Chapter 17 Flashcards
Homestead Act
Increased white settlement, allowed male/citizens citizens to claim federally owned lands in the West
Manifest Destiny
Belief that US was destined to expand across the Western Hemisphere right and duty to colonize land spreading culture, values, and political systems
Dakota War of 1862
Conflict on plains in which violence spreading farther West from MN after Dakota War, INdian movement and resistance
- conflict between white settlers and Native Americans began in the praire land of southwestern Minnesota
Sand Creek Massacre
Cheyenne and Arapho women and children condemned and celebrated by troops under John M. Chivinton
- Dakota lost reservation lands and moved father west
- massacre of Cheyenne and Arapho people in Colorado leading to new attempts to develop a peaceful Federal Indian Policy
Board of Indian Commisionners
Formed due to the Sand Creek Massacre
- dedicated to pursuing a new assimilationist Indian policy, overseenig policy and giving responsibility for managing reservations and Indian relations to Protestant churches
- “peace policy”
- Advisory body created under President Grant that attempted to develop a peaceful and assimilationist Indian polciy
Dawes (General Allotment) Act
Required Indians to register for household allotments
- reducted Native land by 2/3rds
- undermined Native soverignity and disruption to Native life
- splintered Native American reservations into individual family homesteads
Ghost Dance
a religious ceremony that fightened Federal Indian agents and settlers
- droughts and whites vanished and buffalos coming back
- ghost dancers = immune to bullets
- gained wide popularity beginning in the late 19th century
Wounded Knee
Place where Indians saught refugee
- marked end of sustained, armed Native American resistance on the Plains
Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
- provided millions in gov bonds and land grants
- provided fast transportation of cattle products
- crossed western plains and mountains and linked West Coast with rail networks of eastern US
Buffallo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East/ “Two Bills Show”
A popular cultural image of the West
- cowboys and Native Americans, Japanese acrobats, etc
- created by William Frederick Cody
- allowed Natives to performce dances, sing, show attire
Turner’s Thesis “frontier thesis”
Theory of American history that interprets it as long movement of a frontier, giving American society its specific character
- became part of the bedrock myth of the West and American history, indicating warning signs for the future
- leaves slavery out of the history
