American Cultures

Question 1

Reasons why people came to America

Answer 1

• Economy was booming.
  -Travel to America was faster and cheaper (Steam ships)
  -Freedom of religion and thought
  -Jews and other minorities persecuted in other countries.

Question 2

How much did the buffalo population decrease between 1840 and 1885?

Answer 2

13 million to 200.

Question 3

Life on the Reservations

Answer 3

-weren’t allowed to hunt buffalo, have feasts, dances and ceremonies - a complete loss of culture.
-Any resistance would be handled with withholding rations
- Led to depression and alcoholisim

Question 4

Dawes General Allotment

Answer 4

-1887
-Broke reservations into allotments and each family was given 160 acres of land to farm.
-Deteriorated tribal community and took away even more lands.

Question 5

What happened to Native American Children

Answer 5

• Sent to boarding schools to be educated and taught to have no respect for their native way of life. They couldn’t speak their own languages.

Question 6

Ghost Dancers.

Answer 6

• 1890s
  -Led by Wovoka (Spiritual)
  -Believed that dancing would wake the dead ancestors and sweep the settlers off the land and make the buffalo return.
  -Unsettled the white settlers, Indian agents and homesteaders which led to the army killing 250 natives - Wounded Knee Massacre
  (Last acts of Indian resistance)

Question 7

Ida Wells

Answer 7

• Born a slave in 1862
  -Got an education through Freedman’s Bureau, became a teacher
  -She became a journalist and wrote about poor education that black kids received and lynching in south.

Question 8

Booker T Washington

Answer 8

• Black American leader and set up schools to train black children to be farmers and craftsman in 1882
  -Set up Negro Business League to support black businesses in 1900 - led to 23,000 black teachers, 400 doctors, 300 lawyers.

Question 9

W.E.B Dubois

Answer 9

-Black academic from Northern States and gained degrees from Harvard and history professor at Atlanta.
-Advocated for black equal rights. and helped form Niagara movement campaign.

Question 10

what were Sundown Towns

Answer 10

• Racist towns that banned black people from settling.

Question 11

Problems surrounding big businesses

Answer 11

• Workers working long hours and low pay in dangerous conditions.
  -Violence and methods of intimidation if smaller farm tried to compete.
  -Crime was common and racial conflict.

Question 12

Terrible things black people experienced.

Answer 12

• states passed laws which punished harsh crimes with harsh sentences e.g Pig laws
  -Vagrancy Statues - crime to be unemployed
  -Share croppers being exploited by landowners being trapped in a cycle of debt and poverty
  -Schools given less funding
• Jim Crow Laws
  Illegalisation of intermarriage
  -voting restrictions - poll taxes and literacy tests

Question 13

John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie

Answer 13

John - founded Standard Oil Company and became the first American billionaire.
-Andrew - Carnegie Steel company.
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Question 14

Life in America for immigrants

Answer 14

-Anti-immigrant violence
-Laws that prevented Chinese workers moving freely in California
-Ended up in poorest areas of cities.

Question 15

Life like in the cities

Answer 15

• overcrowded -32 families to share a building
  -Disease - babies died before age one
  -promises of work, entertainment, education, freedom
  -driving force behind women getting votes in 1920s.