Westward Expansion

Vast grassland between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

• Great Plains
• Sodbuster
• Battle of Little Bighorn
• Assimilation

Settlers who acquired free land from the government.

• Homesteader
• Battle of Little Bighorn
• Reservation
• Americanization

Name given to Great Plains farmers because they had to break through so much thick soil, called sod, in order to farm.

• Sodbuster
• Reservation
• Cattle drive
• Dawes Act of 1887

In 1876, Indian leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated Custer's troops who tried to force them back on to the reservation; Custer and all his men died.

• Battle of Little Bighorn
• Cattle drive
• Transcontinental railroad
• Wounded Knee Massacre

Federal land set aside for Native Americans

• Reservation
• Transcontinental railroad
• Union Pacific
• Gold Rush

A long journey on which cowboys herded cattle to Northern markets or railroads

• Cattle drive
• Union Pacific
• Central Pacific
• Indian Wars

Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental U.S.

• Transcontinental railroad
• Central Pacific
• Barbed wire
• frontier

Railroad company that tracked west; Irish immigrants

• Union Pacific
• Barbed wire
• Homestead Act
• cowboy

Railroad company that tracked east; Chinese immigrants

• Central Pacific
• Homestead Act
• Assimilation
• Great Plains

Wire that helped close the range

• Barbed wire
• Assimilation
• Americanization
• Homesteader