history

• great love and respect for nature
• they believed spirits controlled the earth
• they believed the circle is a simbol that your life is a circle from childhood to old age
• believed in dances sun dance
• seen while americans as a threat as they did not respect their land in the same way
• they haunted and relied heavily on the buffalo
• lived in tipies
• they were soon forced into reservations as the indians lost the war but they won the battle of little bighorn

• another name for farmers who lived on the plains
• came from southern and eastern states
• Wanted to move further west for land near the missisppi river
• some went because they were poot
• Magazines and newspapers encouraged poeple to go west

PROBLEMS

• weather conditions -cold in winter-hot in summer
• pierre fires -spread by winds and destroyed crops
• grasshopper plagues
• lack of water,houses had to be build from mud and buffalo dung-very unhygeni
• Indians disliked them
• no toilets -lots of illnesses

HOMESTEAD ACT(1862)

• Encouraged homesteaders to settle on the plains
• Gave settlers 160 acres of land for free.

TIMBER CUTLTURE ACT(1873) desert act (1877)

• GAVE MORE LAND FOR FREE AT A LOW COST
• THIS WAS ONLY IF THEY PLANTED TREE ON 40 ACRES OF IT .

CATTLEMEN - set up ranches on the plains. They owned cattle and sold beeef. they called the demand for beef in the 1880's beef bonanza

cowboys =theese are the men who worked for the cattlemen from 1867 until the 1880's was the era of the cowboys

• The cowboys had to round all the cattle up safely to the cowtowns
• this was a hard job and sometimes very boring and little paid but they injoyed their work.
• had to stand gaurd at the cowtowns from russtlers wolves and indians
• in the winter they did not have alot to do
• drives were long and work was hard
• they were mainly black,ex slaves,ex soilders or indians
• usually young unmarried men

after the open ranch the life of the cowboy changed

• no longer had to heard the cattle north
• did odd jobs like fixing fences