US History 2: Chapter 17 Flashcards
Horace Greeley
Editor of the New York Tribune who coined the term “Go West Young Man!”
What are some physical features of the Great Plains?
Treeless, nearly flat, and endless “sea of grassy hillocks” extending from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains
What was another name for the Great Plains?
The Great American Desert
What was the lifestyle of the Pueblo groups?
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
What was another name for the nomadic tribes/groups?
Camp Dwellers
What was the lifestyle of the nomadic tribes?
They lived in tepees or mud huts, grew some crops to supplement their hunting, and moved readily from place to place
What were the most known traits of the Navajo?
They herded sheep and produced beautiful ornamental silver, baskets, and blankets
What were the most known traits of the Apache?
They were fierce fighters and were feared by the whites and fellow Indians across the southwestern plains
What was the lifestyle of the Klamath, Chinook, Yurok, and Shasta tribes?
They built plank houses and canoes, worked extensively with wood, and evolved a complex social and political organization
Quanah Parker
The last Comanche chief
Indian Intercourse Act
Prohibited any white person from entering Indian country without a license
Concentration
It assigned define boundaries to each tribe
Why did Concentration not work as people had hoped?
Accustomed to hunting widely for buffalo, many Native Americans refused to stay within their assigned areas
Ghost Dances
A set of dances and rites that grew from a vision of a Paiute messiah named Wovoka
Dawes Severalty Act 1887
Divided tribal lands into small plots for distribution among members of the tribe
What was the most significant blow to Indian tribal life?
The virtual extermination of the buffalo, the Plains Indians’ chief resource and the basis of their unique way of life
Wounded Knee Massacre 1890
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
Who fired the first shots at The Wounded Knee Massacre?
No one knows
Gold Rush of 1849
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
Overland Trail
The route from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast in the last half of the nineteenth century
Homestead Act of 1862
Legislation granting 160 acres to anyone who paid a $10 registration fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for 5 years
National Reclamation Act 1902
Set aside most of the proceeds from the sale of public land in sixteen western states to fund irrigation projects
Placer Mining
Mining that included using a shovel and washing pan to separate gold from the ore in streams and riverbeds
Comstock Lode
Discovered in 1859 near Virginia City, Nevada, this ore deposit was the richest discovery in the history of mining
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
Excluded Chinese immigrants for ten years and denied US citizenship to Chinese nationals
Exodusters
A group of about 6000 African Americans who left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879 for freer lives as farmers or laborers in Kansas
Dry Farming
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
Bonanza Farms
Huge farms covering thousands of acres of the Great Plains
Timber Culture Act of 1873
Attempted to adjust the Homestead Act to western conditions
Why did the Homestead Act not work as Congress had hoped?
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
Desert Land Act of 1877
Allowed individuals to obtain 640 acres in the arid states for $1.25 an acre, provided they irrigate part of it within three years
The Timer and Stone Act of 1878
Permitted anyone in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington to buy up to 160 acres of forest land for $2.50 an acre
Who did the Timber and Stone Act of 1878 apply to?
Only to land “unfit for cultivation” and valuable chiefly for stone or timber
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Established the rules by which territories became states
What were the major components of territorial government in West, which began to function under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787?
Until they obtained statehood, then, the territories depended on the federal government for their existence
In what ways did the Spanish influence Southwestern life and institutions?
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
What were the new farming methods developed in the American West?
Dry farming, the chilled iron plow, the spring tooth harrow, and the first baling press
What was the impact of the new farming techniques?
It created huge bonanza farms
What were the “Boomers” and the “Sooners” of Oklahoma?
They reflected the speed of the western settlement
Turner’s Thesis
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
