1. The Native Americans originally resigned in the Great West. The boundaries were established in tribes along the Great West.
2. The Indian wars in the West were often savage clashes. Colonel Chivington’s militia massacred Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864.In 1866 a Sioux war party attempted to block construction of the Bozeman Trail and they ambushed Fetterman’s command and the Indians left not a single survivor.
3. The spread of diseases led to the fall of the Native Americans. In the West, white soldiers spread cholera, typhoid, and smallpox to the Native Americans.
4. The whites also put pressure on the shrinking bison population by hunting and grazing their own livestock on the prairie grasses. This place pressure on the Native Americans who were already in conflict with the whites.
5. Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor in 1881 which told of the record of government ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians. It shook the moral sense of Americans towards the Native Americans.
6. The Dawes Act was passed in 1887 and it tried to dissolve Indian tribes by redistributing the land. It was designed to forestall growing Indian poverty, but it resulted in many Indians losing their land to speculators.
7. The mining towns which developed between 1860 and 1890 were often abandoned after the mines closed were predominantly settled by men frequently suffered from lawlessness. They usually only lasted for about 30 years and they cause the country to enter a panic. Many people moved into mining towns.
8. The problem of bringing cattle meat to the East from Texas was solved with the introduction of the transcontinental railroad and the newly perfected refrigerator cars. The "Long Drive" consisted of Texas cowboys driving herds of cattle over unfenced plains until they reached a railroad terminal to where they could be sold. It became significantly less profitable when homesteaders