Life in the West

Today in class we read newspapers from the timespan of 1866-1880 from places out West. I found a newspaper(I lost track of the name and place) about a murder trial that was going on, and the community seemed to be very against the suspect. They wanted him to be found guilty but they had very little evidence to put him away. This taught me that the West did not have a very strong judicial system because they had trouble convicting this man although the entire town believed he was guilty. I also read the Arizona Citizen, and this talked about the Apaches. The newspaper listed many crimes and wrongdoings of the Indians, so I concluded that people from Arizona saw the Apaches as murderers and very bad people. Another thing I found out about the West was that railroad accidents were very common and seemed almost unavoidable. The Helena Weekly Herald proved this by mentioning very many stories and statistics about railroad problems out West. All of this information about the West that I found in the Newspaper Archive showed me that they were still in the process of developing during this time frame because every newspaper seemed to be talking about a conflict going on.

These are two images of railroad accidents in the West in the 1870s.

This is a picture of the fierce Apache Indians.

Human Trafficking Summary

In history we learned that slavery is still very present in society today. It occurs in many different forms nowadays. An example we discussed was forced marriage, which is when someone is married without one of the spouse's consent due to different circumstances such as money or religion. Also human trafficking is a very serious topic and is relevant in many countries around the world. Different types of this terrible phenomenon include organ trafficking and sex trafficking. This subject is very important for people of our generation to learn about because it is still occurring today all around us.