Unfinished Nation - Chapter 16 Key Terms

Californios

hispanic residents of California

Chief Joseph

leader of the Nez Percé tribe in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1870s who fought efforts to force the tribe onto a reservation in the Idaho territory

Chinese Exclusion Act

the federal law of 1882 that blocked Chinese immigration and prevented those Chinese already living in America from becoming citizens for ten years

concentration policy

U.S. government policy introduced in 1851 that forced Indian tribes to live in specific regions, thereby opening up new areas for settlement by non-Indians

coolies

derogatory term for Chinese indentured servants whose conditions were close to slavery

Dawes Severalty Act

legislation that provided for the gradual elimination of most tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners

Geronimo

Apache chief and medicine man who led the fight against resettlement efforts by Mexico and then the United States

Homestead Act

federal legislation permitting any citizen or prospective citizen, including freed slaves, to purchase 160 acres of public land in the western United States for a small fee after living on it for five years

Little Bighorn

site of the 1876 battle in which Colonel George Custer and his men were surprised and killed by a large army of Sioux warriors

long drive

a journey over grasslands that allowed western cattle ranchers to deliver their animals to railroad centers

Mark Twain

pen name of Samuel Langhorne, nineteenth-century American author and humorist who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

range wars

conflicts between sheepmen and cattlemen, ranchers, and farmers

Rocky Mountain school

group of late-nineteenth-century painters known for large-scale depictions of western landscapes

Turner thesis

the theory articulated by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that westward expansion into the frontier had defined and continually renewed American ideas about democracy and individualism

Wounded Knee

located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, it was the site of a massacre of between 150 and 300 Sioux, including women and children, by the U.S. Army on December 29, 1890