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Frontier West
Vocab
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| frontier | unsettled or sparsely settled area of the country occupied mostly by Native Americans |
| 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 sudden burst of economic or population growth |
| Ghost town | once a thriving community in which of the population left |
| Vigilantes | people that took the law into their own hands due to lack of law enforcement |
| 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 span the continental connected the east with the west |
| Union Pacific | railroad company that began in Omaha and build track going west on the Great Plains |
| Central Pacific | railroad company that started in California and went east, blasting through the Sierra Nevada mountains |
| Golden Spike | event in which the Union and Central Pacific met in Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869;completed the first transcontinental railroad |
| Long Drive | 2-3 month trip in which cowboys led cattle to the cow towns along the railroad |
| Open Range | unfenced land on the Great Plains in which cattle were allowed to graze |
| Vaquero | first cowboys that came from Mexico and settled in the Southwest |
| Cowhand | Cowboys that took cattle from Texas to the railroads on the Great Plains |
| Sitting Bull | Sioux chief and medicine man that 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 South west, 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 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho |
| George Custer | Leader of the US 7th cavalry known for fighting Native Americans; was defeated and killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn |
| Wounded Knee | event in which a group of US soldiers massacred a camp of 300 Sioux men, women, and children in 1890 |
| 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 Native Americans in the west |
| Barbed Wire | invented by Joseph Glidden; it was cheap and allowed homesteaders to fence in their property |
| Homestead Act | federal laws passed in 1862 to encourage Americans and immigrants to settle the west |
| Sodbusters | farmers that lived on the Great Plains' built their homes out of sod |
| Windmills | technology that helped homesteaders adapt to the Great Plains; pumped water from the ground |