Lecture 1

Hist 111American Civilization II

Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer

Upper Iowa University

Lecture 1 Westward Expansion: Significance of the Frontier

The West exerted a powerful influence on the U.S. during the 19th century Manifest Destiny: the idea that

Americans spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific was divinely foreordained

End of the Frontier 1890 Census found no frontier

line, only pockets of unsettled land

Announcement caused Americans to reassess the frontier’s meaning

“Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893) Prompted the Census Bureau’s

1890 report Frontier had acted as a social

safety valve Frontier had promoted

individualism, pragmatism, egalitarianism, equality, and democracy

Frederick Jackson TurnerAuthor of the “Significance of the Frontier in American

History”

Lecture 1 Westward Expansion: The New Western History

Turner and his followers helped create a romantic view of the West that made its way into popular culture Epitomized by Hollywood

western in which settlers and the U.S. army bring civilization to the wild West

The New Western History refers to a group of scholars that reject Turner’s positive, rosy view of westward settlement

They even rejects the concept of “frontier” itself since human societies had long existed in the American West

Speak of “borderlands” where U.S. citizens encroached on and disrupted established societies, and wastefully exploited nature often causing serious environmental damage in the process

Critics have charged this view is too negative and contend that the effect of American settlers on the West was on balance positive

Although lacking a significant effect on popular culture, 1990’s Dances with Wolves is arguably a New Western History Hollywood

Western – why?

Lecture 1 Westward Expansion: The Mining Frontier

Americans moved west to pursue economic opportunity

Nowhere was this fact more dramatically illustrated than among the miners

Nothing like a gold or silver strike could bring Anglo-Americans faster into a new area

Characteristics of the Mining Frontier: Overwhelmingly male: mining was

hard manual labor, which discouraged the presence of women

Transient: miners only stayed in a location as long as it was producing

Miners generally lacked concern about the natural environment Hence to obtain minerals they

sometimes used environmentally disastrous practices like hydraulic mining

Hydraulic MiningUtilized high powered water

hoses, literally eroding hillsides to get at the

minerals beneath

Texas Cattle Frontier Appeared before the Civil War The Long Drive: longhorn cattle

fattened on government rangeland and then driven to Kansas railheads

Ranching highly profitable in its early decades: $5 calf raised and fattened on free government grass could sell for $25 or more

As frontier moved west so did the center of the ranching frontier: from Texas to Colorado, into Wyoming, Montana and the western Dakotas

Open-range ranching ended, causes: Overgrazing Winters of 1885-1887

Cowboys: Myths vs. Reality Became a historical icon Tough work for low wages

Lecture 1Westward Expansion: The Ranching Frontier

Cowboys gathered around

a chuck wagon out onthe open range

Lecture 1Westward Expansion: The Farming Frontier

“The Great American Desert”: before Civil War the far west was commonly considered unsuitable for agriculture

New farming techniques opened up this region to American farmers Irrigation (not so new) “Dry Farming”: farming to

maximize moisture conservation Homestead Act (1862)

Helped spur agricultural settlement of the West

Free land for small filing fee, five-years residence, and improvement of the property

Railroads also spurred settlement by transporting settlers and packaging land for sale on affordable terms

Lonely, isolated, often primitive life in early years

Prairie sod house inNorth Dakota

Why did early settlers build their houses from

earth?

Lecture 1Westward Expansion: Native Americans

U.S. expansion came at expense of Native Americans, who lost much of their land as well as their way of life

Buffalo exterminated, Indians cleared from plains

Indian Wars: 1865-1890 Battle of the Little Bighorn

(1876): rare Indian victory What to do with the Native

Americans of the plains? Even Indians’ friends believed

they must be assimilated into larger American society

Dawes Severalty Act (1887): encouraged assimilation by distributing tribal lands to individual Indian families

Ghost Dance movement: evidence of Indian cultural trauma

Wounded Knee (1890): U.S. army crushed the last armed Indian resistance in what amounted to a massacre

“Before” and “After” pictures of a Navajo boy at

the Carlisle IndianIndustrial School, c. 1880s

Boarding schools were tools of assimilating Indian children to Victorian

American culture