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The Great West, Agricultural
Revolution and the Revolt of the Debtor
Hyperlinked materials are considered part of each lecture and
should be reviewed.
At the close of the Civil War, the Great Plains and Mountain West
were still occupied by Indian tribes who hunted buffalo on horseback
and fiercely resisted encroachment on their land and culture. But as
the relatively new Americans grazed their livestock and plowed the
plains, the Native Americans were decimated by disease and entered
into a cycle of environmental destruction and intertribal warfare
threatening their existence. The federal government combined a
"peaceful" treaty strategy with intermittent warfare to force the
native peoples into ever dwindling territories. These policies and
military actions spawned the reservation system. The military
actions were brutal and infamous battles (Custer's
"Last Stand")
took place throughout the western United States.
Total war, including the destruction of the buffalo and
occupation of tribal lands, destroyed the aboriginal dream of living
a life based on nature and replaced it with a life based on
technology. What do we often do to escape from our technology driven
lives today?? In an attempt to
coerce the tribes into adopting "civilized" ways, the
federal government passed the Dawes Act, which eliminated tribal
ownership of land, created a network of Indian boarding schools and
promised citizenship. Forty seven million acres of land was
distributed to Native Americans, while as usual, 90 million acres of
formal tribal land (often the best land) was acquired by settlers.
These policies further accelerated the decay of traditional Native
American culture. The massacre at
Wounded Knee, in 1890, represented the death of the
Plains Indian Culture. Finally, in 1924, The Federal Government
granted citizenship to all Native Americans, even if they had not
complied with the
Dawes Act.
Today, there are over two million Native
Americans living on and off the reservations, with membership in
over one hundred tribes. As you know, courts are consistently uphold
old treaties and attempting to restore lands or make financial
settlements. Why is the Seneca Nation so "popular" in Buffalo and
Niagara Falls this year??
The
mining and cattle frontiers (an interesting slide
presentation) created a unique and intriguing time period in
our history.
Farmers carried out the final phase of settlement, lured
by free/cheap homesteads, the ease of railroad transportation and
the promise of new agricultural technology. Beginning in the 1870's,
farmers began pushing into the treeless prairies of the 100th
meridian, using techniques of dry farming that gradually contributed
to soil loss. irrigation projects, later financed by the federal
government, allowed specialized farming in many areas of the arid
West, including California. Silver and gold strikes brought
thousands of miners west and with the farmers, expedited the
statehood of the western territories. The
railroad,
built on the backs of the
Chinese
(who encountered extreme
discrimination) and Irish, made travel safe and relatively fast.
Towns brought "civilization" and inevitable conflicts between the
land demands of miners, cattlemen, farmers and Native Americans. The
"closing" of the frontier in 1890 signified the end of traditional
westward expansion (why is a frontier important and what "frontiers"
exist today??) , but the Great West remained a unique social and
environmental region. As the farmers opened vast new lands,
agriculture was becoming a mechanized business dependent on
specialized production and international markets. Once declining
prices and other woes doomed the farmers to permanent debt and
dependency, they began to protest and organize. A strategy based on
the concepts of organized labor resulted in the creation of the
Grange, the Farmers' Alliances, and finally the People's (Populist)
Party.
In the early 1890's, Republicans adopted
high tariff, excessive spending economic policies that aroused
strong political protest from hard pressed farmers and other
disadvantaged groups. The deep depression of 1893 caused wide spread
suffering, but President Cleveland pursued conservative economic
policies that further outraged farmer and labor protesters. The
upstart
Populist Party achieved substantial political gains, but
failed to form alliances with urban workers. Southern populism
foundered on racial divisions between white and black farmers. In
1896,
the Populists and Democrats nominated silverite William Jennings
Bryan and promoted the theory of "free coinage of silver" to create
an inflated currency for the farmers/poor to repay debts. This
election turned into an ideological contest between plowholders and
bondholders. William McKinley managed to attract eastern laborer and
big business to his Republican Party and inflicted a crushing defeat
upon Bryan, the Democrats and Populists. These election results
signaled the triumph of the new urban industrial American and
ushered in a period of Republican political domination in national
politics. The economy had changed from agrarian to industrial. The
United states was becoming a nation of cities rather than farms and
villages. The frontier was considered closed and the new immigrants
were creating a complex, pluralistic culture in the United States.
Returning prosperity and new gold discoveries caused the monetary
issue to fade from the center of national politics as the country
entered a new century and a new modern age.
For each module I recommend that you visit A Biography of
America
http://learner.org/resources/series123.html# ,
an exceptional
video instructional series for high school and college students
produced by WGBH Boston in cooperation with the Library of Congress
and the National Archives and Records Administration. These thirty
minute lectures incorporate first person narratives, photographs,
film footage and documents related to various historical time
periods. Combined with my introductory comments, the required
textbooks and our discussions, I believe you will acquire a more
in-depth and enjoyable encounter with history. Please note the
requirements and possible download limitations—which is why this is
not a requirement. Please follow the directions below and give it a
try!!!!
You can view Annenberg/CPB programs of your
choice online with a broadband connection whenever you see this
icon.  There is no
charge for this service.
Simply select a
program and go
to the individual program description listing and click on the icon.
Free sign up required for first-time users. To hear the sound
and view video, you should have Windows Media Player, DSL, a
cable modem, or a LAN connection to a T1 line or greater, and have
Javascript enabled. For more information, please visit our
broadband FAQ.
For this topic—visit
http://learner.org/resources/series123.html#
and
access the
presentation: The West.
Our textbook offers a very comprehensive Online Student Learning
Center. Click on the link below, Select the appropriate chapter and
you will have access to: Chapter Objectives, Chapter in Perspective,
Chapter Overview, numerous Interactive Activities, Primary Source
documents and my favorite--Internet Exercises/Recommended Sites
Related to the Specific Topics--CHOOSE A CHAPTER
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072870982/student_view0/index.html
Folk Music of American History:
Music and Lyrics (highly
recommended music before or
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