Chapter 16: The Conquest of the Far West

• Plain Indians


  the most widespread Indian groups in the west

  -made up of many different tribal and language groups

  -some lived sedentary lives as farmers, many were buffalo-hunters, rode horses, and lived in tepees

  -buffalo/basin were the economic basis of these tribes (provided a source of food, clothing, shoes, tepees, blankets, knives, arrow tips, etc.)
• General Stephen Kearny


  American general who had commanded troops in New Mexico. He tried to establish a territorial government in the region, ignoring the majority Hispanics.

  -Taos Indians rebelled, killing Kearny and other Anglo-American officials
• Californios


  Hispanic residents of California
• barrios


  Hispanic neighborhoods where Mexicans and Mexican Americans clustered in Los Angeles and became part of the lower end of the working class
• Juan Cortina


  led angry Mexicans in raiding the jail in Brownsville and freed all Mexican prisoners inside (little long-term effect)
• foreign miners tax (1852)

  enacted by California legislature to exclude the Chinese from gold mining
• The Chinese were more preferred than white workers because they

  (1) worked hard

  (2) made fewer demands

  (3) accepted relatively low wages
• Workingman's Party (1878)


  -founded by Denis Kearney (an Irish immigrant)

  -took aim against cheap Chinese immigrant labor and the Central Pacific Railroad which employed them
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

  banned Chinese immigration into the U.S. for 10 years and barred Chinese already in the country from becoming citizens

  -renewed for another 10 years in 1892
• The Homestead Act (1862)

  permitted settlers to buy 160 acres for a small fee if they occupied the lands they purchased for 5 years

  -supporters believed it would create new markets and outposts of commercial agriculture
• The Timber Culture Act (1873)

  permitted homesteaders to receive grants of 160 additional acres if they planted 40 acres of trees on them
• The Desert Land Act (1877)

  allowed claimants to buy 640 acres at $1.25 an acre, provided they irrigated part of their holdings within 3 years
• 3 main industries in the western economy

  (1) mining

  (2) ranching

  (3) commercial farming
• range wars


  conflict that erupted between sheepmen and cattlemen, ranchers and farmers
• Rocky Mountain School

  school that celebrated the new west with paintings

  -painters: Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran
• Shows that promoted the west as a place of freedom

  -Buffalo Bill Cody

  -Cody's Wild West Show
• Mark Twain


  portrayed the romantic vision of the west in his works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
• Frederic Remington


  one of the most beloved artists of the 19th century, a painter and sculptor whose works represented the romance of the west, portryed the cowboy as a natural aristocrat
• Theodore Roosevelt


  -also romanticized the west by traveling to the Dakota Badlands after the tragic passing of his wife

  -published The Winning of the West
• Frederick Jackson Turner


  "Now the frontier has gone and with its going has closed the first period of American history"- from "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (Chicago)
• tribal sovereignty


  the idea that the U.S. should recognize Indian tribes as their own nations and negotiate treaties w/ them
• concentration


  the government assigned each tribe its own defined reservation
• Indian Peace Commission


  (composed of soldiers and civilians), recommended that the gov. move all the Plain tribes into 2 large reservations- one in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the other in the Dakotas
• Wounded Knee


  a massacre in 1890 that started when Sioux left the reservation in protest because of the death of Sitting Bull
• Joseph H Glidden and I L. Ellewood


  developed and marketed the barbed wire
• dryland farming


  a system of tillage designed to conserve moisture in the soil by covering it w/ a dust blanket
• issues w/ western agriculture

  (1) railroads, charged higher rates for farm goods

  (2) interest rates increase and issues with institutions controlling credit

  (3) prices of crops were unpredictable
• Hamlin Garland


  reflected on the growing disillusionment of the west in his novel Jason Edwards (1891)