Mining and Ranching
People who moved to California in search of gold the year after it was found at Sutter's Mill were known as what?
Forty Niners
What is a Lobbyist?
A person who tries to get legislators to pass laws favorable to a particular group.
Where did the Indian Removal Act of 1830 force many Indigenous Tribes to move to?
The Oklahoma (Indian) Territory.
What was the main reason settlers would move west into the Great Plains during the second half of the 19th century?
To set up farms.
What is Populism?
A political philosophy that favors the common person's interests over those of wealthy people or business interests.
These were people who would lay claim to an area of land in search of gold.
Prospectors
Name the two railroads that made up the transcontinental railroad.
The Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.
This was the main source of food, as well as clothing and shelter for the Great Plains tribes.
North American Bison
What did the Homestead Act do?
It promised 160 acres of land to every farmer who agreed to live and work on the land for a period of five years.
What is the "Gold Standard"?
The system the United States used where every dollar printed was backed up by that amount of money's worth in gold.
This is the term for a Mexican Cowboy; the people who would be the first cowboys.
Vaqueros
What was the Pacific Railway Act?
Passed in 1862, directed the Central and Union Pacific Railroads to construct railroads and telegraph lines from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.
The U.S. Army would slaughter some 150 Arapahoe and Cheyenne in this tragic event in 1864.
The Sand Creek Massacre.
What is an Exoduster?
An African-American settler who moved to the Great Plains following the Civil War in search of a new life, and farmland to own.
What was the "Greenback Party" created for?
To raise the issue of crop prices being low, as well as the debts farmers had.
Name the trail between San Antonio, TX and Abilene, KS; where cattle would be 'drove" by cowboys north into the grassy prairie lands 1,000 miles north.
The Chisholm Trail
What forced the Union Pacific Railroad to delay laying any track until the year 1865?
Conflicts with the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Lakota Tribes on the Great Plains.
Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his U.S. Army Cavalry Regiment would lose to Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull during this event.
The Battle of Little Bighorn
Thousands of African-Americans would later come to settle in this Great Plains city, which happens to be the capital of the state of Nebraska.
Lincoln
What was the Populist Party's platform during the election of 1892?
They wanted to help the working people by having government ownership of the railroads, as well as the coinage of silver.
Name three threats cowboys would face while working their jobs.
Sleeping outdoors, threat of a stampede, Indigenous Tribes, people stealing their cattle.
What group of workers made up roughly four-fifths of the entire Central Pacific Railroad workforce?
Chinese immigrants.
What effect did the Dawes Act of 1887 have on Indigenous culture?
It forced individual tribal peoples to buy land, rather than tribes themselves. Thus, causing tribal culture to be shattered, which went against the very belief that land could not be bought or sold.
Name the three inventions that made farming on the arid Great Plains much easier for those who lived there.
The steel plow, the windmill, and the mechanical reaper.
Who were the two candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties in the election of 1896? Who would win?
William McKinley (R), William Jennings Bryan (D). William McKinley, the Republican candidate, would win the election.