Dr. Susanne George Bloomfield

Literature of the American West

AMERICAN TIMELINE

1803 Louisiana Purchase from France

1804-1804 Lewis and Clark expedition

1830 Indian removal Act: Eviction of almost all Indians east of the Mississippi into the West; led to the infamous Trail of Tears and the deaths of 4,000 Cherokees in that forced mid-winter march.

1837 Jackson left office; most Native Americans between Appalachians and Mississippi had been removed to the Indian Territory.

1840 Gold Rush; virtually eliminated all Indians from California.

1841 Pre-Emption Act (Add 160 acres if Improved upon)

1846-1846 Mormons leave Illinois to settle In Salt Lake City

1848 Gold is discovered in California; Travel on the Oregon Trail (1840s)

1850 California becomes a state

1851 Reservations were established.

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. U.S. acquires Indian Territory.

1860-1861 Pony Express runs between St. Joseph, MO, and Sacramento, CA

1861-1865 Civil War

1861 Completion of telegraph connecting East and West

1862 Homestead Act and Transcontinental Railroad Act (land grants); Elia W. Peattie born In Michigan

1863 Construction begins on the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads; Kate M. Cleary born in Canada

1864 Sand Creek Massacre

1866 Long Cattle Drives begin; first herds reach Abilene, KS, in 1867

1868 Treaty of Laramie establishes the "Great Sioux Reservation"

1869 Golden spike joins Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah

1873 Yellowstone becomes our first national park; Levi Strauss patents blue jeans; first Colt .45 revolver; Willa Cather born in Virginia

1874 Barbed wire patented

1876 Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn; Zitkala-Sa born on Yankton, SD, Reservation

1877 Desert Lands Act (640 acres In arid West)

1879 Carlisle School for Indians off-reservation education opened by Richard Pratt that promoted acculturation for Indians.

1880 By this date, 67 tribes were forced into an area 3/4 the size of Oklahoma and the rest confined to other reservations.

1881 Billy the Kid Is killed by Pat Garrett; Gunfight at the OK Corral In Tombstone, AZ; Bess Streeter Aldrich born in Cedar Falls, IA

1883 Nearly all of the buffalo of the southern and northern herds had been destroyed; the Sun Dance was outlawed; Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show begins touring.

1884 Zitkala-Sa attends White's Manual Institute through 1885

1886 Capture of Geronimo ends major wars with Indians

1887 Dawes Allotment Act provided for the assignment of small plots (160 acres to head of household) to Americanize Indians. The remaining land was sold by the government, reducing the Indian land base from 132 million acres to 32 million acres by 1928. Allotted Indians became citizens.

1889 Indian territory opened to white settlement (becomes Oklahoma In 1907)

1890 Indian Territory becomes Oklahoma territory; Ghost Dance ( Wovoka and the promise of the return of the dead and the buffalo) and the resulting Massacre of 300 at Wounded Knee. Sitting Bull is killed; Indians now on reservations. Census officials declared that the West was officially closed--there is no longer "free land," as the US has at least 2 people per square mile.

1893 Severe economic depression followed by drought

1896 Mari Sandoz born near Hays Springs, NE

1898 Spanish American War

1900 Zitkala-Sa first publishes her stories in Atlantic Monthly

1904 Kinkaid Act (640 acres homestead claims In Sand Hills region)

1906 Burke Act ended the automatic conferral of citizenship on Native Americans and eliminated the restrictions for selling allotted land, resulting in much corruption.

1910 Wright Morris born In Central City, NE

1912 Tillie Olsen born

1916 Syockraising Homestread Act (640 acres)

1918 My Antonia published

1917-1919 World War I

1920 19th amendment gave women the right to vote; Indian veterans were permitted to apply for citizenship

1924 Indian Citizenship Act

1929 Stock Market crashes

1928 A Lantern in Her Hand is published

1930s The West experienceed the Depression, the Dust Bowl, the New Deal; Setting of Yonnondio

1934 Repeal of the Burke Act: by this time 48 million acres had been sold. Indians now owned 1.5% of the land originally promised to them by the United States government. Indian Reorganization (Wheeler-Howard) Act ends allotment policy of Dawes Act, repeals ban on Indian religious practice, recognizes tribal governments as sovereign nations; Taylor Grazing Act decreased amount of land available to homesteaders.

1941-1945 US Involvement in World War II

1943 Crazy Horse is published

1948 The Home Place is published

1950-1953 Americans involved in the Korean War

1963 John F. Kennedy assassinated

1965 Watts riots In Los Angeles

1973 Confrontation between Indians and government at Wounded Knee

1974 Yonnondio is published

1977 Homestead Act repealed