Idea that the United States should expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.
What is Manifest Destiny?
Name given to people who took up the offer under the Homestead Act of 1862.
Who are the homesteaders?
Person who herded cattle from ranches in Texas and Oklahoma to railroads for shipping.
What is a cowboy?
First railroad spanning from East to West coast in the U.S.
What is the transcontinental railroad?
Animal that Native populations relied on heavily in the Great Plains for food, tools, and beyond.
What is the buffalo (or bison)?
Population centers that suddenly pop up after the discovery of gold or silver.
What are boomtowns?
This group of African Americans moved west to escape racial discrimination and seek new opportunities in Kansas during the late 1800s.
Who are the exodusters?
Original Cowboys from Mexico
Who are vaqueros?
Group of workers who faced heavy discrimination while working on the railroad.
Who are the Chinese workers?
Land areas where Native Americans were forced to live, often on land deemed undesirable by settlers.
What are reservations?
Religious group that moved to Utah after being persecuted for practicing polygamy.
Who are the Mormons?
Amount of land people could claim under the Homestead Act.
What is up to 160 acres?
This invention by Joseph Glidden, introduced in the 1870s, ended the traditional cowboy lifestyle on the open range.
What is barbed wire?
State where the two lines of the transcontinental railroad meet.
Where is Utah?
The primary goal of this school, founded in 1879, was to assimilate Native American children into white society
What is the Carlisle Indian (Industrial) School?
Young outlaw of the Wild West, rumored to have murdered at least 8 people and was killed at only 21, fittingly earning him this nickname
Who is Billy the Kid?
Many homesteaders made these type of homes due to lack of trees on the Great Plains.
What are sod houses?
Group who predominantly used horses as a means for travel, to hunt, and eventually fight U.S forces.
Who are the Native Americans?
Company involved in a fraudulent and bribery riddled railroad scandal involving Credit Mobilier and the U.S. government.
What is the Union Pacific Railroad Company?
This Native American leader, known for his resistance at the Battle of Little Bighorn, led the Lakota Sioux during the fight for Native American rights.
Who is Chief Sitting Bull?
This city has the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, also known as the "Gateway Arch" to memorialize all the pioneers who moved west during Westward Expansion.
What is St. Louis, Missouri?
This insect posed a serious threat to many pioneers on the Great Plains due to their destructiveness of crops.
What are locusts?
Country that originally brought horses to the America's in the 1400s.
What is Spain?
President who signed the Pacific Railway Acts into Law in 1862 & 1864.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
Arrogant leader of the U.S Army who was slaughtered at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as his "last stand".
Who is Colonel Custer?