Push Factors
Pull Factors
Middle Ground
Settlers & Groups
Challenges and Triumphs of the West
100
This term describes reasons people are forced to leave their home, like poverty or overcrowding.
What is a push factor?
100
This term describes reasons people are drawn to a new area, like fertile farmland or new jobs.
What is a pull factor?
100
What is the frontier?
A region just beyond or at the edge of a settled area. the western U.S. where settlers began to move to live in the 19th century.
100
Settlers moving west came from many backgrounds. Name one group that traveled west for land or freedom.
Who were farmers, immigrants, or former enslaved people?
100
Conflicts with _______ ___________ made moving westward dangerous. U.S. expansion often forced tribes off their land.
What are Native Americans?
200
Farmers in the East left for the West because their farms were often too small or unproductive. This is an example of a push factor called lack of __________.
What is land?
200
Which one these is not a pull factor?
Cheap or free farmland through the Homestead Act (1862)
Chance to own land and become self-sufficient
Fertile soil in the Great Plains and river valleys
- Religious or racial discrimination
Religious or racial discrimination is a push factor.
200
African Americans who moved west after the Civil War, many to Kansas, were known as ________.
What are Exodusters?
200
This group of immigrants came from Asia to work on the western railroads and often faced discrimination.
Chinese immigrants
200
What established ownership of cattle, which was part of the pull factor of private property and rights to lands and possessions in the West?
What is branding or cattle branding?
300
Which one of these was not a push factor?
Crowded cities in the East
Lack of available farmland
High land prices in the East
- Opportunities to mine gold, silver, and copper (Gold Rush)
Opportunities to mine gold, silver, and copper (Gold Rush). This is a pull factor.
300
The 1862 law that offered 160 acres of free land to settlers willing to farm it was called the ________ Act.
What is the Homestead Act?
300
People who bought land cheaply hoping to sell it later for a profit were called ________.
What is land speculators?
300
The frontier's vastness and lack of effective law enforcement allowed these members of society to operate with relative impunity, often using remote hideouts like Robber's Roost and Browns Park to evade capture.
What are outlaws?
300
Settlers faced extreme temperatures, harsh storms, and this threat from lack of water or dry soil.
What is drought?
400
The term “Exodusters” refers to thousands of African Americans—many formerly enslaved—who left the Southern states (like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) to settle in the Great Plains, especially ____________. Hint: This state starts with the letter "K."
What is Kansas?
400
The U.S. government offered land and loans to railroad companies to connect the East and West. These were called the ________ Acts.
Pacific Railway Acts
400
This act helped establish colleges that taught agriculture and engineering to support western settlement.
What is the Morrill Land-Grant Act?
400
How did we justify displacement of Native peoples? Hint: This 19th-century belief stated the United States was destined to expand its territory across the North American continent, driven by a sense of divine right and national mission.
Manifest Destiny.
400
What ethnic group contributed greatly to the growth of ranching?
Hint:
What are Mexicans/Mexican-Americans?
500
Exodusters comes from the biblical “_________”, when the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt.
What is Exodus?
500
Where did the gold rush take place (1848–1855)?Prospectors flocked to the region from around the world for this precious metal, drawn by the promise of wealth, and mining camps sprang up throughout the area.
What is California?
500
Name one of the conditions settlers had to meet to qualify for land under the Homestead Act?
-21 y.o. or head of the house
-American citizens or immigrants filing for citizenship
-Would commit to farm the land for five years before claiming ownership
500
This policy resulted in the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Native Americans, including the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations, a journey infamously known as the _____ of _____.
What is the Trail of Tears?
500
How much land did a settler get under the Homestead Act, in acres?
What is 160 acres?