Chapter 8

What do I need to be able to do by the end of this chapter?• Trace the growth of the mining industry in the west• Describe ways in which technology changed open-

range ranching• Explain why/how people began settling the Plains• Trace the growth of commercial farming on the Plains• Discuss conflicts between settlers and Plains Indians• Summarize problems caused by attempts to

assimilate native-Americans

• Gold, silver, and copper strikes in West attracted people and fed the industries of the East

• Placer Mining – prospectors extracted metals using picks, shovels and pans

• Quartz Mining – corporations bought out small miners; dug deep into earth to extract metal

• The Comstock Lode 1859 - Henry

Comstock Virginia City, Nevada Boom Town Ghost Town Law enforcement –

vigilance committees

• Leadville, Colorado 1879 1,000 newcomers per

week Spurred railroad

construction through Rocky Mountains

Denver, supply point for miners, became 2nd largest city in West

• No future for cattle on Plains due to water, prairie grasses

• Texas Longhorn• Open Range – land

owned by government; used by ranchers

• Many cowboy skills came from Mexican cowboys

• Spanish words: lariat, lasso, stampede, rodeo

• Little financial incentive for ranching before Civil War

• War caused demand for beef to skyrocket

• Railroads allowed for transport of beef east

• Cattle Drives - money made by rounding up longhorns and driving them North to railheads

• Chisholm Trail

• Cattle drives herded 2,000 - 5,000 head

• Many cowboys ex-Confederates, blacks, and Hispanics

• Some cattle bought by ranchers and moved north into Wyoming and Montana

Nat Love

• Range Wars - conflict broke out between ranchers (over water and grasslands), farmers, sheep herders

• Range fenced off cheaply with new invention – barbed wire

• End of the cattle drives Fencing closed off routes Investors poured money into ranching causing

oversupply Blizzards of 1886 & 1887 killed hundreds of

thousands of head Open range ranching ended – European

breeds introduced Cowboys became ranch hands

• Great Plains opened to settlement by railroads – land sold at low prices or on credit

• Railroads advertised in Europe

• Great Plains – “heaven” due to above-average rainfall

• US government supported settlement with Homestead Act of 1862

• 160 acres of land free if lived on >5 years

• Life on the Great Plains Lack of water (deep

wells) Lack of trees = sod

houses Harsh climate –

summer & winter Prairie fires Grasshopper

swarms Wind

• New Innovations in Farming Dry farming Steel plows Seed drills Mechanical reapers and

threshers Inventions suited to wheat

– became most important crop

The Wheat Belt – Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas

• Bonanza Farms – investors formed corporations which could buy up land, purchase machines, and reap huge profits

• Agricultural Decline Global competition

caused glut and drop in prices

Drought of late 1880’s

• Native-Americans on the Great Plains Nomadic hunter-

gatherers; some agriculture

Usually lived in bands up to 500 people but could gather into larger groups

Religion based on spirits from the natural world

• Migration of people into Indian lands caused conflict

• Broken treaties• Dakota Sioux

Uprising Annuities “Let the eat grass” Uprising put down –

Indians exiled

• The Fetterman “Massacre”

• 1864 Sand Creek Massacre

• 1867 Indian Peace Commission – plans for movement of Indians onto reservations failed due to Indian resistance and US corruption

• Indians lived on buffalo – way of life threatened by near-extermination of the species

• Settler intrusion into sacred Indian lands of Black Hills caused war

• Custer’s “Last Stand”

• Wounded Knee• Assimilation

1887 Dawes Act – broke up reservations into individual plots for Indians to farm

Policy a failure – Indians not farmers

End of the buffalo doomed Indian culture