The West #2 (2)

Question 1

What factors caused the settlement of southern California to boom?

Answer 1

In the 1880s, it was first with the tourism that was promoted by the railroads, then with the discovery of oil in LA in 1892.

Question 2

Who were the cowboys and what was their life like?

Answer 2

~Cowboys were a collection of white Mexican and black men who were low-paid wage workers.
~They would be herding cattle, helping care for horses, repairing fences in buildings then working cattle driving, and sometimes establishing frontier towns. They normally develop a bad reputation for being lawless and there was nothing romantic about their life.

Question 3

What did the lumber industry look like?

Answer 3

The lumber industry was dominated by corporations that acquired large tracts of land and employed armies of loggers.

Question 4

In what places did gold and silver rushes take place in the West?

Answer 4

They took place in the Dakotas (1876), Idaho (1883), Colorado (1890s), and Alaska (1899).

Question 5

What railroad hubs flourished as gateways to the mineral regions?

Answer 5

The railroad hubs like Albuquerque, El Paso, Denver, and Tucson flourished as gateways to these new mineral regions.

Question 6

What did independent prospectors quickly give way to?

Answer 6

Independent prospectors quickly gave way to deep shaft corporate mining employing wage workers.

Question 7

Prior to the Civil War, what did Chinese immigration look like? How did this change after the war?

Answer 7

Before the Civil War, nearly all Chinese newcomers were single men brought in by labor contractors to work in the gold mines or on the railroad then afterward entire Chinese families started to immigrate and by 1880 there were 150,000 people of Chinese descent in the US in 751 of them lived in California.

Question 8

What was the debate between the Mormons and the US government during Buchanan’s presidency?

Answer 8

President Buchanan received reports that Mormons were obstructing the work of federal judges in Utah and so he removed Brigham Young as governor then Young refused to step down then Buchanan sent in federal troops to remain there until the Civil War.

Question 9

What was the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

Answer 9

The mountain meadows massacre was when a group of Mormons attacked a wagon train of non-Mormons.

Question 10

What did Utah have to ban in order to achieve statehood?

Answer 10

Utah had to ban the Mormons from polygamy.

Question 11

What led to a wholesale lifestyle shift for many Native American tribes on the Plains?

Answer 11

The spread of horses originally introduced by the Spanish led to a full sales style shift for many Native American tribes on the plains.

Question 12

What were the Great Plain’s tribes of the 1800s?

Answer 12

Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Kiowa, and Sioux.

Question 13

What was Grant’s peace policy?

Answer 13

It was towards the West where he appointed a Native American as commissioner of Indian affairs. He wanted peace, end the corruption that was in the Indian Bureau and also treat Indians with dignity

Question 14

The US Army set out to destroy the foundations of the Native American economy. What did this mean?

Answer 14

This means villages, horses, and buffaloes. This also meant army campaigns as well as private hunters looking for buffalo hides and almost orange the buffalo into extinction.

Question 15

What happened to the Nez Perce in 1877? Who was Chief Joseph?

Answer 15

They were pursued on a 17,000-mile chase across the far south and the leader of this tribe was Chief Joseph. Then after four months, Howard forced them to surrender and they were removed to Oklahoma and then again to Washington.

Question 16

What happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn? Who was leading the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors? Who was leading the US troops? Why were the Sioux fighting?

Answer 16

The Battle of Little Bighorn was in June 1876 which is the most famous victory for Native Americans. They were led by Crazyhorse and a sitting bull. The Sioux were fighting because this land has been reserved for them by the Treaty of Fort Laramie but then the way entered after the discovery of gold.

Question 17

Who were the two prominent leaders of the Apache?

Answer 17

The two prominent leaders of the Apache were Cochise and Geronimo.

Question 18

Where was the Comanche empire? What happened to it?

Answer 18

It was modern-day New Mexico, Colorado, and Northern Texas. Dell has been equal with the French Spanish and US governments for years. The power was finally broken in the 1870s.

Question 19

What was the main problem between Native Americans and white Americans?

Answer 19

The main problem between Native Americans and white Americans was the conception of freedom. The Native Americans’ were preserving their cultural and political autonomy, and control of ancestral lands.

Question 20

What did presidents Grant and Hayes believe was the policy to deal with the Native Americans?

Answer 20

They believed that the federal government should persuade and force the Plains tribes to surrender their land, exchange their religion, and give up the idea of communal ownership and the nomadic way of life.

Question 21

What did Congress eliminate in 1871? Why?

Answer 21

~Congress eliminated the treaty system that dated back to the revolutionary era → under the system, the federal government negotiated treaties with Native Americans as if they were independent nations.
~The railroad companies had pressed for the end of this because they found tribal sovereignty an obstacle to construction.

Question 22

What were the boarding schools set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs like?

Answer 22

They establish boarding schools where Native American children are removed from the negative influences of their parents and tribes, dressed in non-native clothes given new names, and educated in white ways.

Question 23

What was the Dawes Act? Was it a success?

Answer 23

It was a crucial step in attacking tribalism that came in 1887. It broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to individual Native American families with the remainder auctioned off to white buyers. It was a complete disaster for the next 50 years.

Question 24

Describe the path to citizenship for Native Americans from the 1880s to 1924.

Answer 24

The Native Americans who accepted the Dawes act and adopted the ways of civilized life would become full citizens. Only a few native Americans accepted this and when the western state courts ruled that the rights guaranteed in the 14th and 15th Amendments, it was stated that didn’t apply to Native Americans. Then there was the Elk v. Wilson case which led to Congress granting citizenship to 100,000 Native Americans in Indian territory. The Native Americans who fought in World War I were granted citizenship in 1919 and then lastly in 1924, Congress extended citizenship to all Native Americans.

Question 25

What happened in the Elk v. Wilkins case?

Answer 25

John Elk tried to claim U.S. citizenship and vote but the Supreme Court rejected his claim and questioned whether any “Indian had achieved the degree of civilization required to be an American citizen.”

Question 26

What was the Ghost Dance?

Answer 26

The Ghost Dance was a religious revival with the belief that one day, whites would disappear, the Buffalo would return, and Native Americans to practice their ancestry customs again.

Question 27

What happened at Wounded Knee Creek?

Answer 27

Soldiers open fire on ghost dancers on December 29, 1890. They killed between 150 to 200 natives and were mostly women + children.

Question 28

Who was Buffalo Bill Cody?

Answer 28

Buffalo Bill Cody was a showman who turned the ‘Wild West’ into a public spectacle with carefully staged shows involving cowboys and ‘Indians’. He had the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.

Question 29

What was the myth of the Wild West? What was the reality?

Answer 29

The Wild West was a lawless place, ruled by cowboys and Indians marked by gunfights, cattle drives, stagecoach robberies, etc.