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Unit 13 Vocabulary
| 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 a sudden burst of economic or population growth |
| Ghost Town | a once thriving community in which of the population has 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 Pacific and Central Pacific met in Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869; completed the first transcontinental railroad |
| Long Drive | a 2-3 month trip in which cowboys led cattle to the cow towns along the railroads |
| Open Range | unfenced land on the Great Plains in which cattle to the cow towns along the railroads |
| Vaquero | the first cowboys that came from Mexico and settled into he Southwest |
| Cowhand | Cowboys that took the cattle from Texas to the railroad 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 Southwest, 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 warriors |
| 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; marked the end of all armed resistance in the West |
| 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; helped to close the Open Range to cattle grazing |
| Homestead Act | federal law passed in 1862 to encourage Americans and immigrants to settle the west; gave free land to anyone that would live on it for 5 years |
| Sodbusters | Farmers that lived on the Great Plains; built their homes out of sod, which is the top layer of prairie soil thickly packed with grass roots |
| Windmills | technology that helped homesteaders adapt to the Great Plains; pumped water up from the ground |