Monday-
Got topics for new upcoming project over the decades
Chapters 5 .. (moving west)
Manifest Destiny
Railroad helped move people west
Tuesday-
Great Plains: used to be labeled the great american deserts ....
people moved west fro homestead , farming , gold , mining , hunting/trapping , etc...
Buffalo genocide- 15 million buffalo in 1800 then 1870 there were 200,000
mountain men
military brought people west (planes wars and native Americans were our enemies)
Cattle Ranching + Cowboys - 1867-80... open range were cattle ran free.. Railhead towns were towns at the end of the railroads.. Ranches... longhorns (bread of cows).... Cattle Barons (bigger ranchers) .... 25% of cowboys where ex-slaves ... life of a cowboy was lonely and dangerous.... cattle industry fell when the price of beef fell... lot of cattle men got their attire from Mexican cowboys.. dangerous because they were alone and their animals could get loose or run off from noises or something
Cow Towns .. Dodge City - lots of money spent, drinking , gambling, fights, prostitution
Wednesday-
Christina came and talked about buffaloes...(The Indians used buffaloes for everything.. water, hair brushes, tools, armory, etc..)
Thursday-
Omaha Stockyards .. no railroads to travel the cows .. came to an end after about 15-20 years when railroads came about
1834... United States were treating native Americans bad .... They were pushing them out of their land and taking away their home living and life styles .... In a process of about 40 years there was a drastic change of land for the Indians .... The destruction of buffalo effect the Natives as well
The Dawes Act - 1887... Gave land to native american families to farm.. ended tribal ownership... those that did it were granted US citizenship... goal of the act was to "Americanize" Native-Americans.... Ended in 1930's under President Roosevelt's Indian Reorganization Act
Friday-
The railroads helped with transportation and moving things... Huge on settling the great plains.... The homestead act gave people amount of lands over in the great west that they could have as long as they promised to farm... Also helped people settle in the great plains... The trans Continental was the first rail road to go from the west coast to the east coast and connect
Homestead Act gave 160 acres of land to people to live on and farm... Attracted thousands of people in the Midwest... Land speculators (rich) stole much of the land that was set aside for the homestead
Struggles they faced in the Great planes: Native american attacks, weather, plagues (grasshopper plagues) , water, loneliness, extremely hard work, lack of trees, railroad prices, debt
What they did to overcome their problems- go to town occasionally to overcome loneliness, the grange (set up to help farmers and provide get together's and dances etc...) Bad weather such as dust storms, snow, flooding.. Insect plagues like the grasshopper hit farms hard in the 1870's.. by 1902 the bugs were gone and eventually technology caught up and medicine took place
Native american attacks were common but sporadic too.. Wars came in place and military's
Lack of trees made house have to be out of saw because there wasn't a lot of trees
Comments
Well done!