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17: Conquering the West
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By the end of the Civil War, the West had become
legendary in the eastern states. No longer the
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Great American Desert, it was now the frontier in
American minds: an empty land awaiting settlement
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and civilization - a place of wealth, opportunity,
purity, and unadulterated individualism.
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In reality, the West bore little resemblance to
its image in the popular consciousness. It was
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populated by Indians, Mexicans, French, British
Canadians, Asians, diverse in climate and culture,
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and often unforgiving. The American west was
the land of many lands. It possessed the most
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arid regions and some of the wettest and lushest
areas of the country; the flattest plains and
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the highest mountains, and for a nation eager
to stretch its legs, it was ripe for conquest.
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Before the arrival of whites, Indian tribes
comprised the largest and most important
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western population group - some were Indians
relocated from the East, but most were members
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of indigenous tribes. More than 300,000 Indians
lived on the Pacific Coast before the arrival
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of Spanish settlers; the Pueblos of the
Southwest had lived permanently as farmers;
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but the most widespread Indian groups
in the West were the Plains Indians.
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Made up of many different tribal and language
groups, they followed bison migrations,
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using the animal for food, clothing, and
other supplies. Plains Indians proved the
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fiercest impediment to white settlement, but
even powerful cross-tribal alliances against
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white invasion could not protect against
ecological (smallpox) and economic decline.
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When the United States acquired the far West,
it acquired pockets of Spanish-speaking old
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Mexico. In the aftermath of the Mexican-American
War, attempts at establishing a territorial
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government in New Mexico that excluded the
much-larger Mexican and Indians populations
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prompted rebellion in 1847, resulting in the
murder of a number of high-profile Anglo-American
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officials. New Mexico remained under military rule
for three years until 1850, when the U.S. Army
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finally broke the power of the Navajo, Apache,
and other tribes. Substantial Hispanic migration
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coincided with the recession of the
tribes, reaching as far north as Colorado.
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Only the railroads brought whites in significant
numbers, “annihilating time and space”
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by rapidly bringing industry, mining, and new
forms of agriculture and ranching to western
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regions, while providing work for many Mexicans.
In California, the secular Mexican aristocracy
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(itself a product of earlier Catholic missionary
efforts to convert coastal Indians) was pushed
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aside by a flood of white prospectors
propelled by the infamous Gold Rush.
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Many of these Mexican Californios lost their
land during the land boom - either through bad
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business deals or outright seizure. Mexicans
and Mexican Americans became part of the lower
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end of the state’s working-class, clustered
in barrios in Los Angeles and elsewhere,
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or laboring as migrant farmworkers. Even Hispanic
landowners found themselves unable to raise
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livestock as they once had, as communal grazing
lands fell under the control of Anglo ranchers.
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A similar pattern occurred in Texas
after it joined the United States.
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Pockets of resistance to growing
Anglo had little long-term impact.
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As in California, Mexicans in southern Texas
became an increasingly impoverished working class.
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At the same time that many ambitious or
impoverished Europeans were crossing the Atlantic
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in search of opportunities in the New World, many
Chinese were crossing the Pacific in hopes of
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better lives. Not all came to the United States
- many Chinese, some as coolies (poorly-treated
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indentured servants) moved to Hawaii, Australia,
Latin America, South America, and the Caribbean.
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A few arrived in the American west before the Gold
Rush, but the trickle turned into a torrent after
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1848. By 1880, more than 200,000 had settled
in the United States, mostly as free laborers.
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For a time, white Americans welcomed the
Chinese as conscientious, hard-working people;
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very quickly, opinion turned hostile, as the
Chinese became worthy rivals in mining operations.
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By 1852, the California legislature was trying
to exclude the Chinese from mining by enacting a
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foreign miners tax. The effect of discriminatory
laws, the hostility of white miners, and the
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declining profitability of the surface mines
drove the Chinese from mining alongside whites.
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Many thousands found work on the transcontinental
railroad, comprising 90% of the labor force of
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the Central Pacific. Those men lost their jobs
in 1869 when the railroad was completed - some
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moved into agricultural work, but many more
flocked to cities, specifically San Francisco.
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Much of community life there, and
in other Chinatowns across the West,
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revolved around benevolent societies -
organizations, led by prominent merchants,
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that functioned much like a local government
for the community. Other organizations,
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known as tongs, were criminal in nature, and
worked in the prostitution and opium trade.
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Overall, Chinese usually occupied the lower
rungs of the employment ladder in the West.
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They served as common laborers,
servants, and unskilled factory hands,
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though some established independent
businesses, including laundries,
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which operated in mining towns for groups of
men used to having women wash their clothes.
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Chinese women (other than prostitutes) came
to America much more gradually than the men.
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While the Chinese were populating the far
American West, anti-Chinese sentiment was
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bubbling among Anglo settlers. Chinese laborers
often accepted very low wages, which stifled
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union efforts to ensure a fair wage for Anglo
workers. The Democratic Party took advantage
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of anti-Chinese sentiment across the West,
as did the Workingmen’s Party of California,
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which gained power in the state by
promoting anti-Chinese policies. By 1885,
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anti-Chinese violence had spread up and down the
Pacific Coast. In 1882, Congress responded to
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political pressure and the growing violence of
the West by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act,
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which banned Chinese immigration in the United
States for ten years, and barred Chinese already
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in the country from becoming citizens; Congress
renewed the law ten years, and then made it
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permanent in 1902, shrinking the population of
Chinese considerably in the decades that followed.
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The scale of post-Civil War migration to
the American West dwarfed everything that
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had preceded it. Where settlers had come in
the thousands, they now came in the millions.
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Most settlers were established Anglo families from
the East, but over two million Europeans settled
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in the West between 1870-1900. They came for gold
and silver, for the short-grass pasture for their
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cattle and sheep, and ultimately, for the sod of
the plains and the meadowlands of the mountains.
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The transcontinental railroad and its subsidiary
lines pulled people in, and so did the policies of
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the federal government, including the Homestead
Act of 1862. Proponents of the Homestead Act
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believed it would create new economic markets in
the west, and Congress gradually made it possible
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for an individual (mostly cattle-owners) to secure
as much as 1200 acres of land at very little cost.
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Political organization followed emigration
- Nevada, Colorado, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho,
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Montana, and Wyoming were territories and then
states. Utah was denied statehood until its
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Mormon leaders convinced the government in 1896
that polygamy had been abandoned. At the turn
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of the century, only Arizona, New Mexico, and
Oklahoma remained outside the United States.
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The great wave of Anglo-American and European
settlement transformed the economy of the Far West
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and tied the region firmly to the
industrial economy of the northeast.
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Western laborers were paid more than workers
in the East, but working conditions were often
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arduous and job security was not assured (once
a railroad was built, a crop harvested, a herd
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sent to market, or a mine played out, hundreds
of workers might find themselves out of work).
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Labor was a highly multiracial affair
in the west. English-speaking whites
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worked alongside African Americans and immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe, as they did in
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the East; however, whites also worked alongside
Chinese, Filipinos, Mexicans, and Indians.
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But the workforce was still highly
stratified. Whites typically served
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as management or skilled labor, while nonwhites
filled all other roles. Three major industries
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dominated labor in the west; mining,
ranching, and commercial farming,
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and each was prone to a cycle of boom-and-bust
economics common to the American West.
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The first economic boom of the Far West
came via major silver and gold strikes,
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the news of which would set off a repeating
pattern of settlement, boom, bust, and then
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a choice - create a more permanent economy,
or pack up and leave. The first great mineral
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strikes (excluding the California Gold Rush)
occurred just before the Civil War near Denver,
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and 50,000 prospectors stormed in. Mining
camps blossomed into cities overnight.
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Almost as rapidly as it had developed, the boom
ended. Later, the discovery of silver supplied a
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new source of mineral wealth for residents. Gold
in the Washoe district of Nevada set off a boom,
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only upended by the silver rush brought
on by the discovery of the Comstock Lode.
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The “roaring camps” of men lasted until the
placer deposits ran out, then Californian and
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eastern capitalists bought the claims of the
pioneer prospectors and began to use the more
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difficult process of quartz mining, which enabled
them to retrieve silver from deeper veins.
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For a few years, outsiders reaped tremendous
profits, until 1880, when the Nevada mines played
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out. In 1874, gold was found in the Black Hills
of southwest Dakota Territory, and prospectors
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swarmed. The Dakotas, like other boom areas of
the mineral empire, ultimately developed a largely
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agricultural economy after the mines were tapped.
Less glamorous than gold and silver were copper,
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lead, quartz, tin, and zinc mining, a process
that began with the great Anaconda copper mine
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in Montana, but created fortunes for investors.
Regardless of the mineral, men greatly outnumbered
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women in the mining towns, and younger men
in particular had difficulty finding female
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companions of comparable age. The sexual imbalance
made the market for prostitutes particularly
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profitable for entrepreneurial women. Of the tens
of thousands of people who flocked to boomtowns,
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few made fast wealth. Many often worked as
wage laborers in corporate mines after the
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boom period failed to net them the profits they
had sought. In the 1870s, nearly one in thirty
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men was disabled by his work in the mines,
and one in every eighty was killed. Mining
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remained one of the most dangerous and toughest
jobs in America well into the 20th century.
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The vastness of the Far West (and particularly,
its open range of vast, public grasslands)
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provided the space cattle ranchers needed to grow
their empires. Mexican and Texas by ancestry, the
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cattle business had been developed and perfected
by Mexicans before whites entered the Southwest.
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Branding, round-ups, roping, saddles, spurs,
and even the bronco and mustang breeds that
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excelled at the work: all were Mexican practices
and technologies passed onto Tejano cowboys.
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At the end of the Civil War, five million cattle
roamed the Texas range. Eastern markets offered
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good prices for steers in any condition, but the
trouble was moving the cattle to railroad centers.
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Early in 1866, some Texas cattle ranchers began
driving their combined herds, some 260,000 head,
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north into Missouri. The caravan suffered heavy
losses, but the effort proved that cattle could
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be driven to distant markets and pastured along
the trail; suddenly West Texas had something to
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offer the booming Northeast. Railroads depots
sprung up closer and closer to the cattle,
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driving settlement into places like Abilene,
Wichita, Cheyenne, and Glendive, Montana.
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Risk dominated the practice. Indians and rustlers
frequently seized large numbers of animals,
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but the biggest risk to profit came from fellow
ranchers. Sheep breeders from California and
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Oregon brought their flocks to the range to
compete for grass. Farmers (“nesters”) from the
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East threw fences around their claims, blocking
trails and breaking up the open range. A series
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of range wars - between sheepmen and cattlemen,
ranchers and farmers - erupted out of the tension.
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The structure of the cattle economy gradually
corporatized, as eastern speculators flooded
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the market with cattle, crowding ranges already
shrunk by rail lines and by settling farmers.
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Two hard winters in the 1880s, divided by
a searing summer, scored the plains - the
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water dried up, the grass shriveled, and
hundreds of thousands of cattle perished,
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taking with them the princely ranches and
speculative fever of new cattlemen. The open-range
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never recovered, and the great western cattle
kingdom lost its viability for most participants.
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The myth and legend of the west occupied a special
place in the Anglo-American imagination during the
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19th century. Many white Americans considered it a
romantic place where individuals could experience
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true freedom in the great wilderness of the
continent. The spectacular landscape only
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perpetuated the notion - the Rocky Mountain School
of American painters celebrated the majesty of the
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west on their canvases, which Eastern audiences
clamored to see. Gradually, these paintings
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inspired a growing wave of tourism among people
eager to see the natural wonders of the region.
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Resort hotels sprung up across the west in the
1880s and 1890s at places like the Grand Canyon
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and the Rocky Mountains. Americans also came to
idealize the rugged, free-spirit figure of the
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American cowboy, popularized in western novels
like The Virginian. His courage and decency,
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his freedom from social constraints, his
affinity with nature, and even his propensity
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for violence made him a powerful symbol of the
supposed virtues of the American frontier. Novels
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and stories of the West soon flooded popular
writing for all audiences, and traveling Wild West
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shows like Buffalo Bill Cody’s romanticized the
life of the cowboy through reenactments of Indian
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battles (with hired Indians) and displays of
horsemanship and riflery (mostly by Annie Oakley).
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Bill, a former Pony Express rider and
Indian fighter, confirmed the popular
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image of the west as a place of romance
and glamour for generations of Americans.
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They romanticized the West because it was closing.
Americans considered the West the final frontier
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of exploration; since the earliest moments of
European settlement in America, the image of
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uncharted territory had always comforted and
inspired those who dreamed of starting life anew.
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Mark Twain gave a voice to that vision in
his novels and memoirs. He created characters
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who repudiated the constraints of organized
society and attempted to escape. The West was,
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for many, the last refuge from the constraints of
civilization. The clearest and most influential
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statement of the romantic vision of the frontier
came from the historian Frederick Jackson Turner
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in his frontier thesis (delivered at
the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago).
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In his paper he claimed that the experience of
western expansion had stimulated individualism,
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nationalism, and democracy, kept opportunities for
prosperity alive, and made America exceptional. He
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suggested the closing of the frontier marked the
most significant event in American history, and
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signaled a new era for the nation. In accepting
the idea of the end of the frontier, Americans
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were acknowledging the end of a cherished myth.
As long as it had been possible to imagine the
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west as a vast and desolate place (which it had
not actually been for some time), it was possible
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to believe that individuals (and the nation as
a whole) could remake or even redeem itself.
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Having imagined the West as a “virgin
land” awaiting civilization by whites,
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Americans tried to force the region to match
their image of it. That meant, above all,
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ensuring that Indian tribes would not remain
obstacles to the spread of white society. By 1850,
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the idea of establishing one great Indian
nation gave way to a policy of concentration.
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The government assigned all tribes
their own defined reservations,
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confirmed by individual treaties. The
new arrangement had many benefits for
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whites - it made tribes easier to control,
for one. In 1867, Congress established the
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Indian Peace Commission, designed to create
a new and permanent solution to the “Indian
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problem.” The commission recommended
that the government move all the Plains
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tribes into two reservations - one in Indian
territory (Oklahoma), the other in the Dakotas.
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Problems implementing the policy were
exacerbated by the relentless bison slaughter
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by whites, which deeply upset the balance
of everyday life for Plains Indians.
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After the Civil War, professional and
amateur hunters swarmed the plains,
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gunning down the animals simply for their trophy
hides. In 1865, more than fifteen million buffalo
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roamed the plains - by 1875, only a few thousand
of the great beasts survived. The near-extinction
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of buffalo destroyed the last vestige of
cultural normalcy for many native Americans.
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The federal government and state militias
had been fighting in the western Indian Wars
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since the early 1850s, as Indians pushed
back against the growing threats to their
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civilizations. The “terror of the plains” Comanche
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continually attacked wagon trains, stagecoaches,
and isolated ranches, and stole horses, often in
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retaliation. As the U.S. Army became more involved
in the fighting, conflicts often escalated. In
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Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming, Indians fought
to reclaim land lost to white settlements,
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including mining camps, farms, and
military outposts. In the so-called Sioux
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uprising, a starving and cornered Dakota people
went to war in Minnesota for their survival. The
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Sand Creek massacre stands out as an especially
egregious example of frontier bloodshed;
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In Colorado, the governor asked peaceful tribes
to congregate at army posts for protection
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before an Army began an attack on hostile Indians.
One Arapaho and Cheyenne band under Black Kettle
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heeded the warning and were butchered in
their sleep by a volunteer militia force,
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largely consisting of unemployed miners,
many of whom were apparently drunk.
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Violence by vigilantes became
known as Indian hunting.
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Sometimes the killing was in response to Indian
raids, but considerable numbers of whites were
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committed to the goal of eliminating Indians
from the continent, a goal that rested on the
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belief in the essential inhumanity of Indians
and the impossibility of white coexistence with
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them. Indian fighting was fierce, and battles like
the Battle of Little Bighorn (Custer’s last stand
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against 2,500 natives) point to a more balanced
conflict than popularly imagined. However,
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Indians never had the political organization
or the supplies to keep their troops united,
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and they were soon divided and overwhelmed by
the greater numbers of white soldiers. Vestiges
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of organized resistance continued until 1886, when
Geronimo (himself the successor to Cochise), his
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band of warriors all but extinct, surrendered to
his 10,000 white pursuers. Disillusioned, a Paiute
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Indian inspired a fervent spiritual movement that
began in Nevada and spread quickly to the plains.
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Emphasizing the imminent coming of a messiah, the
new revival’s most conspicuous feature was a mass,
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emotional Ghost Dance, which inspired ecstatic,
mystical visions - including images of the
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retreat of white people from the plains and
a restoration of the great buffalo herds.
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White agents on the Sioux reservation, bewildered
by and fearful of the dances, warned the army that
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they might be a prelude to war. In the
last days of 1890, Custer’s 7th Cavalry
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tried to round up a group of 350 cold and
hungry Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
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Fighting broke out, and 40 troops and 200
Indians (women and children) were killed.
00:21:14
It is entirely possible that an
Indian may have fired the first shot,
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but the Army used their new machine guns on
the Indians and mowed them down in the snow.
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Even before Wounded Knee, the
federal government worked to
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break up the tribal structure
of American Indian culture. The
00:21:42
Long Walk describes a series of forced marches
to the reservation at Bosque Redondo so terrible
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it is remembered to this day by the Navajo
people. As Indian populations dwindled (and
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Indians began to pose less a threat to
western settlement) federal policy began
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to encourage assimilation and the survival of the
“vanishing race.” The Dawes General Allotment Act
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provided for the gradual elimination of most
communal land ownership instead allocating
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individual tracts for men and for families,
ideally to make them self-sufficient farmers.
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Adult land-owners were provided full citizenship,
but did not gain full title to their land for
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twenty-five years. In applying the Dawes Act, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs relentlessly promoted
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the idea of assimilation that lay behind it. They
took many Indian children away from their families
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and began sending them to boarding schools run
by whites. They moved to stop Indian religious
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rituals and encouraged the spread of Christianity
and the creation of Christian churches on or near
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Indian reservations. They sought to subdue
the last “free” Plains Indians and crush
00:22:49
Comanche resistance during the Red River War. Few
Indians were prepared for these wrenching changes;
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regardless, white corruption in the Bureau
forced the government to abandon the project.
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Much of the reservation land was never
distributed to individual owners.
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The arrival of the miners, empire-building
by cattle ranchers, and the subjugation and
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dispersal of Indian tribes - all served
as prelude to the decisive phase of
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white settlement of the Far West. Farmers had
begun to move west even before the Civil War,
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but in the 1870s, aided by the emerging system
of rail travel, farmers began to pour onto the
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plains and enclose land that had been hunting
territory for Indians and open range for cattle.
00:23:44
Railroads depressed their prices and sold much
of their unused land to settlers in an effort
00:23:48
to promote the West; coupled with an incredible
string of above-average rainfall years in the
00:23:55
early 1870s, white Americans rejected the
old notion of the “Great American Desert”
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moved west in staggering numbers.
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Farming on the plains presenting unique
challenges. The absence of materials for fencing
00:24:19
was solved with the invention of barbed wire, but
the problem of water scarcity was more daunting.
00:24:24
In 1887, a series of dry seasons began, and land
that had been fertile now returned to semiaridity.
00:24:31
Some farmers drew deep wells pumped by steel
windmills and by turning to dryland farming,
00:24:36
or by planting drought-resistant crops. The
bizarre belief that “the rain would follow the
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plow” captured the spirit of the era. In many
areas, though, the drought brought on serious
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debt, and thousands of farmers were forced to
uproot in an unprecedented migration back east.
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By the late 19th century, the commercial
farmer replaced the myth of the sturdy
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independent farmer, and he did so by bringing
to the agricultural economy what industrialists
00:25:01
were doing to the manufacturing economy. Farm
output was increasing dramatically across the
00:25:06
globe and overproduction only accelerated
the distress of America’s 6 million farmers.
00:25:11
Commercial farmers were not self-sufficient
and often focused on cash-crops that could
00:25:16
be sold in faraway markets. This kind of
commercial farming, when properly handled,
00:25:20
made considerable money - it also made
them dependent on bankers, interest rates,
00:25:25
railroad freight rates, international markets,
etc. America’s six million farmers experienced
00:25:30
considerable challenges during the era, including
manipulative railroad rates, exploitative credit
00:25:36
practices by banks, and unpredictable
forces in the agricultural commodities
00:25:40
market (including collusion among corporations and
politicians to influence crop prices). America’s
00:25:42
farmers, more isolated than ever from their
countrymen (and increasingly prone to seeing
00:25:48
their own children leave for America’s
burgeoning cities) experienced unprecedented
00:25:52
discouragement of an epidemic scale, a vague
helplessness that would later transform itself
00:26:00
into one of the nation’s greatest political
movements, the Populist Movement. Writers,
00:26:06
too, captured the spirit of the times, often
in contrast to the rugged cowboys of legend.
00:26:12
The agrarian frontier, once a “Golden West,
the land of wealth and freedom and happiness”
00:26:17
had faded in the popular consciousness. The trials
of rural life were crushing the human spirit.
00:26:24
Once sturdy yeoman farmers had understood
themselves the backbone of American life;
00:26:30
they now fell before the rising urban-industrial
society drawing itself up from the dirt.
00:26:35
“So this is the reality of the dream...A shanty
on a barren plain, hot and lone as a desert.”
