Social Studies Chapter 3 The Wild West Study Guide

the person in charge of a cattle drive

trail boss

transcontinental

crossing a continent

Ezra Fisher

one of the missionaries to the West

trail named after this trader that for many years was the most popular cattle trail

Jesse Chisholm

people who raced to claim land in Oklahoma by pushing stakes into the ground and setting up hasty tents

Boomers

frontier

land that has not been settled

Spanish settlers brought these wild cattle to America long ago

longhorns

symbols burned onto each cow’s hide making it harder for thieves to steal cattle

brands

Crazy Horse

Sioux chief who fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn

reservation

an area of land set aside for its people

during this event, “Sooners” slipped across the borders and claimed land before they were allowed to

Oklahoma Land Rush

Nez Perce leader who traveled to Washington, D.C., and spoke with President Hayes about his people

Chief Joseph

sodbuster

prairie farmer who raised corn, wheat, cattle, and hogs

a town that grew quickly

boomtown

one of the first lawmen of Abilene who believed in using his hands as his weapon and who is remembered as a lawman who commanded respect

Tom Smith

who said, “I could walk this country all over for my Master, if I could only be successful in winning souls to Christ.”

Ezra Fisher

stampede

a sudden rush of frightened animals that run away from the trail

a rich source of precious metal

lode

Dawes Act

congress passed this legislation to try to make Indians live more like white people by allowing them to own land individually

moving a herd of cattle

cattle drive

Homestead Act

allowed each settler to have 160 acres of land if they built a house, lived on the land, and improved the land over a five-year period.

caused the buffalo herds to die out

their grazing areas grew smaller, farms and railroads were built on the open grasslands, hunters killed the buffalo and sold their hides or hunted the buffalo for sport

George Custer

colonel who led US forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and died along with about two hundred of his men

sod house

a house made of strips of thick prairie grassland

invented barbed wire for fences which kept the cattle out of the corn and wheat fields

Joseph Glidden

deserted towns with empty buildings and silent streets that were abandoned after people could no longer make a living from mining

ghost town

was often used by railroad workers to blast through rock and carve out tunnels in landforms along the way

dynamite

Promontory Summit, Utah

place where the two tracks of the transcontinental railroad met

famous lawman of Abilene who was a gambler and an expert shooter

“Wild Bill” Hickok

actions which caused the treaties with the Indians to be broken

farmers moved onto Indian land, gold seekers searched for treasure in territory that belonged to the Indians

the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek

in 1890, US troops fired at a group of Sioux Indians who were performing a rain dance killing more than 250 Indians marking the end of the fighting between the Indians and the white men

wrote a series of books based on her childhood experiences as a homesteader

Laura Ingalls Wilder