Lecture S13 -- The Really Old West and the Mexican War
The Relentless Hunger for Land
Land Pressure: US population grew from 5.3 million in 1800 to 23 million by 1850. In 1800, under 10% were west of the Appalachians; by 1850, half were. (p.335) The amount of land available more than tripled between 1800 to 1850. The predominant form of American agriculture was the family farm. Since families typically had more than two children (one to inherit, one to marry off), there was a constant need for more land in order to maintain this social structure; subdivided inheritance would eventually hit a floor below which you could not divide your land without rendering it economically unviable.
Cities and Western Expansion: Some responded by moving to the cities; but many also responded by pushing west to find fresh land.
Manifest Destiny: Manifest Destiny more or less stated that God had given Americans the right, through their superior skills and knowledge, to spread out and dominate the entire continent to their uses, displacing any other peoples who got in their way. It essentially formed a justification for the actions taken to relieve the land hunger created by the growth of the population.
Land Patterns in the East and Center
The Northeast: The northeastern US was home to burgeoning cities and land which had been subdivided down about as far as it could go. Every inch of land suitable for farming was being exploited. Many in the Northeast were beginning to move to cities and join the industrial workforce; the rest moved west.
Mid-Atlantic: Land was more fertile here, and a substantial force of landless laborers developed to work on large farms—1/2 to 1/3rd were landless.
Southeast: In the South, most land was either in the hands of large plantation owners, small farmers, or hopelessly useless; there was a strong population pressure for both children of planters and small farmers to move west.
The Old Northwest: It rose tenfold from 1810 to 1840, quickly filling up with small farms. Ohio is a state in 1803, Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818. Michigan would become a state in 1837 and Iowa in 1846, Wisconsin in 1848.
Mosaic of Cultures: Many different regional subcultures developed as small pockets from the Northeast, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic all took root.
Subsistence Agriculture: Early on, farmers grew food to simply support themselves. It took about 10 years to properly clear an 80 acre farm from forest and get it fully up to speed. Farmers made all their own stuff—clothing, furniture, etc. Local cooperation in groups such as Claims Clubs (organizations of squatters) was important to survival.
Grain Production: Later, large scale grain production to feed the cities and the plantations took off, due to fertile land and the transportation revolution. By the 1840s, mechanical grain harvesters pulled by horses were coming into use. Before, you could only harvest 2 acres a day; now you could harvest 12.
Growing Market: Food processing and the purchase of manufactured goods in the area took off as grain production rose. Railroads made it possible to haul food products to distant markets.
The Old Southwest:
Swift Growth: This area was quickly settled, driven by the rising demand for cotton and the breaking of the Indian confederations by Andrew Jackson. By 1850, more than 600,000 white settlers had come, bringing 800,000 slaves. New slave states: Louisiana (1812), Mississippi (1817), Alabama (1819), Missouri (1821), Arkansas (1836), Florida (1845), Texas (1845).
Planters: The Planter class flourished, becoming economically and politically dominant
Yeomen: But they were preceded and outnumbered by the small farmers, who also flourished. Their goal was subsistence farming, through diverse agriculture, a mix of livestock and food crops.
Agricultural: While wealthier than the Northwest in 1850 thanks to slavery, it was much less urbanized and had little room for economic expansion, except by becoming more urban and more like the North, which the planters resisted. By 1850, the South produced 68% of the world's cotton supply. Cotton exports made up more than half the value of US exports after the mid-1830s. (p. 339)
The Great American Desert:
Barriers to Expansion: Until the 1840s, the Great Plains were little known and few ventured west. There was plenty of safer land in the Old Northwest and Southwest, after all. Zebulon Pike in 1806 and Stephen Long in 1819 dismissed the southern plains as 'The Great American Desert'. (p. 340)
Lack of Title: While the Louisiana Purchase gave us a paper title, in
practice, it was all owned by Indian tribes.
Disputes with Spain/Mexico: The problem of settling the boundaries also hampered expansion; the Mexicans didn’t want Anglo encroachment.
Lack of Knowledge: And little was known, except by Fur Trappers
The Fur Trade
The Hudson Bay Company: This old English / Canadian company dominated the fur trade until the 1820s.
The Missouri Expeditions: In 1822, William Henry Ashley sent the first of two expeditions up the Missouri river to trap for furs along its whole length.
Rendezvous System: In 1824, William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry of Saint Louis, owners of the Rockey Mountain Fur company, invented the rendezvous system. Once a year, fur traders and Indians and Merchants met at a grand annual fair in Wyoming. The Fur Trade peaked in the 1820s and 1830s.
Free Agents: Fur Trappers signed up with companies for multi-year stints, but basically operated on their own or in small teams of two or four, without supervision. They tended to be rugged individualists. Mortality rates were high, but trappers had a lot of freedom and enjoyed nature. 40% of trappers married Indian women.
Trail-Blazing: The Fur trade blazed the routes used by later expansion
Decline: By 1840, the trade went into decline from over-trapping and wiping out of the fur animals.
The Oregon Trail: In the 1840s, this began to change, as Americans blazed the Oregon Trail, heading for Oregon and California. The Oregon trail was 2,000 miles long and took about six months at 15 miles a day. Some 150,000 Americans made the trip in the 1840s-early 1850s.
Missionaries: Missionary endeavors began the process of settlement in the late 1830s; news from them encouraged others to set out. The missionaries had little luck converting the Indians, who they tried to put to work on white farms, eventually leading to a revolt by the Cayuse indians and the slaughter of that tribe in 1847 during a measles epidemic.
Farmers: Bands of farmers followed, crossing the plains in large caravans; the first one set out in 1842. Most were young farm families.
Dangers: Most dangers were due to weather, starvation, and bad decisions; Indians rarely attacked, preferring to trade. Only 3 or four hundred died from Indians. Hundreds more drowned trying to cross rivers. Nebraska was rife with cholera. Accidents were a major problem. About one in 17 travelers died.
Effects: The constant transit put pressure on the local economies and intensified competition between Indian nations. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 confirmed Sioux domination of the Northern great plains. The US agreed to pay $50,000 a year to be able to build forts and roads through the area..
The Indian Nations:
Numbers: Some 350,000 Indians lived on the Great Plains; the more easterly were farmers; the more westerly were nomads, using horses gained from the Whites in past centuries to become a strong military force. Eastern plains tribes such as the Eastern Sioux, Kansas, Osages, and Omahas grew corns, beans, and squash, living in semipermanent villages. On the great plains, tribes such as the Western Sioux, Crows, Cheyenne, and Arapahos lived as raiders and hunters.
‘Indian Territory’: In the 1830s, a large area was designated for the use of tribes kicked out of the east, despite the fact that it already had inhabitants. It was intended as a permanent reserve for the Indians; this lasted until the 1890s, when even that was taken away.
The Vise: The farming nations were caught between white expansion and the warlike tribes of the plains. As a result, they were crushed.
The Pawnees: The Pawnees were induced to cede their lands south of the Platte to become ‘Indian Territory’. This caught them between the cession and the Sioux, who crushed them.
The Sioux: The Sioux confederation was strong enough to hold the US at bay for decades and to dominate its agricultural neighbors. There were about 25,000 Sioux in 1850.
The Gun and the Horse: The Sioux successfully adopted white tools in order to maintain a traditional life style
Buffalo Hunt: The Sioux fought to control hunting grounds occupied by the Buffalo, who formed the center of the Sioux economy and lifestyle. This put them in a state of constant war with other tribes, though the wars were fought with low lethality. The goal was to touch opponents (counting coup), steal horses, and drive foes off through fear and intimidation.
Trade: The buffalo also became the main source of goods to trade to the whites for more horses and guns and other artifacts.
An Overview of the Mexican Borderlands
Core vs. Periphery: After the 1680s and the Pueblo revolt, the Spanish had exerted only a very minimal level of control over much of the northern regions of what would become Mexico in 1821. The California coast, San Antonio in Texas, and the Rio Grande River valley were the main areas of firm Spanish (later Mexican) authority, with much of the rest occupied by tribes which defied Spanish / Mexican authority
Four-Tiered Society: Peninsulares (native Spaniards) were at the top, then Criollos (those of Spanish descent, but native to the New World), Mestizos (mixed ancestry), and Indians. The top of society was held by the Peninsulares, while the middling positions of authority were held by the Criollos. Spanish colonial society was also heavily dominated by the Church, which held extensive land holdings and tended to oppose the desire of some Criollos and Mestizos to apply Enlightenment ideas of government, especially church-state relations. In the Borderlands, about 50% of the population was Indian. Most Indians were outside Spanish authority in the borderlands, from tribes like the Apache and the Comanches and the Cheyanne. About 300,000 Indians lived in California.
The Mission System: Those Indians under Spanish control were organized under the Mission system into agricultural units connected to missionary churches, and protected by spanish garrison forces based in presidios.
Borderland Economy: The borderland economy was dominated by irrigated agriculture and cattle-raising; wealthy criollos dominated the latter and exploited the former, which had been developed by the local Indians.
Poor Communications: The Borderlands lacked internal communications or much contact with the main body of Spanish territory.
Militarily Weak: It was close to impossible to defend the Borderlands adequately, due to the large number of hostile tribes and the lack of incentive for large scale Spanish settlement. This would lead to the decision to invite Anglos into Texas and to the eventual loss of the area to the US.
Mexico and Texas
Texas and Tejanos: In 1820, it was dominated by the Tejanos—Criolle and Mestizo ranchers born in Texas; they had strong economic ties to Louisiana, as it was more easily traded with. It was also sparsely populated (5000) and hard to defend. The growing strength of the US was also feared.
The Empresarios: Several Americans were granted large grants in order to bring in settlers to build up the area and make it defensible, in hopes of assimilating the immigrants, like Stephen F. Austin. Stephen F. Austin got 18,000 square miles of land; other grants were quite large too.
Swift Growth: By 1830, 25,000 Americans had flooded into Texas, arousing Mexican fears of losing control of the area. Some defied Mexican law, importing slaves. This was further complicated by Mexico’s own problems. In 1826-7, the brief-lived 'Fredonian Rebellion' in Eastern Texas has begun arousing fears of losing control of Texas.
Mexican Independence: In 1821, Mexico successfully revolted against Spain and gained its independence. Criole and Mestizo resentment of the Peninsulares drove the revolution; a substantial group of Mexicans imbued with Enlightenment ideas had arisen in the cities, providing the ideology of revolt. But the Mexican leadership quickly divided.
Conservatives vs. Liberals: Large estate owners and the Church opposed radical changes to society; urban crioles and mestizos sought to bring about land reform (ie—land redistribution), and a general shift to a more secular governing model. As a result, Mexican politics quickly broke down into a series of coups and armed struggles and new constitutions every five minutes.
Santa Anna: The flamboyant, yet mostly useless Santa Anna arose out of this conflict, becoming the leader of Mexico by his military backing and his ability to play off liberals and conservatives against each other until the money ran out.
Crackdown in Texas: Against the background of this struggle, Mexico clamped down the lid on immigration. In theory. In practice, about 10,000 more Americans immigrated illegally because Mexico was too wrapped in its own troubles to stop them. Once Santa Anna came to power in 1833 and became dictator in 1834, he tried to further clamp down, because the Tejanos and empresarios were pushing to try to give Texas more regional autonomy.