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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 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 rail road across the continent linking the Eastern United States to the western United States |
central pacific | began building train track east from Sacramento California. Most workers were Chinese immigrants. |
union pacific | began building train track west from Omaha most workers we Irish 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. Williams Tecumsah | Warned the native Americans that nothing would stop the building of the railroad. |
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 houses (Soddy) | houses made from sod (soil) on the great plains |
sodbusters | the name for farmers on the great plains |
pioneers | new settlers |
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 improves peoples lives |
entrepreneur | a person who makes a business hoping to make a profit |
Levi Strauss | began making pants out of blue denim that were sturdy and didn't tear -the first blue jeans |
reservation | area of land set aside for native americans |
sitting bull | chief of the Lakota tribe in the back hills of south Dakota |
col. George Custer | led the 7th Calvary on a mission to defeat the Lakota and force the m on a new reservation |
the battle of little bighorn | battle in which crazy horses helped lead the Lakota to victory against the U.S. forces |
chief Joseph | A nez perce chief who led his people to the Canadian border to avoid moving to a reservation |