All right. So, what we're going to do today is start talking about the idea of westward expansion. I mean, moving beyond manifest destiny. Now, we actually, you know, by now the United States owns the entirety of what would become the continental United States, almost to the entire continent, but can't for can't forget about Canada and Mexico. But, you know, now that you know, we've spent uh the years up to the Civil War actually getting the land. Now, we have to settle it. And these next two lectures are kind of really intertwined because here to four we've been going rather chronologically. I mean things have just been moving sequentially. I forget this is a mirror image. I just made it look like time travel. So things are moving sequentially. But westward expansion I mean if we want to put a date on that we're going to look at from the end of the Civil War through the closing of the frontier roughly about 1890 1891. But this is overlaps with what we're going to call the guilded age which will be the subject of the next lecture roughly 1876 to 1896. The thing is understand these two things are going on at the same time and more than that the two are actually in this weird competitive cycle where one directly influences the other in the sense that westward expansion. The need to move further west is going to give rise to the railroads which are made possible by the second industrial revolution that starts off the guilded age and railroads enable big business which is you know what we're going to see with the guilded age but advancements with the guilded age contribute to what we're going to see with westward expansion. Um there will be time for some jokes in this lecture but unfortunately we're going to deal with the Indian wars. We're going to deal with such not fun concepts as kill the Indian, save the man, and forcefully trying to assimilate Native Americans into American culture. So the a lot of the humor is going to have to wait for the guilded age where we can just talk about people being stupid. So you know, unfortunately the generally I usually do this in two lectures, but we are a tad behind. We're we're keeping pace with my traditional class, but you know, I'm I'm compressing this just a little bit. So, we're not going to go too much into settling the stuff between 1840 and the 1860s. But understand, ever since the California Gold Rush, more and more people are continuing to move west. We're going to see, you know, just tons of trails just pouring through as people moving further and further and further west. And these trails, I mean, it's not I mean, this is not easy. There's no railroads. So telegraph is relatively new and it's not even going to be really effective until the 1850s 1860s. So I mean if you wanted to leave say independence misery misery, right? Missouri. There we go. You know you want to go to say Oregon. All right. You can see why you're going to die of dysentery. You can see why your oxen's going to die foring the freaking river because what would happen is you you can't ride horses because that will play out the horses. You have to walk generally, you know, 2 to three, sorry, I don't know what that is. Generally 2 to three miles an hour, roughly 12 to 16 hours a day on your feet for what would often be a sixmonth journey. Clearly, there's got to be a better and better way. Well, what about steam ships? Well, the thing is that doesn't really work. I mean, if you look here, you know, California by steamship, you know, I I love this, by the way. 200 jackasses. A-holes need apply, right? For the low low price of $90. Okay, let's let's bear this in mind. This is $1849. $90 in 1862 would get you roughly 1,400 acres of land. If you could afford this, you don't need to go to the west. You You're fine. You don't need to go. But if you pay this, if you look, as I've lost my mouse pointer, okay, you go all the way, you know, around South America, come back. And so, especially if you're trying to get out there for a gold rush, by the time you get there, it's all already gone. No matter what you do, this is the quickest, 35 days. But again, if you got 90 bucks to spare, you're not probably going to rush to California in the first place. An alternative route was they could sail down to Panama. Then you could walk across Panama, get on another ship, and go. There's no Panama Canal yet. The problem is Americans have no resistance to malaria, to yellow fever, to any of these freaking diseases. So, what that means is odds are you're going to die. It you know, if you truly want to pack up, you know, if if we go back to the title, you know, go west and seek your fortune. It's a play on supposedly what Horus Gley um a newspaper editor of the time would write. Go west, young man, and seek your fortune. this idea that the west is a place that money is to be made. The sad thing is you're likely to die if you get out there. Eventually, the government will decide, well, what about, you know, homesteading? We're going to see, you know, passing of the Homestead Act of 1862. And this is, you know, what happened. If you paid around a $10 deposit and agree, okay, you pay 10 bucks and you improve the land for 5 to 10 years, you could get up to 160 acres. Why that's so important is, you know, thousands of families start to move west and as people move west, you need the ability to connect them. Okay. Uh at some point we're going I'm going to stop backing and forth. I'm going to point not that you can see, but if you look here, you know, if you have a lot of people here in the west, okay, if people are in California, you can connect it by steamship. That's not a problem. You can move goods and services between New York and California, but if you're in Salt Lake City or you're in Santa Fe or you're in Denver or you're in BF Oklahoma and you're not going to be there yet, that that stays too until now. You need a way to connect these people. Steam ships are not good enough. You need overland transport. And here's where the guilded age and westward expansion intermingle because what we're going to see hang on and let me adjust my monitor there. There we go. Now you can see more of my hand movements. What we're going to see is as people move west, okay, we we need a way to connect them. At the same time, you have the industrial revolution sweeping the United States. Railroads, the railroad boom of the 1830s is now in, pardon the pun, full steam. You can build stuff like this trestle here, like this trestle, you know, without modern machines. You don't have modern cranes. You don't have modern equipment, but you can build this in the Victorian era. You can actually do this. And there's nothing else they're doing in the Victorian era. And you know, sex joke to liven things up, but I mean, it's Victorian era, it's named for Queen Victoria. And you know, why why I'm, you know, making a joke is people were so uptight that they would do it with their clothes on. And supposedly Queen Victoria herself, despite the fact she had like six, seven kids. I mean, a stupid amount. I'd shoot myself. But, you know, six or seven kids, you know, she's like, she did not like sex. So, she would say that, well, what I would do because I know I needed to produce an air, I would simply lie back and think of England. You know, your fantasies are bad when I'm just saying. So, they they're not they're not having any fun. So, yeah, they might as well build trestles like this. They might as well build something like this. And we're going to see with the industrial revolution, a rapid change in human civilization across the entire world. Things had been done a certain way for a long, long time with fairly limited technological change. It happened, but it was really slow. But the industrial revolution is going to cause just a massive well, it's a revolution for a reason. We're going to see things like you can mass-roduce iron rails. You can now make a lot of train track very, very, very quickly. You can have bigger and better steam locomotives that can haul more stuff, that can go faster, that can go 60 m an hour. I love this picture. It's It's a narrow gauge locomotive, which mine, but a locomotive on top of a flat car. You're doing it training, you're doing it wrong. All right, little shout out for the Thomas the Tank Engine fans out there. You've also got the invention of the Telegraph. The Pony Express is starting to become obsolete. And with the telegraph, you can be in Independence, Missouri, and fairly rapidly talk to somebody in Salt Lake City. You don't have to have somebody on horseback riding out, switching out horses, on and on and on and on. Now, you can just dee, you know, Titanic struck, iceberg, sent, you know, you can do that. This is a major technological breakthrough. and why the railroads are so important and one of your essays is probably going to be focused on the guilded age. Understand the railroads are key. The railroads are the first big business of the United States. The railroads are what make everything else possible. If we jump and part of the reason I'm glad hopefully these two lectures come back to back so you can kind of you know switch back and forth. So if you've not already it might be good because the PowerPoint's already up. Go ahead and pull up your guilded age powerpoints. So you can kind of see what I'm talking about. But think about it with railroads. Okay? One of the robber barons, one of the really big industrial tycoons of the day is Andrew Cargi. He makes steel. Well, you can't ship a lot of steel all across the United States by horse and cart, but you can do it with railroads. Or John D. Rockefeller, who, you know, standard wants to make kerosene to light homes in the entire United States. You cannot ship that stuff in bulk by horse and buggy, but you can with railroads. Railroads make everything possible. So, understand westward expansion starts the railroad and the railroad starts everything else. I have no idea what this is, but I apparently feel the need to talk with my hands. If we look at the, you know, railroads in 1860, okay, there's not that many. Roughly around 35,000 miles of track. We're going to see a little less in the south thanks to William Tecumpsa Sherman, but it's still something like four times that of Great Britain by the 8 by 1890, 30 years later. Now, I'll show you a map the next lecture slide, not slide, but the next lecture, this is going to be covered. I mean, this is going to be absolutely just much much much more. And it's these railroads that what we can see is you can where where the There we go. You can have a steel mill in Pennsylvania and you can ship steel anywhere in the east. You can ship kerosene anywhere in the east. This is why this is such a good issue. 35,000 mi of track by 1865. Britain who felt the industrial revolution first had only 10,000 miles. Railroads are profitable. They can link the Civil War. We'd seen, you know, let's go all the way to the first battle, Bull Run, that well, you can move armies relatively quickly. Well, you can, that means you can move passengers, you can move freight, you can move all of this stuff. And so, the government really, really, really wants to fund this enterprise. So, you're going to see all sorts of things like $85 million in loans to railroads between 1850 and 1871. $85 million. this one. This is the first business that the American government actually invests in. But to again put this amount of money in perspective, okay, just just so that we can relate. At the same time, remember $10 under the Homestead Act gets you 160 acres of land in the 1930s. So 90 years later, 5 cents will buy you a bacon cheeseburger. Here $85 million. This is an astronomically stupid amount of money. The government also donates land, you know, around 170 million acres. Why? That way the railroads don't have to buy the land. In fact, to encourage railroad building, what we're going to see is they're going to say, "Okay, if you build a mile of track, we'll give you the land. I guess you can't actually see. Go pokes, right?" You know, pistols firing, whatever. I'm trying to do either side and it's just not working. You know, if here's your railroad track on either side, they would give you um they would give you land. Why? To make it more profitable so you could develop it, sell it to townships, sell the land, make money, whatever you could do. They would give you lengthy generous loans. They make student loans look horrible, which student loans are horrible, but whatever. But understand this leads to the problem of railroad over building. Today in the United States, we don't have realistically that many railroads because a lot of them have been consolidated. Think BNSF, the big new Santa Fe or the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which is the combination of the Burlington Northern and the Aches and Topek and Santa Fe railroads. That's one of the more recent. Or think Union Pacific, which actually we're going to talk about in a second, but bought out most of its competitors. In the 1860s, there were numerous railroad companies, a lot of startups, and quite literally, you could have Jim Bob's railroad. I mean, look, if you look at this map, you're distracted by all the stuff here in the east and the south, but let's come over here to California. Look at Jim's railroad over here. Or let's come the little Texas. I mean, you would literally have just these little tiny railroads connecting maybe two communities 50 miles apart. They would get all of this money, all this land. But the problem is railroads, they make their money by hauling stuff. And if there's nothing in, you know, where did my mouse pointer go? Nothing in remote Texas to haul or nothing in the middle of California to haul, they lose money. They go bankrupt and they don't pay off those loans. Understand? Railroads inadvertently will cause one of the biggest depressions in American history, the panic of 1873, which once it happens, that's the worst one in 50 years. I swear it's water, not vodka, right? Besides, I'm talking about railroads. I'm going to talk about I can't drink vodka. I got to drink whiskey anyway. And I'd actually like to make it through this lecture. And I'm sure you don't want to hear it flurred. I have no idea what that is, but there you go. Maybe it's whatever. So what we're going to see is railroads I mean it becomes a huge fad overnight but we're going to see it's it's very almost OCD bipolar in the sense that if they become big they make a stupid amount of money but otherwise they fail. They either succeed or they fail. There's never a middle ground. There's no sort of okay it's going to just kind of limp on. It's going to be there. It's not going to be terribly profitable but it won't fail. It's either really successful or really crappy. there is no middle ground. Now, very quickly, very early on there, by the 1850s, if we remember the Kansas Nebraska Act, there was that desire for a transcontinental railroad. That's what Steven Douglas had wanted to do. And why he wants this, there's a lot of people in California, roughly 300,000 people in San Francisco alone. There's a lot of mining. We're getting a lot of ore. We're getting a lot of materials. There's also the fact those are new consumer markets to be opened up and railroads could you know and again railroads first big business. Yay. The thing is those are new markets and again if we go back to the railroad map you know there's nothing overland connecting California to here. This is all unorganized territory or it's not that really settled territory. So, what we're going to see is Oregon at Oregon and California at some level were almost like American colonies, just a world apart, just Narnia basically. I didn't realize the United States conquer, you know, colonized Narnia, but it's ours. Damn it. So, what we're going to see is with the idea of a transcontinental railroad, Douglas had hoped, what about linking the nation? What if we connect the nation together? Maybe we can fix a lot of the problems that we had seen before. If we look at this connecting the nation after the war even during and after the idea was that this could be a national epic and what I mean by national epic is something that an entire nation gets behind as sort of a unifying thing. Think of wonders of the world or think of for Russia the trans siberian railway. For us it's the transcontinental railroad. Um for France it could be something you know I don't know making a bunch of white flags. I don't know. It I'm trying to think of other comparable national epics, but I'm I'm drawing a blank. Now, what we're going to see is this actually is going to do quite a lot. One, it's going to ease migration. Remember, we really didn't cover it, but the 1840s with the rise of the Nothing Party. That's in response to these waves of Irish immigrants. Irish immigrants fleeing Ireland from the potato famine. Well, there's the East is getting overcrowded. A lot of them want to move west. Railroads make that quicker. Railroads make it easier. Railroads make it safer. It's a lot safer to go by rail than by covered wagon. We're going to see this creates employment in the sense you've got to have somebody to plan the railroad, dig the grade, um, lay the rails, build the locomotives, run the thing, all of that. And after the war, okay, you're going to have roughly probably one and a half million people who are not going to stay in the army of North or South who need a job. And you might ask, well, why don't they go back to the farm? And to quote um Harry uh Truman, who was an artillery officer in World War I and he had been a farmer, somebody asked him when he was mustering out. He they said, "Well, you know, Captain Truman, are you going to go back to being a farmer?" And he said, 'Well, son, after this, I can think of a better way to make a living than looking up a mule's ass for the rest of my life.' And the fact is, it's it's really true in any case that the Civil War took people out of their, you know, sheltered lives, a life where realistically, except for going west, and this was unique in the American mindset, a person could honestly expect to live their entire life in about a 20 mile radius of wherever they were born. We take them from that. They see war. They see all this stuff and they want something else that leads to migration. These people want jobs. The railroad gives them. And then, and here's what's critical for leading the guilded age, that as you have the ability to transport a lot of goods, you know, your average 440 steam locomotive can probably pull several hundred tons worth of cargo at around 50 miles an hour. It's faster than a steam ship. It can haul more than a steam ship. It's quicker. It's safer. And so what we're going and also because it's cheaper. Okay, it I'm going to go back to my map. I know I promised to stop, but I lied. You know, B the band director lie. I was a music major for all of a day when I was in undergrad. Um before I settled on history, which apparently everybody thought I would do, I decided I wanted to teach music. Hang on. Stupid computer. I'm in story time. So, I music major did the whole thing. Got to my first class, got told I had to learn piano and I promptly changed to undecided immediately after class. Stayed that way for two years, too. And it it always boggles my mind people coming into OSU because I look and you guys already declare your majors. Most of you, when you're freshman, I'm like, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Where was I? Oh, yeah. By the way, I apparently had a huge coffee this morning. So that's why one, I'm not yawning, and two, I'm a lot more, you know, excited, emphatic, and yet I'm beating the table. Not that you can see. So here, you still can't see. Stupid camera. Whatever. Failed experiment. Okay, that's what I get for trying to be spontaneous. So where was I? So remember before the railroads, okay, if you had a good in Ohio, let's say you're making chairs in Ohio and you want to ship it to New York, it's cheaper to walk it overland to the Miss Mississippi River, float it downstream, put it on a ship, sail it all the way around to New York. Then it becomes cheaper with the canal boom of the 1820s. We really didn't talk about the Eerie Canal, but you can sail it on the Great Lakes up to the various canals, then truck it over, and that's a little bit cheaper. But with the railroads, it's even cheaper just to pop it on a rail line, run it through Pennsylvania, maybe New Jersey, then run it all the way north to New Y. Railroads enable big businesses. Railroads enable the mass consumption of goods. So to do that it starts off really with again the idea of a transcontinental railroad. The idea let's link east and west. Let's move away from this north south dichotomy we're going to see with reconstruction and instead let's look east versus west. So what we're going to see is the the union in 1862 and then again in 1864 charters two companies. The union Pacific, a railroad that's still around today and the Central Pacific to begin building a rail line. the Union Pacific here in blue, you know, starting, you know, over here, the Central Pacific in California, and they want to build and connect to each other. The idea build one to connect east verse west and then, you know, we can start building more lines. Also, this again that national epic, something that the entire United States could look on with wonder and amazement. Now, the government stupid amount of money. Part of that $170 million in loans is for this. For every mile built, these two companies receive not one, not two, but 20 square miles of land. Their loans, they get 30 years to pay them off. That's a lot better than the 10 or 15 you're supposed to get with student loans. See, why are you in college? Go build a railroad and you'll be fine. Never mind. Nobody uses railroads anymore. But details. Now, what we're going to see is construction starts in 1863, but it doesn't really step up till 1865. Why? Because if you're physically fit to build this, why do you not have a gun? Why are you not fighting in the Civil War? So, this is clearly the Union looking to after the war. What can be done later? Now, the interesting thing is this was a race to the finish in the sense people wanted bragging rights. Again they see this as you know they see this as a case where again it is that national epic but at the same instance okay for every extra mile they built that's 20 more square miles of land they can have to sell off to do things with. So in many cases you're going to see okay you building this way let's go up and let's go this let's let's let's go all over the place. I mean this is a case of you know it's both we want to get there first we want to do this but also let's make as much money as possible and many cases they built so fast the work was so poor that there were a number of accidents and after this was done a lot of the track had to be pulled up and relayed again because it was just done so badly what they would do and you really don't get the image from here but what they would do this is actually them relaying the track what they would do is you would have work parties out cutting the grade for the for um the track. Then you would have a locomotive drive up and you know dump off a bunch of railroad ties and by wagon the guys would just plant ties d then you'd have a locomotive pushing a flat car okay of iron rails would stop the guys would take the iron rails dump them off nail them down with spikes the locomotive pushes forward they just do it again and they literally just have this train doing it over and over and over this was completely done by hand this isn't done how it place today where they actually pre-make um about 20 to about um 20 to 50 feet long sections of track and just dump it down. This literally you would get six or seven guys holding a steel rail, drop it down, nail it in, move the locomotive forward and on and on and on again sun up to sun down and blistering blistering heat. So it's often really shoddy and we're going to see that it it is hard work. So, while it provides jobs, we need people to build it. We're going to Here's what the United States is actually going to play on a lot of that immigration stuff because the Union Pacific is going to appeal to a lot of those Irish people that are flooding the East. This is good money. It's good work. Um, not to mention, you know, a lot of Irish people are having problems finding jobs in the cities. They flock there. Chinese people have flooded into California and they had done so because they wanted to be minors. They wanted to work as laborers. They had hoped to capitalize on the gold rush. Well, we're going to we'll talk about this later, but California passes a minor tax of $20 where if you were Chinese, you had to pay 20 bucks a month just to be able to mine. Now, let's let's let's think about this for a second. Homestead Act 1862, 10 bucks to get 160 acres of land. California, 20 bucks, you can go dig for rocks for one month. Clearly the idea is keep the Chinese out. So you have a bunch of Chinese people in California in need of jobs and this provided economic opportunity. And remember economic opportunity by now becomes one of the driving facets in American society. Both westward expansion as well as the guilded age. Now here's the thing. Race does apply. Racism is still a factor. Irish people at this time were not considered white. They were considered the same as African-Americans or Native Americans. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant did not apply to Eastern Europeans. It did not apply to people of Irish descent. So, they are going to be majorly mistreated. The Chinese similar racism, similar attacks. Um, we actually have what Leland Stanford, the president of uh the Central Pacific and the founder of Stanford University would after the war or after this was built and I I apologize now for the racist epithet but you know it's important for historical context. Well, I didn't think the Chin could do it but by God they know how to build a railroad. The same moment the man is complimenting these guys. And I mean these guys, it's California, it's mountains, they're having to tunnel their way through by hand or gunpowder, primitive explosives. The same moment he's complimenting what they do, he immediately puts them down. So we're going to see there's there's a lot of I'm going to click back to my map. The Central Pacific, they've got a tunnel through mountains. It's slow going. The Union Pacific, they're going through Native American lands. I mean it both carry their hazards, but what we're going to see is May 10, 1869, they meet up Promontory Point, Utah, right here. And the Union Pacific is the clear winner. 1,086 mi of track, 689 for the Central Pacific. And what we're going to see is again, a lot of it does have to be, you know, relayed. That that's fine. But the overall significance that what I'd like you to get from this is now east and west are joined. East and west have become one. California is no longer an American colony. Um it's no longer disconnected. What we're seeing is, and this is going to be a theme for the rest of humanity, technology makes the world, in fact the universe get closer. And and I and I want you to pause for a second. I realize I'm talking fast. Let's go on a bit of a tangent here. Is starting now Westward Expansion Guild Age. We're going to see a couple of themes start cropping up in American history. Racism is going to be right there. Okay, it's already there, but I mean it's still there. Economic opportunity. People are not going to do anything without some sort of economic motivation. Economic opportunity. How can we make money will drive a lot of actions in the in for the rest of American history. And here's where it really really really kicks off. We're also going to see the role of technology specifically that technology makes the world come closer by joining east and west. And in this locomotive, here's the Union Pacific's number 119 and the Central Pacific Jupiter locomotives meeting. Okay. California is now fully part of the United States. I mean, it always was a state, but what I mean is now they're connected. Now it doesn't feel like it's in Narnia or just somewhere away. It's right there. And we're going to see technology do that. Technology, the rise of shipping where now we're going to actively be connected with Europe and Asia. Okay. airplanes where instead of the Atlantic and Pacific being, you know, these two vast oceans protecting the United States, you know, this is we're talking 1869. Um, I'm going to do math. It's going to suck. Hang on. 40 50 60 No, 58 years later, Charles Lindberg flies the Atlantic in 33 hours. Okay. Or if this is TW, you know, I'm I'm going to Hang on. I'm going to resort to my handydandy calculator because I do not trust my mathmaking [Music] abilities. Okay. To show and this kind of gets at the rise of the industrial revolution. Okay. Look at human history. Okay. The 18 twins does not look that much different than the 1710s which is not that much different from the 1610s. You do see some change by, you know, between 1510 and 1610, but the 1510s are not going to look that much different from the thousand10s. Okay? But now with the industrial revolution, technology, exploration, expansion, consider and consider this, you know, we're entering that part now in American history. And and unfortunately, this is a survey class. Um, you know, I realize I could flood you guys with lectures, but I want to keep this palatable and understandable. So, odds are we're probably not going to get past Nixon if we're lucky. If you want to do it later, I, you know, shameless plug, I teach an online history 3683, US since 1945. Um, yeah, like I said, shameless plug. I can use the money. But what I'm getting at 1869 technology means the United States has the ability to connect the East Coast with the West Coast. In less than 150 years, the United States has the ability to send a grand pianoized object hurtling past Pluto. Okay, it's starting now as a microcosm, but technology brings the world closer. We're going to see, you know, and a lot of it I it's going to be made possible by the guilded age because it's a rapid technological advancement. And we're going to see again if the 1810s, okay, does not look that much different than the 1710s or even the 1610s. The 1910s will be a world apart. And the process starts here. So understand, you know, that's partly why Gilded Age, you know, it's called Gilded by Mark Twain. We'll get into that later, but at time people thought this is a golden age. This is a golden age of the world. But it comes at a price and specifically with westward expansion, a price towards Native Americans in the sense that Native American tribes on the plains were transhuman. It's a common misconception. They're nomatic. They're transhuman. What that means, yes, they pick up and move. They don't have, you know, necessarily, unless you're Pueblo or Hopi, you know, you don't have specific towns or villages, but you do move because you're following the food source. You're following the buffalo. Okay, but in this case, what we're going to see is when you're building the Union Pacific, okay, a lot of that cuts through buffalo herds and it be and it became common, okay, to for, you know, workers to kill off buffalo for food. Well, there's also the problem of Indian Wars. The 1860s see a number of Indian conflicts. Normally, I go into more detail, but I'm trying to pick up the pace a bit here. And we're going to see that the government decides, and actually two things happen at the same time. The government decides if you kill off the food source, okay, then you can drive out the Native Americans. Then in the 1870s, buffalo leather became a hugely popular item, you know, and you know, with with good reason. I mean, it's tough. It's durable. It looks good. I mean, at least that's what my wife says when she tells me she needs a 300,000th leather jacket. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm more than happy to buy it because, you know, she looks great in it. But, you know, just as it's a popular thing now, you know, leather is a popular thing now. It was even more so in the 1870s. You know, this is actually when leather really bursts onto the scene. And what we're going to see, people want to get as much of it as possible. to put that in perspective between you know the idea of you know using it as a food source killing it off for leather and also just trying to sm you know destroy the food source of the plains Indians between 1872 and 1874 alone 3 million buffalo will be killed that's roughly an average of 1 million per year now Joseph Stalin the Soviet dictator in World War II said that the death of one is a tragedy But the death of a million is a statistic. And he says that because the human brain, we can't rationalize, you know, how much is a million. Dude, I get paid like 3,000 bucks a month. I can barely tell you what a thousand is, let alone a million. So to put that in perspective where it's something you can understand, there was an artist in the 1870s who was commissioned to make a study of the buffalo so he could create a sculpt for the first buffalo nickel. And so he goes out to the west and he spends years on the west. The only place he could find a buffalo to actually figure out what it looked like was the New York City Zoo. That is how complete the destruction was. To put in perspective, this is before that 3 million buffalo. This is a picture from 1870. Each thing you're seeing is nothing but buffalo skulls. And they are so densely packed that these bones can take this guy's weight. And this is not unique. This would be repeated all over the West. This is hugely destructive. It's great for the American economy in the sense, you know, we're flooded with leather goods. It's, you know, great for railroad workers. They have a food source. But for the actual Plains Indians, life becomes even tougher because it destroys their huntergathering transhuman societies. They no longer have their main food stuff. they no longer, you know, have the really ability to live on their own and so they have no real choice but to accept living on a tribal reservation. Now, one thing I do want to say, I do want to put together a myth. You know, there's the common thing we hear, well, Indians use every part of the buffalo. maybe before now, but in the 1870s, a number of Native Americans wanted to make money and so they had no problem doing this to get leather and they would just like white people kill the buffalo, skin it, and then just leave the carcass to rot. So before they might have wanted to use everything, but now again that other thing of American history, economic opportunity. We're entering that point where economic opportunity often leads to unintended consequences. And in this case, this was both an unintended and an intended consequence. So what we're going to see is Native Americans, specifically the plains tribes, and I'm not really referring to those living by now what's come to be known as Indian territory. You know, the just to name a few, the Oage, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the um Creek Seol, things like that. But instead, I'm talking more the Apache, the Sue, um the Navajo, people like those. They are forced by the 1870s, most are going to be on reservations. And here's the thing, the American government has a really stupid Indian policy. And I'm sure a lot of you, well, duh. But in this case, they couldn't really decide what they want to do. one, they treat it almost as a warlike status that okay, if your tribe agreed to stay on a reservation, then if you leave that reservation, you're going to be considered hostile and you could be killed on site. You are an enemy combatant. But at the same time, the American government does its part to help push these guys off the reservation. What they would say is when a tribe would sign on for reservation, the treaty would often say, it would be loosely translated as this land would be yours for as long as the waters run. The idea being waters are going to run forever, so it's always going to be yours. But we're going to see that many in many cases, and this is going to be repeated over and over and over. Okay, here's the reservation. Then gold or oil or silver, something's discovered and boom, here's the government with a new treaty saying, "Okay, well, we need more of the land." The treaties would say, "Okay, we're going to give you goods. We're going to give you annuities, government payments. We're going to give you some food, and we're going to help teach you agriculture." Well, thing is, these are no transhuman societies. They don't farm. They don't want to farm. They're not used to farming. Their diets are not based around farming. There's also the problem the government half the time got tired of paying for these people. So payments would either be late, never come, they'd be less than what was promised, any number of stuff. Also there's the issue of they would have Indian agents actually run these reservations and the Indian agent would be given say $10,000 to buy you know blankets, food, stuff, whatever the tribes needed. Well, the guy quickly learned, this Indian agent would learn if I have 10,000 bucks and I can spend 5,000 on commodities, I can pocket the other 5,000. So, fraud will be rampant, no government oversight, we're going to see disease, starvation, sickness, a lot of problems. And so starting in 1868 until around 1877 and in some cases in the 1880s near constant Native American conflicts because it's this cycle of a tribe being forced to the reservation. Grievances drive the tribe away. There's a war. The tribe is then forced back to the reservation and then has to concede part of that reservation as a response. It's very bad. It's very brutal. And unfortunately, I even can't make jokes about it. I mean, I I wish I could, but I can't. To kind of just in brief about the Indian Wars is we're going to see, you know, it starts tying down a lot of troops. This comes into play with Reconstruction. Remember the Battle of Little Bigghorn, June 1876. That's one year away from the death of Reconstruction with the Compromise of 1877. As troops have to be needed here, they're pulled out of the South. So, African-Americans are left to, you know, fend for themselves in the face of Southerners. We're going to see that Native Americans are Sorry, I I just got a my phone just dinged and I'm waiting on a text from my wife because she's kind of sick right now. So, sorry about that. We're going to see that I just lost my train of thought. That's what we're going to see. Hang on. We're going to see that as this starts to take more and more troops, the Indian wars become common place. They're raging in South Dakota with the Sue. They're raiding in Colorado and New Mexico against the Navajo. They're all over these places. I, you know, I could let we could teach a course just on the Indian Wars. In fact, I think there are c we actually offer upper division courses here where we can do just that. Just some of the big ones, the sue campaigns of the 1870s, which culminates in Little Bigghorn. The 1880s against Shurikawa Apache, which will lead to the surrender of Geronimo, which shout out for your Doctor Who fans, which by the way, yes, I'm a Doctor Who fan. My wife's a huge Doctor Who fan. Star Trek's better, but whatever. Um, what we're going to see is this is actually where Geronimo enters the American lexicon because someone they make a movie about him in the 30s or 40s and supposed and there is a relevance to Doctor Who. So, if you're an 11th Doctor fan, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't like Doctor Who, you can just fast forward about 5 seconds. And what we're going to see is supposedly in 1942 um guys in one either the 101st or the 82nd Airborne Division were watching this movie at night and you know learning about just how awesome Geronimo was and you know Geronimo understand what became sort of a mythical status in American history because he's one of the last major um Indian oh what were the term not fugitive [Music] but I just forget what you would even Paul, you know, enemy combats, let's just say that that's not the term I'm I want to use, but and but you know, he by 1910s, I mean, he will actually make money off of his fame. So, you're going to see pictures of this guy who eluded the American army in the 1880s driving a Model T in the 1910s in almost full native regalia. And so, they watch this movie. And so the next day, you know, during one of their paratrooper jumps to honor him as the guy gets out of the plane, he yells Girono. And that's how it becomes linked to American paratroopers. That's kind of how it becomes Doctor Who fan. And that's why a lot of people, they know what Geronimo is in that context, but not who he actually was. Now, getting back to the name, you know, especially for those of you that fast forward because you think I'm a giant nerd. I teach history. Of course, I'm a giant nerd. Actually, funny story. My dissertation um advisor once called me a nerd and felt um apologetic like, "Well, I didn't mean to put you down." And I'm thinking, "Has nerd been a bad derogatory term at any point since the 1980s? Just asking." But what we're going to see is these Indian wars, they again, they tie down large numbers of troops. Turnover is high, mostly because people get bored and they desert. But we're going to see these wars continue in big and in small because the main causes are never resolved. that is that white encroachment on native land, white breaking of treaties, all of this stuff just becomes a huge problem. And that culminates from a military perspective in the Battle of the Little Bigghorn, which will be the most decisive American loss of the entire Indian Wars. In short, the cause again, it's in the Black Hills and the Montana Territory and gold's discovered. Now, the Black Hills are considered sacred and the Sue under no circumstances wanted to give this stuff up, but the army says, "Well, no, we want this stuff." So, they lead a military expedition to clear it out for settlement and the Sue rise up and boom, we have another Indian War. We also have the rise of George Armstrong Kuster who is probably one of the dumbest American military commanders in history. And what we're going to see with Kuster is, you know, for Kuster, what's going to happen is he believes that, you know, he's God's gift to military strategy. And so Kuster decides that what he's going to do is split his command. Now bear in mind, the army has artillery. They have gatling guns. He thinks they're too slow. So he splits his already small command of 400 guys, moves 200 with them of them into the Little Big Horn Valley. gets overwhelmed by an estimated 3,000 Sue warriors under the a guy named Sitting Bull. And why this is important is this gets immortalized by the American press. The idea of Kuster's last stand. In fact, his guys were massacred. We have evidence that, you know, the rifles, the um actually carbines, the model 1873 trapdoor Springfields were using copper ammunition. You use you use brass ammunition in breach loaders, not copper. And after a few shots, they jammed. And modern archaeologists have found cartridges and parts. And we can actually trace how these guys broke and ran and were just cut down. Why this is really important is this enrages white Americans and it leads to all it convinces in many people on the west or in the east, excuse me, that the time has come to find a solution. And so with 1876, if that's both for our purposes the end of reconstruction, it's also a turning point where the West is going to change and we're going to start speeding through to the end of not only an era, but a pl, you know, a place, a time, and an era in American history. So, what I want to do, it's about 46 minutes, we're about halfway through, so I'm going to go ahead and just break this up into two lectures. That way, you know, you can, you know, watch this video, then take a break, go do whatever. Um, also I'm going to open up the next one with a fun story. I've got I've got a new profession lined up. I'm only kidding. But so stay tuned. We'll go ahead and break the video here and we'll pick up with the idea of the Bonanza West in just a second or in like 10 hours, whenever you watch the second one again. See you in a bit.