SMBC Heimler Study Guide

Question 1

The overland trails

Answer 1

Nineteenth-century wagon and stagecoach routes that began in Missouri and headed westward, carrying settlers and goods to present-day California and Oregon. (1830)

Question 2

The Oregon Trail

Answer 2

The route west from the Missouri River to the Oregon Territory. By 1860, some 350,000 Americans had made the three- to six-month journey along the trail. (Around 1811-1860)

Question 3

In what ways did traveling the overland trails both support and challenge traditional gender roles during the mid-nineteenth century?

Answer 3

-Women had to cook unfamiliar meals.
-Men had to do more gathering than hunting, they also had to hunt weird things like jack rabbits and rattlesnakes.
-Both genders were equally vulnerable to many deadly diseases, wounds, gunshots, etc…

Question 4

What turned on the issue of the expansion of Oregon and Mexico?

Answer 4

The presidential election of 1844 (James K. Polk).

Question 5

What intensified conflicts with American Indians and debates over slavery?

Answer 5

After the United States won vast Mexican territories in 1848.