Ch. 17 Notes Essay

Native Americans and the Trans-Mississippi West

• White men were entering Indian Territory and forcing them to sign

it away, only after the territory was gone did Indians finally start to

fight and resist forces.

• The Plains Indians (northern, central, southern)

• Native American tribes were very clan oriented, (raised children,

made decisions, and provide food) and relied on bison for food,

clothing and trading products until the white men began killing the

animal for their own needs, lowering the mass number of bison’s.

• The Assault on Nomadic Indian Life

• The government created new reservations for Indians—some groups

peacefully accepted, others fought the US Army—the Medicine

Lodge and Fort Laramie treaty were established as an attempt to

keep peace through money and land.

• Custer’s Last Stand

• The Sioux Indians fought off settlers in order to protect their original

territory; George Custer attacked the Indians in order to remove

them from their land, but the Sioux Indians won the battle, making

the white troops angry and fight harder, eventually to rid the land

of all Indians.

• “Saving” the Indians

• Schools that Indians attended began “killing” their inner Indian and

• Dawes Severalty Act: Indians could comply with the law and become

teaching them white man skills, but Indians did not fall for these

teachings.

citizens along with receiving either 160 acres of reservation land for

farming or 320 acres for grazing—most did not prosper due to dry

land and alcoholism

• The Ghost Dance and the end of Indian Resistance on the Great Plains

• As an attempt to bring back life to the way it used to be, Indians

began doing the Ghost Dance, which got Chief Sitting bull arrested

and shot, resulting in an Indian-white battle. The Sioux Indians

were decreasing, but at the same time the Navajos Indians were

rapidly growing.

Settling the West

• Due to the removal of Native Americans, vast amounts of land

opened up in the west, which led to the doubling of agricultural

production.

• First Transcontinental Railroad

• The first railroad stretching across the United States was built by

Chinese, Irish, Mexican-American, and Black workers and finished

on May 10, 1869 to be used for: transportation of soldiers for the

Native American battles; hunters access to bison and other meats;

settlers coming to live in the west; detectives for local police.

• Settlers and the Railroad

• Between 1870 and 1900, over 2.2 million foreign settlers migrated

to the west along with eastern women and families to produce

wheat (northern plains), corn (Iowa and Kansas), and cotton

(Texas)

• Homesteading on the Great Plains

• Congress sold acres of land for very cheap in hopes families would

move and begin more farming, whereas in reality, the land was

dry, houses were full with bugs, weather was harsh, and life was

not easy. Families who stayed a decade or more claimed that life

became easier in sense of farming and chores.

• New Farms, New Markets

• As long as rainfall was heavy and there was high demand for a

product, western farmers made a profit, but if those two conditions

were bad, farmers did not have much to live off of. Technology for

farms was advancing during the 1870s; barbed wire was invented

and efficient laborsaving machinery was more common.

• Building a Society

• Families throughout the west were coming together as a community

• Kansas (1861), Nevada (1864), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876),

and applying for statehood through electing state delegates and

creating a state constitution then getting approved by congress.

North/South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1889), Wyoming and

Idaho (1890), Utah (1896), Oklahoma (1907), Arizona and New

Mexico (1912)

rights

• Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and

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