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Advanced Placement

AP US History

Topic 6.3: Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development

Updated · For the May 2027 AP exam

AP US History Topic 6.3, Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development, covers how settlers, soldiers, and federal policy reshaped the West and its Native nations from 1865 to 1890. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 promised the Lakota the Black Hills, but an 1874 army expedition found gold there, and the Great Sioux War followed, including Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Hunters nearly wiped out the bison, the Dawes Act of 1887 broke up tribal land, and the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 marked the end of armed resistance. In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the frontier had shaped American democracy.

Absolute and Undisturbed Settlers, Soldiers, and the Promise of the Black Hills (1865–1890)

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie reserved the Black Hills to the Lakota. Custer’s 1874 report of gold opened those hills to miners, and in December 1890 soldiers killed Lakota people at Wounded Knee.

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Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development in two minutes

  • The Medicine Lodge treaties of 1867 moved southern Plains peoples toward reservations in Indian Territory, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 set aside the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills.
  • Commercial hide hunters, shipping by rail, nearly wiped out the bison by the late 1880s. Plains peoples lost the animal at the center of their food, shelter, and trade.
  • Custer's 1874 expedition found gold in the Black Hills, and miners poured onto treaty land. In June 1876 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors killed Custer and his whole battalion at the Little Bighorn.
  • Chief Joseph's Nez Perce surrendered in 1877 and Geronimo's Apaches in 1886. The Ghost Dance promised Native renewal, and soldiers sent to stop it killed Lakota families at Wounded Knee in 1890.
  • The Dawes Act of 1887 split tribal land into individual plots, and boarding schools such as Carlisle (1879) enforced assimilation; Native holdings fell from 138 million acres to 48 million by 1934.
  • Americans celebrated the frontier: Buffalo Bill's Wild West began touring in 1883, and in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner argued that free land had shaped American democracy.
  • On the exam: compare Indian policy before and after 1865, explain the causes of the Plains wars, or assess Turner's thesis; it links Indian Removal to the Indian New Deal.

Transcript

The transcript appears here once this topic is finished.

Unit 6 review 1865–1898

  1. 6.1 Contextualizing Period 6 Free Land
  2. 6.2 Westward Expansion: Economic Development Free Land
  3. 6.3 Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development Absolute and Undisturbed
  4. 6.4 The “New South” Separate as the Fingers
  5. 6.5 Technological Innovation The Price of Light
  6. 6.6 The Rise of Industrial Capitalism The Price of Light
  7. 6.7 Labor in the Gilded Age Eight Hours for What We Will
  8. 6.8 Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age Mother of Exiles
  9. 6.9 Responses to Immigration in the Gilded Age Mother of Exiles
  10. 6.10 Development of the Middle Class Looking Backward
  11. 6.11 Reform in the Gilded Age Looking Backward
  12. 6.12 Controversies over the Role of Government in the Gilded Age Cross of Gold
  13. 6.13 Politics in the Gilded Age Cross of Gold
  14. 6.14 Continuity and Change in Period 6 The White City

All of AP US History