Groups of the west

1. Groups of the West

2. Natives – Key Events
•1864 Chivington Sand Creek Massacre
•1876 Battle of Little Big Horn/Custer’s Last Stand
•1880s Ghost Dance
•1890 Wounded Knee Massacre

3. Natives – Key People
• Red Cloud of Lakota
• Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of Sioux
• Chief Joseph of Nez Perce
• Geronimo of Apache
• Col. Chivington
• Col. Custer
• Buffalo soldiers
• Helen Hunt Jackson’s Century of Dishonor

4. Natives - Government Policies/Legislation
•Reservations
•Broken treaties (Ft. Laramie)
•Dawes Severalty Act aka Americanization/
assimilation

5. Natives - Cultural Characteristics
•Nomadic dependence on bison
•White slaughter of bison led to
starvation/end of lifestyle

6. Cowboys/Ranchers - Key Events
•Corralling
•Branding
•RR drives
•1880 – barbed wire
•1883 – droughts
•1887 – blizzard

7. Cowboys/Ranchers - Key People
•Joseph McKoy
•Buffalo Bill Hickok
•Calamity Jane

8. Cowboys/Ranchers - Government
Policies/Legislation
•Land to RR companies
•Transcontinental RR
•Open range system

9. Cowboys/Ranchers - Cultural Characteristics
•Multiethnic
•Mexican vaquero traditions
•Cowboy boots and spurs, chaps, Colt .45,
loneliness
•Refrigerator cars

10. Miners - Key Events
•1848 strikes in CA, NV, CO
•Comstock Lode, NV

11. Miners - Key People
•’49s
•Civil War veterans
•Young men

12. Miners - Government Policies/Legislation
•Vigilante justice
•Land grants to mining companies

13. Miners - Cultural Characteristics
•Surface mining
•Panning
•Sluicing
•Mine shafts

14. RR workers/laborers - Key Events
•1869 – transcontinental RR completed at
Promontory Point, Utah

15. RR workers/laborers - Key People
•Civil War vets
•Irish
•African Americans
•Chinese

16. RR workers/laborers - Government
Policies/Legislation
•Land to RR companies
•Union Pacific RR (E to W)
•Central Pacific RR (W to E)

17. RR workers/laborers - Cultural Characteristics
•Hell on Wheels camps
•Digging
•Dynamite
•Low pay

18. Farmers - Key Events
•1862 Homestead Act
•1889 OK Land Rush

19. Farmers - Key People
• Families (Women are key)
• Exodusters led by Benjamin Singleton
• Grange Movement
• Farmers Alliances
• Populist Party
• William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold”
• Richard Sears

20. Farmers - Government Policies/Legislation
•Homestead Act of 1862
•Morrill Act of 1862
•Bimetallism – Crime of 1873
•Hatch Act of 1887

21. Farmers - Cultural Characteristics
• Sod houses
• Dugouts
• Plows
• Windmills
• Reapers
• Barbed wire
• Dependence on railroads and eastern banks
• 1892 Omaha Populist Party platform