Causes of Westward Expansion
A law that offered 160 acres of land to settlers for a small fee.
What is the Homestead Act?
African American soldiers who served in the U.S. Army after the Civil War.
Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?
Homes made from grass and soil on the Great Plains.
What are soddies?
The year the railroad was completed.
What is 1869?
The main animal Plains Indians depended on.
What is the buffalo?
Precious metals that caused people to rush west and create boomtowns.
What are gold and silver?
African Americans who migrated from the South to Kansas after Reconstruction.
Who were the Exodusters?
A major environmental challenge farmers faced.
What are droughts, hail, or locusts?
The two cities where construction began.
What are Omaha and Sacramento?
A treaty meant to reduce conflict between settlers and Native Americans.
What is the Treaty of Fort Laramie?
This belief justified Americans moving west and claiming land.
What is Manifest Destiny?
Roughly this fraction of cowboys were African American.
What is one-quarter (1 in 4)?
A financial problem caused by falling crop prices and rising costs.
What is debt?
The two companies that built the railroad.
What are Union Pacific and Central Pacific?
The 1876 battle where Native forces defeated Custer.
What is the Battle of Little Bighorn?
This industry made it easier and faster for people and goods to move west.
What are railroads?
A reason African Americans moved west after Reconstruction.
What is escaping discrimination / seeking opportunity?
Two requirements settlers had to meet to earn land ownership/the deed to the land.
What are living on the land for 5 years and improving it/build a house?
A labor group heavily used by the Central Pacific Railroad.
Who were Chinese immigrants?
A law that broke up reservations into individual land plots.
What is the Dawes Act?
Two economic opportunities that pulled people west in the late 1800s.
What are land ownership and jobs (mining, ranching, railroads)?
A way African Americans built independence in the West.
What is creating farms, towns, churches, or businesses?
Why many farmers supported political reform movements.
What is unfair railroad rates and economic hardship?
One major economic and one environmental effect of the railroad.
What are increased trade and pollution / resource use?
The long-term result of railroad expansion for Native Americans.
What is displacement and loss of sovereignty?