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Unit 13 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 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. |
QWyoming | the first state to give women the right to vote. |
Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad that would span the continental 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 from Mexico and settled in the Southwest |
Cowhand | Cowboys that took cattle from Texas to the railroads on the Great Plains |
Sitting Bull | Sioux Cheif and medicine man that led native forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn |
Crazy Horse | Sioux cheif and warrior that fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn and was known for his bravery |
Geronimo | Apache cheif that fought Mexican and US forces in the Southwest, surrendered to the US government in 1887 |
Cheif Joesph | Cheif 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 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; 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 American cavalry that gained fame fighting Native Americans in the West. |
Barbed Wire | invented by Joesph Glidden; it was cheap and allowed homesteaders to fence in their property; helped it close the Open Range to cattle grazing. |
Homestead Act | federal law passed in 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; build 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. |