Far West and American Indians

Describe how encroachment by white settlers on Indian lands on the Great Plains led to warfare.

Reformers considered the Dawes Severalty Act to be a humanitarian gesture. Why did it turn out to be so terrible for the Indians?

What unfamiliar problems did farmers encounter on the Great Plains? What methods and devices helped solve these problems?

What were the grievances of the farmers and how were these complaints compounded by psychological factors?

"Unlike earlier westward expansion, almost every aspect of the settlement of the final frontier was influenced by the transformation occurring within American industry and the American economy." Explain and illustrate this statement with the material about the development of farming, mining, and cattle raising.

FACTS, figures, people, and places. Be prepared to identify, define, describe, and explain the significance of the people, places, and events listed below.

ISSUES: After reading the chapter, you should be able to discuss the following:

1. what doomed the Plains Indians' traditional way of life

2. policies toward Indians followed by the federal government and eastern reformers between 1840 and 1900 and their consequences

3. the attraction of the Great Plains to settlers

4. provisions of the Homestead Act as well as how it worked in actual practice

5. influence of the railroads on western development

6. the lives of farmers on the Great Plains

7. the Grange and its effects

8. railroad regulation

9. the Hispanic population of the Southwest after 1848

10. important gold and silver strikes in the West

11. the development and decline of the open range cattle industry

12. contrasts between the West of the dime novels, the symbolic West of eastern intellectuals and artists, and the real West

13. Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis"