Understanding Life in the American West: Opportunities and Challenges

this is kind of where that reputation and continues here in the west of the rugged individualism the idea that the

american uh especially as we were continuing to expand west love their independence and love their ability to

run their own lives without a whole lot of people telling them what to do where to go and how to live

then let's look at our first objective we'll get to the others when we get to them

i can describe the opportunities and challenges of life in the west the west we talked about and introduced

the west on monday in the late 1800s and early 1900s for various americans minorities and whites alike

and native americans using primary and secondary documents so that's going to be the focus of our first about 20-25

minutes of class here what i have is a series of documents that i've copied for you and you're going to be

working with a partner and each one of these documents have questions attached to them okay

they're copied but they're copied from the original i redid the copies from the original so you can see exactly what you

need to be seeing on these uh if you're struggling with any of it trying to figure out what something is i do have

the originals up here and i can i'm going to be walking around facilitating anyway so we can talk about it but each

one of them have questions attached to them some of it has to do with life of native americans someone has to do with

the buffalo and disappearance of them some of it has to do with the life of a homesteader which deals with other of

our objectives up here a few of them has to do with the dawes act and the assimilation of native americans during

this time period as well so it it touches on a variety of different aspects that are the focal points of

chapter 26 and so you're going to be digging into these in order to give you a little bit of background hopefully

this will give us some folder for discussion a little bit later in the class as well okay so you understand

what you're doing here each one of these questions you and a partner can answer just one set of

answers to those and you will be turning those in at the end of this session so you can get some a grade for that and

credit for that okay questions on that at all yes no no no okay uh then here's what i

want you to do i want you to partner up got 25 copies here so if there's a few of you that want to work by yourself

that's okay but for the most part i'd like for you to be working in partners uh and be discussing these uh back and

forth looking at all this stuff okay so uh let's see as soon as you have your

partner raise your hand and i'll get your copy there's a lot of different reasons and you're hitting on one

one of it had to do with you know the plains indians used these native these buffalo in order to survive right they

lived very symbiotic relationship with the buffalo on the plains they follow them around use them for a food source

use them obviously for teepees for blankets all kinds of different things and you see in one of the images there

tells you all the different things that the buffalo were used for by the native americans so if you get rid of that

source then the plains indians don't have their way of life anymore right so that's part

of it but also you see that first image on the front talking about the rail lines

they wanted to get rid of the buffalo in the region too in order to be able to exactly

more efficiently and not have it you know derail their trains or mess up their schedule

so i mean it was it was a lot of different factors involved and it's capitalism too right

i mean the whites are going there some of them are wanting to make money you know these things were very valuable and

they became like a fad or a fashion to have a buffalo hide in your home not on a massive scale no they might use

them for trade but it wasn't something it wasn't marketed in this way it wasn't commercialized in this way yeah

and if it was then it was later and it was when they were already losing their ability to live the way they wanted to

live and they were trying to adapt yeah so jump to dollars if you can heard statements

what do you all think about assimilation it's kind of mean

it was believe it or not these are the people who sympathize with the native

americans there were some people who simply wanted to push him off into no man's land not

worry about them at all uh their concerns and and then right well get out of your

mileage right but and so these were the people who were you know concerned about the native americans well-being

because they what they said was this life is swallowing them up this life being american life is

swallowing up their way of life their buffalo is leaving their ability to feed themselves to live the way they've

always lived is is fading away and so this is the best chance that we think that they have for success and

what is surrounding them i think it like it's kind of like you know the thing that i

forget the term for it or whatever it's like a qualitative negative or something like that qualitative yeah

that because i mean qualified but at the same time forced assimilation by the 1930s this was perceived as a

mistake and they go back to allowing the native americans to live the way they want to live and encouraging them to

redevelop their tribal type of lifestyle and culture but by then generations of native americans had

grown up under assimilation so it was difficult to bring it back what i want to do is just touch up

really quickly on some of the content that you all have been diving into through these primary and secondary

documents with that activity and explain a few things having to do with the homestead act and the dogs act

to make sure you understand those principles and then we're going to jump to a little bit of a video clip on the

heartland so you can have that out um i believe if i'm not mistaken that we left off with mr woolley

all right okay so uh let's let's jump forward a bit

here and we talked about the disappearance of some of the reservation life

and some of the reservation land in the west as new newer treaties were being formed

we talked about some of the encroachment of white settlers on native american lands whether it was through gold rushes

or whether it was through the transcontinental railroad itself or the establishment of new towns

all these things impacting the natural way of life that native americans have been living for generations and you saw

some of those impacts on those pictures and images you were looking at earlier

certainly that has to do with the battle of little bighorn as well remember that there was a gold rush into the black

hills and what is present-day south dakota the sioux

viewed the black hills as an area that was almost sacred to their people and there was gold found there by white

settlers so what do you think those the rest of white settlers wanted to do go get the gold yeah go get the gold uh

and there was a brief gold rush there into the black hills the government you know kind of had a difficult time

preventing white settlers from moving into the region so they tried to work with the sioux uh to build a road into

that area through their reservation the sioux didn't particularly like that and this brought federal troops to the

region to try and protect white settlers and keep the peace if you will but that also created tensions and led to

conflict okay specifically you talk about the battle a little bighorn where general george armstrong custer and all

of his men were killed there at the near the uh little bighorn river now

for those of you who've gotten into that reading why was this such a big deal two reasons really there we go

you're you're kind of getting into a little bit more of uh the sand creek more so than this one

just come up here stephanie it kind of like betrayed the confidence of the men like they tricked

the native americans and did something interesting and then they sand creek yes in colorado this one's a

little bit different though this is one we haven't talked about in class yet little bighorn this one deals largely

with the fact that this guy right here george armstrong custer

and don't worry about writing what's on the slide right now just listen to the words and listen to the explanation

custer himself uh was he was he

well-known why was he well known he was a civil war hero

okay so this is just you know about nine years after the end of the civil war

americans knew this guy's name as a as a union civil war hero okay some people thought him to be

arrogant that knew him but in general his reputation was civil war hero he and all his men are slaughtered by native

americans that's what the papers put it out as and that is kind of what ends up happening

he moves into an area not realizing that his men were outnumbered by a huge number

right native americans had amassed a few thousand warriors to his few hundred cavalry men

and they are killed to the last man in that section of of the seventh cavalry

so how do you think newspapers back east is going to portray this as an

indian slaughter on the white soldiers okay an indian slaughter the white soldiers and so what do you

think that's going to bring me exactly it's going to bring more

soldiers okay so this is this is one of the best examples of a native american victory

against white soldiers but in the end it it all it does is bring more attention unfortunately to

for the native americans and more troops out to this region so it's a

a couple of different reasons why this battle is a particularly uh memorable one

and i'm going to skip through a couple of these slides to go ahead and jump to the dawes act itself just to make sure

that you understand the the premise behind it why it was done and the impact that it had on native americans

so think specifically about the images that you had and that you were looking at

here we go so the dawes severalty act uh the doll's general allotment act is sometimes the

full title of the legislation if you want to talk about that but the date is 1887.

this is a huge turning point when it talks about the relationship between the federal government and the native

americans because before this what was the federal government's policy towards native

americans no i wouldn't necessarily use laissez faire

reservation system okay the reservation system is what was used before the dawes act to where literally you're cornering

the native american tribes into specific regions and the native americans are typically

in the reservation system before the nawaz act allowed to live however they wanted to live on that land

okay they could live their traditional tribal way of life they were not forced to live any particular way

but as the decades were on and more and more people moved west and you see more and more images of capitalists who are

slaughtering the buffalo who are taking land and who are building railroads and changing the ability for native

americans to live the way they had always lived believe it or not and this is important

to understand the dawes act was not meant or i guess i could say it was not its intention was not punishment

believe it or not the people who created the dawes act were generally viewed as people who were

sympathetic to the native americans how might that be true billy they wanted to uh give the native

americans a way to live other than their normal way of life why being destroyed good

do it they view their way of life as superior and felt that they should who's there

native americans should be assimilated into their culture because they felt that that would be a better lifestyle

for them than they would be more advanced yeah very good so so these the people who created this piece of

legislation said all right native americans we're seeing whites and american culture and the american way of

life swallowing you up you are becoming more and more isolated your ability to live the way you've

always lived is getting less and less possible it's becoming less and less possible the

buffalo are dying off your lands are being taken you're being kind of moved the best chance you have it's success

and the future of this country is for us to help you assimilate into what is surrounding you

and so this this becomes the official government policy towards native

americans after this and it's assimilation forced assimilation

in many cases native american young native americans would be taken off of their lands put into boarding

schools there was a famous one in pennsylvania that literally had inscribed above their door kill the

indian save the man what does that term mean you think take away their culture and save the

human being save the human being take away their culture and replace it with what agriculture with the white culture

with the american culture it wouldn't be something acceptable today in 2014 but but the these were the

people who were sympathetic to them at that time because there were other people who weren't sympathetic who said

you know i don't even let's put them in a desolate section of the country and just let them be

so it's it's difficult to understand but that all right do you understand generally what the purposes of the dolls

act was and the impact that that had on native american culture yes no okay

all right uh then let's go ahead and move on here i mean literally they were individualized they were told in many

cases that they could not live their typical ancestral way of life to the point to where they were put on

homesteads made to be individual landowners in some cases tried to be taught to be farmers

okay but their lands weren't really suitable for a lot of the farming that they were being taught to do

the government provisions that were supposed to be coming in to allow them to flourish while they were learning

these things were in short supply so there was a a big challenge for them to be able to really succeed

and another big part of this i'll show you this slide then we'll talk briefly about the homestead act before i show

you a couple of clips here and you'll be jotting down your notes on your viewing guide on that one

this is largely the effects as it relates to land ownership

of the native americans because what would happen is let's say that you have a huge set of

land that's set aside for the crow reservation right here before the dawes act well once the dawes act put into

place this big chunk of land is divided into individual land plots say 160 acres per

family which is roughly what they did either 160 or about 380 depending on whether they were doing livestock or

farming once they section the amount of land necessary to give each one of the

families that plot of land what do you think they did with the extra land typically that became government

property and sold it to railroad companies or settlers or homesteaders or what have you and here's the result

so their culture and some of their ancestral lands are being lost in the shuffle there

okay questions at all on the general concepts surrounding daws

okay then real quickly here the solid houses that

you looked at those are what i'm going to ask you to think about when i say a homesteader when i say a homesteader i

want you to be thinking about those salt houses that you looked at earlier this period okay

the people who were living in these you know basically a burrow in the ground okay in many cases digging into a

hillside having that be the back of their home and creating kind of uh literally you know digging out little

bricks of sod and using that to build their homes that was their temporary structure for their home until they

could afford to do something else that was a typical homestead's first home this was created actually believe it or

not in 1862 in the midst of the civil war lincoln actually signs this into law the homestead act

right it's not as successful as they eventually hope because this land is

very difficult very challenging to live on but

it does help to settle the west faster than it would have been otherwise okay the homestead act itself sets aside

about 160 acre plots for individual families to be buying up and what they would do is is try and

create again settlements out of this what do you think the purpose of the federal government was in creating the

homestead act casey spring around the people

getting towards the west and they were trying to fill up free space and get the land

more improved okay improving the land in the west settling the land in the west

certainly was this made to be expensive no this process was made to be streamlined okay i mean in the end all

you had to do was stay there for five years you had to dig a well you had to build a 16 by 16 home you had to connect

your property to some sort of local transportation and pay about a 15 filing fee and the

land was yours 160 acres do you realize how significant that is europe's population from 1800 to 1900

doubled doubled so land was difficult to be had in

europe and you've got hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming from there to america and america is handing

out land do you see the contrast i mean these are immigrants that in many

cases would have had a very difficult chance ever owning their own piece of the earth in europe

and yet here in america 15 bucks live on it and improve the land it's yours

that's a huge difference and it offers so much opportunity to people now not everybody succeeded and it was a hard

way of life as you saw from those images but that opportunity is how a lot of these immigrants saw america

that's very significant to understand court cody couldn't that cause a lot of problems if they like overlaid

the land from people because they got it mixed up with boundary lines uh there would be issues with that but a lot of

times and there's movies that actually have these especially in oklahoma which was one of the last areas opened up by

the homestead act once native american territory was turned into that state there

you what you actually would have in some cases are races envision this

you would have literally people with covered wagons and horses that would line up in kind of a prairie great

plains type of setting and the government officials would have already gone out to the local area and staked

out the land they would have already staked this the property lines out and what you would do

it would be somebody that would fire a gun say at high noon and everybody would go out and they would try and find the

stake of land that they wanted they'd pull up the stake they'd replace that stake with their stake and then they'd

have to go back to the beginning of the race turn in the stake and then that's their claim

could they do that more than once they would yeah i mean not necessarily in the same area but new areas that they

were opening up especially in the late part 1890s they would do that in a couple of cases now that wasn't the norm

in the earlier sections in 1860s and 70s and so boundary areas were kind of a challenge in some areas but but a lot of

times they were trying to use natural boundaries like creeks and rivers or tree lines or what have you i'd imagine

that if you're getting 160 acres of land for 18 you're not going to complain too much in many cases they didn't however

it was a challenging life okay so we've got a couple of different things we've gone through describe the impact

the reservation system on native american life how it transitioned to the daws act and assimilation and the impact

that had on native american life in addition to that we've dealt with life in the west and the homesteaders and the

purposes of the homestead act and the challenges and lifestyles of those homesteaders so what do you think you

got those two at least yes no okay it's 8 33 in the morning i know

it's early but do you got it yeah do you got it do you really got it

okay all right uh we've got a limited time left we got about 13 minutes left so what we're going to do is dive into

the the video in the viewing guide right now okay what you have in front of you is what

you already need and i believe we're going to be starting off yes we're going to be starting off with number two so

this expands on what we just talked about with the homestead act and we'll tell you about some of the challenges of

living as a homesteader you realize the promise of america was land

so were all these homesteaders white no they were not i mean they just told you there were minorities involved here

some of them were exadusters those freed slaves that had left the south in order to try their hand in the west so

it was more of a variety than you see sometimes represented in those western films these are people who never

in a million years would be able to own land in europe eventually

10 of the united states will be given away under the homestead

act people descended from tough goods and tough old broads and and i say that with

great admiration they just wanted to control their own future and to have children who could control their own

destiny tornadoes aren't the only biblical challenge the obligors fate this is kind

of where that reputation and continues here in the west of the rugged individualism the idea that the american

especially as we were continuing to expand west love their independence and love their ability to run their own

lives without a whole lot of people telling them what to do where to go and how to live all right i mean these

homesteaders were absolutely in many cases living on isolated areas wouldn't see people especially if they were just

on their homestead maybe for days weeks at a time right and they had to be self-reliant they had to be

individualistic they had to be very proud people and they had to work very hard and deal with a lot of

challenges in order to succeed so you know eventually they will tell you here and i'm going to pause it and we're

going to do something else here to wrap us up they will

tell you here that about half of the individuals who came out to the homestead region in nebraska

in the 1870s 1880s moved back east but what does that tell you

that half of them stayed dealt with tornadoes dealt with living in sought houses dealt with breaking

earth that had never been broken in that way before dealt with locus

biblical type of creatures that were a huge problem uh in the plains uh during the 1870s and 80s

eating up crops and literally blocking out the sun in some cases there would be so many of them coming through until

their uh their the lands where they uh uh proliferated were were plowed up and and so their breeding

grounds were done away with and they they are no longer that problem today out there but they were in the 1870s and

80s so a bunch of different challenges and weather extremes all these sorts of things right