Western Expansion

Question 1

1. Those farmers who were successful on the Great Plains
   A. came to the West as single men, without families
   B. utilized many farming techniques they had learned in the East
   C. personified the spirit of rugged individualism
   D. relied on the assistance of other settlers around them
   E. personified the image of the yeoman farmer of Thomas Jefferson

Answer 1

(Correct Answer: D. Almost every diary of memoirs from individuals who lived on the plains noted that rugged individualism was not enough to be successful.)

Question 2

2. Exodusters were
   A. newly arrived miners in Oregon
   B. Southern blacks who went west to settle
   C. settlers who went to Washington state to be part of the lumbering industry
   D. those who “dusted” or cleaned crops on bonanza farms
   E. immigrants who went west to farm

Answer 2

(Correct Answer: B. This group went west to farm in 1879 and modeled their journey after the journey of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land.)

Question 3

3. The Dawes Act
   A. tried to turn Native Americans into farmers who would farm their own individual plots only
   B. protected Native American land from further encroachment
   C. broke up large Native American reservations into smaller ones
   D. made Ghost Dances illegal
   E. made the further killing of buffalo by Western settlers illegal

Answer 3

(Correct Answer: A. The Dawes Act tried to “civilize” Native Americans and destroy their tribal lands. )

Question 4

4. The organization that expressed the views of farmers to the largest national audience was
   A. the Greenback party
   B. the Populist party
   C. the Grange
   D. the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance
   E. the Farmers’ Alliances

Answer 4

(Correct Answer: B. The Populist party platform was intended to appeal to all workers in society, including those in the city. The policies of the Populist party were heard nationwide in the 1892 presidential election; however, because of the power of the Democratic party in the South, the Populist presidential candidate received only 1 million votes in the election.)

Question 5

5. The Turner thesis
   A. agreed with accounts of the West in the dime-store novels of the 1870s concerning the character of western expansion
   B. emphasized the diversity of those who traveled west
   C. takes into account the massacre of Native Americans
   D. notes the impact of western expan­sion on the American character
   E. emphasized the “hard living” that went on in many western settlements

Answer 5

(Correct Answer: D. Turner himself would later revise his thesis based on some of the characteristics of western expansion noted in the other possible answers.)