Hello and welcome back to the History 2020 lecture series at East Tennessee
State University.
I'm Melanie Storie and in the lecture today I want to talk to you about
the transformation of the west during the late 19th Century.
Specifically we will look at the myth of the West,
as it played into the imagination of the American people. We'll also consider the
diversity of the Western societies in terms of
the different ethnic and racial groups who settled in the West.
We'll also look at the development of the Western economy,
as it coincided with the growth of capitalism and industry in the Eastern
cities.
Then finally we'll consider the impact of the Anglo-American migration
on the thousands of Native American peoples living in the West.
In 1872, Brooklyn-based painter John Gast
was commissioned by a publisher to produce a pane for a series of western travel guides.
It was called "American Progress," and the painting conveys a wide range of ideas
about the American West.
In this painting, the beautiful goddess Liberty glides Westward,
leaving the Eastern cities behind. She holds in her right hand a school book,
which serves as a testament to national enlightenment,
and in her left hand she's stringing telegraph wires
all along the way and then off in the distance,
the railroad can be seen and this gives the impression that civilization was on its
way West
and the new technology would eventually tame the wilderness.
Just beneath the goddess Liberty, Gast depicted farmers and pioneers who were
determined to take advantage
of the West's plentiful resources. Then on the left side of the painting
are a group of Native Americans who are attempting to flee ahead of the advancing
Anglo-American migrations.
Likewise, the herd of buffalo is attempting to escape as well.
Now, throughout most the 19th Century, the history of the West
reflected this type of romantic and optimistic view.
It was a region as a place of
adventure and opportunity. So let's look a little closer at the myth of the West
as it figured
into the imagination of the American people. Probably more than any other
region,
the American West is shrouded in lots of myth
and stereotypes. Whenever the West is mentioned in US history we seem to
conjure up images in our minds of a place where
lawmen and outlaws square off against each other in a high noon shootout or
a place where good and bad are clearly identifiable. The cowboy in particular
came to embody a free-spirited lifestyle that's often associated with the West.
The cowboy was transformed into one of the most widely admired
popular heroes in America. Yet admiring Americans seldom thought about
many dismal aspects of the cowboy's life which was filled with lonely hours of
hard work,
low pay, and little chance for advancement. Instead, in popular Western
novels and then of course later in movies,
the cowboy was romanticized by his freedom from traditional social
constraints.
So the myth of the West was essentially a by product of dime novels in the
19th Century,
while movies and radio and television shows perpetuated the myth
well into the 20th Century, and if you think about it, this symbol of the cowboy
and this adventurous notion of the West has survived
into our 21st Century. But it's not just the character of the new West that made
it so important to the nation's imagination;
it was also many Americans in the late 19th century
considered the region to be the last frontier. If you think back to the first
part of American history,
since the earliest moments of European settlement in America, the image of
uncharted territory to the west has always inspired those
who dreamed of starting a new life. In the 1840's, it was called Manifest Destiny
that is the providential vision that America was destined
to spread freedom and democracy across the entire continent
to the Pacific Ocean. Now,
in the late 19th Century with the last of the unsettled land being slowly
absorbed
into the nation's civilization, the frontier conveyed an even stronger pull
than ever before. In fact, after the Civil War, with the completion of the
Transcontinental Railroad
and legislation which promised cheap Western land,
Americans by hundreds of thousands packed up everything they owned
and they moved to the Western Frontier. Essentially from 1870-1900 there was a
steady stream
of Westward migration. The mythic West represented an uncomplicated,
simplistic, and pure lifestyle. It was what many Americans imagined the entire
society had once been before
cities and factories and masses of immigrants.
Another reason why the romantic depiction of the West persisted
was the popularity of the Wild West shows that
were developed in the late 19th and early 20th Century.
This form of entertainment had little connection with the reality of Western life,
but it impressed on the audiences an image of the West as a place of
adventure and romance.
The leading promoter of the Wild West shows was none other than William
"Buffalo Bill" Cody.
Cody himself had lead a fascinating life. He had panned for gold in the West,
he had worked as a Pony Express rider, he served as an Army Scout,
he hunted buffalo for railroad construction crews which of course led to his
famous nickname. But, Buffalo Bill was smart in the sense that he was able to
capitalize
on the romance of the west by forming the Wild West Company
in 1883. His shows were part circus
and part rodeo and they were widely popular.
They included mock Indian attacks by real Indians, I might add,
on stage coaches and wagon trains. There were portrayals of the Pony Express,
of Lieutenant-Colonel George Custer's so-called Last Stand at the Battle of
Little Bighorn,
and all sorts of shooting and riding and roping demonstrations.
Natually, Buffalo Bill was always the star performer, but the show had other
celebrities too.
Phoebe Butler, you might know her better as her stage name Annie Oakley,
she became widely popular for her shooting acts.
Also, Native Americans were an important part of the show too.
For instance, the great Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull of
Little Bighorn fame toured with the show for a few months.
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show toured all over the nation and throughout all of Europe.
In fact, it's reported that as many as 40,000 people saw it in one day in
Chicago
in 1884. In 1886, it played for six months
on New York's Staten Island. Even members of the royal family attended the show in
England
and it drew large crowds as well in France and Germany and Italy.
Its popularity was evidence of the nostalgia in which late 19th century
Americans looked
at their own imagined past.
Perhaps the clearest and most influential statements though of the
romantic vision of the Frontier
came from historian Frederick Jackson Turner.
In 1893, Turner delivered a paper to the
meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago.
It was titled, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History."
Turner based his findings on Census data and he argued that civilization had so
spread
throughout the frontier that the frontier line was no longer discernible.
He declared quote, "The frontier has gone and with it's going has closed the
first period of
American history."
Yet the West had never been a frontier in the sense that he meant,
a place that was empty, uncivilized,
land waiting... a place of empty and uncivilized land waiting for
a settlement.
So the image at this mythic West greatly differed from the
the reality. The real West of the 19th Century was a diverse land
with many
regions and climates. It was also an extensively
populated land with a number of well developed societies and cultures.
There were Native American tribes, Mexicans,
Europeans, and Asians. They'd all been living in the West for several
generations by the time the Anglo-Americans arrived in
massive numbers. The Anglo-American settlers did create new civilizations in
this vast land but they didn't do it by themselves.
Almost everything they did and built reflected the influence of these other
cultures.
Most of all however, Americans transformed the West by making it part of the growing
capitalist economy of
the East and despite their image as
rugged individuals, they relied heavily on land grants,
subsidies, and military protection as they began to develop the region.
So now let's take a closer look at these diverse group
who settled in the West. Just like the big cities of the East,
the West in the late 19th Century was a wildly diverse place populated by Native
American tribes,
Hispanics, African-Americans, as well as immigrants from Europe and Asia.
The sheer numbers of people who came together in the West sometimes produced
a complex blend of racism and prejudice.
The largest population group living in the West before the Anglo-American
migration
were of course the Native American tribes.
Some of these Indians were members of the Eastern tribes such as the Cherokee
who had been forcibly re-settled west of the Mississippi
to what was called Indian Territory and this is modern-day Oklahoma.
But most of the Indians that lived in the west were members of tribes that
had always lived in the West
and these western tribes had long developed several forms of civilization before any
European contact.
For instance, more than three-hundred thousand Indians had lived on the
Pacific coast before the arrival of Spanish settlers.
Also, in the southwest the Pueblos had long lived as farmers
and established permanent settlements before the Spanish arrived.
The most widespread Indian presence in the West were the Plains Indians,
a diverse group of tribes with different languages.
Some tribes formed alliances with one another while others were in constant
conflict.
Some live more or less sedentary lives as farmers
while some of the others were highly nomadic hunters.
But despite their differences, the tribes shared some similar
traits. Their cultures were based on close extended family networks.
Each tribe generally had a type of governing council with community
decision-making processes.
Also, within each tribe or family, tasks were divided
based on gender. For instance, women's roles were largely domestic.
They took care of raising the children, preparing meals,
preparing animal hides, tending to fields and gardens,
while men primarily worked as hunters and/or traders.
The men also supervised religious and military life.
Most tribes practiced religion centered on a belief that
the spiritual power... there was a spiritual power...
that governed the natural world. Also
many of the Plains tribes subsisted largely through the hunting of the
buffalo.
The buffalo or bison provided the economic basis for
the Plains Indians way of life. The meat was their principal source of food.
Its hide supplied materials for clothing, shoes, shelter, blankets, and tools.
The dried manure that's commonly referred to as 'buffalo chips'
provided fuel for fires. The bones became
knives and arrow tips, while the buffalo tendons
formed the strings of their bows.
So the Plains Indians, make no doubt, prove to be some other most fearsome
rivals that white settlers
would encounter as they settled the West.
Yet these tribes also suffered from several weaknesses
that in the end made it very difficult for them to defeat
the encroachment on their land. One weakness was the inability to unite
several tribes against the white encroachment.
Native American tribes were seldom able to draw together a large
coalition that was big enough to to counter white military power.
Also, they were frequently distracted by conflicts among the tribes
themselves, and this at times made them very vulnerable.
Another group who had already established a presence in the west prior
to Anglo-American migration were Hispanics.
For centuries much of the Far West had been part of
first the Spanish Empire and then later the Mexican Republic.
Now during the 1840's, the land that the United States acquired
did not include much of Mexico's most populous regions
but there were considerable numbers of Mexicans who did live in this region
and now they had suddenly become part of the United States.
Many of these Mexican settlers stayed.
So Spanish-speaking communities were scattered throughout
all of the southwest. All of them were transformed in varying degrees by the
arrival of
Anglo-Americans and the expansion of the American capitalist economy.
For some of them it meant opportunities of great wealth and
opportunity... added opportunity. In many places in the southwest, the Hispanic
population was able to expand
largely due to the US Army breaking the power of tribes like the Navajo and the
Apache.
For other Hispanics the arrival of Anglo- Americans meant the loss of land.
For instance, in California, many Hispanics lost land through corrupt
deals or just outright seizure of their property.
On the whole, the Anglo-American migration created new opportunities
of wealth
for some Hispanics, while at the same time, others lost power and prestige
in a region they had long considered to be their own.
Now in the aftermath of Reconstruction, there were thousands of
African-Americans who also began migrating West.
Some 6,000 southern blacks arrived in Kansas
in 1879 and as many as 20,000
follow the next year. These African-Americans came to be known as
'Exodusters' because they were making their exodus
from the South in search of a haven from racism and poverty.
The migration of black southerners to the West died out
by the early 1880's though, as many
were unprepared for the harsh living conditions on the plains.
They were not alone. There were many white farmers who were also not
ready for the the living conditions on the plains as well. We'll talk about that
in a little bit. Their homesteads...
the African American homesteads were also not large enough to be
self-sustaining
and most of them were forced to supplement their income by hiring
themselves out to other farms.
Some soon abandoned their land altogether and moved into the cities while others
became cowboys
and participated in Texas cattle drives.
Some African-Americans also served with the US Army in the West
Nicknamed the Buffalo Soldiers by the Indians, these men built and maintained
forts,
they mapped out vast areas of the Southwest, and they helped to subdue
hostile Indians. Incidentally, 18 of the Buffalo Soldiers were eventually awarded
Congressional Medals of Honor for their service.
Now, at the same time that Europeans were crossing the Atlantic in search of
opportunities in America,
many Chinese crossed the Pacific with the same hope
for a better life. A few Chinese had come to California even before the gold rush,
but after 1848 the flow of Chinese immigrants
dramatically increased, so much so that by 1880 more than 200,000 Chinese
had settled in the United States, primarily California,
where they consisted of nearly a tenth of the population.
Almost all of the Chinese immigrants came as free laborers
but there were some who arrived under a type of indenture system.
These Chinese workers were called "Coolies".
At first the Chinese immigrants were welcomed but as more and more began to
arrive
many Anglo-American's became hostile towards them.
In the early 1850's, large numbers of Chinese immigrants worked in the gold
mines
and for a time enjoyed some considerable... considerable success as miners.
However, legislation was later passed to exclude...
exclude the Chinese from mining by enacting
a foreign miner's tax and this was something that also helped exclude
Hispanic miners. A series of laws passed during the 1850's and 1860's, and these were
designed to discourage
any further Chinese immigration. Then later on in 1882,
Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration
for ten years.
Groups called the anti-coolie clubs were also formed.
Members sought a ban on employing Chinese laborers.
So as mining declined as a source of wealth for the Chinese,
opportunities arose within the area of railroad construction.
Beginning in 1865, more than 12,000 Chinese found work building the
Transcontinental Railroad.
Chinese workers formed about 90 percent of the labor force
of the Central Pacific Company and were mainly responsible
for the construction of the new Western part of the
railroad.
The company preferred them to white workers because they had no experience
of labor organization and there was less chance for them to go out on strike.
Also, the Chinese work very hard. They made very few demands
and they accepted relatively low pay.
The work was grueling and often dangerous, particularly as the railroad
moved through the mountains and began using
dynamite to blast their way through the the mountain ranges.
In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed
and this resulted in unemployment for thousands of Chinese workers.
Many of them flocked to cities and established communities known as Chinatowns.
Life was very difficult though for most urban Chinese as they
usually occupied the lower rungs on the employment ladder.
Some did establish their own small businesses, in particular laundries
were established by the Chinese. Now this was not due to any kind of special
expertise,
but the fact was that this type of business
required very little capital to start up and required only limited command of
English.
The relatively small number of Chinese women fared much worse though.
During the early migration, virtually all the Chinese women
were sold into prostitution. Once the gender ratio became more balanced though,
Chinese families began to grow in the West.
So now let's look at the changing Western economy.