The West - Settlers & Natives

1. The West

2. Great American Desert
Previously this land was referred to as a Barren Wasteland. It
was not seen a productive land to make a living off. It was not
desirable land until 1860.

3. Trails
West
In the 1850s
there were trails
westward, but
none stopped in
the center of the
country, until…

4. Politics of the West
National government impacts American
west.
- Acts passed by Congress
- railroads
- settlement
- Indian policy

5. Homestead Act 1862
• Adults could get 160 acres of surveyed and
unoccupied land
• Land had to occupied for 5 years.

6. Homestead Act 1862
• Czech ad for land in
the U.S.
Immigrants could also acquire land.
Railroad companied placed ads with
glowing reports of the land in foreign
newspapers and magazines to attract
settlers

7. People took
advantage of the
opportunity, but
life was difficult.
o

9. Indian Wars As settlers move in, they find the
land was not unoccupied. Tribes had
occupied land throughout the Plains.
They still for the most part still
nomadic tribes who lived off the land
and the buffalo.

10. Indian Wars

11. Great Sioux War
1865 - 1867

12. 1867
• “Report on the Condition of the Indian
Tribes”
– Remove cause of Indian Wars
– Meant moving Natives onto smaller
reservations & eliminating buffalo

13. Buffalo & Indians
• 1874
• “The buffalo are disappearing rapidly, but
not faster than I desire. I regard the
destruction of such game as Indians subsist
upon as facilitating the policy of the
government, of destroying their hunting
habits, coercing them on reservations, and
compelling them to begin to adopt the habits
of civilization” - government official."

14. Buffalo Hunt
• Buffalo skulls

15. George
Custer Black Hills, Dakotas
• gold!
• Natives ordered into
smaller reservation
• Some refuse
• Sitting Bull
•Gov’t sends troops in
• Led by Custer

16. Battle of Little Big Horn - 1876
Chief Sitting Bull
• Custer finds encampment of Sioux
~3,000
• Divides troops
 He & troops destroyed

17. Chief Joseph I will fight
no more forever!
Nez Percé tribal
retreat (1877)

18. Helen Hunt Jackson
• 1830 - 1885
• Reformer
• A Century of Dishonor
– Published 1881
– Critic of federal Indian policy

19. DAWES ACT (1887)
• Each Indian head of household received160
acres of land.
• Those who received allotment became
U.S.citizens

20. Dawes Act
Excess land was to be sold off to whites
• Indians lost 90 million acres of land between 1887
and 1932
Participation was mandatory.

21. Dawes Act
1887
Main goal of the Dawes Act was:
• ASSIMILATION and AMERICANIZATION

22. Indian Schools
Taught
English &
American
values

23. Indian Schools
“kill the
Indian,
save the
man”“”

24. Ghost Dance

25. Spread of Ghost Dance

26. Ghost Dance

27. Ghost Dance
Believed all whites would die and dead Indian ancestors
would return to earth if:
1. Indians lived together in peace
2. Abandoned
white influences
3. Danced the
“Ghost Dance”

30. Battle at Wounded Knee
• 1890
• 200+ Indians die
• Last of the Indian
Wars