Mining
The name for abandoned mining towns.
What are ghost towns?
Many of the words associated with cowboy culture, such as lasso and bronco, came from this language.
What is Spanish?
This 1862 law offered 160 acres of land to any American who wished to migrate west and live there for five years.
What is the Homestead Act?
If a farmer with a family died, this person would inherit the land.
Who is "their wife"?
The policy that the US government could only print an amount of money equivalent to the country's supply of gold.
What is the gold standard?
These areas of land were specifically set aside for native tribes to live on.
What are reservations?
Mining camps often turned into these bustling settlements.
What are boomtowns?
This term refers to the groups of African homesteaders who moved to Kansas to escape racism in the South.
What are exodusters?
People living on the prairies (especially farmers) often had disputes over the rights to this scarce resource.
What is water?
A term that refers to a major economic downturn.
What is a recession?
The natives who participated in this religious movement believed that it would make the white settlers disappear.
What is the Ghost Dance?
This kind of mining used pressurized water and mercury to extract gold.
What is hydraulic mining?
This industrial invention allowed for cattle to be transported from the Western United States to the east.
What are railroads? (What are trains?)
The majority of free western land offered by the US government was claimed by this industry.
What are railroads?
Women in the West were the first to get the right to do this.
What is voting?
This movement supported the idea that Americans could have their silver minted into coins.
What is the free silver movement?
This massacre of Lakota symbolized the end of the plain wars.
What is the Wounded Knee?
Western sheriffs would often select local townspeople to form these law enforcement groups.
What are posses?
This innovation to boxcars allowed for raw meat to be transported without spoiling.
What is refrigeration?
The term for the (often) foreign laborers who travelled and farmred around the western US.
What are migrant workers?
Prairie communities would gather together once a week for this.
What is church?
This organization supported farmers and encouraged them to work together and form cooperatives.
What is the Grange?
These African American soldiers in the US Army fought against Native Americans on the plains.
What are Buffalo Soldiers?
Prospectors used this kind of mining to pan for gold out of rivers.
What is placer mining?
Western ranchers and cowboys would take their cattle to these types of towns for transport east.
What are cow towns?
These large scale farms were owned by investors who hoped that they would find "good fortune."
What are bonanza farms?
These types of books were used to teach children to read on the prairies.
What are McGuffey Readers?
This political organization of farmers helped encourage the creation of the Populist Party.
What is the Farmers' Alliance?
The term for the forced march of the Navajo from Arizona to New Mexico.
What is the Long Walk