The West & New South, 1865-1900 Flashcards
What is another term used to describe western territories?
The Frontier
What is the name given to the Great Plains that supported 15 million buffalo and 250,000 Native Americas. The rush to settle this territory caused the near extermination of the buffalo and serious damage to the environment.
The Great American Desert
Gold was discovered in California in 1848, which caused a flood of immigrants in 1849. Fearing job competition, white settlers pushed the legislature to pass what anti-immigration law?
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
What was a big business in the West, but eventually ended with the arrival of settlers and the invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glidden?
Cattle drives
To encourage settlers to move West, this act offered 160 acres in the Great Plains of public land free to any family that settled on it for 5 years. The best land ended up in the hands of railroad companies and speculators.
Homestead Act (1862)
These are farmers who built their homes out of mud bricks on the dry and treeless plains.
Sodbusters
This is the term given to Southern blacks who went West.
Exodusters
This is the name of Frederick Jackson Turner’s influential thesis (essay) that stressed the importance of the frontier and how it promoted independence and individualism. Caused Americans to be inventive, but Americans were also wasteful toward natural resources.
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)
What is the term that refers to the government assigning plains tribes land with boundaries. Indians ignored these boundaries and continued to follow the migrating buffalo wherever they roamed.
Reservations
Indian Wars broke out with the arrival of thousands of miners, cattlemen, and homesteaders in the West. General George Custer and 200 of his men were killed at this battle.
Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)
This terrible event occurred when 200 peaceful Indians were murdered. This ended the Indian Wars.
Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)
This best selling book was written by Helen Hunt Jackson, which created sympathy for Indians, but most Americans proposed assimilation as the solution: education, training, and becoming Christian.
A Century of Dishonor (1881)
This act in 1887, divided tribal land into plots of 160 acres and U.S. citizenship was granted to those who stayed 25 years. This intended to break up tribal organizations.
Dawes Act (1887)
This movement was the last effort by Native Americans to resist U.S. domination and drive whites from their lands.
Ghost Dance Movement (1890)
The New South’s economy was based on what three factors? Despite the improvement, the South remained largely agricultural and was one of the poorest regions in the country.
Capitalism, Industry, Improved Transportation
George Washington Carver, scientist, promoted growing different crops instead of just cash crops. He studied at this school, which was founded by Booker T. Washington.
Tuskegee Institute (1881)