APUSH - Chapter 26: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865 - 1896

Sioux

Major northern Plains Indian nation that fought and eventually lost a bitter war against the U.S. Army, 1876–1877

Apache

Southwestern Indian tribe led by Geronimo that carried out some of the last fighting against white conquest

reservations

Generally poor areas where vanquished Indians were eventually confined under federal control

Ghost Dance

Indian religious movement, originating out of the sacred Sun Dance that the federal government attempted to stamp out in 1890

Dawes Severalty Act

federal law that attempted to dissolve tribal landholding and establish Indians as individual farmers

Comstock Lode

Huge silver and gold deposit that brought wealth and statehood to Nevada

long drive

General term for the herding of cattle from the grassy plains to the railroad terminals of Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming

Homestead Act

Federal law that offered generous land opportunities to poorer farmers but also provided the unscrupulous with opportunities for hoaxes and fraud

Frontier Thesis

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s argument that the continual westward migration into unsettled territory has been the primary force shaping American character and American society

Oklahoma

Former Indian Territory where illegal sooners tried to get the jump on boomers when it was opened for settlement in 1889

Populist Party

third political party that emerged in the 1890s to express rural grievances and mount major attacks on the Democrats and Republicans

Coin’s Financial School

Popular pamphlet written by William Hope Harvey that portrayed pro-silver arguments triumphing over the traditional views of bankers and economics professors

Pullman Strike

Bitter labor conflict in Chicago that brought federal intervention and the jailing of union leader Eugene V. Debs

Cross of Gold speech

Spectacular convention speech by a young pro-silver advocate that brought him the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896

gold bugs

Popular term for those who favored the status quo in metal money and opposed the pro-silver Bryanites in 1896

Sand Creek, Colorado

Site of Indian massacre by militia forces in 1864

Little Big Horn

Site of major U.S. Army defeat in the Sioux War of 1876–1877

Sitting Bull

Leader of the Sioux during wars of 1876–1877

Chief Joseph

Leader of the Nez Percé tribe who conducted a brilliant but unsuccessful military campaign in 1877

Geronimo

Leader of the Apaches of Arizona in their warfare with the whites

Helen Hunt Jackson

Massachusetts writer whose books aroused sympathy for the plight of the Native Americans

John Wesley Powell

Explorer and geologist who warned that traditional agriculture could not succeed west of the 100th meridian

Frederick Jackson Turner

American historian who argued that the encounter with the ever-receding West had fundamentally shaped America

Jacob S. Coxey

Ohio businessman who led his Commonweal Army to Washington, seeking relief and jobs for the unemployed

William Hope Harvey

Author of the popular pro-silver pamphlet Coin’s Financial School

Eugene V. Debs

Railway union leader who converted to socialism while serving jail time during the Pullman strike

Oliver H. Kelley

Minnesota farm leader whose Grange organization first mobilized American farmers and laid the groundwork for the Populists

James B. Weaver

Former Civil War general and Granger who ran as the Greenback Labor party candidate for president in 1880

Mary E. Lease

Eloquent Kansas Populist who urged farmers to “raise less corn and more hell”

Marcus Alonzo Hanna

Ohio industrialist and organizer of McKinley’s victory over Bryan in the election of 1896

reservation system

federal policy forcing Native Americans onto government-controlled lands, often poor and underfunded

Battle of Wounded Knee

1890 massacre of Lakota Sioux by U.S. troops that ended major Native American resistance

mining industry

extraction of minerals like gold and silver that drove western settlement and growth

mechanization of agriculture

use of machines to increase farm output and reduce labor

fourth party system

political era after the 1890s marked by Republican dominance and industrial issues

Gold Standard Act

1900 law placing the U.S. officially on the gold standard