| CHAPTER 17 THE FRONTIER WEST
ISSUES TO UNDERSTAND After reading the chapter, you should be able to discuss the following: 1. What doomed the Plains Indians' traditional way of life 2. The policies that eastern reformers and the federal government followed when dealing with the Indians between 1840 and 1900 and the consequences of those policies for the Indian peoples 3. What attracted settlers to the Great Plains 4. The provisions of the Homestead Act and why it did not work out as well as its sponsors had intended 5. The ways in which railroads influenced western development 6. The hardships and risks experienced by Great Plains farmers 7. The type of government and society that settlers on the Great Plains created in the period 1870-1900 8. What the Grange was and what it attempted to do 9. Early state and federal efforts to regulate railroads and why they were ineffective 10. What happened to the Hispanic population of the Southwest after 1848 11. The most important gold and silver strikes in the West and who made fortunes from them 12. How and why the open-range cattle industry began and why it declined after 1886 13. The contrasts between the West of the dime novels, the symbolic West of eastern intellectuals and artists, and the real West 14. What Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" is and how historians regard it today 15. The beginnings of a conservation
movement
CHAPTER 17 VOCABULARY The following terms are used in Chapter 17. To understand the chapter fully, it is important that you know what each of them means. cede: to hand over land or valuable rights, usually by treaty severalty: the legal situation in which property, such as land, is held or owned by separate or individual right, as opposed to collective ownership polygamy: the practice of having more than one spouse at one time lobby: to seek to influence legislators' votes for or against a bill; many groups hire persons called lobbyists to do this for them indigenous: native to a region or to the original population of an area bonanza: a rich mass of ore, as in mining; a sudden find of wealth subsidize: to give governmental aid to a private business to encourage its development cavalier: disdainful,
dismissive, showing
superiority toward others
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| IDENTIFICATIONS
After reading Chapter 17, you should be able to identify and explain the historical significance of each of the following: Five Civilized Tribes John M. Chivington and the Sand Creek Massacre Fetterman Massacre Great Sioux Reserve Sitting Bull George Armstrong Custer Chief Joseph Chief Dull Knife Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century ofDishonor Dawes Severalty Act, 1887 Carlisle Indian School Wovoka, the Ghost Dance, and Wounded Knee Homestead Act, 1862 Timber Culture, Desert land, and Timber and Stone acts, 1870s Pacific Railroad Act, 1862 The Grange and the Granger laws Wabash v. Illinois, 1886 Interstate Commerce Act, 1887 Henry Comstock and the Comstock Lode Joseph G. McCoyand the cattle frontier Oklahoma "sooners" Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" Ned Buntline and William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody John Wesley Powell, Henry D. Washburn, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, and the birth of the conservation movement |