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Unit wild west
Vocab
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Frontier | unsettled or sparsely settled area of the country occupied mostly by native Americans |
Great Plains | the area from the Missouri River to the rocky Mountains |
Comstock Lode | Location of a mine of valuable minerals next to Virginia city, Nevada |
Boomtown | a town that has a sudden burst of economic or population growth |
Ghost town | A one thriving community in which of the population has left |
Vigilantes | People that took the law into their own hands due to lack of law enforcement |
Exodusters | Freed slaves that fled the south after reconstruction and settled in the west |
Wyoming | the first states to give women the right to vote |
Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad that would span the continental connected the east with the west |
Union PAcific | Rain road company that began in Omaha and build track going west on the great plains |
Central pacific | Rail rod company that started in California and went east , blasting though the sierra Nevada mountains |
Golden spike | event in which union PAcific and central pacific met in promontory summit, Utah on 1896; completed the first transcontinental railroad |
Long drive | a 2-3 month trip in which cowboys led cattle to the cow towns along the railroads |
Open range | unfenced land on the great plains in which cattle were aloud to graze |
Vaquero | the first cowboys that came from Mexico and settled in the south west |
Cowhead | Cowboys that took the cattle from Texas to the railroads on the Great Plains |
Sitting Bull: | Sioux chief and medicine man that led native forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn |
Crazy Horse | Sioux chief and warrior that fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn and was known for his bravery |
Geronimo | Apache chief that fought Mexican and US forces in the Southwest, surrendered to the US government in 1887 |
Chief Joseph | Chief of the Nez Perce tribe; led them in a daring escape to Canada fighting off the US army |
Reservation | an area of land set aside for native Americans to live on |
BAttle of little BIg horn | Battle in which the US 7th Cavalery was massacred by Sioux, Cheyenne and arapaho warriors |
George Custer | leader of the 7th caverly know for fighting native Americans; was defeated and killed at the battle of little bighorn |
Wounded knee | event in which a group of US soldiers massacred a camp of 300 Sioux men, women and children in 1890; makred at the end of a;ll the armed resistence in the west |
Dawes Act | US law that forced natives to assimilate by making them farmers and sending native children to boarding schools in east |
Buffalo soldiers | regiment of American American Cavalery that gained fame fighting native Americans in the west |
BArbed wire | Invented by Joseph Glidden; it was cheat and allowed homesteaders to fence in their property; helped to close the open range to cattle grazing |
Homestead act | federal law passed on the 1862 to encourage Americans and immigrants to settle the west; gave free land to anyone that would live on it for 5 years |
Sodbusters | farmers that lived on the great plains ; built their homes out of sod, which is the top layer of prairie soil thickly packed this grass roots |
windmills | technology that helped homesteaders adapt to the great plains; pumped water up from the ground |