This article is written by the author: Nine Dreams Shock Hua Submitted by the public number: Lost Raiders Group
In this article, I will use the plot of the game as a lead to introduce the specific situation and cultural background of the gold rush and the westward movement, and intersperse some details in the game in the material, I hope you like it.
Game story background
1. As the gang migrates to Mawangpaotai, the wheels of the carriage fall, and Hosea discovers the natives (flying eagles) on the top of the hill and explains to Arthur that the natives originally had the Heart of the Earth, but the resources were robbed of everything, and they were either killed or driven away. This also laid the groundwork for the later meeting.
2. Early in the game, there is a protagonist who hunts bison with Charles, but when the two arrive at the predetermined location, they find multiple bison corpses on the ground, and the death of the bison is caused by shooting. Charles found out why: poachers were killing innocents and blaming the local Indians.
3. Later in the game, Arthur's gang is involved in a war between Indian tribes and oil tycoon Cornwall and the army, in which the army offers unreasonable conditions to persecute the Indians, either to go to war (the army has a legitimate reason to slaughter) or to exile in the barren land. Cornwall coveted the rich natural resources of the indigenous peoples, so a major war was inevitable
4. The major cities in the game have buildings or machines with obvious modern styles, and I will intersperse them with game content and scenery
Historical Abstract: The Westward Movement refers to the movement of the inhabitants of the eastern United States to the Western Region, beginning in the late 18th century and ending in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a long-term and sustained movement of social change, the Westward Movement had an important impact on American modernization. This article will focus on the technological development and impact of the Westward Expansion Movement on the Indians
A prerequisite for the Westward Expansion movement in the United States.
Through the War of Independence of 1775-1781 and the Second War of Independence of 1812-1814, the thirteen British colonies in North America were freed from colonial rule, cleared of colonial influence, removed the constraints of westward expansion, and established and consolidated the United States of America. The Revolutionary War was the prerequisite for the United States to develop its economy independently and opened the way for the Westward Expansion Movement of the United States. When it became independent in 1776, the United States had only about 369,000 square miles of territory along the Atlantic coast, and by 1790 the United States had reached 888,800 square miles, and in 1860 it had increased to 302.67 square miles. After the Civil War, the United States continued its territorial expansion process, and such an ever-increasing vast and fertile land provided another necessary premise for the Westward Expansion Movement of the United States.
The biggest reason for the development of the western region was that there were quite sharp contradictions in society at that time, of which the contradiction between man and nature was particularly prominent. After the War of Independence, the antagonistic contradictions of various classes did not disappear, and the population surged, not only the demand for space increased, but also the consumption of human resources.
The best way to solve this problem is to have some people migrate to more resource-rich places. In addition, the people in the southern region suffered from the hierarchical system, and the people in the north could not bear the hunger and cold. In order to explore opportunities and wealth, and to solve the contradiction between people and resources, a vigorous westward expansion movement began.
The content and role of the westward expansion movement
The westward expansion movement played an extremely important role in the development of the US economy. The impact on industrial development has the following aspects:
1. First: It provides American industry with a large amount of cheap labor. According to statistics, from 1815 to 1890, as many as fifteen million immigrants immigrated to the United States, and most of them were young men between the ages of fourteen and forty. In 1864, the United States established the Immigration Bureau to encourage foreign immigrants by taking advance travel fees, reducing freight, preferential loans, freedom to come and go, exemption from conscription, and citizenship rights for foreign immigrants.
From 1820 to 1900, the total number of immigrants reached 19.12 million, of which 14.06 million were from 1860 to 1900. In 1850 Wisconsin became almost a German state, with more than 100,000 German immigrants. In the game, when Arthur goes to the third chapter to find Rhodes' new camp, it is the German family who saves them. In addition, players can find Chinese workers building railways and a large number of Cantonese-speaking immigrants in Saint-Denis.
A large part of these immigrants flowed into the cities and became wage workers, providing a large amount of labor for American industrial production. The influx of immigrants not only made up for the shortage of labor, but also brought advanced science and technology in Europe, which improved the technology and technology of the United States.
The St. Denis in the game is the representative of the civilized city, which has a botanical hall, a cinema and other new era products. At the same time, with the continuous development and utilization of the rich natural resources of the western United States, the development of American industry has a strong material foundation. For example, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the development of oil fields in southern California, and the establishment of the Colorado Steel Base all played a major role in the development of American industry. In-game refineries can be found near the Heart of the Earth.
2. The "Westward Movement" has promoted the development of agricultural production in the United States more obviously. Between 1855 and 1900, the arable land area in the United States increased from 293.56 million acres to 841.2 million acres; with the development of the west, the center of agricultural production gradually shifted to the west, and agriculture was roughly divided into the following regions: the west became the supply of grain and livestock to the whole country, the northern and central states on the Atlantic coast operated livestock, vegetables and orchards, and the south formed a third agricultural area, which gradually shifted to the production of cotton since the eighteenth century;
The westward movement enabled the independent small-scale peasant economy to be generally established in the American west and to move forward without feudal constraints, thus preparing good conditions for the formation of capitalist farms; the reclamation of a large amount of idle land made the land in the United States cheap, and people could save money and put it into production. In the game Emerald Ranch and Lodz Town can be observed the local developed livestock and agriculture.
3. If you ask me what impressed me most in my eldest cousin, my answer must be the train. The rather epochal train and the bustling railway station of Saint-Denis show us the great industrial capabilities. During the colonial period, transportation was extremely backward. With the development of the westward movement, the population continued to move westward, markets and agricultural areas gradually moved to the west, and product exchanges became more frequent and larger, while traditional means of transportation could not meet the increasingly strong transportation demand at that time.
The U.S. government is aware of this need. The U.S. Railroad, which was less than 100 miles in 1830, increased to more than 3,000 miles by 1840, and increased by an average of 200 percent per year for the next 20 years, with 30,000 miles of railroads in service in the United States by 1860, and in 1862 the U.S. Congress passed the formation of the Federal Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad, which were merged from east to west at Promenta in May 1869. In 1864, Congress passed a resolution to build the North Pacific Railroad. By 1890 the railway had reached 167,000 miles, forming a rail network covering the whole country. By 1914, the western railway mileage had reached half of the country's 253,000 railway miles.
In the game, most towns have train stations, and this convenient way of getting around is not cheap. The control of the railway is in the hands of the tycoon Cornwall, and there are still many plots about him in the game, which will not be repeated here.
The influence of the Westward Expansion on the Indians
1. The Influence of Land Policy on the Way indians lived during the Westward Expansion Movement
The development of the land is the main content of the westward movement, and the development is to occupy the land, and the Indians are the indigenous peoples of the western land, but in their consciousness, the land is only the place where they live, not to themselves. The whites, on the other hand, used their technological superiority to wage a war for land with the Indians. Whites took two main forms, one was direct military plunder, that is, in the areas where the Indians occupied the land, killing and driving out the local tribes and then annexing their land. The other was the so-called legal method, which consisted of two, one was the signing of a treaty, but in 1795 the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Greenville with the Indians, and the Indians ceded large areas of territory, but were still brutally slaughtered by the whites. In this case, the resistance of the Indians also intensified, and the contradictions between the two races intensified.
Another legitimate way is to introduce a system of reservations. A reservation is a small piece of land that the U.S. government has carved out of the original land of the Indians for the tribesmen to continue to live on. The land was limited in scope and was not allowed to leave, and non-Native Americans were not allowed to break in at will. The Indians on the reservation were under the supervision and control of the army and government officials. Under this system, the Indians not only lost most of their land and homeland, but also their rights such as freedom.
In the game, the army and Cornwall forces slaughter and drive out the Indians, and despite the repeated concessions of the rain (tribal chief), some rather excessive behavior makes the rest of the people angry, and Arthur's gang is involved in the dispute. In the end, under the melee of several sides, both sides were defeated. The game restores this history very well, and everyone can experience it for themselves.
As mentioned above, one of the most important elements of the westward expansion movement was the construction of railways. The construction of these railroads allowed the economic and cultural development of the United States rapidly, but the railroads were also like a butcher knife inserted into the natives. Nomadism was one of the means of subsistence for the Indians on the Great Plains. Cornwall in the game is all about railroads and oil resources. After the construction of the railway in the west, there were often incidents of bison crossing the railway or even knocking the train over, so the railway company hired a group of hunters to kill the bison on the grounds of safety. Subsequently, because of the tannery's acquisition of ya cowhide, the hunters' activities of hunting bison on the prairie became uncontrollable, which also led to the basic disappearance of the bison herd.
The construction of the railway for the Indians of the Great Plains, in addition to the loss of land and homes, was most important to the local bison hunted and killed, resulting in the loss of the material basis on which they depended. The important character Charles said in the opening chapter that bison is the most important resource of indians, and almost all of the Indians' supplies are produced by bison. In the long period of interdependence, the bison also became the cultural standard of the Indians and was an integral part of the Indians' lives. Charles said their people have great respect for the bison. Although the Indians also hunted bison, the hunt was limited and did not upset the balance of nature's biological chain. Bison and Indians live in harmony on the prairie, maintaining an ecological balance.
In the westward expansion movement, white people saw wealth from bison and devastated the killing of bison, which not only led to the imbalance of the ecology of nature, but also destroyed the national beliefs of indians, so that Indians lost the wealth on which to survive. The disappearance of the bison means the destruction of this ancient people, the disappearance of cultural sustenance and the destruction of the ecological balance. This provoked desperate resistance from the Indians, but the consequence of the resistance was the more brutal repression of the whites. Charles in the game is surprisingly angry when confronted with poachers, and directly pulls out a gun to keep them there forever. This is also the first time the player has seen Charles the most angry and actively killing people.
When whites came to the west, they destroyed the ecological balance of development here. Faced with vast expanses of land, dense forests, and in addition to their quest for wealth, migrants felt threatened, cutting down forests and killing animals in order to ensure safety, protect their poultry, and obtain food. In the Westward Expansion Movement, whites considered the Indians to be barbaric and ignorant. They themselves are civilized, and the task of the immigrants is to eliminate ignorance and spread civilization, so the immigrants are full of enthusiasm and even passion for the transformation of the west. They cut down forests and uprooted trees, which became the most important living resources for immigrants to build houses, heat up, and produce furniture. In addition, pine trees such as pine trees, cedar trees, white oak trees, hickory trees, etc. have been widely cut down because of their high commercial value. Soon, because of this over-felling tree, the number of trees was greatly reduced, and some of the trees were gone extinct, and some biological species disappeared.
In the process of European colonists' invasion of Indians, various viruses and diseases brought by colonists such as smallpox, malaria, measles, and whooping cough had a great impact on the physiological system of Indians. European colonists have developed certain antibodies and immunity to these viruses, and the improvement of medical care has also strengthened the defense against diseases. But the Indians in a primitive state lived a primitive nomadic life, their tribes did not have these germs, there were no antibodies in the body to deal with such diseases, and the immune system was not formed, so the spread of these viruses in Indian society changed the original physical condition of Indians. These also caused physical harm to the Indians, destroyed their physical fitness, weakened the fighting power of the Indians, and most of the Indians infected with the virus died of disease, which also contributed to the invasion of the colonists.
Throughout the history of the westward expansion movement, it is the golden history of the United States, but it is also the history of the blood and tears of the Indians. We've also had the privilege of getting a glimpse of the truth in Red Dead Redemption 2. Authenticity and detail are the biggest charm of this game. Thank you for being able to see here, I am Jiuhua Dream, we will see you in the next issue!
Reference quotes:
The U.S. Westward Expansion Movement and its Western Development Wang Hongci
The Historical Experience and Lessons of the Westward Expansion Movement in the United States Jiang Yong and Ye Chusheng
On the Nature of the "Westward Movement" and Its Historical Role Han Yi
The Historical Tragedy of american Indians and the Westward Movement Sun Jiangli, College of Lishe, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, 250014
A Brief Exploration of the Influence of the Westward Movement on indians Mao Zhenyu Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123