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Frontier West
Flash Cards
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Frontier | Unsettled or sparsely settled area of the country occupied mostly by Natives. |
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 the population has left. |
Vigilantes | People that took the law into their own hands due to lack of law enforecement. |
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 connect the east with the west. |
Union Pacific | Railroad company that started in California and went east, blasting through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. |
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 the cattle form Texas to the railroads in the Great Plains |
Sitting Bull | Sioux chief and medicine man the 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 Bighorn | Battle in which the US 7th cavalry was massacred by Souic Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. |
George Cluster | Leader of the US 7th cavalry known for fighting Native Americans |
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 Natives in the west. |
Barbed Wire | Invented by Joseph Gidden; it was cheap and allowed homesteaders to fence their property, helped 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, built their homes out of sod, which is the top layer of soil that has grass roots. |
Windmills | Technology that helped homesteaders adapt to the Great Plains, pumped water up from the ground |