Unit 7: Westward Expansion & Indian Wars
Terms
American Indian Wars: a series of armed conflicts between U.S. soldiers and Native American tribes.
Ghost Dance Movement: attempted to rehabilitate traditional Native American culture.
Homestead Act: 1862 law that provided settlers with western land if they lived on and improved it.
Transcontinental Railroad: railroad completed in 1869 that connected the eastern and western United States.
Reservation: land designated by the U.S. government for Native American tribes.
Dawes Act: 1887 law that divided tribal lands into individual plots in an effort to assimilate Native Americans into American society.
Indian Removal: U.S. policies that forced Native American peoples from their ancestral lands to make way for American settlement.
People & Places
Oregon Trail: route used by hundreds of thousands of Americans traveling West in the mid-19th Century.
Sitting Bull: leader of the Sioux tribe.
Crazy Horse: Lakota leader who resisted U.S. expansion and fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
George Armstrong Custer: U.S. Army officer whose forces were defeated at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Little Bighorn: site of an 1876 battle in which Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors defeated Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
Wounded Knee: site in South Dakota where U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Lakota people in 1890.
Promontory Summit: Utah location where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were joined in 1869, completing the first transcontinental railroad.
Concepts
Assimilation: the process through which individuals or groups from different cultural heritage adopt the beliefs, customs, and ways of life of another culture.
Culture: the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or social group.
Heritage: the inherited resources and attributes of a group or society from past generations.
Integrate: to form, coordinate, or blend into a unified group.
Manifest Destiny: the 19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent.
Displacement: the forced movement of people from their traditional or ancestral lands.