American West shorter one

• Plains Indians


  • Sioux
  • Cheyenne
  • Blackfoot
• Bands


  Most people in a band were related to each other. Bands were led by chiefs and had councils of advisers. Council members agreed everything the band did. The survival and protection of the band as a whole was seen as more important than the individuals within it.
• Tribes


  Bands in the same tribe supported each other during crises. Tribal meetings of all the bands were held each year to arrange marriages, trade horses and discuss issues. Chiefs and elders formed the tribal councils that advised tribal chiefs. Some tribes (e.g. the Sioux) were part of larger groups called nations.
• Chiefs


  Chiefs were chosen because of their wisdom and skills as warriors/hunters. They were rarely chiefs for life. Chiefs and councils decided where their bands would go and what should happen to those who broke with customs and traditions. But they did not have to be obeyed.
• Warrior societies


  • The best warriors from each band formed its warrior society. Members of the warrior societies supervised hunting and protected their bands from attack. All short raids and wars were led by the warrior society and the band's council would always consult them before they made decisions.
• Nomadic tribes found it very difficult to live permanently on reservations


  They were used to travelling and hunting freely
• Food was scarce on the Plains

  Bands often moved outside their tribe's traditional hunting grounds and into areas controlled by other tribes
• Plains Indians constantly raided other tribes for food, horses and people
• Horses


  • Catching buffalo was quicker and easier on horseback
  • Horses carried the Indians and their belongings on their journey to find buffalo
  • Horses were used in war
  • Wealth and status were measured by how many horses an Indian or tribe had
• Plains Indians believed that everything in nature had a spirit and that these spirits could help humans or harm them
• Plains Indians believed that humans were a part of nature and should work with the spirits of nature, rather than try to tame and control nature
• Plains Indians tribes had sacred areas. For the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills, Paha Sapa, were sacred because this was where the Lakota believed their tribe originally came from
• For Plains Indians, land was not any one's property, and not something that one person could buy and keep just for him or herself
• The highest respect and prestige was given to warriors, usually young men, for counting coup: landing a blow on an enemy and getting away without being injured
• Indian war parties would also run away if a fight turned against them
• The US Army found it difficult to fight an enemy that ran away rather than fought to the last man


  They had to develop new techniques against Indian warfare
• The US government needed US citizens to go and live in its new territories in the West
• The US Army forced Indians to move away from trails in case Indians attacked travellers migrating from east to west
• The Indian Appropriation Act paid for moving Indians in Indian Territory onto reservations
• The government hoped that reservations would help Indians learn to farm and live like white Americans
• On reservations, white people could teach Indians about new ways of living
• Reservations could become a way of controlling where Indians went and what they did
• The US government forced 46 000 eastern Indians to give up their lands in return for new lands west of the Mississippi River
• Whites then thought this land was worthless – the 'Great American Desert'
• Instead of being on the western edge, Indian Territory was now sandwiched in the middle of the USA
• Pull factors for moving west


  • Freedom and independence
  • Fertile land
  • Space
  • Oregon Trail
  • Gold
• Push factors for moving west

  • Collapse of wheat prices
  • Overpopulation
  • Persecution
  • Unemployment
• The US government needed to populate their territory in the West to defend it from foreign powers
• Manifest Destiny: that it was God's will that white Americans should settle over all of America
• In 1837, corn prices collapsed, leaving farmers facing ruin
• Between 1836 and 1846 the total number of migrants using the Trail was 5000. From 1849, tens of thousands used the Trail in the hope of finding gold in the West
• Thousands more came by ship, from all over the world, to San Francisco. A famine in China led to 20 000 Chinese people migrating to California in 1852
• Most migrants did not find gold. Professional miners with the equipment and expertise to mine underground (where most of the gold was) took over through the 1850s
• Genocide of Californian Indians by migrants
• Tension with Plain Indians due to huge increase in migration along Oregon Trail
• Gold from California boosts US economy - helps fund railroads
• Racial tension due to immigration
• Problems of lawlessness in the mining camps
• The Donner Party migration

  1. Left Missouri for California

  2. Took a 'short cut'

  3. Became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains

  4. Many died of starvation and exposure
• The importance of the Gold Rush for relationships between whites and Indians