How People Travel in West in 1800

Western frontier life in America

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Pioneers traveled in wagon trains

Western borderland life in America describes ane of the nigh exciting periods in the history of the United states of america. From 1850 to 1900, swift and widespread changes transformed the American West. At the beginning of that period, a nifty variety of Native American cultures dominated most parts of the region. By the stop of the era, the West had become a bustling society populated by new immigrants of all kinds.

Historians sometimes ascertain the American West equally lands westward of the 98th meridian, or 98� west longitude. This line of longitude runs though the heart of Texas and Kansas upward through the eastern 3rd of Nebraska and the Dakotas. Some definitions of the region include all lands west of the Mississippi or Missouri rivers. For the complete story of western expansion in the U.s., see Westward movement in America.

Regardless of the precise boundary line used, the western frontier differed in many means from the eastern United States. Much of the W had a drier climate than that of the East, and western terrain often proved much harsher. As a result, immigrants to the West had to adapt and find new ways of doing things to survive. Their efforts were aided by improvements in transportation, communication, subcontract equipment, and other areas.

This commodity will get-go depict the peachy changes experienced on the western frontier and the different peoples who inhabited that frontier. It will then focus on 3 major economic activities that transformed the region: mining, ranching, and farming. The article will also look at conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers. Finally, information technology volition examine the means in which the W left its mark on American culture.

The shifting frontier

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Covered wagons

The frontier moves west. Throughout the 1800's, America'southward frontier moved steadily westward. Nonetheless in the 1840'southward, immigrants to the West saw well-nigh of the region as an obstacle, non a destination. They feared the expanse's vast deserts, rugged mount ranges, and many Indian tribes. Immigrant farmers initially skipped over almost of the West, migrating instead to fertile valleys in California and Oregon by a diversity of country and sea routes.

Two events helped spur a much larger migration past 1849. First, the U.S. victory in the Mexican War (1846-1848) gave the young nation vast new areas of country in the West. Second, a golden rush in California in 1849 attracted droves of American fortune seekers chosen "Forty-Niners." The gold rush besides attracted Chinese, Europeans, Southward Americans, and others, all hoping to strike it rich.

Afterward discoveries of rich ore deposits spurred new migrations to a diverseness of places, including Pikes Summit in Colorado, the Comstock Lode in Nevada, and the Black Hills of Southward Dakota. In each case, the local population soared, every bit miners poured in and people engaged in supplying the miners' many needs flocked to the latest boom towns. Miners required food, equipment, clothing, services, and entertainment, so businesses competed to provide them. Miners needed pack animals too as meat, so ranchers too benefited. For example, some ambitious Oregonians collection cattle south to the California aureate mines.

Improvements in transportation. As more Americans pushed westward, new technologies assisted them. Before the 1850'due south, about people traveled westward by boat or wagon. These methods proved dull and expensive, and they provided limited access to western lands. The railroad, or "fe horse," became a vital new travel option, especially later on the 1860's.

The Pacific Railroad Human activity of 1862 authorized a transcontinental rail line. The Wedlock Pacific Railroad built this line westward from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific Railroad built information technology eastward from Sacramento, California. These ii lines met at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. On May 10, to marking the achievement, officials of the two railroads drove silverish and golden spikes to join the rails. This feat made possible declension-to-coast travel in 8 to 10 days. Later railway lines, including the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and the Smashing Northern, added farther travel options. The iron horse had conquered the West.

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First transcontinental railroad organisation

In addition to bringing settlers west, railroads stimulated many economic activities. Towns vied to concenter track routes. Railroads enabled people to ship wheat, corn, cattle, sheep, mining ore, and other products more quickly and cheaply. Such companies as Montgomery Ward of Chicago could ship appurtenances to westerners who had ordered them through the companies' mail order catalogs. Railroads even boosted tourism. In the 1880's, for example, wealthy easterners began boarding trains to spend time on dude ranches, which provided them a brief sense of taste of western ranch life.

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The Coming and Going of the Pony Express by Frederic Remington

New forms of communication too transformed the West. During the early days of the frontier, a letter took months to travel from the Midwest to California. Just several developments soon fabricated communication much faster. In Apr 1860, a postal service called the pony express began carrying mail betwixt St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento. The service'due south horseback riders commonly fabricated their long journey in about 10 days (see Pony express).

The telegraph before long ended the need for the pony express. This instrument, the first used to send messages by means of wires and electrical current, could transmit messages in minutes. Transcontinental telegraph service was established in 1861. By about 1900, however, the recently invented telephone had begun to cause a decline in telegraph use.

Improvements in farming further stimulated western settlement. Harsh conditions in the West forced immigrant farmers to find new ways of farming. Unpredictable rainfall and thick, grass-covered sod presented challenges. Pioneers began dry farming on the Great Plains, meaning they grew crops without irrigation in relatively dry regions (run across Dry out farming). By plowing soil deep and oftentimes, farmers could raise crops in lands previously idea unproductive. Inventors helped detect ways to brand it easier to plow, plant, and harvest crops in tough prairie sod and heavy, gummy soil. In 1837, John Deere, an Illinois blacksmith, developed a more effective plow by incorporating steel into the moldboard, the curved part of a plough that turns the soil to one side. Cyrus McCormick'due south new mechanical reaper harvested grain more efficiently than did hand methods. In 1858, Lewis Miller patented a mowing car that permitted farmers to gather grain into bundles, once again improving efficiency. Horses, mules, and oxen provided the power for plowing, hauling, and other farm chores. Tractors and trucks would non announced until the 1900'south.

Farmers needed seeds, equipment, household goods, brute feed, and credit. Thus minor towns began to dot the western landscape equally retail businesses and banks arose to serve the growing population. Social centers, including churches, schools, and saloons, grew as well. By the tardily 1800's, the Westward had become a patchwork of farms, ranches, and towns amidst vast open spaces. So much of the Far Westward had filled up by 1890 that the Demography Agency alleged in a report that a definite frontier line no longer existed.

The people of the western frontier

Early occupants. In the 1840's, the American West was sparsely occupied. The largest groups of residents included Native Americans, who lived throughout the region, and Spanish-speaking settlers, who were dominant in the Southwest.

Native Americans, whose cultures were many thousands of years former, had developed an astonishing range of adaptations to the American West. Agriculture, fishing, and hunting and gathering provided a varied diet. Afterward the Spaniards introduced horses to the Great Plains in the 1600'due south, many Indian groups became superb mounted hunters and warriors. Until the belatedly 1800's, huge herds of bison offered an ample supply of nutrient and materials for building and wear.

The shifting borderland had devastating effects on Native American cultures. White settlers pushed Indian tribes off their lands. Resistance by the tribes oftentimes led to wars with the U.S. military, wars the tribes usually lost. As western lands came under white control, settlers turned grasslands into farms and ranches and hunters virtually wiped out the region's vast buffalo herds.

Castilian-speaking settlers had inhabited what is now the American Southwest since the belatedly 1500's. Farming and ranching occupied nearly workers, though mining occurred in certain areas. Spanish missions and ranches attracted some Native Americans, who converted to Roman Catholicism and took up the Spanish language and culture. By the time American settlers arrived in the 1800's, Spanish culture had become well established throughout much of the Southwest.

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Homestead Human action

Newcomers. Immigrants to the West arrived from a wide range of backgrounds and locations. A large number of these newcomers came from the eastern United States. Others came from exterior the country. Mining and ranching attracted mostly young developed males. Farming drew entire families. The U.South. Congress assisted them with laws to encourage settlement. For example, the Pre-emption Human activity of 1841 and the Homestead Deed of 1862 fabricated purchasing western lands easier.

The newcomers came for various motives. For example, Mormons migrated to escape religious persecution, and large numbers of African Americans traveled w to escape racial discrimination. Many others, such as Chinese workers, sought economic opportunity.

Brigham Young led about 3,000 Mormons to Utah'southward Nifty Salt Lake Valley in 1847. This religious group is formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons had decided to leave their home in Illinois in search of religious freedom after the murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1844.

A later Mormon immigrant from England, Jean Rio Bakery, kept a diary of her journey in 1851. She despaired over the road that "was completely covered with stones as large as bushel boxes, stumps of copse, with here and at that place mud holes, in which our poor oxen sunk to the knees."

The hardy Mormon pioneers settled in the valleys of due north-central Utah. They irrigated the valleys and made farming productive. The Mormons besides established Salt Lake City. Utah somewhen became a U.Due south. country in 1896.

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Black homesteaders

Thousands of southern blacks settled in the West, mainly in Kansas, afterward the American Civil State of war (1861-1865). Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a sometime slave from Tennessee, led the migration movement. The African Americans who went west were chosen "Exodusters" because of their exodus (mass departure) to the dusty frontier. Yet almost of the Exodusters faced the aforementioned discrimination in their new homes as they had faced in the South. An 1880 article in Scribner's Monthly magazine described their labors, saying "about ane-third are supplied with teams and farming tools, and may be expected to become self-sustaining in another year." Simply the remaining two-thirds had to work every bit twenty-four hour period laborers or house servants for white farmers and ranchers.

Some Chinese immigrants came to the West as contract laborers (workers imported under an agreement to piece of work for a particular employer). The offset group of Chinese arrived in San Francisco in 1848. Four years later, more than than 20,000 Chinese arrived. In the 1860'south, the Central Pacific Railroad recruited thousands more than Chinese to build the rail line. The Matrimony Pacific hired thousands of Irish and other Europeans for the aforementioned purpose. By 1880, near 105,000 Chinese lived in the United states, by and large in California. Their presence sparked mob violence and calls for immigration restrictions, generally by laborers who felt that the Chinese undercut wages and working conditions. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese workers.

Mining

The quest for aureate and other precious minerals drew tens of thousands of immigrants to the W. In 1848, a millwright named James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter'south Manufactory, California. His discovery touched off the first and greatest western gold rush. Within 2 years, 100,000 people had flocked to California to make their fortune. Would-be miners arrived from effectually the world. Most ended upwardly sick, bankrupt, or both. Merchants sold goods and services to miners at highly inflated prices.

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Asian immigrant workers

Men made up nearly all of the gilt seekers who rushed west. A few women mined, but most worked as entertainers in saloons or dance halls, as seamstresses, or every bit laundresses who done miners' clothes. Other women operated boardinghouses or worked every bit prostitutes. Chinese immigrants also set up laundries in some mining camps, only they oft faced discrimination and violence.

Subsequent finds drew more fortune hunters to other western sites. Southwestern Oregon yielded gold nuggets in the early 1850'south, luring miners northward from California. Prospectors flocked to the expanse near Pikes Peak in Colorado and the Comstock Lode in western Nevada in 1859. In 1873, four miners hit the "Big Bonanza," a vein of gilt and silvery near Virginia City, Nevada. In the mid-1870'south, gold miners poured into the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Black Hills town of Deadwood became famous for its lawlessness, corruption, and prostitution. In 1878, prospectors discovered rich deposits of argent most Leadville in central Colorado.

Other minerals also spurred mining booms. Copper deposits in Butte, Montana; Bingham Canyon, Utah; and Jerome, Arizona, provided employment for many miners. Toward the end of the 1800's, oil, known as "blackness gilt," became the great strike-it-rich commodity of the W. Bartlesville, Oklahoma, became an oil boom town in 1897, followed by Beaumont, Texas, in 1901.

A typical mining military camp. A prospector pounded wooden stakes into the basis to marker his claim. If he institute no golden, he "pulled up stakes" and moved on to stake a new claim. He might too unscrupulously "salt" the merits—that is, he would establish a few gold nuggets there to trick a buyer into purchasing the worthless site.

Mining camps began as primitive, homemade diplomacy. One gold seeker explained, "I pitched my tent, congenital a rock chimney at one end, made a mattress of fir [branches], and idea myself well stock-still for the winter." Miners built shacks out of logs and scraps of wood and canvas. Lice, rodents, and other pests infested the primitive dwellings.

Most miners began working their merits by panning. They dipped up sand and gravel from the riverbed into a metal pan and swirled it around. Heavier gold settled to the lesser. Fine "flour" gold might require using mercury to grade a mixture from which the gilded could be separated. Miners could utilize a box on rockers to arouse gravel and water, thus removing the gold from the mix. More elaborate claims might include a sluice, a series of long, slanted wooden boxes into which was dumped gravel and water. This action separated the tailings (lighter earth) from the heavier gold. Away from river sites, miners searched for quartz, a glassy rock that oftentimes contained gold. They hacked away at the globe with pickaxes and shovels. Larger mining companies dug deep into hillsides, creating surreptitious mines.

Like other westerners, miners lived a difficult life. Excavation or panning for gilt or argent meant long hours under the hot sunday, often working in common cold mountain waters. In 1850, a miner named William Fellow described the weather at his dig along California's Yuba River as "five months' rain, iv months' high water, and three months' dry and good weather condition but very hot—nigh likewise hot to work." Leather boots, vests, and aprons deteriorated quickly. Rocks tore holes into pants and shirts. Near clothes needed constant patching.

Life in the mining towns. Few women and children lived in mining camps. Just if a mining camp grew into a more stable town did the population diversify. If the camp prospered, information technology might abound into a blast town with retail stores, a jail, saloons, dance halls, and analysis offices to evaluate and weigh gold.

Mining booms swelled local populations quickly, outstripping the supply of about everything, including food and work animals. Men sometimes killed each other for such necessities. Some mining communities formed governing councils and created codes of conduct. These councils handled robberies, assaults, and other crimes. In some cases, mob violence and lynchings took the place of legal proceedings. Organized police forces and judges came but gradually to the West.

Conflicts broke out betwixt mining companies and miners as the latter tried to organize into labor unions. Such labor groups as the Western Federation of Miners protested, demanding legal protections and amend conditions under which to work. The labor organizer Mary Harris Jones, ameliorate known as "Mother Jones," spent her long life working to better atmospheric condition for miners.

Ranching

Centers of ranching. Spanish and later Mexican ranchers had grazed cattle in the Southwest since about 1700. Ranches and missions with Native American labor raised livestock. Local markets purchased meat, and ranchers in California exported cattle hides, tallow (beefiness fat), and dried beef. Newcomers to the West continued much of this ranching tradition in the middle and late 1800'due south.

The Civil War generated a corking boom for western ranchers. During the state of war, most able-bodied Texas men left the state to fight for the Confederacy. Yet their cattle herds increased by several million animals, largely untended. Returning afterwards the war to a surplus of longhorn cattle, Texans faced ruin unless they found new markets. Cattle, worth just a few dollars in Texas, could bring up to $50 a head in eastern markets. So ambitious cattlemen drove herds due north to sell them at "cow towns" in Kansas, where buyers had built stockyard holding pens. The animals and so traveled e in track cars to slaughterhouses in Chicago, Kansas City, and elsewhere.

Cattle raising spread gradually n from Texas and California. Many ranchers got their start past rounding up wild horses and mavericks (unbranded cattle). Monroe Brackins, born a slave in 1853, spoke of such roundups in southward Texas. He said, "I used to rather ketch upward a wild equus caballus and break 'im than to swallow breakfast."

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Branding of cattle

Well-nigh cowboys worked on trail drives or in the busier bound and autumn roundup and branding seasons. They moved from ranch to ranch, taking piece of work when they establish information technology. Many were Mexican cowboys, called vaqueros �vah KAIR ohz�, or African Americans.

Life on the ranches. Ranch houses in the W ranged from apprehensive, clay-floored lean-tos to lavish mansions. On small-scale ranches on the plains, an entire family might live in a tiny sod hut. If a ranch had forestlands, the rancher likely built a log cabin. A single fireplace provided winter warmth, and a wood-called-for stove occupied much of the kitchen. Ranchers would aggrandize and improve the dwellings if they made enough profits.

Larger ranches would have outbuildings, including a barn, outhouse, cookhouse, and a bunkhouse for cowboys. The bunkhouse oft had old newspapers as wallpaper, which helped seal out the wind and provided reading material. Unproblematic wooden frames tied by string made up a ranch hand'south bed. The cowboy slept in the same bedroll that he used on the range.

Entertainment consisted mainly of gambling (ordinarily bill of fare games), reading, swapping alpine tales, and reciting poems. The verse of many quondam-time cowboys got passed forth and written down. Today, readers still enjoy the work of such cowboy poets as Charles Badger Clark, Jr., Curley Fletcher, and Bruce Kiskaddon. Cowboys would also stage ranch rodeos, challenging easily from nearby ranches in horse racing and roping.

The cattle bulldoze. The heyday of the great trail drives came just later the Civil War, when cowhands drove millions of longhorns from Texas to Kansas. The Chisholm Trail, which ran about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) between southern Texas and Abilene, Kansas, became the main cattle route. Over the years, other cattle trails developed throughout the West. A Texas cowhand named W. L. Rhodes said about cattle drives of the 1880's, "The kickoff l miles of whatever trail drive is always the hardest because the cattle want to suspension back to the land they're used to. We sure had to haze a many a one dorsum before we got the herd used to moving."

Cowboys faced many dangers on the trail, including lightning, rain, hailstorms, range fires, tornadoes, and rustlers. An 1885 memoir by a cowboy named Charlie Siringo described a trail bulldoze. He wrote, "Everything went on lovely with the exception of swimming swollen streams, fighting at present so amidst ourselves and a stampede every stormy dark, until nosotros arrived on the Canadian river in the Indian territory; there nosotros had a little Indian scare."

Cattle stampedes could too cause great devastation. A cowboy named Edward "Teddy Blueish" Abbott described the result of one stampede, writing that, "equus caballus and man was mashed into the footing as flat every bit a pancake." Abbott said, "The just thing yous could recognize was the handle of his 6-shooter."

Bad atmospheric condition, greed, and technology combined to end the great cattle drives. Especially harsh winters in the mid-1880'southward killed tens of thousands of cattle trying to forage on the open up range. Too many ranchers had overstocked the ranges, leading to lower prices and leaving animals unable to feed themselves on lands that did not produce plenty grass in dry out weather. Farther expansion of western railroads made it cheaper and quicker to haul cattle by train rather than drive them.

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Texas Rangers

Police force and society. Motility pictures and novels often exaggerate the level of the violence in the W, also equally the average cowboy's skill with a gun. Deadfall, rather than ane-on-ane gun duels, characterized most western killings.

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Approximate Roy Bean

Ranching frontier regions had few law enforcement officers, judges, and jails. At Fort Smith, on the present-twenty-four hour period edge of Arkansas and Oklahoma, Isaac C. Parker built a reputation as "the hanging judge." During his 21 years in courtroom that began in 1875, about 160 people received a sentence of death. About one-half that number were executed by hanging.

Lacking regular constabulary enforcement, other areas ofttimes resorted to justice by cocky-appointed groups of citizens called vigilantes (see Vigilante). People accused of rustling cattle or horses often ended up hanged by such vigilantes. Large cattle ranchers might ring together into livestock grower's associations to protect their interests. They often suspected smaller ranchers and farmers of stealing their livestock. In some cases, they hired gun fighters to rail downwards and kill suspected rustlers. Tom Horn became a historic hired gun.

Other types of economical conflict arose. Resentful of encroaching farmers and their fences, some ranchers destroyed barbed wire barriers that cutting off access to rangeland grasses and water. Barbed wire, patented by Joseph F. Glidden in 1873, enabled farmers to protect crops confronting cattle. Cattle and sheep ranchers also fought over access to grass and water. Ethnic violence arose frequently, particularly effectually mining camps, with whites attacking Chinese and Latin Americans as unwanted competitors.

Farming

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Cornhusking

The spread of farming. Pioneer farmers, or homesteaders, began settling in California, Oregon, and other parts of the W during the early 1800's. After the Civil War, however, western farming expanded greatly. Homesteaders, mostly white, quickly populated the Great Plains from 1870 to 1890. Wheat farms spread across the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Idaho became a major producer of potatoes. Other crops included barley, corn, flax, oats, and saccharide beets.

Life on the farms. Early pioneering families had to exist self-sufficient. They fabricated or gathered their own clothing, food, shelter, and fuel.

Clothing. Many farmers kept sheep for nutrient and wool. Women carded (cleaned and combed) the wool and spun and wove it into material. Some houses had a big spinning bike for wool and a smaller 1 for flax. Women too had to knit mittens, mufflers, and stockings as well every bit patch and mend older clothing.

Men and boys wore overalls made from denim or recycled grain sacks and a brusk jacket. Women wore a calico or gingham wearing apparel and a sunbonnet. Every bit towns grew in size and mail-order catalogs appeared, settlers could purchase cotton wool goods to make into clothing. They might use walnut bark, sumac, indigo, and other natural materials to dye the cloth.

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Chuck wagon

Food. A farm family unit had to supply its own food. Farmers generally used corn as the staple, ofttimes making corn-meal mush, corn muffins, or griddle cakes. They also baked wheat and other grains into bread. Luxuries, such equally white sugar and white flour, could only exist bought at stores. Cooks sweetened foods with maple sugar, honey, or sorghum molasses. Some farmers planted a fruit orchard that might include apple, cherry, peach, pear, and plum trees. Meat came from such animals every bit cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. A cow supplied milk and cream that families used to make butter and cheese. Farm families, peculiarly women and children, also tended vegetable gardens. They canned or dried much of the crop for winter apply. Hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits and berries added to the diet.

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Temporary shelters

Shelter. For many subcontract families, a apprehensive shelter dug into a hillside provided their first home. A immature adult female named Laura Iversen Abrahamson described her family's dugout in South Dakota in the late 1800'south. "Our house is one that Pap and George Monrad dug out of a sidehill," she said. "The upper role is made of logs, and the roof is of sod."

Few trees grew on the open plains. Defective the shelter of a hillside or sufficient trees for a log cabin, farmers on the plains cut sod squares from the soil to utilise as building material. The sod grasses, with their long, tough, flexible roots, could exist cut and stacked to make walls and even the roof. A sod house, ofttimes called a soddy or soddie, needed only a small amount of lumber to frame a door and a window or two. The sod insulated reasonably well, except against rain, keeping farmhouses cool during the hot summer and relatively warm in wintertime. Heavy rain penetrated the roof and could plow the floor into a muddy mess.

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Pioneer settlers in Nebraska

After, farmers would booty in lumber to build houses of wood. Josephine Waybright, who lived on a farm near Ashland, Nebraska, in the belatedly 1800's, described the improvements that farmers fabricated over time. "When folks got to building bigger and better houses," she said, "they would arrange them with parlor and a spare room. The parlor was only used when company come and was kept shut up most of the time with the defunction drawn."

Fuel. Lack of wood as well meant a lack of fuel for cooking and heating. Families typically had to use dried buffalo fries (bison dung) as fuel. The fuel gave off a hot, fast-called-for burn down with little scent. James G. Eastman, who grew upward on a Nebraska farm in the late 1800'southward, gathered fuel as ane of his babyhood jobs. He said, "My female parent would transport me out to pick up buffalo fries, sunflower stalks, and large weeds and sticks which nosotros piled up for fuel." A family unit might spend several weeks in the fall piling up chips to go them through the wintertime. With the demise of the great buffalo herds in the 1870's, subcontract families turned to cow pies (dried cattle dung), cats (twists of dried prairie grass), and stale cornstalks and cobs for fuel.

Recreation. Isolation on the plains meant that subcontract families had to make their ain fun. Reading and music offered good sources of home entertainment. Guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, and other musical instruments provided entertainment. Musicians enjoyed a warm welcome at occasional dances, which families might travel for hours to nourish. A quilting bee produced needed bedding and offered women a break from the isolation of plains life.

Holidays provided a take a chance to socialize and celebrate. Laura Abrahamson described fun at a Fourth of July celebration in South Dakota in 1895. She said, "We had swings and hammocks and played games and had lemonade and block and had and then much fun at the picnic that I guess I'll feel all right fifty-fifty if I don't get to anything now for a long time."

Religion. Religious services also brought people together. Pioneers frequently showtime met in someone's soddy until an area could support a church building.

Instruction. One-room schoolhouses began actualization on the plains. Many early schools were made of sod. Later, more substantial woods or brick school buildings appeared. Students sat in handmade desks and wrote on slates with slate pencils. A unmarried teacher instructed all 8 grades. Students had to bring their lunches, usually carried in pails, and sometimes had to bring water besides. They walked or rode horses to class. Vera Pearson, a Kansas homesteader, recalled that teachers had "no charts, no maps, no pictures, no books but a Speller."

Hardships and challenges. Great Plains atmospheric condition could bring extreme heat, cold, pelting, wind, or grit. Hattie Erickson, who survived a blizzard in 1888 at her farm in Southward Dakota, reported, "The storm kept on all night. My kitchen door flew open up several times and so I had to nail it shut. I call up information technology was the coldest night I ever went through." The tempest killed more than than 100 people.

James Eastman recalled prairie fires that "would offset mode down in Kansas and come clear up to Nebraska. The fires would go faster than any horse could run. Small game, such as rabbits . . . would be burned alive." He also told of common cold summers that ruined crops. "I have seen frost in Nebraska in July. Seen the leaves freeze off and all of our corn would be ruined."

Settlers and Native Americans

Westward expansion devastated most Native American cultures. Indian tribes constantly faced the pressure of white settlers and their desire for territory. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson ordered more 40,000 Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians out of their traditional lands in the Eastward. The guild forced the Indians to move to Indian Territory (meet Indian Territory), a region in present-day Oklahoma. Several one thousand Indians died along the way. The Cherokee came to telephone call their journeying the "Trail of Tears," and this term is sometimes used to refer to the removal of the other tribes every bit well. Other displacements followed equally more whites moved west.

Most white settlers believed Indians posed a barrier to U.S. expansion. This mentality sometimes led to the massacre of innocent people. In 1864, Colonel John Chivington commanded Colorado volunteers against a village of Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. The undisciplined troops killed near 150 Indian men, women, and children.

In 1866, some 2,000 Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux warriors ambushed Captain William J. Fetterman and about fourscore of his troops nigh Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. The Indians, including the Sioux leader Crazy Horse, wiped out the entire command. In 1868, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Calvary confronting a big Cheyenne campsite in Indian Territory. The soldiers killed or wounded more than 100 Indians.

Discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1876 touched off the most famous Indian battle in American history. Gold seekers flooded the region, ignoring Teton Sioux rights to the state. Subsequently that year, Custer attacked a large Indian camp on the banks of the Piffling Bighorn River in southeastern Montana. Inside a half hour, Teton Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors wiped out Custer's command. The Sioux Chief Red Equus caballus left an eyewitness account. "These soldiers became foolish," he said, "many throwing away their guns and raising their hands, proverb, 'Sioux, compassion the states; take the states prisoners.' The Sioux did not take a single soldier prisoner, just killed all of them." More than 200 soldiers died.

The relentless tide of white immigrants and the near-destruction of the buffalo doomed Plains Indians to defeat. The final gasp of resistance came with a motility led by the Paiute religious leader Wovoka in 1890. White people called it the Ghost Dance faith considering it promised that expressionless Indian ancestors would return to life. The Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull joined the movement, simply to be shot expressionless when his followers resisted his abort. A massacre at Wounded Articulatio genus, South Dakota, in 1890 ended Indian resistance.

The Due west in American culture

The frontier has had a profound influence on American life. Paintings, stories, and films about the West remain an of import part of American culture.

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Cowboy painting by Charles Marion Russell

Art. Many artists of the 1800's and early 1900'southward used Western subjects in their work. Alfred Jacob Miller painted pictures of many of the W'south natural wonders, including Independence Rock in Wyoming and the G Tetons of the Rocky Mountains. Painter Albert Bierstadt'southward piece of work too celebrated the western mural.

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The Cheyenne, a sculpture by Frederic Remington

Cowboys and Indians also became favorite subjects for artists. George Catlin and Karl Bodmer made memorable paintings of Native Americans. Charles M. Russell created paintings and sculptures of the terminal stages of open up-range cowboy and Indian life on the northern plains. Frederic Remington sketched, painted, and later sculpted the West's inhabitants. Similar Russell, Remington expressed what he saw as the freedom and heroism of western life. James Walker created important images of California's vaqueros at work in their colorful costumes.

The mining and farming frontiers played an additional, though smaller, function in American art. Charles Nahl ranked every bit the best-known artist to gloat the mining borderland. His works include the painting Sun Morning in the Mines (1872).

Literature. Novelists found the Due west and its colorful people irresistible subjects. Fanciful tales came from then-chosen "pulp novelists" in the late 1800's. Seldom having seen the W, these writers churned out cheap literature filled with strong white heroes, women in demand of saving, and fell Indians and outlaws. "Dime novels," such as those by Edward L. Wheeler, sometimes romanticized and exaggerated the actions of such real western figures as Martha "Calamity Jane" Canary (also spelled Cannary).

Ii easterners, Theodore Roosevelt and Owen Wister, promoted their own romantic versions of the West. Roosevelt, after a failed effort at ranching in the Dakotas, wrote a iv-book history called The Winning of the West (1889-1896). He later became president of the United States. Wister's novel The Virginian (1902) raised Western fiction to a position of critical respect.

Entertainment. Ned Buntline, the pen name for Edward Zane Carroll Judson, helped the frontiersman Buffalo Nib become a hero to easterners. Buffalo Nib, whose real name was William Frederick Cody, starred in Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie (1872). Buffalo Bill later started a traveling "Wild W" evidence that became an international striking. Running from 1883 until 1913, the evidence thrilled audiences with galloping cowboys and Indians, keen marksmanship by Annie Oakley, and imaginative re-creations of historical Western events.

The allure of cowboy activeness drew audiences to rodeo competitions (see Rodeo). Originally, cowboys from unlike ranches tested their riding and roping skills against one another. But such competitions became more formal and began offering prize coin. By the early 1900's, Cheyenne Borderland Days in Wyoming, the Pendleton Round-Up in Oregon, and dozens of other rodeos drew competitors from across the country.

Motion-picture show

Western moving-picture show

New media of the 1900's—moving picture, radio, and goggle box—brought Western heroes to larger audiences. The cowboy became the best-known and most pop Western figure. From the early days of silent Western films, cowboy stars dominated the box part. Bronco Billy Anderson, Tom Mix, William Due south. Hart, and other silent film cowboys entertained moviegoers in the early 1900'south. Beginning in the 1930'south, sound films brought the excitement of galloping hooves and blazing guns to the screen. A new generation of heroes arose, including John Wayne and singing cowboys Cistron Autry and Roy Rogers. Many Western films took their plots from "shoot 'em up" novels by Zane Grey, Max Brand, and others.

In the early 1950's, some Western movie stars, including Autry and Rogers, made successful transitions to television. Westerns dominated much of prime-fourth dimension boob tube through the mid-1960'due south. Today, Americans continue to revere their frontier past as a time of force, courage, self-reliance, and honesty.

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Contributor:
• Richard Due west. Slatta, Ph.D., Professor of History, Northward Carolina State University.

How to cite this commodity:
To cite this article, World Book. recommends the post-obit format:

Slatta, Richard W. "Western frontier life in America." Earth Book Online Reference Eye. 2006. Earth Volume, Inc. 19 Jan. 2006

<http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar599110>

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