Main questions
- What are the different dimensions of “incorporation” — spatial, economic, and demographic?
- What is “the West?” How has the concept changed from 1776 to the mid 19th century?
- In what ways is “the West” a concept as opposed to space?
- Was United States policy towards Native Americans genocide?
Key concepts and terms
- Gilded Age (commentary on authenticity)
- Exodusters
- “Indian Wars” (ca. 1860–1890)
- Solutions to the “Indian problem”: extermination or assimilation
- Decimation of buffalo herds = destroy people who rely on them for livelihood
- Near extinction of the American bison
- Sand Creek Massacre
- Dawes Act (1887): privatization of land by family rather than tribe
- Battle of Wounded Knee
- Carlisle Indian School (Indian boarding schools)
- “Myth of the Disappearing Indian”
- Chinese Central Pacific Railroad Workers
- Transcontinental Railroad
- Chinese Exclusion Act
- Land grants for railroad companies, universities, and homesteaders
- Industrialization of space and time
- Industrialization of agriculture (e.g. grain elevators, stock yards)
- Railroads and transformation of locality, time, and space
- Time zones
Key individuals
- Frederick Jackson Turner, “Frontier Thesis”
- Language of development / evolution to describe social process
- The West as a site of conflict vs. site of unity
- “Free land”
