Railroad Builders & "Hell on Wheels"
This transient, wild tent city community moved alongside Union Pacific tracks across the plains, known for its disorderly environment.
What is "Hell on Wheels"?
This former slave and Exoduster leader wrote an 1878 letter encouraging African Americans to migrate from the South to Kansas.
Who is Benjamin "Pap" Singleton?
According to the Carlisle School schedule, students were awakened every morning at 5:45 AM by this military musical signal.
What is a bugle call?
This Apache leader became a famous symbol of Native American resistance against federal forces in the American Southwest.
Who is Geronimo?
Millions of wild Texas Longhorns were driven north along trails to shipping points in this post-Civil War industry.
What is the Cattle Kingdom (or longhorn cattle drives)?
Central Pacific Chinese workers drank tea made with boiled water, avoiding local water contamination that caused this deadly illness among Irish crews.
What is cholera?
This Kiowa chief lamented in 1867 that camps of U.S. soldiers were cutting down his timber and killing his buffalo.
Who is Chief Satanta?
Each afternoon, boarding school students performed tasks like blacksmithing, carpentry, laundry, or sewing, collectively known as this.
What is industrial work?
In 1866, Sioux warriors ambushed Captain William Fetterman and his troops in this western territory during Red Cloud's War.
What is Wyoming?
This political belief asserted that the United States was divinely destined to expand across the continent and spread democracy.
What is Manifest Destiny?
While Irish railroad laborers received $35 a month with food provided, Chinese workers were paid this monthly cash amount and had to buy their own food.
What is $30 a month?
Nebraska homesteader Mattie Oblinger wrote in 1873 that her house had two-foot-thick walls, but the roof leaked for two days after rain because it was made of this.
What is sod?
Navajo student Tom Torlino was photographed before and after his arrival at Carlisle to serve as a government advertisement for this process.
What is assimilation?
This Oglala Lakota warrior co-led Indigenous forces alongside Sitting Bull at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Who is Crazy Horse?
Western railroad advertisements lured settlers by offering millions of acres of farming land in Iowa and Nebraska on this many years of credit.
What is 10 years?
This Union Pacific Civil Engineer documented the extreme hardships and dangers faced by railroad crews on the plains and mountains in his published letters.
Who is Samuel B. Reed?
In his 1884 Dakota Territory land-proof testimony, this homesteader documented building a 12-by-12-foot frame house and cultivating 32 acres.
Who is Almanzo J. Wilder?
Native parents writing letters demanding their children's return and students keeping cultural traditions alive in secret were both forms of this.
What is resistance?
This tragic 1864 attack by Colorado militia on a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment resulted in the deaths of many women and children.
What is the Sand Creek Massacre?
Mining rushes for silver, copper, and gold led to the overnight creation of these service-driven Western settlements.
What are boomtowns (or mining towns)?
To carve through solid Sierra Nevada granite during harsh winters, Chinese workers lived and worked beneath the snow in these structures.
What are snow tunnels (or snow drifts)?
To finalize ownership under the Homestead Act, a settler had to provide testimony from this number of credible witnesses proving residence and improvements.
What is two (2) witnesses?
The strict "English Only" policy caused this long-term social divide when returning children could no longer speak with their tribal elders.
What is a "generational divide"?
Chief Joseph led his Nez Perce people on an 1,100-mile fight for freedom towards this country before being forced to surrender in 1877.
What is Canada?
According to Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 thesis, this moving boundary between settled and unsettled land shaped American identity.
What is the frontier?