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"?
A person who claims to represent the concerns of ordinary people over those of the wealthy and powerful.
What is a Populist?
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 innovation to boxcars allowed for raw meat to be transported without spoiling.
What is refrigeration?
The majority of free western land offered by the US government was claimed by this industry.
What are railroads?
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 chemicals to extract gold.
What is hydraulic mining?
This term refers to the movement of cattle herds across the plains by cowboys.
What are cattle drives?
The term for the (often) foreign laborers who travelled and farmred around the western US.
What are migrant workers?
Women in the West were the first to get the right to do this.
What is voting?
This organization supported farmers and encouraged them to work together and form cooperatives.
What is the Grange?
This massacre of Lakota symbolized the end of the plain wars.
What is Wounded Knee?
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?
Prairie communities would gather together once a week for this.
What is church?
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 African American soldiers in the US Army fought against Native Americans on the plains.
What are Buffalo Soldiers?
Western sheriffs would often select local townspeople to form these law enforcement groups.
What are posses?
This industrial invention allowed for cattle to be transported from the Western United States to the east.
What are railroads? (What are trains?)
This term refers to the groups of African homesteaders who moved to Kansas to escape racism in the South.
What are exodusters?
These types of textbooks were commonly used in one room school houses to teach children how to read.
What are McGuffey Readers?
This movement supported the idea that silver coins would be added to the money supply.
What is the free silver movement?
The term for the forced march of the Navajo from Arizona to New Mexico.
What is the Long Walk