Railroad 267-268
This railroad, completed in 1869, connected the East and West coasts of the U.S.
What is the Transcontinental Railroad?
The Plains Indians depended on this animal for food, shelter, and clothing.
What is the buffalo (bison)?
Many reformers thought that the best hope
for the Indians was to:
assimilate (blend in with
other Americans) to become
“civilized".
Instead of amply watered, wooded lands like
those in the East, farmers:
little rainfall, tough soil, few trees,
extreme temperatures, plagues of grasshoppers,
and a painful sense of isolation
This act gave settlers 160 acres of land if they farmed it for five years.
What is the Homestead Act?
The two railroad companies that built the transcontinental railroad.
What are the Union Pacific and Central Pacific?
This government policy forced Native Americans onto reserved land.
What is the reservation system?
these were established to teach Indian children how to be good Christians, how to farm the land, and how
to become U.S. citizens.
What are reservation schools.
Obstacle: Remoteness of markets
Solution:
Farmers on the Plains used the rail-roads to ship their crops eastwards.
This type of house was common on the Plains due to a lack of trees.
What is a sod house (or "soddy")?
Immigrants from this country made up a large part of the Central Pacific’s workforce.
Who are the Chinese?
The U.S. Army defeated the Sioux and Cheyenne at this 1890 massacre.
What is the Wounded Knee Massacre?
How were Reservation lands different
from those where the tribe had once lived.
They were located on infertile, undesirable land.
Obstacle: A lack of rainfall
Solution:
Farmers on the Great Plains used
drilling equipment to dig wells hundreds of feet
deep in order to tap into groundwater. Wind-
mills powered pumps that brought this ground-
water to the surface.
New farming inventions like this machine helped settlers plow tough prairie soil.
What is the steel plow?
The two railroads met at this location in Utah.
What is Promontory Point (or Promontory Summit)?
This 1876 battle was a rare Native American victory; Custer was defeated.
What is the Battle of Little Bighorn (Custer’s Last Stand)?
Which Apache Chief and his followers resisted efforts to assimilate?
Geronimo
Obstacle: Lack of manpower
Solution:
Farmers used machinery, such as
horse-drawn harvesters and threshers, to farm
more acres with fewer workers
This industry boomed in Texas and the Great Plains after the Civil War.
What is cattle ranching?
This law specified a Northern route for the first trans-
continental railroad: it was to run from Omaha,
Nebraska, to Sacramento, California.
The Pacific Railway Act (1862)
The Dawes Act of 1887 tried to do this to Native American lands and culture.
What is to assimilate Native Americans (break up tribal lands and encourage farming)?
When Sioux warriors refused to turn in
their guns, the army fired field artillery into the
crowd, killing men, women, and children in this
final tragedy of the Indian Wars.
What is the Wounded Knee massacre?
Obstacle: Loneliness and isolation
Solution:
Farmers began joining a national association of
local social clubs known as the Grange move-
ment. They held meetings to discuss farming
techniques and organized social activities like
picnics and lectures.
Barbed wire changed ranching by making this possible.
What is fencing in land (enclosing property or ending the open range)?