In this lecture you are going to learn about…
Who worked and settled in the West and why they were drawn there?
You will learn about The Homestead Act
Mining
And the Ranch Economy
One of the main reasons people moved west was ...
because they wanted a better life and the ability to own land.
Land during this time period signified wealth and freedom ...
and thousands of people moved west to accomplish ...
the goal of owning their own land.
Thus, the passing of the ...
Homestead Act of 1862 certainly proved to be a ...
strong incentive for a lot of people to move west.
The Homestead Act, allowed male citizens (or ...
those who declared their intent to become citizens) to ...
claim federally owned lands in the West.
Settlers could head west, choose a 160-acre surveyed ...
section of land, file a claim,
and begin “improving” the land.
however, homesteaders still needed as ...
much as $1,000 for a house, a team of farm animals,
a well, fencing, and seed.
After five years of living on the land,
could apply for the official title deed to the land.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans used the ...
Homestead Act to acquire land.
The treeless plains that had been considered unfit for ...
settlement became the new agricultural mecca for ...
land-hungry Americans.
But despite the promise of a better life people who ...
ventured west faced hardship,
loneliness, and deprivation.
Blizzards, tornadoes,
grasshoppers, hailstorms,
droughts, prairie fires,
accidental deaths, and diseases were only a few ...
of the catastrophes that could befall even the best farmers.
For women on the frontier, simple daily tasks such as ...
obtaining water and fuel meant backbreaking labor.
Moreover by the 1870s, much of the best land was ...
taken and the least desirable tracts were left for new homesteaders.
As land grew scarce, farmers began to push ...
farther west, moving into western Kansas,
Nebraska, and eastern Colorado—an ...
area known as the Great American Desert.
The opening of the Oklahoma territory in 1889 brought ...
thousands of settlers into the former Indian Territory.
Western populations exploded.
The Plains were transformed. In 1860,
for example, Kansas had about 10,000 ...
farms; in 1880 it had 239,000.
Texas saw enormous population growth.
The federal government counted 200,000 people in ...
Texas in 1850, 1,600,000 in 1880,
and 3,000,000 in 1900, making it the sixth most ...
populous state in the nation.
Mining and the prospect of becoming rich was another ...
reason why people moved west.
You maybe familiar with the discovery of gold in California ...
in 1848 and how people from all over the world went to ...
California with the hopes of finding gold.
However, by the second half of the ...
19th century there will be silver and gold mines all over the west.
Precious-metal was found in Colorado in 1858,
Nevada in 1859, Idaho in 1860,
Montana in 1863, and the Black Hills in 1874.
The promise of gold and silver drew thousands of ...
people—the honest as well as the unscrupulous—to the ...
mines of the West.
The West also drew an international array of ...
immigrants, including a large number of ...
Irish immigrants, making Virginia City more ...
cosmopolitan than either New York or Bostob at the time.
In 1859, people flocked to Nevada,
where they found the richest vein of silver ore on the ...
continent—the legendary Comstock Lode.
Comstock miners uncovered a new vein of ore,
prompting the transition from small-scale industry to ...
corporate enterprise, creating a radically new ...
social and economic environment in the region.
Silver mining was an expensive operation that ...
required capital and technological resources to ...
exploit the claims.
Speculation, misrepresentation,
and outright thievery ran rampant in the mining West ...
during the latter half of the nineteenth century and as ...
corporations took over the prospector it became harder ...
and harder to work in the mines.
The new technology applied by the corporations ...
eliminated some of the dangers of mining but not all ...
and in the 1870s, one out of thirty miners was ...
injured on the job and one out of eighty was killed.
Beside being able to own land,
or strike it rich, many people moved west ...
simply to get a job, and perhaps one of the most ...
notorious jobs in the West is the cowboy.
When we think about the west today,
we cannot help to think about the notorious all-American ...
Cowboy in the open range.
However, cowboys like most jobs in the ...
west were incredibly diverse. In fact,
the first cowboys of the west were Mexican.
Mexican Cowboys called vaqueros worked for ...
Californios Mexican Ranchers of Spanish descent in ...
California that owned land prior to the annexation of ...
California. Vaqueros worked not only in ...
California, but through out the West.
But Mexican Vaqueros were not the only group living in ...
the West. The truth is that the west ...
during this time period was a widely diverse place,
populated by Mormons, African Americans,
Native Americans as well as immigrants from all over the ...
world, strikers, and radicals.
However, diversity did not always ...
translate to equal opportunities many of these ...
groups suffered from discrimination and were often ...
victims of fraud and intimidation.
In California, vaqueros commanded decent ...
wages until the 1870s, when the coming of the ...
railroads ended the long cattle drives and the need for ...
the vaqueros' skills,
many became laborers, often on land their families ...
had once owned.
By the turn of the 20th century most Californios and ...
Mexican families in Texas and other regions of the West had ...
lost their land.
Instead of living in the large ranchos and haciendas many ...
of their parent and grandparents had lived in ...
many lived in segregated urban barrios in the ...
ever-growing towns and cities of the West.
After the Civil War some freed slaves managed to pull ...
together enough resources to go west.
For example, more than fifteen thousand ...
African Americans, moved from Mississippi and ...
Louisiana to take up land in Kansas.
African Americans who ventured out to the territories ...
faced hostile settlers determined to keep the West ...
“for whites only.”
Nevertheless, African Americans who ...
moved west typically found more opportunities than they ...
did in the South. In the West some African ...
Americans worked as railroad porters and Cowboys.
Word of opportunities in the West also attracted people ...
from all over the world.
For example, not everyone knows that ...
many homesteaders were in fact European immigrants.
Migrants sometimes found in homesteads a self-sufficiency ...
denied in their home country. For example,
second or third sons who did not inherit land in ...
Scandinavia, founded farm communities in ...
Minnesota, Dakota,
and other Midwestern territories in the 1860s.
Boosters encouraged emigration by advertising the ...
semiarid Plains as a, "a flowery meadow of great ...
fertility clothed in nutritious grasses and watered by ...
numerous streams."
In reality many of the migrant homesteaders were given the ...
worst land and experienced various hardships.
There will also be a significant icrease of Chinese ...
migrants coming to the West during this time period.
In the mid 19th century, China is in transition from ...
major world power to semi-colonized nation.
The Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856 reverse flow of silver ...
OUT of China, destabilizing the cash economy
Then the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s and 1860s further ...
destabilized the region forcing many Chinese to flee China.
In 1865 there will be around 10,000 Chinese in the West ...
working to build the Transcontinental Railroad
Once the railroad was completed many Chinese ...
immigrants began to work as miners,
but at the mines they faced discrimination in the form of ...
foreign taxes and often they were prohibited to mine all together
For example, in 1853 the Columbia mining ...
district banned Chinese miners.
After 1870, Chinese increasingly move to ...
cities. By 1900s around 45%
of Chinese immigrants lived in San Francisco,
others moved to cities like Stockton or Sacramento.
Moreover, the Chinese suffered the ...
most brutal treatment of all the newcomers at the hands ...
of employers and other laborers in the West.
Often working long hours for low pay.
For example, by 1870,
over 63,000 Chinese immigrants lived in the US,
but they were denied access to citizenship.
Mormons were another group that moved West.
The nearly seventy thousand members of the Church of ...
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more commonly ...
called Mormons)
who migrated west between 1846 and 1868 were similar to ...
other Americans traveling west on the overland trails.
They faced many of the same problems,
but unlike most other American migrants,
Mormons were fleeing from religious persecution.
Many historians view Mormonism as a "uniquely ...
American faith," not just because it was ...
founded by Joseph Smith in New York in the 1830s,
but because of its optimistic and future-oriented tenets.
Mormons believed that Americans were ...
exceptional—chosen by God to spread truth across the ...
world and to build utopia, a New Jerusalem in North America.
However, many Americans were ...
suspicious of the Latter-Day Saint movement and its ...
unusual rituals, especially the practice of ...
polygamy, and most Mormons found it ...
difficult to practice their faith in the eastern United States.
Thus, began a series of migrations ...
in the mid-nineteenth century,
first to Illinois, then Missouri and Nebraska,
and finally into Utah Territory.
Once in the west, Mormon settlements served ...
as important supply points for other emigrants heading on ...
to California and Oregon.
Brigham Young, the leader of the Church after ...
the death of Joseph Smith, was appointed governor of ...
the Utah Territory by the federal government in 1850.
He encouraged Mormon residents of the territory to ...
engage in agricultural pursuits and be cautious of ...
the outsiders who arrived as the mining and railroad ...
industries developed in the region.
Under Young the Mormon community prospered in ...
Utah,however the controversy over polygamy postponed ...
statehood for Utah until 1896.
Despite the great call for opportunity for the little guy,
the ones who truly benefited from the opportunities ...
available in the West were corporations.
The railroads were by far the biggest winners in the ...
scramble for western land.
Then between 1865 and 1885,
cattle ranchers followed the railroads onto the plains,
establishing a cattle kingdom from Texas to Wyoming.
Barbed wire revolutionized the cattle business.
As the largest ranchers in Texas began to build fences,
nasty fights broke out between them and “fence ...
cutters,” who resented the end of the free range.
On the range, the cowboy gave way to the ...
cattle king and became a wage laborer.
In California, land monopoly and ...
large-scale farming fostered tenancy and migratory labor.
Commercial farming, along with mining,
represented another way in which the West developed its ...
own brand of industrialism.
By the end of the nineteenth century,
agriculture had been transformed:
The typical farmer was no longer a self-sufficient ...
yeoman but was tied to global markets as either a ...
businessman or a wage laborer.
That is all of now please watch the next video lecture to learn more.
