Westward Expansion Vocabulary

  1. Frontier- the part of a country that borders another country

  2. Great Plains- grassland extending through the west-central portion of the United States

  3. Push Factors- the reasons that people leave their homes and move to a new area

  4. Pull Factors- the reasons that drew people to move west

  5. Indian Wars- a protracted series of conflicts between Native American Indians and white settlers over land and natural resources in the West.

  6. Battle of Wounded Knee- brings the Indian wars to a bitter end

  7. Homestead Act- offered 160 acres of land free to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of a household

  8. Morrill Act- the legislation that granted federal land to states to help finance the establishment of agricultural colleges

  9. Open range- a system of unfenced public lands where cattle and other livestock could graze freely

  10. Barbed Wire- allowed farmers and ranchers to keep cattle from crossing property lines and damaging crops on neighboring land

  11. Sod House- a house built of strips of sod, laid like brickwork, and used especially by settlers on the Great Plains, when timber was scarce

  12. Dawes Act- broke up reservations and allotted land to individual Native Americans, giving 160 acres to each head of household and 80 acres to each unmarried adult

  13. Exoduster- African Americans that began a massive migration West from the post-Recons

  14. Oliver Hudson Kelley- founded the Patrons of Husbandry, an organization for farmers

  15. Farmers Alliance- a series of political organizations and agrarian movements in the United States in the late 1800s that sought to improve the economic conditions of farmers

  16. Populism- the movement of the people—was born with the founding of the Populist

  17. Bimetallism- a monetary system based on the value between two metals, usually gold and silver

  18. gold standard- a monetary system that linked the value of a country's currency to gold, and it played a role in the United States' emergence as a world power

  19. William McKinley- 25th US president

  20. William Jennings Bryan- former Nebraska congressman