What Was the Wild West questions
What did Congress pass in 1871?
Dawes Act
What was "Custer's Last Stand"?
General Custer was sent to force out Indians; he and his men killed at "Battle of Little Bighorn"
What was the year of 1843 called?
Great Migration
What did Congress pass in 1862?
Homestead Act
Who were fur trappers?
"Mountain men"
Who was Daniel Boone?
1734-1820; most legendary mountain man of all
What was the Trail of Tears?
1830s Indians were forced off their land, many died on the march to the Indian territory
What was the Pony Express?
1860 mail delivery system by horses
Who were the 49ers?
80,000 miners' journey for gold in 1849
What was Manifest Destiny?
American thought that the United States was meant to stretch across the entire continent
Who ran the Wild West Show?
Buffalo Bill Cody
Who was the most famous train robber?
Jesse James
What was the famous duel in 1865?
Springfield, Missouri; Wild Bill Hickok, professional gambler and Dave Tutt
What were ghost towns?
abandoned buildings of a town
What did the English government promise to the Indians in a 1763 treaty?
all land west of the Appalachian Mountains
What was "coffin varnish"?
bad coffee
Who were cowboys later on?
bandits, outlaws, thieves, and murderers
What was invented in the 1860s?
barbed wire
What happened in 1845 to Texas?
became a part of the United States
What were mining towns?
boomtowns
What were wild horses called?
broncos
What was used to build fires?
buffalo droppings - chips
What was the half-black, half-Indian cowboy, Bill Pickett known for?
capturing steers by grabbing their horns and biting their lips
Who was the wrangler?
cared for the horses
What is a posse?
citizens banding together for justice
What was the Homestead Act?
claim 160 acres of land; $10 to live and manage it for five years; it was theirs
What was hard to find?
clean drinking water
Who was 'cookie'?
cook
What was the worst part of the trail?
crossing the Blue Mountains
What was a bonanza?
deposit
What was prairie madness?
depression
What was cholera?
drinking polluted water
Where did the pioneers get the sickness, cholera?
drinking polluted water
What did the mountain men become?
folk heroes
Who were the Exodusters, that founded the town of Nicodemus
former slaves seeking to take advantage of the Homestead Act
What led to bad harvests?
frequent droughts
What was often a violent place?
frontier
What was that border called?
frontier
What was one of the most valuable goods the New World had to sell abroad?
fur
Fur from the New World was sold abroad. What were beaver skins used to make?
gentlemen's tall top hats
What happened in the west in 1848?
gold fever
What was a "six shooter"?
good coffee - strong that a gun would float on it
Why did travelers of the Great Migration leave in early spring?
ground dry; so wagon not get stuck in the mud
Why was Wild Bill Hickok's poker hand called the "dead man's hand"?
hand he was holding when he was shot in the back of the head in 1876
How did Buffalo Bill earn his nickname?
he killed 4,282 buffalo in 18 months
Which job did Buffalo Bill Cody have as a teenager?
he rode a horse across the prairie for the Pony Express mail service
What was true of the Pony Express mail service?
it failed to deliver the mail only once
What did the 1868 United States treaty promise?
land to South Dakota Indians forever; however, when gold was found miners rushed in anyway
What were prairie schooners?
large wagons pulled by a team of oxen
What marked the border between settled and unsettled territory?
line on a map
What did Indians hunt on horseback?
live buffalo
What did settlers have to do in order to "prove a claim"?
live there for five years
What is a lasso?
looped rope
What was the Pony Express?
mail service
Who were the original cowboys?
men in charge of huge herds of cattle
What did the 80,000 men known as the forty-niners journey west to do?
mine for gold
How many buffalo did one man kill in two months?
nearly 6,000
What did the United States decide about the treaty?
not bound by it because it was made by Great Britain not the United States
What did many cowboys not carry?
pistols
What were bandannas for?
prevent sunburn or breathing in dust
What did the telegraph line do?
put the Pony Express out of business
What giant fair started in 1825?
rendezvous - once a year
What was a common crime?
robbery of mining towns
What did some settlers often refer to all Native Americans as?
savages
What were the first things settlers built on prairies?
school house
Why was a crowd gathered in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1886?
see one of the decade's biggest traveling shows - Buffalo Bill's Wild West
How many presidents were born in log cabins?
seven
What was dugout?
shelter dug into the side of a hill
What happened in 1881?
shootout in Tombstone, Arizona
What did Annie Oakley do?
shot a cigar right out of her husband's mouth
What was thought to keep the cattle calm?
singing to them at night
What did students use to write on?
slates-blackboards
What would happen if the cattle panicked?
stampede
What did the Indians say the West was?
stolen, not won
What was completed in 1861?
telegraph line
What happened in the late 1800s that led to the end of the open range?
the terrible winter of 1886-1887 caused deaths of millions of cattle
What did two men do while standing guard at night during a cattle drive?
they sang to the cattle to keep the herd calm
Why were they afraid Indian tribes might attack?
they were traveling all over their land, cutting trees, cattle at their grass and destroyed their crops
Who were cattle rustlers?
thieves stole cows - punished by death on the spot
What was needed to make log cabins?
trees, mud and an ax
What was the Wild West?
white settlers were seen as untamed and untouched by civilization
What did Congress pass in 1862?
Pacific Railroad Act