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President of the U.S. during the war.

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Often referred to as the first "dark horse" President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War.

He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. Studious and industrious, Polk was graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson.

In the House of Representatives, Polk was a chief lieutenant of Jackson in his Bank war. He served as Speaker between 1835 and 1839, leaving to become Governor of Tennessee.

Until circumstances raised Polk's ambitions, he was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for Vice President in 1844. Both Martin Van Buren, who had been expected to win the Democratic nomination for President, and Henry Clay, who was to be the Whig nominee, tried to take the expansionist issue out of the campaign by declaring themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk, however, publicly asserted that Texas should be "re-annexed" and all of Oregon "re-occupied."

The aged Jackson, correctly sensing that the people favored expansion, urged the choice of a candidate committed to the Nation's "Manifest Destiny." This view prevailed at the Democratic Convention, where Polk was nominated on the ninth ballot.

"Who is James K. Polk?" Whigs jeered. Democrats replied Polk was the candidate who stood for expansion. He linked the Texas issue, popular in the South, with the Oregon question, attractive to the North. Polk also favored acquiring California.

Even before he could take office, Congress passed a joint resolution offering annexation to Texas. In so doing they bequeathed Polk the possibility of war with Mexico, which soon severed diplomatic relations.

In his stand on Oregon, the President seemed to be risking war with Great Britain also. The 1844 Democratic platform claimed the entire Oregon area, from the California boundary northward to a latitude of 54'40', the southern boundary of Russian Alaska. Extremists proclaimed "Fifty-four forty or fight," but Polk, aware of diplomatic realities, knew that no course short of war was likely to get all of Oregon. Happily, neither he nor the British wanted a war.

He offered to settle by extending the Canadian boundary, along the 49th parallel, from the Rockies to the Pacific. When the British minister declined, Polk reasserted the American claim to the entire area. Finally, the British settled for the 49th parallel, except for the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The treaty was signed in 1846.

Acquisition of California proved far more difficult. Polk sent an envoy to offer Mexico up to $20,000,000, plus settlement of damage claims owed to Americans, in return for California and the New Mexico country. Since no Mexican leader could cede half his country and still stay in power, Polk's envoy was not received. To bring pressure, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the disputed area on the Rio Grande.

To Mexican troops this was aggression, and they attacked Taylor's forces.

Congress declared war and, despite much Northern opposition, supported the military operations. American forces won repeated victories and occupied Mexico City. Finally, in 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California in return for $15,000,000 and American assumption of the damage claims.

President Polk added a vast area to the United States, but its acquisition precipitated a bitter quarrel between the North and the South over expansion of slavery.

Polk, leaving office with his health undermined from hard work, died in June 1849.

Learn more about James K. Polk's spouse, Sarah Childress Polk.

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Often referred to as the first "dark horse," James K. Polk was the 11th President of the United States from 1845 to 1849, the last strong President until the Civil War.

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Prominent U.S. General during the war.

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Zachary Taylor
Chicago Historical
Society

General Zachary Taylor

General Zachary Taylor was a native of Virginia but an adopted Kentuckian. Born in 1784, he had risen to some national prominence as an army officer in the War of 1812 and in campaigns against Seminole Indians in the 1830s. President James K. Polk ordered the 62-year-old brigadier general to lead a 3,500-man army into Texas to secure that newly annexed state, and as tensions between the United States and Mexico mounted, ordered him to establish a fortified base near the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Hostilities broke out in late April and early May, and Taylor drove Mexican forces from the region in a series of well-fought battles that earned him promotion to Major General. Taylor slowly pursued the defeated Mexican troops toward Monterrey, Mexico, and captured that important city in September 1846.

When Mexico refused American peace overtures, President Polk ordered Taylor to hold his position in northern Mexico while General Winfield Scott took most of Taylor's army and more than 10,000 reinforcements on a campaign to capture Mexico City by way of a landing at Vera Cruz. Taylor, left with an army of fewer than 5,000 mostly untried volunteers, faced a savage attack from Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and 20,000 regulars, militia, and conscripts at the cataclysmic Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. The fight, although a narrow U.S. victory, brought Zachary Taylor to the forefront of the American imagination. This acclaim carried him to the White House in 1848. As president, Taylor faced a host of challenges regarding the expansion of slavery into the territory captured from Mexico.

After a life of rigorous service, Taylor died in office in 1850.

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Zachary Taylor Chicago Historical Society General Zachary Taylor was a native of Virginia but an adopted Kentuckian. Born in 1784, he had risen to some national prominence as an army officer in the War of 1812 and in campaigns against Seminole Indians in the 1830s. President James K.

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A prominent General and leader of Mexico.

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Antonio López de Santa Anna, (born February 21, 1794, Jalapa, Mexico-died June 21, 1876, Mexico City), Mexican army officer and statesman who was the storm centre of Mexico's politics during such events as the Texas Revolution (1835-36) and the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

The son of a minor colonial official, Santa Anna served in the Spanish army and rose to the rank of captain. He fought on both sides of nearly every issue of the day. In 1821 he supported Agustín de Iturbide and the war for Mexican independence, but in 1823 he helped overthrow Iturbide. In 1828 he backed Vicente Guerrero for president, only to help depose him later.

Santa Anna gained much prestige in 1829 when he fought against Spain's attempt to reconquer Mexico, and he became known as the Hero of Tampico. This surge of glory helped him gain the presidency in 1833 as a Federalist and opponent of the Roman Catholic Church; in actuality, however, he established a centralized state. He remained in power until 1836, when he marched into Texas to quell a rebellion by primarily U.S. settlers there. During the course of this punitive expedition, Texas declared its independence from Mexico (March 2). After his army had defeated Texan forces at the Alamo and Goliad, Santa Anna then moved eastward to the San Jacinto River, where he was defeated on April 21 in the Battle of San Jacinto and was captured by Gen. Sam Houston. After signing a public treaty ending the war and a secret treaty in which he promised to do everything he could to ensure that the Mexican government adhered to the public treaty, Santa Anna was sent to Washington, D.C., for an interview with U.S. Pres. Andrew Jackson, who returned him to Mexico, where, in the meantime, he had been deposed from power during his absence.

In 1838, when the French navy seized Veracruz and demanded an indemnity for injuries to French citizens in Mexico, Santa Anna led forces to Veracruz, only to shoot at the ships as they departed. He lost a leg in the skirmish. He gained enough prestige from this event to act as dictator from March to July 1839, while the president was away. Two years later he led a revolt and seized power, which he held until he was driven into exile in 1845.

When war with the United States broke out, Santa Anna contacted U.S. Pres. James K. Polk, who arranged for a ship to take him to Mexico for the purpose of working for peace. Santa Anna took charge of the Mexican forces upon his return; but instead of acting for peace, he led his men against the United States until he was routed by U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott. Santa Anna again retired, moving to Jamaica in 1847 and to New Granada in 1853. Ten years later he sought U.S. support in an attempt to oust the emperor Maximilian, whom the French had placed on the Mexican throne; at the same time, he offered his services to Maximilian. Both proposals were refused. Two years before he died, poor and blind, Santa Anna was allowed to return to his country.

Santa Anna possessed a magnetic personality and real qualities of leadership, but his lack of principles, his pride, and his love of military glory and extravagance, coupled with a disregard for and incompetence in civil affairs, led Mexico into a series of disasters and himself into ill repute and tragedy.

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Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna | Significance, Texas Revolution, & Facts

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Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican army officer and statesman who was the storm center of Mexico's politics during such events as the Texas Revolution (1835-36) and the Mexican-American War (1846-48). Learn more about Santa Anna's life and accomplishments in this article.

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Leading causes of the Mexican War included:

Texan Annexation. Mexico had warned it would regard annexation as an act of war. When it took place, Mexico did not declare war, but broke diplomatic relations.

The Boundary Dispute. Regardless of its status (was it an American state or a rebellious Mexican province?), the United States maintained that the southern border of Texas was formed by the Rio Grande, but Mexico argued that the traditional boundary was at the Nueces River farther north.

The California Question. President Polk clearly wanted to expand the country to the Pacific Ocean by taking control of California and lands in the Southwest – a prime example of the prevailing Manifest Destiny mentality.

Monetary Claims against Mexico. The United States had extracted a promise from the Mexican government to pay $3 million to cover the claims of American citizens who had lost property during turmoil and revolution. Mexico defaulted on those payments and the American creditors pressed their government for action.

---- Selected Quotes ----
Quotes regarding Causes of the Mexican War.
By Henry Clay
This is no war of defense, but one of unnecessary and of offensive aggression. It is Mexico that is defending her firesides, her castles and altars, not we.

- - - Books You May Like Include: ----

Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Campaign of 1848 by Joel H. Silbey.
The presidential campaign of 1848 saw the first strong electoral challenge to the expansion of slavery in the United States; most historians consider ...

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Leading causes of the Mexican War included: Texan Annexation. Mexico had warned it would regard annexation as an act of war. When it took place, Mexico did not declare war, but broke diplomatic relations. The Boundary Dispute.

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A treaty to end the Mexican-American War

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On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in Mexico without President James K. Polk's knowledge. The United States acquired about 55 percent of Mexico's territory for $15 million.

The treaty was eventually endorsed by Polk and sent to the Senate for confirmation, where it was approved by a 34-14 vote on March 10, 1848. The Senate amended the treaty to delete a guarantee of Mexican land grants, particularly in Texas.

The treaty set a border between Texas and Mexico, and ceded land that now includes the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming to the United States.

Abolitionists had objected to the Mexican-American War and the treaty resulting from it as an expansion of slavery. The powerful Whig leader in the Senate, Daniel Webster, opposed it, as did a young Representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Also in the House, former President John Quincy Adams led the fight against the war in Mexico. Adams died from complications of a stroke he suffered on the House floor after he objected to a resolution honoring the Mexican-American War.

Polk's initial objections to the treaty included his desire to have Baja California and property to the Baja's east as part of the treaty, a wish he had communicated that desire to negotiator Nicholas Phillip Trist. But he lobbied heavily of its approval in the Senate.

Trist was the chief clerk to Secretary of State James Buchanan, and he had been sent to Mexico in 1847 to work with General Winfield Scott to negotiate a settlement. Polk's orders to recall Trist

Polk also wanted the talks to take place in Washington, and he sent orders to Mexico that Trist had been recalled as the treaty negotiator. During the six weeks it took for Polk's orders to make their way to Trist, the diplomat realized he had a brief period to negotiate a treaty with the unstable government in Mexico.

Trist ignored the recall order and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in Mexico without Polk's knowledge. Trist sent a copy of the treaty by the fastest means possible to Polk. On Trist's return to Washington, he was promptly fired by Polk and denied any salary earned during treaty negotiations.

In late 1853, the United States acquired more territory from Mexico. The Gadsden Purchase represented about 29,000 square miles of land that eventually became southern Arizona and New Mexico. The then-steep cost of $10 million became part of a broader controversy about slavery since Southern railroad interests wanted the territory for a proposed rail line to California.

Filed Under: Article I, Article II, Article IV, Foreign Policy, Article II, Section 2, Article IV, Section 3, Treaty and Appointments Power

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On the day, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed

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On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in Mexico without President James K. Polk's knowledge. The United States acquired about 55 percent of Mexico's territory for $15 million. The treaty was eventually endorsed by Polk and sent to the Senate for confirmation, where it was approved by a 34-14 vote on March 10, 1848.

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An effort to make all territory acquired by the U.S. from the war into free states

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Contents

1. Competing Economic Priorities in North and South

2. Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery

3. New Land After Mexican-American War

4. Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare

As the United States grew and expanded into new territories throughout the early to mid-19 th century, divisions also deepened. At the heart of those divisions lay the issue of slavery. In 1846, a Pennsylvania representative named David Wilmot proposed legislation intended to bar slavery's expansion into the lands acquired after the Mexican-American War.

The Wilmot Proviso failed to pass-and debate over the proposal exacerbated North-South tensions. "It is part of a larger, broader discussion about the future of slavery," says Dr. Miller W. Boyd III, a historian, teacher and lecturer in St. Louis, Missouri. "It is one small link in a long chain going towards the Civil War."

Competing Economic Priorities in North and South

Slavery emerged as a hotly contested issue between the North and the South in large part because different economic realities prevailed in the different regions. The North's economy was focused more on industry and manufacturing, while crops like tobacco and cotton were big money-makers for white Southerners.

"In Pennsylvania, for example, people were growing wheat. Wheat was not as labor-intensive as other cash crops. Slaves were almost incidental to society," Boyd explains. "In a place like Louisiana or Virginia, you don't have a society with slaves, you have a slave society. Everything is determined or shaped around chattel slavery."

Those differences in economic priorities influenced how slavery was viewed and the degree to which it was tolerated or considered necessary in various parts of the country.

Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery

Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Early Abolitionists tended to be Northerners who objected to slavery on religious and moral grounds. They recognized the humanity of enslaved people, the inhumanity of slavery, and saw the contradiction in allowing such a racist system to persist in a country founded on the principle that "all men are created equal."

Southerners benefited exponentially from the economic advantages of keeping a compulsory work force in bondage and most were unwilling to see slavery abolished. They resented attempts to curtail it-arguing that slavery was the life's blood of their economy and an integral part of their way of life. That stance paved the way to the Confederacy and its eventual secession from the United States.

Wilmot wasn't an abolitionist or an advocate for slavery. He and those affiliated with him, as members of the Free Soil Party, weren't fighting to preserve or abolish slavery. They were content to let slavery persist, however they wanted to prevent it from spreading as America expanded into new territory. Wilmot and those aligned with him wanted to create and preserve economic opportunities for white citizens.

"Wilmot wanted more land available for poor and middling whites to cultivate," says Boyd. "He was trying to help them not have to compete everywhere with slaved-produced crops." Because wherever slavey was allowed to thrive, it took jobs from and suppressed the wages of the working class. Wilmot and his affiliates also feared that slave states had gained too much political power and wanted to see that influence curtailed.

New Land After Mexican-American War

Interim Archives/Getty Images

So when, in August of 1846, President James Polk put forward a special appropriations bill to ask Congress for $2,000,000 to acquire territory from Mexico as part of peace negotiations after the Mexican-American War, Wilmot's Proviso sought to keep slavery from expanding into any of that newly obtained land.

"This war was fought for the acquisition of territory and the hope of expanding not only American borders, but slavery as well," says Boyd.

Wilmot was a member of a Democratic Party that had split into opposing factions over the issue of slavery during the 1844 election. That rift became further entrenched when President Polk accepted less land in a compromise with Great Britain involving Oregon yet sought a greater percentage of Texas from Mexico.

Northern Democrats like Wilmot worried about the implications of the United States acquiring additional territory where slavery would be permitted. By sponsoring the Wilmot Proviso, Wilmot was acting on behalf of his constituents, namely free, white Pennsylvanians.

(See the full text of Wilmot's Proviso as preserved by the National Archives.)

Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare

The Wilmot Proviso was dead in three days. It passed twice in the U.S. House of Representatives where Northerners had the majority. But it failed in the U.S. Senate where there was an equal amount of support for the free states and the slave states. Polk's "Appropriation to Secure Peace Bill" passed in early 1847 without Wilmot's Proviso.

Although the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 didn't pass with Polk's appropriations bill, it still left a lasting legacy. The proposed amendment's purpose was simple and straightforward: slavery and involuntary servitude would be banned forever in all territories acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War. The only exception (much like in the 13th Amendment) would be unpaid labor as punishment for a crime.

The similarity in the wording of those two documents is not coincidental. The 13th Amendment borrowed some of its language from the Wilmot Proviso, which in turn took some of its language from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Although Wilmot's Proviso failed by itself, it fueled volatile division and debate between the Northern and Southern states over slavery and ultimately made the Civil War more inevitable. It also spurred on the creation of the Republican Party because, as Boyd explains, "the Republican party was the culmination of this anti-slavery, abolitionist, but also mostly Free Soil rhetoric."

The Wilmot Proviso highlighted competing economic interests that inflamed North-South tensions around the topic of slavery, pushed the country closer to the Civil War, and continued to divide America well after the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Sources

Wilmot's Proviso, UShistory.org.

The Wilmot Proviso, NBC News Learn.

Wilmot Proviso Transcript, U.S. National Archives.

"How are U.S. states, territories, and commonwealths designated in the Geographic Names Information System?" USGS.

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The Failed 1846 Amendment That Tried to Contain Slavery

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Competing Economic Priorities in North and South Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery New Land After Mexican-American War Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare As the United States grew and expanded into new territories throughout the early to mid-19 th century, divisions also deepened. At the heart of those divisions lay the issue of slavery.

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While rhetorical scholars have ignored Webster's speeches against the war with Mexico, others have mistakenly described him as an imperialist. To remedy the situation, this study examines the evolution of Senator Daniel Webster's attack on the expansionist policy of President Polk. The study demonstrates that his anti‐war public addresses braided genre to achieve their ends. Webster's rhetoric shifted between genre to generate new arguments, to surface past positions, to defend against attacks, and to advance political objectives.

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While rhetorical scholars have ignored Webster's speeches against the war with Mexico, others have mistakenly described him as an imperialist. To remedy the situation, this study examines the evolution of Senator Daniel Webster's attack on the expansionist policy of President Polk. The study demonstrates that his anti‐war public addresses braided genre to achieve their ends.

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American writer and philosopher who opposed the Mexican-American War

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In July of 1846, while on his way to Concord to run an errand, Henry David Thoreau was arrested by the local sheriff for failure to pay a poll tax.

Thoreau, who believed this poll tax supported the Mexican-American war and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest, had stopped paying this tax in 1842 but the sheriff, Sam Staples, failed to take action against him for several years.

According to the book A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, the poll tax actually had nothing to do with the Mexican-American war and Thoreau's arrest was technically illegal:

"Thoreau's jailing was, it seems, an accident, and maybe a legal error. The tax that Thoreau refused to pay was a local one, not connected to the state of Massachusetts or the federal government, and according to one scholar who has studied the issue, it was unrelated to any funding for the Mexican War (Hoeltje, "Misconceptions"). Another scholar suggested that Staples's action was illegal; Massachusetts law empowered him to lay hold of Thoreau's goods and disburse them to pay debts, but not to place Thoreau under arrest."

Thoreau, who was living in his cabin at Walden pond at the time of the arrest, was not the first Concord resident to be arrested for failing to pay this tax.

Thoreau's friend, Amos Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott, had also been for the same reason in January of 1843.

After news of Thoreau's arrest spread throughout the town, an unidentified woman promptly arrived at the jail to pay Thoreau's tax. The woman was rumored to be Thoreau's aunt, Maria Thoreau, but she never revealed her identity.

According to the book Henry David Thoreau: A Biography, even though the debt was cleared, Staples didn't let Thoreau out of jail immediately and instead kept him locked up overnight. Much to Staples surprise though, when he went to let Thoreau out of his cell the next morning, he didn't want to leave.

Thoreau had hoped to use his jail time and refusal to pay the tax to raise awareness about the issue of the Mexican-American war and Staples described him as "mad as the devil" when he learned someone had paid his tax for him and he was free to go.

The incident later inspired Thoreau to write his essay Civil Disobedience in which Thoreau argues for nonviolent, passive disobedience to protest unjust government actions.

The essay, which was titled Resistance to Civil Government when it was first published in 1849, was later reprinted under the title Civil Disobedience after Thoreau's death.

The essay was well-received at the time of its publication and has, since then, been cited as an inspiration to activists worldwide such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Vietnam war protesters of the 60s and 70s and even pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in the 80s.

Sources:
Cain, William E. A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau. Oxford University Press, 2000
Thoreau, Henry David. The Essays of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Richard Dillman. NCUP, 1992
Meltzer, Milton. Henry David Thoreau: A Biography. Twenty-First Century Books, 2006

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Henry David Thoreau Arrested For Nonpayment of Poll Tax

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In July of 1846, while on his way to Concord to run an errand, Henry David Thoreau was arrested by the local sheriff for failure to pay a poll tax. Thoreau, who believed this poll tax supported the Mexican-American war and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest, had stopped paying this tax in 1842 but the sheriff, Sam Staples, failed to take action against him for several years.

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Currency:  3, updated in 2019, so within past 2 years
Reliability: 3, there were links from Library of Congress and the info checks out
Author/Expert: 1, no author listed, but was not created by student
Authority of Organization: 2, is created/maintained/sponsored by major organization
Purpose: 2, a little bit of self-promotion, but mostly good info, clear of bias

Overall: 11/15–this is good source to use

Former slave who became a leader in the abolitionist movement, a major speaker, writer, and thinker of his times

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The North Star, the abolitionist newspaper edited in Rochester, New York, by Frederick Douglass, argued the case against the U.S. war on Mexico, highlighting not only the question of slavery, but the class dimension of the war, as well.
January 21, 1848.
Our nation seems resolved to rush on in her wicked career, though the road be ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls. Well, be it so.

But, humble as we are, and unavailing as our voice may be, we wish to warn our fellow countrymen, that they may follow the course which they have marked out for themselves; no barrier may be sufficient to obstruct them; they may accomplish all they desire; Mexico may fall before them; she may be conquered and subdued; her government may be annihilated- her name among the great sisterhood of nations blotted out; her separate existence annihilated; her rights and powers usurped; her people put under the iron arm of a military despotism, and reduced to a condition little better than that endured by the Saxons when vanquished by their Norman invaders; but, so sure as there is a God of justice, we shall not go unpunished; the penalty is certain; we cannot escape; a terrible retribution awaits us.

We beseech our countrymen to leave off this horrid conflict, abandon their murderous plans, and forsake the way of blood. Peradventure our country may yet be saved. Let the press, the pulpit, the church, the people at large, unite at once; and let petitions flood the halls of Congress by the million, asking for the instant recall of our forces from Mexico. This may not save us, but it is our only hope.

From Voices of a People's History of the United States edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. There was another article about the war published in The North Star in February of 1848, available at the Library of Congress.

The North Star, "The War with Mexico" (January 21, 1848)

Benjamin Bratt reads the North Star's editorial "The War with Mexico" (January 21, 1848) from Voices of a People's History on Vimeo.

Many more video clips can be found at the Voices of a People's History website and in the film The People Speak. Find lessons and other resources below for teaching about the U.S. war with Mexico and the Abolition Movement.

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Jan. 21, 1848: North Star Publishes Editorial on War with Mexico - Zinn Education Project

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The North Star, the abolitionist newspaper edited in Rochester, New York, by Frederick Douglass, argued the case against the U.S. war on Mexico, highlighting not only the question of slavery, but the class dimension of the war, as well. January 21, 1848.

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Step One: EVALUATE the source you are assigned, taking notes in your notebook
Step Two:  SHARE out your evaluation--is this a source that is O.K. to use for research--why or why not?
Step Three: After you have chosen/been assigned a topic, LOCATE a strong source and EVALUATE it, using the CRAAP method

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C:3, this source was updated in 2019 R:2, there are some links. A: 1, there is a name of a company but no specific author. A: 2, the source is a .org page. P: 3, it talks about the battle in general and has evidence to talk about both point of views. (This source has a total of 11/15 points scored.)

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We can never know what frantic thoughts raced through George Armstrong Custer's mind in the last hour of his life. But surely, as ever-growing numbers of angry, well-armed Plains Indians closed in on his 210 troopers of the 7th Cavalry, he must have realized that he had fatally misjudged the size of the hostile force now surrounding him.

His plan to subdue a large Indian village had completely broken down. He had been warned repeatedly by his scouts that his target, an Indian encampment on Montana's Little Bighorn River, was far larger than he had imagined. Now, on this very hot June day in 1876, he must have known that he was going to die.

Even to the very end of what is now known as Custer's Last Stand, we can picture the desperate, dust-covered Custer looking hopefully to the southeast for expected help from the rest of his command. He died not knowing why Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen never came up in support.

But we know. It is not a story of great valor, although certain moments of extraordinary bravery shine through. Benteen and Reno spent the rest of their lives defending their leadership and action-or lack of action-that day. An examination of the known facts reveals that they had a lot to defend.
Opposing the Native Nomadic Lifestyle
The growing presence and power of the white man, backed by overwhelming military strength, had gradually forced many of the Plains tribes onto reservations. However, some militant Indians still defied the United States government and chose to continue their nomadic lifestyle in the Unceded Territory. That huge expanse stretched from the Bighorn and Rocky Mountains on the west to the Great Sioux Reservation along the Missouri River to the east. It was there that the final battles of the Indian wars were fought.

On November 3, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant and a few carefully selected cabinet members and Army generals met in secret session. The decision was made to launch a decisive war against the Indians and cripple their ability to further disrupt western expansion. Although no one knew it at the time, Custer's fate had been sealed.

On December 6, the government issued an ultimatum. All roaming Indians would have to return to the reservations by January 31, 1876, or risk being considered "hostile." In early February, Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan, commanding the Division of Missouri, ordered his forces to prepare for operations against the hostiles. The military plan was a three-pronged affair. One force under Brig. Gen. George Crook moved out from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming. Colonel John Gibbon marched from Fort Ellis in Montana. The third unit, led by Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry, advanced from the Dakota Territory. Terry released Custer and his 7th Cavalry as a mobile strike force to track and locate the Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen thought to be in Montana Territory in the Little Bighorn Valley.
Unheeded Warnings
By late June, however, the plan to link up and trap the hostiles was falling apart. Crook was defeated by an Indian force on the Rosebud River. Terry and Gibbon got temporarily lost. Custer was essentially on his own. In fact, Terry had given Custer unusual freedom. One part of his orders read, "We place too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to impose precise orders upon you which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy." That was all the ambitious, headstrong Custer needed to hear. It triggered the inevitable chain of events that led to his death.

Counting 35 Indian scouts and civilians, Custer led 12 companies, 680 men, seemingly a substantial strike force. But by the time he headed out from Fort Abraham Lincoln on June 22, the number of Indians camped along the Little Bighorn had swelled to 7,000. Between 1,000 and 1,500 of these were warriors. Custer's scouts found numerous trails leading to the Little Bighorn, and soon discovered the massive encampment that now held seven different Indian bands in a straight line stretching almost three miles. Even then, Custer did not seem to understand how many armed warriors he was facing.

On June 25, as the main cavalry body drew closer, Custer feared that his force had been detected, and instead of waiting for a surprise assault at dawn, he decided to attack that afternoon. Although his scouts continued to offer strong warnings, Custer discounted their advice. Lieutenant Edward Godfrey recalled Ree scout Bloody Knife saying, "We'll find enough Sioux to keep us fighting for two or three days." But, Godfrey said, "Custer remarked laughingly that he thought we could get through in one day." Lieutenant Charles Varnum overheard Custer's chief scout, the mixed-blood Mitch Boyer, tell Custer, "General, if you don't find more Indians in that valley than you ever saw before, you can hang me." Custer testily replied, "Well, a lot of good that would do me."

Not only did Custer reject the warnings, he divided his force into four groups. He ordered Benteen to take three companies of 120 men, scout a series of ridges to the southeast to spot any Indians trying to flee, and then rejoin him. Private Charles Windolph later reported that he heard Benteen protest, "Hadn't we better keep the regiment together General? If this is as big a camp as they say, we'll need every man we have." Custer curtly replied, "You have your orders." Custer then ordered Reno to take three companies of 140 troopers and 35 scouts and launch an attack from the south end of the village. The slow pack train, under Captain Thomas McDougall, was given another 175 men. Custer retained five companies with 210 mounted soldiers and civilians. He promised to support Reno in the attack. To say the least, the plan was impulsive and uncoordinated.

A Complete Rout

A few minutes after 3 pm, Reno forded the Little Bighorn River, which the Indians called "Greasy Grass," and raced his mounted troopers into the southern end of the village. Custer mistakenly believed that the Indians were trying to escape. But the Indians were not fleeing. Instead, Reno quickly rode into a growing number of counterattacking warriors. The troopers halted, dismounted, and formed a skirmish line, then watched in dismay as hundreds of Indians, some mounted and others on foot, began to outflank them. In less than an hour of heavy fighting, the soldiers were in danger of being surrounded. Bloody Knife, standing next to Reno, was struck in the head, spraying the major with blood and brains. In shock, Reno panicked, issued wildly confusing orders, and ran for it. No retreat order was passed to the troopers, but as he desperately mounted his horse to flee, Reno shouted, "Any of you men who wish to live, make your escape-follow me!"

The uncoordinated rush back to the river was total chaos. The soldiers drove their horses into the water, crossed the river, and clawed their way up the steep 100-foot bluffs on the other side. The Indians, riding on their flanks, poured a withering fire into the wildly retreating soldiers. Some 80 troopers, including 13 wounded, managed to get to the top. Seventeen others were left in the woods. Thirty of Reno's men were killed initially, and another 27 died in the fighting. Reno insisted later that his retreat was actually a charge.
"I've Lost Half My Men!"
Custer never crossed the river. Instead, he led his men north on the near or east side along high bluffs above the valley, apparently hoping to block any Indians from getting away in that direction. Although a clear view of the valley bottom was difficult, he briefly spotted Reno fighting and saw for the first time, with his own eyes, the immense size of the enemy encampment. He quickly sent Sergeant Daniel Kanipe to find Benteen. Fifteen minutes later he dispatched trumpeter John Martin to carry another urgent message to the captain. Custer's famous written order read: "Benteen-Come on-Big village-Be quick-bring packs. PS-Bring [ammunition] packs."

Historian Walter Camp, who interviewed many of the participants soon after the battle, cited Benteen's reply upon receiving the message: "After he read the message handed to him by Martin, he was heard to remark, 'Well, if he wants me to hurry how does he expect that I can bring the packs? If I'm going to be of service to him I think I had better not wait for the packs.'" As Benteen rode closer, he suddenly saw Reno's men scrambling to the top of the hill as Indian warriors swarmed in front. It was now 4:10 pm. A few minutes later, Benteen's force joined Reno's position. Martin, who stayed with Benteen, told historian Colonel W.A. Graham that he heard Reno exclaim, "For God's sake, Benteen, halt your command and help me. I've lost half my men!" Benteen immediately distributed his extra ammunition to Reno's men.

Could Benteen Have Aided Custer?

At almost the same time, heavy firing was heard coming from a few miles downstream. This was the critical moment. The Indians had spotted Custer's cavalrymen approaching from the other end. Almost all the Indians now rushed off to meet the new threat. Although many troopers urged them to ride to the sound of the guns, neither Reno nor Benteen made any effort to move in that direction. They later denied even hearing any firing. Benteen told an army court of inquiry in Chicago in 1879, "I have heard officers disputing about hearing volleys. I heard no volleys." At the same hearing, Reno blandly testified, "I heard no firing from down river."

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History What-If: Could Custer Have Survived the Battle of Little Big Horn?

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We can never know what frantic thoughts raced through George Armstrong Custer's mind in the last hour of his life. But surely, as ever-growing numbers of angry, well-armed Plains Indians closed in on his 210 troopers of the 7th Cavalry, he must have realized that he had fatally misjudged the size of the hostile force now surrounding him.

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C- 3. Was updated in 2019
R- 3. Linked with other links
A- 1. No author was named
A- 1. Has ".com"
P- 3. Very purposeful
11/15

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What Was the Homestead Act?

In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln told the nation the purpose of America's government was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."

He followed through with the passage of the Homestead Act, which remained active for 124 years until it was repealed in 1976, and resulted in 10 percent of U.S. land-or 270 million acres-to be claimed and settled.

The incentive to move and settle on Western territory was open to all U.S. citizens, or intended citizens, and resulted in 4 million homestead claims, although 1.6 million deeds in 30 states were actually officially obtained. Montana, followed by North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska had the most successful claims.

But to achieve this, thousands of Native Americans were forced from their lands and onto Indian reservations to make way for homesteaders.

During a speech made in Ohio in February 1861, Lincoln said the act was "worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefiting his condition."

After it passed Congress, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862.

Requirements of the Homestead Act

To make a claim, homesteaders paid a filing fee of $18: a $10 fee to make a temporary claim on the land, $2 for commission to the land agent and an additional $6 final payment to receive an official patent on the land. Land titles could also be purchased from the government for $1.25 per acre following six months of proven residency.

Additional requirements included five years of continuous residence on the land, building a home on it, farming the land and making improvements. Homesteaders, who had to be the head of a household or 21 years of age and had to certify they had never borne arms against the United States, also needed two neighbors or friends to attest to the government that they had fulfilled the requirements. Union soldiers could shave off time served in the Civil War from the five-year residency requirement.
WATCH: Matthew Pinsker on the Homestead Act
Land Speculators and the Homestead Act

Of course, there were those who took advantage of homesteading. According to the National Archives, a limited number of farmers and laborers could afford to build a farm, which included access to tools, crops, livestock and more.

"In the end, most of those who purchased land under the act came from areas quite close to their new homesteads (Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, and so on)," the agency states. "Unfortunately, the act was framed so ambiguously that it seemed to invite fraud, and early modifications by Congress only compounded the problem. Most of the land went to speculators, cattlemen, miners, lumbermen, and railroads."

Other loopholes included building the required 12-by-14 dwelling in inches, rather than feet, since the exact measurement wasn't specified. A shortage of investigators also allowed false claims to be approved. And unpredictable weather, water shortages and remoteness led many homesteaders to abandon their claims well before the five-year mark.

But with improvements in rail lines and growing populations, new towns and states were created. "One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act," President John F. Kennedy said in his message on conservation, sent to Congress in 1962, "probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted."

Repeal of the Homestead Act

Homesteading virtually came to a screeching halt with the enactment of the Taylor Grazing Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, which regulated grazing on federal public lands and authorized the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to apportion grazing districts.

In 1976, the Homestead Act was repealed with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which stated "public lands be retained in Federal ownership." The act authorized the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to manage federal lands. Homesteading was still allowed for another decade in Alaska, until 1986.

In 1974, a Vietnam War veteran and native of California named Kenneth Deardorff filed a homestead claim on 80 acres of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. After fulfilling all the requirements of the act and living and working on the land for over a decade, Deardorff received his patent in May 1988. He was the last person to receive the title to land claimed under the Civil War-era act.

Today, the Homestead National Historical Park outside Beatrice, Nebraska, commemorates the Homestead Act. Why the tiny midwest town? That's where Daniel Freeman, deemed the first homesteader to file a claim (on Jan. 1, 1863) by the Department of the Interior, established his homestead site.

Sources

Homestead Act (1862). National Archives.
Homestead Act: Primary Documents in American History. Library of Congress.
Landmark Legislation: The Homestead Act of 1862. United States Senate.
FREE LAND was the Cry! Homestead National Historical Park. National Park Service.

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Homestead Act: 1862 Date & Definition - HISTORY

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In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln told the nation the purpose of America's government was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."

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C: It gets a 3 because it was updated in 2019
R: It gets a 3 because it has links to show their sources
A: I gets a 1 because there is no author and I know it was not written by a student
A: This gets a  3 because it is a .gov
P: this gets a 2 because it has some bias.
Over all 12

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History & Culture - Pony Express National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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It is hard to believe that young men once rode horses to carry mail from Missouri to California in the unprecedented time of only 10 days. This relay system along the Pony Express National Historic Trail in eight states was the most direct and practical means of east-west communications before the t…

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Buffalo massacre
C.2 it was updated in 2016
R.1 he does not give a lot of links
A.2 the author is named, but we do not know a lot about him, also, he posted it from twitter
A.1 it was a .com, and it was informal, but it was not a .gov, or anything of the sort
P.2 it was informing, but it was hard to read, but it was interesting
it got an 8 out of 15, so it was an OK article, but not very good

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“Kill Every Buffalo You Can! Every Buffalo Dead Is an Indian Gone”

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The American bison is the new U.S. national mammal, but its slaughter was once seen as a way to starve Native Americans into submission.

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http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3270

C: 3, updated in 2019
R: 3, gives a few links
A: 3, states an authors name
A: 3, .edu
P: 3, great to use for information.

# data[].attributes.body
C: 1 because it was posted in 2011
R: 1 because it only has links to the images it used
A: 3 because it clearly says all the people involved in the writing
A: 3 because the ending tag is edu
P: 3 because it shows all the information there is no me or I and it is full of information on the topic

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WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE

On December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota, a tangle of events resulted in the deaths of more than 250, and possibly as many as 300, Native Americans. These people were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat. A substantial number were women and children. Most of the victims were members of the Miniconjou band of the Lakota Sioux who had been intercepted by military forces after they fled their reservation in South Dakota for refuge in the Badlands.

The story begins in October 1890, when Daniel F. Royer arrived at Pine Ridge Agency, home of the Oglala Lakotas, to assume responsibility as agent. His selection as agent could not have been worse: he knew nothing about Native Americans and was irrationally fearful of them, and from the time of his arrival the dispatches he sent back to Washington were peppered with warnings of an outbreak similar to the one in Minnesota in 1862 in which hundreds of settlers were killed by Santee Sioux. Royer's appointment was also ill timed. In 1890 drought replaced the bountiful rainfall of the 1880s, resulting in crop failures and economic depression. On their reservations, Native Americans were forced into dependence on the federal government for food and clothing. When Royer took over as agent, there was widespread anxiety among the Oglalas regarding the adequacy of government provisions.

A year earlier, the Ghost Dance had appeared on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Born from the vision of a Paiute named Wovoka (aka Jack Wilson), the Ghost Dance blended the messianic account of Christianity with traditional Native beliefs. This new religion told of the return of the Messiah to relieve the suffering of Native Americans and promised that if they would live righteous lives and perform the Ghost Dance in the prescribed manner, the European American invaders would vanish, the bison would return, and the living and the dead would be reunited in an Edenic world. But in Royer's paranoid mind the Ghost Dance was a war dance that threatened imminent bloodshed. His dispatches to Washington urged that troops be sent to protect citizens from war.

In mid-November 1890 President Benjamin Harrison responded to the fears of an Indian outbreak by ordering troops into the area. Regular troops were sent from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and on November 18, 1890, the Second Nebraska Infantry left Fort Omaha in two special trains. On the train was also a cadre of newspaper reporters. From that point on, the crisis at Pine Ridge was a significant news item in newspapers across the country and around the world.

The trains unloaded their travelers at Rushville, Nebraska, on November 20, 1890, and from there the troops and reporters made their way to Pine Ridge Agency, where they all soon discovered that there was no crisis to be found. Soon a regular fare of rumors and lies began to appear in the national press, fed by merchants who wanted to keep the reporters, and their expense accounts, engaged in the economically strained communities south of the Pine Ridge Reservation. These fantastic stories fed a growing national anxiety about impending war. They also appeared on the reservations, where Lakotas who had been educated in the nation's Indian schools read the reports of troop activities and the rumors of outbreak to other members of their community. In this manner, the press became an important factor in stoking the anxiety both on and off the reservation.

By mid-December 1890 the combination of news reports, governmental reports (particularly those of the panic-stricken Royer), and Ghost Dancing had every nerve in the region on edge. The Lakotas polarized into political camps commonly referred to in the press as "hostiles" and "friendlies," a distinction between those who were opposed and those who were reconciled to reservation life. The Ghost Dancers were generally assigned to the "hostiles" camp. On December 15, 1890, the Hunkpapa holy man and Ghost Dance leader, Sitting Bull, was killed at Standing Rock Agency. Sitting Bull's death was seen by many as the fate that awaited all who failed to accept reservation life. To the south, at Cheyenne River Agency, the Miniconjou Lakotas grew nervous. Their leader, Big Foot, was also engaged in the Ghost Dance, and though not considered a major threat, he was under close observation by the military. In an attempt to quiet the Miniconjous, the military asked a local squatter named John Dunn to persuade them to acquiesce to the military's wishes that they stay in their own village on the reservation. Dunn's tactics are inexplicable: he is reported to have told the Miniconjous that the military planned to take their men prisoner and deport them to an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He apparently advised them to take sanctuary on Pine Ridge Reservation.

On December 23, the Miniconjous left their village in the dead of night and fled south toward the Badlands. Big Foot soon contracted pneumonia, which slowed the escape. Nonetheless, the tribe managed to avoid the military pursuit for five days. But on December 28, the Seventh Cavalry intercepted the ailing Big Foot and his people and ordered them into confinement on Wounded Knee Creek. On the morning of December 29, Col. James W. Forsyth convened a council with the Miniconjous. He demanded that they surrender all their firearms and told them that they would be relocated to a new camp. The order to a new camp was interpreted by the Miniconjous as exile, probably to Indian Territory, a prospect that they found intolerable.

While these discussions proceeded in the Lakota camp, a number of Indians began singing Ghost Dance songs, with some rising to throw handfuls of dirt in the air. The troops who surrounded them perceived the singing and dirt throwing as signals to attack, and at this tense moment the fuse was lit. A man named Black Coyote (sometimes called Black Fox) refused to surrender his rifle to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle it discharged. Immediately the nervous troops began firing, while the Miniconjous retrieved their weapons and returned fire. The military's rifle fire was complemented with cannon rounds from Hotchkiss guns, whose accuracy and exploding shells were formidable. The outnumbered and outgunned Lakotas fled, and for several hours intermittent gunfire continued, with the military in pursuit. Bodies were found as far away as three miles from the camp. Firing ceased, and by midafternoon the troops had gathered up their dead and wounded, as well as Lakota wounded, and returned to Pine Ridge Agency. The fear of a reprisal attack kept troops and civilians entrenched at the agency until January 3, 1891, when a military-escorted civilian burial party proceeded to the site of the massacre. There they buried 146 Lakotas in a single mass grave. Other dead were accounted for later, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas; the Seventh Cavalry lost twenty-five men.

Photographers accompanied the burial detail and made a total of sixteen photographs. A snowstorm that occurred shortly after the massacre added a cold and grim edge to the scene of carnage. The photographs sold well and, together with news stories, carried the story of the massacre at Wounded Knee worldwide. Soon the event developed a meaning that transcended the reality of the tragic loss of life, and Wounded Knee became, and remains, the symbol of the inhumanity of U.S. government policy toward Native Americans.

See also NATIVE AMERICANS: Sitting Bull / RELIGION: Ghost Dance.

John E. Carter Nebraska State Historical Society

Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter. Eyewitness at Wounded Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1896.

Utley, Robert. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1963.

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View larger On December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota, a tangle of events resulted in the deaths of more than 250, and possibly as many as 300, Native Americans. These people were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat.

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it has been updated unbiased, purpose 2 and its is a goverment supporeted page , and is reliable ovr is a 12/15

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On November 29, 1864, peaceful band of Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Native Americans are massacred by Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers at Sand Creek, Colorado.

The causes of the Sand Creek massacre were rooted in the long conflict for control of the Great Plains of eastern Colorado. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 guaranteed ownership of the area north of the Arkansas River to the Nebraska border to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe. However, by the end of the decade, waves of Euro-American miners flooded across the region in search of gold in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, placing extreme pressure on the resources of the arid plains. By 1861, tensions between new settlers and Native Americans were rising.
READ MORE: Broken Treaties With Native American Tribes: A Timeline
On February 8 of that year, a Cheyenne delegation, headed by Chief Black Kettle, along with some Arapahoe leaders, accepted a new settlement with the Federal government. The Native Americans ceded most of their land but secured a 600-square mile reservation and annuity payments. The delegation reasoned that continued hostilities would jeopardize their bargaining power. In the decentralized political world of the tribes, Black Kettle and his fellow delegates represented only part of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. Many did not accept this new agreement, called the Treaty of Fort Wise.

The new reservation and Federal payments proved unable to sustain the tribes. During the Civil War, tensions again rose and sporadic violence broke out between Anglos and Native Americans. In June 1864, John Evans, governor of the territory of Colorado, attempted to isolate recalcitrant Native Americans by inviting "friendly Indians" to camp near military forts and receive provisions and protection. He also called for volunteers to fill the military void left when most of the regular army troops in Colorado were sent to other areas during the Civil War.

In August 1864, Evans met with Black Kettle and several other chiefs to forge a new peace, and all parties left satisfied. Black Kettle moved his band to Fort Lyon, Colorado, where the commanding officer encouraged him to hunt near Sand Creek. In what can only be considered an act of treachery, Chivington moved his troops to the plains, and on November 29, they attacked the unsuspecting Native Americans, scattering men, women, and children and hunting them down. The casualties reflect the one-sided nature of the fight. Nine of Chivington's men were killed; 148 of Black Kettle's followers were slaughtered, more than half of them women and children. The Colorado volunteers returned and killed the wounded, mutilated the bodies, and set fire to the village.

The atrocities committed by the soldiers were initially praised, but then condemned as the circumstances of the massacre emerged. Chivington resigned from the military and aborted his budding political career. Black Kettle survived and continued his peace efforts. In 1865, his followers accepted a new reservation in Indian Territory.
READ MORE: Native American History Timeline

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On November 29, 1864, peaceful band of Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Native Americans are massacred by Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers at Sand Creek, Colorado. The causes of the Sand Creek massacre were rooted in the long conflict for control of the Great Plains of eastern Colorado.

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C: 3 (2019)
R: 2 (somewhat matches with other sources)
A: 1 (does not say)
A: 3 (trusted source)
P: 3 (makes a point)

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A Lady's Life in the Gold Rush

'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England. She penned 23 letters in all, from September 13, 1851, through November 21, 1852, describing life at Rich Bar and nearby Indian Bar, on the 'East Branch of the North Fork of Feather River,' roughly 120 miles northeast of Sacramento, in present-day Plumas National Forest.

Louise Clapp's letters were published as a series, from January 1854 through December 1855, under the nom de plume 'Dame Shirley,' in Ferdinand Ewer's short-lived literary journal: The Pioneer: or California Monthly Magazine. Ewer informed readers that the letters 'were not (originally) intended for publication, and have been inserted with scarcely an erasure from us.' Among those who read the series was Bret Harte (see August 1995 Wild West). Harte was influenced by the Shirley letters when he wrote The Luck of Roaring Camp and other California Gold Rush stories. Nineteenth century historian, philosopher and writer Josiah Royce said the Shirley letters 'form the best account of an early mining camp that is known to me.' And in the 20th century, when the Book Club of California invited 16 leading authorities to list the 10 best primary sources on the California Gold Rush, 13 named the Shirley letters. No other source received that much recognition.

Louisa Amelia Knapp Smith was born on July 28, 1819, in Elizabeth, N.J., the daughter of Moses and Lois (Lee) Smith. Her father was the schoolmaster at the local academy. The family eventually moved back to her father's hometown of Amherst, Mass., where Moses died in 1832, at age 47. Louise was 13 at the time. Lois followed her husband to the grave five years later, leaving seven orphans. Louise was entrusted to an attorney and family friend in Amherst, Osmyn Baker. He sent her to school at the Female Seminary in Charlestown, Mass., and the Amherst Academy. Her closest sibling was Mary Jane, or 'Molly,' to whom she later wrote her now famous letters. Louise may have met Amherst residents Emily Dickinson and Helen Hunt (Jackson), but Louise, as historian Rodman Wilson Paul notes, was 11 years older than her literary neighbors.

Someone with whom Louise did exchange letters was Alexander Hill Everett. They met by chance in August 1839 while traveling by stagecoach in southern Vermont. Louise Smith was then a delicate, bright, golden-haired 20-year-old student. Alexander Everett was a widely traveled diplomat 30 years her elder. She was fascinated by him, in an academic way. He was infatuated with her. As her literary mentor, he advised, on October 31, 1839: 'If you were to add to the love of reading the habit of writing you would find a new and inexhaustible source of comfort and satisfaction opening upon you.' She accepted his advice, rejected his love. Everett died in Macao, China, in June 1847, the same year he received a letter from Louise announcing her engagement to a young doctor.

The man Louise Smith married was five years her junior. Fayette Clapp had graduated from Brown University in 1848 and was a medical student and doctor's apprentice when he met Louise. Both Louise and Fayette Clapp longed to go west, so when they heard that gold had been discovered in California, the newlyweds packed their trunks and boarded the schooner Manilla. They sailed out of New York Harbor in August 1849, arriving in San Francisco about five months later. The foggy, damp bay weather did not agree with Fayette. He suffered from bilious attacks, fever, ague and jaundice while in San Francisco. Louise, on the other hand, liked the hilly city. She wrote: 'What with its many-costumed, many-tongued, many-visaged population: its flashy looking squares, built one day and burned the next; its wickedly beautiful gambling houses; its gay stores where the richest productions of every nation can be found; and its wild, free, unconventional style of living, it possesses, for the young adventurer especially, a strange charm.'

For health reasons, Fayette Clapp moved inland with his wife, settling in Plumas City, a place Louise described as 'a was-to-have-been city' of 'vanishing splendors.' Built near the Feather River, between Sacramento City and Marysville, Plumas City no longer exists.

On June 7, 1851, Fayette set out with a friend to Rich Bar, hoping the pure mountain air would be good for his health. He also hoped that good mining investment opportunities existed at the camp, and that there was a shortage of doctors. In many other places in California, doctors and lawyers were already in abundance. Luckily for young Dr. Clapp, prospects at Rich Bar were good on all counts. Once he had successfully established himself, he returned for his wife in September. Since Louise was provided with a cook and a laundress, she had plenty of time for writing.

There were few women at Rich Bar. Louise found only four besides herself. The mining camp had no brothel, although the Empire, a combination inn, restaurant and general store, had originally been constructed with a brothel in mind. The venture had failed and the gamblers who had invested $8,000 - building and furnishing the two-story structure with its 'elegant mirror,' glass windows, monte tables, and 'bedsteads so heavy that nothing short of a giant's strength could move them' - sold out to Curtis and Louise Bancroft for a few hundred dollars.

Louise Bancroft (referred to in the letters as 'Mrs. B-') was the first woman Louise Clapp met at Rich Bar. The writer describes her as 'a gentle and amiable looking woman, about twenty-five years of age.' When Louise Clapp entered the Empire, Mrs. Bancroft 'was cooking supper for some half-a-dozen people, while her really pretty boy, who lay kicking furiously in his champagne basket cradle and screaming...had that day completed just two weeks of his earthly pilgrimage.'

The other women at the camp included 'Mrs. R-,' whose name has not yet been decoded by historians. She lived with her husband in a three-room canvas house she kept exceptionally clean. Louise dubbed her 'the little sixty-eight-pounder queen.' In her fifth letter, she quotes a miner who praised Mrs. R- enthusiastically. 'Magnificent woman that,' the miner said. 'A wife of the right sort she is. Why, she earnt her old man nine-hundred dollars in nine weeks, clear of all expenses, by washing! Such women ain't common I tell you; if they were, a man might marry and make money by the operation.'

Mrs. Nancy Bailey was also tiny. She shared a dirt floor cabin with her husband and three children, but she fell sick and died weeks after Louise arrived. 'I have just returned from the funeral of poor Mrs. B-,' Louise wrote, 'who died of peritonitis, a common disease in this country.' The body was placed in a coffin and carried, with a monte tablecloth for a pall, to a mountainside cemetery, where the gravestone still stands.

The first woman to arrive at Rich Bar ran the Indiana Hotel with her father. She was called the Indiana Girl. Louise wrote about her in her second letter:

The sweet name of girl seems sadly incongruous when applied to such a gigantic piece of humanity....The far-off roll of her mighty voice, booming through two closed doors and a long entry, added greatly to the severe attack of nervous headache under which I was suffering when she called. This gentle creature wears the thickest kind of miner's boots, and has the dainty habit of wiping her dishes on her apron! Last spring she walked to this place and packed fifty pounds of flour on her back down that awful hill - the snow being five feet deep at the time.

All the same, several men, including Yank, keeper of a log cabin store farther up the bar, were'smitten with the charms of the Indiana Girl,' Louise admits in her ninth letter. Yank himself was a character. His aspiration was to be a dandy grafter. 'He takes me largely into his confidence, as to the various ways he has of doing green miners,' Louise wrote. As for his log cabin store, she described it as 'the most comical olla podrida [potpourri] of heterogeneous merchandise that I ever saw. There is nothing you can ask for but what he has - from crow bars down to cambric needles; from velveteen trowsers up to broadcloth coats of the jauntiest description....His collection of novels is by far the largest, the greasiest, and the 'yellowest kivered' of any to be found on the river.'

In her seventh letter, Louise describes the log cabin Fayette acquired for her on the sparsely populated Indian Bar, upriver from Rich Bar but within walking distance:

Enter my dear; you are perfectly welcome; besides, we could not keep you out if we would, as there is not even a latch on the canvas door....The room into which we have just entered is about twenty feet square. It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth....The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico printing. The artist seems to have exhausted himself on roses...from earliest budhood up to the ravishing beauty of the 'last rose of summer.' A curtain of the above described chintz divides off a portion of the room, behind which stands a bedstead....The fireplace is built of stones and mud, the chimney finished off with alternate layers of rough sticks....The mantle piece...is formed of a beam of wood, covered with strips of tin procured from cans, upon which still remain in black hieroglyphics, the names of the different eatables which they formerly contained....I suppose that it would be no more than civil to call a hole two feet square in one side of the room, a window, although it is as yet guiltless of glass.

The path between Indian Bar, where the Clapp cabin stood, and Rich Bar, where Fayette had his office, was somewhat precarious. Footbridges across the river were felled logs still wrapped in bark and moss. Large rocks and countless mining pits, 6 or more feet deep, with accompanying gravel heaps, had to be skirted. One pit was only a few feet from their cabin door.

On the way to Indian Bar, Louise recorded: 'The first thing that attracted my attention, as my new home came in view, was the blended blue, red and white of the American banner...suspended on the Fourth of July last, by a patriotic sailor, who climbed to the top of the [cedar] tree to which he attached it, cutting away the branches as he descended, until it stood among its brethren, a beautiful moss-wreathed Liberty pole, flinging to the face of Heaven the glad colors of the Free.'

She also glimpsed the 'artificial elegance' of a hotel:

Over the entrance...is painted in red capitals...the name of the great Humboldt spelt without the d. This is the only hotel in this vicinity, and as there is a really excellent bowling alley attached to it, and the bar-room has a floor on which the miners can dance, and, above all, a cook who can play the violin, it is very popular. But the clinking of glasses, and the swaggering air of some of the drinkers, reminds us that it is no place for a lady.

Louise Clapp enjoyed being a 'lady,' but she sometimes showed an unladylike willfulness, describing herself as the sort of 'obstinate little personage, who has always been haunted with a passionate desire to do everything which people said she could not do.' Taking up residence in a mining town was an adventure most ladies avoided. So was panning for gold. When Louise washed a single pan of dirt, she found $3.25 in gold placer. She also discovered it was hard, dirty work, and she did not repeat the experiment, not for years. But she did observe and write about the gold miners. The methods they used, as well as the claim system that governed them, is the subject of her 15th'severely utilitarian' letter:

First, let me explain to you the 'claiming' system. As there are no State laws upon the subject, each mining community is permitted to make its own. Here, they have decided that no man may 'claim' an area of more than forty foot square. This he'stakes off' and puts a notice upon it....If he does not choose to 'work it' immediately, he is obliged to renew the notice every ten days; for without this precaution, any other person has the right to 'jump it'....There are many ways of evading the above law. For instance, an individual can 'hold' as many claims as he pleases if he keeps a man at work in each....The laborer...can jump the claim of the very man who employs him...[but] generally prefers to receive the six dollars per diem, of which he is sure...[rather than] running the risk of a claim not proving valuable....The labor of excavation is extremely difficult, on account of the immense rocks...[in] the soil. Of course, no man can work out a claim alone. For that reason...they congregate in companies of four or six, generally designating themselves by the name of the place from whence the majority of the members have emigrated; for example, the 'Illinois,' 'Bunker Hill,' 'Bay State,' etc., companies. In many places the surface soil, or 'top dirt,' 'pays' when worked in a 'Long Tom.'

Some companies discarded top dirt and chose instead to hunt for gold in bedrock crevices. They dug 'coyote holes' into the sides of surrounding hills, creating tunnels 'that sometimes extended hundreds of feet,' in order to get at the bedrock. A large company of miners pooled resources and built a wing dam and flume that diverted water from the riverbed, where they expected to find 'rich diggings' in the bedrock. Of 'the dreadful flume,' as Louise calls it, she wrote: 'The machinery keeps up the most dismal moaning and shrieking, painfully suggestive of a suffering child.'

In her third letter, Louise paints a picture of the setting in which the miners worked, describing Rich Bar as 'a tiny valley, about eight-hundred yards in length and thirty in width...hemmed in by lofty hills, almost perpendicular, draperied to their very summits with beautiful fir trees; the blue bosomed 'Plumas' or Feather River...undulating along their base.' Here, the mining town sprang up suddenly, 'as if a fairy's wand had been waved above the bar.' There were 'about forty tenements...round tents, square tents, plank hovels, log cabins, etc. - the residences varying in elegance and convenience from the palatial splendor of 'The Empire' down to a 'local habitation,' formed of pine boughs and covered with old calico shirts.'

The people populating Rich Bar and Indian Bar varied as much as their houses. Besides white Americans and Californios (the Spanish-speaking residents who Clapp called 'Spaniards'), there were Swedes, Chilenos, Frenchmen, Mexicans, Indians, Hawaiians, Englishmen, Italians, Germans, American blacks and mulattos. The mulattos included Humbolt-owner Ned 'Paganini' (as Louise nicknamed him) and the legendary mountain man and trailblazer Jim Beckwourth. Louise describes Beckwourth in her eighth letter:

He is fifty years of age, perhaps, and speaks several languages to perfection. As he has been a wanderer for many years and for a long time was a principal chief of the Crow Indians, his adventures are extremely interesting. He chills the blood of the green young miners, who, unacquainted with the arts of war and subjugation, congregate around him [to hear] the cold-blooded manner in which he relates the Indian fights that he has been engaged in.

Unlike Jim Beckwourth, most men at Rich and Indian bars could not speak more than one language fluently, although some Americans seem to have tried. In her 14th letter, Louise wrote: 'Nothing is more amusing than to observe the different styles in which...Americans talk at the unfortunate Spaniard.' She adds that 'mistakes made on the other side are often quite as amusing.' Fayette's colleague, Dr. Canas, told Louise of a Chileno who heard an American use the words'some bread' when purchasing said item, and immediately afterward informed his friends that the English word for bread was the same as the Spanish word for hat - sombrero. Unfortunately, the humor in such misunderstandings was often overlooked. Alcohol, gambling losses, and envy of a neighbor's mining success contributed to ill will. Yet things remained relatively peaceful through the winter of 1851-52.

In February 1852, provisions were becoming scarce. The rancheros who had been driving beef herds into the valley and the mule drivers who brought in onions, potatoes, butter and coffee could not get through the deep snow that covered the hills surrounding the bars. So the Clapps and their neighbors lived for three months on flour, dark ham, salted mackerel, and rusty pork. And when the snow finally melted, spring floods commenced, sweeping away flume machinery, log bridges, long toms, cradles, a newly finished sawmill and several men. By mid-May, the waters calmed down and fresh provisions arrived. So did a large number of mostly American newcomers. On May 25, Louise noted: 'Hundreds of people have arrived upon our Bar within the last few days; drinking saloons are springing up in every direction; the fluming operations are rapidly progressing, and all looks favorably for a busy and prosperous summer.' Some of these newcomers had fought in the Mexican-American War and tended to perceive Spanish-speaking people as enemies.

Meanwhile, Mexicans at the mines expressed growing frustration over the lack of justice where they were concerned. In her 16th letter, Louise writes sardonically:

A few evenings ago, a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and meekly of that most noble representative of the stars and stripes, if the latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time. His high mightiness, the Yankee, was not going to put up with any such impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received, for answer, several inches of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound. Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair.

She goes on to explain that at Rich Bar, 'they have passed a set of resolutions...one of which is to the effect that no foreigner shall work the mines on that Bar. This has caused nearly all the Spaniards [Californios] to immigrate upon Indian Bar.' Two years earlier, the California Legislature had passed a law requiring all foreigners to pay a $20-a-month tax (later reduced to $4) for the right to stake a claim and mine it.

On the Fourth of July, tensions between Californios and Americans exploded. While Dr. and Mrs. Clapp joined other sober Americans in celebrating Independence Day with speeches, poetry, music and dancing at the Empire on Rich Bar, drunken celebrants made the rounds at Indian Bar. When the Clapps returned to their cabin at Indian Bar, a man gave them an 'excited account' of an American who had been knifed during a melee. Louis Clapp wrote about it in her 19th letter:

He said...Domingo - a tall, majestic-looking Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain - had stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the United States,...[and while] brandishing threateningly the long bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim...[had paraded] up and down the street unmolested. It seems that when Tom Somers fell, the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden panic and fled. There was a rumor (unfounded, as it afterwards proved) to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all the Americans on the river. In a few moments, however, the latter rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into the river and swam across to Missouri Bar; eight or shots were fired at him...not one of which hit him.

In the meanwhile,...Spaniards who...thought that the Americans had arisen against them...barricaded themselves in a drinking saloon, determined to defend themselves against the massacre which was fully expected would follow....In the bake shop, which stands next to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave...while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heart-rending manner. The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc., were rushing down the hill by hundreds. Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little bakery, to gaze upon the blood-bathed bosom of the victim....Then arose the most fearful shouts of 'Down with the Spaniards'....'Don't let one of the murderous devils remain.'

The more sensible and sober of the Americans partly quieted the angry crowd. Still, Fayette Clapp wanted his wife to join two other women who lived on a nearby hill, where things would be safer should a serious fight erupt. Louise said she wanted to stay where she was, but finally, 'like a dutiful wife,' she went up the hill.

We three women, left entirely alone, seated ourselves upon a log overlooking the strange scene below. The Bar was a sea of heads, bristling with guns, rifles, and clubs....All at once, we were startled by the firing of a gun, and...saw a man [being] led into the log cabin, while another was carried, apparently lifeless, into a Spanish drinking saloon....Luckily for our nerves, a benevolent individual...came and told us what had happened.

It seems that an Englishman, the owner of a house of the vilest description, a person, who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street....In his drunken fury, he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Sr. Pizarro....This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses....They elected a Vigilance Committee and authorized persons to go...arrest the suspected Spaniards.

The first act of the Committee was to try a Mejicana who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one. She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light....The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards....Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening; the property of all to be confiscated....Oh Mary! Imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men. I had never thought that I should be compelled to hear such fearful sounds, and, although I immediately buried my head in my shawl, nothing can efface from memory the disgust and horror....One of these unhappy persons was a very gentlemanly young Spaniard, who implored for death in the most moving terms. He appealed to his judges in the most eloquent manner - as gentlemen, as men of honor; representing to them that to be deprived of life was nothing in comparison with the never-to-be-effaced stain of the vilest convict's punishment to which they had sentenced him. Finding all his entreaties disregarded, he swore a most solemn oath, that he would murder every American that he should chance to meet alone, and as he is a man of the most dauntless courage, and rendered desperate by a burning sense of disgrace...he will doubtless keep his word.

The above account probably inspired the flogging scene in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, by Yellow Bird, aka John Rollin Ridge. Historian Joseph Henry Jackson notes in his book Bad Company that the Shirley letters were in Ferdinand Ewer's possession when Ridge researched his book, and that he frequently visited Ewer's office.

Not long after the floggings, Louise reported that a hanging and an attempted suicide had occurred at the mines. The first involved a man accused of murdering and robbing his employer. The second involved a Henry Cook, who apparently slit his own throat. After Dr. Clapp tended his wound, Cook decided to accuse Ned, owner of the Humbolt, of attempted murder. Ned's friends came to his defense, and the charge was dropped, but tempers were high. Dr. Clapp was nearly mobbed for having bound the wound of a man they, according to Louise Capp, 'insisted upon shooting...reasoning [that]...'a man so hardened as to raise his hand against his own life will never hesitate to murder another!" In the end, the vigilantes decided to exile Cook instead.

Meanwhile, Señor Pizarro's wounded leg festered. It was amputated, but he did not regain his strength. Sick with dysentery, he died soon afterward. Oxley remained bedridden for weeks but eventually recovered, no thanks to 'the Moguls,' whom Louise Clapp refers to as'sleep killers.' The Moguls, actually members of the Vigilance Committee, apparently believed they were above the law. They began to 'parade the streets all night, howling, shouting, breaking into houses, taking wearied miners out of their beds and throwing them into the river....Nearly every night they built bonfires fearfully near some rag shanty, thus endangering the lives (or I should rather say the property - for as it is impossible to sleep, lives are emphatically safe) of the whole community. They retire about five o'clock in the morning; previously...posting notices to the effect, and that they will throw anyone who may disturb them into the river.'

In fall, the population began to decline swiftly. Louise noted that the flume miners, who had spent $2,000 to build a wing dam'six feet high and three-hundred feet in length, upon which thirty men labored nine days and a half,' had collected $41.70 in gold; 'nearly every person on the river received the same treatment from Dame Nature....Shopkeepers, restaurants, and gambling houses...were in the same moneyless condition.' Fayette had lost $1,000 in a prospecting investment, causing Louise to call mining 'Nature's lottery.'

Few people wanted to brave another winter on the bars, including the Clapps. In her last letter, dated November 21, 1852, Louise couldn't help 'fretting...at the dreadful prospect of being compelled to spend the winter here.' Yet when the day of departure came, she hesitated. 'My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret....Yes, Molly, smile if you will at my folly; but I go from the mountains with a deep heart sorrow. I look kindly to this existence, which to you seems so sordid and mean. Here, at least, I have been contented....You would hardly recognize the feeble and half-dying invalid, who drooped languidly out of sight, as night shut down between your straining gaze and the good ship Manilla...in the person of your now perfectly healthy sister.' Fayette Clapp, too, was perfectly healthy, but San Francisco again did not agree with him.

In 1853, Fayette sailed to Hawaii without Louise. In 1854, he showed up in Massachusetts. A year later, he headed west again, this time to Illinois. Louise chose to remain in San Francisco, where she taught school. She filed for divorce there in 1856. Although she kept Fayette's last name, she apparently added an 'e' to it, making her Louise A.K.S. Clappe. By the time the Civil War broke out, Fayette had moved to Columbia, Mo., and remarried.

Louise retired from teaching in 1878 and went to live in New York City, where she continued to write and lecture until 1897, when she moved into a retirement home founded by Bret Harte's nieces, Anna and Nina Knault, in Hanover Township, N.J. She died there on February 9, 1906. Although the California Gold Rush, which started 150 years ago, produced its share of heartfelt letters, the 'Dame Shirley' letters remain the biggest bonanza in the bunch.

This article was written by Lori Lee Wilson and originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Wild West.p>For more great articles be sure to subscribe to magazine today!

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'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England.

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Currency-3, it was written in 2018
Reliability-1,it has not eve much information but some of it is useful and a lot of ads
Author-2, there is a author name but not very much on the author
Authority of organization- 2, it is a .net
Purpose-2, there is some useful information but not that much information

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CLOSE

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was established in 1879, and served as a model for the 26 off-reservation schools established to "Americanize" Native American students following the end of the Indian wars.

More than 10,500 students from 140 tribes attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School during the 39 years it operated. Of these only 158 ultimately received degrees through the program.

RETURN HOME: Remains of Blackfeet man returned to family for burial 128 years after abduction

(Photo: Topical Press Agency, Getty Images)

Captain Richard Henry Pratt founded the school with the goal of immersing native students in white culture, teach them English and provide them with a trade. Pratt is know for his admonishment to "Kill the Indian: Save the Man" as a mission statement for the school.

Students were enrolled for a five-year period. They were forced to cut their hair, adopt western names, and were punished if caught speaking their Native language or engaging in traditional cultural practices.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was famous for its sports teams. Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe was a graduate of the school, where he excelled as a two-time All-American for the school's football team.

The school closed in 1918, and was transformed into a general hospital to treat U.S. soldiers returning from World War I.

In this May 6, 2016, photo, Russell Eagle Bear, the historic preservation officer for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, looks at photos and maps in his office in Rosebud, S.D., of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Eagle Bear will be leading a meeting Tuesday, May 10 between leaders of several tribes, including the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and representatives from the U.S. Army to address the possibility of repatriating the remains of at least 10 Native American children who died away from their homes while being forced to attend the school more than a century ago. (AP Photo/Regina Garcia Cano) (Photo: Regina Garcia Cano, AP)

Read or Share this story: https://gftrib.com/2KGrvL7

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Six facts about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School

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CLOSE The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was established in 1879, and served as a model for the 26 off-reservation schools established to "Americanize" Native American students following the end of the Indian wars. More than 10,500 students from 140 tribes attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School during the 39 years it operated.

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C. 3 because it was updated 2019
R. 2 because there are links to other sources.
A. 1 because there is no author named
A. 1 because it is a .org website.
P. 3 because the website has no ads and no bias.

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The California Gold Rush | American Experience | PBS

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The discovery of gold in1848 unleashed the largest migration in United States history and drew people from a dozen countries to form a multi-ethnic society in California.

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Currency: 3 The source was last updated April 26, 2019
Reliability: 3  The source checks out with other sources with the same information.
Authority of Author:  1 There was no Author
Authority of Organization: 3 the website is a .edu
Purpose: 3 The website gives you factual detail about it and the history of it.

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History & Culture - Pony Express National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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It is hard to believe that young men once rode horses to carry mail from Missouri to California in the unprecedented time of only 10 days. This relay system along the Pony Express National Historic Trail in eight states was the most direct and practical means of east-west communications before the t…

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Traveion Travis, Battle of little bighorn

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Traveion Travis, Battle of little bighorn

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C- 3, because it was updated this year.
R- 3, because it has different links to  different topics.
A- 3, because it has the author's name\title stated.
A- 1, because it has a .com at the end.
P- 3, because it has facts that are backed up by other websites and it provides factual evidence

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Contents

1. Sitting Bull's Early Life

2. Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government

3. Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty

4. The Battle of Little Bighorn

5. Sitting Bull Surrenders

6. Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show

7. Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site

Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890) was a Teton Dakota Native American chief who united the Sioux tribes of the American Great Plains against the white settlers taking their tribal land. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to the Sioux, but when gold was discovered there in 1874, the U.S. government ignored the treaty and began to remove native tribes from their land by force.

The ensuing Great Sioux Wars culminated in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, when Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led united tribes to victory against General George Armstrong Custer. Sitting Bull was shot and killed by Indian police officers on Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 1890, but is remembered for his courage in defending native lands.

Sitting Bull's Early Life

Library of Congress

Sitting Bull was born in 1831 near Grand River, Dakota Territory in what is today South Dakota. He was the son of Returns-Again, a renowned Sioux warrior who named his son "Jumping Badger" at birth. The young boy killed his first buffalo at age 10 and by 14, joined his father and uncle on a raid of a Crow camp. After the raid, his father renamed him Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull, for his bravery.

Sitting Bull soon joined the Strong Heart warrior society and the Silent Eaters, a group that ensured the welfare of the tribe. He led the expansion of Sioux hunting grounds into westward territories previously inhabited by the Assiniboine, Crow and Shoshone, among others.

Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government

Sitting Bull first battled the U.S. Army in June of 1863, when they came after the Santee Sioux (not the Dakota) in retaliation for the Minnesota Uprising, sparked when federal agents withheld food from the Sioux living on reservations along the Minnesota River. Over 300 Sioux were arrested in the Minnesota Uprising, but President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 39 of the accused.

Sitting Bull faced the might of the U.S. military again at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain on July 28, 1864, when U.S. forces under General Alfred Sully surrounded an Indian trading village, eventually forcing the Sioux to retreat. These face-offs convinced Sitting Bull to never sign a treaty that would force his people onto a reservation.

Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty

His resolve was not shared by all. In 1868, Red Cloud, or Mahpiua Luta (1822-1909), chief of the Oglala Teton Dakota Sioux, signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with 24 other tribal leaders and representatives of the U.S. government including Lieutenant General William Tecumseh Sherman. The treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation and earmarked additional land for the Sioux in parts of South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Sitting Bull's anti-treaty stance won him many followers, and around 1869, he was made supreme leader of the autonomous bands of Lakota Sioux-the first person to ever hold such a title. Members of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes soon joined him.

The uneasy peace of the Fort Laramie Treaty was short-lived. In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, a place sacred to the Sioux and within the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation. White settlers seeking their fortunes rushed to claim the land as their own. The U.S. government reneged on the treaty, demanding that any Sioux who dared resist move to the redrawn reservation lines by January 31, 1876 or be considered an enemy of the United States. Sitting Bull was expected to move everyone in his village an impossible 240 miles in the bitter cold.

Defiant, Sitting Bull refused to back down. He mustered a force that included the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Sioux and faced off against General George Crook on June 17, 1876, winning victory in the Battle of the Rosebud. From there, his forces moved to the valley of the Little Bighorn River.

The Battle of Little Bighorn

It was in a camp at Little Bighorn River that Sitting Bull, then a revered leader and holy man, or "Wichasa Wakan," participated in a Sun Dance ceremony where he famously danced for 36 hours straight, making 50 sacrificial cuts on each arm before falling into a trance. When he awoke, he revealed that he had a vision of U.S. soldiers falling like grasshoppers from the sky, which he interpreted as an omen that the army would soon be defeated.

On June 25, 600 men under the leadership of General George Custer, a West Point graduate, entered the valley. Sitting Bull ensured the women and children of the tribe were safe while Crazy Horse (c.1840-77) led over 3,000 Native Americans to victory in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, overwhelming Custer's smaller force of 300. Custer and every single one of his men were killed in what came to be known as Custer's Last Stand.

Sitting Bull Surrenders

In the wake of The Battle of Little Bighorn, the incensed U.S. government redoubled their efforts to hunt down the Sioux. At the same time, the encroachment of white settlers on traditionally Indian lands greatly reduced the buffalo population that the Sioux depended on for survival. In May 1877, Sitting Bull led his people to safety in Canada.

With food and resources scarce, Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army on July 20, 1881 in exchange for amnesty for his people. He was a prisoner of war in South Dakota's Fort Randall for two years before being moved to Standing Rock Reservation.

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show

Library of Congress

Sitting Bull was occasionally permitted to travel, and it was on one of his trips outside the reservation that he struck up a friendship with sharpshooter Annie Oakley, whom he affectionately nicknamed "Little Sure Shot" after seeing her perform in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1884.

In 1885, Sitting Bull joined Oakley in performing in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Buffalo Bill was by then a celebrity with a storied past straight out of a Western: He'd rode horses for the Pony Express, fought in the American Civil War and served as a scout for the Army.

Sitting Bull rode in the show's opening act, signed autographs and even met President Grover Cleveland, though he could also be mocked and booed onstage. He left the show in October at age 54 and never returned.

Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site

Standing Rock Reservation soon became the center of controversy when the Ghost Dance Movement started gaining traction. Followers believed that deceased tribe members would rise from the dead along with killed buffalo while all white people would disappear. Worried that the influential Sitting Bull would join the movement and incite rebellion, Indian police advanced on his cabin to arrest him.

On December 15, 1890, Indian police woke the sleeping Sitting Bull in his bed at 6 a.m. When he refused to go quietly, a crowd gathered. A young man shot a member of the Indian police, who retaliated by shooting Sitting Bull in the head and chest. Sitting Bull died instantly from the gunshot wounds. Two weeks after his death, the army massacred 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee, the final fight between federal troops and the Sioux.

Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates Military Cemetery in North Dakota by the army. In 1953, family members exhumed what they thought was Sitting Bull's grave and reburied the bones they found near Mobridge, South Dakota, overlooking the Missouri River.

Sources:

Sitting Bull. Biography.com.
New Perspectives on The West: Sitting Bull. PBS.
Sitting Bull. NPS.gov.
Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill And The Circus of Lies. The Independent.
The Native American Ghost Dance, A Symbol of Defiance. ThoughtCo.
Last Stand to Save Grave of Sitting Bull. The Telegraph.

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Sitting Bull's Early Life Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty The Battle of Little Bighorn Sitting Bull Surrenders Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site Sitting Bull (c.

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11/15

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A homesteader had to be the head of a household or at least 21 years of age to claim a 160 acre parcel of land. Settlers from all walks of life worked to meet the challenge of "proving up". They included immigrants, farmers without land of their own, single women, and formerly enslaved people.

A filing fee was the only money required, but sacrifice and hard work exacted a different price from the hopeful settlers. Each homesteader had to live on the land, build a home, make improvements and farm to get the land. The patent they received represented the culmination of hard work and determination. Nearly four million homesteaders settled land across 30 states over 123 years.

The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed anyone over 21 years of age or the head of a household to apply for free federal land with two simple stipulations:

1. Be a citizen of the United States or legally declare their intent to become one

2. Did not fight against the United States or aid enemies of the United States

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About the Homestead Act - Homestead National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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A homesteader had to be the head of a household or at least 21 years of age to claim a 160 acre parcel of land. Settlers from all walks of life worked to meet the challenge of "proving up". They included immigrants, farmers without land of their own, single women, and formerly enslaved people.

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Reliability:  3 cited sources
Author: 3 author cited
Author of organization: 1 its a .com site
Purpose: 3 informing and easy to understand
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History:
C:3-updated in 2019
R:3-sources everywhere
A:3-the writer is writer from history
A:1-.com
P:3- they were not bias all facts
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Ati:
C:3-2029
R:3-lots of links
A:2-name-not professional
A-2-.com
P- informational
https://allthatsinteresting.com/wounded-knee-massacre

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Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between Native Americans and representatives of the U.S. government, including the U.S. Army and, later, the FBI. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux tribe. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation.

Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull

Throughout 1890, the U.S. government was worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Native Americans had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs.

Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, whom they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge in South Dakota.

Did you know? Nearly half of the Sioux killed at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre were women and children.

Wounded Knee Massacre

On December 29, the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it's unclear from which side.

A brutal massacre followed, in which an estimated 150 Indians were killed. (Some historians put this number at twice as high.) Nearly half of them were women and children. The U.S. cavalry lost 25 men.

The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle-the Army troops involved were later rewarded with Medals of Honor-but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it's unlikely that Big Foot's band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment's defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876.

Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was one of the last major confrontations in the Indian Wars, America's deadly series of wars against the Plains Indians and other Native Americans.

American Indian Movement

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in an effort to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area. Borrowing some tactics from the Vietnam war protests of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant demonstrations. However, many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical.

In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, after a group of young white men murdered a Sioux man named Yellow Thunder.

Although Yellow Thunder's attackers received only six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the often racist judicial system. AIM's highly visible publicity campaign on the case was given considerable credit for the verdict, winning the organization a great deal of respect on the reservation.

Wounded Knee Siege

AIM's growing prestige and influence, however, threatened the conservative Sioux tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters where he was under the protection of federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs police.

Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, some 200 AIM members and their supporters decided to occupy the symbolically significant hamlet of Wounded Knee, site of the 1890 massacre. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging Wounded Knee.

During the 71 days of the siege, which began on February 27, 1973, federal officers and AIM members exchanged gunfire almost nightly. Hundreds of arrests were made, and two Native Americans were killed and a federal marshal was permanently paralyzed by a bullet wound.

The leaders of AIM finally surrendered on May 8 after a negotiated settlement was reached. In a subsequent trial, the judge ordered their acquittal because of evidence that the FBI had manipulated key witnesses. AIM emerged victorious and succeeded in shining a national spotlight on the problems of modern Native Americans.

Trouble Continues at Pine Ridge

The troubles at Wounded Knee, however, were not over after the siege. A virtual civil war broke out between the opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge reservation, and a series of beatings, shootings and murders left more than 100 Indians dead. When two FBI agents were killed in a 1975 gunfight, the agency raided the reservation and arrested AIM leader Leonard Peltier for the crime.

The FBI crackdown coupled with AIM's own excesses ended its influence at Pine Ridge. In 1977, Peltier was convicted of killing the two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Peltier's supporters continue to maintain his innocence and seek a presidential pardon for him.

And in 2021, members of the U.S. Congress petitioned President Joe Biden to revoke the Medals of Honor soldiers received for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.

HISTORY Vault: Native American History

Sources

Disaster at Wounded Knee. Library of Congress.
What really happened at Wounded Knee, the site of a historic massacre. National Geographic.
Warren, Merkley, Kahele Lead Bicameral Letter Urging Biden to Rescind Medals of Honor Awarded to Soldiers who Perpetrated Wounded Knee Massacre. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate.
Wounded Knee Massacre. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Wounded Knee: Massacre, Memorial & Battle - HISTORY

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Wounded Knee in South Dakota was the site of an 1890 Indian massacre by U.S. Army troops, and a deadly 1973 occupation by Native American activists.

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jahlonnie dacres battle of the little big horn 

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jahlonnie dacres battle of the little big horn 

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https://wartime.podbean.com/e/s05e11-the-battle-of-the-little-bighorn-custers-last-stand/
C  1 has no recent date in the past three years
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A Brief History

The story of the Mormon Trail is rooted in the beginnings of a unique American religion. In 1827, 21-year-old Joseph Smith announced that he had unearthed a set of golden plates, inscribed with the tenants of God's true church. Smith said that he had been directed to the plates by an angel named Moroni, who also had given him divine tools for translating the ancient inscriptions into English. Smith used these to produce new Scripture called the Book of Mormon. In 1830, in western New York, he organized a legal entity that would become The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His followers, who regarded Smith as a prophet, became known as Mormons.

Important differences between mainstream Christianity and Mormon doctrine quickly emerged, but it was primarily hostilities over land, business, and politics that caused Smith repeatedly to move church headquarters. Driven out of Missouri in 1838, the Mormons finally settled along a bend of the Mississippi River in Illinois. There they established a community they called Nauvoo, a Hebrew word meaning "beautiful place." It was at Nauvoo that Smith cautiously began introducing the Old Testament practice of "plural marriage," or polygamy, among select church leaders.

Thousands of converts flocked to Nauvoo, soon making it the largest town in Illinois. Neighbors initially welcomed the orderly, industrious settlers despite their religious differences. But relations gradually soured, with complaints centering on Mormons' clannish business practices, accusations of theft, their electoral sway, and Smith's political aspirations. Meanwhile, dissent emerged within the church as rumors leaked of secret plural marriages. After an opposition newspaper publicly accused the prophet and other leaders of polygamy, Nauvoo's city council and Smith declared the paper a public nuisance and Smith ordered destruction of its press. For that he and others were arrested and jailed at Carthage, Illinois. On June 27, 1844, a mob broke into the jail and murdered Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Other vigilantes attacked Mormon farms around Nauvoo in an attempt to expel them.

Brigham Young stepped up as Smith's successor and began planning an orderly, spring 1846 evacuation of some 15,000 faithful to the Great Basin, Mexican-held territory beyond the Rocky Mountains. However, as anti-Mormon violence heated, Young decided to organize a vanguard of church leaders to depart in late winter, hoping that would pacify the vigilantes until the main body of Mormons could start west in April. On February 4, 1846, the first wagons ferried across the Mississippi to Iowa. This group halted after five miles and set up camp at Sugar Creek for a lengthy wait as Young and his associates concluded business at Nauvoo. Meanwhile others, anxious not to be left behind, drifted over to join the Sugar Creek camp. Young's vanguard company unexpectedly swelled from his intended 1,800 emigrants to around 3,000-many without their own wagons and provisions.

On March 1, 1846, some 500 Mormon wagons lurched northwesterly across the winter-bare Iowa prairie toward the Missouri River. Their route is the Mormon Trail.

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History & Culture - Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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The story of the Mormon Trail is rooted in the beginnings of a unique American religion. In 1827, 21-year-old Joseph Smith announced that he had unearthed a set of golden plates, inscribed with the tenants of God's true church.

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Traveion Trvais Battle of little big horn

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Traveion Trvais Battle of little big horn

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https://wartime.podbean.com/e/s05e11-the-battle-of-the-little-bighorn-custers-last-stand/

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C:3 It was updated in September 2019
R:2 Some links

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Wounded Knee Massacre | Facts, History, & Legacy

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Wounded Knee Massacre (December 29, 1890), the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by U.S. Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians.

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:Donner Party:
C: 3, it was updated in 2019
R:3, it has sorces from other web sites.
A: 1 there was no author found on the websites page.
A: 0 ends in .com
P: 3 uses evidence

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Donner Party - Survivors, Timeline & Facts | HISTORY

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The Donner Party was a group of 89 emigrants from Illinois who purportedly turned to cannibalism to survive after getting trapped by snowfall while on a westward journey in 1846. Forty-two members of the party died.

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C: 2, updated in 2017
R: 3, has links to other sites
A: 3, states a name and a sponsor
A: 3, .edu
P: 3, great to use for information
https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/historical-impact-of-the-california-gold-rush

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C. 3, updated in August 29, 2019
R.3, has many other links and videos
A.4,has author and website name and publisher
A.1, because it has a .com at the end
P.3, because it has a video that you can watch and there are other videos to back that one up and the other videos up.

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Sutter's Mill

On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California.

At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento). As Marshall later recalled of his historic discovery: "It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold."

Did you know? Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush.

Days after Marshall's discovery at Sutter's Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and leaving California in the hands of the United States-a remarkable twist of fate with important ramifications for an America eager for westward expansion.

At the time, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been there when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769).

Sutter, in fact, had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

Gold Fever Strikes

Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was disbelief, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek.

By mid-June, shops and businesses stood empty, as some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had abandoned the city for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area ballooned to some 4,000 by August.

As news reports-many wildly overblown-of the easy fortunes being made in California spread worldwide, some of the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and China.

Polk Spreads Gold Fever

When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gold fever kicked off nationwide in earnest, however, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report made by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military governor, in his inaugural address.

As Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service."

The '49ers Come to California

Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) with gold fever borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns. In turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone.

Thousands of would-be gold miners, known as 49ers for the year they arrived, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.

By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the end of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the 49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune.

The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, alcoholism, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.

Gold Rush Politics

The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Union as the 31st state. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians.

According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky's Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left to decide the legal status of slavery for themselves.

California's Mines

After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848.

As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state's population was 380,000.

Impact of the Gold Rush

New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Gold Rush permanently altered the landscape of California. The technique of hydraulic mining brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging industry in the area was born from the need to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resources.

In 1884, hydraulic mining was outlawed by court order, and soon agriculture became the dominant industry in California, and it remains so today. While a few mines and Gold Rush towns remain, much of the heritage of that era is preserved at places such as Bodie State Historic Park, a decaying ghost town, and at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where Sutter's Mill once stood.

Sources

Environmental Impact of the Gold Rush. Calisphere.org.
After the Gold Rush. National Geographic.

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Gold Rush: California, Date & Sutter's Mill - HISTORY

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The Gold Rush in California started in 1848 after gold was found at Sutter's Mill. Within a year, hundreds of thousands of 49ers seeking fortune poured into the state.

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Source #2
C. 2 because it was updated 2016
R. 3 because it had different links to sources.
A. 1 because no name is listed.
A. 1 because it is .org.
P. 3 because there are no distracting ads.

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The California Gold Rush, which occurred in the late 1840s, was one of the most compelling events in the history of westward expansion. Thousands of people caught "gold fever" and decided to go west in order to "see the elephant," as the great adventure was often called. Lightly populated by American Indians, Spanish missionaries, and traders, California passed into the hands of the United States as a result of the Mexican War of 1846-48. A number of American settlers, including the ill-fated Donner Party, had already made the overland trek from the east, but the situation was about to be rapidly transformed. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall, overseeing construction of a millrace at Sutter's Mill on the American River, noticed flakes of metal in the water. Various tests, including that the metal could be pounded flat unlike brittle pyrite (fool's gold), convinced Marshall and his boss John Sutter that the material was in fact real gold. Despite their best efforts to keep the discovery a secret, word spread like wildfire and the mill was largely abandoned as workers caught the first cases of "gold fever." The reaction of many was typified by J.H. Carson, who wrote, "A frenzy seized my soul...piles of gold rose up before me..."

Excitement spread to San Francisco via the leather lungs of Sam Brannan, who ran through the streets, hollering "Gold, gold, gold from the American River." Before doing this, he had scouted out a suitable site for a store located adjacent to the diggings. This was an early indication of who would be the greatest profiteers from the Gold Rush. Before long, San Francisco emptied as men went off to the mines, while its harbor was jammed with ships abandoned by their crews, who did the same. People from as far away as Hawaii, Chile, and Peru arrived during the summer and fall of 1848, and in fact these "Forty-Eighters" often picked out the best sites for mining and had the most success.

Not surprisingly, word of the discovery was slow to reach the eastern United States during this pre-telegraph era. Thomas O. Larkin, consul at Monterey, sent dispatches describing the discovery to the east, while a tea caddy filled with gold was displayed at the War Department in Washington, D.C. President James K. Polk gave great publicity to the gold discovery in his December 5, 1848 message to Congress, reporting that "the accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service." It was now that the excitement really began, and thousands of people began planning their trip to California for the following spring.

Forty-Niners coming to California from the east had three travel choices - whether to go by sea via Cape Horn or Panama, or overland. The amazing Cape Horn route was popular in the early days of the Gold Rush, with hundreds of vessels of varying quality making the more than 13,000-mile voyage around the tip of South America. If weather conditions were unfavorable, this voyage could take as long as eight months. Due to great demand, the ships were often jammed with passengers, and unsanitary conditions prevailed. A number suffered from scurvy from a lack of sufficient variety in their diet. Worse yet, since the crews often took off in search of gold once arriving in San Francisco, many people were left behind waiting for ships in the east. Others failed to account for the reversal of the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere, and suffered from bitter wind and cold as the ships rounded Cape Horn in July or August.

Some intrepid Forty-Niners saw a possible shortcut in the sea route - instead of going all the way around Cape Horn, why not cross through Panama in Central America? This route was indeed much shorter on paper, but suffered from its own pitfalls. In sailing from the east coast of the United States, one had to disembark on the Atlantic side of Panama, and since neither railroad service nor the canal existed at this time, cross overland across the Isthmus to the Pacific coast. The tropical climate and endemic diseases claimed many victims. Many people found that having to rely upon two ships for passage to San Francisco merely doubled their chances of being delayed, with disastrous results.

In spite of all of these difficulties, it has been estimated that as many as 25,000 persons made the sea journey to California in the aftermath of the gold discovery, or about as many as lived in the whole territory before 1848. These numbers were dwarfed by those who opted for travel by land. Many people already possessed much of the basic equipment, especially wagons, oxen, and mules, required for the trip, and those west of the Appalachians were relatively close to the trail. A good number of these Forty-Niners passed through St. Louis, where they were impressed by the hustle and bustle of the rapidly growing city. Others, such as William Swain, were appalled that St. Louis was "...dirty, with black narrow streets filled with cars drawn by mules. It is a bare heap of stone and brick, covered with coal smoke..." Merchants in St. Louis shipped supplies to Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri, the jumping-off points for the trail.

One of the biggest and most important decisions that those going overland had to make was when to embark on the trail. If a group started too early in the spring, they found that grass on the Great Plains might not yet be high enough for their cattle to graze upon, wearing out the teams at the very outset of the journey. On the other hand, if one started too late, much of the grass might be consumed by the animals of those who had started earlier, or worse yet, too many miners might already be at the diggings. Finally, there was the recent memory of the fate of the Donner Party, trapped in the Sierras with no food by the first winter snowfall of 1846-47. For all of these reasons, it seems that most overland Forty-Niners tended to start somewhat earlier than would have been best.

From Missouri as far as Fort Hall, in present-day eastern Idaho, most followed the already well marked Oregon Trail. The green travelers gained experience the hard way, suffering such accidents as being run over by wagons, shot by nervous companions, or even shooting themselves as they pulled a loaded rifle out of a wagon muzzle first. However, the greatest hazard of all certainly was disease, especially the dreaded cholera, with which a victim could be "merry at breakfast and dead at supper." The foul water, incessant labor, grueling walks, and varying weather all contributed to the toll. For too many, as diarist Alonzo Delano put it, "the spade of the adventurer was first used to bury the remains of a companion."

Past Fort Hall, a majority of the overland Forty-Niners followed the Humboldt River, soon to be nicknamed the "Hellbolt" or "Humbug." Muddy and alkaline, the river diminished steadily as it meandered west. Such grasses as it supported were quickly worn thin by the vast numbers of cattle going to California. The Humboldt simply vanished into the sand at Humboldt Sink, in western Nevada. There began the most difficult part of the journey, the Forty Mile Desert to the Sierras. Although not far by the standards of the entire trip, the exhaustion of men and animals led to the trail becoming littered with discarded belongings and the corpses of horses, cattle, and humans. Finally surmounting with difficulty the heights of the Sierras, the Forty-Niners staggered into the mining camps. As historian Ray Allen Billington put it, they had "indeed been well tested."

The great adventure of the mass migration to California completely changed the course of westward expansion. Up until 1849, there had been a gradual movement of Euro-Americans from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River and areas beyond, which were geographically contiguous. The only significant exception to this had been the movement of relatively small numbers of people along the trail to Oregon. Suddenly, more than 100,000 people leapfrogged the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and western deserts within a period of just a few years, many employing St. Louis as a transit point. Motivated primarily by greed, these Forty-Niners also embodied other human qualities, including bravery and a search for adventure, which made their story timeless.
Source Citation:
National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov.

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The California Gold Rush, which occurred in the late 1840s, was one of the most compelling events in the history of westward expansion. Thousands of people caught "gold fever" and decided to go west in order to "see the elephant," as the great adventure was often called.

# data[].attributes.body
http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/Currency- 3 because the site was created in 2019, less than 2 years ago
Reliability- 3 because there is many extra sites and there is work cited to make it a credible source
Author- 3 because there is a author and a cite about the author
Authority of organization-  3 because the site is a .edu
Purpose- 3 because there is very useful and is a credible cite

# data[].attributes.body
Currency: 3 The site was updated in 2019
Reliability: 3 Other sources relate to what this source said
Author: 2 they tell you the Author but they do not tell about his credentials
Organization: 1 the website is a .com
Purpose: 3 the website do support and give facts and information about the Pony Express.

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Pony Express | U.S. Mail Delivery History & Map

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The Pony Express was a system of U.S. mail delivery that operated from April 3, 1860, until October 1861. It consisted of continuous horse-and-rider relays between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, with steamers covering the final leg from Sacramento to San Francisco.

# data[].attributes.body
Currency: 3 The site was updated in 2019
Reliability: 3 Other sources relate to  this source
Author: 2 they tell you the Author but they do not tell about him and his details
Organization: 1 the website is a .com
Purpose: 3 the website does support and give facts and information

# data[].attributes.body
C. 2 because it was updated 2016
R. 3 because it had different links to sources.
A. 1 because no name is listed.
A. 1 because it is an org website.
P. 3 because there are no ads to distarct them.

# data[].attributes.body
c. 3 (updated 2019)
r. 3 ( has links and has same info and other)
a.(listes author, whos a expert)
a.(it is a .gov)
p.2 (non biased)
this is a good website

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The Sand Creek Massacre: profound, symbolic, spiritual, controversial, a site unlike any other in America.

As 675 cavalrymen came around a prairie bend, the camps of Chiefs Black Kettle, White Antelope, and Left Hand lay in the valley before them. Chaotic, horrific, tumultuous, and bloody, the events of November 29, 1864 changed the course of history.

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Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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The Sand Creek Massacre: profound, symbolic, spiritual, controversial, a site unlike any other in America. As 675 cavalrymen came around a prairie bend, the camps of Chiefs Black Kettle, White Antelope, and Left Hand lay in the valley before them. Chaotic, horrific, tumultuous, and bloody, the events of November 29, 1864 changed the course of history.

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://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/battle-of-the-little-bighorn

C: 3  last updated sept 19 2019
R: 3 it has a lot of links showing where this was also said
A: 1

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LITTLE BIGHORN, BATTLE OF THE

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On Sunday, June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led 210 men of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry to their deaths at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It was the army's worst defeat of the Plains Indian Wars.

The prelude to "Custer's Last Stand" began at the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which created the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, as a homeland for the bands of the Lakotas and Cheyennes. The government's objective was to settle the Indians down on the reservation, where they could be more easily controlled. In 1874 rumors of gold in the Black Hills were confirmed by a geological team accompanying Custer's expedition, and white miners invaded the sacred land. This abrogation of the treaty rights by Americans encouraged the Lakotas and Cheyennes to resist restriction to the reservation and to continue bison hunting on the ranges of Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. In December 1875 the United States gave the tribes a thirty-day deadline to return to their reservations or be subject to military reprisals.

In the spring of 1876 the United States launched a three-pronged campaign against the Cheyennes and Lakotas. The first prong, under Col. John Gibbon, marched east from Fort Ellis (near present-day Bozeman, Montana). The second prong, led by Gen. Alfred Terry (and including Custer) headed west from Fort Abraham Lincoln near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. The third prong consisted of Gen. George Crook's men moving north from Wyoming into Montana. These three units planned to meet near the end of June in the vicinity of the Little Bighorn. Unknown to Terry and Gibbon, Crook encountered the Indians near Rosebud Creek in southern Montana and was defeated by them about a week before Custer's battle. After this, his force withdrew to Wyoming, breaking one side of the triangle. Meanwhile, Terry was moving west up the Yellowstone River to the Little Bighorn. The Seventh Cavalry, under Custer, scouted ahead on June 22. On the morning of the 25th, they reached the divide between Rosebud and the Little Bighorn Rivers. From a spot known as the Crow's Nest, they observed a large Indian camp. Worried the Indians might escape, Custer decided to attack down the valley of the Little Bighorn. Custer assumed his approximately 600-member command would face at the most 800 warriors. Instead he found a camp of 5,000 to 8,000 Indians, with about 2,000 of them warriors.

Custer divided the Seventh Cavalry into three elements during the early phases of the battle and then subdivided his immediate command into wings. The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, although surprised by the army's attack, quickly rallied and put all elements of the Seventh Cavalry's attack on the defensive. The Indians fought in small, loosely affiliated groups. They used their superior numbers, took advantage of available cover, and sniped at the soldiers from long distances. The soldiers deployed in open skirmish order, as they were trained, with the result that they were widely dispersed and became easy targets for the warriors' guns. Encircled by mounted forces led by Crazy Horse and Gall, Custer's entire command perished.

The news of Custer's defeat reached the American public during the celebration of the nation's centennial. The reaction was outrage and military reprisals that confined most of the Lakotas and Cheyennes to the reservation by the spring of 1877. Following the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Black Hills were confiscated by the United States in direct contradiction of the terms of the 1868 treaty. The site of the battle is now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (previously, before December 10, 1991, the Custer Battlefield National Monument).

See also FILM: Custer Films / IMAGES AND ICONS: Custer, George Armstrong.

Douglas Scott National Park Service

Scott, Douglas D., Richard A. Fox, Milessa A. Conner, and Dick Harmon. Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Utley, Robert. Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

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View larger On Sunday, June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led 210 men of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry to their deaths at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It was the army's worst defeat of the Plains Indian Wars.

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1. California did not have the first gold rush in American history.
That honor actually belongs to North Carolina. Fifty years before gold was discovered at Sutter's mill, the first gold rush in American history got underway after a 17-pound gold nugget was found in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Eventually, more than 30,000 people in the Tar Heel state were mining for gold, and for more than 30 years all gold coins issued by the U.S. Mint were produced using North Carolina gold.

2. The Gold Rush was the largest mass migration in U.S. history.
In March 1848, there were roughly 157,000 people in the California territory; 150,000 Native Americans, 6,500 of Spanish or Mexican descent known as Californios and fewer than 800 non-native Americans. Just 20 months later, following the massive influx of settlers, the non-native population had soared to more than 100,000. And the people just kept coming. By the mid 1850s there were more than 300,000 new arrivals-and one in every 90 people in the United States was living in California. All of these people (and all of this money) helped fast track California to statehood. In 1850, just two years after the U.S. government had purchased the land, California became the 31st state in the Union.

3. The Gold Rush attracted immigrants from around the world.
In fact, by 1850 more than 25 percent of California's population had been born outside the United States. As news of the discovery was slow to reach the east coast, many of the first immigrants to arrive were from South America and Asia. By 1852, more than 25,000 immigrants from China alone had arrived in America. As the amount of available gold began to dwindle, miners increasingly fought one another for profits and anti-immigrant tensions soared. The government got into the action too. In 1850 California's legislature passed a Foreign Miner's tax, which levied a monthly fee of $20 on non-citizens, the equivalent of more than $500 in today's money. That bill was eventually repealed, but was replaced with another in 1852 that expressly singled out Chinese miners, charging them $2 ($80 today) a month. Violence against foreign miners increased as well, and beatings, rapes and even murders became commonplace. However no ethnic group suffered more than California's Native Americans. Before the Gold Rush, its native population numbered roughly 300,000. Within 20 years, more than 100,000 would be dead. Most died from disease or mining-related accidents, but more than 4,000 were murdered by enraged miners.

4. The Gold Rush was a male-dominated event.
Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to California to make their fortunes in the Gold Rush, but almost none of them were women. In 1852, 92 percent of the people prospecting for gold were men. The few women who did travel to the west eked out a living in the growing boomtowns, working in the restaurants, saloons and hotels that seemingly popped up every day. Some women's journals back east, fearful of the trouble the men might get into without the civilizing influence of women, published stories and ran ads encouraging educated, morally minded young women to travel west to tame these men. Few took them up on this offer. The percentage of women in gold mining communities did eventually increase somewhat, but even in 1860 they numbered fewer than 10,000-just 19 percent.

5. Early sections of San Francisco were built out of ships abandoned by prospectors.
The Gold Rush conjures up images of thousands of "'49ers" heading west in wagons to strike it rich in California, but many of the first prospectors actually arrived by ship-and few of them had a return ticket. Within months, San Francisco's port was teeming with boats that had been abandoned after their passengers-and crew-headed inland to hunt for gold. As the formerly tiny town began to boom, demand for lumber increased dramatically, and the ships were dismantled and sold as construction material. Hundreds of houses, banks, saloons, hotels, jails and other structures were built out of the abandoned ships, while others were used as landfill for lots near the waters edge. Today, more than 150 years after the Gold Rush began, archeologists and preservations continue to find relics, sometimes even entire ships, beneath the streets of the City by the Bay.

6. Prospecting for gold was a very costly enterprise.
Most of the men who flocked to northern California arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. Once there, they needed to buy food, goods and supplies, which San Francisco's merchants were all too willing to provide-for a cost. Stuck in a remote region, far from home, many prospectors coughed up most of their hard-earned money for the most basic supplies. At the height of the boom in 1849, prospectors could expect prices sure to cause sticker shock: A single egg could cost the equivalent of $25 in today's money, coffee went for more than $100 per pound and replacing a pair of worn out boots could set you back more than $2,500.

7. More fortunes were made by merchants than by miners.
As the boom continued, more and more men got out of the gold-hunting business and began to open businesses catering to newly arrived prospectors. In fact, some of America's greatest industrialists got their start in the Gold Rush. Phillp Armour, who would later found a meatpacking empire in Chicago, made a fortune operating the sluices that controlled the flow of water into the rivers being mined. Before John Studebaker built one of America's great automobile fortunes, he manufactured wheelbarrows for Gold Rush miners. And two entrepreneurial bankers named Henry Wells and William Fargo moved west to open an office in San Francisco, an enterprise that soon grew to become one of America's premier banking institutions. One of the biggest mercantile success stories was that of Levi Strauss. A German-born tailor, Strauss arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with plans to open a store selling canvas tarps and wagon coverings to the miners. After hearing that sturdy work pants-ones that could withstand the punishing 16-hour days regularly put in by miners-were more in demand, he shifted gears, opening a store in downtown San Francisco that would eventually become a manufacturing empire, producing Levi's denim jeans.

8. Thousands of Gold Rush prospectors got rich-but John Sutter wasn't one of them.
John Sutter, the man whose land would become synonymous with the California Gold Rush, was a Swiss immigrant who fled Europe in the 1830s, leaving behind piles of unpaid debts. After several years of travelling throughout North America, he finally settled in the tiny outpost of Yuerba Buena (modern-day San Francisco) in 1839. With the assistance of the local Mexican government, Sutter quickly realized his goal of establishing an agricultural community on a 50,000-acre tract of land he called "New Helvetia," Latin for "New Switzerland, which became an important outpost for emigrants traveling to the west. It was during the construction of a sawmill on Sutter's land along the American River that one of his employees first discovered the gold nugget that would change the world. Sutter, initially more interested in maintaining control over his property, tried to keep the discovery quiet, but the news quickly leaked out. Within months, most of his workers had abandoned him to search for gold themselves, while thousands of other prospectors overran and destroyed much of his land and equipment. Faced with mounting debts, Sutter was forced to deed his land to one of his sons, who used it to create a new settlement called Sacramento. Sutter Sr. was furious-he had hoped the town would be named after him-but he had more pressing concerns. Nearly bankrupt, he began a decades-long campaign to have the U.S. government reimburse him for his financial losses, to no avail. While thousands became rich off his former land, a bitter Sutter retired to Pennsylvania and died.

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8 Things You May Not Know About the California Gold Rush

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1. California did not have the first gold rush in American history. That honor actually belongs to North Carolina. Fifty years before gold was discovered at Sutter's mill, the first gold rush in American history got underway after a 17-pound gold nugget was found in Cabarrus County, North Carolina.

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c.3 because it was updated in 2019
r.3 it has many links every where were you can just click and it will show you the definitions and if you want to go to a different website then the link is already there.
a.3 because it has the author and website name and publisher
a.1 because it has a .com
p.2 because it backs up every thing it says but its a little to intense and what i mean by that is you can scroll for days on this website and i can't tell if its a good thing or a bad thing.

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San Quentin State Prison, maximum-security correctional facility for men located in San Quentin, near San Francisco, California. Opened in 1854, the penitentiary is the state's oldest prison and its only facility that conducts executions. San Quentin is also among the most well-known prisons in the United States.

Early history

The prison's origins date to the California Gold Rush, a period that roughly spanned from 1848 to 1852. The influx of fortune seekers to the San Francisco area also brought an increase in crime. When the city's jail proved inadequate, prisoners were briefly held on ships until the state opted to build a prison. In 1852 some 20 acres (8 hectares) of land were acquired at San Quentin, overlooking San Francisco Bay. Convicts began constructing the building later that year, and the cell blocks were completed in 1854. San Quentin State Prison originally featured 48 windowless cells, which were designed to hold 250 inmates, though that number was quickly exceeded. In addition to male inmates, the prison housed female prisoners until 1933.

Initially, San Quentin was under private management. Individuals were awarded contracts to run the facility, and in return they were allowed to hire out the inmates. The arrangement proved ripe for abuse. Lessors were accused of profiteering and mismanagement, as prisoners were subjected to inhumane living conditions and brutal punishments. Standard disciplinary measures included floggings and "shower baths," in which inmates were stripped and sprayed with a high-pressure water hose. In addition, lax security allowed for frequent prison escapes; in 1854 more than 80 prisoners broke out of San Quentin. Complaints increased during the lease of John F. McCauley, and the state used "force" to assume control of the prison in 1858. The following year McCauley successfully sued to reclaim the seized property. However, his return to San Quentin proved short-lived as he accepted a settlement from California in August 1860 to end his contract.

Reforms and renovations

After the state resumed control of the prison, lieutenant governors were initially appointed to also serve as wardens. However, this practice ended in 1880 with J.P. Ames, who became the first warden whose sole job was to run the prison. Under his oversight, floggings and whippings were banned. Other notable wardens include James A. Johnston, whose tenure (1913-25) brought improved medical treatment and the creation of educational and vocational training. He also replaced corporal punishment with solitary confinement. During this time, the inmates also began publishing Wall City News, called "the only newspaper in the world published within the walls of a prison." Although it ceased publication in the mid-1930s, the paper was revived (as San Quentin News) under Clinton Duffy, warden from 1940 to 1951; the newspaper was suspended periodically in the ensuing years. Duffy also discontinued the use of solitary confinement, though the practice was later reinstated. San Quentin's first female warden, Jeanne Woodford, served from 1999 to 2004. A vocal advocate of rehabilitation, she instituted a wide range of programs.

The various wardens also oversaw numerous expansions and renovations of San Quentin. Construction in the 1880s included several factory-type structures, a wall surrounding the complex, and a second hospital. A dramatic increase in the inmate population in the early 20th century necessitated additional buildings. Notably, in the 1920s and '30s, four cell blocks, each of which featured multiple tiers, were built. With these expansions, the grounds also increased and eventually covered some 432 acres (175 hectares).

Executions and unrest

In 1893 California's first state-conducted execution, the hanging of a convicted murderer, took place at San Quentin. Folsom State Prison also staged executions from 1895 to 1937, but thereafter San Quentin became California's only penitentiary to implement the death penalty. In 1938 a gas chamber was installed, and it remained in use until 1996, when lethal injection was adopted. As the sole state facility to hold executions, San Quentin housed a number of serial killers and other murderers, notably Charles Manson, who was arguably its most famous inmate.

Throughout its history, San Quentin was the site of violence, perhaps most notably in the 1960s and '70s. Of particular note was a failed escape in 1971 that left six people dead. Political and racial issues also resulted in conflicts, and since the mid-1990s the prison's extreme overcrowding has caused problems. Although designed for nearly 3,100 inmates, the population generally far exceeded that number. The lack of space as well as security concerns over the aging prison led to calls to close the facility, and such efforts increased in the early 21st century. However, proposals for the use of the prison's land-which was prime real estate-were hotly debated.

Popular culture

As one of the oldest prisons in the United States, San Quentin was among the country's most well known, referenced in numerous movies, television shows, songs, and books. It gained additional prominence after country singers Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, a former inmate, performed there in 1969 and 1971, respectively. In addition, San Quentin inmates were regularly featured in episodes of the TV documentary series Lockup.
Amy Tikkanen

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San Quentin State Prison | History & Facts

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San Quentin State Prison, maximum-security correctional facility for men located in San Quentin, near San Francisco, California. Opened in 1854, the penitentiary is the state's oldest prison and its only facility that conducts executions. San Quentin is also among the most well-known prisons in the United States.

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https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre

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