Lewis and Clark Timeline
Post Expedition 1871 - 1880

1871

Kansas City hide dealer J.N. Dubois floods the plains with offers to buy all buffalo hides taken any time of the year. The use of buffalo hides commercially as drive belts for industrial machinery touches off "the big kill," in which 3,700,000 buffalo are destroyed.

All American Indian people are made national wards and the U.S. Government discontinues the practice of making treaties with Indian nations under the Indian Appropriation Act, passed in March. General Sheridan issues orders forbidding western Indians to leave reservations without the permission of civilian agents.

The Apache War in New Mexico is caused by the massacre of over one hundred Apaches at Camp Grant in Arizona.

The Ferdinand V. Hayden survey party, including photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran, explores the Yellowstone area.

John Wesley Powell leads a second Grand Canyon exploration down the Colorado River.

Henry M. Stanley, working as a reporter for The New York Herald, finds David Livingstone, British Explorer, at Ujiji in Central Africa. Livingstone was presumed lost since 1866, when he had set out to discover the source of the Nile River.

Phineas T. Barnum produces the first "Greatest Show on Earth" circus in Brooklyn, N.Y..

1872

The Amnesty Act is passed by Congress: civil rights are restored to all citizens of the South except for five to seven hundred former Confederate leaders.

Vice-President Schuyler Colfax and Congressman James A. Garfield are accused by The New York Sun of taking bribes from the "Credit Mobilier," a construction company secretly owned by Union Pacific Railroad stockholders. An investigation culminates in the censure of the accused.

Congress establishes Yellowstone National Park as "a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." This first National Park comprises 3,348 square miles at the junction of the borders of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

Susan B. Anthony tests the Fourteenth Amendment by leading a group of women to cast ballots in the Presidential election. She is arrested, found guilty, and fined $100.

Mark Twain publishes Roughing It about his experiences in the gold fields of Nevada and California.

1873

The Timber Culture Act of 1873 augments the Homestead Act by giving title to an additional 160 acres of land to any person who plants trees on at least forty acres of it; residence on the land is not required.

The Coal Lands Act of 1873 allows the purchase of public coal land for ten to twenty dollars per acre, depending upon its distance from a railroad.

The Panic of 1873 is precipitated by the failure of the Jay Cooke Company Banking House, which is involved in the financing of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Two days later, the New York Stock Exchange is closed.

Modoc Indians led by "Captain Jack" hold out in the impenetrable lava beds in California, and inflict sixty-nine casualties on attacking troops while remaining unharmed. The Indians are finally dislodged by massive artillery bombardments; "Captain Jack" is hanged.

A patent for an improvement in barbed wire is issued to Joseph Glidden.

More immigrants come to the U.S. than in any previous year: the total is almost 460,000.

1874

Gen. George A. Custer leads an expeditionary force into the Black Hills of Dakota, confirming reports of the discovery of gold.

Starving Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos leave their reservation in search of buffalo in the heart of the last buffalo range, Palo Duro Canyon. Gen. Mackenzie's troops find the great Palo Duro village on September 26.

Rocky Mountain locusts devastate grain growing areas of the Great Plains from Texas to Canada.

Ohio women begin the "whiskey war" in an effort to eradicate the liquor trade. Women stand in front of liquor stores and with prayers and songs, denounce the sale of intoxicants.

Eads Bridge, the first bridge to cross the lower Mississippi River, is opened in St. Louis.

In the case of Minor v. Happersett, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that women do not automatically have the right to vote by virtue of citizenship. Individual states have the right to decide which of their citizens have suffrage rights.

1875

Fifteen thousand gold seekers enter the region of the Black Hills, enticed by reports from Gen. Custer's expedition and ignoring Indian rights in the area.

President Grant sends a commission "to treat with the Sioux Indians for the relinquishment of the Black Hills."

Mary Baker Eddy, a widow, publishes Science and Health, the basic text of Christian Science.

Public lands on Mackinac Island in Michigan are declared a "National public park or grounds for health, comfort, and pleasure, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" by Congress.

In the Red River War on the southern plains, Quanah Parker leads Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne Forces against the U.S. Army.

1876

The War Department authorizes General Sheridan to commence operations against the "hostile Sioux." Sheridan orders Generals Crook and Terry to begin military operations in the direction of the headwaters of the Powder, Tongue, Rosebud, and Bighorn Rivers.

General Crook is defeated at the Battle of the Rosebud by American Indians under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

Gen. George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry attack more than one thousand Lakota (Sioux), Arapaho and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse, encamped along the Little Bighorn River. In the battle that follows, Custer and 270 cavalrymen, scouts and Indian allies are killed.

A detachment of Gen. Crook's army strikes the Cheyenne village of Dull Knife in central Wyoming.

The centennial exposition of United States Independence is held in Philadelphia. Almost ten million people come to see such machines as a self-binding reaper, web printing press, typewriter, refrigerated boxcar, duplex telegraph, the Corliss engine, and Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone.

Colorado is admitted as the thirty-eighth state in the Union.

1877

Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated as the nineteenth President of the United States.

Crazy Horse is killed at Fort Robinson.

Sitting Bull takes his people to Canada.

The Nez Percé, under Chief Joseph, flee seventeen hundred miles on their way to Canada to join Sitting Bull. In a brilliant military campaign, Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé field commander, Looking Glass, elude, outmaneuver, and defeat the best efforts of the U.S. Army. The Nez Percé are finally defeated at the Battle of Bear Paw, a short distance from their goal in Canada.

Thomas A. Edison perfects the electric light bulb.

The Farmer's Alliance, a cooperative union for the purpose of agrarian reform, holds its first formal meeting in Texas.

A general strike halts movement of railroad trains, and spreads across the entire U.S.. Troops battle railroad workers in some cities, and force an end to the nationwide strike.

Nicodemus, Kansas, is settled by African Americans from Kentucky.

William H. Holmes and William Henry Jackson make a tour of most of the known ancient Indian sites, including San Juan, Canyon de Chelly, Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Pintado and the existing Moqui [Hopi] Villages near the Colorado River. Their explorations reveal for the first time the sweep of an entire lost civilization.

1878

A second Dakota land boom is promoted by the entry of the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railroads into the territory.

The Timber Cutting Act allows miners and settlers to cut timber for their own use on public land, free of charge.

The Greenback Labor Party is organized at a Toledo, Ohio convention by delegates from twenty-eight states. Their platform reflects labor viewpoints, calling, in part, for restrictions on the hours of industrial labor, suppression of national bank notes, and checks on Chinese immigration.

The first electric light company in the U.S., the Edison Electric Light Company, is formed with a headquarters at 65 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Thomas A. Edison is awarded a patent for the phonograph.

The first bicycles, called "wheels," are manufactured in the U.S.

A woman suffrage amendment is submitted to Congress.

A yellow fever epidemic strikes, killing 5,000 in Memphis, Tennessee and 4,000 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1879

Clarence King is appointed director of the newly-created U.S. Geological Survey.

John Wesley Powell publishes his Report on the Arid Regions of the United States. A scientific and environmental approach to using the West and its resources wisely, Powell's book was also the first modern treatise on political reform in the West.

George B. Selden applies for a patent on the first carriage in America to be run by an internal combustion engine.

In one of the largest spontaneous migrations in history, over 6,000 oppressed African Americans, called "Exodusters," travel from the former slave states to the great plains of Kansas to establish homesteads and begin new lives.

Thomas A. Edison brings three thousand spectators to his shop in New Jersey to see a demonstration of hundreds of incandescent lamps. Edison's system makes electricity for home light able to compete with gas.

Frank W. Woolworth and his partner W.H. Moore open a "five and ten cent" store in Utica, New York.

The first intercity telephone communication is established between Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts.

1880

A U.S.-China treaty gives the U.S. the right to regulate, limit, or suspend immigration of laborers from China. Cheap immigrant labor has led to pressure for abrogation of the Burlington Treaty of 1868 which allowed unlimited Chinese immigration.

Gold is discovered near Juneau, Alaska.

The celebrated French actress, Sarah Bernhardt, makes her American debut at Booth's Theater in New York City.

Tenth census: U.S. population - 50,156,000.