Why - and how - did the first settlers move westwards? The mountain men were not settlers, and all these trailblazers were moving across the Great Plains, rather than onto them. However, they were vital in the process of settling the West, because they discovered the different trails west across the Plains, which were later followed by genuine settlers.
Few women and children lived in mining camps. Only if a mining camp grew into a more stable town did the population diversify. If the camp prospered, it might grow into a boom town with retail stores, a jail, saloons, dance halls, and assay offices to evaluate and weigh gold.
Mining booms swelled local populations quickly, outstripping the supply of almost everything, including food and work animals. Men sometimes killed each other for such necessities. Some mining communities formed governing councils and created codes of conduct. These councils handled robberies, assaults, and other crimes.
In some cases, mob violence and lynchings took the place of legal proceedings. Organized police forces and judges came only gradually to the West. Conflicts broke out between mining companies and miners as the latter tried to organize into labor unions. Such labor groups as the Western Federation of Miners protested, demanding legal protections and better conditions under which to work.
The labor organizer Mary Harris Jones, better known as "Mother Jones," spent her long life working to improve conditions for miners. Centers of ranching. Spanish and later Mexican ranchers had grazed cattle in the Southwest since about Ranches and missions with Native American labor raised livestock.
Local markets purchased meat, and ranchers in California exported cattle hides, tallow beef fat , and dried beef. Newcomers to the West continued much of this ranching tradition in the middle and late 's. The Civil War generated a great boom for western ranchers.
During the war, most able-bodied Texas men left the state to fight for the Confederacy. Yet their cattle herds increased by several million animals, largely untended. Returning after the war to a surplus of longhorn cattle, Texans faced ruin unless they found new markets. So ambitious cattlemen drove herds north to sell them at "cow towns" in Kansas, where buyers had built stockyard holding pens.
The animals then traveled east in rail cars to slaughterhouses in Chicago, Kansas City, and elsewhere. Cattle raising spread gradually northward from Texas and California. Many ranchers got their start by rounding up wild horses and mavericks unbranded cattle. Monroe Brackins, born a slave in , spoke of such roundups in south Texas.
He said, "I used to rather ketch up a wild horse and break 'im than to eat breakfast. Most cowboys worked on trail drives or in the busier spring and fall roundup and branding seasons.
They moved from ranch to ranch, taking work when they found it. Life on the ranches. Ranch houses in the West ranged from humble, dirt-floored lean-tos to lavish mansions. On small ranches on the plains, an entire family might live in a tiny sod hut. If a ranch had forestlands, the rancher likely built a log cabin. A single fireplace provided winter warmth, and a wood-burning stove occupied much of the kitchen. Ranchers would expand and improve the dwellings if they made enough profits.
Larger ranches would have outbuildings, including a barn, outhouse, cookhouse, and a bunkhouse for cowboys. The bunkhouse often had old newspapers as wallpaper, which helped seal out the wind and provided reading material. Simple wooden frames tied by cord made up a ranch hand's bed.
The cowboy slept in the same bedroll that he used on the range. Entertainment consisted mainly of gambling usually card games , reading, swapping tall tales, and reciting poems. The poetry of many old-time cowboys got passed along and written down. Today, readers still enjoy the work of such cowboy poets as Charles Badger Clark, Jr. Cowboys would also stage ranch rodeos, challenging hands from nearby ranches in horse racing and roping. The cattle drive. The heyday of the great trail drives came just after the Civil War, when cowhands drove millions of longhorns from Texas to Kansas.
The Chisholm Trail, which ran about 1, miles 1, kilometers between southern Texas and Abilene, Kansas, became the main cattle route.
Over the years, other cattle trails developed throughout the West. A Texas cowhand named W. Rhodes said about cattle drives of the 's, "The first 50 miles of any trail drive is always the hardest because the cattle want to break back to the country they're used to. We sure had to haze a many a one back before we got the herd used to moving.
Cowboys faced many dangers on the trail, including lightning, rain, hailstorms, range fires, tornadoes, and rustlers. An memoir by a cowboy named Charlie Siringo described a trail drive.
He wrote, "Everything went on lovely with the exception of swimming swollen streams, fighting now and then among ourselves and a stampede every stormy night, until we arrived on the Canadian river in the Indian territory; there we had a little Indian scare.
Cattle stampedes could also cause great destruction. A cowboy named Edward "Teddy Blue" Abbott described the result of one stampede, writing that, "horse and man was mashed into the ground as flat as a pancake. Bad weather, greed, and technology combined to end the great cattle drives. Especially harsh winters in the mid's killed tens of thousands of cattle trying to forage on the open range. Too many ranchers had overstocked the ranges, leading to lower prices and leaving animals unable to feed themselves on lands that did not produce enough grass in dry weather.
Further expansion of western railroads made it cheaper and quicker to haul cattle by train rather than drive them. Law and order.
Motion pictures and novels often exaggerate the level of the violence in the West, as well as the average cowboy's skill with a gun.
Ambush, rather than one-on-one gun duels, characterized most western killings. Ranching frontier regions had few law enforcement officers, judges, and jails. Parker built a reputation as "the hanging judge. About half that number were executed by hanging. Lacking regular law enforcement, other areas often resorted to justice by self-appointed groups of citizens called vigilantes see Vigilante. People accused of rustling cattle or horses often ended up hanged by such vigilantes.
Large cattle ranchers might band together into livestock grower's associations to protect their interests. They often suspected smaller ranchers and farmers of stealing their livestock. In some cases, they hired gun fighters to track down and kill suspected rustlers. Tom Horn became a celebrated hired gun. Other types of economic conflict arose.
Resentful of encroaching farmers and their fences, some ranchers destroyed barbed wire barriers that cut off access to rangeland grasses and water. Barbed wire, patented by Joseph F.
Glidden in , enabled farmers to protect crops against cattle. Cattle and sheep ranchers also fought over access to grass and water. Ethnic violence arose frequently, especially around mining camps, with whites attacking Chinese and Latin Americans as unwanted competitors. The spread of farming.
Pioneer farmers, or homesteaders, began settling in California, Oregon, and other parts of the West during the early 's. After the Civil War, however, western farming expanded greatly. Homesteaders, mostly white, quickly populated the Great Plains from to Wheat farms spread across the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
Idaho became a major producer of potatoes. Other crops included barley, corn, flax, oats, and sugar beets. Life on the farms. Early pioneering families had to be self-sufficient. They made or gathered their own clothing, food, shelter, and fuel. Many farmers kept sheep for food and wool. Women carded cleaned and combed the wool and spun and wove it into cloth. Some houses had a large spinning wheel for wool and a smaller one for flax. Women also had to knit mittens, mufflers, and stockings as well as patch and mend older clothing.
Men and boys wore overalls made from denim or recycled grain sacks and a short jacket. Women wore a calico or gingham dress and a sunbonnet. As towns grew in size and mail-order catalogs appeared, settlers could purchase cotton goods to make into clothing. They might use walnut bark, sumac, indigo, and other natural materials to dye the cloth.
A farm family had to supply its own food. Farmers generally used corn as the staple, often making corn-meal mush, corn muffins, or griddle cakes. They also baked wheat and other grains into bread. Luxuries, such as white sugar and white flour, could only be bought at stores. Cooks sweetened foods with maple sugar, honey, or sorghum molasses.
Some farmers planted a fruit orchard that might include apple, cherry, peach, pear, and plum trees. Meat came from such animals as cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. A cow supplied milk and cream that families used to make butter and cheese. Farm families, especially women and children, also tended vegetable gardens.
They canned or dried much of the crop for winter use. Hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits and berries added to the diet. For many farm families, a humble shelter dug into a hillside provided their first home. A young woman named Laura Iversen Abrahamson described her family's dugout in South Dakota in the late 's.
Few trees grew on the open plains. Lacking the shelter of a hillside or sufficient trees for a log cabin, farmers on the plains cut sod squares from the soil to use as building material. The sod grasses, with their long, tough, flexible roots, could be cut and stacked to make walls and even the roof. A sod house, often called a soddy or soddie, needed only a small amount of lumber to frame a door and a window or two.
The sod insulated reasonably well, except against rain, keeping farmhouses cool during the hot summer and relatively warm in winter. Heavy rain penetrated the roof and could turn the floor into a muddy mess.
Later, farmers would haul in lumber to build houses of wood. Josephine Waybright, who lived on a farm near Ashland, Nebraska, in the late 's, described the improvements that farmers made over time. The parlor was only used when company come and was kept shut up most of the time with the curtains drawn.
Lack of wood also meant a lack of fuel for cooking and heating. Families typically had to use dried buffalo chips bison dung as fuel. The fuel gave off a hot, fast-burning fire with little odor. James G. Manifest Destiny is the idea that it was the destiny of the United States to spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
United States lawmakers, enamored with this idea, helped extend the railroad and created incentives to send people west. In , President James K. The daily life of people living on the frontier was filled with hard work and difficulties.
Once a farmer cleared the land, built a cabin and a barn, and planted his crops, he still had a lot of chores that needed to be done each day. In order to survive, the entire family needed to work. The settlers who traveled out West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had to live in defiance of nature and the elements without the comforts of civilization. Whole families would gather together in wagons and ride off into the unknown, sometimes spending months living in the carriages that pulled them westward.
From to men and women moved into western cities to find new opportunities and new profits. Exchanging raw materials such as crops, minerals, and animal skins for manufactured goods, or providing services to outlying communities, became the primary economic roles of these urban areas. Other businesses began as more people moved into the region. Today, farming and mining are still done. You will also find manufacturing, technology, and tourism in the region. What were the three major industries involved in the development of the West, and how did these industries transform western economy?
The Railroad, mining, and cattle industries aided the development of the west. These industries connected the West to the East, facilitating the development of the West. Between and , the United States underwent a period of increased territorial expansion, immigration, economic growth, and industrialization. Economic development, while increasing wealth and prosperity, also brought regional differences more sharply into focus. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Essay Why did settlers move west in the s? Ben Davis May 2, Why did settlers move west in the s? What were the lives of slaves like? Who were the western settlers? Where did settlers move west in the s?
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