1. Settling the West
1865-1900
After the Civil War, a dynamic period in American History
opened—the settlement of the West. The lives of the Western
miners, farmers, and ranchers were often filled with great
hardships, but the wave of American settlers continued. Railroads
hastened this migration. During this period, many Native
Americans lost their homelands and their way of life.

2. Who would settle the West??
• Miners

3. What kind of deposits did the west
have?

4. Gold
http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-
story-of-us/videos/gold-rush

5. Silver

6. Copper
• Uses of Copper
• Copper is used to pipe water supplies. The metal is also used
in refrigerators and air conditioning systems.
• Computer heat sinks are made out of copper as copper is able
to absorb a high amount of heat.
• Magnetrons, found in microwave ovens, contain copper.
• Vacuum tubes and cathode ray tubes both use copper.
• Some copper is added to fungicides and nutritional
supplements.
• As a good conductor of electricity, copper is used in Copper
wire, electromagnets and electrical relays and switches.
• Copper is a great water-proof roofing material. It has been
used for this purpose since ancient times.
• Some structures, such as the Statue of Liberty, are made with
copper.
• Copper is sometimes combined with nickel to make a
corrosion resistant material that is used in shipbuilding.
• Copper is used in lightning rods. These attract lightning and
cause the electrical current to be dispersed rather than
striking, and possibly destroying, a more important structure.
• Copper(II) sulfate is used to kill mildew.
• Copper is often used to color glass. It is also one component of
ceramic glaze.
• Many musical instruments, particularly brass instruments, are
made out of copper

7. Boom to Bust
Ghost towns were repeated
throughout the mountainous west

8. Who else would settle the West?
• Ranchers—at first
ranching was not
practical—no
water, cattle could not
survive—tough prairie
grasses—but in Texas—
The Longhorn—lean
and rangy—the
longhorn could survive.

9. Open Range-a vast area of grassland
owned by the government.
• Hispanic cowhands
developed the tolls and
techniques for rounding up
and driving cattle.
• Lariat, lasso, stampede
• After the Civil War meat
prices soared
• Millions of longhorns
roamed in Texas
• How to move the cattle to
the RR
• Long cattle drives-The
Chisholm Trail
• Barbed wire
• http://player.discoveryeduc
ation.com/index.cfm?guidA
ssetId=5EB648BC-FBA8-
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arch=1&productcode=US

10. The Settlement of the Great Plains

12. Major Stephen Long-The Great
American Desert- “wholly unfit for
cultivation”
• 20 inches of
rain a year
• Few trees
• Millions of
buffalo
• Native
Americans

14. Despite all –settlement occurred.
Why?

15. Railroads—the government gave them
land to build the RR—the RR in turn
sold land to prospective settlers

17. The Chinese

21. • “Rain follows the Plow”
• Homestead Act- the
government would give
up to 160 acres of land
and receive the title to
that land after 5 years.
• Life was hard

24. Native Americans
• The Great Plains were
home to many Native
Americans
• Some were farmers
• But the majority were
nomads—roamed the
vast distances following
their source of food—
the buffalo
• As ranchers, miners and
farmers moved out to
the Plains—Native
Americans were
deprived of their
hunting grounds
• The Buffalo was killed
for sport—by the
millions

26. With broken treaties, the Native
Americans were forced to relocate.
• Reservations-land set
aside for Native
Americans
• The Sioux
• The Lakota
• The Cheyenne

27. Lakota Chief Sitting Bull

28. Crazy Horse—Leader of the Oglala
Lakota

29. Chief Joseph- “I will fight no more
forever”

30. The Last Native American Wars
• Battle of the Little Big Horn
• The Battle of the Little
Bighorn, also called Custer's
Last Stand, was an engagement
between the combined forces
of the Lakota and Northern
Cheyenne tribes against the 7th
Cavalry of the United States
Army. The most famous of all of
the Indian Wars, the remarkable
victory for the Lakota and
Northern Cheyenne occurred
over two days on June 25-
26, 1876 near the Little Bighorn
River in eastern Montana
Territory. The U.S. cavalry
detachment, commanded by
Lieutenant Colonel George
Armstrong Custer, lost every
soldier in his unit.

31. The Battle of the Little Big Horn
• http://www.history.com
/videos/sitting-bull

32. Wounded Knee
• The Ghost Dance-a
ritual of dance and
prayer that hoped for
the day of reckoning.
• U.S. forbade the Native
Americans to perform.
• They continued despite
the law

33. Wounded Knee
• On the bone-chilling morning of December 29, devotees of
the newly created Ghost Dance religion made a lengthy trek
to the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota
to seek protection from military apprehension. Members of
the(Lakota) tribe led by Chief Big Foot and the Sioux (Lakota)
followers of the recently slain charismatic leader, Sitting
Bull, attempted to escape arrest by fleeing south through the
rugged terrain of the Badlands. There, on the snowy banks of
Wounded Knee Creek (Cankpe Opi Wakpala), nearly 300
Lakota men, women, and children -- old and young -- were
massacred in a highly charged, violent encounter with U.S.
soldiers

34. The dead at Wounded Knee

35. • The U.S. government
just wanted the Native
Americans to just
assimilate
• Assimilation-to be
absorbed into a culture
• “A Century of Dishonor”
a book by Helen Hunt
Jackson that was critical
of the US policies
• The Dawes Act-similar
to the Homestead Act—
the Dawes Act allowed
the Indians land –it
failed to help the
Indians.