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.