January 26, 2006:
Conquest of Land, People, and Ideas
Read
before class:
·
Give Me liberty, 591-613 Lecture
outline
·
Voices of Freedom, 23-27
·
Indian Life documents
·
“Break Up the
Reservations”
·
Andrew
Carnegie, excerpt from “Wealth” with background
Questions: How was the American West transformed
during the late 19th century? How were Plains Indians conquered,
both militarily and in terms of ideas and values? What conflict of ideas are
evident in the various primary readings? What key words do you see used to justify
the conquest of Native American life? What was wrong with the Indian life from
the Euro-American perspective? What
significance do you think these readings have for today?
Recommended Websites/readings:
Barbed
wire and DeKalb’s connection to the conquest:
Indian Life and compromising with
“civilization”
George Kills in
Sight Describes the Death of Indian Leader Crazy Horse
“All That Is
Passed Away”: A Young Indian Praises U.S. Government Policy in the Late 19th
century
“Kill the
Indian, and Save the Man”: Capt. Richard C. Pratt on the Education of Native
Americans
Ballad to a
Massacre: Private Prather’s Portrait of Wounded Knee
Interview with Ward
Churchill about genocide of Native Americans
History of the American West
1860-1920 –photos
Women Artists of the American West
Peopling North America: Population Movements & Migration
Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains
Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham
Fletcher
Website on Wounded Knee massacre
The Autobiography of
Geronimo
Indigenous People's
Literature
NativeWeb: Resources for Indigneous Cultures Around the
World
“to provide a cyber-place for Earth’s indigenous peoples.” Includes 81
“history” links; bibliographies “Our purpose is not to ’preserve,’ in museum fashion,
some vestige of the past, but to foster communication among peoples engaged in
the present and looking toward a sustainable future for those yet unborn.”
Making It Their Own: Women in the West
Photographs of the American West, 1861–1912
A Cowboy’s
Work is Never Done: George Martin
Black [African-American] Cowboys
Western and Cowboy Poetry
A German Jewish Woman Settles in North Dakota
“You Would Never Hear People Complain”: Elfido López Recalls
Rural Mexican-American Life in the Late 19th century
Rural
Mexican-American Life in the Late 19th Century
Rock
Springs riot
Murdering Chinese laborers in the west and
getting away with it
Home on the
Range: Richard Phillips, cowboy
Photographs from the Great Northern Plains
Chinese Exclusion Act
“Genesee Had Railroads”: Kenneth Platt Recalls the
Importance of the Railroad to Late Nineteenth-Century Western Towns
One town boomed while its neighbors
languished in economic isolation, largely as a result of the rail station in
Genesee.
Westward by Sea: A Maritime Perspective on American
Expansion, 1820–1890
explores themes such as the California Gold
Rush, whaling, maritime business, migration and immigration, women’s role in
the West, and interactions between European migrants and native inhabitants
“A Little Standing Army in Himself”: N. A. Jennings Tells of
the Texas Rangers, 1875
The Rangers were founded in 1835 to fight Indians, formed a special corps in
the Mexican War, and were re-established after the Civil War.
The Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought an enormous chunk of Mexico to the United
States. This added to the territory obtained by the annexation of Texas in
1845, but more than just territory was added. More than 75,000 Spanish-speaking
residents became U.S. citizens, but the struggle to achieve that citizenship
was long and often unsuccessful. Mexican-Americans lost political power and
civil liberties quickly in Texas. Justice was hard to secure and the ranching
country of South Texas became a landless borderland for Anglo and Hispano
alike. Cattle thieves were rampant. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans also had to
endure a terror campaign by the Texas Rangers, the state’s leading law enforcement
officers. One of those Rangers, N. A. Jennys described a complex pattern of
ethnic conflict along the border in 1875 in his A Texas Ranger. The Rangers
were founded in 1835 to fight Indians, formed a special corps in the Mexican
War, and were re-established after the Civil War.
“Everything Was Lively”: David Hickman Describes the
Prosperity Late Nineteenth-Century Railroads Brought to the West