 Good afternoon in this video We're going to look at the opening of the western part of the state of Texas and this comes about following the Civil War So we're going to look at the time period from about 1865 to about 1900 and look at the various things that went on in the West. Maybe you're a fan of Westerns, Cowboys, Indians, Railroads, Buffalo, Farmers, Settlers, all of that happens in Texas as well And what we're going to do is look at from the South Texas cattle drives It took cattle from places like the King Ranch All the way across Texas up into Kansas to catch the train at the railheads and have the cattle ship back east So we'll start there and we'll look at the various frontiers in Texas If we look at the opening of Texas following the Civil War in 1865, we're going to look at ranching That's a big part of what's happening in Texas And of course the cows the cattle the horses and even the sheep goats pigs a lot of that came from Spain brought over with the conquistadors came over and the explorers came over in the 1400s 1500s and so by the time of the 1800s the middle of the 19th century You've had animals from Spain from Europe here in the United States for hundreds of years Some of those were raised by missions Some of those were raised on the ranches that the Spanish had initiated when they were settling, Texas But by now by the middle of the Civil War We've gone to open range ranching in other words the cattle the pigs the goats the horses are all running free And you rounded them up and you got them when necessary As I said, there were sheep and goats were also very important from very early on and the whole ranching industry is Multicultural you think of the word vaquero Lariat all of those are words brought in from the Spanish to the English and have been adopted into ranching culture So it was also true that a lot of the so-called cowboys They didn't look like John Wayne. They weren't all white A lot of the cowboys about a third of them were Hispanic and about another third were African-American. So it was a multicultural frontier We talked about the cattle kingdom the cattle that we see During the 1860s Are coming up out of south texas and you have these cattle drives that stretch all the way up From south texas all the way up to kansas taking the cattle to kansas the railheads and then moving them east to The markets in places like new york chicago and other areas But the railroads are necessary To help do this because of the cattle though from south texas bringing in diseases and ticks and fleas Farmers and ranchers in other states began putting restrictions on texas cattle The cattle drives really only lasted about 20 years by the 1880s the cattle drives are long gone part of that has to do with the expansion of railroads A lot of international investors we tend to think of some guy on a ranch owning it But there were corporations that got involved And people from other countries were coming into texas to buy up the land One of those was the matador land and cattle company for example Its headquarters was in scotland and yet they owned thousands of acres of west texas land and they are just one example There were many international investors that bought land in texas and you had some very large ranches The biggest ranch we see and you see the map there of uh the gulf coast The king ranch about a million acres in about four counties in texas and various divisions Probably the most famous headquartered at kingsville Named after the king ranch was the santa gertrude's division and that became home of the first texas breed of cattle The santa gertrude's the ranch was started in the 1860s following the civil war by richard king and mifflin kennedy And they had been riverboat captains and they had done steam shipping up and down the rio grand during the civil war Even larger Was the x it ranch and x it stands for 10 in texas You can see the map on the right hand side of the screen there and those show you The 10 counties that the x it ranch made up the panhandle region It made up over three million acres of land much larger than the king ranch by three times And it was largely done for the company that built the state capital as payment We'd look over at native americans in the west because as people were moving out as ranchers were moving out as later farmers were moving out to the west They were encountering native americans who already lived in the west who used the west following the civil war President grant institutes. What's known as the quaker peace policy The quakers were a religious group And they wanted to have peaceful relations with the native americans instead of a harsher policy This resulted in the treaty of medicine lodge creek in 1867, which was a In held in kansas, and it was a meeting of various Native american groups tribal leaders And representatives the problem was is that A lot of native americans didn't recognize the authority of those leaders to sign peace treaties for them And so while there was on paper a peace treaty in practice things weren't always Uh, so peaceful You know that the native americans during the civil war had pushed the frontier back About a hundred miles across the west And so one of the things that the federal government wanted to do was to reestablish Uh, native americans back onto reservations get them off that land and push that frontier Forward again. Laurie tatum was the indian agent at fort sill in oklahoma just along the texas border And that's where the keo and the comanche Were in reservation Tatum was a quaker. He tried to be very good to the native americans But he was constantly thwarted because they were leaving the reservation largely because the reservations The food wasn't very good. Sometimes it was rotten meat the companies that were contracted to provide food and supplies Weren't always doing a very good job. And so native americans were quite upset Unhappy that they lost their native land and unhappy to be on these reservations that where they lived in squalor in 1871 The so-called salt creek massacre also known as the warren wagon train raid This happened shortly after William tecumseh Sherman a general for the us army Went to investigate the conditions of native americans on the texas frontier So he came in at brownsville and he and buffalo soldiers who were guarding him Traveled up texas to see the extent of native american raids He had heard that there were a lot of attacks going on And even after the tour, he didn't believe it He arrived at fort richardson, which is just around jacksboro, which is northwest of fort worth And concluded that things weren't as bad. Well A few hours later about 100 native americans who had watched Sherman attacked they were led by satan satanta big tree And they attacked this wagon train that was bringing supplies to the fort seven people were killed this changed the indian policy Thereafter and what they wanted to do was really push back and force native americans By any means necessary to stay on the reservation And this was especially true in texas They began refortifying all the frontier forts and i've included a map here of where many of those forts were Buffalo soldiers these were the former african-american troops Out of the four divisions That served during the civil war and so you had the beginning of the so-called indian wars. This actually started in 1869 One example of problems that they had With native americans was the attack on the adobe walls trading outpost in 1874 quanta parker a chief Of one of the band of comanches stationed at fort sill left the reservation about 700 attacked adobe walls They were repelled and they were treated. It was the start of several native american attacks Attacks were coming from south of the border. This was led by juan cortina Cortina had been a problem even before the civil war the so-called first cortina war Happened right before the civil war cortina had witnessed Mexican americans being treated badly by law enforcement in brownsville So he attacked some law enforcement officers and this started battles back and forth attacks back and forth The second cortina war came about after the civil war already started Cortina joined the union volunteered to join the union And he and some of his men were attacking confederates along the rio grand Finally He settles down for a while in the 1870s However, he and some of his followers are implemented in some cattle wrestling schemes And they call for his arrest now. Here's the thing about cortina We don't know how big his gang really was or it was just a fear that people were associated with him Or willing to blame any mexican or mexican american who was causing problems with being associated with cortina So some of it may be exaggerated. Some of it really may have been him We do know that he was very active at this time The farmers frontier, this is the name we give to the expanse of farmers As they began moving west the state population between 1860 and 1890 increased tremendously From a little over half a million to well over two million people In a 30 year period that is a lot of people moving into the state Most of them do live in the rural areas And this was facilitated in large part due to the growth of railroads across texas now. This is a map I've shown you near amorello How the land was divided up into sections you can see that Northern line that kind of stretches across the map. That's a railroad and you can see how the sections are Determined off and it's in that checkerboard square Some sections of land are sold some or not. Those are probably land where the railroad is getting money from the government And you had two major roads going across texas early on the texas and pacific Which was of course moving westward and then you also have the fort worth in denver, which is moving kind of northwestern another Invention that facilitated the farmers was a development of barbed wire This of course kept cattle from moving onto your land You put up the wire the cattle don't cross it because of the barbs and the wire This led to a so-called fence war as people were trying to move their cattle during the cattle drives And this is what kind of put it into the cattle drives They were running into farmers who had put fencing up to keep cattle out. Well, they were also fencing off water and in texas you cannot Stop people from having access to water And so people were cutting the fences if they caught you cutting the fences though They might hang you you looked at some of the sources That I provided some of the primary sources about this fence war that was going on and this is what was causing that This is what was leading to those fencing wars The farmers were having many problems though as they moved west and of course it wasn't just them. There were problems across the west In 1890 the federal census bureau declared that the frontier was over meaning that Settlement had so expanded across the middle part of the american west that there was no longer a frontier You also had the rise of industrialism that farmers weren't just farming by hand, but they were using better and better implements some mechanized and so you had Changes to the farming community changes to the way people farmed and that affected the frontier also again With an excess of cotton because you had more people moving west more people establishing farms more people trying to plant cotton As you have a surplus of cotton the price of cotton declines So this is going to make it harder for farmers who are out there working planning their crops To make a living what they could make a living with before wasn't cutting it anymore And so this is going to lead to farmers unrest the farmers began forming unions or at least associations One of those popular ones was the grange. This is followed formed by a former military officer Who wanted to get farmers together? Many of them lived in isolation and he felt that they should have community projects And community events and so he started the grange the official name was the national grange of the patrons of husbandry We called the grange for short This civic club these civic organizations gave rise to political organizations as farmers became more and more upset And in south in central texas around lamb passes and hillsboro You had the beginning of the so-called farmers alliance eventually in texas It'll become known as the southern farmers alliance And this will give rise to a movement called populism or the people's party And in texas the effect of populism. They even had their own newspaper. You can see the southern mercury James hog who later becomes governor of the state Is very interested in reform that's going to help the farmers one of the things that the farmers were upset about were railroads Railroads had advertised land. They had brought people out. They had set people up But then farmers were upset because they weren't making as much money as they used to At the price railroads were charging to send crops to market And so they formed the texas railroad commission in order to regulate prices that railroads are charging One of the other things that came about was prohibition and prohibition had been around for a while starting off in about the 1840s But by the 1870s and 80s you have the formation of various organizations that are going to have effect on texas First is the united friends of temperance. Now temperance wasn't Against drinking all together, but they wanted it moderated But you do have the women's christian temperance union and many of them were Prohibitionists not only do they want you to cut back on liquor, but that wasn't enough They wanted you to stop it all together and you see how these programs Expand and that women were also involved in this And it was kind of in the woman's fear that it was okay for women to get involved because it was a moral issue In 1876 when the new constitution was founded based upon agrarian interests you see the Implementation of what they call local option laws Counties could decide if they were going to be wet allowing liquor and alcohol or dry not allowing it By 1895 you had 15 53 counties that were completely dry and another 79 that were at least partially dry So that's where this lecture will end and we'll pick up Talking about the political successes of progressives and how they turn into populace in the next lecture