The Transcontinental Railroad & Impact on Plains Nations: Fifth Grade Social Studies
In the late nineteenth century, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad conquered the vast geography of the American West, linking the nation from coast to coast while bringing catastrophic disruption to the sovereign Native American nations of the Great Plains.
The Dream of an Ocean-to-Ocean Railway
During the mid-nineteenth century, traveling across the American continent was a grueling, dangerous expedition that required four to six months by covered wagon or an expensive, five-to-eight-month sea voyage around the stormy southern tip of South America. Visionaries dreamed of an iron railway spanning the continent, uniting the booming Pacific coast with the industrial East.
In July 1862, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act. Lincoln recognized that building a transcontinental railroad was a vital national security priority that would bind California and the West firmly to the Union while unlocking millions of acres of western land for settlement and economic development.
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| THE PACIFIC RAILWAY ACT OF 1862 |
| |
| TWO RIVAL RAILROAD COMPANIES RACE ACROSS THE CONTINENT: |
| |
| 1. THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD |
| - Started in OMAHA, NEBRASKA; built WEST across the |
| flat Great Plains and through the Rocky Mountains. |
| - WORKFORCE: Thousands of IRISH IMMIGRANTS, Civil War |
| veterans (Union and Confederate), and former enslaved men.|
| |
| 2. THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD |
| - Started in SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA; built EAST through the|
| sheer granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains! |
| - WORKFORCE: Over 12,000 CHINESE IMMIGRANT LABORERS who |
| did the most dangerous, backbreaking blasting work! |
| |
| GOVERNMENT INCENTIVES: |
| - Federal subsidies: $16,000 to $48,000 in government bonds |
| per mile of track laid, PLUS millions of acres of free |
| public land in alternating checkerboard sections! |
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The Epic Race to the Golden Spike
The two railroad corporations engaged in a fierce competition: the more track a company laid, the more land and federal money it received.
The Central Pacific faced monumental engineering obstacles immediately. To conquer the sheer, snow-covered granite walls of the Sierra Nevada mountains, construction superintendent Charles Crocker hired more than twelve thousand Chinese immigrant laborers. White supervisors initially doubted that Chinese workers, who averaged barely one hundred and twenty pounds, were strong enough for heavy construction. The Chinese laborers quickly proved they were the most disciplined, industrious, and skilled workforce on the continent.
Chinese workers chiseled fifteen tunnels through solid rock using handheld sledgehammers and volatile nitroglycerin liquid explosive. In winter, as forty-foot snowdrifts covered the mountains, Chinese workers lived and worked in tunnels carved beneath the snowpacks, where avalanches frequently buried entire work camps. To carve a roadbed along the sheer cliff of Cape Horn high above the American River, Chinese workers were lowered down vertical mountain cliffs in woven wicker baskets, drilled holes into the granite, set gunpowder fuses, and were hauled up by rope before the explosions blew away the rock.
Meanwhile, the Union Pacific laid tracks rapidly across the flat prairies of Nebraska and Wyoming, averaging two to three miles of track a day under the direction of former Union General Grenville Dodge. The construction crews lived in mobile, rowdy tent cities that moved along with the tracks, nicknamed "Hell on Wheels" for their saloons, gambling halls, and lawlessness.
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| PROMONTORY SUMMIT, UTAH (MAY 10, 1869) |
| |
| - The tracks of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific meet. |
| - Central Pacific's "Jupiter" locomotive touches cowcatchers |
| with Union Pacific's "Engine No. 119." |
| - LELAND STANFORD swings a silver maul and drives the |
| ceremonial GOLDEN SPIKE into a laurel-wood tie! |
| - The telegraph taps out three letters across the nation: |
| D - O - N - E ! Church bells ring from coast to coast! |
| | |
| v |
| HISTORIC IMPACT: Travel time from New York to San Francisco |
| plummeted from SIX MONTHS to JUST SIX DAYS! Shipping costs |
| dropped by 85%! |
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On May 10, 1869, the two rail lines officially met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. Before a cheering crowd of railroad executives, construction workers, and soldiers, Central Pacific President Leland Stanford drove a ceremonial golden spike into a polished laurel-wood tie. The hammer strokes were wired directly to the telegraph system, clicking out three letters across the country: D - O - N - E. The continent was officially spanned.
The Destruction of the Buffalo: An Ecological Catastrophe
While the Transcontinental Railroad was celebrated as a triumph of American ingenuity, it dealt a fatal, devastating blow to the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, including the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa.
For thousands of years, the nomadic culture, diet, and spiritual life of Plains nations revolved entirely around the American Bison (commonly called the buffalo). In 1850, an estimated thirty to sixty million buffalo roamed the Great Plains in majestic, thunderous herds that stretched as far as the eye could see. The buffalo provided Plains peoples with everything they needed to survive: meat for food, thick hides for warm clothing and tepee coverings, sinew for bowstrings and thread, bones for tools and needles, and horns for spoons and bowls.
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| THE EXTERMINATION OF THE BUFFALO |
| |
| 1850: 30,000,000 to 60,000,000 Buffalo roam the Plains. |
| 1889: FEWER THAN 1,000 BUFFALO REMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES! |
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| CAUSES OF EXTINCTION: |
| - Commercial hide hunters using high-powered Sharps rifles |
| slaughtered millions of buffalo for industrial leather belts|
| and luxury carriage robes in the East. |
| - Railroad "Hunting Excursions": Tourists fired rifles from |
| moving train passenger windows for sport, leaving carcasses |
| to rot in the sun. |
| - DELIBERATE U.S. MILITARY POLICY: Generals William T. |
| Sherman and Philip Sheridan encouraged hide hunters to |
| exterminate the herds to starve Native nations onto |
| reservations! Sheridan: "Let them kill, skin, and sell until|
| the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to |
| bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance." |
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The railroad cut directly through the migratory routes of the herds. Professional commercial hide hunters slaughtered millions of buffalo, stripping the skins to make industrial machine belts for Northern factories and leaving millions of tons of meat to rot on the prairie. By 1889, fewer than one thousand buffalo remained in the entire United States. The extermination of the buffalo shattered the independent nomadic way of life of the Plains nations, leaving them facing starvation and forcing them onto federal reservations.
The Plains Wars: Resistance and Tragedy
Desperate to protect their ancestral hunting grounds, sacred Black Hills, and sovereign independence, Plains nations fought a series of fierce military conflicts with the U.S. Army known as the Plains Wars (1862-1890).
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| KEY BATTLES OF THE PLAINS WARS |
| |
| SAND CREEK MASSACRE (1864, Colorado): |
| - U.S. volunteer militia under Colonel John Chivington attacks|
| peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp under white flag; massacres|
| over 150 women, children, and elderly elders. |
| |
| BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN (June 25, 1876, Montana): |
| - Gold discovered in sacred Lakota Black Hills. |
| - 2,000 Lakota, Cheyenne, & Arapaho warriors under SITTING |
| BULL and CRAZY HORSE surround and annihilate Lt. Col. |
| GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER and 268 men of the 7th Cavalry! |
| - Known as "Custer's Last Stand"; greatest Native military |
| victory in American history. |
| |
| CHIEF JOSEPH & THE NEZ PERCE (1877): |
| - Brilliant 1,170-mile fighting retreat toward Canada; trapped|
| 40 miles from border; Chief Joseph: "I will fight no more |
| forever." |
| |
| WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE (December 29, 1890, South Dakota): |
| - U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounds Lakota camp performing peaceful |
| Ghost Dance; Hotchkiss cannons massacre 300 unarmed men, |
| women, and children in the freezing snow. |
| - Marks the tragic END of the Indian Wars on the Plains. |
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The Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876)
In 1868, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, establishing the Great Sioux Reservation and guaranteeing the Lakota Sioux permanent possession of the sacred Black Hills ("Paha Sapa"). However, in 1874, a military expedition commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills. Thousands of illegal white prospectors flooded onto sacred Lakota lands. When the Lakota refused to sell the Black Hills, the U.S. government ordered all Native bands to report to reservations or be treated as hostiles.
On June 25, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in Montana, Custer rashly attacked a massive encampment of over two thousand Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors led by spiritual leader Sitting Bull and war chief Crazy Horse. Custer and all 268 men of his immediate command were surrounded and wiped out in less than an hour in what became known as "Custer's Last Stand."
While Little Bighorn was a stunning military victory for Indigenous warriors, it triggered a furious military counteroffensive. The U.S. Army hunted down the bands relentlessly through the winter, forcing Sitting Bull to flee to Canada and Crazy Horse to surrender.
The Dawes Act and Cultural Erasure
Having confined Native American nations to reservations, the federal government shifted its policy from military warfare to forced cultural assimilation.
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes General Allotment Act. The law aimed to destroy tribal communal ownership of land and assimilate Native Americans into individualistic American farming culture:
- Tribal reservations were surveyed and broken up into individual 160-acre parcels allotted to each family head.
- "Surplus" reservation land was sold to white settlers and railroad corporations. Under the Dawes Act, Native American nations lost more than ninety million acres—over two-thirds of their remaining land base.
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| INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS: "CULTURAL ASSIMILATION" |
| |
| - Founded in 1879 by Army Officer RICHARD HENRY PRATT. |
| - Motto: "KILL THE INDIAN IN HIM, AND SAVE THE MAN." |
| - Thousands of Native children forcibly removed from their |
| parents and sent to distant boarding schools (Carlisle, PA).|
| - Hair was forcibly cut; traditional clothes burned; forbidden|
| to speak native languages under threat of physical beating! |
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Simultaneously, the federal government established off-reservation Indian boarding schools, led by the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879 by Army Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt's explicit motto was: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
Federal agents forcibly removed tens of thousands of Native children from their families and sent them to distant boarding schools. Upon arrival, children's long braided hair was shorn, their traditional clothing was taken away and burned, and they were dressed in military uniforms. They were forbidden from speaking their native languages or practicing their cultural traditions under pain of corporal punishment, inflicting generational cultural trauma that impacted Indigenous communities for decades.
The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad created a continental American empire, unlocking immense industrial and agricultural wealth for the United States, but at the profound, tragic cost of Indigenous sovereignty, culture, and ancestral land.
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to describe the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad between 1862 and 1869, identifying the two competing railroad companies, the primary immigrant labor groups employed by each, and the historic meeting at Promontory Summit, Utah. The response should detail the Union Pacific building west from Omaha with Irish laborers and the Central Pacific building east from Sacramento with Chinese laborers blasting through the Sierra Nevada, culminating in the driving of the Golden Spike on May 10, 1869, which reduced travel time across the continent from months to six days.
Exercise Two asks students to analyze the causes and consequences of the near-extinction of the American buffalo on the Great Plains in the late nineteenth century. The response should explain that commercial hide hunting, railroad sport shooting, and a deliberate U.S. military policy to eliminate the food supply of Plains nations decimated thirty million bison to fewer than one thousand, destroying the nomadic hunting culture of Plains tribes and forcing them onto reservations.
Exercise Three requires students to explain the objectives and consequences of the Dawes Act of 1887 and the federal Indian boarding school system. The response should explain that the Dawes Act sought to assimilate Native Americans by dividing communal reservation lands into private family allotments, resulting in the loss of two-thirds of tribal lands, and describe how schools like Carlisle forcibly removed children, cut their hair, and banned native languages under the motto "Kill the Indian, Save the Man."
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that the Transcontinental Railroad was an unprecedented feat of engineering and human labor. The complementary efforts of Chinese workers conquering the Sierra Nevada and Irish crews spanning the prairies transformed American logistics, integrating national markets and speeding westward settlement.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that the destruction of the buffalo was an ecological strategy of subjugation. By eliminating the keystone resource that provided Plains nations with food, shelter, and cultural independence, the federal government undermined tribal autonomy, compelling Indigenous peoples to accept reservation boundaries.
Solution to Exercise Three details that late nineteenth-century federal policy transitioned from military extermination to systemic cultural destruction. The combination of land dispossession through the Dawes Act and forced assimilation through boarding schools inflicted profound trauma on Indigenous communities while enriching white land speculators with millions of acres of former tribal territory.