Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2022 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

Americans were getting a crowded feeling in the late 1700s. Most of the nation’s population lived clustered together along the East Coast. Some people had begun pushing through the westward boundaries of the 13 Original Colonies, into the frontier that was present-day Ohio and Kentucky. But few Americans felt the urge to cross the mighty Mississippi River to see what lay beyond it. Besides, the United States didn’t even own that mysterious western expanse. But things changed in December 1803. That’s when the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French. Almost immediately, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the Corps of Discovery left on a fact-finding trip. They were charged with learning about the vast new territory. Two years later, the Corps returned. The information that the men…

Before Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) and Willa Cather (1873–1947) became famous novelists, they both traveled westward with their families. Drawing on their childhood experiences in the 1870s and 1880s, their books vividly describe life on America’s frontier. Over the first 13 years of Wilder’s life, her family lived in a log cabin in Wisconsin, on a farm on the Kansas prairie, in a dugout in Minnesota, and on a homestead in South Dakota. Her books describe many of the difficulties that settlers faced in the West. Those issues included dealing with aggressive Indigenous people, crop-eating grasshoppers, dangerous blizzards, and life-threatening illnesses. Wilder’s books also capture the pride that came with owning a homestead and the joy of settlers coming together to build a community. Cather was nine years old when…

With the notice above, a Leavenworth, Kansas, company named Russell, Majors & Waddell hoped to establish a spectacular 10-day mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. That may not sound so impressive today, considering the speed of our wireless emails and cell phones. But in the mid-1800s, it took several weeks for news and information to make its way from St. Joseph, where telegraph service ended, to the West Coast. The Pony Express’s first trip began on April 3, 1860. It successfully delivered the mail to Sacramento in just under 10 days. After that, teenaged boys regularly made the nearly 2,000-mile trip back and forth from St. Joseph to Sacramento. They rode through blizzards and snowdrifts, over the white salt desert of Utah and the badlands of Nevada,…

Not every family who moved to the frontier lived in a sod house. Simple but sturdy one-room log cabins were introduced to the United States by early Swedish and Finnish settlers. Those settlers came from heavily forested land, so they knew how to build structures from trees. To build a log cabin, a settler cut logs from the trunks or limbs of felled trees. He then dragged them to the site he had chosen for his cabin. Four logs made up the cabin’s foundation. The walls were formed by alternately stacking notched logs horizontally. To prevent drafts, the builder filled the holes in the walls with rocks, wood, and clay. Log cabins were warm, dry, and durable. In addition, they could be built by one person using only an ax:…

On the frontier, families usually lived many miles apart. Isolated pioneers often used work as an excuse to gather people together. If a settler needed to clear land, he planned a logrolling. People came from miles around to help. The men worked all day cutting trees and rolling logs. Sometimes the workers divided into teams. Each team tried to roll logs faster than the other teams. The work was sweaty and hard, but the contests made it fun. Families came, too. Wives brought food to cook and gossip to share while children played. If a family needed to husk their crop of corn, they planned a husking bee. Newly picked ears of corn were piled high. Neighbors divided into teams. Everyone talked, joked, and laughed as they removed the husks…

The first explorers of the North American wilderness in the 1600s returned with something interesting—beaver pelts. They had received the pelts in trade with Indigenous peoples. By the 1800s, beaver pelts had grown quite valuable. Fashionable beaver felt hats were in high demand in Europe. That created a demand for both beavers and men to trap them. Adventurous Euro-Americans headed west into the frontier. They discovered beaver colonies in the rivers that flowed from the Rocky Mountains. Those trappers became known as mountain men. Mountain men had an openness to adventure. They liked being independent and living by their own rules. Traveling to remote parts of the frontier did not intimidate them. They also saw the potential to make a good living. A season’s worth of 300 or 400 furs…

For many, the West represented a chance for a new life. But for America’s Indigenous peoples, the push westward resulted in quite the opposite experience. The story of the Cherokee people, the single largest Native American group in the Southeast, provides just one example of the mistreatment of North American Indigenous peoples during this time. Before the arrival of the first Europeans, the Cherokee people inhabited most of present-day Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as parts of western Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and northern Georgia and Alabama. By the 1800s, Euro-American settlers had taken most of that land. The Cherokees were left with only a small section of northwestern Georgia. When gold was discovered there in 1828, Euro-American people wanted that land, too. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian…

The desire to settle the United States from coast to coast was more than just an American dream. Beginning with the administration of President James K. Polk (1845–1849), it became a national policy known as Manifest Destiny. Americans felt it was the nation’s right to expand westward and settle the North American continent as they saw fit. But traveling across the frontier was a perilous journey. The route through the wild west was not for the faint-hearted. Trouble of any kind—a broken wagon wheel, a deadly disease, bad weather, or a roaming Indigenous party—could mean the end of the journey for pioneers. In order to secure travel routes and protect settlement of the western lands, the U.S. government looked to a network of frontier forts. In the late 1820s, the…

Artist George Catlin (1796–1872) made a handful of trips into the American frontier in the 1830s. He traveled among the many Indigenous peoples who lived along the Missouri River, and he captured their culture in his paintings. He took his works on tour to cities in the East and in Europe. Today, his original Indian Gallery paintings are in the collection of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. Geronimo (1829-1909) was a leading member of the Apache, who called the American Southwest their home. He is remembered today for his fearless and determined resistance to efforts by both the Mexican and the U.S. military to keep the Apache people on reservations in the mid-1800s. He surrendered several times to the U.S. Army, but he always escaped. He surrendered for the last…

Can you solve this crossword puzzle about life on the American frontier? All the answers can be found in this issue. The solution is on page 49. ACROSS 2. The Trail of Tears refers to the forced removal of the _____ people from their traditional lands in the Southeast to less desirable land in Oklahoma. 4. _____ earned their livelihoods in the saddle moving cattle across the Midwestern United States. 5. _____ used the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails to reach the West. 6. A _____ was a home that could be made from the earth and the grass readily available on the mostly treeless prairie. 7. Abilene is one of a number of _____ that appeared overnight during the cattle drive years. 8. Young men riding relays of horses…

The American frontier west of the Mississippi River in the 1800s looked like an ocean of tall grass. The grass grew so high that it was difficult to see over it—even while riding a horse. Unlike trees, which need a lot of water, grass can survive under dry conditions. That is thanks in large part to its extensive and deep root system. The ocean of grassland in the United States was called the prairie. A prairie is an “extensive area of predominantly treeless, flat, rolling grassland.” The word derives from the Old French prairie, which derives from the Latin prata, which means “meadow.” The difference between a prairie and a meadow is that a prairie consists mostly of tall grasses while a meadow tends to be a mixture of tall…

The sun has not yet risen, but Mrs. Keegan is awake already and starting her breakfast fire. The other women in the wagon train of 15 families also are out of bed. The two men who had guarded the cattle, horses, sheep, mules, and oxen during the night are herding the animals back to camp. The animals must be guarded constantly to prevent them from stampeding, being stolen, or wandering off and getting lost. By the time the sun comes up, the rest of the travelers also are awake. Breakfast consists of coffee, milk, bacon, and biscuits. After the quick meal is done, the cows are milked. Then it is time to clean up, repack the wagons, and harness the teams to the wagons. The two men who will serve…

During the 1800s, thousands of people traveled west hoping to find a better life on the American frontier. Many of those settlers were young children who traveled with their families. Meet four real children and read the stories they might have told about their lives on the frontier. Gertrude Appolonia Braat Vandergon (1860–1941) When I was 10, our family left Holland for a “better life” in Minnesota. We packed our belongings into trunks and loaded our organ onto a cart. We sailed to England, then we boarded another ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Twenty-five days later, we arrived in New York City. From there, we journeyed by train to St. Paul, Minnesota. We traveled the last miles by wagon. Finally, we reached the 80 acres of land Father had…

Dramatic change rarely happens overnight. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, newly emancipated African Americans in the South faced constant oppression and discrimination. They were denied an education and the right to vote. They were cheated out of their crops. They were the targets of violence. Newly freed Black people had hoped for better lives and greater opportunities after the Civil War. They soon realized that they would not find that life in the South. As it had for so many others in search of a better future, the West beckoned to African Americans. In the spring of 1879, a mass migration of some 6,000 Black people began moving from the South to Kansas, Nebraska, and other parts of the West. Eventually, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 African Americans…

Boomtowns, so called because they appeared to spring up overnight, popped up all over America’s West in the 1800s. In Kansas alone, towns such as Ellsworth, Caldwell, Wichita, and Dodge City flourished during the years of the cattle drives. Other towns sprang up after the discovery of gold or oil made people rush to the spot to get in on the profits. Boomtowns were places where miners, laborers, and cowboys could find entertainment and gather supplies. Some boomtowns remained in existence only as long as the ore, oil, or cattle lasted. Other towns, serving as stagecoach stops or founded along established trails, survived to become more permanent settlements. Abilene, Kansas, was one such town. Abilene began as a stagecoach stop in 1857 and slowly grew to about 300 residents. It…

The frontier had quite a few bandits and con men. You’ve probably heard of Billy the Kid and Jesse James, but here’s an introduction to a few less-famous outlaws. Poetic Justice The stagecoach driver sat stiff and still. The robber kept a rifle aimed at him as he unpacked the Wells Fargo strongbox. An old flour sack hid the robber’s face. Before he dashed away, he left behind a paper with a poem scribbled on it. The poem was signed “Black Bart.” To the public, Black Bart was a “gentleman thief.” He never swore, was polite to the drivers he robbed, and became famous for the two poems he left behind. From 1875 to 1883, he robbed 28 Wells Fargo stagecoaches in north California. He set up wooden “rifles” in…

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