History 162: Lectures 9 & 10

History 263: Readings in Frontier and Western History



History 162: Lectures 9 and 10
THE WORKDAY WEST AND THE WILD WEST

  1. Trappers
    1. The Fur Trade Moves West
    2. Economic Organization
      1. John Jacob Astor
      2. William Henry Ashley, the Independent Trapper, and the Rendezvous System
    3. Relationships between Mountain Men and Indian Women
    4. Depletion of Beaver and the Decline of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade

  2. Miners
    1. Gold Fever: The California and Other Rushes
    2. From Placer to Hard-Rock Mining

  3. Cowboys
    1. Hispanic Origins and American Diffusion
    2. African-American Impact
    3. Boom and Bust
    4. Independence and Dependence

  4. The Legacy of the Wild West
    1. The Appeal of Frontier Justice
    2. The Significance of "No Duty to Retreat" Doctrine

  5. Law and Disorder
    1. Mining Towns
      1. Murder Rates
      2. The Limits of Violence
    2. Cowtowns
      1. Gun Control
      2. Law Enforcement
    3. Vigilantism
      1. Statistical Portrait
      2. Social Portrait

  6. Ethnic Violence
    1. Violence against Indians
    2. Violence against Chinese

  7. Economic Violence: Wars of Consolidation
    1. Range Wars: Revisiting the Johnson County War
    2. North vs. South in West
    3. The Consolidation of a Capitalist Order: The OK Corral Reconsidered


Visuals


Western Mining Rushes, 1848-1900


The Cattlemen's Frontier


The Western Civil War of Incorporation, 1850s-1919