Skip to main content. You are here Home. Wait just a minute here Get started right now! US History. No votes yet. Human—computer interaction.
Printer Friendly. An indirect discoverer of the new world. Francisco Pizarro: Conqueror of the Incas. Juan Ponce De Leon: in and Juan explored Florida in search for gold and probably not the fountain of youth, instead he met with death by the head of Indian arrow. Hernando de Soto: Hernado Monteczuma:Powerful Aztec monarch who fell to Spanish conquerors Christopher Columbus:Italian-born explorer who believed he arrived off the coast of Asia rather than on an unknown continent the Americas Hernan Cortes: Conqueror of the Aztecs.
Unlock Course-Notes. Interact with other members Receive feedback from the Course-Notes. Need Help? Need Notes? Often, zealous White missionaries would force Indians to convert, and in , they helped urge the government to outlaw the sacred Sun Dance, called the Ghost Dance by Whites. It was a festival that Whites thought was the war-drum beating. This battle marks the end of the Indian Wars as by then the Indians were all either on reservations or dead.
The Dawes Severalty Act of dissolved the legal entities of all tribes, but if the Indians behaved the way Whites wanted them to behave become farmers on reservations , they could receive full U. Ironically, an immigrant from a foreign nation could become a citizen much, much faster than a native-born Native American.
Reservation land not allotted to Indians under the act was sold to railroads. In , the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania was founded to teach Native American children how to behave like Whites, completely erasing their culture. The Dawes Act struck forcefully at the Indians, and by they had lost half the land than they had held 20 years before. This plan would outline U. Anarchy in these outposts seemed to rule, but in the end, what was left were usually ghost towns.
After the surface gold was found, ore-breaking machinery was brought in to break the gold-bearing quartz which was very expensive to do. Women found new rights in these Western lands however, gaining suffrage in Wyoming the first place for women to vote , Utah , Colorado and Idaho Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive As cities back east boomed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the demand for food and meat increased sharply.
The problem of marketing meat profitably to the public market and cities was solved by the new transcontinental railroads. The meat-packaging industry thus sprang up. Dodge City, Abilene, Ogallala, and Cheyenne became favorite stopovers. Hickok maintained order. The railroads made the cattle herding business prosper, but it also destroyed it, for the railroads also brought sheepherders and homesteaders who built barbed-wire, invented by Samuel Glidden, fences that erased the open-range days of the long cattle drives.
Also, blizzards in the winter of left dazed cattle starving and freezing. Breeders learned to fence their ranches and to organize i.
The legends of the cowboys were made here at this time, but lived on in American lore. Before, the U. This act led half a million families to buy land and settle out West, but it often turned out to be a cruel hoax because in the dry Great Plains, acres was rarely enough for a family to earn a living and survive. And often, families were forced to give up their homesteads before the five years were up, since droughts, bad land, and lack of necessities forced them out. However, fraud was spawned by the Homestead Act, since almost ten times as much land ended up in the hands of land-grabbing promoters than in the hands of real farmers.
Taming Western Deserts Railroads such as the Northern Pacific helped develop the agricultural West, a place where, after the tough, horse-trodden lands had been plowed and watered, proved to be surprisingly fertile. Due to higher wheat prices resulting from crop failures around the world, more people rashly pushed further westward, past the th meridian which is also the magic inch per year rainfall line , where it was difficult to grow crops.
Here, as warned by geologist John Wesley Powell, so little rain fell that successful farming could only be attained by massive irrigation. A Russian species of wheat—tough and resistant to drought—was brought in and grew all over the Great Plains, while other plants were chosen in favor of corn. Not until was Utah allowed into the Union, and by the 20th century, only Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona remained as territories.
In Oklahoma, the U. The Fading Frontier The frontier was a state of mind and a symbol of opportunity. It seems that the cities, not the West, were the safety valves, as busted farmers and fortune seekers made Chicago and San Francisco into large cities.
Of hundreds of years, Americans had expanded west, and it was in the trans-Mississippi west that the Indians made their last stand, where Anglo culture collided with Hispanic culture, and where America faced Asia.
The life that we live today is one that those pioneers dreamed of, and the life that they lived is one of which we can only dream. Large-scale farmers tried banking, railroading, and manufacturing, but new inventions in farming, such as a steam engine that could pull a plow, seeder, or harrow, the new twine binder, and the combined reaper-thresher sped up harvesting and lowered the number of people needed to farm.
Farmers, though, were inclined to blame banks and railroads for their losses rather than their own shortcomings. The mechanization of agriculture led to enormous farms, such as those in the Minnesota-North Dakota area and the Central Valley of California.
Henry George described the state as a country of plantations and estates. California vegetables and fruits, raised by ill-paid Mexican workers, made handsome profits when sold to the East. Deflation Dooms the Debtor In the s, when world markets rebounded, produced more crops, and forced prices down, the farmers in America were the ones that found ruin. Paying back debts was especially difficult in this deflation-filled time during which there was simply not enough money to go around for everyone.
Unhappy Farmers In the late s and early s, droughts, grasshopper plagues, and searing heat waves made the toiling farmers miserable and poor. City, state, and federal governments added to this by gouging the farmers, ripping them off by making them pay painful taxes when they could least afford to do so. The railroads by fixing freight prices , the middlemen by taking huge cuts in profits , and the various harvester, barbed wire, and fertilizer trusts all harassed farmers.
In , one half of the U. Kelley to improve the lives of isolated farmers through social, educational, and fraternal activities. Eventually, it spread to claim over , members in , and the Grange changed its goals to include the improvement of the collective plight of the farmer.
The Grangers found most success in the upper Mississippi Valley, and eventually, they managed to get Congress to pass a set of regulations known as the Granger Laws, but afterwards, their influence faded.
The Greenback Labor Party also attracted farmers, and in , the Greenback Laborites polled over a million votes and elected 14 members of Congress.
In , the Greenbackers ran General James B. However, its programs only aimed at those who owned their own land, thereby ignoring the tenant farmers, and it purposely excluded Blacks. The Alliance members agreed on the 1 nationalization of railroads, 2 the abolition of national banks, 3 a graduated income tax, and 4 a new federal sub-treasury for farmers.
0コメント