Chapter 18 - Conquest and Survival: The Trans-Mississippi West 1860-1900

18.1: Indian Peoples Under Siege

Indians west of the Mississippi river felt strongly the pressures that the West would gradually be integrated into the United States.
Hundreds of tribes, perhaps one million members of it, had occupied West Countries for over 20,000 years before European colonists reached the New World.
English, Spanish and other European invasions brought new patterns of business, diseases, religious conversion, and
They mutilated the bodies and returned to Denver to present themselves as trophies.
- The bands of Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahoes were still ransacking, burning civilian outposts and killing whole families at times a few months after the Sand Creek massacre.
The Nez Perces considered themselves over generations to be good friends of white traders and colonists.
However, 1860 when gold was found on Nez Perce Land, its relations with Weiss were worse and their tribal identity also challenged

In 1848, gold was discovered in California and sought fortune from the United States, Europe and so far from Chile.
In 1882, the Congress adopted the Edmunds Act which enforced penalties and jail on those who believed in or practiced polygamy.
- More devastating, five years later, Edmunds– Tucker Act disintegrated the Church of the Last Saints, seized assets of more than $50,000 and established a federal commission for all territorial elections.
With the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, ending in the 1848 Mexican-American War, Hispanics to the north of Rio Grande chose to migrate to Mexico or to live in the United States today.

The large bovine traffic depended on the cowboy, a seasonal worker or a migrant.
- Following the Civil War, cowboys rounded up Texas cattle and drove them to ranches or stores, as far as 1,500 miles north to shipping to the eastern markets by rail
Regular features were in animal towns and mining camps, lounges, playgrounds and dance halls.
Prostitution, gambling and drinking combined discouraged stable community formation.
- Personal violence was well known in the streets and bars of the livestock towns and mining camps, most of which were young men.

The 1862 Homestead Act offered prospective farmers the first significant incentive.
- This law granted to any householder, who had lived there on the ground for at least five years and improved it or who could purchase land for $1.25 per acre at the end of six months, a quarter of the public domain gratuitously.
The majority of farms survived and were able to prosper, often from dawn to dark, through hard labor.
- Men's activity in the fields was usually seasonal, with heavy labor while seeding and harvesting.
By the 1862 Morrill Act, land-grant schools acquired campus space in return for promising agricultural programmes.
The productivity of agriculture depended both on new technology and on the hard work of the farmers.
- John Deere created his famous "singing plow" in 1837, easily turning prairie grasses into compact soils.

Artists, writers, and scientists soon built on what they saw and envisioned.
- Many authors have described astonishing natural sites such as the Grand Tetons and High Sierra.
The West has been found in popular entertainment as the land of promise and opportunity and, above all, excitement and adventure.
New graphic reproduction technologies have encouraged the circulation of images of Indian peoples by painters and photographers.

Many of these measures were incorporated by the Dawes Severalty Act adopted by Congress in 1887 and federal Indian policy was established in decades to come.
Following the passing of the Dawes Severalty Act, Sioux has had yet another cycle of rebellion.
- In 1889, during a total sunset, the North Paiute Wovoka had a vision.
The toughest tribalities were white settlers' occupying land or those far from their new communities.

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