click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
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 | businesses that delivered mail from Missouri to California in just ten days |
Telegraph | invention that sent messages along wires using electricity |
Samuel B. Moore | 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 west from Omaha, Most workers were Irish immigrants |
Central Pacific | began building train track east from m 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 percent of the Central Pacific workers |
Red Cloud | told Uion Pacific workers they were scaring away the buffalo |
Gen. William Tercumsah 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 immigrants who were willing to start new farms on the Great Plains. |
Homesteaders | settlers who claimed land through the Homestead Act |
Sod House( soddy) | houses amde of sod (soil) on the Great Plains |
Sodbusters | the name for farmers on the Great Plains |
pioneers | new settlers |
exodusters | thousands of African American 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 people's lives |
entreprenuer | a person who starts a new business hoping to make a profit |
Levi Strauss | began making plans out of blue denim that were Sturdy and didn't tear- the first blue jeans |
Reservation | area of land set aside for Native Amaericans |
Sitting Bull | chief of the Lakota tribe in the Black Hills of South Dakota |
Col. George Custer | led the 7th Cavalry to defeat the Defeat the Lakota and force them onto a new Reservation |
Battle of Little Bighorn | battle in which Crazy Horse helped lead the Lakota to victory against the U.S forces |
Cheif Joseph | A Nez Perce' cheif who led his people to the Canadian border to avoid moving reservation. |