What would the Native Americans think? |
TEACHERS NOTE: You can make a fairly good argument that reservations for Native Americans were really big prisons. Let students figure that out.
“A few thousand square miles of uninhabited territory.”
On the building of the first
transcontinental railroad, Hendrik Van Loon comments,
Thus far the railroad contractor had
followed the pioneer. Now the railroad contractor himself turned pioneer. He no
longer waited until there were enough settlers in any given part of the Union
to make it worth his while to build an iron road and go after their business.
He first of all provided a few thousand square miles of uninhabited territory
with decent means of communication and then invited farmers from the East and
immigrants from Europe to settle within reasonable distance of his depots and
use his road for the transportation of their cattle and their farm products. (124-410)
Van Loon seems blind when he speaks
of “uninhabited territory,” but redeems himself a few pages later, writing,
In this mad rush for new grazing
fields and fresh wheat fields, the last remnants of the Indians (who had been
given this territory as a sort of conscience money when the United States
occupied their ancestral possessions in the East), those poor savages were
ruthlessly pushed out of the way or were cooped up in vast concentration camps
where they were allowed to vegetate and to generate as mildly interesting
specimens of the original local fauna.
But such cruel incidents seem to be
an unavoidable part of the White Man’s progress across the face of the globe.
Theoretically the European and the American recognize the fact that black and
yellow and copper-colored creatures also have the right to exist. In practice,
however, they prefer such creatures when they “know their place” and shine
their boots for them or do their masters’ laundering. When one of the races
which seem to stand between the pale-face and his immediate profits declares
itself too proud to become a bootblack or a dishwasher, the Caucasian does not
quite know what to do with him. In such a dilemma he gets nervous and begins to
play with his revolver and nine times out of ten something happens and the gun
goes off. …
This chapter in our history is not
very flattering to our pride. On every page we read the records of greed and
cruelty and of broken treaties and the entire episode is steeped in the
contraband room of the prairie saloon. (124-412-413)
Later, he writes that when the white
men came, “They slew and hacked and burned and shot and hanged and generally
destroyed everything the natives had built as rapidly as they could.” (124-415)
*
Jill Lepore, a bicycle enthusiast, writes:
No
one’s quite sure who came up with this idea—most historians place their bets on
a French carriage-maker, in 1855—but putting a crank on the axle of the front
wheel, with pedals on either side of the hub, changed everything about
bicycles, including their name: most people called the ones with pedals
“velocipedes,” which is, roughly, Latin for “fast feet.” People expected
velocipedes to replace horses. “We think the bicycle an animal, which will, in
a great measure, supersede the horse,” one American wrote in 1869. “It does not
cost as much; it will not eat, kick, bite, get sick, or die.”
*
The first transcontinental railroad
is completed – but not before the two competing companies first drive right
past each other, in an effort to get more free federal land. As Alistair Cooke
once wrote, the rail crews opened fire on each other at one point, before
cooler business head prevailed. “A century ago,” Cooke also wrote, “the
railroad engine was as magical as a space ship.” (America, 228-229)
*
Construction
begins on Fort Sill, in Oklahoma, named after Gen. Joshua W. Sill, killed in
the Battle of Stones River.
The
Native American artist, T.C. Cannon, painted the following picture, “Beef Issue
at Fort Sill,” and wrote the accompanying poem in the mid-1970s.
With the buffalo fast disappearing, Native Americans stuck on reservations are forced to rely on government beef. |
Beef Issue
Everything must be used
then else returned to the earth
for even now
the grass is black with blood
the rainsmell fills the breeze
and the children are hungry
i can see that the sky
is yellowing again
the fuzzy face soldiers are laughing
they are never hungry
the dogs are eager for the bones
the sky is burning down overhead
everything must be used
the grass is black with blood
*
The College of New Jersey (now
Princeton) and Rutgers play the first ever college football game, with Rutgers
prevailing 6-4 (goals are worth one point and scored by kicking the ball across
an opponent’s goal line.) Passing and carrying the ball are illegal and teams
are comprised of 25 players, including 11 “fielders” to play defense and 12
“bulldogs” whose job is to score. The remaining pair position themselves near
the opponent’s goal, hoping to pick up an easy point.
A “game” ends when a goal is scored, and ten games are played. Rutgers uses the “flying wedge” for the first time to break through the New Jersey defenses. But J.E. Michael, known as “Big Mike,” for New Jersey, soon counters, breaking through the wedge. Madison M. Bell, a wounded Civil War veteran, also impresses spectators (there are about 100), using a heel kick to stop New Jersey scoring rushes and even set up a score for his own team.
*
Completion of the first
transcontinental railroad means growing trouble for Native Americans on the Great
Plains. Gilbert King, writing in Smithsonian magazine (7/17/2012), explains:
Massive hunting parties began to
arrive in the West by train, with thousands of men packing .50 caliber rifles,
and leaving a trail of buffalo carnage in their wake. Unlike the Native
Americans or Buffalo Bill, who killed for food, clothing and shelter, the
hunters from the East killed mostly for sport. Native Americans looked on
with horror as landscapes and prairies were littered with rotting buffalo
carcasses. The railroads began to advertise excursions for “hunting by
rail,” where trains encountered massive herds alongside or crossing the
tracks. Hundreds of men aboard the trains climbed to the roofs and took
aim, or fired from their windows, leaving countless 1,500-pound animals where
they died.
Harper’s Weekly described
these hunting excursions:
Nearly every railroad train
which leaves or arrives at Fort Hays on the Kansas Pacific Railroad has its
race with these herds of buffalo; and a most interesting and exciting scene is
the result. The train is “slowed” to a rate of speed about equal to that of the
herd; the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of
the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the
cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish. Frequently a young bull will turn
at bay for a moment. His exhibition of courage is generally his death-warrant,
for the whole fire of the train is turned upon him, either killing him or some
member of the herd in his immediate vicinity.
Hunters began killing buffalo by
the hundreds of thousands in the winter months. One hunter, Orlando Brown
brought down nearly 6,000 buffalo by himself and lost hearing in one ear from
the constant firing of his .50 caliber rifle. The Texas legislature, sensing
the buffalo were in danger of being wiped out, proposed a bill to protect the
species. General Sheridan opposed it, stating, ”These men have done more in the
last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed
Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty
years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary. And it is a well known
fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great
disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace,
let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then
your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle.”
*
Mid-August: James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok is
elected sheriff of Ellis County, in Kansas. (He will not be reelected in
November.) Hays is the biggest town, filled with cowboys, and frequented by
soldiers of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. One biographer says of Hickok, that he
was “the handsomest man west of the Mississippi. His eyes were blue – but could
freeze to a cool steel-gray at threat of evil or danger.”
By 1866, he could tell a reporter he
had already killed about a hundred men, not counting Native Americans. He told
another reporter, “As to killing men, I never think much of it…. The killing of
a bad man shouldn’t trouble one any more than killing a rat or an ugly cat or a
vicious dog.”
During his time in Hays,
he may have killed a man named Jack
(or Sam) Strawhorn (or Strawhan) who tried to get the drop on him; he may have
killed two soldiers who talked tough at him; he may have thrashed Tom Custer, a
brother of General George Custer; he may have killed three soldiers whom Custer
had vengefully sicced on him – all the evidence bearing on these matters is
likewise fuzzy. What is certain is that Hickok left Hays in a hurry one winter
night, lest he be further beset by the Seventh Cavalry.
Source:
an old American Heritage article, “The Wild, Wild West” by Peter Lyon
(formatted on brown pages, without numbers).
*
“Is it
possible to get further down in National degeneracy and disgrace?”
When a white member of Congress from
South Carolina is forced to resign, having sold an appointment to Annapolis,
the Republican Party sends Joseph Hayne Rainey, an African-American, to fill
his place. Rainey is later elected to serve a full term. (See also: 1871, 1872,
1873.)
The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer
responds: “Is it possible to get further down in National degeneracy and
disgrace?”
Congressman Rainey. |
*
September
24: Benjamin Andrews describes the
attempt to corner the gold market and the crash known as “Black Friday.”
In 1869 a clique of speculators in
New York thought to realize an immense fortune by cornering gold, a large
proportion of the stock east of the Rocky Mountains being known to be in New
York City.
By Wednesday, September 22d, they had
pushed up the price of gold in greenbacks from 131 to 141, causing a disastrous
tumble in stocks and almost a panic. The money market grew tight, and interest
enormous. Loans were to be had only on the very best securities. On Thursday
gold still advanced, showing that the corner remained solid. At the last call
it stood at 144; at the first on Friday, September 24th, 105 [error?] was the
figure. The ring was believed at this time to hold in gold and in contracts to
deliver the same, over $100,000,000, while all the gold in New York outside the
United states Sub-Treasury was hardly over $10,000,000. Only the Government
could break the corner. At 11:00 o’clock gold was at 155, whence in half an
hour it rose to 160, then to 162, then to 164. In the midst of an excitement
never paralleled in the Gold Room before our since, it was announced on
authority that the Government would sell. The price at once went down to 135,
and the power of the clique was instantly broken. This day passed into history
under the name of “Black Friday.” (356-359)
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