Keywords: Western States
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Displaying 1-20 of 66 results.
A Chinese Immigrant Makes His Home in Turn-of-the-Century America
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Abstract: In this autobiographical sketch published in 1903 in the Independent magazine (which ran a series of about eighty short autobiographical "lifelets" of "undistinguished Americans" between 1902 and 1906), Chinese immigrant Lee Chew looked back on his passage to America, and his years as a launderer and ... More »
A Cowboy's Work is Never Done: George Martin
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| Type: | Library or Collection |
Abstract: The cowboy of Western mythology rode the range during the heyday of the long cattle drives in the l860s and 1870s. Despite the individualism emphasized in myth, most cowhands were employees of Eastern and European capitalists who raised cattle as a corporate enterprise to serve a growing appetite for ... More »
"A Foreigner in My Own Land": Juan Nepomuceno Seguin Flees Texas, 1842
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Abstract: Few Anglos lived in San Antonio after the Texas Revolution of 1835-36 and Tejanos (Texas-Mexicans) continued their rule. Juan Nepomuceno Seguin was born into a prominent tejano family and had close ties with Stephen Austin, leader of the first American settlers in Texas. He became mayor or alcade at ... More »
A German Jewish Woman Settles in North Dakota
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Abstract: Women who settled the West in the years after the Civil War often faced harsh and unremitting toil. Laboring from well before dawn until well after the sun had set, women helped plant and harvest crops, raised large families, and kept house with the most rudimentary of equipment. Long periods of isolation ... More »
"A Hungery Savage Look which was Truly Fearful": Samuel Chamberlain's Recollections of the Mexican War, 1846
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Abstract: In the mid-nineteenth century, many Americans were eager to acquire the Mexican land of California and New Mexico, enough to provoke a war with Mexico. In 1845 U.S. President James K. Polk sent envoys who offered to buy Mexican territory and stationed federal troops in the border areas. Naval forces ... More »
"A Little Standing Army in Himself": N. A. Jennings Tells of the Texas Rangers, 1875
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Abstract: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought an enormous chunk of Mexico to the United States. This added to the territory obtained by the annexation of Texas in 1845, but more than just territory was added. More than 75,000 Spanish-speaking residents became U.S. citizens, but the struggle to achieve ... More »
A Mormon Woman's Life in Southern Utah
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| Type: | Library or Collection |
Abstract: Women who settled the West in the years after the Civil War often faced harsh and unremitting toil. Laboring from well before dawn until well after the sun had set, women helped plant and harvest crops, raised large families, and kept house with rudimentary equipment. Long periods of isolation from neighbors ... More »
"A Regular Row in the Backwoods."
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| Type: | Library or Collection |
Abstract: The 1841 issue of the Crockett Almanac , named after the Tennessee backwoodsman, Davey Crockett, made famous by his self-serving tall tales, portrayed a rough rural sport." The inexpensive comic almanacs combined illustrated jokes on topical subjects with astrological and weather predictions. While ... More »
"All We Are Seeking Here Is Equal Opportunity": The American G.I. Forum Desegregates a Texas Community's Schools
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Abstract: With the annexation of Texas in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Tejanos--Texans of Mexican descent--lost property rights and political power in a society dominated by Anglos. Through discriminatory practices and violent force, Tejanos were kept at the bottom of the new political and socio-cultural ... More »
"An Iron Furnace of Affliction": Abigail Abbot Bailey Endures the Abuse of her Husband, New Hampshire, 1790-1791
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Abstract: During their 26 years of marriage, New Englanders Abigail Abbot and Asa Bailey lived on farms in Haverhill and Landaff, New Hampshire, and had 14 children. In 1770, Asa conducted an affair with one of the farm's hired women. Three years later, a second farm servant accused him of rape. Asa also beat ... More »
"As They Had Been in Ancient Times": Pedro Naranjo Relates the Pueblo Revolt, 1680
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Abstract: In the late 17th-century, Spain's empire in the Americas extended north to New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California, where Spanish soldiers, settlers, and missionaries began to settle. The missionaries resettled the indigenous Pueblo people into peasant communities, building forts and missions to subdue ... More »
"Dam Hetch Hetchy!": John Muir Contests the Hetch-Hetchy Dam
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Abstract: The Progressive Era's most controversial environmental issue was the 1908-1913 struggle over federal government approval for building the Hetch Hetchy dam in a remote corner of federally-owned land in California's Yosemite National Park. The city of San Francisco, rebuilding after the devastating 1906 ... More »
"Dame Shirley" Describes Life at a California Gold Mining Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1851
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Abstract: The author of this letter, who used the pseudonym "Dame Shirley," was Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp (1819-1906). The letter was written to Clapp's sister, Molly, in Massachusetts, but was subsequently published as one of a series of twenty-three in the Pioneer , a California literary magazine. Clapp's ... More »
"Everything Was Lively": David Hickman Describes the Prosperity Late Nineteenth-Century Railroads Brought to the West
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Abstract: The availability of rail connections often determined whether a western community would survive or die. The rails fostered prosperity by bringing both goods and people. This trade, and the local service industries that sprouted up to capitalize on the movement of people and goods, drove many local economies. ... More »
Eyewitness to Murder: Recounting the Ludlow Massacre
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Abstract: The labor struggles of the early 20th century, many of which ended in violence and death, engendered deep concern at all levels of society and led to a series of governmental investigations. The most important--the Commission on Industrial Relations--was appointed by newly elected Democratic president ... More »
Fighting Discrimination in Mexican American Education
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| Type: | Library or Collection |
Abstract: With the annexation of Texas in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Tejanos--Texans of Mexican descent--lost property rights and political power in a society dominated by Anglos. Through discriminatory practices and violent force, Tejanos were kept at the bottom of the new political and socio-cultural ... More »
"For Oregon!" Settlers From Illinois Describe the New Territory, 1847
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Abstract: On June 15, 1846, the United States and Britain signed a treaty dividing the Oregon Territory--which at that time stretched into British Columbia--at the forty-ninth parallel. The acquisition of Oregon, like the acquisition of Texas, was part of President Polk's program of territorial expansion. In 1847 ... More »
Friends in High Places: A Pro-Labor Governor Speaks Out
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Abstract: Davis Waite, the Populist and pro-labor governor of Colorado, won national notoriety in the summer of 1893 after he declared that if change would not come peacefully, it was "better, infinitely better that blood should flow to the horses' bridles than our national liberties should be destroyed." A Republican-controlled ... More »
"Genesee Had Railroads": Kenneth Platt Recalls the Importance of the Railroad to Late Nineteenth-Century Western Towns
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Abstract: The penetration of the railroads into the West in the late nineteenth century had a profound impact on local economies. For a period of ten years in the 1880s the Latah County, Idaho town of Genesee experienced this phenomenon. One town boomed while its neighbors languished in economic isolation, largely ... More »
George Kills in Sight Describes the Death of Indian Leader Crazy Horse
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| Type: | Library or Collection |
Abstract: One of the most notable Indian warriors of the post-Civil War era was Crazy Horse (Tashunka Witko), a military leader of the Teton Sioux. In the aftermath of Custer's defeat by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn in June 1876, U.S. troops relentlessly pursued both Indian leaders. Crazy ... More »