American Frontier Expansion and the Northwest Territory

Daniel Boone

A pioneer, woodsman, and hunter raised in a Pennsylvania Quaker family who explored Kentucky, discovered Big Bone Lick, and blazed the Wilderness Road.

Big Bone Lick

A Kentucky site discovered by Daniel Boone that was rich in salt—the era's primary food preservative—along with sulfur springs and bones of giant sloths, mastodons, and dinosaurs.

Wilderness Road

A route spanning over 300 miles blazed by Daniel Boone in 1775 to enable settlers to travel from North Carolina to Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap.

Boonsborogh

A fort built at the end of the Wilderness Road in Kentucky to provide settlers protection from indigenous peoples.

Scots-Irish

A group of settlers from Ulster in Northern Ireland who predominantly settled in Kentucky and Tennessee, bringing with them a firm belief in the Bible.

Kentucky

The very first frontier state admitted to the Union, welcomed in the year 1792.

Northwest Territory

A northern frontier region from which the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota were carved.

Land Ordinance of 1785

Legislation establishing an orderly rectangular survey system that divided the Northwest Territory into six-mile by six-mile townships containing 36 one-square-mile sections.

Section 16

The specific one-square-mile section of land in each township reserved under the Land Ordinance of 1785 for public education.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

A law that provided territorial governance, guaranteed trial by jury, prohibited slavery, and required religious instruction and the Bible in public school curricula.

5,000 Adult Males

The population threshold required for a territory within the Northwest Territory to elect its own representative assembly.

60,000 Persons

The total population required for a portion of the Northwest Territory to be admitted into the Union as an equal state.

Battle of Fallen Timbers

A battle fought among trees knocked down by a tornado where General Anthony Wayne led federal troops against a confederation of Native American tribes.

General Anthony Wayne

The military leader sent by George Washington who commanded federal troops to victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

Treaty of Grenville

The treaty resulting from the Battle of Fallen Timbers that moved the boundary line between Native American lands and areas open to new settlement.

Ohio

The first state carved out of the Northwest Territory to be welcomed into the Union, admitted in 1803.

Cumberland Gap

A natural pass through the Appalachian Mountains used by indigenous tribes as a warrior path, discovered by Daniel Boone and John Finley in 1769.

John Finley

A wagoneer who fought alongside Daniel Boone in the French and Indian War and informed him of Kentucky and a mountain gap to reach it.

Corning

A food preservation method where large salt crystals are rubbed directly into meat to draw out water and stop bacterial growth.

Louisiana Purchase

A major American land expansion marked on the textbook timeline in the year 180