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Frontier Strip states are in
red.
The
Frontier Strip are the six states in the United States
forming a north-south line from North Dakota
to Texas
.
In the
American Old West, westward from
this strip was the frontier of the United States
toward the latter part of the 19th century.
The
Frontier Strip states, or the Last American
Frontier, form a nearly straight line from north to south and roughly
correspond to the Great
Plains
region of the United States.
Description
The term
Frontier Strip is correlated to the 1880
census, where these six states, some of which were
territories at the time, were part of the "
Frontier Line," sometimes taken to be the
100th meridian west, the geographic
designation by the
U.S.
Census Bureau that proclaimed where the
civilization of the Eastern United States
ended and the historic American Wild West began. In the
1890 census, it stated, "Up to and including 1880 the country had a
frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been
so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can
hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its
extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any
longer have a place in the census reports."
Demographics
The Frontier Strip's land area is 1,642,083.585 km² (634,012.017 sq
mi), or 17.92% of U.S. land area. Its population as of the 2000
census was 30,099,199 or 10.695% of U.S. population. Its average
population density was 18.33/km²
(47.47/sq mi), compared to the U.S. average of 30.72/km² (79.56/sq
mi). Its population is heavily tilted towards the south, with both
population and population density increasing as one goes state by
state from North Dakota in the north towards Texas in the south.
Texas by itself has 69.28% of the region's population, living on
41.29% of its land area.
The modern states included in the frontier strip are:
Politics
The Frontier Strip has been one of the most reliably
Republican regions of the
United States. It was one of the few parts of the country where
Republicans had any electoral success during the heavily Democratic
years of the Great Depression. The last Democratic presidential
candidate to win one of those six states was
Jimmy Carter, who won Texas in
United States
presidential election, 1976, though
Barack Obama won one Nebraska electoral vote in
the
United
States presidential election, 2008.
Frontier history
Frontier Strip
events
- Kansas: Upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, the
borders of Kansas Territory were set from the Missouri
border to the summit of the Rocky Mountain range; the southern boundary
was the 37th parallel, the northern was the 40th
parallel.
- Texas: While far from the major battlefields
of the American Civil War, Texas
contributed large numbers of men, and equipment to the rest of the
Confederacy. President Johnson, in 1866, declared the civilian
government restored in Texas. Despite not meeting reconstruction
requirements, in 1870, Congress readmitted Texas into the Union
.
- South Dakota
- In
1861, Dakota Territory was
established by the United States government (this initially
included North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Montana
and Wyoming ).
- North Dakota
- The railroads were the engine of settlement in the state. Major
development occurred in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1861, the area that
is now North Dakota was incorporated into the new Dakota Territory.
- Nebraska: On March 2, 1861, Dakota Territory took all of the portions
of Nebraska Territory north of 43° N (the present-day
Nebraska-South
Dakota
border), along with the portion of present-day
Nebraska between the 43rd parallel
north and the Keya Paha and Niobrara rivers (this land would be
returned to Nebraska in 1882).
- Oklahoma
- The United States entered into two new treaties with the Creeks
and the Seminoles. Under these treaties, tribes would sell at least
part of their land in Oklahoma to the U.S. to settle other Indian
tribes and [[wikt
|
Opening of the frontier area
Native Americans
The
numerous native tribes of North America stretched throughout the
Great
Plains
. In the area, the
Blackfoot Confederacy and the
Sioux (the
Lakota people)
lead lives of
hunting and
gathering.
Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who
lived in semipermanent villages of
earth
lodges, such as the
Arikara,
Mandan,
Pawnee and
Wichita.
Louisiana Purchase era
An
influence in the frontier strip were the French
. It
was from the French that the United States acquired the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803. This
significantly expanded the country's borders. The
Lewis and Clark expedition
(1804–1806) was the first United States overland expedition across
the west frontier, to the
Pacific coast, and then
back, lead by Captain
Meriwether
Lewis and Second Lieutenant
William
Clark.
The expedition past through the area, what
is now Kansas City and Omaha,
Nebraska
.
Following the Lewis and Clark expeditions, Major Stephen H.
Long led
the Yellowstone and Missouri expeditions of 1819-1820, but his
categorizing of the Great
Plains
as arid and useless led to the region getting a bad
reputation as the "Great American Desert", which discouraged
settlement in that area for several decades.
Trails, roads, and routes
The 1821 opening of the
Santa Fe
Trail ("Santa Fe Road") by
William
Becknell allowed commercial trade between Kansas City, Missouri
and Santa Fe, New Mexico, until 1880. The
Southwest Trail was another pioneer route
that was the primary route for American settlers bound for Texas.
The
Mormon Trail was the overland route
the Mormon pioneers followed west from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt
Lake Valley, establishing Salt Lake City, Utah in 1846.
The
Oregon Trail was a key overland
migration route on which pioneers traveled across the North
American continent in wagons. This trail helped the United States
implement its cultural goal of
Manifest
Destiny, that is to build a great nation spanning the North
American continent. The Oregon Trail spanned over half the
continent as the wagon trail proceeded over 2,000 miles west
through territories and land later to become six U.S. states
(Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon). Between
1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers to the
Northwest and West Coast areas of what is now the United States.
The
California Trail, sharing a
portion of the Oregon Trails route, was another major overland
emigrant route across the American West from Missouri to California
in the middle 19th century. It was used by 250,000 farmers and
gold-seekers to reach the California gold fields and farm
homesteads in California beginning in the late 1840s.
Indian Territory
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Map of Indian territory - 1836
Indian territories was land set aside
within the United
States
for the use of Native
Americans. The general borders were set by the
Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. It
was more properly "Indian territory" (lower-case T) than "Indian
Territory" (capital T) because the name referred to the
unorganized lands set aside for Native
Americans. The Indian Territory served as the destination for the
policy of
Indian Removal, a policy
pursued intermittently by
American presidents early in
the nineteenth century, but aggressively pursued by President
Andrew Jackson after the passage of
the
Indian Removal Act of
1830.
The
Five Civilized Tribes in
the South were the most prominent tribes displaced by the policy, a
relocation that came to be known as the
Trail of Tears during the Choctaw removals
starting in 1831.
The trail ended in what is now Arkansas
and Oklahoma, where there were already many Native
Americans living in the territory, as well as whites and escaped
slaves. Other tribes, such as the
Delaware,
Cheyenne, and
Apache were also forced to relocate to
the Indian territory.
Texas Revolution
In 1835,
Davy Crockett, after being defeated in
an election and completely fed up with the eastern folks, left
politics telling those he left behind, "You all may go to hell,
and I'll go to Texas
". On 14 January 1836, Crockett and 65
other men signed an oath to the Provisional Government of Texas.
Each man was promised about 4,605 acres (19 km²) of land as
payment. However, despite their oaths, many of the men, including
Crockett, found themselves joining forces with the Texan rebels,
who disliked the strict mandates of the Mexican government.
Crockett, and a dozen of his men decided to join the Texan fight
for independence by heading to San Antonio de Bexar, where a large
number of Texan forces were staked out. They arrived in San Antonio
on 6 February 1836.
Crockett
took part in the Battle of the Alamo
(February 23 - March 6, 1836) and was assigned to
defend the south palisade in front of the chapel. The Texas
forces of 180-250 were overwhelmed by the 1,300-1,600 Mexican
soldiers. Tradition has it that Crockett went down fighting inside
the Alamo.
Despite the defeat at the Alamo, the
fighting continued and Texas won its independence at the Battle of
San Jacinto
that spring. Texas eventually applied for
admission as a U.S. state, a situation that the Mexican government
called an act of war. After a gunbattle in the
Rio Grande Valley between Mexican troops
and a U.S. scouting party (Most historians agree that the battle
took place on the Mexican side of the border), it was declared that
"American blood has been shed on American soil," and the
Mexican-American War began.
Winfield Scott and
Zachary Taylor led full-scale campaigns deep
into Mexico.
Americans in California revolted and set up
the short-lived California Republic
. The end result of the controversial war was
that a vast new swath of land became U.S. territory, open for Anglo
settlements.
Westward expansion
The
Pony Express Trail from St.
Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, was also in use around
this time. It was 1840 miles in length.
The Pony Express
Trail traversed the states of Missouri and California and the
intrevening Utah Territory, Nebraska
Territory
, and Kansas
Territory lands (the present day states include: Missouri,
Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and
California). It only stayed in operation for 18 months,
between April 1860 and October 1861, being replaced by the
telegraph.
Wild Bill Hickok, in 1855, was a
stagecoach driver on the Santa Fe route and Oregon Trail. His
gunfighting skills led to his nickname. He lived a while in Johnson
County, Kansas and later was a town constable in Nebraska. He
became well-known for single-handedly capturing the McCanles gang,
through the use of a ruse. On several other occasions, Hickok
confronted and killed several men while fighting alone.
Kansas-Nebraska territory
By the mid-1850s, the Kansas territory had a population of only a
few hundred settlers but it became the focus of the slavery
question. Of its neighboring states, Missouri was a slave state and
Iowa was not. With the
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Congress
repealed the
Missouri Compromise
which blocked slavery in Kansas, instead leaving the decision up to
Kansas. The stakes were high. Adoption of slavery in Kansas would
have given the slave states a two vote majority in the Senate and
abolitionists were intent on blocking that.
To influence the territorial decision, abolitionists (also called
"Jayhawkers" or "Free-soilers") financed the migration of
anti-slavery settlers. But pro-slavery advocates secured the
outcome of the territorial vote by bringing in "Border Ruffians",
rowdies from Missouri who stuffed ballot boxes and intimidated
voters. The anti-slavers then sent
Sharps
rifles ("
Beecher's Bibles") and
ammunition to supporters in Kansas, leading to widespread violence
and destruction.
Bleeding Kansas, the
Border
War, was a series of violent events, involving
anti-slavery Free-Soilers and pro-slavery "
Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in
the
Kansas Territory and the
western frontier towns roughly between 1854 and 1858.
At the heart of the
conflict was the question of whether Kansas
would enter
the Union as a free state or slave
state. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a
proxy war between
Northerners and
Southerners over the issue of
slavery in the United
States.
Dred Scott
The
Dred Scott decision by the
Supreme Court of the United
States
in 1857 declared the Missouri Compromise
unconstitutional and that Congress had no authority to exclude
slavery from the territories, thus opening
these areas to slavery again depending on the local vote.
Despite the efforts by presidents
Franklin Pierce and
James Buchanan to influence Kansas
territorial governors to vote pro-slavery, Kansas voted to become a
free state and the thirty-fourth state of the Union in 1861. The
conflict also helped to foster the organization and development of
the
Republican
Party in 1856, a mixture of free-soilers, expansionists, and
federalists who opposed the extension of slavery into the Western
territories.
Abraham Lincoln, an early
Republican, made clear his position on slavery in the famous
Lincoln-Douglas debates
which helped propel him to the presidency in 1860, "Never forget
that we have before us this whole matter of the right or wrong of
slavery in this Union, though the immediate question is as to its
spreading out into new Territories and States." Lincoln branded
slavery as a "monstrous injustice" and a "moral, social, and
political evil". In 1862, Lincoln signed a law prohibiting the
spread of slavery into all the remaining territorial possessions.
During Lincoln's administration, two other important acts were
passed which impacted the West—the
Homestead Act and the
Pacific Railroad Act.
Civil War era
At the outset of the
American Civil
War, Westerners looked to the Civil War to settle the question
of slavery in their territories. But they also feared that the
federal government would be too preoccupied with the war to worry
about the stability of the territorial governments and that
lawlessness might spread. The Dred Scott Decision had made the
choice of slavery legal in all of the land west of the Mississippi
River, except for Kansas and a few other states.
In Kansas, a major area of conflict building up to the war, was the
scene of only one battle, at
Mine
Creek. But its proximity to Confederate states enabled
guerillas, such as
Quantrill's
Raiders, to attack Union strongholds, causing considerable
damage. Both sides attacked civilians, murdering and plundering
with little discrimination, creating an atmosphere of terror.
In Texas, citizens voted to join the confederacy. Local troops took
over the federal arsenal in San Antonio, with plans to grab the
territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, and possibly
California.
At the Battle of Glorieta Pass
, the Texans' campaign was defeated by Union troops
from Colorado and from Fort
Union
.
The decreased presence of Union troops in the West left behind
untrained militias which encouraged native uprisings and skirmishes
with settlers. President Lincoln appears to have had little time to
formulate new Indian policy. Some tribes took sides in the war,
even forming regiments that joined the Union or the rebel cause,
while others took the opportunity to avenge past wrongs by the
federal government. Within the "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma),
conflicts arose among the
Five
Civilized Tribes, some of whom sided with the South being
slaveholders themselves.
Homestead Act
In 1862, Congress passed three important bills that impacted the
land system. The
Homestead Act granted
to each settler who improved the land for five years, to citizens
and non-citizens including squatters, for no more than modest
filing fees. If a six months residency was complied with, the
settler then had the option to buy the parcel at $1.25 per acre.
The property could then be sold or mortgaged and neighboring land
acquired if expansion was desired. Though the act was on the whole
successful, the size of parcels was not large enough for the needs
of Western farmers and ranchers.
Reconstruction west
Antebellum pioneers
After the Civil War, much of the Great Plains became
open range, hosting
ranching operations where anyone was theoretically
free to run
cattle. In the spring and fall,
roundups were held and the new calves were branded and the cattle
sorted out for sale. Ranching began in Texas and gradually moved
northward.
Texas cattle were driven north to railroad lines in cities Dodge City,
Kansas
and Ogallala, Nebraska
; from there, cattle were shipped eastward.
Many
foreign, especially British
, investors financed the great ranches of the
era. Overstocking of the range and the terrible winter of
1886 eventually resulted in a disaster, with many cattle starved
and frozen. From then onward,
ranchers
generally turned to raising feed in order to keep their cattle
alive over winter. This settlement led to the near-extinction of
the
bison and the removal of the
Native
Americans to
Indian
reservations in the 1870s.
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
"land exploring tickets", the cost of which could be applied to
land purchases offered by the railroads. Some migrants went west
reluctantly, particularly women tied to their husbands
economically, who viewed the dangers of the West more objectively.
The truth was that farming the plains was indeed more difficult
than back east. Water management was more critical, lightning fires
more prevalent, weather more extreme, rainfall less
predictable.
Most migrants, however, put those concerns aside. Their chief
motivation to move west was to find a better economic life than the
one they had. Farmers sought larger and more fertile areas;
merchants and tradesman new customers and less competitive markets;
laborers higher paying work and better conditions. In many cases,
migrants sank their roots in communities of similar religious and
ethnic backgrounds. For example,
Swedes to South Dakota,
Norwegians to North Dakota, and
German Mennonites in Kansas.
Concerning
African-Americans, the
number of blacks in the West remained at only a few thousand
throughout the 19th century. Blacks did participate in nearly all
segments of Western society but many lived in segregated
communities. They served in expeditions that mapped the West and as
fur traders, miners, cowboys, Indian fighters, scouts, woodsmen,
farm hands, saloon workers, cooks, and
outlaws. The famed
Buffalo Soldiers were members of the Negro
regiments of the U.S. Army and they played a substantial role in
fighting the Plains Indians and the Apache in Arizona.
Relatively few freed
slaves, known as "Exodusters", became
prairie settlers in all-black towns like Nicodemus
, Kansas.
Transcontinental railroad
Concerning the transcontinental rails
through the area, existing lines, particularly belonging to the
Union Pacific, had already reached
westward to Omaha,
Nebraska
, about half
way across the continent. 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 labor intensive, using
mostly plows, scrapers, picks, axes, chisels, sledgehammers, and
handcarts.
The transcontinental railroad spurred the development of trunk and
feeder lines and the
rapid growth of
Omaha specifically, creating a rail network extending from the
city that eventually reached over most of the West. The railroads
made possible the transformation of the United States from an
agrarian society to a modern industrial nation. Not only did they
bring eastern products west and agricultural products east, but
they also helped the establishment of western branches of eastern
companies. Mail order businesses grew rapidly, bringing city
products to rural families, sometimes dominating local companies
and forcing them out of business.
The building and the operation of railroads, which required vast
amounts of coal and lumber, spurred the timber and mining
industries. Most industries benefited from the lower costs of
transportation and the expanding markets made possible by the
railroads. Railroads also had a profound social effect. Rail travel
brought immigrant families to the West as women were less
intimidated by the rail journey west than by wagon. The greater
numbers of women and children migrating west helped stabilize and
tame some of the wild frontier towns, as these settlers organized
and demanded schools, law enforcement, churches, and other
institutions supportive of family life.
Native bison, European cattle
The rise of the cattle industry and the cowboy is directly tied to
the demise of the huge
bison herds of the
Great Plains.
Plains buffalo herds
Once numbering over 25 million, bison were a vital resource animal
for the Plains Indians, providing food, hides for clothing and
shelter, and bones for implements. Drought, loss of habitat,
disease, and over-hunting steadily reduced the herds through the
19th century to the point of near extinction. Overland trails and
growing settlements began to block the free movement of the herds
to feeding and breeding areas. Initially, commercial hunters sought
bison to make "
pemmican," a mixture of
pounded buffalo meat, fat, and berries, which was a long-lasting
food used by trappers and other outdoorsmen. Not only did white
hunters impact the herds, but Indians who arrived from the East
also contributed to their reduction. Adding to the kill was the
wanton slaughter of bison by sportsmen, migrants, and soldiers.
Shooting bison from passing trains was common sport. However, the
greatest negative effect on the herds was the huge markets opened
up by the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Hides in
great quantities were tanned into leather and fashioned into
clothing and furniture. Killing far exceeded market requirements,
reaching over one million per year. As many as five bison were
killed for each one that reached market, and most of the meat was
left to rot on the plains and at trackside after removal of the
hides. Skulls were often ground for fertilizer. A skilled hunter
could kill over 100 bison in a day.
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By the 1870s, the great slaughter of bison had a major impact on
the Plains Indians, dependent on the animal both economically and
spiritually. Soldiers of the U.S. Army deliberately encouraged and
abetted the killing of bison as part of the campaigns against the
Sioux and Pawnee, in an effort to deprive them of their resource
animal and to demoralize them.
Cattle industry
The sharp decline of the herds of the Plains created a vacuum which
was exploited by the growing cattle industry. 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―with railheads available at Abilene, Kansas City, Dodge City,
and Wichita―Texas ranchers raised large herds of longhorn cattle
and drove them north along the Western, Chisholm, and
Shawnee trails. The cattle were slaughtered in
Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
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 from south Texas to Abilene,
Kansas
. In 1871, the Kansas City Stockyards boomed in the
city's West
Bottoms
because of their central location in the country
and their proximity to trains. They became second only to
Chicago's in size, and the city itself was identified with its
famous
Kansas City steak.
The long cattle drives were treacherous, especially crossing
dangerous waters and when facing hostile Indians or 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, the long Texas drives proved very
profitable and attracted investors from the United States and
abroad. The price of one head of cattle raised in Texas was about
$4 but was worth more than $40 back East.
By the 1870s and 1880s, cattle ranches expanded further north into
new grazing grounds and replaced the bison herds in Nebraska and
the Dakota territory, using the rails to ship to both coasts. Many
of the largest ranches were owned by Scottish and British
financiers. Gradually, longhorns were replaced by the American
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.
In the late 1880s, disaster struck the cattle industry.
Overgrazing, harsh weather, and competition from sheep ranches led
to a sharp price drop as ranchers gave up on cattle and sold their
herds into a falling market. Sheep grazing took over as sheep were
easier to feed and needed less water. However, sheep also helped
cause ecological changes that enabled foreign grasses to invade the
Plains and also caused increased erosion. 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. Cattlemen and sheep ranchers sometimes engaged in violence
against each other as did large and small cattle ranchers.
Cowboy's duties
Before a drive, a cowboy's duties included riding out on the range
and bringing together the scattered cattle. All cattle would be
sorted, roped, and branded, and most male cattle were castrated.
Later, 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. The work days 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,
brawling, and even cursing was often prohibited and fined. It was
often monotonous and boring work. Food was barely adequate and
consisted mostly of 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. As open range
ranching and the long drives gave way to fenced in ranches in the
1880s, the glory days of the cowboy came to an end, and the myths
about the "free living" cowboy began to emerge.
Western code and cowboys
A new code of behavior was becoming acceptable in the West. People
no longer had a
duty to retreat when
threatened. This was a departure from British common law that said
you must have your back to the wall before you could protect
yourself with deadly force. Many of the cowboys were veterans of
the Civil War, particularly from the
Confederacy, who returned to
ruined home towns and found no future, so they went west looking
for opportunities. Some were Blacks, Hispanics, and even Native
Americans, Britons, and Scotsmen. Nearly all were in their twenties
or teens.
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 Andalusia
in Spain. Chaps, the heavy protective
leather trousers worn by cowboys, got their name from the Spanish
"chaparreras", and the 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. The most enduring fashion adapted
from the cowboy, popular nearly worldwide today, are "blue jeans",
originally made by
Levi Strauss for
miners in 1850. But it was the cowboy hat, that came to symbolize
the
American West.
Cow-towns and lawmen
While the
Eastern United
States
was beginning to experience the Second Industrial Revolution
(which started around 1871), the frontier was beginning to fill up
with people. In the early days of the wild west, a great
deal of the land was in the
public
domain, open both to
livestock raising
as
open range and to
homesteading. Throughout much of the Old West,
there was little to no local law enforcement, and the military had
only concentrated presence at specific locations.
Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, drifters
and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to the shootings where
men died "with their boots on."
The early years of male-dominated life in cattle towns gave way to
a more balanced community of farm families and small businesses as
the boom passed. Though lawlessness, prostitution, and gambling
were significant in cattle towns, especially early on, the greed
factor in the towns added an extra element of danger and violence.
Since these towns grew rapidly, law and order often took a while to
establish itself. Vigilante justice did occur, but in many cases,
it subsided when adequate police forces were appointed. While some
vigilante committees served the public good fairly and successfully
in the absence of law officers and judges, more often than not
vigilantism was motivated by bigotry and base emotion and produced
imperfect justice directed at those considered socially
inferior.
In the
towns, state houses, dance halls and saloons catered to the
Texas
cattle drive trade. The historic
Chisholm Trail was used for cattle drives.
The trail
ran for 800 miles (1,290 km) from south Texas to Abilene,
Kansas
, and was used from 1867 to 1887 to drive cattle
northward to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway, where they
were shipped eastward. Cattle
rustling was a sometimes serious offense and was always a
hazard for the expeditions. It could result in the rustler's
lynching by
vigilantes (but most stories
of this type are fictional).
Mexican
rustlers were a major issue during the American Civil War, with the Mexican
government being accused of supporting the habit.
Texans
likewise stole cattle from Mexico, swimming them across the
Rio
Grande
.
Anchoring the booming cattle industry of the 1860s and 1870s were
the cattle towns in Kansas.
Cattle towns such as Abilene
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 on after
the grazing lands were exhausted. In some cases, resistance by
moral reformers and alliances of businessmen drove the cattle trade
out of town. Ellsworth, on the other hand, floundered as the result
of Indian raids, floods, and
cholera.
Fort
Dodge, Kansas
, was
established in 1859 and opened in 1865 on the Santa Fe Trail near the present site of
Dodge City,
Kansas
(which was established in June 1872). The
fort offered some protection to wagon trains and the U.S. mail
service, and it served as a supply base for troops engaged in the
Indian Wars. By the end of 1872, the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad crossed Kansas. Dodge City
acquired its legacy of lawlessness and gun-slinging and its
infamous burial place —
Boot Hill
Cemetery. It was used until 1878. Dodge City was the buffalo
capital until mass slaughter destroyed the huge herds and left the
prairie littered with decaying carcasses. Law and order came into
Dodge City with such law officers as
W. B. 'Bat' Masterson, Ed Masterson,
Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, H. B. 'Ham' Bell and
Charlie Bassett. The city passed an ordinance that guns could not
be worn or carried north of the "deadline," which was the railroad
tracks.
A contemporary eyewitness of Hays City, Kansas paints a vivid image
of a 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."
To control violence, sometimes cowboys were segregated into brothel
districts away from the main part of town. Free-shooting brawls,
also known as "hurrahing", were not as frequent as in the movies.
In Wichita, handguns were outlawed within city limits and in many
towns some form of gun control existed. Also unlike in the movies,
marshals rarely shot outlaws, especially in the middle of Main
Street in a showdown.
Wild Bill and Calamity Jane
After the Civil War,
Wild Bill
Hickok became an army scout and a professional gambler.
Hickok's
killing of Whistler the Peacemaker with a long range rifle shot had
influence in preventing the Sioux from uniting
to resist the settler incursions into the Black Hills
. In 1876, Calamity
Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota
, in the Black Hills region where she was close
friends with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, all having
traveled in Utter's wagon train. Jane later claimed to have
been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child;
however, this story is viewed with skepticism.
On
August 2,
1876,
while playing poker in Deadwood (then part of the Dakota Territory
but on Indian land), Hickok could not find an empty seat in the
corner where he always sat in order to protect himself against
sneak attacks from behind, and he instead sat with his back to the
door; unfortunately, his previous caution proved wise, since he was
shot in the back of the head with a double-action .45 caliber
revolver by Jack McCall. The motive for the killing is still
debated. It is claimed that, at the time of his death, Hickok held
a pair of aces and a pair of eights, with all cards black; this has
since been called a "
dead man's
hand".
Frontier Indian Wars
Military forts and outposts
The establishment of U.S. military forts moved with it,
representing and maintaining federal sovereignty over new
territories. 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 Indian
presence.
For example, Fort Laramie
and Fort Kearny helped
protect immigrants crossing the Great Plains. 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), and Fort Worth
(Texas). By the 1890s, with the threat from
Indian nations eliminated, and with migrant populations increasing
enough to provide their own law enforcement, most frontier forts
were abandoned.
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.
Settlements and conflagrations
As settlement sped up across the West after the transcontinental
railroad was completed, clashes with Native Americans of the Plains
and southwest reached a final phase. The military's mission was to
clear the land of free-roaming Indians and put them onto
reservations. The stiff resistance after the Civil War of
battle-hardened, well-armed Indian warriors resulted in the
Indian Wars.
Red Cloud's War was led by the
Lakota chief
Makhpyia luta (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 , the
U.S. granted a large reservation to the Lakota, without military
presence or oversight, no settlements, and no reserved road
building rights. The reservation included the entire Black
Hills.
The
Black Hills War was conducted by
the Lakota under
Sitting Bull and
Crazy Horse. The conflict began after
repeated violations of the
Treaty of Fort Laramie 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.
The end of the Indian Wars came at the
Massacre of Wounded Knee (December
29, 1890) where Sitting Bull's half-brother,
Big Foot, and some 200 Sioux were killed by the
U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment. Only
thirteen days before, Sitting Bull had been killed with his son
Crow Foot in a gun battle with a group of
Indian police that had been sent by the American government to
arrest him.
Closing the frontier
Buffalo Bill Wild West Show
In Omaha, Nebraska, in 1883, Cody founded the "Buffalo Bill Wild
West Show," a circus-like attraction that toured annually: Annie
Oakley and Sitting Bull both appeared in the show. In 1887, he
performed in London in celebration of the Jubilee year of Victoria
of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria and toured Europe in 1889. The
frontiersman and showman Buffalo Bill (William Cody) toured the
United States starring in plays based loosely on his Western
adventures. His part typically included an 1876 incident at
Warbonnet Creek where he
scalped a Cheyenne warrior, purportedly in revenge for the death of
George Armstrong Custer.
Oklahoma land rush
In 1889, President
Benjamin
Harrison authorized the opening of of unoccupied lands in the
Oklahoma territory acquired from the native tribes. On April 22,
over 100,000 settlers and cattlemen (known as "boomers") lined up
at the border, and with the army's guns and bugles giving the
signal, began a mad dash into the newly opened land to stake their
claims (
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."
In a day,
the towns of Oklahoma
City
, Norman
, and Guthrie came into
existence. In the same manner, millions of acres of
additional land was opened up and settled in the following four
years.
U.S. Census and Turner's Thesis
In his highly influential
Frontier
Thesis in 1893,
Frederick
Jackson Turner concluded that the frontier was all but gone.
After the eleventh
U.S. Census was taken in 1890, the superintendent
announced that there was no longer a clear line of advancing
settlement, and hence no longer a frontier in the continental
United States. By century's end, the population of the West had
reached an average of two people per square mile, which was enough
to be considered "settled". Towns and cities began to grow around
industrial centers, transportation hubs, and farming areas.
Recent history
World Wars era
At the
beginning of the First World War,
thousand from the region enlisted in the United States military after the
United States declared war on Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria
, and Turkey
.
The
Dust Bowl was a series of
dust storms caused by a massive drought that
began in 1930 and lasted until 1941. The effect of the drought
combined with the effects of the
Great
Depression, forced many farmers off the land throughout the
Great Plains. The several economic and climatic conditions combined
with disastrous results. A lack of rainfall, extremely high
temperatures and over-cultivation of farmland produced what was
known as the
Dust Bowl in several other
plains states. Fertile
topsoil was blown
away in massive dust storms, and several harvests were completely
ruined. The experiences of the Dust Bowl, coupled with local bank
foreclosures and the general economic
effects of the
Great Depression
resulted in many leaving the region.
The Grapes of Wrath by
John Steinbeck, photographs by
Dorothea Lange, and songs of
Woody Guthrie tales of woe from the era. The
negative images of the "
Okie" as a sort of
rootless migrant laborer living in a near-animal state of
scrounging for food greatly offended many Oklahomans. These works
often mix the experiences of former sharecroppers of the western
American South with those of the exodusters fleeing the fierce dust
storms of the High Plains. Although they primarily feature the
extremely destitute, the vast majority of the people, both staying
in and fleeing the region, suffered great poverty in the Depression
years.
Economic stability returned with the U.S. entry into
World War II in 1941, when demand for
agricultural and industrial products grew as the nation mobilized
for war. During the
Second World
War, states were home to several
prisoner of war camps. In addition, several
U.S. Army Airfields were constructed at various locations across
the region
Contemporary era
During the
Cold War, the area participated
in the deterrent weapons system that for years defended America
from nuclear attack. In the 1950s, Kansas received unusually high
doses of radioactive nuclear fallout from 1950s nuclear weapons
tests in Nevada.
In May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court in
Brown v. Board of Education
unanimously declared that separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment to the
United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens "equal
protection of the laws."
Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka explicitly outlawed
de
jure racial segregation
of
public education facilities
(legal establishment of separate government-run schools for blacks
and whites). The site consists of the Monroe Elementary School, one
of the four segregated elementary schools for African American
children in Topeka, Kansas (and the adjacent grounds).
During the 1950s and 1960s,
intercontinental ballistic
missiles (designed to carry a single nuclear warhead) were
stationed throughout the region's facilities. They were stored (to
be launched from) hardened underground silos. Many facilities were
deactivated in the early 1980s.
On Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m.
Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC)
Lee
Harvey Oswald assassinated
John F.
Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States.
Three
shots were fired at the president's car from the 6th floor of
theTexas
School Book Depository
. The Texas Governor,
John B. Connally, was also critically injured but
survived.
The vice president, the Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, sworn in as
President on Air Force One in Dallas at Love Field
Airport
.
In 1995 Oklahoma became the scene of an act of terrorism.
On April
19, in the Oklahoma
City bombing
, Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred
P.
Murrah Federal Building
, killing 168 people, including 19 children.
Timothy McVeigh and
Terry Nichols were the convicted perpetrators
of the attack, although many believe others were involved.
Timothy McVeigh was later sentenced to death
by lethal injection, while his partner,
Terry Nichols, who was convicted of 161 counts
of
first degree murder received
life in prison without the possibility of
parole.
References
- General information
19th century sources
- Marcy, Randolph Barnes. The
Prairie and Overland Traveller: A Companion for Emigrants, Traders,
Travellers, Hunters, and Soldiers Traversing Great Plains and
Prairies. London: S. Low, 1860.
- Dana, C. W., Thomas Hart Benton. The
Great West, Or The Garden of the World: Its History, Its Wealth,
Its Natural Advantages, and Its Future, Thayer & Eldridge,
1861
- Gilpin, William. Mission of the North American People, Geographical,
Social, and Political. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co,
1874.
- Dodge, Richard Irving, William Blackmore, The
Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants: Being a Description
of the Plains, Game, Indians of the Great North American
Desert. G. P. Putnam's sons, 1876.
- Dodge, Richard Irving, William Blackmore, Ernest Henry Griset,
The Hunting Grounds of the Great West: A Description of
the Plains, Game, and Indians of the Great North American
Desert. Chatto & Windus, 1877
- Campion, J. S. On
the Frontier: Reminiscences of Wild Sports, Personal Adventures,
and Strange Scenes. Chapman & Hall, 1878.
20th and 21st century sources
- Parrish, Randall. The
Great Plains: The Romance of Western American Exploration, Warfare,
and Settlement, 1527-1870. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co,
1907.
- Paxson, Frederic L. The
Last American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1910.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. The
Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Holt and Co,
1921.
- Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol
and Myth, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1950.
ISBN 0674939557
- Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the
Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. 1960.
- Lamar, Howard, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American
West (1998); this is a revised version of Reader's
Encyclopedia of the American West ed. by Howard Lamar.
1977.
- Tompkins, Jane, West of Everything: The Inner Life of
Westerns. 1993.
- Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, and William Cronon, eds.
Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the
American West. 1994.
- Mitchell, Lee Clark, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction
and Film. 1998.
- Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the
Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890.
1998.
- Wishart, David J. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. Lincoln,
Neb: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. The American Legal Frontier. Page 442 - 443.
- Footnotes
- Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Frontier In American History.
- Utley, Robert Marshall. The Indian Frontier of the American
West, 1846-1890. Histories of the American frontier. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
- Paxson, Frederic L. The
Last American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1910.
- Accessed January 14, 2009
- Horan & Sann, Pictorial History of the Wild West,
Bonanza Books, New York, 1964, p. 52
- In later days and with the discovery of gold in the
Klondike in 1896, a new frontier was opened up in the vast
northern territory. Alaska
afterward became known as "the last frontier.".
- Warren Commission, p. 147.
- Warren Commission Hearings, p. 133
- Transcript, Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview XIII,
9/10/86, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. See:
Page 23 at [1]
External links