American west

• A permanent Indian Frontier was established

  1834
• The Indian Frontier was designed to keep whites and Indians apart, Indians were meant to stay westwards of the Mississippi river and whites were meant to stay east and not settle on Plains Indians' lands
• The Oregon Trail opened


  1836
• An economic depression occurred in the east leading to increased poverty and unemployment, moving westwards to start a new life now seemed more attractive to some


  1837
• The Donner Party headed west but met with disaster and death


  1846
• Mormons travel to Great Salt Lake and established Salt Lake City


  1846
• Gold was discovered in California


  1848
• The California Gold rush occurred as thousands of Americans headed west to try to find gold and get rich


  1849
• The Fort Laramie Treaty - the Indian tribes agreed to stop fighting, allow migrants to travel through their land safely, allow railroad surveyors to work in their lands, allow the government to build roads and army posts and pay compensation if members of their tribes broke the treaty terms. In return the US government agreed to protect Indians from white Americans and pay the tribes a yearly sum of $50,000 as long as they stuck to the treaty terms.


  1851
• The Indian Appropriations Act - this provided government money for moving the Plains Indians to reservations in modern day Oklahoma


  1851
• Gold was discovered in the Rocky Mountains and gold mines opened in Nevada and Colorado


  1858-9
• The American Civil War was fought between the northern states (the Union) and the southern states (the Confederacy)


  1861-1865
• John Illif buys some cows and fattens them up on the Plains - showing that raising cattle on the Plains was feasible, you didn't have to raise them in Texas and then drive them miles to sell them in the west - this was the start of the idea of open ranching on the plains


  1861
• The Homestead Act - this promoted and encouraged the settlement of the west, plots of land were divided into 160 acre 'homesteads,' Americans could file a claim for a homestead for just $10, once they had lived and farmed on the land for 5 years they could pay $30 and own the land outright. -this was called 'proving up'


  1862
• The Pacific Railroad Act - this provided the incentive for transcontinental railroad building, splitting the job between two companies the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, loaning each company a huge amount of money for every mile built, promising to extinguish any rights of Plains Indians to land along the route as well as granting each company large sections of land alongside the rail route to sell and make profit


  1862
• Little Crow's War - he was chief of the Dakota Sioux, this tribe were desperately poor and hungry on the reservations and rebelled, killing white settlers, they were crushed by the US army and forced to move onto even poorer reservation lands. Little Crow was shot by a white settler soon after


  1862
• Work began on the transcontinental railway


  1864
• The Sand Creek Massacre - Black Kettle, chief of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes set up a camp at Sand Creek, he believed he and his people were under army protection but US soldiers charged in and massacred 140 men, women and children. The Indians were eventually forced to move to a reservation half the size of what they previously had


  1864
• Slavery was abolished after the north won the Civil War


  1865
• Goodnight and Loving establish the Goodnight-Loving Trail, this allowed cattle farmers to bring their cows west and sell directly to the growing populations on the west


  1866
• Red Cloud's War, he was a respected warrior and chief of the Lakota Sioux, he did not trust the US government and spent 2 years fighting to stop white gold miners crossing Indian lands, he was joined by two other leaders -Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, they achieved some successes, leading to the signing of the second Fort Laramie Treaty


  1866-68
• Joseph McCoy established the first cow town at Abilene


  1867
• President Grant's 'Peace Policy' aimed to ease tensions between white settlers & Plains Indians by improving management of reservations, replacing corrupt reservation agents with religious men who were less likely to trick the Indians out of supplies. A budget of $2 million was to ensure that Indians on the reservations were provided for, but any who refused to live on reservations were seen as hostile and could be attacked by the army


  1868
• The Second Fort Laramie Treaty - this recognised that the Great Sioux reservation was to be for the exclusive use of the Sioux tribes, Red Cloud agreed, but Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused - they did not trust the government to honour the treaty


  1868
• The first transcontinental railroad opens


  1869
• Cattle ranching begins on plains - the start of 'open range' ranching


  1870
• The Timber Culture Act was passed - this allowed a homesteader to claim a further 160 acres if they agreed to plant trees on a quarter of it - this was to help solve the problems of lack of timber and fuel on the Plains


  1873
• Barbed wire begins to be mass produced and wind powered pump was introduced-both of which made lives for homesteaders much easier


  1874
• The Great Sioux War - the last struggle of the Plains Indians to preserve their way of life and fight back against the white settlers


  1876-81
• The Battle of Little Big Horn - a branch of the US army led by General Custer was defeated by the Sioux, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, this was a turning point, turning US public opinion against the Plains Indians with a determination that they must 'assimilate or die


  1876
• Billy the Kid was killed


  1878
• The Exoduster Movement- thousands of former salves from the south moved westwards to start a new life, many went to Kansas


  1879
• The Gunfight at the OK Corral - Wyatt Earp and his brothers were meant to be the marshals and law keepers in the town of Tombstone but got into conflicts with rival families and ended up having a gunfight on the streets with several rival families. Locals did not like their violent approach to law keeping which seemed to create more conflict


  1881
• All Plains Indians are resettled on to reservations


  1885
• A very severe winter lead to the great die up' when millions of cattle died on the plains, it ended cattle ranching on the open range


  1886-87
• The Dawes Act - this allotted each Plains Indian family a 160-acre plot of land on the reservations, all the reservation land left over was to be sold to whites. Indians who took up the offer of 160 acres of land could apply to be US citizens and it was hoped that they wold settle down and become farmers


  1887
• The Wounded Knee massacre - the US army opened fire on a group of Sioux killing 250, half of whom were women and children, although this massacre was not planned this was the last stage in the government's attempts to crush the Ghost Dance movement which they saw as a threat


  1890
• The US Government closes the frontier- this meant that it ceased to exist, there was now no dividing line between east and west and the whole continent was now American owned land -manifest destiny had been achieved


  1890
• The Johnson County War-this was an armed conflict typical of the period between rival ranchers (big ranchers/cattle barons v. homesteaders and small ranchers)


  1892
• The Oklahoma land rush - the last Indian Territory was divided up and put up for sale


  1893