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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 once thriving community in which most 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 state to give women the right to vote |
Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad that would span the continent, connected the east with the west |
Union Pacific | railroad company that began in Omaha and built track going west on the Great Plains |
Central Pacific | railroad company that started in California and went east, blasting through the Sierra Nevada Mountains |
Golden Spike | event in which the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869; 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 allowed to graze |
Vaquero | the first cowboys that came to Mexico and settled in the Southwest |
Cowhand | 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 |
Geronimo | Apache chief that fought Mexican and US forces in the Southwest, surrendered to 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 Bighorn | Battle in which the US 7th cavalry was massacred by Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors |
George Custer | leader of the US 7th cavalry known 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; marked the end of all armed resistance in the West |
Dawes Act | US law that forced Natives to assimilate by making them farmers and sending Native children to boarding schools in the east |
Buffalo Soldiers | regiment of African America cavalry that gained fame fighting Native Americans in the west |
Barbed wire | invented by Joseph Glidden; it was cheap and allowed homesteaders to fence I n their property; helped to close the Open Range to cattle grazing |
Homestead Act | federal law passed in 1862 to encourage Americans and immigrants to settle in the west; gave free land to anyone that would live on it for 5 years |
Sodbusters | farmers that lied on the Great Plains; built their homes out of sod, which is the top layer of prairie soil thickly packed with grass roots |
Windmills | technology that helped homesteaders adapt to the Great Plains; pumped water up from the ground |
Crazy Horse | Sioux chief and warrior that fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn and was known for his bravery |