vocab Us history

Pacific Railway Act

A series of acts, beginning in 1862, that provided federal government support, including land grants and government bonds, to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies to construct the first transcontinental railroad.

Transcontinental Railroad

The continuous railroad line completed in 1869 that connected the eastern and Pacific coasts of the United States, drastically reducing travel time and facilitating massive westward migration, economic growth, and the decline of the Native American way of life by enabling the slaughter of bison herds.

Homestead Act

Enacted in 1862, this federal law granted 160 acres of public land to any applicant who occupied and improved the land for five years. This encouraged hundreds of thousands of settlers to move to the West and the Great Plains.

Dawes Act

Also known as the General Allotment Act of 1887, this law authorized the President to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into individual allotments to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society by breaking up tribal entities and eliminating collective land ownership.

Chinese Exclusion Act

A federal law passed in 1882 that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for a period of ten years, reflecting growing nativism and anti-Chinese sentiment among white workers in the West.

Battle of Wounded Knee

The last major conflict (often referred to as a massacre) between the U.S. Army and Plains Indians, occurring on December 29, 1890, in South Dakota, where U.S. soldiers killed between 150 and 300 Lakota people in a botched disarmament attempt.

Plains Indians

Diverse Native American tribes, including the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche, who inhabited the vast interior grasslands of North America and whose cultures were often centered around the migratory patterns of the buffalo herds.

General Custer (George Armstrong Custer)

A U.S. Army cavalry commander who was famously defeated and killed along with his entire command by a coalition of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Cowboys

Primarily cattle herders in the late 19th-century American West who conducted large cattle drives across the unfenced range to railheads for transport to eastern markets. Their era was relatively short-lived, impacted by the expansion of railroads and the invention of barbed wire.

Indian Wars

A series of conflicts fought by European colonists and later the U.S. military against various Native American tribes from the early 17th century to the late 19th century, primarily driven by land disputes and the U.S. policy of westward expansion.

Great Plains

A vast geographical region of flat, grassy, and semi-arid land in the central U.S. and Canada, significant for its role in indigenous cultures and as the focal point of intense settlement and agricultural development during westward expansion.

Nativism

A political policy promoting the interests of native-born inhabitants over those of immigrants. This sentiment was strong in the late 19th century and contributed to policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Barbed wire

A type of fencing material with sharp barbs that allowed farmers and ranchers to enclose land cheaply and effectively. Its widespread use on the Great Plains ended the open range and traditional long cattle drives, fundamentally changing the landscape and the cowboy's way of life.

Assimilation

A U.S. government policy aimed at absorbing Native Americans into mainstream American society by forcing them to abandon their traditional cultures, languages, and religions in favor of American customs, often through legislation like the Dawes Act and the establishment of Indian schools.

Indian Schools

(also called boarding schools) Institutions established by the U.S. government and religious organizations to educate Native American children away from their homes and families, with the explicit goal of forcibly assimilating them into white American culture by suppressing their indigenous identities.