American West: 1861-76

Lesson 8: A Home in the West

Oh, Give Me a Home where the Buffalo Once Roamed

In the West of the mid-1870s, as well as in the East, South, and North, folks began to look towards a new century arriving in a few years. But it would still be some time before the West was really won. There was a lot of unsettled land that had yet to feel the bite of the homesteader’s plow. More towns would be built. The major gold rushes were nearly over, but still there was considerable gold in “them thar hills.”

The Indian Bureau stayed under the thumb of the War Department. However, President Grant, by 1872, had appointed seventy-three agencies from among the nation’s principal denominations to make healthy civilized Christians out of the Indians.

Back east, Washington had a fist-full of high-handed ideals of how things should be, but once that fist opened out on the wild and uncivilized Plains those ideals crumbled and blew away like scattered sage in a desert wind. At that particular time they crumbled even faster in the southwest where Mangas Coloradas had been treacherously murdered under the white flag of truce. The Chiricahau and the Mimbres Apaches were outraged and did their utmost to show it. From Tucson through Mexico, stockmen and settlers trembled in fear for their lives and their property.

Red Cloud, Oglala Sioux

Back in April of 1870, Red Cloud had gone to Washington to talk with the Great Father about the possibility of going to a reservation. After endless talks, and not until 1873, was a reservation provided in northwestern Nebraska. Just outside the boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation the government built Red Cloud Agency for the Oglalas and Spotted Tail Agency for the Brules.

Brule Sioux Chief Spotted Tail

Red Cloud lived for another forty years and never again took up arms against the white man--but this did not insure that peace had come to the Plains.

The government finally determined that all Indians in the west would live on reservations, Brady tells us in The Sioux Indian Wars. The Indians were told they had to come in to the reservations by the first of January of 1876, and they had to stay on them. If they did not come in, they would be forced to do so by the War Department. The Indians did not come in. In fact, many already living on reservations left them.

By now the Oglalas Sioux, by the hundreds, were flocking to the standard of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, hoping for one last violent resistance.

Sitting Bull

Other tribes would join them. And so, the war was on again. But this was a war that had never really ended for All of the people who called the Plains their home.

There are a lot more good folks that played a big part in settling the West. Here's just a few good links for your future study.

Jim Bridger and the Fur Trade http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/old_...

Immigrants: Native and the New http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/grea...

Adah Isaacs Menken http://www.mkionwritenow.com/page7.html

Bat Masterson http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/old_...

It has been GREAT learning about the West with all of you. Thank you, and feel free to keep in touch if you want to yack about the West. Please let at my course on Custer's Last Stand, if you want to continue with the story.

Mary Trotter Kion

marykion@juno.com

The source for this section is:

Brady, Cyrus Townshend. The Sioux Indian Wars, From the Powder River to the Little Big Horn. Indian Head Books, New York, 1992.

Suggest topics for discussion from this lesson.

Do you have ancestors who were homesteaders on the Plains? If so, tell us about them.

You live in the mid-1800s. You are moving west. What will be your means of earning a living: Homesteader, Sheriff, Soiled Dove, Gunfighter, or some other? Why did you make your particular choice?

Bibliography:

Brady, Cyrus Townshend. The Sioux Indian Wars, From the Powder River to the Little Big Horn. Indian Head Books, New York, 1992.

Hicks, Jim, Editor. The Gamblers: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1978.

Horn, Huston. The Pioneers: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1974.

Kion, Mary Trotter. Madam, Is This the End of the Line? The Josephine Hensley Story: Women of the West, web site.

Stratton, Joanna L. Pioneer Women: Voices From the Kansas Frontier. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983.

Trachtman, Paul. The Gunfighters: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1974.

Wheeler, Keith. The Townsmen: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1975.

Photograph and Illustration Credits

Rocky Mountain National Park http://www.nps.gov/romo/downloads_photos...

Park Net: National Park Service http://www.nps.gov/gosp/research/histori...

Whitman Mission National Park Site http://www.nps.gov/whmi/

National Parks Service http://www.cr.nps.gov/catsig.htm

Treasure Net: American West Images http://ww.treasurenet.com/

Treasure Net: Civil War Images http://www.tresurenet.com/

Photograph Collection of Mary Trotter Kion

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