Chapter 17: The American West and Conquering the West

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, acts, treaties, and events regarding Westward Expansion, U.S. Indian Policy, and the American West from Chapter 17.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the United States was destined and morally entitled to expand across North America, which justified post-Civil War western settlement, economic extraction, and federal conquest of Native lands.

Transcontinental Railroad

The rail line connecting the eastern railroad network with the Pacific Coast, completed in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific tracks met.

Homestead Act of 1862

A federal law offering 160 acres of public land to settlers who lived on and improved it for five years, encouraging migration, farming, and land speculation while accelerating the seizure of Native territory.

Settler Colonialism

A system in which incoming settlers permanently occupy Indigenous homelands and replace Native political control with new institutions.

Chinese Railroad Workers

A workforce of approximately 200,000 Chinese immigrants who performed exhausting and dangerous labor for western railroads, notably for the Central Pacific through the Sierra Nevada, while enduring discrimination and lower status.

Joseph Smith

The founder of the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) movement based on the Book of Mormon and Christian teachings.

Brigham Young

The leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who directed thousands of Mormons west to the Great Salt Lake Valley starting in the 1840s to establish a secure religious community.

Reservation System

Federal policy confining Native peoples to designated tracts of land in order to open remaining areas to settlers, railroads, ranchers, and miners, thereby reducing Native mobility and sovereignty.

Grant's Peace Policy

President Ulysses S. Grant's initiative to assign reservation administration to Christian religious organizations and replace corrupt agents, which increased federal control and promoted cultural assimilation.

Assimilation (Native American Policy)

Federal and reformer efforts to force Native Americans to abandon their languages, religions, collective landholding systems, governments, and family practices in favor of white American cultural norms, Christianity, English, private farming, and wage labor.

Off-Reservation Boarding Schools

Institutions that forcibly removed Native children from their families, cut their hair, changed their clothing and names, and prohibited Native languages and religions to enforce assimilation.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

The premier federal off-reservation boarding school, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879 by Richard Henry Pratt under the assimilationist motto 'Kill the Indian … and save the man.'

Dawes Act of 1887

A federal law that broke up communally held reservation land into individual allotments—generally 160 acres for families and 80 acres for individuals—held in trust for 25 years, while selling 'surplus' land to non-Native settlers.

Ecological Imperialism

The deliberate transformation or destruction of environments, animals, and natural resources—such as replacing bison with cattle—to destroy Indigenous independence and advance political and economic conquest.

Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851)

An agreement recognizing broad tribal territories on the Plains while granting the U.S. government permission to establish roads, forts, and safe passage for settlers.

Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)

An agreement ending Red Cloud's War that established the Great Sioux Reservation, recognizing Lakota control over the Black Hills and hunting rights in parts of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.

Dakota Uprising (1862)

A conflict in Minnesota driven by hunger, land loss, and delayed treaty payments, resulting in war, removal, and the execution of 38 Dakota men—the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Sand Creek Massacre (1864)

An attack by Colorado militia commanded by John Chivington on a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment, resulting in the slaughter of many women and children.

Red River War (1874–1875)

A military campaign against Southern Plains peoples including Comanche and Kiowa bands who resisted reservation confinement, ending after federal troops destroyed their horses, homes, and food supplies.

Quanah Parker

A prominent Comanche leader who led resistance against U.S. expansion during the Red River War before leading his people to the Fort Sill reservation in 1875.

Cynthia Ann Parker (Naduah)

A white child captured during a Comanche raid who integrated into Comanche society, married Peta Nocona, and became the mother of Quanah Parker.

Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

An engagement where Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and 268 U.S. soldiers were killed after attacking a large Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho village near the Little Bighorn River.

Wovoka

A Northern Paiute religious leader whose 1889 vision inspired the Ghost Dance movement, promising spiritual renewal, the return of ancestors and bison, and the end of colonial oppression.

Ghost Dance

A spiritual movement that spread among western Native nations in 1889–1890, offering hope and cultural restoration during severe suffering, which U.S. officials misread as an armed rebellion.

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

An event in South Dakota where U.S. troops attempting to disarm a Lakota band opened fire, killing hundreds of men, women, and children, often marked as the end of large-scale armed Native resistance on the Plains.

Vaqueros

Mexican livestock workers whose skills in roping, riding, branding, and cattle management formed the foundation of American cowboy traditions.

Cowboys

Wage laborers in the ranching industry—including Mexican, Black, Native, and white workers—who drove cattle long distances and managed livestock while facing low pay, long hours, and hazardous conditions.

Cattle Trails

Routes such as the Chisholm Trail, Goodnight-Loving Trail, and Western Trail used to drive cattle north from Texas to railheads in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska for shipment to eastern markets.

Open Range

Unfenced public grazing land used by ranchers before barbed wire fencing, land sales, and crop farming restricted open cattle movement.

Wild West Shows

Traveling outdoor spectacles, such as Buffalo Bill Cody's show, that staged frontier battles, sharpshooting, and cowboy adventures, creating a romantic mythology of western conquest.

Commercial Farming

Large-scale agricultural production for national and international markets using advanced tools like steel plows, mechanical reapers, irrigation, and barbed wire, which required managerial skills and hired labor.

Frederick Jackson Turner

The historian who presented the 'Frontier Thesis' in 1893, asserting that the American frontier experience shaped national character, democracy, individualism, and innovation.

Turner Thesis (Frontier Thesis)

The theory that continuous settlement at the western frontier forged distinct American character traits like democracy and individualism, though criticized for ignoring Native sovereignty, government assistance, and corporate power.