The prompt is "What were the most important factors that encouraged Anglo-Americans and new immigrants to settle the West? What were the most important impediments to their efforts?" It has to articulate a thesis and only has to be 250 words. The main thing is it has to provide evidence/details from the note guidelines I have provided below.
THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAN WEST 1 HST 106 – Spring 2021 The “Old West” THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAN WEST AND THE CLOSING OF THE FRONTIER We’re going to leave the American South behind and head west across the Mississippi River --and look at the myth of the “Old West” We’ll look at how Anglo settlers from the east conquered and settled the region --and we’ll look at the so-called “closing” of the United States’ western frontier --and its importance to the way Americans think of themselves to this day Now, the “Old West”, as it’s come to be known, is largely a post-Civil war phenomenon --and lasted, roughly, from 1865-1890 It included the large-scale settlement of about 430 million acres of land --More land was settled in the Old West than in the first 250 years of American history --In effect, the land area occupied by Anglo-Americans doubled During this time, three empires rose and fell: --Mining, especially gold and silver --Farming --and Cattle Ten new states entered the Union --and by 1912, the “lower forty-eight” were complete It was also during this time that the Anglo-Americans defeated the Native American tribes in the so-called “Indian Wars” The Old West is so much a part of our culture that we sell cigarettes by showing the “Marlboro Man” riding across the Montana ranges We think of gunslingers and their battles in the dusty streets of cattle towns --and across the lawless prairie In fact, the truth behind the myth of the gunslingers is somewhat less romantic --For example, one of the great figures of Western lore and legend was John Wesley Hardin --Hardin supposedly killed between 35 and 40 men --But the best historians can only confirm that he shot and killed on man --possibly by accident --Hardin was in his hotel room cleaning his six-gun --He didn’t realize there was a bullet in the chamber and it went off, killing the poor guy in the room next door Or take “Wild Bill” Hickock, who looms so large in movie and TV accounts of the West --Hickock may have shot two men in his life --and one of those was a special deputy whom Hickock shot by mistake Or Marshal Wyatt Earpe --The legendary lawman from the Gunfight at the OK Corral --In fact, Earpe was never really a federal marshal -and he may have only shot one man in his career So we have a lot of myths and legends that surround the Old West The questions I want to answer today are these: --Which “Old West” are we talking about when we talk about the West? --And whose “Old West” was it? --and how old, in fact, was the “Old West”? Well, I think there are three significant ways of answering these questions: --In terms of space --Just where was the Old West? --In terms of time --When was the Old West? --When did it come to an end? --and in terms of the images that crowd our minds when we hear the phrase “The Old West” Let’s turn to the first of these issues – space --and here we have to make our initial distinctions when talking about the Old West The Old West actually consisted of three distinct regions: The first region ran from about 98 degrees longitude --from the Canadian border down to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico through East Texas --So, basically, it covered the area of the Great Plains --from Mississippi River --to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains --and included the territories of the modern day states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the two Dakotas --It also included the eastern parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado --This area covers about one-fifth of the land area of the continental United States The second main region of the Old West we can call the Far West --This is the area west of the pacific mountain ranges --the Sierra Nevadas up through the Cascade Range in Washington Territory --The Far West included most of the territory of present day California, as well as Oregon and Washington state The third principle region was the area that lay between the Pacific Mountain ranges and the western foothills of the Rockies --This included a portion of Montana --a good amount of Idaho --most of Eastern Oregon --portions of Utah, Nevada, and down into Arizona Now, these three regions were quite different and distinct --They had different climates and physical geographies --but they have been lumped together, both in the 19th century and in our own time, as the present “space” of the Old West And concerning a good portion of this space, there grew up a legend that took on the proportion of a myth --This was the myth of the “Great American Desert” The concept of the Great American Desert had long been familiar to Americans --and it controlled much of the direction and character of the United States’ territorial growth during the 19th century So, we need to take a little step back here, to the period before the Civil War, to see how this geographical myth took shape --and to see how it shaped the thoughts and the attitudes of the American people as they moved West In 1819, the federal government in Washington, and the Monroe administration decided that it needed substantial information about the territory that lay west of the Mississippi River as far west as the Rocky Mountains So, they hired an explorer and surveyor named Stephen H. Long to make an expedition to: --map this territory --to keep a journal --and to inform the federal government about a vast area of land that was unknown to most Americans Long was really following in the footsteps of the Lewis and Clark expedition that Thomas Jefferson had sent to establish the quickest route from the United States, through the lands of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, to the Pacific --But Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had not taken the time to explore the great hinterlands south of their route Long’s expedition took him and his men westward, through what is now Iowa and Nebraska to the front of the Rocky Mountain ranges --He then traveled south and back through parts of modern Oklahoma and Arkansas Long drew a very detailed master map as well as a series of more detailed smaller maps --and drafted a mammoth report to Washington on all that he had seen and done Over the area of his map that we know today as the Great Plains, Long simply printed in giant letters: “Great American Desert” --and in his journals and in his report that accompanied his maps, Long conveyed his opinion that, “I do not hesitate in saying that the entire area is almost wholly unfit for cultivation. And of course it’s uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their existence.” --Buffalo, wild goats, game might live there, but not people And, so, on the map that reached the American people in 1823, the Great American Desert made its way into lexicon and the psyche of a country hungering for westward expansion As a result, there was very sparse settlement in the area beyond the Mississippi River in the 1840s and 1850s --There were isolated pioneer homesteads here and there --but not settlers pouring in vast numbers until the late 1850s and early 1860s In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War, pioneer traffic into the trans-Mississippi West picked up dramatically --by the hundreds, and then the thousands, and then the tens of thousands Settlers poured into the Great Plains moving Westward toward new homes in Oregon and California --and as they crossed the Plains, it became clear to them that the stories they had heard about the barrenness of the Great American Desert were simply myths And to combat and replace the myths, a new myth took root A new group of entrepreneurs and land speculators emerged on the Great Plains who were: --eager to boost settlement --and to attract business --and obtain railroad concessions These people wanted the folks back East to know that the Great American Desert was not a desert at all --So, in the late 1860s and 1870s, they began to call the Great Plains “The Garden” or the “Garden of the West” --And they portrayed it as an agricultural paradise --in which there was space enough and time enough for anyone to achieve their wildest dreams and ambitions A new kind of booster literature appeared that portrayed the Great American Desert area, the Great Plains, as an agrarian heaven, an idyllic spot Now, one of the characteristics of the region we’re referring to here is a lack of abundant rainfall --But men eager to lure new settlers and to convince themselves, began to play up the region as a place of abundant rain --To sell the myth of “The Garden”, people began selling the myth exemplified in the phrase popular in the 1870s that “rain follows the plow.” --Wherever the yeoman farmer broke the land and planted his crops, heaven was bound to yield the appropriate rainfall to make those crops grow What made people believe this kind of nonsense? --Well, the myth seemed to have the backing of modern science Charles Dana Wilbur was one of the most important boosters of Western settlement in the 1870s --and he was also something of an amateur scientist Wilbur claimed that he could prove scientifically that rainfall was bound to increase as the farming frontier moved steadily westward --In 1881, Wilbur published a book called The Great Prairies and Valleys of Nebraska and the Northwest --and in it he argued that the age-old symbol of the simple yeoman farmer, the plow, was the instrument of cooperation between God, Nature, and Man --He wrote, “In this miracle of progress, the plow was the unerring prophet, the procuring cause, not by any magic or enchantment, not by incantations or offerings, but instead of the sweat of his face and toiling with his hands, man can persuade the heavens to yield their treasures of dew and rain upon the land he has chosen for his dwelling.” --And Wilbur concluded, “The raindrop never fails to fall and answer to the imploring power of prayer of labor.” And, indeed, the 1870s proved to be an era of unusually heavy rainfall on the Great Plains --But many farmers were discouraged when the region returned to its normal, more arid climate in the 1880s And so, much of the territory that we refer to as the “Old West” was new and unfamiliar to prospective settlers in