deaths were commonplace, and frontier justice reigned. The notorious mining town of Bodie, California,
had twenty-nine murders between 1877 and 1883, which translated to a murder rate higher than any other
city at that time, and only one person was ever convicted of a crime. The most prolific gunman of the day
was John Wesley Hardin, who allegedly killed over twenty men in Texas in various gunfights, including
one victim he killed in a hotel for snoring too loudly ( Figure 17.12 ).
Figure 17.12 The towns that sprouted up around gold strikes existed first and foremost as places for the men who
struck it rich to spend their money. Stores, saloons, and brothels were among the first businesses to arrive. The
combination of lawlessness, vice, and money often made for a dangerous mix.
Ranching brought with it its own dangers and violence. In the Texas cattle lands, owners of large ranches
took advantage of their wealth and the new invention of barbed wire to claim the prime grazing lands
and few significant watering holes for their herds. Those seeking only to move their few head of cattle to
market grew increasingly frustrated at their inability to find even a blade of grass for their meager herds.
Eventually, frustration turned to violence, as several ranchers resorted to vandalizing the barbed wire
fences to gain access to grass and water for their steers. Such vandalism quickly led to cattle rustling, as
these cowboys were not averse to leading a few of the rancher’s steers into their own herds as they left.
One example of the violence that bubbled up was the infamous Fence Cutting War in Clay County, Texas
(1883–1884). There, cowboys began destroying fences that several ranchers erected along public lands:
land they had no right to enclose. Confrontations between the cowboys and armed guards hired by the
ranchers resulted in three deaths—hardly a “war,” but enough of a problem to get the governor’s attention.
Eventually, a special session of the Texas legislature addressed the problem by passing laws to outlaw
fence cutting, but also forced ranchers to remove fences illegally erected along public lands, as well as to
place gates for passage where public areas adjoined private lands.
An even more violent confrontation occurred between large ranchers and small farmers in Johnson
County, Wyoming, where cattle ranchers organized a “lynching bee” in 1891–1892 to make examples of
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 499 cattle rustlers. Hiring twenty-two “invaders” from Texas to serve as hired guns, the ranch owners and
their foremen hunted and subsequently killed the two rustlers best known for organizing the owners of
the smaller Wyoming farms. Only the intervention of federal troops, who arrested and then later released
the invaders, allowing them to return to Texas, prevented a greater massacre.
While there is much talk—both real and mythical—of the rough men who lived this life, relatively few
women experienced it. While homesteaders were often families, gold speculators and cowboys tended
to be single men in pursuit of fortune. The few women who went to these wild outposts were typically
prostitutes, and even their numbers were limited. In 1860, in the Comstock Lode region of Nevada, for
example, there were reportedly only thirty women total in a town of twenty-five hundred men. Some of
the “painted ladies” who began as prostitutes eventually owned brothels and emerged as businesswomen
in their own right; however, life for these young women remained a challenging one as western settlement
progressed. A handful of women, numbering no more than six hundred, braved both the elements and
male-dominated culture to become teachers in several of the more established cities in the West. Even
fewer arrived to support husbands or operate stores in these mining towns.
As wealthy men brought their families west, the lawless landscape began to change slowly. Abilene,
Kansas, is one example of a lawless town, replete with prostitutes, gambling, and other vices, transformed
when middle-class women arrived in the 1880s with their cattle baron husbands. These women began to
organize churches, school, civic clubs, and other community programs to promote family values. They
fought to remove opportunities for prostitution and all the other vices that they felt threatened the values
that they held dear. Protestant missionaries eventually joined the women in their efforts, and, while
they were not widely successful, they did bring greater attention to the problems. As a response, the
U.S. Congress passed both the Comstock Law (named after its chief proponent, anti-obscenity crusader
Anthony Comstock) in 1873 to ban the spread of “lewd and lascivious literature” through the mail
and the subsequent Page Act of 1875 to prohibit the transportation of women into the United States
for employment as prostitutes. However, the “houses of ill repute” continued to operate and remained
popular throughout the West despite the efforts of reformers.
Take a look at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/natcowboy) to determine whether this site’s portrayal
of cowboy culture matches or contradicts the history shared in this chapter.
17.4 The Loss of American Indian Life and Culture
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the methods that the U.S. government used to address the “Indian threat”
during the settlement of the West
• Explain the process of “Americanization” as it applied to Indians in the nineteenth
century
As American settlers pushed westward, they inevitably came into conflict with Indian tribes that had long
been living on the land. Although the threat of Indian attacks was quite slim and nowhere proportionate
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 to the number of U.S. Army actions directed against them, the occasional attack—often one of
retaliation—was enough to fuel the popular fear of the “savage” Indians. The clashes, when they
happened, were indeed brutal, although most of the brutality occurred at the hands of the settlers.
Ultimately, the settlers, with the support of local militias and, later, with the federal government behind
them, sought to eliminate the tribes from the lands they desired. The result was devastating for the Indian
tribes, which lacked the weapons and group cohesion to fight back against such well-armed forces. The
Manifest Destiny of the settlers spelled the end of the Indian way of life.
CLAIMING LAND, RELOCATING LANDOWNERS
Back east, the popular vision of the West was of a vast and empty land. But of course this was an
exaggerated depiction. On the eve of westward expansion, as many as 250,000 Indians, representing a
variety of tribes, populated the Great Plains. Previous wars against these tribes in the early nineteenth
century, as well as the failure of earlier treaties, had led to a general policy of the forcible removal of many
tribes in the eastern United States. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in the infamous “Trail of
Tears,” which saw nearly fifty thousand Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek Indians relocated west
of the Mississippi River to what is now Oklahoma between 1831 and 1838. Building upon such a history,
the U.S. government was prepared, during the era of western settlement, to deal with tribes that settlers
viewed as obstacles to expansion.
As settlers sought more land for farming, mining, and cattle ranching, the first strategy employed to deal
with the perceived Indian threat was to negotiate settlements to move tribes out of the path of white
settlers. In 1851, the chiefs of most of the Great Plains tribes agreed to the First Treaty of Fort Laramie.
This agreement established distinct tribal borders, essentially codifying the reservation system. In return
for annual payments of $50,000 to the tribes (originally guaranteed for fifty years, but later revised to last
for only ten) as well as the hollow promise of noninterference from westward settlers, Indians agreed to
stay clear of the path of settlement. Due to government corruption, many annuity payments never reached
the tribes, and some reservations were left destitute and near starving. In addition, within a decade, as
the pace and number of western settlers increased, even designated reservations became prime locations
for farms and mining. Rather than negotiating new treaties, settlers—oftentimes backed by local or state
militia units—simply attacked the tribes out of fear or to force them from the land. Some Indians resisted,
only to then face massacres.
In 1862, frustrated and angered by the lack of annuity payments and the continuous encroachment on
their reservation lands, Dakota Sioux Indians in Minnesota rebelled in what became known as the Dakota
War, killing the white settlers who moved onto their tribal lands. Over one thousand white settlers were
captured or killed in the attack, before an armed militia regained control. Of the four hundred Sioux
captured by U.S. troops, 303 were sentenced to death, but President Lincoln intervened, releasing all but
thirty-eight of the men. The thirty-eight who were found guilty were hanged in the largest mass execution
in the country’s history, and the rest of the tribe was banished. Settlers in other regions responded to
news of this raid with fear and aggression. In Colorado, Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes fought back
against land encroachment; white militias then formed, decimating even some of the tribes that were
willing to cooperate. One of the more vicious examples was near Sand Creek, Colorado, where Colonel
John Chivington led a militia raid upon a camp in which the leader had already negotiated a peaceful
settlement. The camp was flying both the American flag and the white flag of surrender when Chivington’s
troops murdered close to one hundred people, the majority of them women and children, in what became
known as the Sand Creek Massacre . For the rest of his life, Chivington would proudly display his
collection of nearly one hundred Indian scalps from that day. Subsequent investigations by the U.S. Army
condemned Chivington’s tactics and their results; however, the raid served as a model for some settlers
who sought any means by which to eradicate the perceived Indian threat.
Hoping to forestall similar uprisings and all-out Indian wars, the U.S. Congress commissioned a committee
to investigate the causes of such incidents. The subsequent report of their findings led to the passage
of two additional treaties: the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie and the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek,
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 501 both designed to move the remaining tribes to even more remote reservations. The Second Treaty of Fort
Laramie moved the remaining Sioux to the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory and the Treaty of Medicine
Lodge Creek moved the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche to “Indian Territory,” later to become
the State of Oklahoma.
The agreements were short-lived, however. With the subsequent discovery of gold in the Black Hills,
settlers seeking their fortune began to move upon the newly granted Sioux lands with support from U.S.
cavalry troops. By the middle of 1875, thousands of white prospectors were illegally digging and panning
in the area. The Sioux protested the invasion of their territory and the violation of sacred ground. The
government offered to lease the Black Hills or to pay $6 million if the Indians were willing to sell the land.
When the tribes refused, the government imposed what it considered a fair price for the land, ordered the
Indians to move, and in the spring of 1876, made ready to force them onto the reservation.
In the Battle of Little Bighorn, perhaps the most famous battle of the American West, a Sioux chieftain,
Sitting Bull, urged Indians from all neighboring tribes to join his men in defense of their lands ( Figure
17.13 ). At the Little Bighorn River, the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry, led by Colonel George Custer,
sought a showdown. Driven by his own personal ambition, on June 25, 1876, Custer foolishly attacked
what he thought was a minor Indian encampment. Instead, it turned out to be the main Sioux force. The
Sioux warriors—nearly three thousand in strength—surrounded and killed Custer and 262 of his men and
support units, in the single greatest loss of U.S. troops to an Indian attack in the era of westward expansion.
Eyewitness reports of the attack indicated that the victorious Sioux bathed and wrapped Custer’s body
in the tradition of a chieftain burial; however, they dismembered many other soldiers’ corpses in order
for a few distant observers from Major Marcus Reno’s wounded troops and Captain Frederick Benteen’s
company to report back to government officials about the ferocity of the Sioux enemy.
Figure 17.13 The iconic figure who led the battle at Little Bighorn River, Sitting Bull led Indians in what was their
largest victory against American settlers. While the battle was a rout by the Sioux over Custer ’s troops, the ultimate
outcome for his tribe and the men who had joined him was one of constant harassment, arrest, and death at the
hands of federal troops.
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 AMERICAN INDIAN SUBMISSION
Despite their success at Little Bighorn, neither the Sioux nor any other Plains tribe followed this battle
with any other armed encounter. Rather, they either returned to tribal life or fled out of fear of remaining
troops, until the U.S. Army arrived in greater numbers and began to exterminate Indian encampments and
force others to accept payment for forcible removal from their lands. Sitting Bull himself fled to Canada,
although he later returned in 1881 and subsequently worked in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. In Montana,
the Blackfoot and Crow were forced to leave their tribal lands. In Colorado, the Utes gave up their lands
after a brief period of resistance. In Idaho, most of the Nez Perce gave up their lands peacefully, although
in an incredible episode, a band of some eight hundred Indians sought to evade U.S. troops and escape
into Canada.
MY STORY
I Will Fight No More: Chief Joseph’s Capitulation
Chief Joseph, known to his people as “Thunder Traveling to the Loftier Mountain Heights,” was the chief
of the Nez Perce tribe, and he had realized that they could not win against the whites. In order to avoid a
war that would undoubtedly lead to the extermination of his people, he hoped to lead his tribe to Canada,
where they could live freely. He led a full retreat of his people over fifteen hundred miles of mountains
and harsh terrain, only to be caught within fifty miles of the Canadian border in late 1877. His speech has
remained a poignant and vivid reminder of what the tribe had lost.
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired
of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old
men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on 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 to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where
they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have 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.
—Chief Joseph, 1877
The final episode in the so-called Indian Wars occurred in 1890, at the Battle of Wounded Knee in South
Dakota. On their reservation, the Sioux had begun to perform the “Ghost Dance,” which told of an Indian
Messiah who would deliver the tribe from its hardship, with such frequency that white settlers began to
worry that another uprising would occur. The militia prepared to round up the Sioux. The tribe, after the
death of Sitting Bull, who had been arrested, shot, and killed in 1890, prepared to surrender at Wounded
Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. Although the accounts are unclear, an apparent accidental rifle
discharge by a young male Indian preparing to lay down his weapon led the U.S. soldiers to begin firing
indiscriminately upon the Indians. What little resistance the Indians mounted with a handful of concealed
rifles at the outset of the fight diminished quickly, with the troops eventually massacring between 150
and 300 men, women, and children. The U.S. troops suffered twenty-five fatalities, some of which were
the result of their own crossfire. Captain Edward Godfrey of the Seventh Cavalry later commented, “I
know the men did not aim deliberately and they were greatly excited. I don’t believe they saw their sights.
They fired rapidly but it seemed to me only a few seconds till there was not a living thing before us;
warriors, squaws, children, ponies, and dogs . . . went down before that unaimed fire.” With this last show
of brutality, the Indian Wars came to a close. U.S. government officials had already begun the process of
seeking an alternative to the meaningless treaties and costly battles. A more effective means with which to
address the public perception of the “Indian threat” was needed. Americanization provided the answer.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 503 AMERICANIZATION
Through the years of the Indian Wars of the 1870s and early 1880s, opinion back east was mixed. There
were many who felt, as General Philip Sheridan (appointed in 1867 to pacify the Plains Indians) allegedly
said, that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But increasingly, several American reformers who
would later form the backbone of the Progressive Era had begun to criticize the violence, arguing that
the Indians should be helped through “Americanization” to become assimilated into American society.
Individual land ownership, Christian worship, and education for children became the cornerstones of this
new, and final, assault on Indian life and culture.
Beginning in the 1880s, clergymen, government officials, and social workers all worked to assimilate
Indians into American life. The government permitted reformers to remove Indian children from their
homes and place them in boarding schools, such as the Carlisle Indian School or the Hampton Institute,
where they were taught to abandon their tribal traditions and embrace the tools of American productivity,
modesty, and sanctity through total immersion. Such schools not only acculturated Indian boys and girls,
but also provided vocational training for males and domestic science classes for females. Adults were
also targeted by religious reformers, specifically evangelical Protestants as well as a number of Catholics,
who sought to convince Indians to abandon their language, clothing, and social customs for a more Euro-
American lifestyle ( Figure 17.14 ).
Figure 17.14 The federal government’s policy towards the Indians shifted in the late 1880s from relocating them to
assimilating them into the American ideal. Indians were given land in exchange for renouncing their tribe, traditional
clothing, and way of life.
A vital part of the assimilation effort was land reform. During earlier negotiations, the government had
respected that the Indian tribes used their land communally. Most Indian belief structures did not allow
for the concept of individual land ownership; rather, land was available for all to use, and required
responsibility from all to protect it. As a part of their plan to Americanize the tribes, reformers sought
legislation to replace this concept with the popular Euro-American notion of real estate ownership and
self-reliance. One such law was the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, named after a reformer and senator from
Massachusetts, which struck a deadly blow to the Indian way of life. In what was essentially an Indian
version of the original Homestead Act, the Dawes Act permitted the federal government to divide the
lands of any tribe and grant 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land to each head of family,
with lesser amounts to others. In a nod towards the paternal relationship with which whites viewed
Indians—similar to the justification of the previous treatment of African American slaves—the Dawes Act
permitted the federal government to hold an individual Indian’s newly acquired land in trust for twenty-
five years. Only then would he obtain full title and be granted the citizenship rights that land ownership
entailed. It would not be until 1924 that formal citizenship was granted to all Native Americans. Under the
Dawes Act, Indians were given the most arid, useless land. Further, inefficiencies and corruption in the
government meant that much of the land due to be allotted to Indians was simply deemed “surplus” and
claimed by settlers. Once all allotments were determined, the remaining tribal lands—as much as eighty
million acres—were sold to white American settlers.
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 The final element of “Americanization” was the symbolic “last arrow” pageant, which often coincided
with the formal redistribution of tribal lands under the Dawes Act. At these events, Indians were forced
to assemble in their tribal garb, carrying a bow and arrow. They would then symbolically fire their “last
arrow” into the air, enter a tent where they would strip away their Indian clothing, dress in a white
farmer’s coveralls, and emerge to take a plow and an American flag to show that they had converted to
a new way of life. It was a seismic shift for the Indians, and one that left them bereft of their culture and
history.
Take a look at the Carlisle Industrial Indian School (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
carlisleschool) where Indian students were “civilized” from 1879 to 1918. It is worth
looking through the photographs and records of the school to see how this well-
intended program obliterated Indian culture.
17.5 The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic
Citizens
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the treatment of Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens during the
westward expansion of the nineteenth century
As white Americans pushed west, they not only collided with Indian tribes but also with Hispanic
Americans and Chinese immigrants. Hispanics in the Southwest had the opportunity to become American
citizens at the end of the Mexican-American war, but their status was markedly second-class. Chinese
immigrants arrived en masse during the California Gold Rush and numbered in the hundreds of
thousands by the late 1800s, with the majority living in California, working menial jobs. These distinct
cultural and ethnic groups strove to maintain their rights and way of life in the face of persistent racism
and entitlement. But the large number of white settlers and government-sanctioned land acquisitions left
them at a profound disadvantage. Ultimately, both groups withdrew into homogenous communities in
which their language and culture could survive.
CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
The initial arrival of Chinese immigrants to the United States began as a slow trickle in the 1820s, with
barely 650 living in the U.S. by the end of 1849. However, as gold rush fever swept the country, Chinese
immigrants, too, were attracted to the notion of quick fortunes. By 1852, over 25,000 Chinese immigrants
had arrived, and by 1880, over 300,000 Chinese lived in the United States, most in California. While they
had dreams of finding gold, many instead found employment building the first transcontinental railroad
(Figure 17.15 ). Some even traveled as far east as the former cotton plantations of the Old South, which
they helped to farm after the Civil War. Several thousand of these immigrants booked their passage
to the United States using a “credit-ticket,” in which their passage was paid in advance by American
businessmen to whom the immigrants were then indebted for a period of work. Most arrivals were men:
Few wives or children ever traveled to the United States. As late as 1890, less than 5 percent of the
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Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 505 Chinese population in the U.S. was female. Regardless of gender, few Chinese immigrants intended to
stay permanently in the United States, although many were reluctantly forced to do so, as they lacked the
financial resources to return home.
Figure 17.15 Building the railroads was dangerous and backbreaking work. On the western railroad line, Chinese
migrants, along with other nonwhite workers, were often given the most difficult and dangerous jobs of all.
Prohibited by law since 1790 from obtaining U.S. citizenship through naturalization, Chinese immigrants
faced harsh discrimination and violence from American settlers in the West. Despite hardships like the
special tax that Chinese miners had to pay to take part in the Gold Rush, or their subsequent forced
relocation into Chinese districts, these immigrants continued to arrive in the United States seeking a
better life for the families they left behind. Only when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade further
immigration from China for a ten-year period did the flow stop.
The Chinese community banded together in an effort to create social and cultural centers in cities such
as San Francisco. In a haphazard fashion, they sought to provide services ranging from social aid to
education, places of worship, health facilities, and more to their fellow Chinese immigrants. But only
American Indians suffered greater discrimination and racial violence, legally sanctioned by the federal
government, than did Chinese immigrants at this juncture in American history. As Chinese workers
began competing with white Americans for jobs in California cities, the latter began a system of built-
in discrimination. In the 1870s, white Americans formed “anti-coolie clubs” (“coolie” being a racial slur
directed towards people of any Asian descent), through which they organized boycotts of Chinese-
produced products and lobbied for anti-Chinese laws. Some protests turned violent, as in 1885 in Rock
Springs, Wyoming, where tensions between white and Chinese immigrant miners erupted in a riot,
resulting in over two dozen Chinese immigrants being murdered and many more injured.
Slowly, racism and discrimination became law. The new California constitution of 1879 denied naturalized
Chinese citizens the right to vote or hold state employment. Additionally, in 1882, the U.S. Congress
passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade further Chinese immigration into the United States for
ten years. The ban was later extended on multiple occasions until its repeal in 1943. Eventually, some
Chinese immigrants returned to China. Those who remained were stuck in the lowest-paying, most menial
jobs. Several found assistance through the creation of benevolent associations designed to both support
Chinese communities and defend them against political and legal discrimination; however, the history of
Chinese immigrants to the United States remained largely one of deprivation and hardship well into the
twentieth century.
506 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum
(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/railroadchina) provides a context for the role of the
Chinese who helped build the railroads. What does the site celebrate, and what, if
anything, does it condemn?
DEFINING "AMERICAN"
The Backs that Built the Railroad
Below is a description of the construction of the railroad in 1867. Note the way it describes the scene, the
laborers, and the effort.
The cars now (1867) run nearly to the summit of the Sierras. . . . four thousand laborers were
at work—one-tenth Irish, the rest Chinese. They were a great army laying siege to Nature in
her strongest citadel. The rugged mountains looked like stupendous ant-hills. They swarmed
with Celestials, shoveling, wheeling, carting, drilling and blasting rocks and earth, while their
dull, moony eyes stared out from under immense basket-hats, like umbrellas. At several
dining camps we saw hundreds sitting on the ground, eating soft boiled rice with chopsticks
as fast as terrestrials could with soup-ladles. Irish laborers received thirty dollars per month
(gold) and board; Chinese, thirty-one dollars, boarding themselves. After a little experience
the latter were quite as efficient and far less troublesome.
—Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi
Several great American advancements of the nineteenth century were built with the hands of many other
nations. It is interesting to ponder how much these immigrant communities felt they were building their
own fortunes and futures, versus the fortunes of others. Is it likely that the Chinese laborers, many of
whom died due to the harsh conditions, considered themselves part of “a great army”? Certainly, this
account reveals the unwitting racism of the day, where workers were grouped together by their ethnicity,
and each ethnic group was labeled monolithically as “good workers” or “troublesome,” with no regard for
individual differences among the hundreds of Chinese or Irish workers.
HISPANIC AMERICANS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, promised U.S.
citizenship to the nearly seventy-five thousand Hispanics now living in the American Southwest;
approximately 90 percent accepted the offer and chose to stay in the United States despite their immediate
relegation to second-class citizenship status. Relative to the rest of Mexico, these lands were sparsely
populated and had been so ever since the country achieved its freedom from Spain in 1821. In fact, New
Mexico—not Texas or California—was the center of settlement in the region in the years immediately
preceding the war with the United States, containing nearly fifty thousand Mexicans. However, those who
did settle the area were proud of their heritage and ability to develop rancheros of great size and success.
Despite promises made in the treaty, these Californios—as they came to be known—quickly lost their land
to white settlers who simply displaced the rightful landowners, by force if necessary. Repeated efforts at
legal redress mostly fell upon deaf ears. In some instances, judges and lawyers would permit the legal
cases to proceed through an expensive legal process only to the point where Hispanic landowners who
insisted on holding their ground were rendered penniless for their efforts.
Click and Explore
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 507 Much like Chinese immigrants, Hispanic citizens were relegated to the worst-paying jobs under the most
terrible working conditions. They worked as peóns (manual laborers similar to slaves), vaqueros (cattle
herders), and cartmen (transporting food and supplies) on the cattle ranches that white landowners
possessed, or undertook the most hazardous mining tasks ( Figure 17.16 ).
Figure 17.16 Mexican ranchers had worked the land in the American Southwest long before American “cowboys”
arrived. In what ways might the Mexican vaquero pictured above have influenced the American cowboy?
In a few instances, frustrated Hispanic citizens fought back against the white settlers who dispossessed
them of their belongings. In 1889–1890 in New Mexico, several hundred Mexican Americans formed las
Gorras Blancas (the White Caps) to try and reclaim their land and intimidate white Americans, preventing
further land seizures. White Caps conducted raids of white farms, burning homes, barns, and crops to
express their growing anger and frustration. However, their actions never resulted in any fundamental
changes. Several White Caps were captured, beaten, and imprisoned, whereas others eventually gave
up, fearing harsh reprisals against their families. Some White Caps adopted a more political strategy,
gaining election to local offices throughout New Mexico in the early 1890s, but growing concerns over the
potential impact upon the territory’s quest for statehood led several citizens to heighten their repression
of the movement. Other laws passed in the United States intended to deprive Mexican Americans of
their heritage as much as their lands. “Sunday Laws” prohibited “noisy amusements” such as bullfights,
cockfights, and other cultural gatherings common to Hispanic communities at the time. “Greaser Laws”
permitted the imprisonment of any unemployed Mexican American on charges of vagrancy. Although
Hispanic Americans held tightly to their cultural heritage as their remaining form of self-identity, such
laws did take a toll.
In California and throughout the Southwest, the massive influx of Anglo-American settlers simply overran
the Hispanic populations that had been living and thriving there, sometimes for generations. Despite being
U.S. citizens with full rights, Hispanics quickly found themselves outnumbered, outvoted, and, ultimately,
outcast. Corrupt state and local governments favored whites in land disputes, and mining companies
and cattle barons discriminated against them, as with the Chinese workers, in terms of pay and working
conditions. In growing urban areas such as Los Angeles, barrios , or clusters of working-class homes, grew
more isolated from the white American centers. Hispanic Americans, like the Native Americans and
Chinese, suffered the fallout of the white settlers’ relentless push west.
508 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Americanization
Battle of Wounded Knee
bonanza farms
California Gold Rush
Comstock Lode
exodusters
Fence Cutting War
las Gorras Blancas
Manifest Destiny
Sand Creek Massacre
sod house
Key Terms
the process by which an Indian was “redeemed” and assimilated into the American
way of life by changing his clothing to western clothing and renouncing his tribal customs in exchange
for a parcel of land
an attempt to disarm a group of Lakota Sioux Indians near Wounded Knee,
South Dakota, which resulted in members of the Seventh Cavalry of the U.S. Army opening fire and
killing over 150 Indians
large farms owned by speculators who hired laborers to work the land; these large farms
allowed their owners to benefit from economies of scale and prosper, but they did nothing to help small
family farms, which continued to struggle
the period between 1848 and 1849 when prospectors found large strikes of gold in
California, leading others to rush in and follow suit; this period led to a cycle of boom and bust through
the area, as gold was discovered, mined, and stripped
the first significant silver find in the country, discovered by Henry T. P. Comstock in
1859 in Nevada
a term used to describe African Americans who moved to Kansas from the Old South to
escape the racism there
this armed conflict between cowboys moving cattle along the trail and ranchers who
wished to keep the best grazing lands for themselves occurred in Clay County, Texas, between 1883 and
1884
the Spanish name for White Caps, the rebel group of Hispanic Americans who fought
back against the appropriation of Hispanic land by whites; for a period in 1889–1890, they burned farms,
homes, and crops to express their growing anger at the injustice of the situation
the phrase, coined by journalist John O’Sullivan, which came to stand for the idea that
white Americans had a calling and a duty to seize and settle the American West with Protestant
democratic values
a militia raid led by Colonel Chivington on an Indian camp in Colorado, flying
both the American flag and the white flag of surrender; over one hundred men, women, and children
were killed
a frontier home constructed of dirt held together by thick-rooted prairie grass that was
prevalent in the Midwest; sod, cut into large rectangles, was stacked to make the walls of the structure,
providing an inexpensive, yet damp, house for western settlers
Summary
17.1 The Westward Spirit
While a few bold settlers had moved westward before the middle of the nineteenth century, they were the
exception, not the rule. The “great American desert,” as it was called, was considered a vast and empty
place, unfit for civilized people. In the 1840s, however, this idea started to change, as potential settlers
began to learn more from promoters and land developers of the economic opportunities that awaited them
in the West, and Americans extolled the belief that it was their Manifest Destiny—their divine right—to
explore and settle the western territories in the name of the United States.
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 509 Most settlers in this first wave were white Americans of means. Whether they sought riches in gold,
cattle, or farming, or believed it their duty to spread Protestant ideals to native inhabitants, they headed
west in wagon trains along paths such as the Oregon Trail. European immigrants, particularly those from
Northern Europe, also made the trip, settling in close-knit ethnic enclaves out of comfort, necessity, and
familiarity. African Americans escaping the racism of the South also went west. In all, the newly settled
areas were neither a fast track to riches nor a simple expansion into an empty land, but rather a clash of
cultures, races, and traditions that defined the emerging new America.
17.2 Homesteading: Dreams and Realities
The concept of Manifest Destiny and the strong incentives to relocate sent hundreds of thousands of people
west across the Mississippi. The rigors of this new way of life presented many challenges and difficulties to
homesteaders. The land was dry and barren, and homesteaders lost crops to hail, droughts, insect swarms,
and more. There were few materials with which to build, and early homes were made of mud, which did
not stand up to the elements. Money was a constant concern, as the cost of railroad freight was exorbitant,
and banks were unforgiving of bad harvests. For women, life was difficult in the extreme. Farm wives
worked at least eleven hours per day on chores and had limited access to doctors or midwives. Still, they
were more independent than their eastern counterparts and worked in partnership with their husbands.
As the railroad expanded and better farm equipment became available, by the 1870s, large farms began to
succeed through economies of scale. Small farms still struggled to stay afloat, however, leading to a rising
discontent among the farmers, who worked so hard for so little success.
17.3 Making a Living in Gold and Cattle
While homesteading was the backbone of western expansion, mining and cattle also played significant
roles in shaping the West. Much rougher in character and riskier in outcomes than farming, these two
opportunities brought forward a different breed of settler than the homesteaders. Many of the long-trail
cattle riders were Mexican American or African American, and most of the men involved in both pursuits
were individuals willing to risk what little they had in order to strike it rich.
In both the mining and cattle industries, however, individual opportunities slowly died out, as
resources—both land for grazing and easily accessed precious metals—disappeared. In their place came
big business, with the infrastructure and investments to make a profit. These businesses built up small
towns into thriving cities, and the influx of middle-class families sought to drive out some of the violence
and vice that characterized the western towns. Slowly but inexorably, the “American” way of life, as
envisioned by the eastern establishment who initiated and promoted the concept of Manifest Destiny, was
spreading west.
17.4 The Loss of American Indian Life and Culture
The interaction of the American Indians with white settlers during the western expansion movement was a
painful and difficult one. For settlers raised on the notion of Manifest Destiny and empty lands, the Indians
added a terrifying element to what was already a difficult and dangerous new world. For the Indians, the
arrival of the settlers meant nothing less than the end of their way of life. Rather than cultural exchange,
contact led to the virtual destruction of Indian life and culture. While violent acts broke out on both sides,
the greatest atrocities were perpetrated by whites, who had superior weapons and often superior numbers,
as well as the support of the U.S. government.
The death of the Indian way of life happened as much at the hands of well-intentioned reformers as those
who wished to see the Indians exterminated. Individual land ownership, boarding schools, and pleas to
510 Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900
This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 renounce Indian gods and culture were all elements of the reformers’ efforts. With so much of their life
stripped away, it was ever more difficult for the Indians to maintain their tribal integrity.
17.5 The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens
In the nineteenth century, the Hispanic, Chinese, and white populations of the country collided. Whites
moved further west in search of land and riches, bolstered by government subsidies and an inherent and
unshakable belief that the land and its benefits existed for their use. In some ways, it was a race to the
prize: White Americans believed that they deserved the best lands and economic opportunities the country
afforded, and did not consider prior claims to be valid.
Neither Chinese immigrants nor Hispanic Americans could withstand the assault on their rights by the
tide of white settlers. Sheer numbers, matched with political backing, gave the whites the power they
needed to overcome any resistance. Ultimately, both ethnic groups retreated into urban enclaves, where
their language and traditions could survive.
Review Questions
1. Which of the following does not represent a
group that participated significantly in westward
migration after 1870?
A. African American “exodusters” escaping
racism and seeking economic opportunities
B. former Southern slaveholders seeking land
and new financial opportunities
C. recent immigrants from Northern Europe
and Canada
D. recent Chinese immigrants seeking gold in
California
2. Which of the following represents an action that
the U.S. government took to help Americans fulfill
the goal of western expansion?
A. the passage of the Homestead Act
B. the official creation of the philosophy of
Manifest Destiny
C. the development of stricter immigration
policies
D. the introduction of new irrigation techniques
3. Why and how did the U.S. government
promote western migration in the midst of fighting
the Civil War?
4. What specific types of hardships did an average
American farmer not face as he built his homestead
in the Midwest?
A. droughts
B. insect swarms
C. hostile Indian attacks
D. limited building supplies
5. What accounts for the success of large,
commercial “bonanza farms?” What benefits did
they enjoy over their smaller family-run
counterparts?
6. How did everyday life in the American West
hasten equality for women who settled the land?
7. Which of the following groups was not
impacted by the invention of barbed wire?
A. ranchers
B. cowboys
C. farmers
D. illegal prostitutes
8. The American cowboy owes much of its model
to what other culture?
A. Mexicans
B. Indians
C. Northern European immigrants
D. Chinese immigrants
9. How did mining and cattle ranching transform
individual “get rich quick” efforts into “big
business” efforts when the nineteenth century came
to a close?
10. Which of the following was not a primary
method by which the American government dealt
with American Indians during the period of
western settlement?
A. relocation
B. appeasement
Chapter 17 Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900 511 C. extermination
D. assimilation
11. What did the Last Arrow pageant symbolize?
A. the continuing fight of the Indians
B. the total extermination of the Indians from
the West
C. the final step in the Americanization process
D. the rebellion at Little Bighorn
12. What brought the majority of Chinese
immigrants to the U.S.?
A. gold
B. work opportunities on the railroads
C. the Homestead Act
D. Chinese benevolent associations
13. How were Hispanic citizens deprived of their
wealth and land in the course of western
settlement?
A. Indian raids
B. land seizures
C. prisoner of war status
D. infighting
14. Compare and contrast the treatment of
Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens to that
of Indians during the period of western settlement.
Critical Thinking Questions
15. Describe the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. What effect did it have on Americans’ westward
migration? How might the different groups that migrated have sought to apply this philosophy to their
individual circumstances?
16. Compare the myth of the “Wild West” with its reality. What elements of truth would these stories
have contained, and what was fabricated or left out? What was life actually like for cowboys, ranchers, and
the few women present in mining towns or along the cattle range?
17. What were the primary methods that the U.S. government, as well as individual reformers, used
to deal with the perceived Indian threat to westward settlement? In what ways were these methods
successful and unsuccessful? What were their short-term and long-term effects on Native Americans?
18. Describe the ways in which the U.S. government, local governments, and/or individuals attempted to
interfere with the specific cultural traditions and customs of Indians, Hispanics, and Chinese immigrants.
What did these efforts have in common? How did each group respond?
19. In what ways did westward expansion provide new opportunities for women and African
Americans? In what ways did it limit these opportunities?
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This content is available for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3
