US History 2: Chapter 17

Question 1

Horace Greeley

Answer 1

Editor of the New York Tribune who coined the term “Go West Young Man!”

Question 2

What are some physical features of the Great Plains?

Answer 2

Treeless, nearly flat, and endless “sea of grassy hillocks” extending from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains

Question 3

What was another name for the Great Plains?

Answer 3

The Great American Desert

Question 4

What was the lifestyle of the Pueblo groups?

Answer 4

They were cultivators of corn who lived on the sub desert plateau of present-day New Mexico and Arizona, they also built communal houses made out of adobe brick on high mesas or in cracks in the cliffs to stay safe from being harassed by neighboring tribes

Question 5

What was another name for the nomadic tribes/groups?

Answer 5

Camp Dwellers

Question 6

What was the lifestyle of the nomadic tribes?

Answer 6

They lived in tepees or mud huts, grew some crops to supplement their hunting, and moved readily from place to place

Question 7

What were the most known traits of the Navajo?

Answer 7

They herded sheep and produced beautiful ornamental silver, baskets, and blankets

Question 8

What were the most known traits of the Apache?

Answer 8

They were fierce fighters and were feared by the whites and fellow Indians across the southwestern plains

Question 9

What was the lifestyle of the Klamath, Chinook, Yurok, and Shasta tribes?

Answer 9

They built plank houses and canoes, worked extensively with wood, and evolved a complex social and political organization

Question 10

Quanah Parker

Answer 10

The last Comanche chief

Question 11

Indian Intercourse Act

Answer 11

Prohibited any white person from entering Indian country without a license

Question 12

Concentration

Answer 12

It assigned define boundaries to each tribe

Question 13

Why did Concentration not work as people had hoped?

Answer 13

Accustomed to hunting widely for buffalo, many Native Americans refused to stay within their assigned areas

Question 14

Ghost Dances

Answer 14

A set of dances and rites that grew from a vision of a Paiute messiah named Wovoka

Question 15

Dawes Severalty Act 1887

Answer 15

Divided tribal lands into small plots for distribution among members of the tribe

Question 16

What was the most significant blow to Indian tribal life?

Answer 16

The virtual extermination of the buffalo, the Plains Indians’ chief resource and the basis of their unique way of life

Question 17

Wounded Knee Massacre 1890

Answer 17

Troopers of the 7th Cavalry, under orders to stop the Ghost Dance religion among the Sioux, took Chief Big Foot and his followers to a camp on Wounded Knee in South Dakota where 200 Native American were killed

Question 18

Who fired the first shots at The Wounded Knee Massacre?

Answer 18

No one knows

Question 19

Gold Rush of 1849

Answer 19

Prospectors made tje first gold strikes along the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, touching off a mining boom that set the pattern for subsequent strikes in other regions

Question 20

Overland Trail

Answer 20

The route from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast in the last half of the nineteenth century

Question 21

Homestead Act of 1862

Answer 21

Legislation granting 160 acres to anyone who paid a $10 registration fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for 5 years

Question 22

National Reclamation Act 1902

Answer 22

Set aside most of the proceeds from the sale of public land in sixteen western states to fund irrigation projects

Question 23

Placer Mining

Answer 23

Mining that included using a shovel and washing pan to separate gold from the ore in streams and riverbeds

Question 24

Comstock Lode

Answer 24

Discovered in 1859 near Virginia City, Nevada, this ore deposit was the richest discovery in the history of mining

Question 25

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Answer 25

Excluded Chinese immigrants for ten years and denied US citizenship to Chinese nationals

Question 26

Exodusters

Answer 26

A group of about 6000 African Americans who left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879 for freer lives as farmers or laborers in Kansas

Question 27

Dry Farming

Answer 27

A farming technique developed to allow farming in the more arid parts of the West where settlers had to deal with far less rainfall than they had eat of the Mississippi

Question 28

Bonanza Farms

Answer 28

Huge farms covering thousands of acres of the Great Plains

Question 29

Timber Culture Act of 1873

Answer 29

Attempted to adjust the Homestead Act to western conditions

Question 30

Why did the Homestead Act not work as Congress had hoped?

Answer 30

Few farmers and laborers had the cash to move to the frontier, buy farm, equipment, and wait out the year or two before the farm became self-supporting

Question 31

Desert Land Act of 1877

Answer 31

Allowed individuals to obtain 640 acres in the arid states for $1.25 an acre, provided they irrigate part of it within three years

Question 32

The Timer and Stone Act of 1878

Answer 32

Permitted anyone in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington to buy up to 160 acres of forest land for $2.50 an acre

Question 33

Who did the Timber and Stone Act of 1878 apply to?

Answer 33

Only to land “unfit for cultivation” and valuable chiefly for stone or timber

Question 34

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Answer 34

Established the rules by which territories became states

Question 35

What were the major components of territorial government in West, which began to function under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787?

Answer 35

Until they obtained statehood, then, the territories depended on the federal government for their existence

Question 36

In what ways did the Spanish influence Southwestern life and institutions?

Answer 36

The Spanish established the present-day economic structure of the Southwest, they brought mining, stock raising, and irrigated farming, they brought new laws and ranching methods as well as chaps and the burro, and they created the legal framework for distributing land and water

Question 37

What were the new farming methods developed in the American West?

Answer 37

Dry farming, the chilled iron plow, the spring tooth harrow, and the first baling press

Question 38

What was the impact of the new farming techniques?

Answer 38

It created huge bonanza farms

Question 39

What were the “Boomers” and the “Sooners” of Oklahoma?

Answer 39

They reflected the speed of the western settlement

Question 40

Turner’s Thesis

Answer 40

Put forth by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in 1893, this thesis asserted that the existence of a frontier and its settlement had shaped American character