Assignment 10

The Way West: Part 2: The Approach of Civilization

Infinite possibilities and space for white Americans
Native Americans wanted to preserve west as it was. Different ideas of west.
West as they knew it did not go on in time for Native Americans. Whites learned West was not infinite in land and space.
#of white Americans west of Mississippi increased 40 fold and had multiplied to nearly a million whites
Telegraph lines, railroads, and immigrant roads had reached out across the continent cutting the Indian domain in two.
Greater numbers moved west in order to conquer the continent. Railroad leads the way.
Mines opened in Mountain areas. Trans-continental railroad and more railroads.
Happened in only 2 decades. White people are like locusts, keep coming and coming and eating and destroying everything in their wake.
Native Americans had fallen back for over 3 centuries, and for the first time there was no where for them to fall back so they were all warring against the whites.
Determined to defend their hunting buffalo ranges. Whites were determined to build and keep their railroad.
April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. Civil War was over.
George Armstrong Custer, 25, out of Westpoint, General.
Officers who won the war turned west. North and South had reunited under the Union.
July 20, 1865 first locomotive for Union Pacific Line major general Sherman arrived in Omaha, NE.
Named after red haired officer who had been instrumental in winning the war for the Union.
His new job was defense of West against the Indians. Sherman insisted the Indians should be relocated to two reservations.
Most agreed the answer to Indian problem was war.
John Pope launched largest military campaign against the Plains Indians.
Pope’s armys moved thru Dakota territory and Wyoming.
Gold was discovered in Montana. The Bozeman trail was the quickest way to Montana. Thru territories of the Cheyenne, the Arapahos, and the Lakota Sioux. The trail went thru the land Buffalo range of the Indians.
Determined to subdue the hostile Sioux and to open the Bozeman trail, Pope ordered construction of Ft. Reno on the Powder River, ordered an attack to kill every Indian over 12 years old. Campaign was disaster from start to finish. Low morale and bad weather made the soldiers easy targets for the Lakota Sioux. Many soldiers deserted the area.
Burning Sky or Red Cloud, prestige amongst warriors. Lakota warrior. Armies tried bribing the Sioux next. Talks began promisingly, govt promised $75,000 a year and promises that their land would never be taken by force. He was about to sign when he learned the whites were building two more forts in the Lakota Sioux area.
The struggle for the Bozeman trail came to climax in Dec. 1866. Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Dec 21. Crazy Horse and more warriors swooped down on wood cutters and 80 men burst out from fort. Trap worked perfectly for the Indians. Fedderman’s command followed decoy fleeing Indians. Red Cloud and Crazy Horse were waiting for them with over 100 Indians on the other side of mountain. By the time reinforcements reached the battle ground, no one was left alive. Fedderman and another officer named Brown had shot each other in the head to avoid capture. Body parts were strewn for half a mile across the country side.
While Sherman’s forces struggled across the northern plains, railroads were being built steadily to the south.
Paid for by lavish land grants and builders themselves. By 1866 the Union Pacific was blasting thru Nebraska at more than a mile a day. Mainly done by Irish workers at first.
By 1866, the majority of the workers were Chinese. Gamblers and prostitutes were popular around tent towns along the railroads. Saying “there was not a virtuous woman west of Omaha” mostly true.
Most outposts collapsed as soon as the railroads moved on. Some survived and began to attract a constant population. Built real buildings and towns became cities, etc.
Nov. 17, 1866 Sioux and Cheyenne upset because the railroad was running thru their hunting grounds.
Despite Indian attacks, disease, exhaustion, by 1868 more than 800 miles of track had been laid in just 3 years.
Railroad stretched from Omaha to Sacramento. Seen as great work and progress. Astonishing how quickly the work was done.
Something about railroad gave Native Americans the sense of ending for them. Railroad would scare animals and they would not be able to hunt. Indians did not want railroads thru their lands.
75 million buffalo roaming the Great Plains when the Lakota Sioux originated in the area.

Immigrant trails had already cut the buffalo trails in half. Buffalo hunters among the whites killed more buffalo in order to supply more people with food.
Ex pony express rider 1867 William F. Cody got a job supplying meat for Pacific Express. He killed over 4,000 buffalo in less than 8 months. He earned the name Buffalo Bill. He brought in over 19 buffalo in one day.
Many buffalo were killed and left and were not even eaten by white hunters.
Aug 6, 1867 telegraph wire in Plum Creek, NE went dead. Party to find problem were attacked by Cheyenne warriors. Thompson was scalped, but not killed. Caught train back to Omaha and tried to have it sewed back on but to no avail.
Sherman turned attention to central and southern plains in 1867. Determined to protect the railroads in Nebraska and Kansas. He called on 2 celebrated field officers Winfield Hancock and George Armstrong Custer.
Convinced force would show the Cheyennes who’s boss. Unable to catch up with the Cheyenne’s, Sherman burned villages along the way.
George Custer conducted strange cavalry campaigns. Issued brutal punishments for small offenses. Ignored orders of Sherman. Went buffalo hunting whenever he pleased. Accidentally shot his own horse during a buffalo hunt. Many of his exhausted officers deserted him and his campaign. He ordered any man who left to be shot dead.
Custer and a few others went and reunited with his wife Libby. Once there, he was arrested and charged with abandoning his command, shooting deserters without trial, and inhumane treatment of his troops.
He was suspended for a year.
June 26, 1867 300 warriors descended on Ft. Wallace in Kansas where company of 7th Cavalry were stationed. 7 soldiers killed including Frederick Williams. No one in the 7th Cavalry ever forgot what had happened to Williams because of a photograph taken by Bell. Killed by Cheyennes, Lakota, and Arapahos. Purposefully mutilated Williams’ body.
Military was not seen as helping the problem and officials decided reservations would be the only way to control the Indians. Most were forced to sign treaties and move onto Reservations.
The Lakota Sioux, however, did not sign. Red Cloud meant to keep his people’s lands. Sherman came to Ft. Laramie himself and offered for the Sioux to keep their lands and no whites would be able to enter their territory without the permission of the Sioux. With so many broken promises and broken treaties, Red Cloud would not sign until all the Forts along the Bozeman trail were closed.
Crazy Horse and other warriors swooped down from the mountains and burned the forts to the ground. Still he refused to sign the treaties. Finally he returned to sign the treaty in 1868. He was able to close the Bozeman trail and secure permanent Indian land.
Now armies were drawn out of Wyoming, Sherman was able to focus on the Southern tribes in the Central Plains.
All thru summer of 1868, warriors of Cheyennes terrorized Kansas and Colorado killing 124 people. No one could stop them. As winter approached, they went back to Indian territory to rest up for the winter.
Sherman replaced Hancock with General Sheridan. Ruthless leader like Sherman. Fall of 1868, called Custer back into 7th Cavalry in Kansas. He and his men he trained marched south into Indian territory with a mission to reclaim his tarnished reputation. No distractions or delays.
Nov 23. Scouts of the 7th picked up a trail of Indians thru the snow. Midnight almost stumbled into Black Kettle’s village. No idea who or how many Indians were there. They didn’t know whether these Indians were friendly or violent. It was too dark to see the white peace flag in the center of the village. Custer attacked the village at first light. Black Kettle and his wife were shot in the backs as they tried to flee. The bloodshed was coming to an end when reinforcements arrived from more Cheyennes and Arapahos. Custer ordered the slaughter of 800 ponies they had captured. A reporter from New York Tribune described the scene as a slaughter yard and a massacre.
Custer described the battle as killing 103 warriors, had 53 prisoners. In fact only 11 fighting men had been killed. The rest were women, children, and old men. Washita was not a battle, it was a massacre.
Custer’s triumph at Washita released a storm of protest in the east. Grant accepted advice of policy makers and wanted peace for the Indians. No longer wanted to settle the problems thru military force.
They wanted to settle all the Indians on reservations to Christianize them.
May 8, 1869 two ends of the Continental railroad met. Celebrations for the Railroad accomplishment. Railroads led to the conquest of the American Indians. Cut the buffalo herds in two and started the process of extermination.
It was an ending and a beginning. Four more transcontinental railways were built a few decades later. Where railroads went up, towns sprung up.
Native Americans were on the run, in 1869 there were few places for the Indians to run and very few buffalo left for the Indians to hunt. Even the last refuge of buffalo was under attack as manifest destiny pushed west.
In the decades to come, a dwindling group of Native Americans would fight to preserve their way of life. It would come to its final climax in the Black Hills of Dakota, along the Little Big Horn River in Montana, and along a tiny creek in South Dakota called Wounded Knee.