Paper 1 Section A/A: America, 1840–1895: Expansion and consolidation

June 2021

Q1: How does Interpretation B differ from Interpretation A about the Great Plains?

Explain your answer based on what it says in Interpretations A and B.

Answer:

For example, Interpretation B emphasises that conditions on the Great Plains made them a hostile and dangerous environment. By contrast in Interpretation A, Luther Standing Bear sees the Great Plains as a protecting force that helped the Indians rather than something to be feared. For example, according to Luther Standing Bear (Interpretation A) the Great Plains were tame and friendly whereas Parrish (Interpretation B) says that they could bring death if you were caught out in the open.

Q2: Why might the authors of Interpretations A and B have a different interpretation

about the Great Plains? Explain your answer using Interpretations A and B and your contextual knowledge.

Answer:

For example, students might argue that the beliefs, circumstances and motives of Standing Bear and Parrish were different. As a Sioux Indian brought up on the Plains, Standing Bear would have learnt to respect and love the land which they believed had been created by the Great Spirit and, as a result, adapted their lifestyle to live successfully on the Great Plains. White people like Parrish, however, saw the Great Plains as a hostile environment that needed to be tamed and brought under control and exploited. They worked against the land unlike the Indians who worked with the land hence their different For example, Interpretation A was from an Indian whose whole life had been spent on the Plains, whereas Interpretation B was by Parrish who was an outsider who only worked on the Plains so didn’t understand them.

Q3: Which interpretation gives the more convincing opinion about the Great Plains?

Explain your answer based on your contextual knowledge and what it says in Interpretations A and B.

Answer:

For example, students may make the judgement that Interpretation B is more convincing than Interpretation A as far as white settlers were concerned for the period before the homesteaders arrived on the Plains and began to change them. The homesteaders with their new farming methods and technology ‘tamed’ the Plains and made them productive so later on they, too, would have seen the land as bountiful and agreed with at least part of Interpretation A. For example, supporting Interpretation B by reference to the fact that the Great Plains was seen as an unproductive area without wood or water and unfit for farming – hence the fact that it was dismissed by many Americans as the Great American Desert. It could be a dangerous as the early travellers across it found. Rivers could become raging torrents and impossible to cross while stampeding buffalo could destroy wagon trains. For example, Interpretation A is convincing because the Plains contained huge herds of buffalo which gave the Indians everything that they needed from food to the skins that they covered their tipis with so it was bountiful. For example, answers stating that Interpretation A is convincing as we know that there were extremes of weather like tornados on the Plains and/or that Interpretation B is convincing because the Plains did give the Indians everything that they needed to live successfully.

Q4: Describe two problems faced by the American Government in settling the West.

Answer:

These might include: One problem was getting the settlers onto the Plains. The land was difficult and slow to travel on by Prairie Schooner. The government gave the land to the railway companies to fund a trans-continental railroad linking east and west coasts. They passed the Pacific Railways Act in 1861 and the two sides were linked by 1869. People and products flowed onto and off the Plains easily. Another problem was that the Plains were full of Indians who did not like the Whites who tried to settle on the Plains. Settlers shot the buffalo, put up fences and ploughed the land. The Indians could not live their traditional nomadic lives and reacted to white settlement by killing settlers. News of killings discouraged new settlement so the government used the army. For example, attracting settlers eg, ‘Manifest Destiny’, lawlessness, landholding eg, Homestead Act 1862, the native Americans eg, Indian wars/Treaties/Reservations, communication, information and transportation eg,

Q5: In what ways were the lives of Americans affected by slavery?

Explain your answer.

Answer:

For example, slavery led to the American Civil War, and affected the lives of both the slaves and the slaveowners after it ended. After the Civil War former slaves tried to put their families back together. From 1866 hundreds of people advertised for family members and sent letters to Freedmen’s Bureau to try to find their relatives. Many returned to places from which they had been sold to try to retrieve their children which the former owners wanted to hold onto to put them to work. The southern states passed Black Codes which tried to restrict the rights of freed slaves and keep whites in a superior legal position. For example, some Americans in the southern states made a lot of money from owning slaves who worked on their plantations. They grew tobacco, sugarcane, cotton but a lot of their wealth was in the enslaved workers themselves. By 1861 the South produced 75% of the world’s cotton and there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else For example, many Americans were affected by slavery because that was a major cause of the American Civil War. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation proclamation in 1863, many African-Americans joined the Union army, fought and died for the North. Over 38,000 had died by the end of the war. For example, African-American slaves working on cotton, sugarcane or tobacco plantations in the South lived a short and brutal life. They did not live long. Most of them worked in the fields growing the crops. They could not marry. If they had children they were often separated from their parents. For example, slavery affected many African-Americans because they were forced to work on cotton or sugarcane plantations in the southern states.

Q6: Which of the following was the more important reason why the Plains Indians were

defeated: • the destruction of the buffalo • the US Army? Explain your answer with reference to both bullet points.

Answer:

For example, both reasons are important. The army did not officially support the buffalo hunters however, they often supplied them with ammunition to kill buffalo. The generals realised that the Indians depended on the buffalo and by killing buffalo, the hunters could save soldiers’ lives. President Ulysses Grant did not sign a bill in Congress in 1874 to protect the buffalo, allowing the killing to continue. The army then attacked a weaker and more desperate enemy during the winter campaigns when the Indians would stay in one place for long periods of time and try to conserve their food supplies. For example, the army were important in defeating the Indians because they outnumbered the Indians, had a railroad and forts to supply the men. But above all they fought a strategy of total war and winter campaigns whereas the Indians fought in small groups, they rarely worked together, and not in the winter. The army had better weapons. However, without the buffalo, the Indians could not survive on the Plains so the buffalo hunters did more than the regular army to destroy the Indian lifestyle and force them onto reservations. For example, the Plains Indians needed the buffalo for their nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle. They followed the buffalo herds across the plains only killing the animals they needed to survive. The buffalo hunters were not interested in the meat, they wanted the skins and so destroyed whole herds. By the end of 1875, the southern plains herds were gone and the Indians had to go onto For example, the Plains Indians relied on the buffalo for everything, they made their clothes, shoes, tipis from buffalo and made jerky for food.