Transcript Westward Expansion Vocabularyx

• FRONTIER: a place that has never been seen.
• MANIFEST DESTINY: the belief that the US had
the right and duty to control all of the land
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
• ANNEX/ANNEXATION: to add land to a country
• CEDE/ CESSION: to give land to another
country
• CARAVAN: a group traveling together on a long
journey. The wagons would travel in a straight
single line and then circle at night for protection.
• CONESTOGA: a covered wagon used to carry
freight across the prairies.
• PRAIRIE SCHOONER: another word for covered
wagon, so called because they looked like ships
sailing across a sea of grass.
HOMESTEADING: to settle on public land to use as
a home.
RANCHO: huge properties for raising livestock
BOOMTOWN: communities that quickly grow in
population
• MOUNTAIN MAN: a person who lived in the
mountains and was usually a trapper or a
hunter.
• PIONEERS: someone who went to an area
before it was settled.
• FORTY-NINER: people who went to California
during the Gold Rush of 1849.
• IMMIGRANTS: a person who leaves to go live
somewhere else.
Sod Houses
• Houses made of stacked sod, which
are pieces or layers of dirt
containing the grass and its roots.
Transcontinental Railroad
• A railroad project
contracted by the
U.S. government
in 1863 &
completed in
1869 linking the
east and west
coasts.
NOTE: The Union Pacific built from the east, & the Central Pacific from the
west.
The two lines met in Utah. The Central Pacific laborers were mostly Chinese,
and the Union Pacific laborers mostly Irish.
Dust Storm
• A strong wind carrying clouds of
dust across or from a dry region.
Migration
• The movement of people or
animals from one place to
another.
Great Plains (Prairie)
• The Great Plains
are a broad
expanse of flat
land, which lies
west of the
Mississippi River
and east of the
Rocky Mountains
in the United
States.
This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado,
Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North
Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and
Wyoming.
Treaty
• A signed,
formal
agreement or
understanding
between two
individuals or
groups of
people.
Assimilation
• To adapt
and
conform to
the customs
or attitudes
of a group
or nation.
Reservation
• A tract of
public land
set apart for a
special purpose
such as the use
of an American
Indian tribe.
Geronimo
• This Native–American
was an Apache war chief
who was opposed to
Westward Expansion.
– He took revenge on the Mexicans
& settlers of the Southwest for
the murder of his wife, mother, &
three children.
– He later surrendered to U.S.
authorities & remained a prisoner
of war until his death in 1909.
Geronimo 1887
Actual signature above.
Chief Joseph
• This Native-American
chief of a Nez Perce tribe
in Idaho who was
opposed to Westward
Expansion.
– He tried to move his people to
Canada, while fighting off the U.S.
military, but eventually surrendered
and relocated to a reservation
rather than see more of his people
die.
– Upon his surrender he stated,
“From where the sun now stands, I
will fight no more forever.”
Sitting Bull
• Native-American chief
of the Sioux nation
who was opposed to
Westward Expansion.
– He is most famous for the multi-tribal
victory known as the battle of Little
Big Horn or Custer’s Last Stand in 1876.
– Sitting Bull would later surrender in
1881 and be forced onto a reservation
where he is killed by Indian police in
1890.
Actual signature above.
Nez Perce`
• This Native-American
tribal nation lived
mainly in the Pacific
Northwest of the
United States; the
name translates to
“The People.”
• Their descendants
now inhabit a
reservation in Idaho.