westward expansion

Homestead Act

1862 law giving 160 acres of public land to any settler who lived on it and farmed it for five years.

Transcontinental Railroad

rail line built between 1869 connected the eastern railroad to the pacific coast.

Sand Creek Massacre

1864 attack in which Colorado militia killed about 150–200 Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women and children.

Sioux Wars

Conflicts between the Sioux and the U.S. Army from the 1860s to 1890 over the northern Plains and the Black Hills.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

1876 battle in Montana where Lakota and Cheyenne warriors wiped out Custer's cavalry detachment.

Gold Rush

A sudden rush of people into an area after gold is discovered there, such as California in 1849.

Dawes Act

1887 law that split reservation land into individual family plots to force Native Americans to assimilate.

Exodusters

African Americans who left the South to travel west in the late 1870s to escape violence and repression.

Buffalo Soldiers

African American soldiers in segregated U.S. Army regiments serving in the West after the Civil War.

Populism

Late-1800s political movement of farmers and laborers demanding free silver, railroad regulation, and reform.

Ghost Dance

Religious movement around 1890 whose dance was believed to restore Native lands, buffalo, and ancestors.

Industrialization

The shift from farming and handmade goods to large-scale factory production using machines.

Indian Peace Commission

Group created by Congress in 1867 to end the Plains Wars by moving Native nations onto reservations.

Immigrant

A person who moves permanently into a country other than the one they were born in.

Migrant

A person who moves from one place to another, often temporarily and often for work.

Push Factor

Something that drives people to leave home, such as war, famine, or lack of jobs.

Pull Factor

Something that attracts people to a new place, such as land, jobs, or freedom.

The Grange Movement

Farmers' organization founded in 1867 that formed cooperatives and pushed states to regulate railroad rates.

Subsidies

Government money or land given to a business to encourage activity seen as good for the public.

Vaquero

A Spanish or Mexican cattle herder whose skills and gear became the model for the American cowboy.

Sodbuster

Nickname for a Plains farmer who had to cut through thick prairie sod to plant crops.

Cooperatives

Businesses owned jointly by their members, used by farmers to buy supplies and sell crops together.

Reservations

Land set aside by the federal government for Native American nations to live on.