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Moving West

Explore the push-pull factors that led people to move west in the 1800s, including the Homestead Act, Morrill Land-Grant Act, Native American conflicts, assimilation efforts, and the challenges faced in Oklahoma, along with the impact of new farming techniques, mining, ranching, and the Gold Rush.

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Moving West

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  1. Moving West

  2. Push-Pull Factors • Led people to push (forced) or pull (attract) them to move west • Southeastern farmland (expensive) • Sheltered outlaws on the run • Adventure, fresh start, imagination

  3. Homestead Act • Signed by Lincoln • Small fee = 160 acres of land (1/4 mile) • Rules: • At least 21 years old or head of a family • American citizen or immigrant filing for citizenship • Build house a minimum size (12 feet by 14 feet) • Live in house 6 months out of year • Farm land 5 yrs in a row before ownership set 372,000 new farms - 600,000land claims – 80 million acres

  4. Morrill Land-Grant Act (1862) • Congress gave millions of acres to state governments • Goal was to sell land and raise money to create “land grant” colleges (agriculture and mechanical arts) • States sold land to banks and land speculators • Land speculator: people who buy up land in the hope of selling it for profit in the future.

  5. Native American Conflict • Great Plains: area of land between Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains. • Native Americans vs. New Settlers • Deemed settlers as invaders • Sacred land invaded • Indians were nomads • Move from place to place…why? • Food, survival, buffalo

  6. Reservations • Federal land set aside for Native Americans • Native Americans fought back • Sandy Creek Massacre (1864) - Colorado • Battle of Little Big Horn (1876) – Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana • Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) – South Dakota

  7. Assimilation: • attempt in which one society becomes a part of another, more dominant society by adopting its culture • Dawes Act (1887): • Divided reservations into individual plots.

  8. Boomers and Sooners • Two million unsigned acres of land of native americans • Bought by Congress • April 22, 1889 • Boomers: • legally staked claims on this land • Sooners: • snuck passed government officials early in the morning hours to mark their claims. • By sundown, 2 million acres claimed!!

  9. Far and Away We will now watch a scene from the movie, Far and Away with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Westward Expansion Oklahoma in the late 1800s.

  10. Hardships • Lived in soddies • Homes made of sod: grass, root and dirt. ($3.00) • Livable homestead cost ($1000) • Difficulty farming for five years to claim land • Bugs: • grasshoppers, locusts • ate wheat, rye barley fields • mosquitos • Carried disease • Drought • Reduced land productivity

  11. New Farming techniques • Barbed wire • Dry farming • Steel plow • Steel windmill • Hybridization • Grain Drill

  12. Mining, Ranching, Farming GOLD RUSH “gold everywhere you stick your shovel” • $400 million in gold and silver • Placer mining: running water over boxed dirt looking for gold and silver particles

  13. Cowboys • 25 million buffalo killed (1840-1889) • Long drive: • Herding of thousands of cattle from one cattle ranch to another • 1867: 35,000 cattle driven • 1881: 250,000 cattle driven

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