chapter 16 ap history Flashcards
Frontier
An empty land awaiting settlement and civilization; a place of wealth, adventure, opportunity, and untrammeled individualism; a place of fresh beginning and bold undertakings
Pueblos
Indian tribe of the southwest who had long lived largely as farmers and had established permanent settlements
Territorial rings
Circles of local businesspeople with access to federal money who worked together to make the territorial government mutually profitable
Californios
Hispanic residents in California who were unable to resist the onslaught of English speaking immigrants
Rancheros
People in the south of California who raised cattle for the booming Anglo communities in the north
Barrios
Mexican American communities found in Los Angeles
Coolies
Chinese indentured servants whose condition was close to slavery
Tongs
Chinese secret societies, some were violent criminal organizations involved in opium trade and prostitution
Denis Kearney
An Irish immigrant who created the Workingmen’s party of California in 1878
Chinese exclusion act
Passed by congress in 1882; banned Chinese immigration into the U.S. for 10 years and barred Chinese already in the U.S. from becoming naturalized citizens
Homestead act
1862 permitted settlers to buy plots of 160 acres for a small fee if they occupied the land for 5 years and improved it
Sodbusters
Farmers who moved onto the Great Plains in Nebraska and other states on the agrarian frontier who cut through the sod to get to the soil to plant crops
Comstock lode
Silver discovery by Henry Comstock in Nevada, 1858
Black hills
A mining vein in southwestern Dakota territory where important minerals were found in 1874
Boo towns
A community that quickly started usually where a mining camp was located
Vigilantes
When gangs became intolerable, these committees formed as a system of social control. Unconstrained by legal system, they often forced justice without regard to due process.
