| 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 ten 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,
Nebraska. Most workers were Irish immigrants |
| Central Pacific | period where thousands of people went west to
search for gold |
| 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. William Tecumsah 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 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 make 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 7 the 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 U.S. forces |
| Chief Joseph | A Nez Perce’ chief who led his people to the
Canadian border to avoid moving to a
reservation. |
