The Trans-Mississippi West, 1860-1900

CHAPTER 17 The Transformation of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1860–1900 n spring 1871 fifteen-year-old Luna Warner began a diary as she ventured Iwest with her family to a new homestead claim near the Solomon River in western Kansas. In it she carefully recorded her impressions of the vast western landscape that seemed so different from the countryside near her Massachusetts home. She was delighted by the rugged beauty of the local river and gathered wildflowers everywhere, but she was most impressed by the large numbers of birds and animals she saw: great shaggy bison, wild turkeys and ducks, antelope, and prairie chickens. In her diary, which chronicled her family’s struggle to build a cabin, break the sod, and plant crops, Luna singled out for special attention the bison hunt that her uncle participated in the following winter. She noted that her uncle, who eventually brought back six bison, initially lost his way, but was helped by an Indian who led him back to camp. The following summer Luna was out riding with her father and two younger cousins when they, too, encountered a bison. She vividly described what happened. “Pa got off. He handed me the bridle while he went for the buffalo, CHAPTER OUTLINE revolver in hand. ...He fired and then they [the buffalo] came right toward Native Americans and the Trans- us. The horse sprang and snorted and whirled around me, but I kept fast hold Mississippi West and talked to her and she arched her neck. Then he [the buffalo] fell dead in the ravine. [We] hitched the oxen to the buffalo and dragged him up where Settling the West The Southwestern Frontier Exploiting the Western Landscape The West of Life and Legend 511 512 CHAPTER 17 The Transformation of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1860–1900 they could skin him...[and] they all went to skinning mountainsides in search of minerals, and tore up the the buffalo with pocket knives.“ prairie sod to build farms even in areas west of the ninety- Luna Warner and her family were part of one of the eighth meridian, where limited rainfall made farming great human migrations in modern history. Lured by problematic. tales of the West as a region of free land and rare miner- Although entrepreneurs attributed their economic als, miners, farmers, land speculators, and railroad achievements to American individualism and self- developers flooded onto the fertile prairies of Iowa, reliance, the West’s development depended heavily on Minnesota, and Kansas, carving the land into farms and the federal government. The government sent troops to communities. Then, tempted by the discovery of gold in pacify the Indians, promoted the acquisition of farm the Rocky Mountains, these same settlers, aided by the land through the Homestead Act (1862), and subsidized U.S. army, pushed aside the Indian inhabitants who the construction of the transcontinental railroad. lived there and swarmed onto the Great Plains and the Eastern banks and foreign capitalists provided invest- semiarid regions beyond them. Scarcely a decade later, ment capital and eased access to international markets. when Luna married and settled on her own farm, the Yet westerners clung to their ideal of the self-reliant indi- trans-Mississippi West had been transformed into a con- vidual who could handle any obstacle. That ideal, tested terrain as Native peoples fought to preserve their though often sorely tested, survived to form the bedrock homeland from being broken up into new settlements, of western Americans’ outlook even today. reservations, mines, ranches, farmland, and national parks. This chapter will focus on five major questions: The transformation of the West left a mixed legacy. Although many white families like the Warners pros- ■ How was Indian life on the Great Plains transformed pered on the High Plains, the heedless pursuit of land in the second half of the nineteenth century? and profit proved destructive to the Native Americans, ■ What roles did the army and the railroads play in the to the environment, and often to the settlers themselves. settlement of the West? Under the banner of civilization and progress, industri- ous western entrepreneurs exploited white, Native ■ To what extent did the Homestead Act succeed in American, Chinese, and Mexican laborers alike. They making free land available to those who settled in slaughtered millions of bison for their hides, skinned the the West? Native Americans and the Trans-Mississippi West 513 ■ How was the Wild West image of cowboys and Five Civilized Tribes, who had been driven there from Indians created? Why has it remained so popular? the Southeast in the 1830s, pursued an agricultural life in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The ■ How did some Americans become more aware of the Pawnees in Nebraska maintained the older, more settled need to conserve natural resources by setting them tradition characteristic of Plains river valley culture aside in national parks? before the introduction of horses, spending at least half the year in villages of earthen lodges along watercourses. NATIVE AMERICANS AND THE Surrounding these to the South were the migratory TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST tribes of western Kansas, Colorado, eastern New Mexico, and Texas—the Comanches, Kiowas, southern No aspect of the transformation of the West was more Arapahos, and Kiowa Apaches. visible and dramatic than the destruction of the tradi- Considerable diversity flourished among the Plains tional Indian way of life. Even before settlers, ranchers, peoples, and customs varied even within subdivisions of and miners poured onto the Great Plains at midcentury, the same tribe. For example, the easternmost branch of Indian life in the trans-Mississippi West was changing. the great Sioux Nation, the Dakota Sioux of Minnesota In the southwest earlier in the century, the Spanish had who inhabited the wooded edge of the prairie, led a forcibly incorporated pueblo peoples such as the Hopis semisedentary life based on small-scale agriculture, deer and Zuñis into their Mexican trading networks. Other and bison hunting, wild-rice harvesting, and maple- tribes, such as the Navajos, had gradually given up sugar production. In contrast, many Plains tribes—not migratory life in favor of settled agriculture. To the only the Lakota Sioux, but also the Blackfeet, Crows, and North, the Cheyenne and the Lakota Sioux, already Cheyennes—using horses obtained from the Spanish expelled from the Great Lakes region by the expansion of and guns obtained from traders, roamed the High Plains white settlement, had moved onto the grasslands of the to the west, and followed the bison migrations. Great Plains and had seized hunting grounds from their For all the Plains Indians, life revolved around enemies, the Pawnees and the Crows. These and other extended family ties and tribal cooperation. Within the nomadic warrior tribes, dispersed in small bands and various Sioux-speaking tribes, for example, children moving from place to place to follow the bison herds, were raised without physical punishment and were had developed a resilient culture adapted to the harsh taught to treat each adult clan member with the respect environment. accorded to relatives. Families and clans joined forces to When white pioneers invaded their territory at mid- hunt and farm and reached decisions by consensus. century, it was the resistance of these nomadic Indians For the various Sioux bands, religious and harvest that most captured the public’s attention and spurred celebrations provided the cement for village and camp debate. Caught between a stampede of miners and set- life. Sioux religion was complex and entirely different tlers who took their land and depleted their natural from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Lakota Sioux resources and the federal government that sought to thought of life as a series of circles. Living within the force them onto reservations, Native Americans desper- daily cycles of the sun and moon, Lakotas were born into ately fought back. By the 1890s relocation to distant, a circle of relatives, which broadened to the band, the often inferior lands had become the fate of almost every tribe, and the Sioux Nation. The Lakotas also believed in Indian nation. Beaten and victimized, resilient Native a hierarchy of plant and animal spirits whose help could Americans struggled to preserve their traditions and be invoked in the Sun Dance. To gain access to spiritual rebuild their numbers. power and to benefit the weaker members of the com- munity, young men would “sacrifice” themselves by suf- fering self-torture. For example, some fastened skewers The Plains Indians to their chest from which they dragged buffalo skulls; The Indians of the Great Plains inhabited three major others suspended themselves from poles or cut pieces of subregions. The northern Plains, from the Dakotas and their flesh and placed them at the foot of the Sun Dance Montana southward to Nebraska, were dominated by pole. Painter George Catlin, who recorded Great Plains several large tribes such as the Lakota who spoke Siouan Indian life before the Civil War, described such a cere- languages, as well as by the Flatheads, Blackfeet, mony. “Several of them, seeing me making sketches, Assiniboins, northern Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Crows. beckoned me to look at their faces, which I watched Some of these were allies, but others were bitter enemies through all this horrid operation, without being able to perpetually at war. In the central region the so-called detect anything but the pleasantest smiles as they 514 CHAPTER 17 The Transformation of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1860–1900 looked me in the eye, while I could hear the knife rip valley sites where the buffalo had wintered and exhaust- through the flesh, and feel enough of it myself, to start ed the tall grasses upon which the animals depended.

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