Transcript Westward Expansion in the 19th century

Westward Expansion in the
th
19 century
VUS.8
Westward Movement
• Westward movement
– Following the Civil War, the
westward movement of
settlers intensified into the
vast region between the
Mississippi River and the
Pacific Ocean.
• The years immediately
before and after the Civil
War were the Era of the
American Cowboy,
– marked by long cattle
drives for hundreds of
miles over unfenced open
land in the West, the only
way to get cattle to market.
Homestead Act
• Many Americans had to rebuild their
lives after the Civil War and moved west
to take advantage of :
– the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave free
public land in the western territories to settlers
who would live on and farm the land.
– Southerners and African Americans, in
particular, moved west to seek new
opportunities after the Civil War.
Western Frontier
• New technologies (for example, railroads
and the mechanical reaper):
– opened new lands in the West for settlement
and made farming more prosperous
– Great Plains and Rocky Mountain region of
the American West was no longer a mostly
unsettled frontier, but was fast becoming a
region of farms, ranches, and towns.
Admission of New States
• As the population moved westward, many
new states in the Great Plains and Rocky
Mountains were added to the Union.
• By the early 20th century, all the states
that make up the continental United
States, from Atlantic to Pacific, had been
admitted.
– Oklahoma Land Rush
The Transcontinental Railroad
• Connected Union Pacific and Central
Pacific Railroads
• Chinese and Irish immigrants were the
predominant groups that helped to build
the railroad
• Two railroads united at Promontory Point,
Utah in 1869
The Golden Spike
Battle of Little Big Horn, 1876
• An armed engagement
between combined forces
of Lakota, Northern
Cheyenne and Arapaho
people against the 7th
Cavalry Regiment of the
United States Army
• Indians were led by Crazy
Horse and Sitting Bull
• U.S. Army General
Custer and his 7th
Cavalry suffered a major
defeat
Massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890
• In an effort to bring hope of
freedom in Indian
Reservations, Indians began
performing “ghost dances.”
• The ghost dances alarmed
U.S. army soldiers monitoring
the reservations and they
decided to arrest Indian Chief,
Big Foot (aka Spotted Elk)
near Wounded Knee River.
• What triggered the massacre is
debated, but in the end 150
Lakota Indians were killed, 50
wounded and 25 soldiers were
killed.