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Period: to
WESTWARD EXPANSION
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Treaty of Fort Laramie
This treaty as signed was ratified by the Senate with an amendment changing the annuity in Article 7 from fifty to ten years, subject to acceptance. Assent of all tribes except the Crows was procured and in subsequent agreements this treaty has been recognized as in force. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed by the U.S. Congress. It provided for the transfer of 160 acres of unoccupied public land to each homesteader on payment of a nominal fee after five years of residence; land could also be acquired after six months of residence at $1.25 an acre. -
Indian Peace Commission Established
On June 20, 1867, Congress established the Indian Peace Commission to negotiate peace with Plains Indian tribes who were warring with the United States. The commission met in St. Louis, Missouri on August 6, 1867, where its first order of business was to elect Nathaniel G. Taylor, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, as its president. -
Transcontinental Railroad Completed
The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah The two railroads were the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, later to be Southern Pacific. -
Battle of Little Big Horn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn was an armed engagement between a Lakota-Northern Cheyenne combined force and the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army. It occurred between June 25 and June 26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in the eastern Montana Territory. -
End of Cattle Boom
During the Cattle Boom there was something known as the Cattle Kingdom, many factors took place to this kingdom that led to the rise and fall of the cattle. -
Dawes Act
On February 8, 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act. The law allowed for the President to break up reservation land, which was held in common by the members of a tribe, into small allotments to be parceled out to individuals. -
Oklahama Land Rush
In 1889 the opening to white settlement of a choice portion of Indian Territory in Oklahoma set off one of the most bizarre and chaotic episodes of town founding in world history. A railroad line crossed the territory, and water towers and other requirements for steam rail operation were located at intervals along the tracks that connected Arkansas and Texas. -
Closing of The Frontier
By the end of the nineteenth century, the West was effectively settled. Railroads stretched across all parts of the region, from the Great Northern, which ran along the Canadian border, to the Southern Pacific that ran across Texas and the Arizona and New Mexico territories to link New Orleans and Los Angeles. -
Battle of the Wounded Knee
The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves confined to reservations dependent on Indian Agents for their existence. In a desperate attempt to return to the days of their glory, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. -
Populist Party
The People's Party was much younger than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which had been founded before the Civil War. Agricultural areas in the West and South had been hit by economic depression years before industrial areas. -
William Jenning Bryan's "Cross of Gold" Speech
The most famous speech in American political history was delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The issue was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1.