Conquest of the West

According to the 2000 Federal Census, four of the five poorest counties in the United States contained Indian reservations--despite passage in 1988 of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which has provided many native peoples with a financial bonanza. This is especially true for those Indian nations who were able to establish casinos east of the Mississippi River; the Mashantucket Pequot casino, Foxwoods, generates about $1 billion a year. At the other end of the spectrum, however, the Little Big Horn Casino, near the site of Custer's Last Stand, generated an income of about $100 a month during its first year of operation. The Indian gaming industry in 2007 generated more than $22 billion in revenue, more than the combined income of the NBA, NFL, and MLB. That income is unequally distributed, however; more than half of all reservation Indians live in Montana, Nevada, North and South Dakota, and Oklahoma--most far from the population centers that the gaming industry counts on to visit and lose money. In fact, this population of reservation Indians receives less than 3 percent of gaming proceeds, or about $400 a year. The situation that many Indian people find themselves in today is a consequence of events that took place in the West in the years immediately after the Civil War.


I. The West After the Civil War

A. Mining Boom--much of the population explosion in the West can be attributed to the discovery of gold and silver in abundant quantities, which in turn attracted prospectors from around the world to seek their fortune; most of these men eventually had to settle for working for the corporations that quickly established themselves to control the mining industry in the region--as they did for most other economic endeavors, as well.

1. California Gold Rush--took place in 1849, but established the pattern for subsequent mineral discoveries, as well.

a. Especially notable because the discovery of gold in California also attracted prospectors from China. In subsequent years, Chinese workers also provided the labor that built the railroads through the Sierra Nevada mountains, and helped to connect the west coast the the eastern half of the United States. When railroad construction diminished, however, and these Chinese workers began to compete for "white jobs," laws were passed to limit the civil and economic rights of Chinese Americans, and eventually a federal law was passed to end Chinese immigration (with one large exception).

2. Comstock Lode--perhaps the richest deposit of both gold and silver in one location; some ores mined at Comstock were worth nearly $4,000 a ton.

3.Gold Fever--the immense wealth obtainable attracted all kinds of "entrepreneurs" to the site of the discovery--everyone from shopkeepers charging outrageous prices for goods, claim holders who "salted" their claims in order to sell parts to gullible investors, to gamblers and pimps and madams who ran the "entertainment" industry.

B. Homesteaders--during the Civil War, the Homestead Act was passed to provide free land for those Americans willing to settle on it. Unfortunately, most poor Americans (who were the supposed targets for the legislation) were unable to raise the money to move west to claim the land, and a less than vigorous enforcement of the stipulation precluding land speculation meant that it was of little benefit for them.

1. The Great American Desert--as it was depicted in early maps, much of the West is a semi-arid steppe. While the land is exceptionally fertile, the lack of rainfall over much of it meant that it was difficult to grow crops there.

2. Land bonanza--the lack of success of the Homestead Act, and the unreliability of rainfall, meant that much of the land ended up in the hands of speculators, who eventually used it to graze cattle.



3. The Western Land Wars--during the free range period in the west, cattle were allowed to graze freely on the public land, since it was difficult to acquire a sufficient quantity of  land to raise a herd on what you could legally own. The lucrative nature of the cattle business, and the invention of barbed wire, led many ranchers to attempt to fence of the public lands that they used, to prevent others from using the land as well; this led to the range wars that became  popularly depicted in the movies.

a. When the beef market collapsed, ranchers were left with an overabundance of cattle. When ranchers held them off the market in 1883-1884, severe weather on the plains killed anywhere from 90 to 95 percent of the herd, wiping out the investment of many of these ranchers, including one "dude" rancher by the name of Theodore Roosevelt.

C. The Fate of Native Americans--all of this settlement occurred because of the removal of the people who had originally settled there--the Lakota, the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne, and the Comanche.

1. The Buffalo--all of the Plains Indians shared an attachment to the buffalo, which provided their source of protein, clothing, and shelter. Before the American Civil War, there were probably in excess of 13 million buffalo roaming the Great Plains; by 1890 there were less than 1,000. This fact is largely overlooked when the issue of native acceptance of government treaties, which they never expected the government to live up to, anyway.

a. "Buffalo Bill" Cody--began as a scout for a railroad company, shooting buffalo to provide beef for the work gangs. Realized that the romanticized ideal of the "wild west" that most Americans had could readily be turned into cash--and he did so, not only in the United States but around the world.

b.Triumph of technology--the buffalo herds were not only decimated by the need to feed railroad work gangs, but also because tanners in Philadelphia invented a way to inexpensively process buffalo hides to make cheap leather. This meant that millions of buffalo were killed, skinned, and their carcasses left to rot on the prairie to make cheap boots for workers, children's shoes, etc.--in excess of 2 million between 1872-1874 alone.