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Westward Expansion
westward expansion
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| California Gold Rush | period where thousands of people went west to search for gold |
| cattle drive | when cowboys guided huge herds of cattle North to new railroad lines extending across the great plains |
| pony express | business that delivered mail from Missouri to California in just ten days |
| telegraph | invention that sent messages along wires using electricity |
| Samuel B. Morse | developed a way to send telegraph messages |
| Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad across the continent linking the Eastern United States to the Western United States |
| Union Pacific | began building train track east from Sacramento, California. Most workers were Chinese immigrants |
| Promontory Point | place in Utah where the Union Pacific met the central Pacific and connected the transcontinental railroad |
| Chinese immigrants | made up almost 80% of the central pacific workers |
| Red cloud | told union pacific workers they were scaring away the buffalo |
| Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman | warned the native americans that nothing would stop the building of the railroads |
| homestead act of 1862 | law that offered free land to american citizens and imigrants who were willing to start new farms on the great plains |
| homesteaders | settlers who claimed land through the homestead act |
| sod house(soddy) | house made from sod(soil) on the great plain |
| sodbusters | the name for farmers on the great plains |
| pioneers | new settelers |
| exodusters | thousands of African Americans pioneers who moved to the great plains and started communities |
| Nicodemus, Kansas | a successful community started by exodusters |
| technology | the use of new ideas to make tools that improve peoples life |
| entrepreneur | a person who starts a new bushiness hoping to make a profit |
| levi stauss | began making pants out of blue denim that were Sturdy and didn't tear |
| reservation | area of land set aside for Native Americans |
| Sitting bull | chief of the Lakota in the black hills of south Dakota |
| Col. George Custer | led the 7th Cavarly on a mission to defeat the defeat the lakota to victory against the U.S forces |
| Battle of little bighorn | battle in witch crazy horse helped lead the loakata |