APUSH Ch. 16 Terms

Caste System of the Southwest

The hierarchical social order in the Spanish/Mexican Southwest that ranked people by race and ancestry, with Spaniards at the top, followed by mestizos (mixed Spanish-Indian), Indians, and enslaved Africans at the bottom. This system influenced social relations even after American conquest.

Plains Indians

Native American tribes including the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others who inhabited the Great Plains and relied heavily on buffalo hunting, developed horse culture, and often lived in mobile tipis.

Buffalo

The American bison that numbered in the tens of millions across the Great Plains, serving as the central resource for Plains Indians (providing food, clothing, shelter, and tools) until near-extinction by white hunters in the 1870s-1880s.

Stephen Kearny

U.S. Army general who led forces to occupy New Mexico and California during the Mexican-American War (1846-1847), establishing American military control over the Southwest with minimal resistance.

Taos Rebellion

An 1847 uprising in New Mexico where Hispanos and Pueblo Indians revolted against American occupation, killing the newly appointed territorial governor Charles Bent and other Americans before being suppressed by U.S. forces.

Californios

Spanish-speaking residents of California before and after American conquest in 1848, many of whom were wealthy ranchers who gradually lost their lands and political power despite treaty protections.

Juan Cortina

Mexican-Tejano folk hero and rancher who led armed resistance against Anglo-American authority in South Texas (1859-1860s), fighting against land theft and mistreatment of Mexican Americans.

Collies

Derogatory term for Chinese laborers, often used to compare them to enslaved workers; derived from the word "coolie," referring to Asian contract laborers.

Transcontinental Railroad

The railway completed in 1869 connecting the eastern United States to California, built largely by Chinese laborers from the west and Irish immigrants from the east, transforming western settlement and commerce.

Chinatowns

Ethnic enclaves in western cities where Chinese immigrants clustered for mutual support, cultural preservation, and protection from discrimination, with San Francisco's being the largest and most prominent.

Tongs

Chinese mutual aid societies and fraternal organizations that provided support to immigrants but sometimes engaged in illegal activities and violent rivalries, particularly during the "Tong Wars" of the late 19th century.

Anti-Coolie Clubs

Organizations formed by white workers, especially in California, to oppose Chinese immigration and employment, arguing that Chinese labor undercut wages and took jobs from white Americans.

Chinese Exclusion Act

The 1882 federal law that prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for ten years (later extended), marking the first major restriction on immigration based on nationality and remaining in effect until 1943.

Henry George

Economist and social reformer who wrote Progress and Poverty (1879), advocating for a single tax on land and criticizing monopolistic land ownership in the West; his ideas influenced Progressive Era reforms.

Homestead Act

The 1862 law that granted 160 acres of public land to settlers who would live on and improve it for five years, encouraging western settlement but often proving inadequate for farming in arid regions.

Timber Culture Act

An 1873 law allowing settlers to claim an additional 160 acres if they planted and maintained trees on one-quarter of the land, intended to encourage forestation in the treeless Plains.

Desert Land Act 1877

Legislation permitting individuals to purchase 640 acres of arid land at low cost if they irrigated it within three years, though this often led to speculation and fraud rather than genuine farming.

The Timber and Stone Act

An 1878 law allowing purchase of 160-acre parcels of western land unfit for cultivation but valuable for timber and stone, frequently exploited by lumber companies using dummy entrymen.

Comstock Lode

Major silver deposit discovered in Nevada in 1859, producing hundreds of millions of dollars in ore and creating boom towns like Virginia City while enriching a few industrialists.

Bonanza Kings

Wealthy mining magnates like James Fair, John Mackay, James Flood, and William O'Brien who made fortunes from Nevada's Comstock Lode and dominated San Francisco's economic elite.

Chisholm Trail

Famous cattle drive route running from Texas to Kansas railheads (primarily Abilene), used from the 1860s-1880s to transport millions of Texas longhorns to northern markets.

Long Drive

The practice of driving large herds of cattle hundreds of miles from Texas ranches to railroad terminals in Kansas and other states, peaking in the 1870s-1880s before barbed wire and railroads made it obsolete.

Cowboys

Cattle herders of diverse backgrounds (Anglo, Mexican vaquero, African American, Native American) who worked ranches and conducted long drives, later romanticized in American popular culture.

Texas Fever

Tick-borne disease carried by Texas longhorn cattle (who were immune) that infected and killed northern cattle, leading to quarantine laws and conflicts between Texas drovers and farmers.

Rocky Mountain School

Group of 19th-century landscape painters including Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran who created grand, romantic depictions of western scenery that shaped eastern perceptions of the frontier.

Cowboy Culture Myth

The romanticized image of cowboys as heroic, independent figures representing American freedom and masculinity, differing significantly from the reality of low-paid, ethnically diverse ranch workers.

The Virginian

Owen Wister's influential 1902 novel that established many cowboy story conventions and stereotypes, portraying the West as a place where eastern refinement met frontier masculinity.

Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

The historian's 1893 argument that the western frontier experience was central to American democracy, individualism, and national character, declaring the frontier "closed" with implications for American identity.

Concentration Policy

Federal strategy beginning in the 1850s-1860s to confine Native American tribes to specific reservations, separating them from white settlers and making them dependent on government provisions.

Bureau of Indian Affairs

Federal agency (established 1824) responsible for managing relations with Native American tribes, administering reservations, and implementing assimilation policies, often corruptly and ineffectively.

Little Crow

Dakota Sioux leader who reluctantly led his people in the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota after broken treaties and starvation on reservations, resulting in the largest mass execution in U.S. history (38 Dakota men).

Sand Creek Massacre

The 1864 attack by Colorado militia under Colonel John Chivington on a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village, killing over 150 people (mostly women and children) despite a flag of truce.

Little Bighorn

The 1876 battle in Montana where Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated the 7th Cavalry under George Custer, marking the most famous Native American victory.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull

Prominent Lakota leaders who resisted U.S. expansion; Crazy Horse was a war leader at Little Bighorn killed in custody (1877), while Sitting Bull fled to Canada before returning and being killed during the Ghost Dance movement (1890).

General Custer

George Armstrong Custer, flamboyant Civil War veteran and cavalry commander whose entire detachment was killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn, becoming a controversial symbol of western conflict.

Chief Joseph

Leader of the Nez Perce who conducted a strategic 1,170-mile fighting retreat in 1877 attempting to reach Canada, ultimately surrendering with his famous speech "I will fight no more forever."

Geronimo

Apache leader who resisted Mexican and American forces in the Southwest, becoming the last Native American warrior to surrender (1886) after years of evading capture in Arizona and Mexico.

Nez Perce

Pacific Northwest tribe displaced from their homeland in Oregon when gold was discovered, leading to Chief Joseph's famous 1877 retreat and eventual forced removal to reservations.

Ghost Dance

Religious movement among Plains Indians in 1890 promising the return of buffalo, disappearance of whites, and reunion with deceased relatives through ritual dancing, leading to government suppression.

Wounded Knee

The 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, where the 7th Cavalry killed approximately 300 Lakota Sioux, including women and children, effectively ending the Indian Wars.

Dawes Act

The 1887 law that divided tribal lands into individual allotments (typically 160 acres per family), aiming to assimilate Native Americans into farming culture while opening "surplus" reservation land to white settlement, resulting in massive loss of Native landholdings.

Barbed Wire

Fencing technology patented in the 1870s that enabled farmers to enclose land on the treeless Plains, ending the open range and transforming both agriculture and the cattle industry.

Commercial Farming

Large-scale agricultural production for market rather than subsistence, encouraged by railroads, mechanization, and land policies, which transformed the West into a major food-producing region but made farmers dependent on distant markets and vulnerable to price fluctuations.