La frontera estadounidense , también conocida como el Viejo Oeste y popularmente conocida como el Salvaje Oeste , abarca la geografía, la historia, el folclore y la cultura asociados con la ola de expansión estadounidense en América del Norte continental que comenzó con los asentamientos coloniales europeos a principios del siglo XVII y terminó con la admisión de los últimos territorios occidentales contiguos como estados en 1912. Esta era de migración y asentamiento masivos fue particularmente alentada por el presidente Thomas Jefferson después de la Compra de Luisiana , dando lugar a la actitud expansionista conocida como " destino manifiesto " y la " Tesis de la Frontera " de los historiadores. Las leyendas, los eventos históricos y el folclore de la frontera estadounidense, conocida como el mito de la frontera , se han incrustado en la cultura de los Estados Unidos tanto que el Viejo Oeste, y el género de los medios de comunicación del oeste específicamente, se ha convertido en una de las características definitorias de la identidad nacional estadounidense.
Los historiadores han debatido extensamente sobre cuándo comenzó la era fronteriza, cuándo terminó y cuáles fueron sus subperíodos clave. [3] Por ejemplo, los historiadores a veces usan el subperíodo del Viejo Oeste para referirse al tiempo desde el final de la Guerra Civil estadounidense en 1865 hasta cuando el Superintendente del Censo, William Rush Merriam , declaró que la Oficina del Censo de los EE. UU. dejaría de registrar los asentamientos fronterizos occidentales como parte de sus categorías censales después del Censo de los EE. UU . de 1890. [6] [7] [10] [11] Sin embargo, sus sucesores continuaron la práctica hasta el Censo de 1920. [ 1] [2]
Otros, incluida la Biblioteca del Congreso y la Universidad de Oxford , a menudo citan puntos diferentes que se remontan a principios del siglo XX; típicamente dentro de las primeras dos décadas, antes de la entrada estadounidense en la Primera Guerra Mundial . [4] [12] Un período conocido como "La Guerra Civil Occidental de Incorporación" duró desde la década de 1850 hasta 1919. Este período incluyó eventos históricos sinónimos del arquetipo del Viejo Oeste o "Salvaje Oeste", como el conflicto violento que surgió de los asentamientos invasores en tierras fronterizas, la remoción y asimilación de nativos, la consolidación de la propiedad en grandes corporaciones y el gobierno, el vigilantismo y el intento de hacer cumplir las leyes a los delincuentes. [13]
En 1890, el superintendente del censo, William Rush Merriam, afirmó: "Hasta 1880 inclusive, el país tenía una frontera de asentamiento, pero en la actualidad el área no colonizada ha sido tan dividida por cuerpos aislados de asentamiento que difícilmente puede decirse que haya una línea fronteriza. En la discusión de su extensión, su movimiento hacia el oeste, etc., por lo tanto, ya no puede tener un lugar en los informes del censo". [14] A pesar de esto, el censo estadounidense posterior de 1900 continuó mostrando la línea fronteriza hacia el oeste, y sus sucesores continuaron con la práctica. [1] [15] Sin embargo, para el censo estadounidense de 1910 , la frontera se había reducido a áreas divididas sin una línea singular de asentamiento hacia el oeste. [16] Se cita una afluencia de colonos agrícolas en las primeras dos décadas del siglo XX, que ocuparon más superficie que las concesiones de propiedad en todo el siglo XIX, por haber reducido significativamente las tierras abiertas. [17]
Una frontera es una zona de contacto en el borde de una línea de asentamiento. El teórico Frederick Jackson Turner fue más allá y sostuvo que la frontera fue el escenario de un proceso definitorio de la civilización estadounidense: "La frontera", afirmó, "promocionó la formación de una nacionalidad compuesta para el pueblo estadounidense". Teorizó que era un proceso de desarrollo: "Este renacimiento perenne, esta fluidez de la vida estadounidense, esta expansión hacia el oeste... proporciona las fuerzas que dominan el carácter estadounidense". [18] Las ideas de Turner desde 1893 han inspirado a generaciones de historiadores (y críticos) a explorar múltiples fronteras estadounidenses individuales, pero la frontera popular se concentra en la conquista y el asentamiento de tierras de los nativos americanos al oeste del río Mississippi , en lo que ahora es el Medio Oeste , Texas , las Grandes Llanuras , las Montañas Rocosas , el Suroeste y la Costa Oeste .
En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, desde la década de 1850 hasta la de 1910, el Oeste de los Estados Unidos (especialmente el Suroeste ) recibió una enorme atención popular . Estos medios solían exagerar el romance, la anarquía y la violencia caótica de la época para lograr un mayor efecto dramático. Esto inspiró el género cinematográfico del Oeste , junto con programas de televisión , novelas , cómics , videojuegos , juguetes infantiles y disfraces.
Como definen Hine y Faragher, "la historia de la frontera cuenta la historia de la creación y defensa de las comunidades, el uso de la tierra, el desarrollo de cultivos y hoteles y la formación de estados". Explican: "Es una historia de conquista, pero también de supervivencia, persistencia y fusión de pueblos y culturas que dieron origen y continuidad a los Estados Unidos". [19] El propio Turner enfatizó repetidamente cómo la disponibilidad de "tierra libre" para iniciar nuevas granjas atrajo a los pioneros estadounidenses: "La existencia de un área de tierra libre, su recesión continua y el avance de los asentamientos estadounidenses hacia el oeste explican el desarrollo estadounidense". [20]
Mediante tratados con naciones extranjeras y tribus nativas , compromisos políticos, conquistas militares, el establecimiento de la ley y el orden, la construcción de granjas, ranchos y pueblos, la señalización de senderos y la excavación de minas, y la atracción de grandes migraciones de extranjeros, Estados Unidos se expandió de costa a costa, cumpliendo la ideología del Destino Manifiesto. En su "Tesis de la Frontera" (1893), Turner teorizó que la frontera era un proceso que transformaba a los europeos en un nuevo pueblo, los estadounidenses, cuyos valores se centraban en la igualdad, la democracia y el optimismo, así como en el individualismo , la autosuficiencia e incluso la violencia.
La frontera es el margen de territorio no desarrollado que comprendería los Estados Unidos más allá de la línea fronteriza establecida. [21] [22] La Oficina del Censo de los EE. UU. designó territorio fronterizo como tierra generalmente desocupada con una densidad de población de menos de 2 personas por milla cuadrada (0,77 personas por kilómetro cuadrado). La línea fronteriza era el límite exterior del asentamiento europeo-estadounidense en esta tierra. [23] [24] Comenzando con los primeros asentamientos europeos permanentes en la Costa Este , se ha movido constantemente hacia el oeste desde el siglo XVII hasta el siglo XX (décadas) con movimientos ocasionales hacia el norte hasta Maine y New Hampshire, hacia el sur hasta Florida y hacia el este desde California hasta Nevada.
También aparecen bolsas de asentamientos mucho más allá de la línea fronteriza establecida, particularmente en la Costa Oeste y el interior profundo, con asentamientos como Los Ángeles y Salt Lake City respectivamente. El " Oeste " era el área recientemente colonizada cerca de esa frontera. [25] Por lo tanto, partes del Medio Oeste y el Sur de Estados Unidos , aunque ya no se consideran "occidentales", tienen una herencia fronteriza junto con los estados occidentales modernos. [26] [27] Richard W. Slatta, en su visión de la frontera, escribe que "los historiadores a veces definen el Oeste estadounidense como tierras al oeste del meridiano 98 o 98° de longitud oeste ", y que otras definiciones de la región "incluyen todas las tierras al oeste de los ríos Mississippi o Missouri". [28]
Llave: Estados Territorios Zonas en disputa Otros países
En la era colonial , antes de 1776, el oeste era una prioridad para los colonos y los políticos. La frontera estadounidense comenzó cuando los ingleses se establecieron en Jamestown , Virginia, en 1607. En los primeros días de la colonización europea en la costa atlántica, hasta aproximadamente 1680, la frontera era esencialmente cualquier parte del interior del continente más allá del borde de los asentamientos existentes a lo largo de la costa atlántica. [29]
Los patrones de expansión y asentamiento de los ingleses , franceses , españoles y holandeses fueron bastante diferentes. Sólo unos pocos miles de franceses emigraron a Canadá; estos habitantes se asentaron en aldeas a lo largo del río San Lorenzo , construyendo comunidades que se mantuvieron estables durante largos períodos. Aunque los comerciantes de pieles franceses se extendieron ampliamente por los Grandes Lagos y la región del medio oeste, rara vez se asentaron. El asentamiento francés se limitó a unas pocas aldeas muy pequeñas como Kaskaskia, Illinois [30], así como a un asentamiento más grande alrededor de Nueva Orleans . En lo que ahora es el estado de Nueva York, los holandeses establecieron puestos de comercio de pieles en el valle del río Hudson, seguidos de grandes concesiones de tierra a ricos terratenientes patronos que trajeron agricultores arrendatarios que crearon aldeas compactas y permanentes. Crearon un asentamiento rural denso en el norte del estado de Nueva York, pero no avanzaron hacia el oeste. [31]
Las áreas del norte que estaban en la etapa de frontera en 1700 generalmente tenían malas instalaciones de transporte, por lo que la oportunidad de agricultura comercial era baja. Estas áreas permanecieron principalmente en la agricultura de subsistencia y, como resultado, en la década de 1760 estas sociedades eran altamente igualitarias , como lo explicó el historiador Jackson Turner Main:
La sociedad fronteriza típica, por lo tanto, era aquella en la que las distinciones de clase se reducían al mínimo. El especulador rico, si había alguno, por lo general se quedaba en casa, de modo que normalmente no había ningún rico residente. La clase de los pobres sin tierra era pequeña. La gran mayoría eran terratenientes, la mayoría de los cuales también eran pobres porque empezaban con poca propiedad y todavía no habían desbrozado mucha tierra ni habían adquirido las herramientas agrícolas y los animales que un día los harían prósperos. Pocos artesanos se establecieron en la frontera, excepto aquellos que ejercían un oficio para complementar su ocupación principal, la agricultura. Podía haber un tendero, un ministro y tal vez un médico; y había varios trabajadores sin tierra. Todos los demás eran agricultores. [32]
En el sur, las zonas fronterizas que carecían de transporte, como la región de los Apalaches , seguían basándose en la agricultura de subsistencia y se parecían al igualitarismo de sus homólogas del norte, aunque tenían una clase alta más numerosa de propietarios de esclavos. Carolina del Norte era representativa. Sin embargo, las zonas fronterizas de 1700 que tenían buenas conexiones fluviales se transformaron cada vez más en agricultura de plantación. Llegaban hombres ricos, compraban las buenas tierras y las trabajaban con esclavos. La zona ya no era "fronteriza". Tenía una sociedad estratificada que comprendía una poderosa nobleza blanca terrateniente de clase alta, una pequeña clase media, un grupo bastante grande de agricultores blancos sin tierra o arrendatarios y una creciente población de esclavos en la base de la pirámide social. A diferencia del norte, donde eran comunes las pequeñas ciudades y hasta los pueblos, el sur era abrumadoramente rural. [33]
Los asentamientos coloniales costeros dieron prioridad a la propiedad de la tierra para los agricultores individuales y, a medida que la población crecía, se dirigieron hacia el oeste en busca de nuevas tierras de cultivo. [34] A diferencia de Gran Bretaña, donde un pequeño número de terratenientes poseían la mayor parte de la tierra, la propiedad en Estados Unidos era barata, fácil y generalizada. La propiedad de la tierra trajo consigo un grado de independencia, así como el derecho a voto para los cargos locales y provinciales. Los asentamientos típicos de Nueva Inglaterra eran bastante compactos y pequeños, de menos de una milla cuadrada. El conflicto con los nativos americanos surgió de cuestiones políticas, a saber, quién gobernaría. [35] Las primeras áreas fronterizas al este de los Apalaches incluían el valle del río Connecticut, [36] y el norte de Nueva Inglaterra (que fue un movimiento hacia el norte, no hacia el oeste). [37]
Los colonos de la frontera a menudo relacionaban incidentes aislados con conspiraciones indígenas para atacarlos, pero estos carecían de una dimensión diplomática francesa después de 1763, o de una conexión española después de 1820. [38]
La mayoría de las fronteras experimentaron numerosos conflictos. [39] La Guerra Francesa e India estalló entre Gran Bretaña y Francia, con los franceses compensando su pequeña base de población colonial alistando partidas de guerra nativas como aliados. La serie de grandes guerras que se extendieron a partir de las guerras europeas terminó en una victoria completa para los británicos en la Guerra de los Siete Años en todo el mundo . En el tratado de paz de 1763 , Francia cedió prácticamente todo, ya que las tierras al oeste del río Misisipi, además de Florida y Nueva Orleans, pasaron a España. De lo contrario, las tierras al este del río Misisipi y lo que ahora es Canadá pasaron a Gran Bretaña. [ cita requerida ]
A pesar de las guerras, los estadounidenses se desplazaban a través de los Apalaches hacia el oeste de Pensilvania, lo que hoy es Virginia Occidental y áreas del Territorio de Ohio , Kentucky y Tennessee. En los asentamientos del sur a través de Cumberland Gap , su líder más famoso fue Daniel Boone . [40] El joven George Washington promovió asentamientos en Virginia Occidental en tierras que el gobierno real le había otorgado a él y a sus soldados en pago por su servicio en tiempos de guerra en la milicia de Virginia. Los asentamientos al oeste de los Apalaches fueron restringidos brevemente por la Proclamación Real de 1763 , que prohibía el asentamiento en esta área. El Tratado de Fort Stanwix (1768) reabrió la mayoría de las tierras occidentales para que los colonos se establecieran. [41]
La nación estaba en paz después de 1783. Los estados dieron al Congreso el control de las tierras occidentales y se desarrolló un sistema eficaz para la expansión de la población. La Ordenanza del Noroeste de 1787 abolió la esclavitud en el área al norte del río Ohio y prometió la condición de estado cuando un territorio alcanzara un umbral de población, como lo hizo Ohio en 1803. [ 42] [43]
El primer gran movimiento al oeste de los Apalaches se originó en Pensilvania, Virginia y Carolina del Norte tan pronto como terminó la Guerra de la Independencia en 1781. Los pioneros se alojaban en cobertizos rústicos o, como mucho, en cabañas de troncos de una sola habitación. Al principio, el principal suministro de alimentos provenía de la caza de ciervos, pavos y otros animales abundantes.
Ataviado con el típico atuendo de la frontera, pantalones de cuero, mocasines, gorro de piel y camisa de caza, y ceñido con un cinturón del que colgaban un cuchillo de caza y una bolsa de perdigones —todos ellos de fabricación casera—, el pionero presentaba un aspecto singular. En poco tiempo abrió en el bosque un terreno o claro en el que cultivó maíz, trigo, lino, tabaco y otros productos, incluso frutas. [44]
En pocos años, los pioneros añadieron cerdos, ovejas y vacas, y tal vez adquirieron un caballo. Las pieles de animales fueron sustituidas por ropas tejidas a mano. Los pioneros, más inquietos, se sintieron insatisfechos con la vida demasiado civilizada y se desarraigaron de nuevo para trasladarse 50 o 100 millas (80 o 160 km) más al oeste.
La política agraria de la nueva nación era conservadora y prestaba especial atención a las necesidades de los colonos del Este. [45] Los objetivos que ambos partidos perseguían en la era 1790-1820 eran hacer crecer la economía, evitar la fuga de los trabajadores cualificados que necesitaba el Este, distribuir la tierra de forma inteligente, venderla a precios que fueran razonables para los colonos pero lo suficientemente altos como para pagar la deuda nacional, sanear los títulos legales y crear una economía occidental diversificada que estuviera estrechamente interconectada con las áreas colonizadas con un riesgo mínimo de un movimiento separatista. Sin embargo, en la década de 1830, el Oeste se estaba llenando de ocupantes ilegales que no tenían títulos legales, aunque es posible que hubieran pagado dinero a los colonos anteriores. Los demócratas jacksonianos favorecían a los ocupantes ilegales prometiéndoles un acceso rápido a tierras baratas. Por el contrario, Henry Clay estaba alarmado por la "chusma sin ley" que se dirigía al Oeste y que estaba socavando el concepto utópico de una comunidad republicana de clase media estable y respetuosa de la ley. Mientras tanto, los sureños ricos buscaban oportunidades para comprar tierras de alta calidad para establecer plantaciones de esclavos. El movimiento Free Soil de la década de 1840 exigía tierras de bajo costo para los agricultores blancos libres, una posición promulgada como ley por el nuevo Partido Republicano en 1862, ofreciendo granjas gratuitas de 160 acres (65 ha) a todos los adultos, hombres y mujeres, negros y blancos, nativos o inmigrantes. [46]
Después de ganar la Guerra de la Independencia (1783), los colonos estadounidenses llegaron en masa al oeste. En 1788, los pioneros estadounidenses del Territorio del Noroeste establecieron Marietta, Ohio , como el primer asentamiento estadounidense permanente en el Territorio del Noroeste . [47]
En 1775, Daniel Boone abrió un camino para la Compañía Transilvania desde Virginia a través de Cumberland Gap hasta el centro de Kentucky. Más tarde se alargó hasta llegar a las cataratas del Ohio en Louisville . El Wilderness Road era empinado y accidentado, y solo se podía recorrer a pie o a caballo, pero era la mejor ruta para miles de colonos que se mudaban a Kentucky . [48] En algunas áreas tuvieron que enfrentarse a ataques nativos. Solo en 1784, los nativos mataron a más de 100 viajeros en el Wilderness Road. Kentucky en ese momento se había despoblado: estaba "vacío de aldeas indias". [49] Sin embargo, a veces pasaban grupos de asalto. Uno de los interceptados fue el abuelo de Abraham Lincoln , a quien le arrancaron el cuero cabelludo en 1784 cerca de Louisville. [50]
La Guerra de 1812 marcó la confrontación final entre las principales fuerzas británicas y nativas que luchaban para detener la expansión estadounidense. El objetivo de la guerra británica incluía la creación de un estado de barrera indígena bajo los auspicios británicos en el Medio Oeste que detendría la expansión estadounidense hacia el oeste. Las milicias fronterizas estadounidenses bajo el mando del general Andrew Jackson derrotaron a los creeks y abrieron el suroeste, mientras que la milicia bajo el mando del gobernador William Henry Harrison derrotó a la alianza nativo-británica en la batalla del Támesis en Canadá en 1813. La muerte en batalla del líder nativo Tecumseh disolvió la coalición de tribus nativas hostiles. [51] Mientras tanto, el general Andrew Jackson puso fin a la amenaza militar nativa en el sudeste en la batalla de Horseshoe Bend en 1814 en Alabama. En general, los hombres de la frontera lucharon contra los nativos con poca ayuda del ejército de los EE. UU. o del gobierno federal. [52]
Para poner fin a la guerra, los diplomáticos estadounidenses negociaron con Gran Bretaña el Tratado de Gante , firmado a finales de 1814. Rechazaron el plan británico de establecer un estado indígena en territorio estadounidense al sur de los Grandes Lagos. Explicaron la política estadounidense respecto de la adquisición de tierras indígenas:
Los Estados Unidos, si bien tienen la intención de no adquirir nunca tierras de los indios de otra manera que no sea pacíficamente y con su libre consentimiento, están plenamente decididos a recuperar progresivamente y en proporción a lo que su creciente población pueda requerir, del estado de naturaleza y a poner en cultivo toda porción del territorio contenido dentro de sus límites reconocidos. Al proveer de esta manera al sustento de millones de seres civilizados, no violarán ningún dictado de justicia o humanidad, pues no sólo darán a los pocos miles de salvajes dispersos en ese territorio un equivalente suficiente por cualquier derecho que puedan ceder, sino que siempre les dejarán la posesión de tierras más de las que puedan cultivar y más que adecuadas para su subsistencia, comodidad y disfrute mediante el cultivo. Si esto es un espíritu de engrandecimiento, los abajo firmantes están dispuestos a admitir, en ese sentido, su existencia; pero deben negar que proporcione la más mínima prueba de una intención de no respetar los límites entre ellos y las naciones europeas, o de un deseo de invadir los territorios de Gran Bretaña. [...] No supondrán que ese Gobierno admitirá, como base de su política hacia los Estados Unidos, un sistema de frenar el crecimiento natural de sus territorios, con el fin de preservar un desierto perpetuo para los salvajes. [53]
A medida que los colonos iban llegando, los distritos fronterizos se convirtieron primero en territorios, con una legislatura elegida y un gobernador designado por el presidente. Luego, cuando la población alcanzó los 100.000 habitantes, el territorio solicitó la condición de estado. [54] Los colonos solían abandonar las formalidades legalistas y el sufragio restrictivo que favorecían las clases altas del este y adoptar más democracia y más igualitarismo. [55]
En 1810, la frontera occidental había llegado al río Misisipi . San Luis, Misuri , era la ciudad más grande de la frontera, la puerta de entrada para los viajes hacia el oeste y un importante centro comercial para el tráfico del río Misisipi y el comercio interior, pero permaneció bajo control español hasta 1803.
Thomas Jefferson se consideraba un hombre de frontera y estaba muy interesado en expandir y explorar el Oeste. [56] La Compra de Luisiana de Jefferson en 1803 duplicó el tamaño de la nación a un costo de $15 millones, o alrededor de $0,04 por acre ($305 millones en dólares de 2023, menos de 42 centavos por acre). [57] Los federalistas se opusieron a la expansión, pero los jeffersonianos saludaron la oportunidad de crear millones de nuevas granjas para expandir el dominio de los terratenientes ; la propiedad fortalecería la sociedad republicana ideal, basada en la agricultura (no en el comercio), gobernada a la ligera y promoviendo la autosuficiencia y la virtud, además de formar la base política para la democracia jeffersoniana . [58]
Francia recibió un pago por su soberanía sobre el territorio en términos del derecho internacional. Entre 1803 y la década de 1870, el gobierno federal compró la tierra a las tribus nativas que entonces la poseían. Los contables y los tribunales del siglo XX han calculado el valor de los pagos realizados a los nativos, que incluían pagos futuros en efectivo, alimentos, caballos, ganado, suministros, edificios, educación y atención médica. En términos de efectivo, el total pagado a las tribus en el área de la Compra de Luisiana ascendió a unos 2.600 millones de dólares, o casi 9.000 millones de dólares en dólares de 2016. Se pagaron sumas adicionales a los nativos que vivían al este del Mississippi por sus tierras, así como pagos a los nativos que vivían en partes del oeste fuera de la Compra de Luisiana. [59]
Incluso antes de la compra, Jefferson estaba planeando expediciones para explorar y cartografiar las tierras. Encargó a Lewis y Clark que "exploraran el río Misuri y su curso principal, ya que, por su curso y comunicación con las aguas del océano Pacífico, el río Columbia, el río Oregón, el río Colorado o cualquier otro río pueden ofrecer la comunicación más directa y practicable a través del continente para el comercio". [60] Jefferson también encargó a la expedición que estudiara las tribus nativas de la región (incluida su moral, idioma y cultura), el clima, el suelo, los ríos, el comercio comercial y la vida animal y vegetal. [61]
Los empresarios, en particular John Jacob Astor, aprovecharon rápidamente la oportunidad y expandieron las operaciones de comercio de pieles al noroeste del Pacífico . El " Fort Astoria " de Astor (más tarde Fort George), en la desembocadura del río Columbia, se convirtió en el primer asentamiento blanco permanente en esa zona, aunque no fue rentable para Astor. Fundó la American Fur Company en un intento de romper el control que tenía el monopolio de la Compañía de la Bahía de Hudson sobre la región. En 1820, Astor se había hecho cargo de los comerciantes independientes para crear un monopolio rentable; dejó el negocio como multimillonario en 1834. [62]
A medida que la frontera se desplazaba hacia el oeste, los tramperos y cazadores se adelantaron a los colonos en busca de nuevos suministros de pieles de castor y otras pieles para enviarlas a Europa. Los cazadores fueron los primeros europeos en gran parte del Viejo Oeste y formaron las primeras relaciones de trabajo con los nativos americanos en el Oeste. [63] [64] Aportaron un amplio conocimiento del terreno del Noroeste, incluido el importante Paso Sur a través de las Montañas Rocosas centrales. Descubierto alrededor de 1812, más tarde se convirtió en una ruta importante para los colonos hacia Oregón y Washington. Sin embargo, en 1820, un nuevo sistema de "encuentros de brigadas" enviaba a los hombres de la compañía en "brigadas" a través del país en largas expediciones, evitando a muchas tribus. También alentó a los "tramperos libres" a explorar nuevas regiones por su cuenta. Al final de la temporada de recolección, los tramperos se "encontraban" y entregaban sus productos a cambio de un pago en los puertos fluviales a lo largo del río Verde , el Alto Misuri y el Alto Misisipi. San Luis era la ciudad de encuentro más grande. Sin embargo, en 1830, las modas cambiaron y los sombreros de castor fueron reemplazados por sombreros de seda, lo que puso fin a la demanda de pieles estadounidenses caras. Así terminó la era de los hombres de montaña , los tramperos y los exploradores como Jedediah Smith , Hugh Glass , Davy Crockett , Jack Omohundro y otros. El comercio de pieles de castor prácticamente cesó en 1845. [65]
Hubo un amplio acuerdo sobre la necesidad de colonizar los nuevos territorios rápidamente, pero el debate se polarizó sobre el precio que el gobierno debería cobrar. Los conservadores y los whigs, representados por el presidente John Quincy Adams , querían un ritmo moderado que cobrara a los recién llegados lo suficiente para pagar los costos del gobierno federal. Los demócratas, sin embargo, toleraron una lucha salvaje por la tierra a precios muy bajos. La resolución final llegó en la Ley de Homestead de 1862, con un ritmo moderado que les dio a los colonos 160 acres gratis después de trabajar en ellos durante cinco años. [66]
El afán de lucro privado dominó el movimiento hacia el oeste, [67] pero el gobierno federal desempeñó un papel de apoyo en la obtención de tierras mediante tratados y el establecimiento de gobiernos territoriales, con gobernadores designados por el presidente. El gobierno federal adquirió primero territorio occidental mediante tratados con otras naciones o tribus nativas. Luego envió topógrafos para cartografiar y documentar la tierra. [68] En el siglo XX, las burocracias de Washington administraban las tierras federales, como la Oficina General de Tierras de los Estados Unidos en el Departamento del Interior, [69] y, después de 1891, el Servicio Forestal en el Departamento de Agricultura. [70] Después de 1900, la construcción de presas y el control de inundaciones se convirtieron en preocupaciones importantes. [71]
El transporte era un tema clave y el Ejército (especialmente el Cuerpo de Ingenieros del Ejército) recibió la responsabilidad total de facilitar la navegación en los ríos. El barco de vapor, utilizado por primera vez en el río Ohio en 1811, hizo posible viajar de manera económica utilizando los sistemas fluviales, especialmente los ríos Misisipi y Misuri y sus afluentes. [72] Las expediciones del Ejército por el río Misuri entre 1818 y 1825 permitieron a los ingenieros mejorar la tecnología. Por ejemplo, el barco de vapor del Ejército " Western Engineer " de 1819 combinó un calado muy bajo con una de las primeras ruedas de popa. En 1819-1825, el coronel Henry Atkinson desarrolló barcos de quilla con ruedas de paletas accionadas manualmente. [73]
El sistema postal federal desempeñó un papel crucial en la expansión nacional. Facilitó la expansión hacia el Oeste al crear un sistema de comunicación económico, rápido y conveniente. Las cartas de los primeros colonos proporcionaban información y estímulo para alentar una mayor migración hacia el Oeste, ayudaban a las familias dispersas a mantenerse en contacto y brindar ayuda neutral, ayudaban a los empresarios a encontrar oportunidades comerciales y posibilitaban las relaciones comerciales regulares entre los comerciantes y el Oeste y los mayoristas y fábricas del Este. El servicio postal también ayudó al Ejército a expandir el control sobre los vastos territorios occidentales. La amplia circulación de periódicos importantes por correo, como el New York Weekly Tribune , facilitó la coordinación entre los políticos de diferentes estados. El servicio postal ayudó a integrar áreas ya establecidas con la frontera, creando un espíritu de nacionalismo y proporcionando una infraestructura necesaria. [74]
El ejército asumió desde el principio la misión de proteger a los colonos a lo largo de los Senderos de Expansión hacia el Oeste , una política que fue descrita por el Secretario de Guerra de los EE. UU. , John B. Floyd , en 1857: [75]
Una línea de puestos que corra paralela sin fronteras, pero cerca de las viviendas habituales de los indios, situados a distancias convenientes y en posiciones adecuadas, y ocupados por infantería, ejercería una restricción saludable sobre las tribus, que sentirían que cualquier incursión de sus guerreros sobre los asentamientos blancos se encontraría con una rápida represalia en sus propios hogares.
En aquella época se debatió sobre el tamaño óptimo de los fuertes, y Jefferson Davis , Winfield Scott y Thomas Jesup defendían la idea de que los fuertes fueran más grandes pero menos numerosos que el de Floyd. El plan de Floyd era más caro, pero contaba con el apoyo de los colonos y del público en general, que preferían que los militares permanecieran lo más cerca posible. La zona fronteriza era enorme e incluso Davis admitió que "la concentración habría expuesto partes de la frontera a las hostilidades de los nativos sin ninguna protección". [75]
El gobierno y la empresa privada enviaron a muchos exploradores al Oeste. En 1805-1806, el teniente del ejército Zebulon Pike (1779-1813) dirigió un grupo de 20 soldados para encontrar las cabeceras del Misisipi. Más tarde exploró los ríos Rojo y Arkansas en territorio español, llegando finalmente al río Grande . A su regreso, Pike avistó el pico en Colorado que lleva su nombre . [76] El mayor Stephen Harriman Long (1784-1864) [77] dirigió las expediciones a Yellowstone y Missouri de 1819-1820, pero su categorización en 1823 de las Grandes Llanuras como áridas e inútiles llevó a que la región recibiera una mala reputación como el "Gran Desierto Americano", lo que desalentó el asentamiento en esa área durante varias décadas. [78]
En 1811, los naturalistas Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859) y John Bradbury (1768-1823) viajaron por el río Misuri documentando y dibujando la vida vegetal y animal. [79] El artista George Catlin (1796-1872) pintó cuadros precisos de la cultura nativa americana. El artista suizo Karl Bodmer hizo paisajes y retratos atractivos. [80] John James Audubon (1785-1851) es famoso por clasificar y pintar en minuciosos detalles 500 especies de aves, publicadas en Birds of America . [81]
El más famoso de los exploradores fue John Charles Frémont (1813-1890), oficial del ejército en el Cuerpo de Ingenieros Topográficos. Demostró un talento para la exploración y un genio en la autopromoción que le valió el sobrenombre de "Pionero del Oeste" y lo llevó a la nominación presidencial del nuevo Partido Republicano en 1856. [82] Lideró una serie de expediciones en la década de 1840 que respondieron a muchas de las preguntas geográficas pendientes sobre la región poco conocida. Cruzó las Montañas Rocosas por cinco rutas diferentes y cartografió partes de Oregón y California. En 1846-1847, jugó un papel en la conquista de California. En 1848-1849, Frémont fue asignado para localizar una ruta central a través de las montañas para el ferrocarril transcontinental propuesto, pero su expedición terminó casi en un desastre cuando se perdió y quedó atrapada por una fuerte nevada. [83] Sus informes mezclaban la narración de una aventura emocionante con datos científicos e información práctica detallada para los viajeros. Captó la imaginación del público e inspiró a muchos a dirigirse al oeste. Goetzman dice que fue "monumental en su amplitud, un clásico de la literatura exploratoria". [84]
Mientras las universidades aparecían en todo el noreste, había poca competencia en la frontera occidental para la Universidad de Transilvania , fundada en Lexington, Kentucky, en 1780. Contaba con una facultad de derecho además de sus programas de pregrado y de medicina. Transilvania atraía a jóvenes políticamente ambiciosos de todo el suroeste, incluidos 50 que se convirtieron en senadores de los Estados Unidos, 101 representantes, 36 gobernadores y 34 embajadores, así como Jefferson Davis, el presidente de la Confederación. [85]
La mayoría de los pioneros mostraron poco compromiso con la religión hasta que comenzaron a aparecer evangelistas itinerantes y a producir "resurrecciones". Los pioneros locales respondieron con entusiasmo a estos eventos y, en efecto, desarrollaron sus religiones populistas, especialmente durante el Segundo Gran Despertar (1790-1840), que incluía reuniones de campamento al aire libre que duraban una semana o más y que introdujeron a muchas personas a la religión organizada por primera vez. Una de las reuniones de campamento más grandes y famosas tuvo lugar en Cane Ridge, Kentucky , en 1801. [86]
Los bautistas locales establecieron pequeñas iglesias independientes: los bautistas renunciaron a la autoridad centralizada; cada iglesia local se fundó sobre el principio de independencia de la congregación local. Por otra parte, los obispos de los metodistas, bien organizados y centralizados, asignaron a los itinerantes a áreas específicas durante varios años, para luego trasladarlos a nuevos territorios. Se formaron varias denominaciones nuevas, de las cuales la más grande fue la de los Discípulos de Cristo . [87] [88] [89]
Las iglesias orientales establecidas tardaron en satisfacer las necesidades de la frontera. Los presbiterianos y los congregacionalistas, que dependían de ministros bien educados, no contaban con personal suficiente para evangelizar la frontera. En 1801, elaboraron un Plan de Unión para combinar recursos en la frontera. [90] [91]
El historiador Mark Wyman llama a Wisconsin un "palimpsesto" de capas y capas de pueblos y fuerzas, cada una de las cuales imprime influencias permanentes. Identificó estas capas como múltiples "fronteras" a lo largo de tres siglos: la frontera de los nativos americanos, la frontera francesa, la frontera inglesa, la frontera del comercio de pieles, la frontera minera y la frontera maderera. Finalmente, la llegada del ferrocarril trajo consigo el fin de la frontera. [92]
Frederick Jackson Turner creció en Wisconsin durante su última etapa fronteriza y, en sus viajes por el estado, pudo ver las capas de desarrollo social y político. Uno de los últimos estudiantes de Turner, Merle Curti, utilizó un análisis profundo de la historia local de Wisconsin para poner a prueba la tesis de Turner sobre la democracia. La opinión de Turner era que la democracia estadounidense "implicaba una amplia participación en la toma de decisiones que afectaban a la vida en común, el desarrollo de la iniciativa y la autosuficiencia y la igualdad de oportunidades económicas y culturales. Por lo tanto, también implicaba la americanización de los inmigrantes". [93] Curti descubrió que, entre 1840 y 1860, en Wisconsin los grupos más pobres ganaron rápidamente en propiedad de la tierra y, a menudo, ascendieron a liderazgo político a nivel local. Descubrió que incluso los jóvenes trabajadores agrícolas sin tierra podían obtener pronto sus granjas. Por lo tanto, la tierra gratuita en la frontera creó oportunidades y democracia, tanto para los inmigrantes europeos como para los viejos yanquis. [94]
Entre los años 1770 y 1830, los pioneros se trasladaron a las nuevas tierras que se extendían desde Kentucky hasta Alabama y Texas. La mayoría eran agricultores que se desplazaban en grupos familiares. [95]
El historiador Louis Hacker muestra lo derrochadora que fue la primera generación de pioneros: eran demasiado ignorantes para cultivar la tierra adecuadamente y, cuando se agotó la fertilidad natural de la tierra virgen, vendieron todo y se trasladaron al oeste para intentarlo de nuevo. Hacker describe lo que ocurrió en Kentucky alrededor de 1812:
Se vendían granjas de diez a cincuenta acres desbrozados, con casas de troncos, huertos de melocotoneros y, a veces, de manzanos, cercados con vallas y con abundante madera en pie para leña. La tierra estaba sembrada de trigo y maíz, que eran los alimentos básicos, mientras que el cáñamo [para hacer cuerdas] se cultivaba en cantidades cada vez mayores en los fértiles lechos de los ríos... Sin embargo, en general, era una sociedad agrícola sin habilidad ni recursos. Cometía todos los pecados que caracterizan a la agricultura despilfarradora e ignorante. No se sembraban semillas de pasto para heno y, como resultado, los animales de la granja tenían que buscar su propio sustento en los bosques; no se permitía que los campos estuvieran cubiertos de pasto; se plantaba un solo cultivo en el suelo hasta que la tierra se agotaba; el estiércol no se devolvía a los campos; solo se cultivaba una pequeña parte de la granja, mientras que el resto se dejaba con árboles. Los instrumentos de cultivo eran rudimentarios y torpes y muy pocos, muchos de ellos fabricados en la granja. Es evidente por qué el colono de la frontera norteamericana se desplazaba continuamente. No era su miedo a un contacto demasiado estrecho con las comodidades y restricciones de una sociedad civilizada lo que lo impulsaba a una actividad incesante, ni simplemente la posibilidad de venderla con beneficios a la próxima oleada de colonos; era la pérdida de tierras lo que lo impulsaba a continuar. El hambre era el acicate. La ignorancia del agricultor pionero, sus inadecuadas instalaciones para el cultivo, sus limitados medios de transporte lo obligaban a cambiar de escenario con frecuencia. Sólo podía tener éxito con un suelo virgen. [96]
Hacker añade que la segunda oleada de colonos recuperó la tierra, reparó los daños y practicó una agricultura más sostenible. El historiador Frederick Jackson Turner exploró la cosmovisión y los valores individualistas de la primera generación:
Lo que objetaban era la existencia de obstáculos arbitrarios, de limitaciones artificiales a la libertad de cada miembro de esta gente de la frontera para desarrollar su carrera sin temor ni favoritismo. A lo que se oponían instintivamente era a la cristalización de las diferencias, a la monopolización de las oportunidades y a la fijación de ese monopolio por el gobierno o por las costumbres sociales. El camino debe estar abierto. El juego debe jugarse de acuerdo con las reglas. No debe haber ninguna restricción artificial a la igualdad de oportunidades, ninguna puerta cerrada a los capaces, nada que detenga el juego libre antes de que se juegue hasta el final. Más que eso, había un sentimiento no formulado, tal vez, pero muy real, de que el mero éxito en el juego, mediante el cual los hombres más capaces podían alcanzar la preeminencia, no daba a los exitosos ningún derecho a mirar por encima del hombro a sus vecinos, ningún derecho adquirido para afirmar la superioridad como una cuestión de orgullo y para disminuir el derecho y la dignidad iguales de los menos exitosos. [97]
El Destino Manifiesto era la controvertida creencia de que Estados Unidos estaba predestinado a expandirse desde la costa atlántica hasta la costa pacífica, y los esfuerzos que se hicieron para hacer realidad esa creencia. El concepto apareció durante la época colonial, pero el término fue acuñado en la década de 1840 por una revista popular que editorializó: "el cumplimiento de nuestro destino manifiesto... extenderse por el continente asignado por la Providencia para el libre desarrollo de nuestros millones que se multiplican anualmente". A medida que la nación crecía, el "Destino Manifiesto" se convirtió en un grito de guerra para los expansionistas del Partido Demócrata. En la década de 1840, las administraciones de Tyler y Polk (1841-1849) promovieron con éxito esta doctrina nacionalista. Sin embargo, el Partido Whig , que representaba los intereses comerciales y financieros, se opuso al Destino Manifiesto. Los líderes Whig como Henry Clay y Abraham Lincoln pidieron profundizar la sociedad a través de la modernización y la urbanización en lugar de la simple expansión horizontal. [98] A partir de la anexión de Texas, los expansionistas obtuvieron la ventaja. John Quincy Adams , un Whig antiesclavista, consideró que la anexión de Texas en 1845 fue "la peor calamidad que jamás me haya sucedido a mí y a mi país". [99]
Para ayudar a los colonos a trasladarse hacia el oeste, en la década de 1840 se utilizaron las "guías" para emigrantes, que incluían información sobre las rutas proporcionadas por los comerciantes de pieles y las expediciones de Frémont, y prometían tierras de cultivo fértiles más allá de las Montañas Rocosas. [nb 1]
México se independizó de España en 1821 y se apoderó de las posesiones del norte de España que se extendían desde Texas hasta California. Las caravanas estadounidenses comenzaron a entregar mercancías a la ciudad mexicana de Santa Fe a lo largo del Camino de Santa Fe , a lo largo de un viaje de 870 millas (1400 km) que duraba 48 días desde Kansas City, Missouri (entonces conocida como Westport). Santa Fe también era el punto de partida del "Camino Real" (la Carretera del Rey), una ruta comercial que transportaba productos manufacturados estadounidenses hacia el sur hasta lo más profundo de México y devolvía plata, pieles y mulas hacia el norte (no debe confundirse con otro "Camino Real" que conectaba las misiones en California). Un ramal también corría hacia el este cerca del Golfo (también llamado el Viejo Camino de San Antonio ). Santa Fe se conectaba con California a través del Viejo Camino Español . [100] [101]
Los gobiernos español y mexicano atrajeron a colonos estadounidenses a Texas con términos generosos. Stephen F. Austin se convirtió en un "empresario", recibiendo contratos de los funcionarios mexicanos para traer inmigrantes. Al hacerlo, también se convirtió en el comandante político y militar de facto de la zona. Sin embargo, las tensiones aumentaron después de un intento fallido de establecer la nación independiente de Fredonia en 1826. William Travis , liderando el "partido de la guerra", abogó por la independencia de México, mientras que el "partido de la paz" liderado por Austin intentó obtener más autonomía dentro de la relación actual. Cuando el presidente mexicano Santa Anna cambió de alianzas y se unió al partido conservador centralista, se declaró dictador y ordenó a los soldados que entraran en Texas para reducir la nueva inmigración y los disturbios. Sin embargo, la inmigración continuó y 30.000 anglosajones con 3.000 esclavos se establecieron en Texas en 1835. [102] En 1836, estalló la Revolución de Texas . Después de las pérdidas en El Álamo y Goliad , los tejanos ganaron la decisiva Batalla de San Jacinto para asegurar la independencia. En San Jacinto, Sam Houston , comandante en jefe del ejército texano y futuro presidente de la República de Texas, gritó: "¡Recuerden El Álamo! ¡Recuerden Goliad!". El Congreso de los Estados Unidos se negó a anexar Texas, estancado por disputas polémicas sobre la esclavitud y el poder regional. De este modo, la República de Texas siguió siendo una potencia independiente durante casi una década antes de ser anexada como el 28.º estado en 1845. Sin embargo, el gobierno de México consideraba a Texas como una provincia fugitiva y afirmó su propiedad. [103]
México se negó a reconocer la independencia de Texas en 1836, pero Estados Unidos y las potencias europeas sí lo hicieron. México amenazó con la guerra si Texas se unía a Estados Unidos, lo que hizo en 1845. Los negociadores estadounidenses fueron rechazados por un gobierno mexicano en crisis. Cuando el ejército mexicano mató a 16 soldados estadounidenses en territorio en disputa, la guerra estaba al caer. Los whigs como el congresista Abraham Lincoln denunciaron la guerra, pero fue bastante popular fuera de Nueva Inglaterra. [104]
La estrategia mexicana era defensiva; la estrategia estadounidense era una ofensiva de tres frentes, utilizando un gran número de soldados voluntarios. [105] Las fuerzas terrestres tomaron Nuevo México con poca resistencia y se dirigieron a California, que rápidamente cayó ante las fuerzas terrestres y navales estadounidenses. Desde la base estadounidense principal en Nueva Orleans, el general Zachary Taylor dirigió fuerzas hacia el norte de México, ganando una serie de batallas que siguieron. La Marina de los EE. UU. transportó al general Winfield Scott a Veracruz . Luego marchó con su fuerza de 12.000 hombres al oeste hasta la Ciudad de México, ganando la batalla final en Chapultepec. Las conversaciones sobre la adquisición de todo México se desvanecieron cuando el ejército descubrió que los valores políticos y culturales mexicanos eran tan ajenos a los de Estados Unidos. Como preguntó el Cincinnati Herald , ¿qué haría Estados Unidos con ocho millones de mexicanos "con su adoración de ídolos, superstición pagana y razas mestizas degradadas?" [106]
El Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo de 1848 cedió los territorios de California y Nuevo México a los Estados Unidos por 18,5 millones de dólares (que incluían la asunción de reclamaciones contra México por parte de los colonos). La Compra de Gadsden en 1853 añadió el sur de Arizona, que era necesario para una ruta ferroviaria a California. En total, México cedió medio millón de millas cuadradas (1,3 millones de km 2 ) e incluyó los futuros estados de California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Nuevo México y partes de Colorado y Wyoming, además de Texas. La gestión de los nuevos territorios y el tratamiento de la cuestión de la esclavitud provocaron una intensa controversia, en particular sobre la Cláusula Wilmot , que habría prohibido la esclavitud en los nuevos territorios. El Congreso nunca la aprobó, sino que resolvió temporalmente la cuestión de la esclavitud en el Oeste con el Compromiso de 1850. California entró en la Unión en 1850 como estado libre; las otras áreas siguieron siendo territorios durante muchos años. [107] [108]
El nuevo estado creció rápidamente a medida que los inmigrantes llegaban en masa a las fértiles tierras algodoneras del este de Texas. [109] Los inmigrantes alemanes comenzaron a llegar a principios de la década de 1840 debido a las presiones económicas, sociales y políticas negativas en Alemania. [110] Con sus inversiones en tierras algodoneras y esclavos, los plantadores establecieron plantaciones de algodón en los distritos orientales. La zona central del estado fue desarrollada más por agricultores de subsistencia que rara vez poseían esclavos. [111]
Texas, en sus días del Salvaje Oeste, atraía a hombres que podían disparar con precisión y poseían entusiasmo por la aventura, "por la fama masculina, el servicio patriótico, la gloria marcial y las muertes significativas". [112]
En 1846, unos 10.000 californianos (hispanos) vivían en California, principalmente en ranchos de ganado en lo que hoy es el área de Los Ángeles. Unos cientos de extranjeros estaban dispersos en los distritos del norte, incluidos algunos estadounidenses. Con el estallido de la guerra con México en 1846, Estados Unidos envió a Frémont y una unidad del ejército estadounidense , así como fuerzas navales, y rápidamente tomó el control. [113] Cuando la guerra estaba terminando, se descubrió oro en el norte y la noticia pronto se extendió por todo el mundo.
Miles de "los del 49" llegaron a California navegando alrededor de Sudamérica (o tomando un atajo a través de Panamá, un país asolado por enfermedades), o recorriendo a pie la ruta de California. La población se disparó hasta más de 200.000 personas en 1852, principalmente en los distritos auríferos que se extendían hasta las montañas al este de San Francisco.
En San Francisco, la vivienda era escasa y los barcos abandonados cuyas tripulaciones se dirigían a las minas solían convertirse en alojamientos temporales. En los propios yacimientos de oro, las condiciones de vida eran primitivas, aunque el clima templado resultaba atractivo. Los suministros eran caros y la comida escasa; las dietas típicas consistían principalmente en carne de cerdo, frijoles y whisky. Estas comunidades transitorias, predominantemente masculinas y sin instituciones establecidas, eran propensas a altos niveles de violencia, embriaguez, blasfemias y comportamiento impulsado por la avaricia. Sin tribunales ni agentes de la ley en las comunidades mineras para hacer cumplir las reclamaciones y la justicia, los mineros desarrollaron su propio sistema legal ad hoc, basado en los "códigos mineros" utilizados en otras comunidades mineras del extranjero. Cada campamento tenía sus propias reglas y a menudo impartía justicia por votación popular, a veces actuando de manera justa y a veces ejerciendo justicieros; los nativos americanos (indios), los mexicanos y los chinos generalmente recibían las sentencias más duras. [114]
La fiebre del oro cambió radicalmente la economía de California y trajo consigo una serie de profesionales, entre ellos especialistas en metales preciosos, comerciantes, médicos y abogados, que se sumaron a la población de mineros, taberneros, jugadores y prostitutas. Un periódico de San Francisco afirmó: "El país entero... resuena con el sórdido grito del oro! ¡Oro! ¡Oro! ¡Oro! mientras el campo queda a medio sembrar, la casa a medio construir y todo se descuida, salvo la fabricación de palas y picos". [115] Más de 250.000 mineros encontraron un total de más de 200 millones de dólares en oro en los cinco años que duró la fiebre del oro de California. [116] [117] Sin embargo, a medida que llegaban miles, cada vez menos mineros hicieron fortuna, y la mayoría acabó exhausta y arruinada.
Los bandidos violentos solían atacar a los mineros, como en el caso de Jonathan R. Davis, que mató a once bandidos sin ayuda de nadie. [118] Los campamentos se extendieron al norte y al sur del río American y al este, hacia las Sierras . En pocos años, casi todos los mineros independientes fueron desplazados cuando las minas fueron compradas y administradas por compañías mineras, que luego contrataron a mineros asalariados con salarios bajos. A medida que el oro se volvió más difícil de encontrar y más difícil de extraer, los prospectores individuales dieron paso a cuadrillas de trabajo remunerado, habilidades especializadas y maquinaria minera. Sin embargo, las minas más grandes causaron un mayor daño ambiental. En las montañas, predominaba la minería de pozos, que producía grandes cantidades de desechos. A partir de 1852, al final de la fiebre del oro de 1849, hasta 1883, se utilizó la minería hidráulica . A pesar de que se obtuvieron enormes ganancias, cayó en manos de unos pocos capitalistas, desplazó a numerosos mineros, grandes cantidades de desechos ingresaron en los sistemas fluviales y causaron un gran daño ecológico al medio ambiente. La minería hidráulica terminó cuando la protesta pública por la destrucción de tierras de cultivo condujo a la ilegalización de esta práctica. [119]
Las áreas montañosas del triángulo que va desde Nuevo México hasta California y Dakota del Sur contenían cientos de yacimientos mineros de roca dura, donde los buscadores descubrieron oro, plata, cobre y otros minerales (así como algo de carbón de roca blanda). De la noche a la mañana surgieron campamentos mineros temporales; la mayoría se convirtieron en pueblos fantasmas cuando se agotaron los minerales. Los buscadores se dispersaron y buscaron oro y plata a lo largo de las Montañas Rocosas y en el suroeste. Pronto se descubrió oro en Colorado , Utah, Arizona, Nuevo México, Idaho, Montana y Dakota del Sur (en 1864). [120]
El descubrimiento de la veta Comstock , que contenía grandes cantidades de plata, dio lugar a las ciudades en auge de Virginia City , Carson City y Silver City en Nevada . La riqueza proveniente de la plata, más que la del oro, impulsó la maduración de San Francisco en la década de 1860 y ayudó al ascenso de algunas de sus familias más ricas, como la de George Hearst . [121]
Para llegar a las nuevas y ricas tierras de la Costa Oeste, había tres opciones: algunos navegaban alrededor del extremo sur de Sudamérica durante un viaje de seis meses, algunos emprendieron el peligroso viaje a través del istmo de Panamá, pero otros 400.000 caminaron hasta allí en una ruta terrestre de más de 2.000 millas (3.200 km); sus caravanas de carretas generalmente partían de Missouri. Se movían en grandes grupos bajo la dirección de un capataz experimentado, llevando su ropa, suministros agrícolas, armas y animales. Estas caravanas de carretas seguían ríos importantes, cruzaban praderas y montañas y, por lo general, terminaban en Oregón y California. Los pioneros generalmente intentaban completar el viaje durante una sola estación cálida, generalmente durante seis meses. En 1836, cuando se organizó la primera caravana de carretas de migrantes en Independence, Missouri , se había despejado un sendero de carretas hasta Fort Hall, Idaho . Los senderos se despejaron cada vez más hacia el oeste, hasta llegar finalmente al valle de Willamette en Oregón. Esta red de caminos para carros que conducían al noroeste del Pacífico se denominó posteriormente Camino de Oregón . La mitad oriental de la ruta también fue utilizada por viajeros del Camino de California (desde 1843), el Camino Mormón (desde 1847) y el Camino de Bozeman (desde 1863) antes de desviarse hacia sus destinos separados. [122]
En la "Carretera de carretas de 1843", entre 700 y 1.000 emigrantes se dirigieron a Oregón; el misionero Marcus Whitman encabezó las carretas en el último tramo. En 1846, se completó la carretera Barlow alrededor del monte Hood, proporcionando una ruta de carretas accidentada pero transitable desde el río Misuri hasta el valle de Willamette: alrededor de 3.200 km (2.000 millas). [123] Aunque la dirección principal de viaje en las primeras rutas de carretas era hacia el oeste, la gente también usaba la Ruta de Oregón para viajar hacia el este. Algunos lo hacían porque estaban desanimados y derrotados. Algunos regresaban con bolsas de oro y plata. La mayoría regresaba para recoger a sus familias y trasladarlas de regreso al oeste. Estos "regresos" eran una importante fuente de información y entusiasmo sobre las maravillas y promesas (y peligros y decepciones) del lejano Oeste. [124]
No todos los emigrantes llegaron a su destino. Los peligros de la ruta terrestre eran numerosos: mordeduras de serpientes, accidentes de carros, violencia de otros viajeros, suicidio, desnutrición, estampidas, ataques nativos, una variedad de enfermedades ( disentería , fiebre tifoidea y cólera estaban entre las más comunes), exposición, avalanchas, etc. Un ejemplo particularmente conocido de la naturaleza traicionera del viaje es la historia de la desafortunada expedición Donner , que quedó atrapada en las montañas de Sierra Nevada durante el invierno de 1846-1847. La mitad de las 90 personas que viajaban con el grupo murieron de hambre y exposición, y algunos recurrieron al canibalismo para sobrevivir. [125] Otra historia de canibalismo presentó a Alferd Packer y su viaje a Colorado en 1874. También hubo frecuentes ataques de bandidos y salteadores de caminos , como los infames hermanos Harpe que patrullaban las rutas fronterizas y atacaban a los grupos de migrantes. [126] [127]
En Misuri e Illinois, la animosidad entre los colonos mormones y los lugareños creció, lo que reflejaría los de otros estados como Utah años después. La violencia finalmente estalló el 24 de octubre de 1838, cuando las milicias de ambos lados se enfrentaron y se produjo una matanza masiva de mormones en el condado de Livingston 6 días después. [128] Se presentó una orden de exterminio mormón durante estos conflictos, y los mormones se vieron obligados a dispersarse. [129] Brigham Young , que buscaba abandonar la jurisdicción estadounidense para escapar de la persecución religiosa en Illinois y Misuri, llevó a los mormones al valle del Gran Lago Salado , propiedad en ese momento de México pero no controlado por ellos. Un centenar de asentamientos rurales mormones surgieron en lo que Young llamó " Deseret ", que gobernó como una teocracia. Más tarde se convirtió en el Territorio de Utah. El asentamiento de Young en Salt Lake City sirvió como centro de su red, que también se extendió a los territorios vecinos. El comunalismo y las prácticas agrícolas avanzadas de los mormones les permitieron tener éxito. [130] Los mormones a menudo vendían bienes a las caravanas de carros que pasaban por allí y llegaron a acuerdos con las tribus nativas locales porque Young decidió que era más barato alimentar a los nativos que luchar contra ellos. [131] La educación se convirtió en una alta prioridad para proteger al grupo asediado, reducir la herejía y mantener la solidaridad grupal. [132]
Tras el fin de la guerra entre México y Estados Unidos en 1848, México cedió Utah a los Estados Unidos. Aunque los mormones de Utah habían apoyado los esfuerzos de Estados Unidos durante la guerra, el gobierno federal, impulsado por las iglesias protestantes, rechazó la teocracia y la poligamia. Fundado en 1852, el Partido Republicano era abiertamente hostil hacia la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días (Iglesia SUD) en Utah por la práctica de la poligamia, considerada por la mayoría del público estadounidense como una afrenta a los valores religiosos, culturales y morales de la civilización moderna. Los enfrentamientos rayaron en la guerra abierta a finales de la década de 1850, cuando el presidente Buchanan envió tropas. Aunque no se libraron batallas militares y las negociaciones llevaron a una retirada, la violencia se intensificó y hubo varias víctimas. [133] Después de la Guerra Civil, el gobierno federal tomó sistemáticamente el control de Utah, la Iglesia SUD fue legalmente desincorporada en el territorio y los miembros de la jerarquía de la iglesia, incluyendo a Young, fueron removidos sumariamente y excluidos de prácticamente todos los cargos públicos. [134] Mientras tanto, el exitoso trabajo misionero en los EE. UU. y Europa trajo una avalancha de conversos mormones a Utah. Durante este tiempo, el Congreso se negó a admitir a Utah en la Unión como un estado y la estadidad significaría el fin del control federal directo sobre el territorio y el posible ascenso de políticos elegidos y controlados por la Iglesia SUD a la mayoría, si no todos, los cargos electos federales, estatales y locales del nuevo estado. Finalmente, en 1890, el liderazgo de la iglesia anunció que la poligamia ya no era un principio central, a partir de entonces un compromiso. En 1896, Utah fue admitido como el estado número 45 con los mormones divididos entre republicanos y demócratas. [135]
El gobierno federal proporcionó subsidios para el desarrollo del correo y la entrega de mercancías, y en 1856, el Congreso autorizó mejoras en las carreteras y un servicio de correo terrestre a California. El nuevo servicio de trenes de carretas comerciales transportaba principalmente mercancías. En 1858, John Butterfield (1801-1869) estableció un servicio de diligencias que iba de San Luis a San Francisco en 24 días a lo largo de una ruta del sur. Esta ruta fue abandonada en 1861 después de que Texas se uniera a la Confederación, a favor de los servicios de diligencias establecidos a través de Fort Laramie y Salt Lake City , un viaje de 24 días, con Wells Fargo & Co. como el principal proveedor (inicialmente utilizando el antiguo nombre "Butterfield"). [136]
William Russell, con la esperanza de obtener un contrato gubernamental para un servicio de entrega de correo más rápido, inició el Pony Express en 1860, reduciendo el tiempo de entrega a diez días. Instaló más de 150 estaciones a unas 15 millas (24 km) de distancia.
En 1861, el Congreso aprobó la Ley de Telégrafos de Concesión de Tierras, que financió la construcción de las líneas telegráficas transcontinentales de Western Union. Hiram Sibley , director de Western Union, negoció acuerdos exclusivos con los ferrocarriles para que instalaran líneas telegráficas a lo largo de sus derechos de paso. Ocho años antes de que se inaugurara el ferrocarril transcontinental, el primer telégrafo transcontinental unió Omaha, Nebraska, con San Francisco el 24 de octubre de 1861. [137] El Pony Express terminó en tan solo 18 meses porque no podía competir con el telégrafo. [138] [139]
Constitucionalmente, el Congreso no podía tratar la esclavitud en los estados, pero tenía jurisdicción en los territorios occidentales. California rechazó por unanimidad la esclavitud en 1850 y se convirtió en un estado libre. Nuevo México permitió la esclavitud, pero rara vez se vio allí. Kansas estaba fuera de los límites de la esclavitud por el Compromiso de 1820. Los elementos del suelo libre temían que si se permitía la esclavitud, los plantadores ricos comprarían las mejores tierras y las trabajarían con cuadrillas de esclavos, dejando pocas oportunidades para que los hombres blancos libres tuvieran granjas. Pocos plantadores sureños estaban interesados en Kansas, pero la idea de que la esclavitud fuera ilegal allí implicaba que tenían un estatus de segunda clase que era intolerable para su sentido del honor y parecía violar el principio de los derechos de los estados . Con la aprobación de la extremadamente controvertida Ley Kansas-Nebraska en 1854, el Congreso dejó la decisión en manos de los votantes en el terreno en Kansas. En todo el Norte, se formó un nuevo partido importante para luchar contra la esclavitud: el Partido Republicano , con numerosos occidentales en puestos de liderazgo, sobre todo Abraham Lincoln de Illinois. Para influir en la decisión territorial, los elementos antiesclavistas (también llamados "Jayhawkers" o "Free-soilers") financiaron la migración de colonos políticamente decididos. Pero los defensores de la esclavitud contraatacaron con colonos proesclavistas de Missouri. [140] El resultado fue la violencia en ambos bandos; en total, 56 hombres habían sido asesinados cuando la violencia disminuyó en 1859. [141] En 1860, las fuerzas proesclavistas tenían el control, pero Kansas solo tenía dos esclavos. Las fuerzas antiesclavistas tomaron el poder en 1861, cuando Kansas se convirtió en un estado libre. El episodio demostró que un compromiso democrático entre el Norte y el Sur sobre la esclavitud era imposible y sirvió para acelerar la Guerra Civil. [142]
A pesar de su gran territorio, el oeste trans-Mississippi tenía una población pequeña y su historia de guerra ha sido en gran medida subestimada en la historiografía de la Guerra Civil estadounidense. [143]
La Confederación participó en varias campañas importantes en el Oeste. Sin embargo, Kansas, una importante zona de conflicto que precedió a la guerra, fue escenario de una sola batalla, en Mine Creek . Pero su proximidad a las líneas confederadas permitió que las guerrillas pro-confederadas, como los Raiders de Quantrill , atacaran los bastiones de la Unión y masacraran a los residentes. [144]
En Texas, los ciudadanos votaron para unirse a la Confederación; los alemanes pacifistas fueron ahorcados. [145] Las tropas locales tomaron el arsenal federal en San Antonio, con planes de apoderarse de los territorios del norte de Nuevo México, Utah y Colorado, y posiblemente California. La Arizona Confederada fue creada por ciudadanos de Arizona que querían protección contra las incursiones apaches después de que las unidades del Ejército de los Estados Unidos se retiraran. La Confederación luego se propuso obtener el control del Territorio de Nuevo México. El general Henry Hopkins Sibley fue asignado para la campaña y, junto con su Ejército de Nuevo México , marchó directamente hacia el Río Grande en un intento de tomar la riqueza mineral de Colorado y California. El Primer Regimiento de Voluntarios descubrió a los rebeldes, e inmediatamente advirtieron y se unieron a los yanquis en Fort Union. Pronto estalló la Batalla de Glorieta Pass , y la Unión puso fin a la campaña confederada y el área al oeste de Texas permaneció en manos de la Unión. [146] [147]
Misuri , un estado fronterizo del sur donde la esclavitud era legal, se convirtió en un campo de batalla cuando el gobernador secesionista, en contra del voto de la legislatura, condujo tropas al arsenal federal en San Luis ; recibió la ayuda de fuerzas confederadas de Arkansas y Luisiana. El gobernador de Misuri y parte de la legislatura estatal firmaron una Ordenanza de Secesión en Neosho, formando el gobierno confederado de Misuri y la Confederación controlando el sur de Misuri. Sin embargo, el general de la Unión Samuel Curtis recuperó San Luis y todo Misuri para la Unión. El estado fue escenario de numerosas incursiones y guerra de guerrillas en el oeste. [148]
Después de 1850, el ejército estadounidense estableció una serie de puestos militares a lo largo de la frontera, diseñados para detener la guerra entre tribus nativas o entre nativos y colonos. A lo largo del siglo XIX, los oficiales del ejército generalmente desarrollaron sus carreras en funciones de mantenimiento de la paz, pasando de un fuerte a otro hasta su jubilación. La experiencia real en combate era poco común para cualquier soldado. [149]
The most dramatic conflict was the Sioux war in Minnesota in 1862 when Dakota tribes systematically attacked German farms to drive out the settlers. For several days, Dakota attacks at the Lower Sioux Agency, New Ulm, and Hutchinson killed 300 to 400 white settlers. The state militia fought back and Lincoln sent in federal troops. The ensuing battles at Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, Fort Abercrombie, and Wood Lake punctuated a six-week war, which ended in an American victory. The federal government tried 425 Natives for murder, and 303 were convicted and sentenced to death. Lincoln pardoned the majority, but 38 leaders were hanged.[150]
The decreased presence of Union troops in the West left behind untrained militias; hostile tribes used the opportunity to attack settlers. The militia struck back hard, most notably by attacking the winter quarters of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, filled with women and children, at the Sand Creek massacre in eastern Colorado in late 1864.[151]
Kit Carson and the U.S. Army in 1864 trapped the entire Navajo tribe in New Mexico, where they had been raiding settlers and put them on a reservation.[152] Within the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, conflicts arose among the Five Civilized Tribes, most of which sided with the South being slaveholders themselves.[153]
In 1862, Congress enacted two major laws to facilitate settlement of the West: the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Act. The result by 1890 was millions of new farms in the Plains states, many operated by new immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia.
With the war over and slavery abolished, the federal government focused on improving the governance of the territories. It subdivided several territories, preparing them for statehood, following the precedents set by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It standardized procedures and the supervision of territorial governments, taking away some local powers, and imposing much "red tape", growing the federal bureaucracy significantly.[154]
Federal involvement in the territories was considerable. In addition to direct subsidies, the federal government maintained military posts, provided safety from Native attacks, bankrolled treaty obligations, conducted surveys and land sales, built roads, staffed land offices, made harbor improvements, and subsidized overland mail delivery. Territorial citizens came to both decry federal power and local corruption, and at the same time, lament that more federal dollars were not sent their way.[155]
Territorial governors were political appointees and beholden to Washington so they usually governed with a light hand, allowing the legislatures to deal with the local issues. In addition to his role as civil governor, a territorial governor was also a militia commander, a local superintendent of Native affairs, and the state liaison with federal agencies. The legislatures, on the other hand, spoke for the local citizens and they were given considerable leeway by the federal government to make local law.[156]
These improvements to governance still left plenty of room for profiteering. As Mark Twain wrote while working for his brother, the secretary of Nevada, "The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two."[157] "Territorial rings", corrupt associations of local politicians and business owners buttressed with federal patronage, embezzled from Native tribes and local citizens, especially in the Dakota and New Mexico territories.[158]
In acquiring, preparing, and distributing public land to private ownership, the federal government generally followed the system set forth by the Land Ordinance of 1785. Federal exploration and scientific teams would undertake reconnaissance of the land and determine Native American habitation. Through treaties, the land titles would be ceded by the resident tribes. Then surveyors would create detailed maps marking the land into squares of six miles (10 km) on each side, subdivided first into one square mile blocks, then into 160-acre (0.65 km2) lots. Townships would be formed from the lots and sold at public auction. Unsold land could be purchased from the land office at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre.[159]
As part of public policy, the government would award public land to certain groups such as veterans, through the use of "land script". The script traded in a financial market, often at below the $1.25 per acre minimum price set by law, which gave speculators, investors, and developers another way to acquire large tracts of land cheaply.[160] Land policy became politicized by competing factions and interests, and the question of slavery on new lands was contentious. As a counter to land speculators, farmers formed "claims clubs" to enable them to buy larger tracts than the 160-acre (0.65 km2) allotments by trading among themselves at controlled prices.[161]
In 1862, Congress passed three important bills that transformed the land system. The Homestead Act granted 160 acres (0.65 km2) free to each settler who improved the land for five years; citizens and non-citizens including squatters and women were all eligible. The only cost was a modest filing fee. The law was especially important in the settling of the Plains states. Many took a free homestead and others purchased their land from railroads at low rates.[162][163]
The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 provided for the land needed to build the transcontinental railroad. The land was given the railroads alternated with government-owned tracts saved for free distribution to homesteaders. To be equitable, the federal government reduced each tract to 80 acres (32 ha) because of its perceived higher value given its proximity to the rail line. Railroads had up to five years to sell or mortgage their land, after tracks were laid, after which unsold land could be purchased by anyone. Often railroads sold some of their government acquired land to homesteaders immediately to encourage settlement and the growth of markets the railroads would then be able to serve. Nebraska railroads in the 1870s were strong boosters of lands along their routes. They sent agents to Germany and Scandinavia with package deals that included cheap transportation for the family as well as its furniture and farm tools, and they offered long-term credit at low rates. Boosterism succeeded in attracting adventurous American and European families to Nebraska, helping them purchase land grant parcels on good terms. The selling price depended on such factors as soil quality, water, and distance from the railroad.[164]
The Morrill Act of 1862 provided land grants to states to begin colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts (engineering). Black colleges became eligible for these land grants in 1890. The Act succeeded in its goals to open new universities and make farming more scientific and profitable.[165]
In the 1850s, the U.S. government sponsored surveys that charted the remaining unexplored regions of the West in order to plan possible routes for a transcontinental railroad. Much of this work was undertaken by the Corps of Engineers, Corps of Topographical Engineers, and Bureau of Explorations and Surveys, and became known as "The Great Reconnaissance". Regionalism animated debates in Congress regarding the choice of a northern, central, or southern route. Engineering requirements for the rail route were an adequate supply of water and wood, and as nearly-level route as possible, given the weak locomotives of the era.[166]
Proposals to build a transcontinental failed because of Congressional disputes over slavery. With the secession of the Confederate states in 1861, the modernizers in the Republican party took over Congress and wanted a line to link to California. Private companies were to build and operate the line. Construction would be done by unskilled laborers who would live in temporary camps along the way. Immigrants from China and Ireland did most of the construction work. Theodore Judah, the chief engineer of the Central Pacific surveyed the route from San Francisco east. Judah's tireless lobbying efforts in Washington were largely responsible for the passage of the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, which authorized construction of both the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific (which built west from Omaha).[167] In 1862 four rich San Francisco merchants (Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins) took charge, with Crocker in charge of construction. The line was completed in May 1869. Coast-to-coast passenger travel in 8 days now replaced wagon trains or sea voyages that took 6 to 10 months and cost much more.
The road was built with mortgages from New York, Boston, and London, backed by land grants. There were no federal cash subsidies, But there was a loan to the Central Pacific that was eventually repaid at six percent interest. The federal government offered land-grants in a checkerboard pattern. The railroad sold every-other square, with the government opening its half to homesteaders. The government also loaned money—later repaid—at $16,000 per mile on level stretches, and $32,000 to $48,000 in mountainous terrain. Local and state governments also aided the financing.
Most of the manual laborers on the Central Pacific were new arrivals from China.[168] Kraus shows how these men lived and worked, and how they managed their money. He concludes that senior officials quickly realized the high degree of cleanliness and reliability of the Chinese.[169] The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese workers, 90% of its manual workforce. Ong explores whether or not the Chinese railroad workers were exploited by the railroad, with whites in better positions. He finds the railroad set different wage rates for whites and Chinese and used the latter in the more menial and dangerous jobs, such as the handling and the pouring of nitroglycerin.[170] However the railroad also provided camps and food the Chinese wanted and protected the Chinese workers from threats from whites.[171]
Building the railroad required six main activities: surveying the route, blasting a right of way, building tunnels and bridges, clearing and laying the roadbed, laying the ties and rails, and maintaining and supplying the crews with food and tools. The work was highly physical, using horse-drawn plows and scrapers, and manual picks, axes, sledgehammers, and handcarts. A few steam-driven machines, such as shovels, were used. The rails were iron (steel came a few years later), weighed 700 lb (320 kg) and required five men to lift. For blasting, they used black powder. The Union Pacific construction crews, mostly Irish Americans, averaged about two miles (3 km) of new track per day.[172]
Six transcontinental railroads were built in the Gilded Age (plus two in Canada); they opened up the West to farmers and ranchers. From north to south they were the Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road, and Great Northern along the Canada–U.S. border; the Union Pacific/Central Pacific in the middle, and to the south the Santa Fe, and the Southern Pacific. All but the Great Northern of James J. Hill relied on land grants. The financial stories were often complex. For example, the Northern Pacific received its major land grant in 1864. Financier Jay Cooke (1821–1905) was in charge until 1873 when he went bankrupt. Federal courts, however, kept bankrupt railroads in operation. In 1881 Henry Villard (1835–1900) took over and finally completed the line to Seattle. But the line went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893 and Hill took it over. He then merged several lines with financing from J.P. Morgan, but President Theodore Roosevelt broke them up in 1904.[173]
In the first year of operation, 1869–70, 150,000 passengers made the long trip. Settlers were encouraged with promotions to come West on free scouting trips to buy railroad land on easy terms spread over several years. The railroads had "Immigration Bureaus" which advertised package low-cost deals including passage and land on easy terms for farmers in Germany and Scandinavia. The prairies, they were promised, did not mean backbreaking toil because "settling on the prairie which is ready for the plow is different from plunging into a region covered with timber".[174] The settlers were customers of the railroads, shipping their crops and cattle out, and bringing in manufactured products. All manufacturers benefited from the lower costs of transportation and the much larger radius of business.[175]
White concludes with a mixed verdict. The transcontinentals did open up the West to settlement, brought in many thousands of high-tech, highly paid workers and managers, created thousands of towns and cities, oriented the nation onto an east–west axis, and proved highly valuable for the nation as a whole. On the other hand, too many were built, and they were built too far ahead of actual demand. The result was a bubble that left heavy losses to investors and led to poor management practices. By contrast, as White notes, the lines in the Midwest and East supported by a very large population base, fostered farming, industry, and mining while generating steady profits and receiving few government benefits.[176]
After the Civil War, many from the East Coast and Europe were lured west by reports from relatives and by extensive advertising campaigns promising "the Best Prairie Lands", "Low Prices", "Large Discounts For Cash", and "Better Terms Than Ever!". The new railroads provided the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special family tickets, the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the railroads. Farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east. Water management was more critical, lightning fires were more prevalent, the weather was more extreme, rainfall was less predictable.[177]
The fearful stayed home. The actual migrants looked beyond fears of the unknown. Their chief motivation to move west was to find a better economic life than the one they had. Farmers sought larger, cheaper, and more fertile land; merchants and tradesmen sought new customers and new leadership opportunities. Laborers wanted higher paying work and better conditions. As settlers moved west, they had to face challenges along the way, such as the lack of wood for housing, bad weather like blizzards and droughts, and fearsome tornadoes.[178] In the treeless prairies homesteaders built sod houses. One of the greatest plagues that hit the homesteaders was the 1874 Locust Plague which devastated the Great Plains.[179] These challenges hardened these settlers in taming the frontier.[180]
After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, Tsar Alexander II of Russia decided to sell the Russian American territory of Alaska to the United States. The decision was motivated in part by a need for money and in part a recognition amongst the Russian state that Britain could easily capture Alaska in any future conflict between the two nations. U.S. Secretary of State William Seward negotiated with the Russians to acquire the tremendous landmass of Alaska, an area roughly one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States. On March 30, 1867, the U.S. purchased the territory from the Russians for $7.2 million ($157 million in 2023 dollars). The transfer ceremony was completed in Sitka on October 18, 1867, as Russian soldiers handed over the territory to the United States Army.
Critics at the time decried the purchase as "Seward's Folly", reasoning that there were no natural resources in the new territory and no one can be bothered to live in such a cold, icy climate. Although the development and settlement of Alaska grew slowly, the discovery of goldfields during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896, Nome Gold Rush in 1898, and Fairbanks Gold Rush in 1902 brought thousands of miners into the territory, thus propelling Alaska's prosperity for decades to come. Major oil discoveries in the late 20th century made the state rich.[181]
In 1889, Washington opened 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2) of unoccupied lands in the Oklahoma territory. On April 22, over 100,000 settlers and cattlemen (known as "boomers")[182] lined up at the border, and when the army's guns and bugles giving the signal, began a mad dash to stake their claims in the Land Run of 1889. A witness wrote, "The horsemen had the best of it from the start. It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as the eye could see".[183] In a single day, the towns of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Guthrie came into existence. In the same manner, millions of acres of additional land were opened up and settled in the following four years.[184]
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Indian wars have occurred throughout the United States though the conflicts are generally separated into two categories; the Indian wars east of the Mississippi River and the Indian wars west of the Mississippi. The U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894) provided an estimate of deaths:
The "Indian" wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians. The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the given... Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate...[185]
Historian Russell Thornton estimates that from 1800 to 1890, the Native population declined from 600,000 to as few as 250,000. The depopulation was principally caused by disease as well as warfare. Many tribes in Texas, such as the Karankawan, Akokisa, Bidui and others, were extinguished due to conflicts with Texan settlers.[186] The rapid depopulation of the Native Americans after the Civil War alarmed the U.S. government, and the Doolittle Committee was formed to investigate the causes as well as provide recommendations for preserving the population.[187][188] The solutions presented by the committee, such as the establishment of the five boards of inspection to prevent Native abuses, had little effect as large Western migration commenced.[189]
The expansion of migration into the Southeastern United States in the 1820s to the 1830s forced the federal government to deal with the "Indian question". The Natives were under federal control but were independent of state governments. State legislatures and state judges had no authority on their lands, and the states demanded control. Politically the new Democratic Party of President Andrew Jackson demanded the removal of the Natives out of the southeastern states to new lands in the west, while the Whig Party and the Protestant churches were opposed to removal. The Jacksonian Democracy proved irresistible, as it won the presidential elections of 1828, 1832, and 1836. By 1837 the "Indian Removal policy" began, to implement the act of Congress signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Many historians have sharply attacked Jackson.[190] The 1830 law theoretically provided for voluntary removal and had safeguards for the rights of Natives, but in reality, the removal was involuntary, brutal and ignored safeguards.[191] Jackson justified his actions by stating that Natives had "neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvements".[192]
The forced march of about twenty tribes included the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole). To motivate Natives reluctant to move, the federal government also promised rifles, blankets, tobacco, and cash. By 1835 the Cherokee, the last Native nation in the South, had signed the removal treaty and relocated to Oklahoma. All the tribes were given new land in the "Indian Territory" (which later became Oklahoma). Of the approximate 70,000 Natives removed, about 18,000 died from disease, starvation, and exposure on the route.[193] This exodus has become known as the Trail of Tears (in Cherokee "Nunna dual Tsuny", "The Trail Where they Cried"). The impact of the removals was severe. The transplanted tribes had considerable difficulty adapting to their new surroundings and sometimes clashed with the tribes native to the area.[194]
The only way for a Native to remain and avoid removal was to accept the federal offer of 640 acres (2.6 km2) or more of land (depending on family size) in exchange for leaving the tribe and becoming a state citizen subject to state law and federal law. However, many Natives who took the offer were defrauded by "ravenous speculators" who stole their claims and sold their land to whites. In Mississippi alone, fraudulent claims reached 3,800,000 acres (15,000 km2). Of the five tribes, the Seminole offered the most resistance, hiding out in the Florida swamps and waging a war which cost the U.S. Army 1,500 lives and $20 million.[195]
Native warriors in the West, using their traditional style of limited, battle-oriented warfare, confronted the U.S. Army. The Natives emphasized bravery in combat while the Army put its emphasis not so much on individual combat as on building networks of forts, developing a logistics system, and using the telegraph and railroads to coordinate and concentrate its forces. Plains Indian intertribal warfare bore no resemblance to the "modern" warfare practiced by the Americans along European lines, using its vast advantages in population and resources. Many tribes avoided warfare and others supported the U.S. Army. The tribes hostile to the government continued to pursue their traditional brand of fighting and, therefore, were unable to have any permanent success against the Army.[196]
Indian wars were fought throughout the western regions, with more conflicts in the states bordering Mexico than in the interior states. Arizona ranked highest, with 310 known battles fought within the state's boundaries between Americans and the Natives. Arizona ranked highest in war deaths, with 4,340 killed, including soldiers, civilians, and Native Americans. That was more than twice as many as occurred in Texas, the second-highest-ranking state. Most of the deaths in Arizona were caused by the Apache. Michno also says that fifty-one percent of the Indian war battles between 1850 and 1890 took place in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, as well as thirty-seven percent of the casualties in the county west of the Mississippi River.[197] The Comanche fought a number of conflicts against Spanish and later Mexican and American armies. Comanche power peaked in the 1840s when they conducted large-scale raids hundreds of miles into Mexico proper, while also warring against the Anglo-Americans and Tejanos who had settled in independent Texas.[198]
One of the deadliest Indian wars fought was the Snake War in 1864–1868, which was conducted by a confederacy of Northern Paiute, Bannock and Shoshone Native Americans, called the "Snake Indians" against the United States Army in the states of Oregon, Nevada, California, and Idaho which ran along the Snake River.[199] The war started when tension arose between the local Natives and the flooding pioneer trains encroaching through their lands, which resulted in competition for food and resources. Natives included in this group attacked and harassed emigrant parties and miners crossing the Snake River Valley, which resulted in further retaliation of the white settlements and the intervention of the United States army. The war resulted in a total of 1,762 men who have been killed, wounded, and captured from both sides. Unlike other Indian Wars, the Snake War has widely forgotten in United States history due to having only limited coverage of the war.[200]
The Colorado War fought by Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux, was fought in the territories of Colorado to Nebraska. The conflict was fought in 1863–1865 while the American Civil War was still ongoing. Caused by dissolution between the Natives and the white settlers in the region, the war was infamous for the atrocities done between the two parties. White militias destroyed Native villages and killed Native women and children such as the bloody Sand Creek massacre, and the Natives also raided ranches, farms and killed white families such as the American Ranch massacre and Raid on Godfrey Ranch.[201][202]
In the Apache Wars, Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson forced the Mescalero Apache onto a reservation in 1862. In 1863–1864, Carson used a scorched earth policy in the Navajo Campaign, burning Navajo fields and homes, and capturing or killing their livestock. He was aided by other Native tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes.[203] Another prominent conflict of this war was Geronimo's fight against settlements in Texas in the 1880s. The Apaches under his command conducted ambushes on US cavalries and forts, such as their attack on Cibecue Creek, while also raiding upon prominent farms and ranches, such as their infamous attack on the Empire Ranch that killed three cowboys.[204][205] The U.S. finally induced the last hostile Apache band under Geronimo to surrender in 1886.
During the Comanche Campaign, the Red River War was fought in 1874–1875 in response to the Comanche's dwindling food supply of buffalo, as well as the refusal of a few bands to be inducted in reservations.[206] Comanches started raiding small settlements in Texas, which led to the Battle of Buffalo Wallow and Second Battle of Adobe Walls fought by buffalo hunters, and the Battle of Lost Valley against the Texas Rangers. The war finally ended with a final confrontation between the Comanches and the U.S. Cavalry in Palo Duro Canyon. The last Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker, surrendered in June 1875, which would finally end the wars fought by Texans and Natives.[207]
Red Cloud's War was led by the Lakota chief Red Cloud against the military who were erecting forts along the Bozeman Trail. It was the most successful campaign against the U.S. during the Indian Wars. By the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), the U.S. granted a large reservation to the Lakota, without military presence; it included the entire Black Hills.[208] Captain Jack was a chief of the Native American Modoc tribe of California and Oregon, and was their leader during the Modoc War. With 53 Modoc warriors, Captain Jack held off 1,000 men of the U.S. Army for seven months. Captain Jack killed Edward Canby.[209]
In June 1877, in the Nez Perce War the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph, unwilling to give up their traditional lands and move to a reservation, undertook a 1,200-mile (2,000 km) fighting retreat from Oregon to near the Canada–U.S. border in Montana. Numbering only 200 warriors, the Nez Perce "battled some 2,000 American regulars and volunteers of different military units, together with their Native auxiliaries of many tribes, in a total of eighteen engagements, including four major battles and at least four fiercely contested skirmishes."[210] The Nez Perce were finally surrounded at the Battle of Bear Paw and surrendered. The Great Sioux War of 1876 was conducted by the Lakota under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The conflict began after repeated violations of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) once gold was discovered in the hills. One of its famous battles was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by General George Armstrong Custer.[211] The Ute War, fought by the Ute people against settlers in Utah and Colorado, led to two battles; the Meeker massacre which killed 11 Native agents, and the Pinhook massacre which killed 13 armed ranchers and cowboys.[212][213] The Ute conflicts finally ended after the events of the Posey War in 1923 which was fought against settlers and law enforcement.[214]
The end of the major Indian wars came at the Wounded Knee massacre on December 29, 1890, where the 7th Cavalry attempted to disarm a Sioux man and precipitated a massacre in which about 150 Sioux men, women, and children were killed. Only thirteen days before, Sitting Bull had been killed with his son Crow Foot in a gun battle with a group of Native police that had been sent by the American government to arrest him.[215] Additional conflicts and incidents though, such as the Bluff War (1914–1915) and Posey War, would occur into the early 1920s.[214] The last combat engagement between U.S. Army soldiers and Native Americans though occurred in the Battle of Bear Valley on January 9, 1918.[216]
As the frontier moved westward, the establishment of U.S. military forts moved with it, representing and maintaining federal sovereignty over new territories.[217][218] The military garrisons usually lacked defensible walls but were seldom attacked. They served as bases for troops at or near strategic areas, particularly for counteracting the Native presence. For example, Fort Bowie protected Apache Pass in southern Arizona along the mail route between Tucson and El Paso and was used to launch attacks against Cochise and Geronimo. Fort Laramie and Fort Kearny helped protect immigrants crossing the Great Plains and a series of posts in California protected miners. Forts were constructed to launch attacks against the Sioux. As Indian reservations sprang up, the military set up forts to protect them. Forts also guarded the Union Pacific and other rail lines. Other important forts were Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Fort Snelling, Minnesota, Fort Union, New Mexico, Fort Worth, Texas, and Fort Walla Walla in Washington. Fort Omaha, Nebraska, was home to the Department of the Platte, and was responsible for outfitting most Western posts for more than 20 years after its founding in the late 1870s. Fort Huachuca in Arizona was also originally a frontier post and is still in use by the United States Army.
Settlers on their way overland to Oregon and California became targets of Native threats. Robert L. Munkres read 66 diaries of parties traveling the Oregon Trail between 1834 and 1860 to estimate the actual dangers they faced from Native attacks in Nebraska and Wyoming. The vast majority of diarists reported no armed attacks at all. However many did report harassment by Natives who begged or demanded tolls, and stole horses and cattle.[219] Madsen reports that the Shoshoni and Bannock tribes north and west of Utah were more aggressive toward wagon trains.[220] The federal government attempted to reduce tensions and create new tribal boundaries in the Great Plains with two new treaties in early 1850, The Treaty of Fort Laramie established tribal zones for the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Crows, and others, and allowed for the building of roads and posts across the tribal lands. A second treaty secured safe passage along the Santa Fe Trail for wagon trains. In return, the tribes would receive, for ten years, annual compensation for damages caused by migrants.[221] The Kansas and Nebraska territories also became contentious areas as the federal government sought those lands for the future transcontinental railroad. In the Far West settlers began to occupy land in Oregon and California before the federal government secured title from the native tribes, causing considerable friction. In Utah, the Mormons also moved in before federal ownership was obtained.
A new policy of establishing reservations came gradually into shape after the boundaries of the "Indian Territory" began to be ignored. In providing for Indian reservations, Congress and the Office of Indian Affairs hoped to de-tribalize Native Americans and prepare them for integration with the rest of American society, the "ultimate incorporation into the great body of our citizen population".[222] This allowed for the development of dozens of riverfront towns along the Missouri River in the new Nebraska Territory, which was carved from the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase after the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Influential pioneer towns included Omaha, Nebraska City, and St. Joseph.
American attitudes towards Natives during this period ranged from malevolence ("the only good Indian is a dead Indian") to misdirected humanitarianism (Indians live in "inferior" societies and by assimilation into white society they can be redeemed) to somewhat realistic (Native Americans and settlers could co-exist in separate but equal societies, dividing up the remaining western land).[223] Dealing with nomadic tribes complicated the reservation strategy and decentralized tribal power made treaty making difficult among the Plains Indians. Conflicts erupted in the 1850s, resulting in various Indian wars.[224] In these times of conflict, Natives become more stringent about white men entering their territory. Such as in the case of Oliver Loving, they would sometimes attack cowboys and their cattle if ever caught crossing in the borders of their land.[225][226] They would also prey upon livestock if the food was scarce during hard times. However, the relationship between cowboys and Native Americans were more mutual than they are portrayed, and the former would occasionally pay a fine of 10 cents per cow for the latter to allow them to travel through their land.[227] Natives also preyed upon stagecoaches travelling in the frontier for its horses and valuables.[228]
After the Civil War, as the volunteer armies disbanded, the regular army cavalry regiments increased in number from six to ten, among them Custer's U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment of Little Bighorn fame, and the African-American U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment and U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment. The black units, along with others (both cavalry and infantry), collectively became known as the Buffalo Soldiers. According to Robert M. Utley:
The frontier army was a conventional military force trying to control, by conventional military methods, a people that did not behave like conventional enemies and, indeed, quite often were not enemies at all. This is the most difficult of all military assignments, whether in Africa, Asia, or the American West.[229]
Westerners were proud of their leadership in the movement for democracy and equality, a major theme for Frederick Jackson Turner. The new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Ohio were more democratic than the parent states back East in terms of politics and society.[230] The Western states were the first to give women the right to vote. By 1900 the West, especially California and Oregon, led the Progressive movement.
Scholars have examined the social history of the west in search of the American character. The history of Kansas, argued historian Carl L. Becker a century ago, reflects American ideals. He wrote: "The Kansas spirit is the American spirit double distilled. It is a new grafted product of American individualism, American idealism, American intolerance. Kansas is America in microcosm."[231]
Scholars have compared the emergence of democracy in America with other countries, regarding the frontier experience.[232] Selwyn Troen has made the comparison with Israel. The American frontiersmen relied on individual effort, in the context of very large quantities of unsettled land with weak external enemies. Israel by contrast, operated in a very small geographical zone, surrounded by more powerful neighbors. The Jewish pioneer was not building an individual or family enterprise, but was a conscious participant in nation-building, with a high priority on collective and cooperative planned settlements. The Israeli pioneers brought in American experts on irrigation and agriculture to provide technical advice. However, they rejected the American frontier model in favor of a European model that supported their political and security concerns.[233]
The cities played an essential role in the development of the frontier, as transportation hubs, financial and communications centers, and providers of merchandise, services, and entertainment.[234] As the railroads pushed westward into the unsettled territory after 1860, they build service towns to handle the needs of railroad construction crews, train crews, and passengers who ate meals at scheduled stops.[235] In most of the South, there were very few cities of any size for miles around, and this pattern held for Texas as well, so railroads did not arrive until the 1880s. They then shipped the cattle out and cattle drives became short-distance affairs. However, the passenger trains were often the targets of armed gangs.[236]
Denver's economy before 1870 had been rooted in mining; it then grew by expanding its role in railroads, wholesale trade, manufacturing, food processing, and servicing the growing agricultural and ranching hinterland. Between 1870 and 1890, manufacturing output soared from $600,000 to $40 million, and the population grew by a factor of 20 times to 107,000. Denver had always attracted miners, workers, whores, and travelers. Saloons and gambling dens sprung up overnight. The city fathers boasted of its fine theaters, and especially the Tabor Grand Opera House built in 1881.[237] By 1890, Denver had grown to be the 26th largest city in America, and the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River.[238] The boom times attracted millionaires and their mansions, as well as hustlers, poverty, and crime. Denver gained regional notoriety with its range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams to the squalid "cribs" located a few blocks away. Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly, and "crib girls" did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crack downs satisfied the demands for reform.[239]
With its giant mountain of copper, Butte, Montana, was the largest, richest, and rowdiest mining camp on the frontier. It was an ethnic stronghold, with the Irish Catholics in control of politics and of the best jobs at the leading mining corporation Anaconda Copper.[240] City boosters opened a public library in 1894. Ring argues that the library was originally a mechanism of social control, "an antidote to the miners' proclivity for drinking, whoring, and gambling". It was also designed to promote middle-class values and to convince Easterners that Butte was a cultivated city.[241]
European immigrants often built communities of similar religious and ethnic backgrounds. For example, many Finns went to Minnesota and Michigan, Swedes and Norwegians to Minnesota and the Dakotas, Irish to railroad centers along the transcontinental lines, Volga Germans to North Dakota, English converts to the LDS church went to Utah including English immigrants who settled in the Rocky Mountain states (Colorado,Wyoming and Idaho) and German Jews to Portland, Oregon.[242][243]
African Americans moved West as soldiers, as well as cowboys (see Black cowboy), farmhands, saloon workers, cooks, and outlaws. The Buffalo Soldiers were soldiers in the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, and 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments of the U.S. Army. They had white officers and served in numerous western forts.[244]
About 4,000 black people came to California in Gold Rush days. In 1879, after the end of Reconstruction in the South, several thousand Freedmen moved from Southern states to Kansas. Known as the Exodusters, they were lured by the prospect of good, cheap Homestead Law land and better treatment. The all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas, which was founded in 1877, was an organized settlement that predates the Exodusters but is often associated with them.[245]
The California Gold Rush included thousands of Mexican and Chinese arrivals. Chinese migrants, many of whom were impoverished peasants, provided the major part of the workforce for the building of the Central Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad. Most of them went home by 1870 when the railroad was finished.[246] Those who stayed on worked in mining, agriculture, and opened small shops such as groceries, laundries, and restaurants. Hostility against the Chinese remained high in the western states/territories as seen by the Chinese Massacre Cove episode and the Rock Springs massacre. The Chinese were generally forced into self-sufficient "Chinatowns" in cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles.[247] In Los Angeles, the last major anti-Chinese riot took place in 1871, after which local law enforcement grew stronger.[248] In the late 19th century, Chinatowns were squalid slums known for their vice, prostitution, drugs, and violent battles between "tongs". By the 1930s, however, Chinatowns had become clean, safe and attractive tourist destinations.[249]
The first Japanese arrived in the U.S. in 1869, with the arrival of 22 people from samurai families, settling in Placer County, California, to establish the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony. Japanese were recruited to work on plantations in Hawaii, beginning in 1885. By the late 19th century, more Japanese emigrated to Hawaii and the American mainland. The Issei, or first-generation Japanese immigrants, were not allowed to become U.S. citizens because they were not "a free white person", per the United States Naturalization Law of 1790. This did not change until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, known as the McCarran-Walter Act, which allowed Japanese immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens.
By 1920, Japanese-American farmers produced US$67 million worth of crops, more than ten percent of California's total crop value. There were 111,000 Japanese Americans in the U.S., of which 82,000 were immigrants and 29,000 were U.S. born.[250] Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924 effectively ending all Japanese immigration to the U.S. The U.S.-born children of the Issei were citizens, in accordance to the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.[251]
The great majority of Hispanics who had been living in the former territories of New Spain remained and became American citizens in 1848.[252] The 10,000 or so Californios also became U.S. citizens. They lived in southern California and after 1880 were overshadowed by the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals from the eastern states. Those in New Mexico dominated towns and villages that changed little until well into the 20th century. New arrivals from Mexico arrived, especially after the Revolution of 1911 terrorized thousands of villages all across Mexico. Most refugees went to Texas or California, and soon poor barrios appeared in many border towns. The California "Robin Hood", Joaquin Murrieta, led a gang in the 1850s which burned houses, killed exploiting miners, robbed stagecoaches of landowners and fought against violence and discrimination against Latin Americans. In Texas, Juan Cortina led a 20-year campaign against Anglos and the Texas Rangers, starting around 1859.[253]
On the Great Plains very few single men attempted to operate a farm or ranch; farmers clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding, and clothing the family, managing the housework, and feeding the hired hands.[254] During the early years of settlement, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. The scientific housekeeping movement, promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics courses in the schools all contributed to this trend.[255]
Although the eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the lonely farmer and farm life, in reality, rural folk created a rich social life for themselves. They often sponsored activities that combined work, food, and entertainment such as barn raisings, corn huskings, quilting bees,[256] Grange meetings,[257] church activities, and school functions. The womenfolk organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families.[258]
Childhood on the American frontier is contested territory. One group of scholars, following the lead of novelists Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder, argue the rural environment was beneficial to the child's upbringing. Historians Katherine Harris[259] and Elliott West[260] write that rural upbringing allowed children to break loose from urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and at the end produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts. On the other hand, historians Elizabeth Hampsten[261] and Lillian Schlissel[262] offer a grim portrait of loneliness, privation, abuse, and demanding physical labor from an early age. Riney-Kehrberg takes a middle position.[263]
Entrepreneurs set up shops and businesses to cater to the miners. World-famous were the houses of prostitution found in every mining camp worldwide.[264] Prostitution was a growth industry attracting sex workers from around the globe, pulled in by the money, despite the harsh and dangerous working conditions and low prestige. Chinese women were frequently sold by their families and taken to the camps as prostitutes; they had to send their earnings back to the family in China.[265] In Virginia City, Nevada, a prostitute, Julia Bulette, was one of the few who achieved "respectable" status. She nursed victims of an influenza epidemic; this gave her acceptance in the community and the support of the sheriff. The townspeople were shocked when she was murdered in 1867; they gave her a lavish funeral and speedily tried and hanged her assailant.[266] Until the 1890s, madams predominantly ran the businesses, after which male pimps took over, and the treatment of the women generally declined. It was not uncommon for bordellos in Western towns to operate openly, without the stigma of East Coast cities. Gambling and prostitution were central to life in these western towns, and only later—as the female population increased, reformers moved in, and other civilizing influences arrived—did prostitution become less blatant and less common.[267] After a decade or so the mining towns attracted respectable women who ran boarding houses, organized church societies, worked as laundresses and seamstresses and strove for independent status.[268]
Whenever a new settlement or mining camp started one of the first buildings or tents erected would be a gambling hall. As the population grew, gambling halls were typically the largest and most ornately decorated buildings in any town and often housed a bar, stage for entertainment, and hotel rooms for guests. These establishments were a driving force behind the local economy and many towns measured their prosperity by the number of gambling halls and professional gamblers they had. Towns that were friendly to gambling were typically known to sports as "wide-awake" or "wide-open".[269] Cattle towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska became famous centers of gambling. The cowboys had been accumulating their wages and postponing their pleasures until they finally arrived in town with money to wager. Abilene, Dodge City, Wichita, Omaha, and Kansas City all had an atmosphere that was convivial to gaming. Such an atmosphere also invited trouble and such towns also developed reputations as lawless and dangerous places.[270][271]
Historian Waddy W. Moore uses court records to show that on the sparsely settled Arkansas frontier lawlessness was common. He distinguished two types of crimes: unprofessional (dueling, crimes of drunkenness, selling whiskey to the Natives, cutting trees on federal land) and professional (rustling, highway robbery, counterfeiting).[273] Criminals found many opportunities to rob pioneer families of their possessions, while the few underfunded lawmen had great difficulty detecting, arresting, holding, and convicting wrongdoers. Bandits, typically in groups of two or three, rarely attacked stagecoaches with a guard carrying a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun; it proved less risky to rob teamsters, people on foot, and solitary horsemen,[274] while bank robberies themselves were harder to pull off due to the security of the establishment. According to historian Brian Robb, the earliest form of organized crime in America was born from the gangs of the Old West.[275]
When criminals were convicted, the punishment was severe.[273] Aside from the occasional Western sheriff and Marshal, there were other various law enforcement agencies throughout the American frontier, such as the Texas Rangers.[276] These lawmen were not just instrumental in keeping the peace, but also in protecting the locals from Native and Mexican threats at the border.[277] Law enforcement tended to be more stringent in towns than in rural areas. Law enforcement emphasized maintaining stability more than armed combat, focusing on drunkenness, disarming cowboys who violated gun-control edicts and dealing with flagrant breaches of gambling and prostitution ordinances.[278]
Dykstra argues that the violent image of the cattle towns in film and fiction is largely a myth. The real Dodge City, he says, was the headquarters for the buffalo-hide trade of the Southern Plains and one of the West's principal cattle towns, a sale and shipping point for cattle arriving from Texas. He states there is a "second Dodge City" that belongs to the popular imagination and thrives as a cultural metaphor for violence, chaos, and depravity.[279] For the cowboy arriving with money in hand after two months on the trail, the town was exciting. A contemporary eyewitness of Hays City, Kansas, paints a vivid image of this cattle town:
Hays City by lamplight was remarkably lively, but not very moral. The streets blazed with a reflection from saloons, and a glance within showed floors crowded with dancers, the gaily dressed women striving to hide with ribbons and paint the terrible lines which that grim artist, Dissipation, loves to draw upon such faces... To the music of violins and the stamping of feet the dance went on, and we saw in the giddy maze old men who must have been pirouetting on the very edge of their graves.[280]
It has been acknowledged that the popular portrayal of Dodge City in film and fiction carries a note of truth, however, as gun crime was rampant in the city before the establishment of a local government. Soon after the city's residents officially established their first municipal government, however, a law banning concealed firearms was enacted and crime was reduced soon afterward. Similar laws were passed in other frontier towns to reduce the rate of gun crime as well. As UCLA law professor Adam Wrinkler noted:
Carrying of guns within the city limits of a frontier town was generally prohibited. Laws barring people from carrying weapons were commonplace, from Dodge City to Tombstone. When Dodge City residents first formed their municipal government, one of the very first laws enacted was a ban on concealed carry. The ban was soon after expanded to open carry, too. The Hollywood image of the gunslinger marching through town with two Colts on his hips is just that—a Hollywood image, created for its dramatic effect.[281]
Tombstone, Arizona, was a turbulent mining town that flourished longer than most, from 1877 to 1929.[282] Silver was discovered in 1877, and by 1881 the town had a population of over 10,000. In 1879 the newly arrived Earp brothers bought shares in the Vizina mine, water rights, and gambling concessions, but Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp obtained positions at different times as federal and local lawmen. After more than a year of threats and feuding, they, along with Doc Holliday, killed three outlaws in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight of the Old West. In the aftermath, Virgil Earp was maimed in an ambush, and Morgan Earp was assassinated while playing billiards. Wyatt and others, including his brothers James Earp and Warren Earp, pursued those they believed responsible in an extra-legal vendetta and warrants were issued for their arrest in the murder of Frank Stilwell. The Cochise County Cowboys were one of the first organized crime syndicates in the United States, and their demise came at the hands of Wyatt Earp.[283]
Western story tellers and film makers featured the gunfight in many Western productions.[284] Walter Noble Burns's novel Tombstone (1927) made Earp famous. Hollywood celebrated Earp's Tombstone days with John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), John Sturges's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Hour of the Gun (1967), Frank Perry's Doc (1971), George Cosmatos's Tombstone (1993), and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (1994). They solidified Earp's modern reputation as the Old West's deadliest gunman.[285]
The major type of banditry was conducted by the infamous outlaws of the West, including the James–Younger Gang, Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, Black Bart, Sam Bass, Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, and hundreds of others who preyed on banks, trains, stagecoaches, and in some cases even armed government transports such as the Wham Paymaster robbery and the Skeleton Canyon robbery.[287][288] Some of the outlaws, such as Jesse James, were products of the violence of the Civil War (James had ridden with Quantrill's Raiders) and others became outlaws during hard times in the cattle industry. Many were misfits and drifters who roamed the West avoiding the law. In rural areas Joaquin Murieta, Jack Powers, Augustine Chacon and other bandits terrorized the state. When outlaw gangs were near, towns would occasionally raise a posse to drive them out or capture them. Seeing that the need to combat the bandits was a growing business opportunity, Allan Pinkerton ordered his National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, to open branches in the West, and they got into the business of pursuing and capturing outlaws.[289] To take refuge from the law, outlaws would use the advantages of the open range, remote passes, and badlands to hide.[290] While some settlements and towns in the frontier also house outlaws and criminals, which were called "outlaw towns".[291]
Banditry was a major issue in California after 1849, as thousands of young men detached from family or community moved into a land with few law enforcement mechanisms. To combat this, the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was established to give drumhead trials and death sentences to well-known offenders. As such, other earlier settlements created their private agencies to protect communities due to the lack of peace-keeping establishments.[292][293] These vigilance committees reflected different occupations in the frontier, such as land clubs, cattlemen's associations and mining camps. Similar vigilance committees also existed in Texas, and their main objective was to stamp out lawlessness and rid communities of desperadoes and rustlers.[294] These committees would sometimes form mob rule for private vigilante groups, but usually were made up of responsible citizens who wanted only to maintain order. Criminals caught by these vigilance committees were treated cruelly; often hung or shot without any form of trial.[295]
Civilians also took arms to defend themselves in the Old West, sometimes siding with lawmen (Coffeyville Bank Robbery), or siding with outlaws (Battle of Ingalls). In the Post-Civil War frontier, over 523 whites, 34 blacks, and 75 others were victims of lynching.[296] However, cases of lynching in the Old West wasn't primarily caused by the absence of a legal system, but also because of social class. Historian Michael J. Pfeifer writes, "Contrary to the popular understanding, early territorial lynching did not flow from an absence or distance of law enforcement but rather from the social instability of early communities and their contest for property, status, and the definition of social order."[297]
Range wars were infamous armed conflicts that took place in the "open range" of the American frontier. The subject of these conflicts was the control of lands freely used for farming and cattle grazing which gave the conflict its name.[298] Range wars became more common by the end of the American Civil War, and numerous conflicts were fought such as the Pleasant Valley War, Johnson County War, Pecos War, Mason County War, Colorado Range War, Fence Cutting War, Colfax County War, Castaic Range War, Spring Creek raid, Porum Range War, Barber–Mizell feud, San Elizario Salt War and others.[299] During a range war in Montana, a vigilante group called Stuart's Stranglers, which were made up of cattlemen and cowboys, killed up to 20 criminals and range squatters in 1884 alone.[300][301] In Nebraska, stock grower Isom Olive led a range war in 1878 that killed a number of homesteaders from lynchings and shootouts before eventually leading to his own murder.[302] Another infamous type of open range conflict were the Sheep Wars, which were fought between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers over grazing rights and mainly occurred in Texas, Arizona and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado.[303][304] In most cases, formal military involvement were used to quickly put an end to these conflicts. Other conflicts over land and territory were also fought such as the Regulator–Moderator War, Cortina Troubles, Las Cuevas War and the Bandit War.
Feuds involving families and bloodlines also occurred much in the frontier.[305] Since private agencies and vigilance committees were the substitute for proper courts, many families initially depended on themselves and their communities for their security and justice. These wars include the Lincoln County War, Tutt–Everett War, Flynn–Doran feud, Early–Hasley feud, Brooks-Baxter War, Sutton–Taylor feud, Horrell Brothers feud, Brooks–McFarland Feud, Reese–Townsend feud and the Earp Vendetta Ride.
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The end of the bison herds opened up millions of acres for cattle ranching.[306][307] Spanish cattlemen had introduced cattle ranching and longhorn cattle to the Southwest in the 17th century, and the men who worked the ranches, called "vaqueros", were the first "cowboys" in the West. After the Civil War, Texas ranchers raised large herds of longhorn cattle. The nearest railheads were 800 or more miles (1300+ km) north in Kansas (Abilene, Kansas City, Dodge City, and Wichita). So once fattened, the ranchers and their cowboys drove the herds north along the Western, Chisholm, and Shawnee trails. The cattle were shipped to Chicago, St. Louis, and points east for slaughter and consumption in the fast-growing cities. The Chisholm Trail, laid out by cattleman Joseph McCoy along an old trail marked by Jesse Chisholm, was the major artery of cattle commerce, carrying over 1.5 million head of cattle between 1867 and 1871 over the 800 miles (1,300 km) from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas. The long drives were treacherous, especially crossing water such as the Brazos and the Red River and when they had to fend off Natives and rustlers looking to make off with their cattle. A typical drive would take three to four months and contained two miles (3 km) of cattle six abreast. Despite the risks, a successful drive proved very profitable to everyone involved, as the price of one steer was $4 in Texas and $40 in the East.[308]
By the 1870s and 1880s, cattle ranches expanded further north into new grazing grounds and replaced the bison herds in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, and the Dakota territory, using the rails to ship to both coasts. Many of the largest ranches were owned by Scottish and English financiers. The single largest cattle ranch in the entire West was owned by American John W. Iliff, "cattle king of the Plains", operating in Colorado and Wyoming.[309] Gradually, longhorns were replaced by the British breeds of Hereford and Angus, introduced by settlers from the Northwest. Though less hardy and more disease-prone, these breeds produced better-tasting beef and matured faster.[310]
The funding for the cattle industry came largely from British sources, as the European investors engaged in a speculative extravaganza—a "bubble". Graham concludes the mania was founded on genuine opportunity, as well as "exaggeration, gullibility, inadequate communications, dishonesty, and incompetence". A severe winter engulfed the plains toward the end of 1886 and well into 1887, locking the prairie grass under ice and crusted snow which starving herds could not penetrate. The British lost most of their money—as did eastern investors like Theodore Roosevelt, but their investments did create a large industry that continues to cycle through boom and bust periods.[311]
On a much smaller scale, sheep grazing was locally popular; sheep were easier to feed and needed less water. However, Americans did not eat mutton. As farmers moved in open range cattle ranching came to an end and was replaced by barbed wire spreads where water, breeding, feeding, and grazing could be controlled. This led to "fence wars" which erupted over disputes about water rights.[312][313]
Anchoring the booming cattle industry of the 1860s and 1870s were the cattle towns in Kansas and Missouri. Like the mining towns in California and Nevada, cattle towns such as Abilene, Dodge City, and Ellsworth experienced a short period of boom and bust lasting about five years. The cattle towns would spring up as land speculators would rush in ahead of a proposed rail line and build a town and the supporting services attractive to the cattlemen and the cowboys. If the railroads complied, the new grazing ground and supporting town would secure the cattle trade. However, unlike the mining towns which in many cases became ghost towns and ceased to exist after the ore played out, cattle towns often evolved from cattle to farming and continued after the grazing lands were exhausted.[314]
The concern with the protection of the environment became a new issue in the late 19th century, pitting different interests. On the one side were the lumber and coal companies who called for maximum exploitation of natural resources to maximize jobs, economic growth, and their own profit.[315]
In the center were the conservationists, led by Theodore Roosevelt and his coalition of outdoorsmen, sportsmen, bird watchers, and scientists. They wanted to reduce waste; emphasized the value of natural beauty for tourism and ample wildlife for hunters; and argued that careful management would not only enhance these goals but also increase the long-term economic benefits to society by planned harvesting and environmental protections. Roosevelt worked his entire career to put the issue high on the national agenda. He was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He worked closely with Gifford Pinchot and used the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi2 or 930,000 km2) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land, national parks, and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.[316]
Roosevelt explained his position in 1910:
Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.[317]
The third element, smallest at first but growing rapidly after 1870, were the environmentalists who honored nature for its own sake, and rejected the goal of maximizing human benefits. Their leader was John Muir (1838–1914), a widely read author and naturalist and pioneer advocate of preservation of wilderness for its own sake, and founder of the Sierra Club. Muir, a Scottish-American based in California, in 1889 started organizing support to preserve the sequoias in the Yosemite Valley; Congress did pass the Yosemite National Park bill (1890). In 1897 President Grover Cleveland created thirteen protected forests but lumber interests had Congress cancel the move. Muir, taking the persona of an Old Testament prophet,[318] crusaded against the lumberman, portraying it as a contest "between landscape righteousness and the devil".[319] A master publicist, Muir's magazine articles, in Harper's Weekly (June 5, 1897) and the Atlantic Monthly turned the tide of public sentiment.[320] He mobilized public opinion to support Roosevelt's program of setting aside national monuments, national forest reserves, and national parks. However, Muir broke with Roosevelt and especially President William Howard Taft on the Hetch Hetchy dam, which was built in the Yosemite National Park to supply water to San Francisco. Biographer Donald Worster says, "Saving the American soul from a total surrender to materialism was the cause for which he fought."[321]
The rise of the cattle industry and the cowboy is directly tied to the demise of the huge herds of bison—usually called the "buffalo". Once numbering over 25 million on the Great Plains, the grass-eating herds were a vital resource animal for the Plains Indians, providing food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bones for implements. Loss of habitat, disease, and over-hunting steadily reduced the herds through the 19th century to the point of near extinction. The last 10–15 million died out in a decade 1872–1883; only 100 survived.[322] The tribes that depended on the buffalo had little choice but to accept the government offer of reservations, where the government would feed and supply them. Conservationists founded the American Bison Society in 1905; it lobbied Congress to establish public bison herds. Several national parks in the U.S. and Canada were created, in part to provide a sanctuary for bison and other large wildlife.[323] The bison population reached 500,000 by 2003.[324]
Following the 1890 U.S. census, the superintendent announced that there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement, and hence no longer a contiguous frontier in the continental United States. When examining the later 1900 U.S. census population distribution results though, the contiguous frontier line does remain. But by the 1910 U.S. census, only pockets of the frontier remain without a clear westward line, allowing travel across the continent without ever crossing a frontier line.
Virgin farmland was increasingly hard to find after 1890—although the railroads advertised some in eastern Montana. Bicha shows that nearly 600,000 American farmers sought cheap land by moving to the Prairie frontier of the Canadian West from 1897 to 1914. However, about two-thirds of them grew disillusioned and returned to the U.S.[325][326] Despite this, homesteaders claimed more land in the first two decades of the 20th century than the 19th century. The Homestead Acts and proliferation of railroads are often credited as being important factors in shrinking the frontier, by efficiently bringing in settlers and required infrastructure.[327] The increased size of land grants from 160 to 320 acres in 1909 and then rangeland to 640 acres in 1916 accelerated this process.[17] Barbed wire is also reasoned to reduce the traditional open range. In addition, the growing adoption of automobiles and their required network of adequate roads, first federally subsidized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1916, solidified the frontier's end.[328][329]
The admission of Oklahoma as a state in 1907 upon the combination of the Oklahoma Territory and the last remaining Indian Territory, and the Arizona and New Mexico territories as states in 1912, marks the end of the frontier story for many scholars. Due to their low and uneven populations during this period though, frontier territory remained for the meantime. Of course, a few typical frontier episodes still happened such as the last stagecoach robbery occurred in Nevada's remaining frontier in December 1916. A period known as "The Western Civil War of Incorporation" that often was violent, lasted from the 1850s to 1919.
The Mexican Revolution also led to significant conflict reaching across the US-Mexico border which was still mostly within frontier territory, known as the Mexican Border War (1910–1919).[330] Flashpoints included the Battle of Columbus (1916) and the Punitive Expedition (1916–1917). The Bandit War (1915–1919) involved attacks targeted against Texan settlers.[331] Also, skirmishes involving Natives happened as late as the Bluff War (1914–1915) and the Posey War (1923).[214][216]
The westward expansion of American influence and jurisdiction across the Pacific in the late 19th century was in some sense a new "Asia–Pacific frontier",[332] with Frederick Jackson Turner arguing this to be a necessary element of the U.S.'s growth, as its identity as a civilized and ideals-based nation depended on constantly overcoming a savage 'other'.[333]
Alaska was not admitted as a state until 1959. The ethos and storyline of the "American frontier" had passed.[334]
Central to the myth and the reality of the West is the American cowboy. In actuality, the life of a cowboy was a hard one and revolved around two annual roundups, spring and fall, the subsequent drives to market, and the time off in the cattle towns spending their hard-earned money on food, clothing, firearms, gambling, and prostitution. During winter, many cowboys hired themselves out to ranches near the cattle towns, where they repaired and maintained equipment and buildings. Working the cattle was not just a routine job but also a lifestyle that exulted in the freedom of the wide unsettled outdoors on horseback.[335] Long drives hired one cowboy for about 250 head of cattle.[336] Saloons were ubiquitous (outside Mormondom), but on the trail, the cowboys were forbidden to drink alcohol.[337] Often, hired cowboys were trained and knowledgeable in their trade such as herding, ranching and protecting cattle.[338][339] To protect their herd from wild animals, hostile Natives, and rustlers, cowboys carried with them their iconic weaponry such as the Bowie knife, lasso, bullwhip, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns.[226][338]
Many of the cowboys were veterans of the Civil War; a diverse group, they included Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and immigrants from many lands.[340] The earliest cowboys in Texas learned their trade, adapted their clothing, and took their jargon from the Mexican vaqueros or "buckaroos", the heirs of Spanish cattlemen from the middle-south of Spain. Chaps, the heavy protective leather trousers worn by cowboys, got their name from the Spanish "chaparreras", and the lariat, or rope, was derived from "la reata". All the distinct clothing of the cowboy—boots, saddles, hats, pants, chaps, slickers, bandannas, gloves, and collar-less shirts—were practical and adaptable, designed for protection and comfort. The cowboy hat quickly developed the capability, even in the early years, to identify its wearer as someone associated with the West; it came to symbolize the frontier.[341] The most enduring fashion adapted from the cowboy, popular nearly worldwide today, are "blue jeans", originally made by Levi Strauss for miners in 1850.[342]
Before a drive, a cowboy's duties included riding out on the range and bringing together the scattered cattle. The best cattle would be selected, roped, and branded, and most male cattle were castrated. The cattle also needed to be dehorned and examined and treated for infections. On the long drives, the cowboys had to keep the cattle moving and in line. The cattle had to be watched day and night as they were prone to stampedes and straying. While camping every night, cowboys would often sing to their herd to keep them calm.[343] The workdays often lasted fourteen hours, with just six hours of sleep. It was grueling, dusty work, with just a few minutes of relaxation before and at the end of a long day. On the trail, drinking, gambling, and brawling were often prohibited and fined, and sometimes cursing as well. It was monotonous and boring work, with food to match: bacon, beans, bread, coffee, dried fruit, and potatoes. On average, cowboys earned $30 to $40 per month, because of the heavy physical and emotional toll, it was unusual for a cowboy to spend more than seven years on the range.[344] As open range ranching and the long drives gave way to fenced-in ranches in the 1880s, by the 1890s the glory days of the cowboy came to an end, and the myths about the "free-living" cowboy began to emerge.[325][345][346]
In 1849, James W. Marshall was building a sawmill for Sutter's Fort on the riverside of the American River when he noticed metal flakes under the waterwheel. He recognized the flakes to be gold. However, the sawmill he was building was not his, meaning that when he finished building the sawmill, his client John Sutter would also notice. Word quickly spread of gold in the American River, leading to a surge of westward migration to California in the hope of striking it rich. This was the start of the California Gold Rush.[347] The California Gold Rush had positive and negative benefits for America. It simultaneously increased the population of California to almost 100,000 people, which helped with the modernization of California, but it also reduced the population of other states. Their employment rates took a hit as well, as people were quitting their jobs so they could embark on their journeys. The California Gold Rush finally came to an end in 1855. The extraction of gold from the river was done by dust panning; with most dust panning normally done by prospectors.[348][349]
Even after the California Gold Rush, mining was still a common occupation. Most mountainside towns likely had a mineshaft. Most miners were poor, as mining was a very labor-intensive job. Miners would use pickaxes in order to mine into the mountains. They mined gold, zinc, copper, and other metals. These metals were sold to shopkeepers and rich people for currency. Miners were paid a salary of $1.70 per day.[347]
Similarly, other gold rushes happened in other territories as other expeditions were happening. Events such as the Black Hills Gold Rush in the Dakota Territory following the Black Hills Expedition.[350] Or the Pike's Peak Gold Rush in the Nebraska Territory.[351]
Laws were less restrictive in the West for white women. Western states allowed women to vote long before the eastern states did and had more liberal divorce laws. Minority women did not experience the same freedoms. Native women were forced onto reservations, but still tried to maintain their ways of life and support their families. Chinese women immigrated to work in the laundries, inns, and saloons of mining camps. Some were sold to work in mining camps by their impoverished families in China. Some women were also forced to work in the sex industry.[352]
The main occupation of women was running the household and raising children. Tasks included cooking, cleaning, making clothes, gardening, and helping out on the farm. Sometimes women were the sole operators of farms. Women were also entrepreneurs, running saloons, boarding houses, laundries, and inns. Independent women earned a living through teaching or sex work. In towns with male-dominated industries such as logging and mining, the gender imbalance led to different roles for women. Women were paid for domestic work that was traditionally unpaid.[353]
Some women also worked in predominantly male positions; there were cowgirls, female business owners, female gunslingers and female bounty hunters.[354]
Women had less lawful protection compared to men.[355]
Being a lumberjack was a labor-intensive occupation. The job was a fairly common occupation to have in this era, similarly to miners and railroad workers, many people pursued these careers, but was ultimately very dangerous. Loggers were paid more than both miners and railroaders combined, making $3.20 every day.[356]
To cut down trees, lumberjacks had many tools to help them in the process. To cut down trees, they would send multiple loggers depending on the size of the tree. From there, they would use double-sided axes to chop the base of the tree. After the tree collapsed, if the tree was too big to chop with the double-sided axes, they would use a gigantic saw called a crosscut. These saws could be over 12 feet in length.[357]
And for transportation, they would either float the logs down a river (a profession known as log driving), or use a high-wheel loader to lift the massive logs that were strapped together using rope. Another rope was tied to oxen, then the oxen would pull the logs to wherever they needed to be.[358]
The frontiersmen were the explorers of the Old West. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson closed the deal of the Louisiana Purchase for 15 million dollars. With the 828,000 square miles of gained territory. He sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark along with 45 other men to go explore the new territory. Their expedition across the Western United States turned into the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition There were many dangers on the trail; they had to travel up, portage and ford rivers, suffer injuries, disease, famine, and fending off grizzly bears and hostile Native American tribes. The Lewis and Clark expedition did take place before the Wild West era, but it was a major event in United States history, and was one of the main reasons the Wild West era began.[359]
Besides Lewis and Clark, the Wild West era brought many other frontiersmen. They were very self-sufficient compared to normal townspeople. They cleared their own land, built their own shelter, and farmed and foraged for their food. Their nomadic lifestyle was hurtful for America's economy, as unemployment made it difficult for more money to go into circulation, and stores were going bankrupt from a lack of customers. This also caused territorial disputes with the Native Americans. For example, Charles Bent's arrival into Colorado caused the Taos Revolt. Bent shortly died from an assault from multiple Pueblo warriors.[360]
The names and exploits of Western gunslingers took a major role in American folklore, fiction and film. Their guns and costumes became children's toys for make-believe shootouts.[361] The stories became immensely popular in Germany and other European countries, which produced their novels and films about the American frontier.[362] The image of a Wild West filled with countless gunfights was a myth based on repeated exaggerations. Actual gunfights in the Old West were more episodic rather than being a common thing, but when gunfights did occur, the cause for each varied.[363] Some were simply the result of the heat of the moment, while others were longstanding feuds, or between bandits and lawmen. Although mostly romanticized, there were instances of "quick draw" that did occur though rarely, such as Wild Bill Hickok – Davis Tutt shootout and Luke Short-Jim Courtright duel.[364] Fatal duels were fought to uphold personal honor in the West.[365][366] The most notable and well-known took place in Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. To prevent gunfights, towns such as Dodge City and Tombstone prohibited firearms in town.
In 1848, when the U.S. won the Mexican–American War, it gained seven new territories: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. This was one of the main causes of the Wild West era. When people relocated to the underdeveloped badlands, a pure culture was developed within Western America. Sonora's culture was also acculturated to the Wild West.[367][368]
On June 13, 1898, the Yukon Territory Act created Yukon as a separate Canadian territory. One of the most important cities on the trail, Dawson City, gave prospectors access to gold mines. causing the Klondike Gold Rush.[369] The Klondike Trail was a dangerous place; many wild animals attacked the prospectors, and contagious diseases spread throughout the trail.[370] In total, over 1,000 died on the trail from various causes.[360]
The exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the "American Old West" form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, video games, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—which continues in the modern era.[371] Beth E. Levy argues that the physical and mythological west inspired composers Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell.[372]
Religious themes have inspired many environmentalists as they contemplate the pristine West before the frontiersmen violated its spirituality.[373] Actually, as a historian William Cronon has demonstrated, the concept of "wilderness" was highly negative and the antithesis of religiosity before the romantic movement of the 19th century.[374]
The Frontier Thesis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner, proclaimed in 1893,[375] established the main lines of historiography which fashioned scholarship for three or four generations and appeared in the textbooks used by practically all American students.[376]
The mythologizing of the West began with minstrel shows and popular music in the 1840s. During the same period, P. T. Barnum presented Native chiefs, dances, and other Wild West exhibits in his museums. However, large scale awareness took off when the dime novel appeared in 1859, the first being Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter.[377] By simplifying reality and grossly exaggerating the truth, the novels captured the public's attention with sensational tales of violence and heroism and fixed in the public's mind stereotypical images of heroes and villains—courageous cowboys and savage Natives, virtuous lawmen and ruthless outlaws, brave settlers and predatory cattlemen. Millions of copies and thousands of titles were sold. The novels relied on a series of predictable literary formulas appealing to mass tastes and were often written in as little as a few days. The most successful of all dime novels was Edward S. Ellis' Seth Jones (1860). Ned Buntline's stories glamorized Buffalo Bill Cody, and Edward L. Wheeler created "Deadwood Dick" and "Hurricane Nell" while featuring Calamity Jane.[378]
Buffalo Bill Cody was the most effective popularizer of the Old West in the U.S. and Europe. He presented the first "Wild West" show in 1883, featuring a recreation of famous battles (especially Custer's Last Stand), expert marksmanship, and dramatic demonstrations of horsemanship by cowboys and natives, as well as sure-shooting Annie Oakley.[379]
Elite Eastern writers and artists of the late 19th century promoted and celebrated western lore.[67] Theodore Roosevelt, wearing his hats as a historian, explorer, hunter, rancher, and naturalist, was especially productive.[380] Their work appeared in upscale national magazines such as Harper's Weekly featured illustrations by artists Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and others. Readers bought action-filled stories by writers like Owen Wister, conveying vivid images of the Old West.[381] Remington lamented the passing of an era he helped to chronicle when he wrote:
I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever...I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat.[382]
Theodore Roosevelt wrote many books on the west and the frontier, and made frequent reference to it as president.[383]
From the late 19th century the railroads promoted tourism in the west, with guided tours of western sites, especially national parks like Yellowstone National Park.[384]
Both tourists to the West, and avid fiction readers enjoyed the visual imagery of the frontier. After 1900 Western movies provided the most famous examples, as in the numerous films of John Ford. He was especially enamored of Monument Valley. Critic Keith Phipps says, "its five square miles [13 square kilometers] have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West."[385][386][387] The heroic stories coming out of the building of the transcontinental railroad in the mid-1860s enlivened many dime novels and illustrated many newspapers and magazines with the juxtaposition of the traditional environment with the iron horse of modernity.[388]
The cowboy has for over a century been an iconic American image both in the country and abroad.[389]
Heather Cox Richardson argues for a political dimension to the cowboy image:[390]
The timing of the cattle industry’s growth meant that cowboy imagery grew to have extraordinary power. Entangled in the vicious politics of the postwar years, Democrats, especially those in the old Confederacy, imagined the West as a land untouched by Republican politicians they hated. They developed an image of the cowboys as men who worked hard, played hard, lived by a code of honor, protected themselves, and asked nothing of the government. In the hands of Democratic newspaper editors, the realities of cowboy life—the poverty, the danger, the debilitating hours—became romantic. Cowboys embodied virtues Democrats believed Republicans were destroying by creating a behemoth government catering to lazy ex-slaves. By the 1860s, cattle drives were a feature of the plains landscape, and Democrats had made cowboys a symbol of rugged individual independence, something they insisted Republicans were destroying.
The most famous popularizers of the image included part-time cowboy and "Rough Rider" President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), a Republican who made "cowboy" internationally synonymous with the brash aggressive American. He was followed by trick roper Will Rogers (1879–1935), the leading humorist of the 1920s.
Roosevelt had conceptualized the herder (cowboy) as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer—a theme well expressed in the 1944 Hollywood hit Oklahoma! that highlights the enduring conflict between cowboys and farmers.[391] Roosevelt argued that the manhood typified by the cowboy—and outdoor activity and sports generally—was essential if American men were to avoid the softness and rot produced by an easy life in the city.[392]
Will Rogers, the son of a Cherokee judge in Oklahoma, started with rope tricks and fancy riding, but by 1919 discovered his audiences were even more enchanted with his wit in his representation of the wisdom of the common man.[393]
Others who contributed to enhancing the romantic image of the American cowboy include Charles Siringo (1855–1928)[394] and Andy Adams (1859–1935). Cowboy, Pinkerton detective, and western author, Siringo was the first authentic cowboy autobiographer. Adams spent the 1880s in the cattle industry in Texas and the 1890s mining in the Rockies. When an 1898 play's portrayal of Texans outraged Adams, he started writing plays, short stories, and novels drawn from his own experiences. His The Log of a Cowboy (1903) became a classic novel about the cattle business, especially the cattle drive.[395] It described a fictional drive of the Circle Dot herd from Texas to Montana in 1882 and became a leading source on cowboy life; historians retraced its path in the 1960s, confirming its basic accuracy. His writings are acclaimed and criticized for realistic fidelity to detail on the one hand and thin literary qualities on the other.[396] Many regard Red River (1948), directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, as an authentic cattle drive depiction.[397]
The unique skills of the cowboys are highlighted in the rodeo. It began in an organized fashion in the West in the 1880s, when several Western cities followed up on touring Wild West shows and organized celebrations that included rodeo activities. The establishment of major cowboy competitions in the East in the 1920s led to the growth of rodeo sports. Trail cowboys who were also known as gunfighters like John Wesley Hardin, Luke Short and others, were known for their prowess, speed and skill with their pistols and other firearms. Their violent escapades and reputations morphed over time into the stereotypical image of violence endured by the "cowboy hero".[361][398][399]
Historians of the American West have written about the mythic West; the west of western literature, art, and of people's shared memories.[400] The phenomenon is "the Imagined West".[401] The "Code of the West" was an unwritten, socially agreed upon set of informal laws shaping the cowboy culture of the Old West.[402][403][404] Over time, the cowboys developed a personal culture of their own, a blend of values that even retained vestiges of chivalry. Such hazardous work in isolated conditions also bred a tradition of self-dependence and individualism, with great value put on personal honesty, exemplified in songs and cowboy poetry.[405] The code also included the gunfighter, who sometimes followed a form of code duello adopted from the Old South, in order to solve disputes and duels.[406][407] Extrajudicial justice seen during the frontier days such as lynching, vigilantism and gunfighting, in turn popularized by the Western genre, would later be known in modern times as examples of frontier justice.[408][409]
Scores of Frederick Jackson Turner's students became professors in history departments in the western states and taught courses on the frontier influenced by his ideas.[410] Scholars have debunked many of the myths of the frontier, but they nevertheless live on in community traditions, folklore, and fiction.[411] In the 1970s a historiographical range war broke out between the traditional frontier studies, which stress the influence of the frontier on all of American history and culture, and the "New Western History" which narrows the geographical and temporal framework to concentrate on the trans-Mississippi West after 1850. It avoids the word "frontier" and stresses cultural interaction between white culture and groups such as Natives and Hispanics. History professor William Weeks of the University of San Diego argues that in this "New Western History" approach:
It is easy to tell who the bad guys are—they are almost invariably white, male, and middle-class or better, while the good guys are almost invariably non-white, non-male, or non-middle class.... Anglo-American civilization....is represented as patriarchal, racist, genocidal, and destructive of the environment, in addition to hypocritically betraying the ideals on which it supposedly is built.[412]
By 2005, Steven Aron argues that the two sides had "reached an equilibrium in their rhetorical arguments and critiques".[413] Since then, however, the field of American frontier and western regional history has become increasingly inclusive.[414][additional citation(s) needed] The field's more recent focus was captured in the language of the 2024 Call for Papers of the Western History Association:
The Western History Association was once an organization dominated by white male scholars who typically wrote triumphalist narratives. We are no longer that organization. We now produce pathbreaking scholarship by and about the members of the many communities previously excluded from traditional tales of expansion. This new work and the people writing it have transformed the WHA, the history of the U.S. West, and the profession more broadly.[414]
Meanwhile, environmental history has emerged, in large part from the frontier historiography, hence its emphasis on wilderness.[415] It plays an increasingly large role in frontier studies.[416] Historians approached the environment for the frontier or regionalism. The first group emphasizes human agency on the environment; the second looks at the influence of the environment. William Cronon has argued that Turner's famous 1893 essay was environmental history in an embryonic form. It emphasized the vast power of free land to attract and reshape settlers, making a transition from wilderness to civilization.[417]
Journalist Samuel Lubell saw similarities between the frontier's Americanization of immigrants that Turner described and the social climbing by later immigrants in large cities as they moved to wealthier neighborhoods. He compared the effects of the railroad opening up Western lands to urban transportation systems and the automobile, and Western settlers' "land hunger" to poor city residents seeking social status. Just as the Republican party benefited from support from "old" immigrant groups that settled on frontier farms, "new" urban immigrants formed an important part of the Democratic New Deal coalition that began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's victory in the 1932 presidential election.[418]
Since the 1960s an active center is the history department at the University of New Mexico, along with the University of New Mexico Press. Leading historians there include Gerald D. Nash, Donald C. Cutter, Richard N. Ellis, Richard Etulain, Ferenc Szasz, Margaret Connell-Szasz, Paul Hutton, Virginia Scharff, and Samuel Truett. The department has collaborated with other departments and emphasizes Southwestern regionalism, minorities in the Southwest, and historiography.[419]
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