The Great Plains: A Narrative Analysis

“The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado” Written by Elliott West. I chose to write about this book because of the large range of events and transitions that occurred throughout the American West that the author includes in the text. Elliot West highlights the struggles that many endured while trying to create better circumstances for not only themselves but also their families by moving to the west. He chronicles the adaptations that many white settlers arriving in the west faced in order to be able to make a living for themselves. But another reason why I found the book interesting was because of the way Elliot West provided perspective for each side of the struggle over the American West. He gives us the

Living on the Great Plains was not an easy task to accomplish for homesteaders who want to settle there. You had to worry about the extreme temperature and weather, the lack of water, and the lack of building materials. For me, the most difficult thing to deal with for homesteaders on the Great Plains was the lack of water.

There are many major events that happened in the Great Plains. One major event is that in Spain returned Missouri River to France. The Louisiana purchase transferred from France to United States. This event happened during the year 1801. Furthermore, This is one of the major historical event that made the Plains a popular place.

Until the late nineteenth century, the United States was still an agrarian community. As factories sprouted to process the products obtained from agriculture and to manufacture farm equipment, there rose

Have you ever been in a place of green with forests and animals everywhere? Well, where some of the Native Americans lived, there were such things. Native American tribes such as the Crow lived in the Great Plains. The Crow tribe of the Great Plains were nomadic and followed the buffalo migrations which provided their food. This tribe spent a good part of the year living in camps that could easily be dismantled and moved to follow the buffalo migrations. Other tribes of the plains were more sedentary. These tribes lived in permanent villages year round.

In the period 1865-1900, technology, government policy, and economic conditions all changed American agriculture a great deal. New farming machinery had a large role in the late 19th century, giving farmers the opportunity to produce a lot more crops than they used to. The railroads had an enormous influence on agriculture. They were able to charge the farmers large fees, expenses that farmers barely had enough to cover, in order to transport their goods throughout the expansive country. The booming industry also changed American agriculture, creating monopolies and gaining incredible wealth with which the farmers simply could not compete. Economically, the monetary policy along with the steadily

Even though manufacturing was growing much more rapidly than agriculture in the 1880s, data shows that farmers had a prosperous decade. The tables below will show the increase

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, many people started to migrate west for more land, but there were a few problems with this new region. They were not connected to an ocean or a significant road system that was connected to the north, east, or south. The Market Revolution was new ways to get raw materials and new ways to transport them. In the Midwest, there was only one good way to travel, down the Mississippi River. The problem was people couldn’t travel back up the river so it took months to walk back home. After the Market Revolution, steamboats were invented which lead to less time taken, more goods could be shipped, and the westerners being able to use other rives to get to other regions of the country. Additionally, revolutionary technology in farming was emerging including the McCormick Reaper and the steel plow. The Reaper was a horse-drawn mechanical cuter intended to cut wheat made in the early 1830s. The steel plow was made to cut through the strongest prairie sod. This was needed because the ground in the West was tougher than the ground in the East and all of the other plows of that time kept breaking. Both types of new technology increased production by 75% after 20 years and impacted the cities of the West including Chicago and

During 1865-1900 technology made a huge impact in agriculture. What changed America was the expansion of railroads, limiting laws on goods that farmers sold and transportation of goods. Farmers began to harvest vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. In document D shows you a picture of The Wheat Harvest in 1880.

In the late 19th century, many factors affected agriculture in the United States as small farms transitioned to large farms. Technology, government policy, and economic conditions greatly influenced the way agriculture functioned in America. Farmers were exposed to advanced agricultural machinery and suffered from poor economic conditions due to a lack of government intervention. As production of crops increased thanks to the advancements in agriculture and processing, the prices of food dropped, leading to the eventual downfall of American farmers. In addition, the government was rooting for the success of the national economy, even if that meant choosing to neglect the struggling farmers and workers that made that success possible.

Nineteenth century America was a time of rapid growth and expansion. The movement of settlers further and further west accompanied by technological advances led to the major growth of cities and industries across the American frontier. However, it was the major innovations of transportation that had the most significant impact on the expansion of Midwestern and western America. The construction of canals and roads led to the increase in the use of stagecoaches, steamboats, and ultimately railroads.

By this time we saw on the map that many American cities in the east coast became increasingly larger, interconnected and agriculture in these areas increased substansely. With the expansion of America to the west and the creation of an increasing number of interconnected railways the opportunity for growth skyrocketed. By 1890 San Francisco alone increased its figures in imports from $7.4 million dollars in 1860 to $49 million dollars (Henretta, Edwards, Self, 476). The railroad also provided many jobs to Americans in a time when the country was not doing so well and allowed many Americans to settle homesteads away from the eastern coast. It did not just impact trade in the United States though, goods from Asia and other continents could now be shipped from the west coast across America and within the first 10 years $50 million in goods was shipped from coast to coast (Transcontinental Railroad,

The Westward expansion provided settlers with fertile lands and according to the Homestead Act, settlers did not require to be an American citizen to fill for lands. Farmers farmed extensively, which led to smaller agriculture’s share of the economy. Although the country was producing more than its consumption, statistically; reflect a decline in the importance of farming, the farmers exported the excess. However, the migration from rural to urban areas increased due to the dominance of wage labor and the rise of industrial America, such as railroads. At this era, the whole economy seemed like to revolve around railroads, every company needs railroad to export/import goods, or accessible transportation, and it was a major supplement that powered the industrial economy. The steel rails accounted for an enormous percentage of the steel production in the United States, also a major consumer of coal and lumber, opened an unlimited

The nineteenth century was a period of revelation and magnification for the Coalesced States of America. The Westward Expansion emerged by America’s desire to expand economically and territorially. Driven by the compulsion of consummating their manifest destiny, many Americans packed their paraphernalia, got their families yare, and commenced their peregrination to the West of the Amalgamated States. This great migration was mostly done utilizing wagon trains (Corbett et al., 2016, 481). Most Americans and immigrants peregrinated along trails, such as the California, Santa Fe, and Oregon Trail, to get to the West. These trails were long, exhausting, and lacked safety. In 1862, with the approbation of the Pacific Railway Act, this migration to the West took a crucial turn. This act sanctioned the Cumulation Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad, to build an incipient track that connected the East and West of the Cumulated States. This incipient track is better kenned as the first transcontinental railroad. The development of the first transcontinental railroad was responsible for a substantial increase in the Westward Expansion from 1870 through 1890.

The rapid growth of agricultural education and training began during the late 19th century in the United States of America (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_extension).