Development of the American West in the Late Nineteenth Century

Major Changes in the Region

Significant transformations that would impact future generations.
Native Americans:
- Loss of land and power; forced onto reservations.
- Struggled to maintain their way of life.
Bison Population:
- Near extinction due to slaughter for leather and removal.
Economy:
- Expansion of mining, ranching, and farming; linked to the growth of railroads.
- The West became more commercially viable for white settlers compared to pre-Civil War.

Completed in 1869; connected east and west coasts.
Enabled rapid settlement and industrial growth in the West.
Bison slaughtered as settlers arrived, impacting Native Americans significantly.
New sense of time emerged; settlers had to adhere to railroad schedules.

U.S. military forced Native Americans onto reservations.
Buffalo Soldiers: African American cavalrymen involved in the relocation efforts.
Native Americans faced poverty and loss of autonomy on reservations.
Government policies increasingly aimed at assimilation:
- Dawes Act of 1887: Divided lands into individual parcels, undermining communal ownership.
- Many Native American children sent to boarding schools, losing cultural ties and practices.

Followed the railroads into the West after the bison were eradicated.
Ranchers drove cattle to railroad stations for transport to stockyards.
Cowboys' work was often low-paid and tedious, contrary to popular media portrayals.

Native American resistance diminished after the Wounded Knee Massacre (1891), with U.S. soldiers killing up to 300 Lakota.

By the late nineteenth century, significant changes occurred:
- Native Americans largely relegated to reservations.
- Bison nearly extinct.
- Railroads and cattle ranching transformed the Midwest, leading to a more settled West integrated into mainstream American culture.