The West: Exploting An Empire

THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE

After the Civil War, Americans, who believed expansion was their “manifest destiny,” began moving westward across the continent, subduing the Native Americans through various means, and creating a North American empire.

Beyond the Frontier
Prior to the Civil War, the march of white settlement paused at the margin of the semiarid Great Plains, a region searedby hot winds in the summer and buffeted by blizzards and hailstorms in the winter, and presenting a temporary obstacle to further migration.

Crushing the Native Americans
Because they were seen as an additional obstacle to further white migration, Native Americans were pushed from their lands and forced to radically change their cultures by the end of the century. Those who did not peacefullyacquiesce were beaten into submission.
Life of the Plains Indians
After they acquired the Spanish horse, the Plains Indians abandoned their former agricultural lifestyle in favor of a strong, unique culture based upon nomadic hunting of the buffalo. Though the Plains Indians generally existed in tribes of thousands people, they lived in smaller bands of several hundred. Within the culture of thePlains Indians, men and women existed in relative egalitarianism as the occupations of both were necessary for group survival.
“As Long as Waters Run”: Searching for an Indian Policy
Earlier in the century, the Great Plains, known as the Great American Desert, was considered by the United States government as unusable for whites and was given to the Native Americans as “one big reservation.”But with the discovery of gold in the West, the federal government began a policy of concentration, restricting tribes to specific, limited reservations. This new policy led to conflicts and violence among Native American groups and with whites.
Final Battles on the Plains
From 1867 to 1890, the federal government fought a number of tribes in brutal military campaigns, eliminating any semblance ofresistance and culminating in the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

The End of Tribal Life
In the 1870s and 1880s, Congress began a new policy to try to end tribal authority, turn Native Americans into farmers, and educate their children to be more like whites. The Dawes Act of 1887 forced Native Americans to live on individual plots of land and allowed 90 million acres of Indian lands to be sold towhite settlers. The crushing blow to traditional tribal ways resulted from the near extermination of the buffalo by white hunters. By 1900, there were only 250,000 Native Americans counted in the census, down from nearly five million in 1492, most of them suffering from extreme poverty and the problems associated with it.

Settlement of the West
In the last three decades of the nineteenthcentury, whites, along with some blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, moved west seeking adventure, better health and economic opportunity, or religious freedom, in the case of the Mormons.
Men and Women on the Overland Trail
Some one-half million settlers flocked to the West, especially California and Oregon, in the three decades after the Gold Rush of 1849. Traveling the Overland Trail, men and womenfound the journey both arduous and dangerous. For women in particular, the movement to the West meant separation from friends and family, loneliness, and exhaustive work.
Land for the Taking
Government policy, beginning with the Homestead Act of 1862, provided free or inexpensive land to individual settlers, land speculators, and private corporations like railroads, all of whom were eager to supplythe desire of a growing nation for products from the West.
Railroads became the West’s largest landowners. Often, unscrupulous speculators and companies took advantage of these government land programs.
Territorial Government
The new territories of the West related to the federal government much like colonies. The generation that grew up in the territorial West often developed distinctive...