Ch. 25 Flashcards
What ended the reservation system?
The Dawes Severalty Act
The Battle Of Little Bighorn
- “Custer’s Last Stand.”
-advantage gained by Native Americans after the battle short
-Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians defeated and killed many soldiers, + Custer.
What was the cause of the Battle of Wounded Knee?
the Sioux refused to give up their practice of the “Ghost Dance.”
reservation system
-system that allotted land with designated boundaries to Natives tribes in West
-ending with the Dawes Severalty Act
- land was used communally
- government encouraged and violently forced Natives to stay on the reservations always
the Plains Indians
-nomadic of the west
-government tried to pacify them by signing treaties with the “chiefs” of various “tribes” at Fort Laramie and at Fort Atkinson
the “Great Sioux Reservation”
- government herded dozens of Plains indians into still-smaller confines in Dakota Territory in present-day Oklahoma
Buffalo Soldiers
- U.S. Army personnel on the western frontier who were African American
- name given by the Indians because of the resemblance
Sand Creek Massacre
- militia under command of John C. Chivington
- assaulted a Cheyenne village in Colorado Territory
- Initially hailed as a military triumph, later found they attacked village unprovoked
- killing a hundred women and children
the Bozeman Trail
- Lakota Indians moved to block construction of this
- was being built to the Montana goldfields in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty
George Armstrong Custer
“boy general” of Civil War fame, now demoted to colonel and turned Indian fighter
Geronimo
- Apache tribes Led by Geronimo were most difficult to defeat
- they were eventually pursued into Mexico by federal troops
William “Buffalo Bill” Cody
killed over four thousand animals in eighteen months while employed by the Kansas Pacific
Peace Policy
- President Ulysses Grant’s attempt to end the Plains Indians Wars
- enlisted Christian missionaries to supervise Indian reservations
-hoped churches would be more gentle agents of “assimilation,” - policy failed and was eventually terminated
Helen Hunt Jackson
- Massachusetts writer of children’s literature
- pricked the moral sense of Americans
-published A Century of Dishonor, chronicled the record of government ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians.
Dawes Severalty Act
- act that broke up/ended Indian reservations and distributed land to individual households
- Leftover land was sold for money to fund U.S. government efforts to “civilize” Native Americans
- forced them to give up culture, become farmers
Carlisle Indian School
- government funded Carlisle Indian School in PA
- Native children, separated from their parents and their tribes
-were taught English and inculcated with white values and customs. - “Kill the Indian and save the man”
field matrons
- sent these to the reservations to teach Native American women the sewing and to preach the virtues of chastity + hygiene
the Indian Reorganization Act
-the “Indian New Deal”
-partially reversed the individualistic approach
-tried to restore the tribal basis of Indian life
Ghost Dance
- reformers, thought they knew what was good for indians, thought they were revolting
- moved aggressively to suppress the “Ghost Dance,” a Native American religious movement
Battle of Wounded Knee
- battle between U.S. Army and the Sioux
- Tensions erupted violently over two major issues: the practice of the “Ghost Dance,” U.S. government had outlawed
- and dispute over whether Sioux reservation land would be broken up because of the Dawes Act
“fifty-niners” or “Pikes Peakers”
rushed west to find gold in the Rockies
-also Nevada after the Comstock Lode had been uncovered
Helldorados
- aka “Boomtowns”
- miners swilled adulterated liquor in saloons, accompanied by accommodating women
ghost towns
When “diggings” petered out, the gold-seekers decamped
- leaving “ghost towns”
mining industry
- metals were essential to U.S. industrial growth and were also sold into world markets
- After surface metals were removed, people wanted to extract from under ground
- leading to the development of heavy mining machinery.
- led to the consolidation of the mining industry, only big companies could afford to buy machines.
Silver Senators
- representing the thinly peopled “acreage states” of the West
- used their disproportionate influence to promote the interests of the silver miners
Long Drive
-Texas cowboys drove herds numbering from 1k to 10k
- headed slowly over the unfenced and unpeopled plains
cow town
- beasts grazed en route on free government grass until they reached a railroad terminal at “cow town”
- order was maintained by Marshal James B. (“Wild Bill”) Hickok
Marshal James B. (“Wild Bill”) Hickok
-a gunman who reputedly killed only in self-defense or in the line of duty.
- was fatally shot in the back while playing poker.
Knights of the Saddle
- became part of American folklore. Many of them
- five thousand were blacks who enjoyed the new-found freedom of the open range
The Wyoming Stock-Growers’ Association
Breeders organized this, which virtually controlled the state and its legislature
beef barons
- consolidated the cattle industry
- shipping their fresh products to the East Coast in the newly perfected refrigerator cars
Homestead Act of 1862
-law allowed a settler—provided he had “never borne arms against the government of the United States”—to acquire as much as 160 acres of land for a filing fee of $10.
- living on it for five years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of $1.25 an acre, a homesteader could take possession
- mostly failed
Sodbusters
- prairie sod was broken with heavy iron plows pulled by four yokes of oxen
- earth proved astonishingly fruitful. “Sodbusters” poured onto the land. - - Lacking trees for lumber and fuel, they built homes from sod
100th meridian
A geographical, north-south line that bisects the United States from the Dakotas through West
- meridian was where Americans imagined that the “West” began.
John Wesley Powell
- explorer of the Colorado River’s Grand Canyon
- director of the U.S. Geological Survey
- warned in his book that beyond the 100th meridian so little rain fell that agriculture was impossible without massive irrigation
dry farming
- bc of devastating drought, new technique arose on plains
- frequent shallow cultivation supposedly were adapted to the arid western environment,
- over time created a finely pulverized surface soil that contributed to “Dust Bowl”
Joseph F. Glidden
Barbed wire, perfected by Joseph F. Glidden, solved the problem of how to build fences on the treeless prairies.
Why is the closing of the frontier dated to 1890?
In that year, the census bureau declared that there was no longer a discernible line of advancing pioneer settlement.
Where was the real “safety valve” provided by the late nineteenth century?
Western cities like Denver and San Francisco
Why did the U.S. government set aside lands for national parks?
To preserve land in the West
the Sooner State
Oklahoma
sooners
Scores of overeager and well-armed “sooners,” illegally jumping the gun, had entered Oklahoma Territory. They had to be evicted repeatedly by federal troops, who on occasion would shoot the intruders’ horses.
Frederick Jackson Turner
- Author of “frontier thesis”, argued that the taming of the West had shaped the nation’s character., encouraged Americans’ embrace of individualism/ democracy.
- ignoring the role of Native Americans in the West, still keystone thought
Red Cloud
-was one of the most important leaders of the Lakota
- was one of the most capable Native American opponents whom the S army faced in the west
Sitting Bull
- One of the leaders of the Sioux tribe.
-became a prominent Indian leader during the Sioux Was - a superior force. During Custer’s Last Stand
-Sitting Bull and the other Sioux we forced into Canada.
Chief Joseph
- chief of the Nez Perce Indians of Idaho
- People wanting gold trespassed on their beaver river. To avoid war, and save his people he tried retreating to Canada with his people.
- were cornered 30 miles from safety and surrendered
Comstock Lode
- A great amount of gold and silver was discovered in Nevada.
- The “fifty-niners” rushed to Nevada in their own hopes of getting rich, which caused Nevada to become a state.
