Term
|
Definition
| The Miller Brothers 101 Ranch was founded in 1893 in Oklahoma. Created the 101 Ranch Wild West Show; example of another show that enacted Cody’s Wild West. Authenticity was the highlight of Cody’s Wild West as he constantly updated his show. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The American Indian Movement is the best known pan-Indian activist organization of the postwar period. Created in urban community of Minneapolis in 1968. Best known for its street patrol designed to check police brutality. “Coalition of Indian people willing to fight for Indians.” |
|
|
Term
| Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act |
|
Definition
| Signed into law by President Nixon in 1971; largest land claims settlement in U.S. history. Meant to resolve issues around aboriginal land claims in Alaska, took away Alaska Native claims to the land by transferring titles to Alaska Native regional corporations and village corporations. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1887; federal government broke up communal Indian plots of land into individual plots and sold the “surplus” land (there was always surplus) to non-Indian settlers. Claimed to stimulate assimilation of Indians into American society with its emphasis on private ownership |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A postwar American culture cowboy character, a performer who gained fame beginning in the 1930s, and for more than three decades, as a singing cowboy on radio, TV, and in movies. Example of a B-western series star whose real identity merged with the character he played. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Very much a part of the arts and crafts movement; bungalow life is simple but not sloppy. At first houses were built in typical Victorian cottage style but soon developed their own building tradition around 1910. Didn’t have a cellar, encouraged indoor-outdoor living with spacious porch extending across the front of the house and with oriental elements in the exposed beam work. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Dime novelist, greatest triumph in 1869 met Cody and wrote him up in Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen. Character of Buffalo Bill was “the greatest scout of the west.” Cody tried to live the role Buntline had cast him in, before Cody’s death in 1917 he had been the subject of 1500 dime novels, a score written by Buntline. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Severe example of cultural imperialism, “civilizing the Indians”; Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania founded in 1879 by Richard Henry Pratt, a former commander of Indian scouts. The girls were given Anglo-American names, dressed as Victorian ladies, and taught to play the piano while the boys were organized into military companies. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A name given to African Americans who fled the post-Reconstruction Southern United States for Kansas in 1879 and 1880. So-called because of the mass “exodus” from the South. Were able to claim land because of the 1862 Homestead Act (even though most were very poor, and many were sharecroppers). Represented a new era of freedom for African Americans. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An oil tanker that crashed off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the ocean. One of the worst environmental disasters in history. Representative of the increasing commercialization/commodification of the American West (in this case, Alaska), and the trend of environmental destruction that has unfortunately continued with the advance of the frontier. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A book published by journalist Carey McWilliams in 1939 within months of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The book examines the lives of migrant farm workers in California and condemns the politics and consequences of large-scale agribusiness. |
|
|
Term
| Farm Security Administration |
|
Definition
| Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty. The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of sharecroppers, tenants, very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty (think: Dorothea Lange’s photographs). The FSA is significant, according to Faragher, as part of the dividing line between the “old West” and the “new West” -- whereas, in pre-New Deal times, the West had been viewed as foreign and removed from the lives of most Americans, in post FSA/New Deal times, the West was intentionally integrated into the United States, infrastructurally and to an extent culturally. The photography project represents that attempt at humanizing the West and making it more relatable to non-frontier Americans. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The Farmers Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement amongst U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s. Despite its failure, it is regarded as the precursor to the Populist Party, which grew out of the ashes of the Alliance in 1892. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An American film director, active from 1917-1966, most notable for his huge presence in the “Westerns” genre. Directed The Grapes of Wrath. Many of his films contributed to the idealization of the American West and the construction of the “myth of the West.” His role as a pioneer of location shooting and the long shot, which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain, contributed to the construction of this myth. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1890. A religious movement/dance which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The chief figure in the movement was the “prophet of peace,” Jack Wilson. He prophesied a peaceful end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| One of the founders of the Bank of America; merged his own bank with another in 1928 to create what is now the Bank of America. The son of Italian immigrants to San Francisco, Giannini was notably one of the first bankers to offer banking services to middle-class Americans, rather than the upper class. He also pioneered the holding company structure and established one of the first modern trans-national institutions. He bankrolled many business ventures and developments that proved successful during the Depression and WWII. His story represents the “American dream” turned real, the frontier as the place where that dream can happen, even for immigrants/the children of immigrants. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A dam built on the Columbia river between 1933 and 1944 under the auspices of Henry J. Kaiser. Financed largely by the Bank of America, which was funded by the New Deal’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation. A good example of “state capitalism” at work. |
|
|
Term
| "The Great Train Robbery" |
|
Definition
| Film made in 1903 that mythologized the 1901 hold-up of a Union Pacific train by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. As the first motion picture to tell a complete story and the first movie western, it marked the birth of the American film industry. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The most successful writer of Western Pulp Fiction. His most well known work was “Riders of the Purple Sage” in 1912. His stories of violence with panoramic Western backdrops had a lot of movie adaptations. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World (AKA the IWW or Wobblies) in 1905. He was one of the most prominent foes of Western capitalism in the early 20th century. The IWW changed the paradigm of Western labor since enterprising working men had to respond to the realities of working for masters instead of for themselves. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite National Park was a site San Francisco wanted to use to impound city water. San Francisco officials first approached the federal government with a proposal in 1903 which was denied. Later in 1913, a plan was approved and “the granite temple of Hetch Hetchy would disappear under hundreds of feet of water”. The story of Hetch Hetchy is one of extractive capitalism changing the natural landscape, and also fits into Faragher’s narrative about city-states ruling over regional satellites in the West. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The son of Collis Huntington of “Big Four” Fame. Was the largest single landowner in Southern California by 1900. He was the majority shareholder of the Pacific Electric, which collected outside hinterlands to the Los Angeles city center. He divided much of the land in those hinterlands into landscaped lots, precursors to modern suburban “sprawl”. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Known as the “stagecoach king”, Holladay was responsible for bringing the stagecoach to California during the 1849 gold rush. He participated in a long string of mergers and takeovers of stagecoach lines in the West. After leaving the stagecoach business, he predicted the next wave of change in transportation and invested his capital in Pacific railroad stock. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The Homestead Act took effect January 1, 1863. Men and women were eligible to file for up to 160 acres of surveyed land. They had to cultivate and improve their land and reside there for 5 years, at which time they would receive full title to it for only $10. Alternatively, they could do the same for 6 months and purchase the land at its minimum cash price. Although some lauded it as a great success, Congress failed to enact limits on the amount of land that could be purchased under the act so large landowners ended up buying a large portion of homestead lands. Also, some companies had their employee’s create “dummy homesteads” then after 6 months transfer the titles to them. Continued trend of large landed interests benefiting more from policy than “the little guy”. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The Act represented the most radical shift in Indian policy in American history. It put an end to the government campaign of oppression in favor of Indian cultural freedom. Granted religious freedom on all reservations. Collier phased out boarding schools and replaced them with reservation schools in which Indians had impact on curriculum. He sponsored publication of textbooks in both English and tribal languages and encouraged teachers to adopt them. Also, helped increase number of Indian employees in Bureau of Indian Affairs from an insignificant few to several thousand. The Act also ended allotment and encouraged Indians who already had allotments to exchange their land for stock in Indian corporations. Under the act, 181 tribes voted to organize new forms of representative self-government (though the BIA still held a veto power). Though Collier’s New Deal gave the Indians sovereignty internally, the government often violated this directive. However, the precedent it set was the most important part. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| In 1942, 2 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, suspending the civil rights of both citizens and aliens of Japanese background in the western states, authorizing the confiscation of their property, and the removal of families from their homes and communities. The order was defended on the grounds of “military necessity,” upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944, although in 1982 a federal commission concluded that the United States government had possessed no evidence linking West coast Japanese Americans with espionage and that internment was the result of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Many residents of LA’s Little Tokyo ended up at Manzanar. A total of 120k people were held in these detention camps for up to three years. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The New Deal’s “favorite businessman.” Became the West’s most prominent industrialist in the 1930s by building the great dams on the Colorado and Columbia Rivers. Led the Six Companies, a consortium of western contractors that built the Hoover Dam in Colorado. Built and ran the Fontana Steel Mill outside of LA in 1942, the most modern and efficient facility for the production of steel. Built a ship every 10 hours with prefabricated steel. Represents how federal funding through the New Deal transformed the West into a powerful industrial economy - the big winner in the New Deal was the West. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Kearney was a leader of the Workingman’s Party of California in the 1870s and 1880s known for his racist and nativist statements regarding Chinese immigrants and laborers. Though he was known by his simple, “Chinese must go,” Kearney himself was an immigrant from Ireland. His criticism of the Chinese extended to the Central Pacific railroad for hiring them, often combing populist ideals with overt racism. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Lakewood is a planned, post-World War II community. Developers Louis Boyar, Mark Taper and Ben Weingart are credited with "altering forever the map of Southern California". Begun in late 1949, the completion of the developers' plan in 1953 helped in the transformation of mass-produced working-class housing from its early phases in the 1930s and 1940s to the reality of the 1950s |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Dorothea Lange was a photographer who rose to national prominence for her work with the Farm Security Administration during the Dust Bowl/Great Depression. Lange was married to prominent western painter Maynard Dixon, who she would divorce. She then married Economist Paul Taylor, who helped educate about socio-political matters and alter her work. Her best known picture was “Migrant Mother,” a picture of grape picker Florence Owens Thompson. Though there is some controversy about the staging of her pictures, their importance in spreading awareness of Dustbowl situations was invaluable. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter was published in 1860 and is considered to be the first Dime Novel. This one isn’t particularly important, but Dime Novels were because they characterized perceptions of the West for most people in the East. Dime Novels were known for action, romance, clichéd storylines, and relying heavily on stereotypes. Beadle & Adams was the largest publisher of Dime Novels. Dime Novels remained popular through the end of the 19th century and were in many ways precursors to the Western film. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Manzanar was an internment camp for Japanese-American civilians during World War Two in the Owens Valley. The region was an arid waste after the water had been diverted away towards LA. Manzanar was called a triple tragedy because first the Native Paiute Indians lost the land, then the farmers lost their water, and finally the Japanese-Americans lost their rights. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: Western film star most active between 1910 and 1935; Mix was a veteran of wild west shows whose masterful command of trick riding and shooting, along with his detailed and ornate cowboy clothing (white ten gallon, hand-tooled boots, etc.), made him a hero of western films in the early 20th century
Significance: Mix contributed to stereotypes of the cowboy that would carry through to the John-Wayne era of western films: fanciful clothing, entertaining trick riding, etc. Essentially, Tom Mix was a "comic book/dime novel character of a cowboy," unconcerned with authenticity. His popularity also caused a boom in the demand for and popularity of western film in the early 20th century; contributed to the popularity of "westerns." |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: America's first and most effective propagandist for wilderness, active around the turn of the 19th century; while eccentric, he understood the practical side to national parks and worked with the railroads to generate more tourist business; founded the Sierra Club in 1892, which hopes to close reserves to commercial exploitation; fought (and lost) against Hetchy Hetch Valley flood in 1903.
Significance: Muir loved the wilderness, but he was an environmental politician; he hoped to generate tourism to national parks as a way of protecting them from commercial exploitation |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: Sweetheart of Buffalo Bill's Wild West which she joined in 1885; an excellent shot that earned her the nickname "Little Sure Shot" from Sitting Bull while he was in the show
Significance: Oakley contributed to the popularity of the Wild West show; as a woman her talent appealed and delighted audiences; a pioneer for women in gun-handling, she even offered her services as a "lady sharpshooter" in the Spanish American War |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Identification: Valley providing large portion of water to Los Angeles; between 1905 and 1907, L.A. Board of Water Commissioners put to a vote (that was approved) the construction of an aqueduct diverting the Owen's River to the city; majoring engineering construction project |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: Commissioner of Indian affairs; served from 1863-9; a Seneca lawyer who argued against honoring treaties with Indians because they gave Indians the notion that they were independent, citizens of their own nation rather than under the control of the Republic; Parker referred to the Indians as "hapless wards" of the federal government.
Significance: Parker was himself an Iroquois, of the Seneca nation, who aligned himself with the United States and turned on his own people |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: Roosevelt's closest advisor on environmental policy from 1901 on; a proponent of "conservationism," an ideology shared by Roosevelt in reaction to the perception that the frontier was filing up and that temporary profit needed to be sacrificed for the good of the future of the nation; helped Roosevelt with his "midnight reserves" of 150 million acres of national forest;
Significance: Pinchot believed that the resources in national parks should be used (grazing home-building, etc.) as well as persevered for the future (unlike Muir) in the form of wise use; by the time he left his position, he had built the Forest Service into a strong organization. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: term coined in a Harper's essay in 1934 by Bernard DeVoto to describe the American West
Significance: DeVoto believed that the West had been stripped of her natural resources to enrich the East in as a type of mercantilism, leaving the West bankrupt until it could recover, only to be exploited again. DeVoto specifically mentions beaver, gold, buffalo, minerals, and oil in his essay |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Identification: name for Cincinnati, Ohio coined in 1835
Significance: in the early to mid 1800's, Cincinnati was the United States' chief hog-packing center, a time when pigs were so plentiful in Cincinnati that herds of pigs traveled in the streets |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| style characterized by low horizontal lines, picture windows, sliding glass doors, inviting informality and joint indoor/outdoor living. Became immensely popular, nationally, post WWII—an icon of the West the architecture summoned images of open space, freedom, and glamour. One of the styles carried eastward in second half of twentieth century. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| painter and sculptor famous for depicting Indians and romanticizing the cowboy. Good friend with Roosevelt, part of elite group credited with popularizing physical masculine image of the west and transporting that into gender norms. Professor Faragher groups with Roosevelt and wister as trio of pop culture definers who went west in youth for regeneration post an elite education Harvard or Yale (Remington educated at Yale). Celebrated nostalgia for the old rough west and sought to memorialize with art, created image of the west for those in the east. |
|
|
Term
| Rural Electrification Administration |
|
Definition
| product of the new deal, provided electricity to much of the west, characterized by professor Faragher as key step to making land west of trans-mississippi region no longer a resource colony. a unit of the New Deal’s “state capitalism” and allowed industrialization of Tennessee and Columbia basins. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| term coined by Horace Greeley, editor of New York’s Working Man’s Advocate to describe how making western land free to settlers would release pressure on the over-large eastern workforce, began gaining popularity in 1840s, a significant argument for the 1862 Homestead Act. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| powerful Chinese merchant clan that largely controlled San Francisco’s Chinatown in the first decades of the twentieth century. They governed the city’s Chinese workforce (which made up half of the city’s laborers) nearly separately from the rest of the population and made deals with city officials to sidestep zoning and labor laws that would shut down Chinatown’s sweatshops. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| second husband of Dorothea Lange (dust-bowl and Japanese-internment camp photographer) who co-produced reports on migrant farmers with her in 1935 (same year they married) and published ‘American Exodus” in 1939- responsible for bringing national and federal attention to the conditions of the people in the dust bowl. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| (again, the descendants of both Spaniards and native Americans) in the context of the twentieth century, in 1915 Tejanos induced an armed insurrection/general violence against anglo ranchers (who were growing in number and had been instutionalizing racism since the turn the century via segregation and a 1902 poll tax that virtually excluded blacks and tejanos frombeing able to vote) around San Diego on the Nueces river. They had issued El Plan de San Diego, a proclamation calling for a rising of the disparate minorities against the anglo ranchers. They were brutally put down. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Opened in 1978, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is an oil pipeline bringing oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. The pipeline was a success for those in favor of development of Alaska and a defeat for environmentalists, natives, and those looking to preserve the last frontier. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1893. Historian who introduced the “Frontier Thesis” - explained the development of America in three waves: free land; its continuous recession; and the advance of American settlement westward. Defined the frontier to be the outer margin of white settlement; less than six people per square mile. |
|
|
Term
| "Uncle Sam is Rich Enough to Give Us All a Farm" |
|
Definition
| 1860s-1870s. The saying surrounding the homesteading movement and the homesteading Act of 1862. The dream of free land had become law, but this possession of “free” land came at the expense of the dispossession of Indians. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1966. Organized by Cesar Chavez and colleagues as a farmer union for migrant Mexican laborers. UFW was a critical component of a Mexican political resurgence in the Southwest and is emblematic of the Civil Rights Movement’s role in the West. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1929 (sound film). First a novel by Owen Wister, adapted into an idyllic western film starring Gary Cooper. Epitomizes the western model of masculinity and manhood, declaring a real man to be the good-bad man with an unemotional, even callous, hard-shell exterior. Like other westerns, the film is complete with a shoot-out and primitive settings. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1890. A brutal massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek by the Seventh Cavalry due to the Indians’ refusal to abandon their Ghost Dance. Wounded Knee was part of the campaign against Indian cultural expression; making assimilation and homogeneity the American goal. Later served as the site of a 71 occupation by AIM, 1973. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1890s. A shaman among the Paiutes of Nevada who preached that if Indians gave up alcohol, lived simple lives and dedicated themselves to meditation and prayer then there would come a day when the Great Spirit would restore their lives and lands, and the white man and all of his implements would disappear. Wovoka was an example of the Indian outburst of religious energy to their repression and forced removal into reservations. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1943. Sailors from port of Long Island invaded East L.A. and assaulted young Mexican Americans and African Americans as police watched and white bystanders cheered. Called the zoot-suit riots after the zoot suits many young Mexican American pachucos wore. Representative of the extreme racism and discrimination of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the west during this period. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Founded the UFW (United Farm workers) in 1966. One of the first to advocate for the rights and equal treatment of migrant workers. Shows the decades of oppression against Mexican Americans in the west and brings attention to their important role. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1882 Excluded the immigration of Chinese labor from the united states. Enacted because of fears of Chinese cultural hegemony in the west. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Mid 19th century. Like proto-dime novels in that they popularized the myth of the west. Told stories of cowboys and indians, etc. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Buffalo fucking bill! My man! Civil war vetaran who became famous for his frightening ability to kill buffalo. Killed many buffalo for meat companies and travelled around the west. Became a performer and headed Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, a collection of “rough riders” --indians, cowboys, annie oakley, etc. who toured and entertained the east. They were in Chicago in 1893 and even toured Europe multiple times. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| American social reformer and indian advocate served as the head of the Bureau for Indian Affairs under FDR from 1933 to 1945. Chiefly responsible for the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 which solidified the rights and sovereignty of reservations. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Performers with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, also the nickname for the romantic first US cavalry that rode into the 1898 Spanish American War with Teddy Roosevelt. These guys (and annie oakley and indians) were the epitome of meathead cowboys). They spread the myth of the west and came to comprise the dominant cast of Westerns for Years to come. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 1887. Authorized the president of the United States to survey collective Indian tribal lands and divide them into personal plots. Much of the "surplus" was sold. Imposed a western way of living onto the Indians. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| or the “Dirty Thirties” -- a period of massive dust storms in the United States that lead to massive displacement of people from the great plains. They mostly moved to California in search of work. The dust bowl lead to many modern pro-farmer policies and was the backdrop to the Grapes of Wrath. |
|
|
