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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 new railroad lines extending across the Great Plains |
Pony Express | business that delivered mail from Missouri to California in just 10 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 west from Omaha, most workers were irish immigrants. |
Central Pacific | began building a 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 Transcontinetal Railroad |
Chinese Immigrants | told union Pacific workers they were scaring away the buffalo |
Gen. William Tecumsah Sherman | warned the native Americans that nothing would stop the building if 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 Had to be a man 21 or older or a women who was head of the family Got up to 160 acres of land Paid abou |
Homesteads | settlers who claimed land through the Homestead Act |
sod House (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 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 male tools that improve people's lives |
entrepreneur | a person who starts a new 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 black hills of South Dakota |
Col. George Custer | led the 7th Cavalry on a mission 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 US forces |
Chief Joseph | A Nez Perce' chief who led his people to the Canadian Border to avoid moving the reservation |