U.S.+History+II.4

What were the major causes of westward expansion of the American people following the Civil War? What impact did this have on the indigenous people of the American West?

Major causes of westward expansion The search for economic advantage

Population density in the East made for an increasingly competitive economy.

Resources in the West acted as incentive for many pioneers.

Trappers and traders were among the earliest immigrants, seeking untapped sources of deer and buffalo hides as well as beaver pelts.

Gold, silver, and lead were discovered in large quantities pushing migration at a rapid pace. Most prospectors and miners did not “strike it rich” but many stayed to make lasting contributions in the West. Mining camps often later became towns and cities.

On the Great Plains between 1865 and 1887, an area larger than half of Europe, started being utilized by cattlemen as pastureland. The “cowboy” was popularized as a folk hero of the West.

Farmers came in two roughly discernable waves: the pioneer farmers cut forests, turned sod, raised crops for a few years and moved on to begin the process anew elsewhere. The second wave, permanent settlers, continued clearing land, fenced their fields, built homes, and financed the construction of roads to provide access for their produce to markets back east.

A final stage of early westward movement was among merchants, millers, lawyers and distillers who transformed the territories into a reflection of the states from which they had come. The resource upon which their success would depend was a somewhat settled, potentially economically-active population and this did not exist in the West until after the Civil War.

The quest for greater freedom

Religion

While James Madison had intended the First Amendment to the Constitution to protect religious freedom, in practice many found the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in the East to be intolerant.

After Joseph Smith, Jr., prophet to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), was killed by an Illinois mob, a large group led by Brigham Young moved to the Great Basin in Idaho and Utah, where many still live today.

Some smaller groups, such as the Menonites and Hutterites who were expelled from Russia, developed communities based on their ideals in the culturally-unrestrictive West.

Established religions were eager for “new fields to conquer”.

Both the Protestant and Catholic churches “felt compelled to carry their mission to whiles and Indians west of the Mississippi”. Catholic missions already had long history of successes and failures in the West before the Civil War.

About 250,000 German Jews migrated to the U.S. and scattered across the country. A notable success story is the legendary clothier Levi Strauss.

A “simpler” frontier lifestyle was sought by many pioneers who felt the transplanted European culture in the East was too constraining.

Governmental encouragement of westward migration

“Manifest Destiny”- “jingoistic tenet holding that territorial expansion of the United States is not only inevitable but divinely ordained” first coined by John O’Sullivan, American diplomat and journalist, in an 1845 editorial supporting the annexation of Texas. It was repeatedly used as justification for American expansionists’ aims worldwide.

The U.S. government went to war with Mexico in 1846 to challenge Mexican territorial claims and succeeded not only in securing uncontested American sovereignty over Texas, but also California, Nevada and Utah and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Homestead Act of 1862-the government awarded 65 hectares (160 acres) almost free to anyone willing to develop the land with the aim of increasing agricultural production in the West. The measure failed to achieve this aim but was very successful at motivating western migration. Impact on Indigenous peoples of the American West


 * Native American Interaction/Impact on Native Population**

The first pioneers in the West took up a way of life similar to the Native American groups in whose homelands they traveled and among whom they found many friends.

Eventually, westward expansion overtaxed resources which were staples for Native Americans and caused environmental damage.

In the Great Plains hunter-gatherer groups such as the Sioux depended on buffalo herds which were decimated by American pioneers, sometimes simply for sport.

In the Southwest, groups with hunting and farming subsistence patterns like the Navaho and Hopi lost access to water resources to settlers.

In the Pacific Northwest, native fishermen groups like the Nez Perce were forced to concede their prime fishing spots to settlers and canneries. Disease was a major factor in the devastation of Native Americans both before and after the Civil War. A large percentage of the overall indigenous population succumbed to diseases of European provenance such as Small Pox and Yellow Fever.

Spirituality

Revival Movements

Prophets- Religions developed among several indigenous groups around the teachings of a visionary leader who usually claimed to have had a dream about how to defeat the settlers, or that they would all soon be leaving Native American lands.

Ghost Dance- Paiute prophet Wovoka had a dream that the Great Spirit told him doing the Ghost Dance, in which participants reportedly can see deceased ancestors, would revive the buffalo and renew the Earth. The Pine Ridge Reservation Lakota Sioux were participating in a Ghost Dance just before the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Peyotists- The use of hallucinogenic plants by some indigenous groups (originally the Apache) to produce spiritual visions was vehemently opposed by Christian churches, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Congress. However, elements of this group eventually established the governmentally-recognized Native American Church in 1918.

Native American-Christian syncretisms developed such as Pueblo Roman Catholic, Sioux Episcopal, and Pima Presbyterian. Military Conflict

There were numerous battles, very few of which can be said to have been won by indigenous people; any victories they did achieve, they paid double for in time.

Chivington Massacre (November 1864)- Col. J.M. Chivington’s troops killed 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and 1 children while commiting atrocities such as scalping (and worse).

Little Bighorn (“Custer’s Last Stand”)- In 1876, Lakota and Northern Cheyenne encampments were attacked by Lt. Col. George Custer’s 7th Cavalry. It marked on of the few significant victories for Native Americans as Custer’s force was destroyed.

Wounded Knee (December 1890)- Lakota Sioux Ghost Dancers were being disarmed by U.S. Army troops when shooting broke out leaving 25 soldiers and more than 150 Lakota dead (many of the soldiers died from friendly fire). Reportedly, soldiers were shouting “Remember Little Bighorn” as they discharged their Hotchkiss rapid fire guns into the largely unarmed Lakota.

Military conflict was not the major cause of Native Americans’ demise.

Reservations

At first, indigenous peoples were forced to circumscribe their hunting and other activities to an area within a specifically demarcated zone, often not their ancestral homeland: the reservation. The most egregious and infamous displacement was among the friendly Cherokee who had allied with the U.S. against Britain in the Revolutionary War. They were forced from their homelands in and around North Carolina to a reservation in Oklahoma. The ill-prepared and disastrous government-forced move is called the Trail of Tears.

Dawes Act of 1887- attempted to divide large reservations by portioning tribal lands among the individuals of the tribe, while breaking off additional pieces for government or other uses. Between 1887 and 1934 the 150 million acres of Native American reservation lands were reduced to 48 million acres.

Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934-preserved what remained of reservations and reconstituted others with mixed results concerning the improvement of the lives of the inhabitants of those lands.