Rise Of The American West Essay

The American west was perceived as a land of opportunity and success for many people of different racial and financial backgrounds during this specific era. However, the extent of success from opportunity varied on one’s race, willingness to take chances, and federal involvement. Farmers, miners, and indigenous people predominantly appeared in the west for opportunity. Farming dominated the West beginning in the 1870s, but the decline of agriculture economically immediately followed during the mid-1880s. Commercial farming began to dominate the West by cash crops being sold to a world market and creating overproduction which caused a decline in prices. Farmer’s warehouse rates were considerably higher in the South and West than the Northeast. Farmers believed speculators, banks, and eastern manufacturers were conspiring to fix prices at the farmers' expense. Isolation from urban centers caused loneliness, lack of education, and lack of medical expertise which led to the Populism movement of the 1890s. The Populism movement wants an expansion of the currency in order to raise prices and it
supported "free silver" along with miners in an attempt to add to the currency supply. Between 1860s and 1890s time period, it was considered the “mining boom” ages.
The miner’s populations were mostly male, greed, outlaws attracted by minerals prospectors panned for minerals by hand. When corporations dug deeper below the surface fewer people became rich and those that remained in the West worked in the corporate mines. In 1880, the Comstock Lode in Nevada on the eastern corporations gained $306 million more than individual western miners. Corporate mine working conditions were very hot and deep, which led to many people having heat strokes. There were concerns of cave-ins and explosions. Also, ventilation was another major issue because poisonous carbon dioxide caused people to become nauseous. After 1873, silver was not coined, but in the 1870s the market value of silver fell, so silver was available for coinage again, but was prevented by the 1873
law.
Indigenous People of the West such as Indians were forced to move to these lands unwanted by American western settlers which were poorly administered by Bureau of Indian Affairs. Buffalo were the center of the Indians' way of life (food, clothing, tools), and white Americans shot the buffalo for sport or for the hides. Through the 1850s and 1880s, Indians struggle against white threats of expansion. Battle of the Little Bighorn was the initial victory for Indians and defeat American Colonel Custer, but American troops eventually overpower and kill both Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull. The Indians were only defeat because of white’s usage of the machine gun. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was passed, which caused the gradual elimination of tribal ownership, instead of giving the tracts of land to individual owners. The arrival of American settlers in the West produced land of prosperity, land of grief for American settlers, and displaced Indians from their established territories and positions in their societies. Only a very few miners were blessed enough to gain much profit from the "mining booms “and farmers began a steady decline in the mid-1880s with accumulating grievances about their position in society and the economy.