Old West Timeline

• On January 13, the Great Fire struck New Orleans; it was thought to be set by rebel slaves.
• On May 26 the Indian Removal Act is passed
• George Catlin becomes the first important artist to paint the American Indians

• On February 24, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, was proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi ceded land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.
• On May 27, trapper-explorer Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanches on the Santa Fe Trail.
• The First Missouri steamboat reaches Pierre, South Dakota
• James Bowie invents the Bowie knife.

• On April 6, the Black Hawk War began when the Sauk and Fox people tried to plant their corn fields and were repulsed by whites. They Indians were forced to leave Illinois.
• On August 2, 1300 Illinois militia massacred some 150 Sauk and Fox men, women and children who were followers of Black Hawk at the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin. Black Hawk himself finally surrendered three weeks later, bringing the Black Hawk War to an end.
• On August 2, Texas settlers refused an order to surrender their arms to José de las Piedras, commander of the Mexican battalion at Nacogdoches. The ensuing battle of Nacogdoches is sometimes called the opening gun of the Texas Revolution.
• On October 20, in the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, the Chickasaw Nation ceded northern Mississippi and moved west of the Mississippi River.

• On January 12, a law was passed making it unlawful for any native person to remain within the boundaries of the state of Florida.
• Brothers Charles and William Bent and veteran trapper-trader Ceran St. Vrain open Bent's Fort on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail.
• Samuel Colt invents and begins producing the revolver.
• After Joseph Smith founded the Church of Latter-Day Saints community of Zion in what is now Kansas City, Missouri, area residents vehemently resisted and demanded that they leave. In July, a group of 500 men destroyed the offices and press of the Mormon newspaper, burned Mormon literature, and tarred and feathered two Mormons.
• On September 26, the Treaty of Chicago was signed by the Potawatomi of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, assuring their relocation to reservations west of the Mississippi River in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.

• In May, after more persecution in Zion, Joseph Smith gathered 150-200 armed volunteers from Ohio and headed to Missouri. However, when they arrived a month and a half later, they found the town of Zion deserted and burned to the ground. The Mormons, in the meantime, had moved some 40 miles north, creating a new settlement called Far West, Missouri.
• On June 30, the Indian Intercourse Act creates Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The territory also included parts of Kansas and Nebraska, but these lands were taken back when the Kansas and Nebraska territories were created in 1854.
• Fort Laramie becomes the first trading post in Wyoming

• On May 26, Congress passed a resolution stating that it had no authority over state slavery laws.
• On October 2, the first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as U.S. settlers defeated a Mexican cavalry near the Guadalupe River.
• On November 13, Texans officially proclaimed independence from Mexico, calling itself the Lone Star Republic

• On February 24, the Alamo is attacked by Mexican forces and all of its more than 180 defenders are slain, including William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.
• Texans under Sam Houston defeat the Mexican army and capture General Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto
• Texas becomes a Republic.

• On June 17, the Cherokee begin the Trail of Tears, a 1,200 mile forced march from the East to present-day Oklahoma.
• A smallpox epidemic north of San Francisco killed over 60,000 natives.

• Missourians near Far West, Missouri are no more happy about the Mormons than those near Zion, some five years earlier. As Far West has grown to some 5,000 people, the anti-Mormon hysteria increases and the Mormons form their own army. After a number of skirmishes between the two factions, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs announced in October:  “The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary for the public good. Their outrages are beyond all description.” On October 30, 200 to 250 militia marched on the village killing seventeen Latter-day Saints and one friendly non-Mormon. The Mormons were then forced to give up their property and leave.

• On March 19, Republic of Texas soldiers killed some thirty Penateka Comanche leaders and warriors and five women and children in the Council House Fight in San Antonio.
• On May 10, Mormon leader Joseph Smith moved his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
• After the Council House Fight in San Antonio, Texas, the Comanche retaliated by raiding villages throughout the Guadelupe Valley. When the Texas army and Rangers went after them, the Battle of Plum Creek was fought on August 11 resulting in a decisive defeat of the Comanche.

• The first covered wagons to travel the Oregon Trail arrive in Sacramento, California.

• John C. Fremont begins his exploration of the West along with guide Kit Carson.
• On August 14, the Second Seminole War ended; natives were removed from Florida to Oklahoma.

• The California Trail opens.

• Miles Goodyear establishes Fort Buenaventura, the first town in Utah, on the site of present-day Ogden.
• On June 27, Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Mormon religion, was murdered along with his brother Hyrum when an anti-Mormon mob broke into a jail in Carthage, Illinois, where they were being held on charges of inciting a riot.

• John L. O'Sullivan, a newspaper editor, claimed that it was the "manifest destiny" of the U.S. to take Texas and spread to the Pacific Ocean.
• Texas is admitted to the union.
• Texas banned saloons but the law was never enforced and was repealed in 1856.
• On September 16, Phineas Wilcox was stabbed to death by fellow Mormons in Nauvoo, Illinois, because he was believed to be a Christian spy. Wilcox was one of the first victims of "blood atonement," a Mormon doctrine conceived of by Brigham Young, according to which murder is sometimes necessary in order to save a sinful soul.

• Brigham Young and 3,000 Mormons set out for Utah on February 4, 1846.
• On May 8, the first major battle of the Mexican War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas, resulting in victory for General Zachary Taylor's forces.
• On May 13, the U.S. Congress declared war on Mexico.
• The Black Bear Revolt begins in California.
• The American flag is raised at Monterey, California.
• The United States, in a treaty with Britain, obtains the Oregon Territory
• The first permanent settlement in Idaho is established by Mormons
• The Donner Party is trapped in the Sierra Nevada when winter descends

• On January 13, the Treaty of Cahuenga ended the Mexican-American War in California.
• On January 19, the Pueblo people of Taos, New Mexico struck back, attacking a Taos home that Governor Charles Bent was visiting, murdered his guards, and then killed him. Fifteen more white settlers were killed before the rebellion was quelled by Colonel Sterling Price.
• Brigham Young and the Mormons arrive at the Great Salt Lake
• Samuel Colt, with Texas Ranger Captain Sam Walker, develops the revolver.
• In the Whitman Massacre of November 29th, Cayuse and Umatilla Indians murdered missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa as well as 12 others near the present-day town of Walla Walla, Washington. The incident began the Cayuse War.

• On May 19 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War; the United States gets more than one-half million square miles, including what will become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado.  Texas is also ceded to the United States.James Marshall discovers gold at Sutter's Mill in California
• Thomas Garrett, a Quaker, was apprehended after leading 2700 slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
• A Mormon trading post at Genoa is the first permanent settlement in Nevada.
• Oregon in organized as a territory.
• The State of Deseret, incorporated by the Mormons, includes Utah, most of Nevada and Arizona, and parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Colorado

• 80,000 forty-niners make their way to California in search of gold
• In January, the town of Old Dry Diggings, California was unofficially renamed Hangtown when a mob ran down William Campbell, David Davis and Matthew Freer, who reportedly tried to rob a local gambler. The men were flogged and hanged on Main Street.
• At Chinese Camp, California the first outbreak of anti-Chinese violence erupted as a result of a depression in the mining industry when white miners attempted to rid the Chinese miners from the community.
• When outlaw Joaquin Murrieta and his brother were arrested in Murphys, California for robbery, Joaquin was tied to a tree and brutally beaten, his brother was hanged, and his wife was raped. Afterwards, when he tried to file charges, he was told that it was not illegal for whites to rape Mexican women or for whites to kill Mexicans. Murrieta would retaliate by beginning a series of raids and criminal activities throughout the state.
• On December 6, Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland. She would travel to the South 19 times and brought out more than 300 slaves

• Levi Strauss begins manufacturing heavyweight trousers for gold miners, made of the twilled cotton cloth known as "genes" in France. Strauss had intended to make tents, but finding no market, made a fortune in pants instead.
• On June 3, five Cayuse men were hanged in Oregon City, Oregon for the Whitman Massacre.
• On September 9, California is admitted to the union.
• On September 9, New Mexico and Utah are organized as a territories.
• On September 29 President Millard Fillmore appoints Brigham Young first governor of Utah Territory.
• On November 29, the San Francisco Grand Jury condemned gambling as "a crying evil," and urged that something must be done about prize fighting as well as numerous houses of ill-repute.
• In the 1850's the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance executed 10 people for murder, 12 for conspiracy to commit murder, and 9 for kidnapping.

• John L. Soule, in an editorial in the Terre Haute Express, advises: "Go West, young man, go West." But New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley gets credit for the line.
• On September 17th, the Treaty of Fort Laramie is signed with the Sioux Indians.
• On July 5, "Pretty Juanita," convicted of murder after stabbing a man who had tried to rape her, became the first person hanged in the California mining camps. Occurring In Downieville, she was convicted the same day it happened and was said to have given a laugh and a salute as the rope pulled tight.
• On March 27th Mariposa Battalion, led by James D. Savage are first reported non-natives to enter Yosemite Valley.
  On November 13 the he Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what will become Seattle, Washington.

• The Mormon Church in Utah officially acknowledges that the practice of polygamy is part of its religion.
• On March 18 the Wells Fargo Company was founded to provide express and banking services to California.

• On February 8th, Washington is organized as a territory
• March - Levi Strauss arrives in San Francisco and opens store supplying goods and clothing to Gold Rush miners
• Uncle Tom's Cabin sold over two million copies during the first two years of its publication. In the first three years after its publication, fourteen proslavery novels were written to contradict the book's antislavery messages.
• On July 25, in a macabre instance of rough frontier justice, California Rangers claimed a $6000 reward by bringing in the severed head of outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, preserved in whiskey.
• On October 25, Paiute people attacked U.S. Army Captain John W. Gunnison and his party of 37 soldiers and railroad surveyors near Sevier Lake, Utah. Gunnison and seven other men were killed.
• On December 30th, the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico adds 29,640 square miles the territory that becomes Arizona and New Mexico.

• Nebraska and Kansas are organized as territories.
• White settlers in Del Norte County, California ambushed and killed 30 Tolowa people at the Etculet village on Lake Earl.
• On May 30, the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, creates the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and opens the Northern territories to slavery leading to the "Bleeding Kansas" violence the next year.
• On August 19 the Grattan Massacre occurred near Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

• Lecompton government established in Kansas, starting the Kansas/Missouri Border War between pro-slavery and pro-freedom forces.
• On September 3, General William Harney and 700 soldiers took revenge for the Grattan Massacre with a brutal attack on a Sioux village in Nebraska that left 100 men, women and children dead.
• On October 4, Kamiakan, chief of the Yakama, defeated forces under Major Haller in the first engagement of the Yakama War.

• On May 21, 1856, Border Ruffians and other pro-slavery supporters captured and sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas.

• On May 24, in retaliation for the sacking of the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces, militant abolitionist John Brown led a raid against a pro-slavery settlement along Pottawatomie Creek. Over the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in what became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

• On September 11, 1857 approximately 120 men, women, and children in a wagon train from Arkansas were murdered by a band of Mormons set on a holy vengeance.  Known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the history of this event continues to generate fierce controversy and deep emotions even to this day.

• On September 14, Mormon leader Brigham Young tried to prevent U.S. troops from entering the territory of Utah, when President James Buchanan sent them into to impose federal law. The Mormons attacked the federal troops' supply lines, burning Fort Bridger, and setting fire to the plains to deprive the advancing army of forage for its horses. At the same time, he readied a plan to evacuate and destroy Salt Lake City, should the federal troops get through.

• Gold is discovered in Colorado
• The first non-stop stage coach from St. Louis, Missouri arrives in Los Angeles, California completing the 2,600 mile trip across the Southwest in 20 days.

• Oregon is admitted to the Union
• Gold is discovered in Boulder Canyon, Colorado, sparking the Pikes Peak gold rush which brings an estimated 100,000 fortune-hunters to the Rockies under the banner "Pikes Peak or Bust."
• The Comstock Lode is discovered in Nevada.
• Painter Albert Bierstadt makes his first trip to the West.
• The first steamboat from St. Louis arrives in Fort Benton, Montana, the farthest-inland port in the world.

• Gold is discovered in Idaho.

• The Pony Express completes its inaugural delivery, bringing mail over the 1,966 miles from St. Louis, Missouri to Sacramento, California in 11 days.
• Kansas is admitted to the Union.
• North Dakota and Nevada are organized as territories.
• Denver, Colorado is incorporated as a city.
• Crews working to complete a coast-to-coast telegraph line meet at Fort Bridger in Utah Territory. The first transcontinental telegram, transmitted from Sacramento to Washington, carries a message from the state's Chief Justice to President Lincoln. Completion of a transcontinental telegraph line signals the end for the Pony Express.
• The Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Fort Sumter.
• Colorado is organized as a territory
• Federal troops evacuate Indian Territory soldiers
• Nevada is organized as a territory

• Henry Griffin discovers gold near the Powder River in Oregon.

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