Key Terms and Events in 19th Century American West Expansion

Expansionist

People who favored territorial growth

Manifest Destiny

The belief that God wanted the United States to own all of North America.

Santa Fe Trail

A trail of a growing commerce of trade.

Mountain Men

Young trappers who hunted for beaver pelts in the Rockies.

Oregon Trail

A trail that went northwest at South Pass that Marcus and Narcissa Whitman followed to found an Indian mission at Walla Walla.

Commence

To begin a project or an enterprise.

Brigham Young

Leader of the Mormons organized an exodus in 1847 and led the Mormons across the Plains and Rockies to establish the colony the New Zion on the eastern shores of the great Salt Lake.

Treaty of Fort Laramine

Bound the Indians to territories away from the major trails.

Stephen F. Austen

Led American emigrants who began to settle east of San Antonio, founding the town of Austen.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana

A ruthless general who seized Mexico City. Favored a centralized, authoritarian government dominated by the military.

Lone Star Republic

The new nation of Texas was called the Lone Star Republic.

Alamo

Texas.

Sam Houston

Texan who along with other Texans drew Santa Anna eastward into a trap and surprised and crushed the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Became Texas' first President.

James K. Polk

Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee, slaveholder, believed in Manifest Destiny, runs for President in 1844. Wanted the annexation of Texas and all of the Oregon Trail.

General Zachary Taylor

General for US Army under Polk. Fights in the Mexican American War. Sweeps a victory in the war.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Treaty that forced Mexico to give up the northern third of their country and added 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United States.

Gadsen Purchase

1853 US obtained from Mexico another 29,640 square miles in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Wilmont Proviso

Proposed bill that would have banned slavery in the territory won from Mexico in the Mexican American War but was rejected by Congress.

California Gold Rush

News of gold in California that spawned a rapid migration to the Pacific Coast.

Forty Niners

Miners that went to California after the discovery of gold.

Placer mining

The use of cheap metal pans, picks, and shovels to harvest gold flecks from the sand along the banks and bottoms of rivers and streams.