Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24

Summary

In this episode of Crash Course U.S. History, John Green explores the myth and reality of the American West. Debunking the notion of the 'Wild West' as purely a land of individualistic cowboys and settlers, Green discusses the significant role of the federal government in facilitating westward expansion through railroads, homesteading laws, and military actions against Native Americans. He also touches on the economic motivations behind the westward movement, the impact on indigenous populations, and the transformation of the West into a region driven by agrobusiness and industrial capitalism.

Takeaways

• 🌏 The Wild West was not as 'wild' or individualistic as often depicted in American mythology, with many settlers arriving as families or part of immigrant groups.
• 🚂 Railroads were crucial for the settlement and development of the West, enabling the transportation of goods to market and the delivery of necessary supplies to settlers.
• 🏞️ The federal government played a significant role in the West's development, including passing laws to encourage homesteading, displacing Native Americans, and supporting railroad expansion.
• 🔥 The U.S. military conducted campaigns against Native Americans, leading to their forced relocation to reservations and the destruction of their way of life, such as the buffalo hunting that devastated the Plains tribes.
• 📉 The Ghost Dance movement was a spiritual response by some Native Americans to the cultural and physical threats they faced, seeking to preserve their traditions and way of life.
• 🏫 The Dawes Act of 1887 aimed to assimilate Native Americans by allotting tribal lands to individual families and encouraging farming, but it resulted in significant land loss for Native Americans.
• 🤠 The image of the cowboy as a symbol of rugged individualism is largely a myth; the cowboy's work was often tied to the railroads and industrial meat processing.
• 🌾 Western farming was not the idyllic family farm as often imagined but involved large-scale production for national and international markets, and required significant irrigation projects.
• 🌊 The Oglala Aquifer, a massive underground water source, was essential for irrigation in the Great Plains, but its sustainability is now in question as it depletes.
• 🏭 The West's agricultural sector became increasingly industrialized, with large corporations owning and operating farms, and relying on migrant labor, diverging from the Jeffersonian ideal of family farms.

Q & A

What does the term 'Wild West' commonly evoke in American mythology?

The term 'Wild West' commonly evokes images of cowboys, gunslingers, houses of ill repute, and a sense of freedom from government interference.

According to Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 lecture, what were some key characteristics of American culture influenced by the West?

Turner argued that the West influenced American culture by promoting beliefs in individualism, political democracy, and economic mobility.

How does the reality of western settlement differ from the myth of the Frontier?

In reality, most western settlers went not as individuals but as members of a family or as part of an immigrant group, and the territory was not unoccupied as it was home to American Indians, Chinese, Mexican migrant laborers, and former slaves.

What role did railroads play in the settlement and development of the West?

Railroads made it possible for people to settle in the West by providing a means to transport crops and goods to market and by bringing necessary goods to the settlers, thus making life in the West profitable and livable.

How did the U.S. government support the expansion of railroads and western settlement?

The U.S. government supported the expansion by financing the transcontinental railroad, passing laws that spurred homesteading, clearing out American Indians, and leading military expeditions against them.

What was the economic and racial imperative behind moving Native Americans off their land?

The economic imperative was to use the land for railroad tracks and farming, and later for extracting minerals. The racial imperative was the desire of white settlers to take over the land.

What was the impact of General Philip H. Sheridan's tactics on the Native American way of life?

General Sheridan aimed to destroy the Native American way of life by burning villages, killing horses, and especially buffalo, which was the basis of the plains tribes' existence.

What was the Ghost Dance movement, and what did its followers believe?

The Ghost Dance movement was a spiritual movement that arose around 1890. Followers believed that by gathering for dances and religious rituals, the white man would disappear, the buffalo would return, and with them, the Indians' traditional customs.

How did the Dawes Act of 1887 change the way Native American land was managed and what was the outcome?

The Dawes Act ended the treaty system and allotted lands to individual families rather than tribes. It aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white society by encouraging farming, but resulted in Native Americans losing 86 million acres of their land.

What was the policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs towards Native American children, and what was the impact?

The Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted a policy that involved setting up boarding schools where Indian children were removed from their families to be 'civilized'. This policy aimed to assimilate them into white society but amounted to cultural genocide, stripping them of their language, clothing, and family connections.

How does the image of cowboys in the Wild West differ from the reality of the cattle industry at the time?

The image of cowboys as solitary individuals herding cattle across open ranges is a myth. In reality, the cattle drives ended at railheads, and the industry relied on railroads and industrial meat processing to function. The open range ranching era ended as ranchers began to enclose land and move closer to railroad stations.

Outlines

00:00

🏞️ The Myth and Reality of the Wild West

In this segment, John Green discusses the mythologized image of the Wild West as a land of cowboys, gunslingers, and unbridled freedom, contrasting it with the historical realities. He points out that the West was not as 'wild' as popular culture suggests, and that the frontier was not just a place for rugged individualism but was shaped by government policies and infrastructure developments like railroads. Green also touches on the diverse population of the West, including American Indians, European immigrants, Chinese migrants, and former slaves. The segment challenges the romanticized view of the West by highlighting the role of the federal government in facilitating westward expansion and the impact on Native American populations.

05:01

🛤️ The Impact of Railroads and Government Policies on Western Expansion

This paragraph delves into the significant role that railroads played in the settlement and development of the West. Without railroads, the transportation of goods to market would have been impossible, making the westward movement less feasible. The federal government's support for railroads was crucial, as was its military intervention against Native Americans, which involved violent displacement and cultural destruction. The paragraph also discusses the economic motivations behind the westward movement, including the desire for land for farming and the exploitation of natural resources. The tragedy of the buffalo population's decline and the Ghost Dance movement's spiritual resistance are highlighted, illustrating the complex and often tragic history of the West.

10:03

🏡 The Transformation of Western Agriculture and the End of the Frontier

The final paragraph addresses the transformation of agriculture in the West, moving away from the Jeffersonian ideal of small, family-owned farms towards large-scale, market-driven agricultural enterprises. It discusses the end of the open range and the rise of enclosed, capital-intensive farming practices. The paragraph also touches on the role of irrigation in making the Great Plains productive for agriculture, and the environmental implications of drawing from the Oglala Aquifer. The narrative concludes by reflecting on the broader impact of these changes on American society and the economy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of the West's development with the rest of the country's industrialization and the international economic system.

Keywords

💡Wild West

The 'Wild West' refers to the American frontier in the late 19th century, often characterized by its lawlessness, cowboys, and uncharted territories. In the video, the Wild West is discussed as a mythologized region that was not as 'wild' as commonly portrayed. It highlights the reality of settlers, including families and various immigrant groups, and the role of the federal government in facilitating westward expansion.

💡Agribusiness

Agribusiness refers to large-scale agricultural production and distribution, often involving corporations and mechanized farming. The video connects the origins of modern agribusiness to the Wild West, where the federal government's policies and railroad expansion allowed for the growth of large-scale farming operations, impacting the environment and indigenous populations.

💡Homesteading

Homesteading is the process of acquiring land for settlement or cultivation by occupying and improving it. The video discusses how the federal government passed laws to spur homesteading, which was central to the westward movement and the displacement of Native Americans from their lands.

💡Transcontinental Railroad

The transcontinental railroad was a series of railroads that connected the western and eastern coasts of the United States. In the video, it is noted that the railroads didn't create the desire to settle the West but made it possible by providing transportation for goods and people, thus playing a crucial role in the development of the West.

💡Native American Removal

Native American Removal refers to the forced relocation of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. The video discusses how the U.S. government led military expeditions against Native Americans, resulting in their removal to reservations and the destruction of their cultures, which was a dark chapter in the history of the Wild West.

💡Ghost Dance Movement

The Ghost Dance Movement was a spiritual and religious movement among Native Americans in the late 19th century. The video mentions the Ghost Dance as a response to the dire circumstances faced by Native Americans, with followers believing that performing the dance would bring the return of the buffalo and their traditional way of life.

💡Dawes Act

The Dawes Act of 1887 was a United States federal law that aimed to assimilate Native Americans into American society by allotting tribal lands to individual families and encouraging private ownership. The video explains how this act led to a significant loss of Native American land and furthered their dispossession.

💡Cultural Genocide

Cultural genocide refers to the systematic destruction of a group's culture, often through forced assimilation. The video describes the U.S. government's policy of removing Native American children from their families and placing them in boarding schools to 'civilize' them, which is an example of cultural genocide.

💡Irrigation

Irrigation is the artificial application of water to land or soil. The video highlights the importance of large-scale irrigation projects in the Great Plains for successful agricultural production, which required significant capital investment and contributed to the rise of agribusiness.

💡Industrial Capitalism

Industrial capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the concentration of industries. The video contrasts the myth of the individualistic Wild West with the reality of industrial capitalism, where large corporations and market-driven agriculture became dominant.

💡Oglala Aquifer

The Oglala Aquifer is an underground water source that plays a critical role in the irrigation of the Great Plains. The video mentions the aquifer as a key resource for agriculture in the region, raising concerns about its sustainability as it is being depleted.

Highlights

The Wild West was not as wild as American mythology suggests.

The myth of the Frontier was popularized by Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 lecture, emphasizing individualism, democracy, and economic mobility.

Settlers in the West were often part of families or immigrant groups, not solitary individuals.

The West was home to diverse groups including American Indians, Chinese, Mexican migrant laborers, and former slaves.

The federal government played a significant role in the West's development through homesteading laws, railroad sponsorship, and American Indian displacement.

Railroads were crucial for the West's growth, enabling crop transportation and bringing necessary goods to settlers.

State governments often financed railroads, leading to financial crises and the introduction of balanced budget requirements.

The U.S. military conducted expeditions against American Indians, leading to their forced relocation to reservations.

The economic and racial imperatives of the West led to the displacement of Native Americans for railroad tracks, farming, and mineral exploitation.

General Sheridan's tactics included destroying Native American villages and their buffalo herds, devastating their way of life.

The Ghost Dance movement was a spiritual response to preserve Native American culture and resist white encroachment.

By 1890, Native Americans were defeated and relocated to reservations, marking the end of significant resistance.

The Dawes Act of 1887 led to the allotment of Native American lands to individuals, resulting in significant land loss for tribes.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs' boarding school policy aimed to 'civilize' Native American children, severing their cultural ties.

The image of the cowboy was influenced by the railroads, which ended cattle drives at railheads and created a market for beef.

Western farming was often family-based, with women playing significant roles in agricultural work.

Agricultural practices in the West were increasingly market-driven, with production aimed at national and international markets.

Irrigation projects and the Oglala Aquifer were essential for the agricultural productivity of the Great Plains.

Large-scale agricultural enterprises in California relied on irrigation, chemical fertilizers, and migrant labor, reflecting industrial capitalism.

The West's development was part of a broader shift towards industrial capitalism and an international economic system.

Transcripts

Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History

and today we leave behind the world of industry and corporations to talk about the Wild Wild West.

Spoiler Alert: You You have died of dysentery.

And in the process, we’re going to explore how all of us, even those of us who are vegan or eat sustainably-produced food benefit from massive agrobusiness that has its roots in the Wild Wild West.

The West still looms large in American mythology as the home of cowboys and gunslingers and houses of ill repute and freedom from pesky government interference.

But in fact:

It was probably not as wild as we’ve been told.

Ugh, Mr. Green, why can’t America live up to its myths just once?

Because this is America, Me from the Past, home to Hollywood and Gatsby and Honey Boo Boo.

We are literally in the mythmaking business.

[Theme Music]

So, before the Hollywood western, the myth of the Frontier probably found its best expression in Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 lecture,

“the Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

Turner argued that the West was responsible for key characteristics of American culture:

beliefs in individualism, political democracy, and economic mobility.

Like, for 18th and 19th century Americans, the western frontier represented the opportunity to start over,

and possibly to strike it rich by dint of one’s own individual effort, even back when the West was, like, Ohio.

In this mythology, the west was a magnet for restless young men who lit out for the uncorrupted, unoccupied, untamed territories to seek their fortune.

But, in reality, most western settlers went not as individuals but as members of a family or as part of an immigrant group.

And they weren’t filling up unoccupied space either because most of that territory was home to American Indians.

Also, in addition to Easterners and migrants from Europe, the West was settled by Chinese people and by Mexican migrant laborers and former slaves.

Plus, there were plenty of Mexicans living there already who became Americans with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

And the whole west as “a place of rugged individualism and independence” turns out to be an oversimplification.

I mean, the federal government, after all, had to pass the law that spurred homesteading, then had to clear out American Indians already living there,

and had to sponsor the railroads that allowed the West to grow in the first place.

About as individualistic as the government buying Walden Pond for Henry David Thoreau.

What’s that? It’s a state park now? The government owns it? Well, there you go.

Now, railroads didn’t create the desire to settle the west but they did make it possible for people who wanted to live out west to do so, for two reasons.

First, without railroads there would be no way to bring crops or other goods to market.

I mean, I guess you could dig a canal across Kansas, but, if you’ve ever been to Kansas that is not a tantalizing proposition.

Second, railroads made life in the west profitable and livable because they brought the goods that people needed,

such as tools for planting and sowing, shoes for wearing, books for putting on your shelf and pretending to have read.

Railroads allowed settlers to stay connected with the modernity that was becoming the hallmark of the industrialized world in the 19th century.

Now, we saw last week that the Federal government played a key role in financing the transcontinental railroad, but state governments got into the act too, often to their financial detriment.

In fact, so many states nearly went bankrupt financing railroads that most states now have constitutional requirements that they balance their budgets.

But perhaps the central way that the Federal government supported the railroads, and western settlement and investment in general,

was by leading military expeditions against American Indians, rounding them up on ever-smaller reservations, and destroying their culture.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

There was an economic as well as a racial imperative to move the Native Americans off their land: white people wanted it.

Initially it was needed to set down railroad tracks, and then for farming.

But eventually it was also exploited for minerals like gold and iron and other stuff that makes industry work.

I mean, would you really want a territory called the Badlands unless it had valuable minerals?

Early western settlement, of the Oregon Trail kind, did not result in huge conflicts with Native Americans,

but by the 1850s, a steady stream of settlers kicked off increasingly bloody conflicts that lasted pretty much until 1890.

Even though the fighting started before the Civil War, the end of the “war between the states”

meant a new, more violent phase in the warring between American Indians and whites.

General Philip H. “Little Phil” Sheridan set out to destroy the Indians’ way of life,

burning villages and killing their horses and especially the buffalo that was the basis of the plains tribes’ existence.

There were about 30 million buffalo in the U.S. in 1800; by 1886 the Smithsonian Institute had difficulty finding 25 “good specimens.”

In addition to violent resistance, some Indians turned to a spiritual movement to try to preserve their traditional way of life.

Around 1890 the Ghost Dance movement arose in and around South Dakota.

Ghost Dancers believed that if they gathered together to dance and engage in religious rituals,

eventually the white man would disappear and the buffalo would return, and with them the Indians’ traditional customs.

But even though a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors completely destroyed George Custer’s force of 250 cavalrymen at Little Bighorn in 1876,

and Geronimo took years to subdue in the Southwest, western Native Americans were all defeated by 1890, and the majority were moved to reservations.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Boy, this Wild West episode sure is turning out to be loads of fun!

It’s just like the Will Smith movie!

All right, Stan, this is about to get even more depressing, so let’s look at, like, some pretty mountains and western landscapes and stuff, while I deliver this next bit.

So in 1871 the U.S. government ended the treaty system that had since the American Revolution treated Native American land as if they were nations.

And then with the Dawes Act of 1887, the lands set aside for the Indians were allotted to individual families rather than to tribes.

Indians who “adopted the habits of civilized life,”

which in this case meant becoming small scale individualistic Jeffersonian farmers,

would be granted citizenship and there were supposed to be some protections to prevent their land from falling out of Native American possession.

But, these protections were not particularly protective and much of the Indian land was purchased either by white settlers or by speculators.

After the passage of the Dawes Act “Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land in their possession.”

Oh boy, it’s time for the Mystery Document. The rules here are simple.

I guess the author of the Mystery Document. And then you get to see me get shocked when I’m wrong. All right.

I have seen the Great Father Chief the Next Great Chief the Commissioner Chief; the Law Chief;

and many other law chiefs and they all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice,

but while all their mouths talk right I do not understand why nothing is done for my people.

I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done Words do not pay for my dead people.

They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men.

They do not protect my father's grave.

Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.

I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.

It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises.

I mean that could be almost any American Indian leader.

This is totally unfair, Stan. All I really know about this is that the Great Father Chief is the President.

I mean it could be any of a dozen people.

How bout if I say the name in 10 seconds I don’t get punished?

Aaaand start. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Chief Big Foot, um, Keokuk, Chief Oshkosh,

Chief Joseph Ch-OH YES YES!

And now let us move from tragedy to tragedy.

So if you’re thinking that it couldn’t get worse for the Native Americans: it did.

After killing off the buffalo, taking their land and forcing Indians onto reservations,

the Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted a policy that amounted to cultural genocide.

It set up boarding schools, the most famous of which was in Carlisle, PA, where Indian children were forcefully removed from their families to be civilized.

This meant teaching them English, taking away their clothes, their names, and their family connections.

The idea put succinctly, was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

Now, the U.S. wasn’t the only nation busy subjugating its indigenous inhabitants and putting them on reservations in the late 19th century.

Like, something similar was happening in South Africa, in Chile, and even to First Peoples in Canada.

And you’re usually so good, Canada.

Although the slower pace of western settlement meant that there was much less bloodshed, so, another point to Canada.

And as bad as the American boarding school policy was,

at least it was short lived compared with Australia’s policy of removing Aboriginal children from families and placing them with white foster families, which lasted until the 1970s.

All right, Stan, we need to cheer this episode up. Let’s talk about cowboys!

The Marlboro Man riding the range, herding cows and smoking, solitary in the saddle, alone in his emphysema.

Surely that is the actual West, the men and women but mostly men who stood apart from the industrializing country as the last of Jefferson’s rugged individuals.

But, no. Once again, we have the railroad to thank for our image of the cowboy.

Like, those massive cattle drives of millions of cows across open range Texas?

Yeah, they ended at towns like Abilene, and Wichita, and Dodge City – because that’s where the railheads were.

Without railroads, cowboys would have just driven their cattle in endless circles.

And without industrial meat processing, there wouldn’t have been a market for all that beef.

And it was a lot of beef. You know what I’m talking about. I’m actually talking about beef.

By the mid 1880s the days of open range ranching were coming to an end,

as ranchers began to enclose more and more land and set up their businesses closer to, you guessed it, railroad stations.

There are also quite a few things about western farming that just fly in the face of the mythical Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal.

Firstly, this type of agricultural work was a family affair;

many women bore huge burdens on western farms, as can be seen in this excerpt from a farm woman in Arizona:

“Get up, turn out my chickens, draw a pail of water …

make a fire, put potatoes to cook, brush and sweep half inch of dust off floor,

feed three litters of chickens, then mix biscuits, get breakfast, milk, besides work in the house and this morning had to go half mile after calves.”

These family-run farms were increasingly oriented towards production of wheat and corn for national and even international markets rather than trying to eke out subsistence.

Farmers in Kansas found themselves competing with farmers in Australia and Argentina,

and this international competition pushed prices lower and lower.

Secondly, the Great Plains, while remarkably productive agriculturally, wouldn’t be nearly as good for producing crops without massive irrigation projects.

Much of the water needed for plains agriculture comes a massive underground lake, the Oglala Aquifer.

Don’t worry, by the way, the Aquifer is fed by a magic and permanent H20 factory in the core of the earth that you can learn about in Hank’s show, Crash Course Chemis–

What’s that? It’s going dry. MY GOD THIS IS A DEPRESSING EPISODE.

Anyway, large-scale irrigation projects necessitate big capital investments,

and therefore large, consolidated agricultural enterprises that start to look more like agri-business than family farms.

I mean, by 1900, California was home to giant commercial farms reliant on irrigation and chemical fertilizers.

Some of them were owned, not by families, but by big corporations like the Southern Pacific Railroad.

And they were worked by migrant farm laborers from China, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico.

As Henry George, a critic of late 19th century corporate capitalism, wrote

“California is not a country of farms, but … of plantations and estates.”

When studying American history, it’s really easy to get caught up in the excitement of industrial capitalism with its robber barons,

and new technologies, and fancy cities because that world looks very familiar to us, probably because it’s the one in which we live.

After all, if I was running a farm like that Arizona woman I talked about earlier, there’s no way I could be making these videos because I’d be chasing my calves.

I don’t even know what a litter of chickens is.

Is it 4 chickens? 12? 6? It’s probably 12 because eggs do come in dozens.

The massive agricultural surplus contemporary farms create,

and the efficient transportation network that gets that surplus to me quickly, makes everything else possible – from YouTube to Chevy Volts.

And no matter who you are, you benefit from the products that result from that massive surplus.

That’s why we’re watching YouTube right now.

So, agriculture and animal husbandry did change a lot in late 19th century America,

as we came to embrace the market driven ethos that we either celebrate or decry these days.

And in the end, the Wild West ends up looking a lot more like industrial capitalism than like a Larry McMurtry novel.

The Wild West, like the rest of the industrialized world, was incentivized to increase productivity and was shaped by an increasingly international economic system.

And it’s worth remembering that even though we think of the Oregon Trail and the Wild West being part of the same thing.

In fact, they were separated by the most important event in American history: the Civil War.

I know that ain’t the mythologizing you’ll find in Tombstone, but it is true.

Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.

The associate producer of the show is Danica Johnson.

The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Halse Rojas, and myself.

And our graphics team is Thought Café.

Every week, there’s a new caption for the libertage.

If you’d like to suggest one you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians.

Thanks for watching Crash Course. If you enjoy it, make sure you subscribe.

And as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

OH, ahh I didn’t get a good push.