Daily Life in the American West by Pierce, Jason E.;

Short description:

Daily Life in the American West details the lives of American Indians, miners, cowboys, immigrants, and settlers who, together, populated the unique region that is the American West.

Long description:

Daily Life in the American West details the lives of American Indians, miners, cowboys, immigrants, and settlers who, together, populated the unique region that is the American West.

Daily Life in the American West combines the credibility and coverage of a history textbook with a close and nuanced view of the amazing people who struggled to make a home for themselves in a beautiful and evocative but harsh and unforgiving region. Included here are close descriptions of how a variety of peoples lived their daily lives, from nomadic Indian tribes to Chinese immigrants and from cowboys to city-dwellers. It also conveys how those individual lives are reflected in the sweeping changes that occurred in a century that saw the West become the most modern and diverse of all the nation's regions.

Readers will also find the expected cast of characters (gunfighters, American Indian leaders, cowboys, and so on) that have long captured the imagination of people around the world covered with an academic focus that tries to tell an accurate story of the West and its role in the United States. The book provides the scale of a textbook, but in a more-engaging format that should appeal to students and the general public.

Table of Contents:

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Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Timeline
Glossary

1. DOMESTIC LIFE OF AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
Domestic Life and Paleo-Indians
Daily Life for Indian Peoples at the Dawn of Contact
Daily Life of the Plains Indians in the 18th and 19th Centuries
The Central Role of the Bison in Daily Domestic Life
On the Cusp of Great Changes

2. DOMESTIC LIFE ON THE OVERLAND TRAILS
Into the West
A Message from the West
To Oregon!
Daily Life on the Oregon Trail
The Donner Party
Childhood on the Trail

3. DOMESTIC LIFE ON THE MINING FRONTIER
Settling into the West
Daily Life in the Mining Camps
Women in the Mining Camps
Coal Mining in the Mountain West
The Legacy of Mining in the West

4. ECONOMIC LIFE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
The Intrusion of Capitalism and the Fur Trade
The Destruction of the Bison
The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Industry
Railroads, Telegraphs, and Daily Life in a Shrinking World
Words Written on Lightning
From Frontier to Industrial Society

5. POLITICAL LIFE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
Political Expansion
Lewis and Clark, the Fur Trade, and the Coming of the United States
Political Life for Plains Indians and the Challenge of American Expansion
Manifest Destiny
Northerners and the Shaping of the West
Conservation and Preservation
Conclusion: Political Life and the Rise of the Federal Government

6. RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
American Indian Spirituality
Christian Missionaries and Conversion Efforts
The Mormons
Religion in the 19th-Century American West

7. THE INDIAN WARS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF DAILY LIFE FOR AMERICAN INDIANS
The Grattan ""Massacre""
The Bloody Texas Frontier
The Sand Creek Massacre
The Red River War
The Sioux Wars of 1876-1877
The Reservation System and the Dawes Act
The Ghost Dance and the Tragedy of Wounded Knee

8. INTELLECTUAL LIFE AND THE MYTH OF THE WEST

EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF THE WEST

Bibliography
Index