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