U.S. History 2

Revised Units/Unit 1/Westward Expansion Characters and Key Terms.html

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Westward Expansion: Characters and Key Terms

Characters

Keep this list of major characters in mind in order to follow the action more easily.  Click on each person or Key Term to see his/her/its corresponding description and/or definition. You can also click the "Show All" button to expand all characters and descriptions at once.   African Americans who served in the U.S. Army in the western conflicts with Native Americans; some Native American tribes used the term because their black, curly hair resembled the buffalo. Men and women who moved to what is currently called the Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas) after the Civil War to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862.Native Americans largely populated the West when American settlers arrived after the Civil War, causing numerous armed conflicts.Leader of the Nez Perce who led his followers in a desperate attempt to escape into Canada from Oregon after white settlers encroached on their land. Chief Joseph and his followers were outnumbered more than ten to one, but they were able to outmaneuver and evade U.S. troops for over 3 months and close to 1,800 miles. They finally surrendered in Montana, 40 miles from the Canadian border. Chief Joseph and his followers were forced onto a reservation in the Indian Territory, where many died.

Key Terms

A policy or belief based on the idea that when native people learned American customs and values, they would be able to merge tribal traditions with American culture and peacefully assimilate into society. Commonly held belief in the 19th Century that settlers were destined to expand across the continent. This act, signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862, encouraged Western expansion by providing settlers 160 acres of public land, provided they paid a small filing fee and complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land.Signed into law by Abraham Lincoln on July 1, 1862, the act provided Federal government support for the building of the first transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. Series of books depicting life in the American Plains region in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, which created myths about the West and westward expansion. The Gold Rush was the largest mass migration in American history, when over 300,000 people came to the region looking for gold, leading to a heated debate in Congress over whether California should be admitted to the Union as a slave or Free state leading up to the Civil War.Extremely large farms in the western United States during the late 19th century that conducted large-scale operations, mostly cultivating and harvesting wheat.African-Americans who moved from states east of the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, as part of the Exodus of 1879, making it the first mass migration of African-Americans after the Civil War.The tremendous growth of the cattle industry in the two decades after the Civil War in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas due to the expansion of railroads.The Oregon Trail was a more than 2,000 trail that settlers traveled by wagon and horses that brought them from the Missouri Valley to Oregon and the West Coast. Hundreds of thousands of settlers went westward from the 1830s to the late 1860s. The Santa Fe trail was a similar trail that connected Missouri to New Mexico around the same time. It also was used the launching point for the American invasion of Mexico during the Mexican-American War. This was the completion of a project decades in the making, which ran for close to 2,000 miles from Nebraska to California. It was finally completed in 1869 when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad Companies met in Utah to lay the "Golden Spike." Much of the labor on the railroad was immigrant labor, with Chinese immigrants building much of the route from California to the east and Irish-Americans laying much of the track from Nebraska to the west.These were the two railroad companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. The Union Pacific worked out of California, laying track to the east, while the Central Pacific worked out of Nebraska, working to the west. Both used immigrant labor, mainly Chinese and Irish workers.This was a lode of silver discovered in Nevada in 1859. The discovery led to a silver rush, which brought prospectors to the territory, some from California who had come for the Gold Rush in the 1840s.A trail established after the Civil War to drive cattle from Texas to Kansas by Jesse Chisolm and a Native American scout, Black Beaver. There were challenges along the trail, such as rivers, mountain ranges and other topographical obstacles.This massacre was carried out in 1864 by the United States military during the American Indian Wars. The victims were members of the Cheyenne and the Arapaho peoples. Anywhere between 100 and 500, including women and children, were killed or wounded in the massacre.A battle during the Great Sioux War in 1876 between the United States Cavalry, led by Colonel George Armstrong Custer, which in a victory by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota. More than 250 troops were killed, including Custer. In the aftermath of the battle, more U.S. troops were sent west, who ultimately killed Crazy Horse and chased Sitting Bull into Canada, effectively ending the Indian Wars.Treaty between the United States and eight Indian Nations in which the United States acknowledged that all the land covered by the treaty was Indian territory and did not claim any part of it, and the natives guaranteed safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail and allowed roads and forts to be built in their territories in return for promises of an annuity in the amount of fifty thousand dollars for fifty years.Signed between the United States and four Indian Nations in 1868 that established the Great Sioux Reservation, which gave ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as Indian Territory in areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana.The massacre was considered to be the last armed conflict between natives and the United States, occurring in 1890 when over 250 Lakota men, women, and children were killed by United States soldiers.The first non-Reservation boarding school for Indian children, established in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the intent of "Americanizing" the children so they could assimilate into American society.Authorized the President to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Native Americans, as well as to grant citizenship for those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe.When passed in 1882, this act was the first law that restricted immigration into the United States of an ethnic group, banning them for ten years (later extended), and denying citizenship to those already in the country.A Hispanic Person from California that is descended from the Spanish Era.