Development of the Plains Flashcards
All 24 cards in this deck
What did the Pacific Railroad Act (1862) do?
It chose a route linking the eastern railroads at Omaha to California and gave the job of building it to two companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, funded by government loans and land grants.
When and where was the First Transcontinental Railroad completed?
In 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah, connecting the East and West coasts.
How did the railroad companies use their land grants to encourage settlement?
They advertised in Europe and the East for migrants and sold the granted land cheaply to settlers, helping to fund construction and creating new towns along the routes.
What did the Homestead Act (1862) offer settlers?
160 acres of government land for a small filing fee, which became theirs if they lived on and farmed it for five years.
What did the Timber Culture Act (1873) allow homesteaders to do?
Claim a further 160 acres of land, provided they planted trees on 40 acres of it.
Which new technologies helped homesteaders farm the Great Plains? Give two.
Barbed wire, which cheaply fenced crops against buffalo and cattle, and metal wind pumps, which made reaching deep water affordable. (Also ploughs with steel ploughshares.)
What was a US marshal?
A federal law officer appointed by the President for each territory, who, with deputy marshals, enforced federal law over a huge area.
Who was Joseph McCoy?
A cattle dealer who in 1867 built stockyards at Abilene, Kansas — a cow town on the railroad where Texas cattle could be driven, sold and shipped east.
Who was John Iliff?
The first great 'cattle baron' of the Plains, who ranched in Colorado and won contracts to supply beef to railroad workers and to reservations.
Who was Charles Goodnight?
A Texas rancher who, with Oliver Loving, opened the Goodnight–Loving Trail (1866), driving cattle to sell at reservations and mining camps.
Why was the railroad network important to the growth of the cattle industry?
Live cattle could be shipped from cow towns to more lucrative eastern markets such as Chicago instead of being driven long distances; refrigerated railcars later carried meat east.
How did the cowboy's work change as ranching spread onto the Plains?
Long cattle drives gave way to work on ranches — riding the line, mending fences and branding — so the job became safer but duller and lower in status.
True or false? Ranchers and homesteaders often came into conflict over land and water.
True. Homesteaders fenced off land and water with barbed wire, while ranchers' cattle trampled crops and spread Texas fever.
Give two ways the railroads changed the lives of Indigenous peoples of the Plains.
They lost land along the routes, with many tribes signing treaties to live on reservations; and hunting grounds were disrupted as buffalo were fenced off and shot from the trains for sport and hides.
What happened after gold was found in the Black Hills in 1874?
Prospectors poured onto Sioux land, breaking the second Fort Laramie Treaty; the government tried to buy the Black Hills and the Sioux refused.
What did the second Fort Laramie Treaty (1868) create?
The Great Sioux Reservation in Dakota, including the Black Hills, for the exclusive use of the Sioux, with white settlers and prospectors barred from it.
True or false? All Sioux leaders accepted the second Fort Laramie Treaty (1868).
False. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused to agree to it or live on the reservation, sowing the seeds of future conflict.
What was the aim of the US government's reservation policy towards Indigenous peoples?
To confine them to fixed areas away from their traditional lands, 'civilise' them by making them farm, and leave them dependent on government supplies and easier to control.
What was Little Crow's War (1862)?
A rising by the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota: starving after crops failed and promised government payments did not arrive, Little Crow attacked the reservation agency and settlers before being defeated by the US army.
What happened at the Sand Creek Massacre (1864)?
Colonel Chivington led a dawn raid on Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp, which believed it was under US army protection, massacring about 150 men, women and children.
What was the significance of Red Cloud's War (1866–68)?
Red Cloud's Sioux forced the US government to close the Bozeman Trail and withdraw troops from its forts, leading to the second Fort Laramie Treaty (1868).
Give one reason many claims under the Homestead Act (1862) were never 'proved up' (completed).
A 160-acre plot was too small to make a living from on the dry Plains, so many families gave up; around 60% of claims were never completed.
What was the role of a county sheriff in the West?
A locally elected officer who enforced the law in a county for a two-year term and could call on local men to form a posse to chase lawbreakers.
Why was driving Texas cattle north so profitable after the Civil War (1861–65)?
Texas had millions of longhorns worth only about 40 a head for beef.