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Range Wars · Saberian History Lectures

• 0:00
  All right, wires on. Greetings, students. This
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  is going to be a recorded lecture because I don't
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  have y 'all in class, so this is going to be
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  a little interesting. So looking at the final
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  end of the frontier, you have two conflicts that
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  are of note. The first is the range wars, which
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  was the war between the... Free grazers or the
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  open range cowboys, the vaqueros, versus the
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  cattlemen who had enclosed property with barbed
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  wire. As stated previously, if you're a nomad,
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  you exist with a parasitic relationship with
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  an animal versus a person who engaged in settled
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  agriculture. That person is more like a virus
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  because the farmer and the rancher, they'll modify
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  the habitat. to serve the interests of propagation.
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  This is more similar to a virus, whereas the
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  nomad will live off the sustenance of an animal,
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  but not kill the whole herd or kill the whole
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  host. And so the range wars were largely settled
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  by a combination of the technological determination
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  of barbed wire, which we had talked about earlier.
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  plus government intervention to pacify the situation
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  until really market forces cause ranch cattle
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  to far exceed range cattle. The second triumph
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  of the virus over the parasite is the triumph
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  of settler Euro -Americans over the Native Americans.
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  And this is more complicated because it takes
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  a longer degree of time. So the book has you
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  recall the Trail of Tears, the Native American
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  Removal Act in the 1830s, and how many tribes
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  were moved out of what was the Ohio River Valley
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  and the American Deep South into settlements
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  in... west of the Mississippi in Oklahoma and
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  in other parts of the Great Plains. At the time,
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  the Great Plains was seen as the Great American
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  Desert because it was not seen as suited towards
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  domestic agriculture. This begins to change with
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  technological improvements in the 1850s and 60s.
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  So going back to the 1850s, you begin to see
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  white settlement. move out and come into conflict
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  with the native peoples. Again, the government,
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  prior to the Civil War, the United States is
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  not a major military power, is not a great industrial
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  power, and so you don't have the fortitude or
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  the wherewithal for the American army to impose
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  a peace, and so the army proceeds to negotiate
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  a peace. This is the First Treaty of Fort Laramie
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  in 1851, which gives the native peoples a rather
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  large territory, which is on your first large
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  map, and the promise of an annuity. That's 1851.
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  That's negotiated well before the dawn of the
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  modern Republican Party. It's negotiated well
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  before the Civil War. Then things change in 1862.
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  Two things happen. While the United States is
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  at war with the, while the Union is at war with
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  the American South, you have the passage of the
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  Homestead Act of 1862. Homesteaders proceed to
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  settle, again, while the war is going on, and
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  in the area of Minnesota, come under attack by
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  the Dakota tribe. Those Dakota attacks are pacified.
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  by white militia. A similar circumstance occurs
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  in Colorado with the Sand Creek Massacre, where,
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  again, a white militia unit abjectly annihilates
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  Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Well, not annihilates,
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  decimates, because those tribes are still alive.
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  So, meanwhile, the bulk of the American army
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  is fighting in the Civil War. By the way, some
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  of the native tribes do throw in, especially
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  in Oklahoma and Texas, do throw in their lot
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  with either Union or Confederate forces, depending
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  on which one of them gave them the most grief.
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  Sort of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But
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  by the time you get to 1875, okay, the South
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  has been subdued. The bulk of the American army
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  is still occupying the American South. is president.
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  And so you have a negotiated treaty. You have
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  two of them, the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which
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  moves the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Comanche,
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  and the Kiowa to Oklahoma. And then you have
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  the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which moves
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  the Lakota to the Black Hills. Now, 1876, you
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  have a number of turning points. And so you can
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  look at the period of about 1830 to about 1876
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  as the treaty period. When you get to 1876, you
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  move away from treaties and move more towards
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  a type of conquest. So you have to ask yourself,
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  okay, what changed? Well, a couple of things
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  changed. One was there were substantial advancements
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  in weapons technology. You have the development
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  of the self -contained cartridge. So previous
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  to this, you had your bullet, you had your powder
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  charge, you had your wad, and then you would
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  have a primer, which would have been, back in
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  the earlier days of firearms, breech -loaded
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  powder from a horn, or later when you get into
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  the Civil War, you have percussion caps. Well,
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  now you have a single bullet that has the primer,
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  it has the charge, and it has the bullet. all
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  in one nice, neat copper and then later brass
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  casing. The modern bullet is born right around
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  the 1870s. And so it begins to be deployed in
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  rifles, in pistols, in different calibers. It
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  even begins to be deployed in machine guns. And
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  you then adapt and upscale that same concept.
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  You now have repeating rifles that are lever
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  action. You have bolt action guns later. You
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  also have the dawn of repeating artillery. So
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  one of the reasons why the Americans have to
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  resort to a treaty system is... The weapons technology
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  is not there to completely subdue the natives
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  until 1876. The natives with their weapons, the
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  bows, the arrows with the fast reload, and again,
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  the fast getaway on horseback, they're able to
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  do quite well against... muzzle loaded, reloading
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  in nine counts, muskets and rifles that it takes
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  20 seconds to reload a shot. Okay, now you're
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  going from 20 seconds of reload to less than
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  one. And also this new type of weapon, again,
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  the natives are not being armed by the enemy
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  nation states of the United States. The British
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  aren't arming the natives anymore. The Spanish
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  or the French or the Mexicans aren't. arming
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  these natives anymore. So again, if they're going
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  to try and use American arms, they have to capture
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  it from Americans. This becomes a more difficult
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  possibility. So in addition to the improvement
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  in weapons technology, you also have some personnel
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  that get shifted from the American South to the
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  American West. Some notable characters, of course,
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  are George Armstrong Custer, who has this following.
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  As sort of a media darling when he was an officer
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  during the Civil War, tries to carry over his
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  press into the West. Of course, he and his troopers
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  are massacred at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
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  It becomes, again, because now you have integrated
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  news by way of the Telegraph, it becomes a national
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  sensation. People believe something should be
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  done about this. And so, again, political forces
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  are pushed to... mobilize against the natives.
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  You also have Philip Sheridan, who was an aggressive
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  cavalry officer during the Civil War. You also
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  have the discovery of gold in the Black Hills,
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  and so now you have a reason to try and appropriate
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  land that was given to the Lakota by treaty.
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  Now there's a reason to try and take it, and
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  those who would resist would face American force
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  of arms. Perhaps the most The noteworthy change
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  in personnel was when William Tecumseh Sherman,
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  this is the same William Tecumseh Sherman who
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  does Sherman's March to the Sea, is now put in
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  command of the Army of the West. And part of
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  his strategy is to eliminate, he is aware of
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  the fact that the Native Americans have a parasitic
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  relationship with the American bison, aka the
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  buffalo. And so Um, he proceeds to place bounties
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  on Buffalo and American settlers begin to meet
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  those bounties and the American bison are hunted
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  to near extinction. By denying the native peoples
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  their food source, you're now removing the possibility
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  that natives could leave the reservation. So
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  the other thing about the reservation system,
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  the reservation system is older than the conquest
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  method, but one of the virtues of the reservation
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  system is you have your non -combatant natives
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  on the reservation, and any native who is outside
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  the reservation is basically in a free -fire
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  zone. Through a combination of barrier and habitat
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  and food denial, you now have the native peoples
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  forced into their reservations, if for nothing
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  else other than subsistence. Now again, for these
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  nomadic hunter -warrior peoples, being forced
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  to live in communal or subsistence farming was
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  seen as absolutely emasculating. Pretty much
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  by the time you get to the 1880s, most of the
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  native peoples are well contained. However, there
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  is this rise of discontent among the natives
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  who had been on the reservation. They congregate
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  in a place called Wounded Knee, doing what was
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  called a ghost dance. And the idea was if we
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  do this mystical thing, the white people will
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  be cleansed from the land. Of course, the white
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  people show up. There was an accidental discharge.
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  And then, as with many great tragedies in history,
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  training kicks in. And the American army opens
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  up with Gatling guns, repeating rifles, repeating
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  artillery. It is an absolute slaughter. Moving
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  down the road. So 1890, the Battle of the Wounded
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  Knee, that's the last gasp of Native American
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  resistance. After the conquest, you move into
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  a mode of assimilation. So assimilation is a
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  very fun little Latin word. It comes from the
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  Latin ad meaning to assimilate, to make them
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  like yourself. And so you have the passage of
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  the Dawes Severalty Act. What the Dawes Severalty
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  Act does is it subdivides the Native American
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  reservations single household farms. And so one
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  can look at the Dawes -Severalty Act as a, for
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  lack of a better word, a homestead act for the
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  natives, except they're subdividing Native American
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  land. And those that don't go to heads of household
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  are then put back on the market. So part of that
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  conquest and assimilation, you have a picture
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  of Sitting Bull who had posed fierce resistance
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  to the Americans, and then again, after starvation
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  of his people, is now reduced to being a prop
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  in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Then when you
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  get into the period of about 1879 to about 1918,
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  Christian ministers begin to try and assimilate
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  Native American children. by basically taking
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  them from their reservations to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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  It's called the Carlisle Industrial Indian School.
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  And again, okay, they're trying to impose, again,
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  you have to look at this as the imposition of
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  Yankee capitalism. Okay, what are the hallmarks
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  of Yankee capitalism? Land ownership and industry.
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  So again, they're trying to take some of the
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  native children, they take them to Pennsylvania,
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  which is now no longer really a farming community,
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  but is the heart of the American industrial landscape.
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  And once you've assimilated the children, the
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  cultural and linguistic imperialism is complete.
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  Irony of ironies, a group of Navajo children
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  who... resisted the linguistic extinction, their
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  language will be featured or will be used by
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  the American military in World War II because
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  no one in the world except Navajo spoke Navajo,
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  so it's kind of an unbreakable cipher. Actually,
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  ironically enough, the United States kept the
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  Navajo language as a secret communication possibility.
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  It wasn't declassified until after the end of
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  the Cold War. And so I hope this lecture is useful
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  to you. You will have the scans of the documents
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  from my book. And if you have questions, I should
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  be back later this week. Thank you.