The Subjugation of the American West

Manifest Destiny! This simple phrase enraptured the United States during the late 1800’s, and came to symbolize an era of westward expansion through numerous powerful entities. The expansion can be inspected though many different contextual lenses, but if examined among the larger histories of the United States, this movement can be classified as one of the most influential developments of the post-Civil War period. While very influential to the larger part of American history, the seemingly barbaric methods that were used conquer the western lands and their peoples took physical and economical forms that proved to be a plague upon the West.

The movement westward during the late 1800’s created new tensions among already strained relations with current Native American inhabitants. Their lands, which were guaranteed to them via treaty with the United States, were now beginning to be intruded upon by the massive influx of people migrating from the east. This intrusion was not taken too kindly, as Native American lands had already been significantly reduced due to previous westward conquest. Growing resentment for the federal government’s Reservation movement could be felt among the native population. One Kiowa chief’s thoughts on this matter summarize the general feeling of the native populace. “All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don’t want to give away any of it” (Edwards, 203). His words, “I don’t want to give away any of it”, seemed to a mantra among the Native Americans, and this thought would resound among them as the mounting tensions reached breaking point.

By 1870, most of the Native American population had been subdued onto even smaller reservations. Due to the expansion of the Anglo-American presence in the west and the economical possibilities available for the country, President Grant issued his infamous “Peace Policy” that would spark the last few years of Native American resistance against the federal government. The new “Peace Policy” focused in on the assimilation of natives to an Anglo way of life instead of forced removal by military conquest, but the result of this policy led to a series of hostilities that were ironically named “the Wars of the Peace Policy” (Edwards, 203). These wars were ruthlessly fought by the U.S. Army, who committed numerous atrocities against the natives such as the torture and murder of innocent women and children. The Wars of the Peace Policy and the senseless slaughter of natives would continue for decades, but not without critics. One such critic, Helen Jackson, wrote a “damning” account of the violence, in 1881, which became somewhat of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Native Americans. Though this book won widespread praise, most Americans could not imagine letting natives continue to live in their “primitive” ways. Theodore Roosevelt even spoke out against this in his book Winning of the West, “The Indians never had any real title to the soil…. This great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for the squalid savages” (Edwards, 206). Though the Native Americans put up a very impressive resistance to the Anglo-American’s westward expansion, their oppositions was ultimately futile.

The conquering of the American West was not merely a physical confrontation and subsequent domination of the native inhabitants; this conquest also took form in the economical expansion into the frontier of the United States. Beginning with the Homestead Act of 1862, a mass of families and businesses flooded the West in hopes of striking it rich. Because the large open prairies seemed ideal for large-scale agricultural development, much of the West was financed by Eastern investment. Because of this investment, the West was soon producing at a rate that surpassed the South, and by 1890 was producing 50% of the nation’s grain. The Eastern dependence on these goods led to an influx of potential farmers into the West, and subsequently led to the land being over used and improperly developed. The arid nature of the West made irrigation a major issue and thus a constant problem for many farmers. This problem was pointed out in the 1878 вЂ?Report on the Arid Regions of the US” of John Powell, not much was done by the federal government to help with the irrigation of lands for development. Not even a decade after the report was issued,