1850-1900
Chapter 17-The West: Exploiting an Empire
Time Period: 1850-1900
1. Beyond the Frontier
-line of white settlement at MO timber country by 1840s
What’s in the West? What land? -“The Great Plains”/Prairie Plains: rich soil and good rainfall (Wisconsin down to Texas) -High Plains: rough, semiarid (Montana down to NMex.) -Rockies: formidable barrier (Alaska to NMex.) -Western Basin: home to many NA, desert, held in by the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, MOST travelers here (Idaho and Utah) -Pacific Coast: Washington, CA, OR
-Early explorers like Pike thought the country beyond the MI was uninhabitable; Mapmakers agreed, calling it the “Great American Desert”; even John Noble, a painter, agreed
-Plains: few rivers, low rainfall, hot winds in the summer and blizzards in the winter; lots of wildlife
-East of MI: land, water, and timber; West: land (Walter Prescott Webb)
2. Crushing the Native Americans
-at the end of the Civil War, NA inhabited ½ of the US, but by 1890 they were almost gone
-1865, you have ¼ million NA in the West -Winnebago, Menominee, Cherokee, and Chippewa (forced out)
-Pueblo groups (native to the region, SW)
-Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos (western NM and eastern Arizona) -cultivated corn, communal adobe brick houses
-more nomadic ones: Camp Dwellers, the Jicarilla Apache and Navajo (eastern NW and western TX)
-lived in tepees or huts, hunted and planted
-Klamath, Chinook, Yurok, and Shasta (Pacific NW) -plank houses and canoes, good with wood, rich civilization, both social and political -resisted the invasion of whites
-By 1870, most had been destroyed/beaten into submission -powerful Ute crushed in 1855, ceded UT -Navajo and Apache fought, but in vain -NA in CA succumbed to dangerous diseases brought by Gold Rush By 1880 < 20,000 NA
a. Life of the Plains Indians
-in the mid 1900’s 2/3 NA lived on the Great Plains
-nomadic and warlike, depended on buffalo and horse (brought by Spanish in 1500’s,
Time Period: 1850-1900
1. Beyond the Frontier
-line of white settlement at MO timber country by 1840s
What’s in the West? What land? -“The Great Plains”/Prairie Plains: rich soil and good rainfall (Wisconsin down to Texas) -High Plains: rough, semiarid (Montana down to NMex.) -Rockies: formidable barrier (Alaska to NMex.) -Western Basin: home to many NA, desert, held in by the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, MOST travelers here (Idaho and Utah) -Pacific Coast: Washington, CA, OR
-Early explorers like Pike thought the country beyond the MI was uninhabitable; Mapmakers agreed, calling it the “Great American Desert”; even John Noble, a painter, agreed
-Plains: few rivers, low rainfall, hot winds in the summer and blizzards in the winter; lots of wildlife
-East of MI: land, water, and timber; West: land (Walter Prescott Webb)
2. Crushing the Native Americans
-at the end of the Civil War, NA inhabited ½ of the US, but by 1890 they were almost gone
-1865, you have ¼ million NA in the West -Winnebago, Menominee, Cherokee, and Chippewa (forced out)
-Pueblo groups (native to the region, SW)
-Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos (western NM and eastern Arizona) -cultivated corn, communal adobe brick houses
-more nomadic ones: Camp Dwellers, the Jicarilla Apache and Navajo (eastern NW and western TX)
-lived in tepees or huts, hunted and planted
-Klamath, Chinook, Yurok, and Shasta (Pacific NW) -plank houses and canoes, good with wood, rich civilization, both social and political -resisted the invasion of whites
-By 1870, most had been destroyed/beaten into submission -powerful Ute crushed in 1855, ceded UT -Navajo and Apache fought, but in vain -NA in CA succumbed to dangerous diseases brought by Gold Rush By 1880 < 20,000 NA
a. Life of the Plains Indians
-in the mid 1900’s 2/3 NA lived on the Great Plains
-nomadic and warlike, depended on buffalo and horse (brought by Spanish in 1500’s,