Westward Expansion and Its Cost, c. 1840–1900

This is Unit Two, part two, on the peoples of the West, from the Plains nations to the closing of the frontier. Part one closed with barbed wire and the winters ending the open range, and pointed to the peoples who already lived on the Plains. This part is about them, and about the Chinese and Hispanic westerners the law shut out. Carry one thing through it: the distance between what a policy said and what it did. A treaty reserved the Black Hills. A mass execution is told as mercy. A citizenship was promised on paper. At the Dawes Act, the course measures that distance directly. By the end you will be able to trace federal Indian policy from removal to the treaties of eighteen sixty-seven and sixty-eight. To explain what broke the Fort Laramie Treaty. To state what happened at Wounded Knee. To explain whether allotment was reform. And to describe the legal barriers Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens faced.

Two entries on the Plains nations, and on the policy the government had already pursued before the settlers came.

The Plains nations.

USH2 0172 The Plains Nations

About two hundred fifty thousand Native Americans lived on the Great Plains before the westward expansion of settlers and railroads. The Yawp reproduces a photograph of bison skulls piled to be ground into fertilizer. The bison were killed for leather, fertilizer and sport, and destroying the herds destroyed the Plains nations' economy.

From removal to reservations.

USH2 0173 From Removal to Reservations

The Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty drove nearly fifty thousand Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole people west. The first Treaty of Fort Laramie, in eighteen fifty-one, drew tribal borders and began the reservation system. Tribes were paid fifty thousand dollars a year to stay clear of settler paths, for fifty years, later cut to ten.

Three entries on the wars of the eighteen sixties, and the treaties that followed the national debate.

The war that erupted during the Civil War.

USH2 0174 The Dakota War

In the Dakota War of eighteen sixty-two, more than one thousand settlers were killed or captured, and three hundred three Sioux were sentenced to death. Lincoln reduced the executions to thirty-eight. The reduction is often told as mercy. Thirty-eight hangings remain the largest mass execution the United States has ever carried out.

An attack on a peaceful camp.

USH2 0175 Sand Creek

In eighteen sixty-four Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers attacked Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne camp at Sand Creek, in eastern Colorado, killing close to one hundred people, the majority of them women and children. Digital History records that the Cheyenne had gathered under the governor's protection. The attack provoked a national debate over Indian policy.

The treaties that followed the debate.

USH2 0176 The Treaties of 1867 and 1868

At Medicine Lodge Creek in the fall of eighteen sixty-seven, officials sought to move the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche to reservations in Indian Territory, and the Yawp says each side understood the terms differently. The Fort Laramie Treaty of April eighteen sixty-eight recognised the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation.

Two entries on the Black Hills: what broke the treaty, and the most famous battle of the wars that followed.

What broke it.

USH2 0177 Gold in the Black Hills

An American expedition discovered gold in the Black Hills in eighteen seventy-four, inside land the eighteen sixty-eight treaty had reserved for the Sioux. Prospectors poured into treaty land while officials pressed the Sioux for a new treaty, and General Philip Sheridan quietly moved troops into the region. The Yawp says clashes between soldiers and warriors followed.

The most famous battle of those wars.

USH2 0178 Little Bighorn

On June twenty-fifth, eighteen seventy-six, nearly three thousand Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho under Sitting Bull defeated Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. Custer and more than two hundred sixty of his men were killed; the anchor counts two hundred sixty-two with him, and Digital History two hundred sixty-four. Five years of warfare then confined the Sioux to reservations.

Three entries: schools built to end Native culture, a religion that answered despair, and the massacre that fear of it produced.

The schools.

USH2 0179 Boarding Schools

From the eighteen eighties, boarding schools such as the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania forced Native children to abandon their tribal traditions, teaching vocational trades and domestic science in place of their own languages and customs. The federal government founded Carlisle in eighteen seventy-nine. The aim, the anchor says, was to make children embrace Euro-American social and cultural practices.

The religion that answered despair.

USH2 0180 The Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance, taught by the prophet Wovoka, promised that dancers who lived justly would see their ancestors return and the bison roam again. Lakota Ghost Dancers faced drought, cut rations and a shrinking reservation. Settlers and officials read the dance as the start of an uprising, and that fear led directly to Wounded Knee.

What happened at Wounded Knee Creek.

USH2 0181 Wounded Knee

On December twenty-ninth, eighteen ninety, Seventh Cavalry troopers entered the camp of Spotted Elk's Lakota band, also known as Bigfoot's, at Wounded Knee Creek to disarm them. A shot was fired, and the soldiers opened fire on men, women and children. The anchor gives the dead as between one hundred fifty and three hundred; Digital History gives three hundred. Twenty-five American soldiers were casualties, the anchor says. The anchor records twenty Medals of Honor given to soldiers for Wounded Knee; Digital History records twenty-two. The sources call it a massacre, and so does this course.

Two entries on the law that took the land itself, and the second asks whether it was reform.

The Dawes Act.

USH2 0182 The Dawes Act

The Dawes Act of February eighth, eighteen eighty-seven, divided reservations into individual allotments, a quarter section to each head of a family and an eighth of a section to each single person over eighteen, held in trust for twenty-five years. After allotment, the land left over was sold to White settlers. Citizenship came with full title.

Whether allotment was reform.

USH2 0183 Whether Allotment Was Reform

Both witnesses answer this with both halves. The Yawp says Americans publicly touted the act as an uplifting humanitarian reform, but that it upended Native lifestyles and left Native nations without sovereignty over their lands. Digital History says it was supposed to encourage Native Americans to become farmers, but most allotted land proved unsuitable for farming for lack of rainfall, and many allottees sold to White buyers. Its figures show the result: Native-owned land fell from one hundred fifty-five million acres in eighteen eighty-one to seventy-seven million in nineteen hundred, and to forty-eight million by nineteen thirty-four. The anchor counts about eighty million acres passing to White settlers. Two misreadings sit on either side. One takes the reform language at its word and blames bad soil. The other treats the reformers as conscious thieves, a motive the sources do not state. The evidence fits a harder reading: a policy sincere in its language that still produced dispossession on a vast scale, because its surplus land was sold by design. That is the distance this part asked you to watch. Carlisle and allotment pursued one aim, assimilation, by two routes.

Three entries on the Chinese immigrants who built the railroad, and on the laws that shut them out.

Chinese immigration.

USH2 0184 Chinese Immigration

Barely six hundred fifty Chinese lived in the country at the end of eighteen forty-nine, and more than twenty-five thousand arrived in eighteen fifty-two. By eighteen eighty the Yawp counts more than two hundred thousand, and the anchor over three hundred thousand. By eighteen ninety, fewer than one in twenty was female.

The work they did, and how they came.

USH2 0185 Railroad Labour and the Credit Ticket

Chinese workers built much of the transcontinental railroad and worked former cotton plantations in the South after emancipation. Many came on the credit ticket: a businessman paid a labourer's passage in advance, to be repaid from his wages. That arrangement tied workers to debt, a labour obligation owed before the first day's work began.

The laws that shut them out.

USH2 0186 The Chinese Exclusion Act

Chinese immigrants faced legal barriers at every level. Federal law had barred them from naturalised citizenship since seventeen ninety. In eighteen seventy-nine California's new constitution denied the vote and state employment to Chinese residents who had become citizens. On May sixth, eighteen eighty-two, the Chinese Exclusion Act suspended the immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years. It was renewed and extended, and Digital History notes that most Chinese immigrants were barred until nineteen forty-three, a ban of sixty-one years. It also notes that many of the earliest immigration restrictions were aimed at Asian immigrants. Unit nine returns to immigration quotas, and unit fourteen to their repeal.

Three entries on the Southwest's Hispanic citizens, and the census announcement that closes the unit.

The treaty that made them citizens.

USH2 0187 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February second, eighteen forty-eight, ended the Mexican-American War and promised citizenship to Mexicans who remained in the ceded lands. Of nearly seventy-five thousand Hispanics in the Southwest, about ninety percent accepted citizenship; both figures are the anchor's. Citizenship on paper did not protect the land they held.

How that land was taken.

USH2 0188 Dispossession by Law

Hispanic landowners in the Southwest were displaced by force, and by legal processes designed to leave them penniless. Sunday Laws forbade traditional cultural practices, and Greaser Laws jailed unemployed Mexican Americans as vagrants. The Greaser Laws, like the Black codes, used vagrancy to control a population, and treaty citizenship gave little protection in court.

The announcement that the frontier was gone.

USH2 0189 The Frontier Line

In eighteen ninety the superintendent of the census announced that western settlement meant there could hardly be said to be a frontier line. Digital History says three million families started farms on the Great Plains in a quarter century. Frederick Jackson Turner built a famous argument on it in eighteen ninety-three, which unit seven examines as a source.

Look at what you can now do. You can trace federal Indian policy from the Removal Act of eighteen thirty, through the reservation system begun at Fort Laramie in eighteen fifty-one, to the treaties of eighteen sixty-seven and sixty-eight, which reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux. You can explain what broke that treaty: gold found in the Black Hills in eighteen seventy-four, prospectors on treaty land, and troops moved in. You can state what happened at Wounded Knee. Soldiers opened fire on men, women and children, killing between one hundred fifty and three hundred, and twenty or more Medals of Honor were awarded for it. You can explain whether allotment was reform, stating the promise and the outcome together: reform in its language, and dispossession on a vast scale, because the surplus land was sold by design. And you can describe the legal barriers Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens faced: exclusion lasting sixty-one years, and a treaty citizenship that did not protect the land.