Latest / Saberian History Lectures / Settling the West

Transcript

Settling the West · Saberian History Lectures

0:00
So, as I look at the map, you have the Great
0:06
Plains, you have the Rockies, you have the desert,
0:10
then you have California. Right? So far, so good.
0:15
What, by, oh, after the Civil War was already
0:19
settled, was California itself, San Francisco,
0:26
Los Angeles, were they already settled? San Francisco,
0:28
yes. San Francisco was a firmly established trade
0:31
route to the east, yes? San Francisco as a city
0:34
already existed. And so, if I think about it,
0:38
San Francisco to Chicago, you have the Transcontinental
0:40
Railroad, which is a lifeline of civilization
0:44
to the west. But what's in the middle? Not just
0:53
the mountains. The Great Plains. And are those
0:57
densely populated? Are those entirely civilized?
1:01
No. If we think about it again, it is unsettled,
1:09
for the most part, unpopulated grassland. Yes?
1:15
Into that grassland you have people trying to
1:19
make a living and they kind of branch off from
1:21
the rail lines. Think of it as if it's a Nile
1:23
of steel. Why do I use the term Nile? What do
1:27
I mean by Nile? Like the Nile River in Egypt
1:30
that all the civilization flowed when it flooded,
1:34
yes? And so, getting back to the bit. So, people
1:40
start moving west to change the landscape of
1:43
it, and they encounter a number of challenges.
1:46
Now, also, people moving into the west encounter
1:52
who? Native peoples conflict with one another
1:58
as people in this vast frontier are trying to
2:02
meet out a new existence in a place where the
2:05
rules are not defined because this is not yet
2:08
state society. So you may have a state society
2:12
in Chicago. You may have a state society in San
2:15
Francisco. But all along in the middle, whether
2:17
it's on the rail lines or in the hinterland on
2:20
the grasslands, that is ill -defined legal relationships.
2:23
You get what I mean? So, you have migratory streams.
2:28
You have immigrants coming in from China. You've
2:33
got immigrants coming in from... You have African
2:38
Americans who have left the South. and you have
2:43
people who are overflowing from the American
2:45
East Coast. So you've got people coming into
2:47
the West from all different directions. So the
2:49
African Americans who headed West to make communities
2:53
of their own, they were called exodusters. Why?
2:56
Because what was it in the Bible when the Jews
2:59
left Egypt and went to the Promised Land? That
3:03
was the Exodus. And so again, appropriating that
3:07
aspect of theology, these people made their own
3:10
communities. So here we go, Nicodemus, Kansas.
3:13
This was an exoduster community founded by southern
3:16
blacks in the 1860s. Another group of people
3:20
moving west are people getting into the cattle
3:22
industry. Now, what's interesting is with the
3:26
dawn of barbed wire, that kind of changes the
3:29
game. So you've got people who were moving cattle
3:33
on the open range running into people who are
3:36
setting up farms on the Great Plains. What could
3:39
possibly go wrong? You don't want cows eating
3:44
your wheat, do you? Fertilizer's good. Let me
3:49
sort of go back to the map. Okay, so let me zoom
3:52
it in. If I can get the cursor working. All right.
4:03
This is where the cows start. South of San Antonio
4:05
in South Texas. And where do they go? They go
4:11
north. Up along the Western Trail, the Chisholm
4:14
Trail, and the Goodnight Loving Trail. Primarily,
4:19
if I'm going up the Chisholm Trail, I am headed
4:22
to either Abilene, Kansas or Dodge City. Prior
4:28
to the development of modern day Fort Worth,
4:30
the idea is you start in South Texas and you
4:33
drive the cattle north. They are slowly moving.
4:36
They are munching on tall grass. They're having
4:38
a good time, by the way, which tends to have
4:40
a higher nutritional benefit. Grain -fed or grass
4:42
-fed cattle? Grass -fed. Grass -fed. And if they're
4:45
walking all the time, are they very fatty? No.
4:49
Lean muscle mass, good for the cows until, well,
4:51
they make it to the slaughterhouse. Then it doesn't
4:53
end well for them. But, hey. So, you move them
4:57
up the Chisholm Trail up to either Abilene, Kansas,
5:00
or Dodge City. From there, you put them on a
5:02
rail car. they get carted off to either St. Louis
5:06
or Chicago. Then, in Chicago, they get slaughtered,
5:10
they get packed, and then off they go to the
5:13
markets in the American East Coast. By the way,
5:18
where's the Chisholm Trail now? I -35. I've driven
5:25
it a thousand times. And sometimes when you're
5:28
stuck in traffic on 35, you're wondering if I
5:30
could move a herd of cattle faster than what
5:32
this traffic is actually moving. Too soon? Too
5:37
soon for that joke? Too late? You've got... Now,
5:42
what's interesting is... So at first, you're
5:47
driving the cattle and you're having a good time
5:49
because who owns the land? You. No one. No one.
5:55
It's not owned. So you can drive the cattle at
5:59
will. Now how do you know if you run into a herd
6:01
of somebody else's people? How do you know that
6:03
your cattle are yours? They're branded, yes?
6:07
Okay, now what happens with the dawn of barbed
6:10
wire, what happens with the expansion of commercial
6:12
agriculture is people start enclosing on the
6:17
land that used to be open range land. And so,
6:21
you actually had in the Great Plains area, in
6:24
addition to the armed conflicts between the Euro
6:26
-Americans and Native peoples, you had a series
6:29
of armed conflicts between people who were what
6:32
were called open -range people versus people
6:34
who were engaged in settled agriculture and settled
6:37
ranching. This was actually called the Range
6:38
Wars. If you ever see the film Open Range with
6:41
Kevin Costner, it shows you some of the broad
6:44
strokes, albeit with a lot more Hollywood to
6:46
it. It's a good film. I highly recommend it.
6:48
Okay. So, that's going on. In addition to that,
6:53
you have the discovery of gold and silver deposits
6:58
in the American desert at the Comstock Loads.
7:01
So, this drives people into previous areas that
7:05
had just been widely forsaken wasteland. And
7:08
so, I'll get to the farming on the Great Plains
7:11
in a bit. I'll go back to that. You have people
7:15
mining in these western towns, mining in the
7:19
west, so what happens is people show up, they
7:20
set up a mine, and besides miners, what else
7:23
do you need? If you have people mining, what
7:24
else do you have to do to them? Feed them, house
7:27
them, clothe them, and so in servicing these
7:32
mines for these precious metals, gold and silver,
7:34
whole towns spring up, and when the vein runs
7:38
dry, what happens to the town? Ghost town. And
7:42
so that definitely becomes a thing. Alright.
7:48
So that's your mining boomtowns. Okay. Farming
7:51
in the West. So, Homestead Act of 1862. A person
7:56
could get 160 acres of land for how much? For
8:03
free. Now, it's kind of an interesting thought
8:09
when... Sherman shows up to the American South.
8:17
He had suggested that they give each freed slave
8:21
40 acres and a mule. So the phrase 40 acres and
8:27
a mule, what does that tell you the expectation
8:29
was? What could you do with 40 acres and a mule?
8:33
Grow enough food to feed yourself, maybe have
8:35
some excess to go to market. Now, what's the
8:37
difference between 40 acres and 160 acres? Well,
8:43
it's a lot more arable land. And so the idea
8:46
was that under the Homestead Act, people could
8:49
get property, and this was to put the Great Plains
8:52
under cultivation, partially to deal with the
8:55
population influx that was crowding in the United
8:57
States, but also, again, they were trying to
9:00
settle land and bring it under control. Now,
9:02
a couple of ecological things just to make it
9:04
interesting. What grows on the Great Plains?
9:08
That's what grows on the Great Plains now. What
9:10
is indigenous to the Great Plains? What was originally
9:13
there before the wheat farmers showed up? Grass.
9:16
Not grain, grass. Now, is grain a type of grass?
9:19
Yes. Tall grass. What's tall grass? Tall grass
9:24
is very, very tall. We're talking six feet. Yes.
9:28
I mean, we're talking grass taller than me. I
9:31
know that's not hard for incomplete generality.
9:33
I only stand about 5 '8", 5 '9". Now, one of
9:36
the things that y 'all may not appreciate this,
9:38
for those of you who do not engage in landscaping,
9:40
the taller the grass, the deeper the what? Roots.
9:44
So if you've got six foot grass, you've got some
9:49
really gnarly roots. What does that do to your
9:52
soil if you've got some really gnarly roots?
9:54
By the way, what brings tall grass down to size?
10:00
Drought. Drought and then fire. Right? So, you've
10:07
got, on the Great Plains, you've got the tall
10:10
grass that's got the soil deeply compacted. So,
10:12
this is where some of those agricultural advancements
10:15
come in where you can actually punch through
10:17
the sod. And this actually helps in the cultivation.
10:20
And so, you have, and so this one you've got,
10:25
you have this machine that's actually punching
10:32
through the grass and winnowing it down. And
10:34
so that's your early combine, but you also have
10:36
the sod buster, which was really crucial at the
10:38
time. And so what you have is you have changes
10:40
in the environment. So previously you had the
10:42
Great Plains, which was tall grass and bison
10:46
being supplanted by wheat and what's the bovis
10:53
of choice? Cows, cattle. And so, it's kind of
10:57
interesting how remarkably similar animals occupy
11:00
the same ecological space. Alright, so we got
11:04
through that. Now, by the way, kind of interesting,
11:06
and this actually will get the point across.
11:10
Some of the hardship faced by homesteaders is
11:13
this. What do you build with in 19th century
11:22
America? Well, yes, but previously it was wood,
11:27
yes? What do you make fences out of prior to
11:32
barbed wire in America? Wood. What do you typically
11:39
burn in your stoves to keep warm? Wood. What
11:42
don't you have on the Great Plains? Wood. And
11:45
so one of the things that you have to kind of
11:47
keep in mind is those rail lines or lifelines
11:49
because you're building materials because many
11:51
of your agricultural implements, they're not
11:54
manufactured, they're not made on site. They
11:57
have to be brought in. And so this is why typically
12:00
expansion in the West is, again, More like the
12:03
Nile of Steel where it's fanning away from these
12:05
rail towns and these are the lifelines back to
12:07
human civilization. Now, you see this in the
12:09
sketch. What is in that wagon? That is crap.
12:18
That is buffalo biscuits. You are not going to
12:23
eat them. What could you possibly do with dried
12:25
buffalo crap? That is a fuel source. And so what's
12:31
really kind of remarkable, and I sort of brought
12:33
this up the other day, is okay, you've got, well,
12:36
it's fertilizer, but also, again, in this case,
12:38
you're trying to keep warm. By the way, again,
12:40
we're not talking Texas where it's warm, well,
12:44
except this week where it's been all four seasons
12:46
inside of a week. But you're getting to the point
12:53
that, okay. Them winter nights are cold in North
12:59
Dakota. Those winter nights are cold in Kansas.
13:02
Those winter nights are cold in Nebraska. And
13:04
so you use buffalo feces as a fuel source. In
13:08
that regard, it's a pretty crappy existence.
13:10
But hey, it's still cleaner than what you've
13:12
got going on in the cities, right? Either way.
13:21
It's the smell of freedom, right? Okay. Okay.
13:26
So you have people moving into the Great Plains.
13:29
They are beginning to eke out a living. And then
13:34
you also have, with the advancement of settled
13:40
agriculture into the Great Plains, with the advancement
13:45
of state societies into the Great Plains, what
13:50
Does the new state society, what do the Euro
13:53
-Americans run into? Native peoples. So once
13:59
again, we go back to the conflict between Euro
14:03
-Americans and Native Americans. Now, your 1301
14:08
instructor, for all of his faults, did talk about
14:12
the conflict between state and non -state societies.
14:16
Yes? Is the American experience of state versus
14:21
non -state societies unique? No. Even to this
14:25
day, there are tribal peoples in Pakistan whose
14:28
government are trying to impose law and order
14:30
upon them. Now, when I'm looking at the native
14:34
peoples now, who am I looking at? I'm not talking
14:37
about the Creek. I'm not talking about the Cherokee.
14:41
Who am I talking about? the Western Indians,
14:44
specifically the Plains Indians, and how do these
14:47
people make a living? They are nomadic hunter
14:54
-gatherer cultures following herds of buffalo
14:58
up and down the Great Plains. Now, at the risk
15:01
of oversimplifying things, what do you call the
15:05
relationship... when you have an organism feeding
15:10
off another without destroying it completely?
15:13
Parasite. If I think of human populations feeding
15:18
off of a migratory animal population, I can almost
15:21
describe it as a parasitic relationship, yes?
15:24
When you have an organism transform the environment
15:27
to suit its own ends, that's a virus, yes? And
15:31
so here you have the parasitic behavior of the...
15:36
Plains Indians following the buffalo running
15:39
up against into the viral behavior of settled
15:42
agriculture. And by the way, when was the last
15:45
time in the history class we talked about it?
15:48
We talked about it in the context of the Indian
15:49
Removal Act. However, when was the Indian Removal
15:51
Act? Much longer ago, yes? In the era of Andrew
15:57
Jackson. What has changed? Specifically, what
16:04
type of technology? firearms technology, the
16:07
implements of death. So if you think about it,
16:11
when Andrew Jackson is president, you're talking
16:15
the weapon of choice was the Kentucky long rifle,
16:19
yes? Single shot, maybe could do three rounds
16:24
a minute. By the 1880s, what had been developed?
16:33
Revolvers, lever actions, and one rather tasty
16:40
implement of death developed by a physician,
16:42
ironically enough, the Gatling gun. What's the
16:47
Gatling gun? Mankind's first machine gun. A crank
16:54
-operated, air -cooled, I want to say it was
16:59
clip -fed because the rounds were coming from
17:00
the top, they go into the chamber and you just
17:02
keep spinning, automatic weapon. Kind of ironically
17:05
enough, designed by a physician, and he prided
17:08
himself on being a pacifist. And then he made
17:12
a weapon of death. Yes, but you have to understand
17:15
something. Actually, what most people don't appreciate
17:17
is a lot of arms makers and weapons designers
17:19
at this point in history, all the way pretty
17:22
much until Oppenheimer, have this idea of if
17:25
we make warfare so terrible, mankind will stop.
17:31
You see it with Gatling, you see it with Nobel
17:34
who developed dynamite and actually, or Nobel
17:37
with his TNT who actually put it to use in the
17:39
military industrial complex of the First World
17:41
War, and to a lesser extent you see it with the
17:43
scientists who worked on the nuclear weapons.
17:47
By the way, was Gatling correct? We made machine
17:50
guns, we used them once, we stopped using them,
17:52
right? Okay, so, you have... into the 1870s,
18:00
into the 1880s, you have improvements in weapons
18:05
that allow for a superior capacity for death
18:09
and oppression. Now, a couple other things going
18:11
on. So, 1860s to 1870s, you have a series of
18:17
wars with the native peoples. Now, one of the
18:22
things that finally happens, so here we've got
18:25
the non -state society of the native peoples.
18:29
And especially when we're talking about the Sioux,
18:31
when we're talking about the Cheyenne, when we're
18:33
talking about those people. These are migratory
18:37
hunter -warrior cultures. Hunter -warrior cultures.
18:49
The cavalry units of the West combine two things.
18:52
They combine speed, they combine aggression,
18:54
and with their modern weapons, they're able to
18:56
impose some degree of death and destruction.
19:00
Now, the other thing that you've got going on
19:02
is Sherman and other aspects, as people are settling
19:09
West, what are they doing to take care of the
19:12
Native people issue? Not just them. I don't need
19:18
to kill them. What is slow moving and easy pickings?
19:25
So you have the annihilation of the bison. And
19:33
that was not, you know, oh, you know, these are
19:36
nice decorations. No, this was programmatic.
19:40
And so the idea is they were well aware that
19:42
the native peoples relied on the bison for their
19:44
subsistence. And the idea was if we annihilate
19:47
the bison, by the way, the Euro -Americans were
19:50
going to annihilate the bison because they were
19:52
a competitor for foodstuff with what? Cows. So
19:56
as you have the bison being supplanted by domesticated
19:59
cows, this takes food away from these migratory
20:04
hunter -warrior peoples. Enter the next level.
20:08
So once you've starved a people down, what all
20:10
of a sudden do they become more pliable for?
20:15
They'll sign agreements. You'll be amazed what
20:18
you'll consent to. It's a lot easier to fight
20:21
an enemy with a sword, but it's a lot harder
20:23
to fight an enemy with bread. When you're hungry,
20:28
when you're worried about your children, when
20:30
you're worried about your children's children
20:32
and the annihilation of your people, you will
20:34
consent to many things. And so, you move them,
20:37
having annihilated their food supply, onto reservations.
20:47
Now, reservations serve two purposes. What would
20:52
be the first? To keep the people in. Also, so
21:00
here's your basic idea. On the reservation, those
21:04
people are safe. By the way, on the reservation,
21:06
they are encouraged to engage in what form of
21:09
survival if they're not moving because they're
21:11
on a reservation? Subsistence agriculture. You
21:19
turn people who were parasites of the bison into
21:23
the viral behavior which is domestic agriculture.
21:26
But it serves one other purpose. It frees up
21:30
the land. Not only does it free up the land,
21:32
that's true, but also if you're a native person
21:34
and you're not in the reservation, what are you?
21:38
You are a hostile. It gives you a very simple
21:41
way of identifying who your friendlies and who
21:44
your hostiles are. Basically, once you have your
21:47
reservation system set up, everything outside
21:49
the reservation system is a free -fire zone.
21:52
You get the idea. Kind of an interesting... of
21:57
counterinsurgency warfare. Okay, so you have
22:01
people being placed on the reservation. You have
22:04
the army being used to chase down the remnants
22:07
who decided not to be in the reservation system.
22:10
And so one of the examples that the textbook
22:13
addresses, and it really is quite compelling,
22:15
I want to see... That's Chief Joseph and the
22:17
Nez Perce. I actually want to show you the map
22:19
first. Hmm? Um... I may have to cut that one
22:26
out of the tape, but here we go. All right. So
22:30
here are the Nez Perce. They had been pursued
22:33
by the army through Idaho into Canada and up
22:37
against starvation in the winter, Chief Joseph
22:41
finally surrenders. And he sends out a message
22:48
to the other chiefs telling them to surrender
22:52
that their time has gone. And his last words
22:55
were, I will fight no more forever. And so it
22:59
really marks the end of non -state society in
23:04
the United States. The true death knell of it,
23:08
however, is the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887.
23:12
In many ways, this is the homestead act for native
23:16
peoples. Once again, they could petition for
23:19
160 acres of land. To do what with? Farm. To
23:24
a nomadic hunter -warrior culture, farming is
23:29
death. And so... And from, let's say, 1492 to
23:43
1887, the state had finally overwhelmed the non
23:49
-state. One other thing, kind of interesting,
23:54
textbook doesn't talk about it. I find it interesting
23:57
because one of the first classes I TA'd was actually
23:59
a Native American history class. One of the things
24:05
that they also set up in the United States, I
24:07
want to say this is about 1920, was what was
24:10
called the Indian schools. They actually took
24:12
the Native American children to Carlisle, Pennsylvania
24:16
for re -education. There they were made to speak
24:22
English. And the idea was to remove the native
24:29
use of their language to further their assimilation.
24:35
Kind of ironically enough, Native American language
24:37
would actually help the United States against
24:39
the Japanese, a la the use of Navajo code talkers,
24:43
because no one in Japan knew Navajo. It's kind
24:45
of convenient in that regard. This is why I've
24:48
often said, while language defines who we are,
24:52
we should never forget the many blessings of
24:58
thinking outside of our own tongue. Okay. A little
25:03
ethereal note. I try. So, with the end of the
25:09
frontier, now with no frontier for people to
25:12
escape to, now America has to learn how to live
25:16
with itself. Thank you. Have a good afternoon.