Deck 17: The Contested West

Question 1

Which statement describes life on the Indian reservations?

A) The government allowed Indians to maintain their cultural practices.
B) Poverty and starvation stalked Indian reservations.
C) The government assaulted Indian culture but did give Indians sufficient rations.
D) Indians were able to establish their own independent governments.

Answer 1

Poverty and starvation stalked Indian reservations.

Question 2

What was the outcome of the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887?

A) Expansion of the area covered by the reservation system to include all Native Americans
B) Division of reservations and allotment of individual plots of land to Native Americans
C) Prohibition of white settlement in Oklahoma
D) Restoration of much of the land in the Southwest to Native Americans

Answer 2

Division of reservations and allotment of individual plots of land to Native Americans

Question 3

What did historian Frederick Jackson Turner argue about the importance of the western frontier in American history in 1893?

A) It made the United States different from Europe.
B) It provided a focus for American imperialism.
C) It promoted conflict between the North and the South.
D) It disproved Buffalo Bill's version of American history.

Answer 3

It made the United States different from Europe.

Question 4

What was the Comstock Lode?

A) A vein of gold discovered by prospector Henry Comstock
B) The richest vein of silver ore found on the North American continent
C) A complicated piece of machinery designed to extract silver from mines
D) The largest mining company ever formed in the American West

Question 5

Which of the following explains why the U.S. army gunned down unarmed Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota in 1890?

A) It was rumored that the Indians were waiting to ambush the troops.
B) American soldiers feared an uprising provoked by a militant interpretation of the Ghost Dance religion.
C) The Sioux had refused to sign a new treaty that relinquished land surrounding the Creek.
D) Troops had been ordered to wipe out all Native Americans in the area.

Question 6

What happened to the Sioux after their victory at the Battle of the Little Big Horn?

A) They continued to pose a military threat to American invaders.
B) They were hunted down by the American army.
C) Sitting Bull led the united Sioux in establishing an independent settlement.
D) They begrudgingly accepted the loss of the Black Hills.

Question 7

Which group or groups decimated the buffalo herds on the Great Plains in the late nineteenth century?

A) Native Americans who regularly slaughtered the animals as part of their rituals
B) Railroads and irresponsible hide hunters
C) The U.S. army, which killed them to feed the troops
D) Chinese and Irish work gangs who were desperate for food

Question 8

What happened at the Sand Creek Massacre in November 1864?

A) Colonel John M. Chivington butchered 270 Indians.
B) Black Kettle defeated Chivington's American forces.
C) The Americans executed five Indians who refused to surrender.
D) Chivington scalped and mutilated Indian men but spared women and children.

Question 9

Which statement describes the U.S. government's Indian policy during the middle of the nineteenth century?

A) The government was more willing than ever to grant Indians the rights enjoyed by whites.
B) The government cleared Indian land for white settlement but lived up to most of the promises it made to the Indians.
C) The government pushed Indians off their lands and into reservations.
D) The government attempted to prevent white settlers from taking more Indian land.

Question 10

What occurred under the "outing system" of the 1880s?

A) Young children from rural areas were sent to live with families in cities.
B) Indian children were forced to live with white families over summer vacation.
C) Indian children who did not succeed at school were returned to their tribes.
D) White men who had taken Indian wives were asked to leave the reservation.

Question 11

Who led the Great Sioux Uprising in 1862?

A) Sitting Bull
B) Little Crow
C) Red Cloud
D) Crazy Horse

Question 12

According to Map 17.2: Western Mining, 1848-1890, in which state did the most "gold bonanzas" occur?

A) California
B) Arizona
C) South Dakota
D) Colorado

Question 13

Which fleeing Indian tribe was hunted down by the U.S. army just 50 miles from Canada in 1877?

A) Nez Percé
B) Shoshoni
C) Apache
D) Crow

Question 14

What was the Ghost Dance?

A) A religious ritual that was supposed to lead to the destruction of whites and the return of the buffalo.
B) A ritual performed by the Paiutes in an effort to contact their great spirit leaders for guidance.
C) A signal that Native Americans of the Great Plains had resigned themselves to white domination.
D) A ritual that the Sioux men performed as they were preparing for battle against white Americans.

Question 15

What occurred after Geronimo surrendered to General Miles in 1886?

A) The U.S. government resettled the Apaches in Mexico.
B) The Apache warriors were tried as war criminals and executed.
C) The Apaches were allowed to remain on their ancestral land in the Southwest.
D) The government sent nearly five hundred Apaches to prisons in the South.

Question 16

What was the outcome of the second Treaty of Fort Laramie?

A) The Sioux and Cheyenne agreed to the completion of the Bozeman Trail.
B) The treaty convinced Sioux chiefs, including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, to accept reservation lands.
C) The treaty was violated by the U.S. government after gold was discovered in the Black Hills.
D) The treaty led to the extinction of the Sioux Indians.

Question 17

The portraits of Indian students in "The Assimilation of Sioux Students at Carlisle Indian School" illustrate what goal of Indian schools?

A) To help Indian students maintain ties to their heritage
B) To erase signs of students' Indian heritage
C) To educate Indian students as well as their white counterparts
D) To encourage patriotism to the United States among Indian students

Question 18

In what manner did William Tecumseh Sherman successfully defeat the Comanchería?

A) Using the scorched-earth policy he'd perfected during his March to the Sea
B) Committing the largest mass execution in American history
C) Creating the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
D) Herding the Comanche onto the reservation at Fort Sill

Question 19

Why did the Plains Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which ceded some of their land to allow the passage of wagon trains?

A) They depended on trade with white settlers.
B) They wanted to protect their favored status with the U.S. government.
C) They believed it would help them to displace weaker tribes.
D) They hoped to preserve their culture in the face of white onslaught.

Question 20

Who was Geronimo?

A) A Sioux warrior and chieftain who regularly defeated the U.S. army on the Great Plains
B) The Nez Percé leader who said, "I will fight no more forever."
C) A Cheyenne warrior and chieftain who led pitched battles against both Mexican and U.S. armies
D) An Apache warrior and chieftain who led raiding parties and burned ranches on both sides of the Mexican border

Question 21

Which of the following characterizes life for women on the western frontier in the late nineteenth century?

A) They usually had servants to help them with their household work.
B) They worked only within the physical confines of their homes.
C) They were forced to work hard to accomplish even the simplest tasks.
D) They tended to live quite well while expending little physical effort.

Question 22

How did the Utah legislature counter the criticism of polygamy in 1870?

A) It outlawed the practice.
B) It gave women the right to vote.
C) It ignored its critics.
D) It successfully petitioned for statehood.

Question 23

Chinese immigrants made up what proportion of the workforce that built America's first transcontinental railroad?

A) 20 percent
B) 50 percent
C) 90 percent
D) 100 percent

Question 24

Which of the following is true of labor unions in the western mining industry?

A) They formed early and held considerable bargaining power.
B) They did little to help workers in the event of an accident or sickness.
C) They held little appeal for workers.
D) They had no success organizing in the West.

Question 25

Along with the Homestead Act of 1862, which factor helped stimulate the land rush in the trans-Mississippi West?

A) The transition from large commercial farming to smaller family farms
B) Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
C) The availability of essential resources such as water and firewood on the plains
D) The opening of the transcontinental railroad

Question 26

Which of the following terms best characterizes Virginia City, Nevada, and other mining centers in the late nineteenth century?

A) Lawless outposts
B) Homogeneous small towns
C) Sprawling industrialized communities
D) Short-lived settlements

Question 27

According to Map 17.2: Western Mining, 1848-1890, in which state was lead available?

A) California
B) Nevada
C) Wyoming
D) Oregon

Question 28

What did the Homestead Act of 1862 promise to potential migrants to the West?

A) 160 acres to any southerner who promised to defect from the Confederacy and move West
B) 160 acres free to any citizen or prospective citizen who settled on land west of the Mississippi River for five years
C) Free agricultural implements and enough money to live for one year to all citizens willing to cultivate land west of the Mississippi River
D) 160 acres to any citizen or prospective citizen at a guaranteed price of $2 an acre

Question 29

Which was the largest ethnic group in the western mining district of the United States in the late nineteenth century?

A) The Chinese
B) The Swiss
C) Hungarians
D) The Irish

Question 30

How did the landscape of the trans-Mississippi West change between 1870 and 1900?

A) The region proved to be a haven for family farming.
B) It was populated predominantly by former slaves.
C) Mining made it the country's largest industrial region.
D) Family farms gave way to commercial farming.

Question 31

Which of the following describes the impact of the wealth produced in the Nevada mining industry?

A) It enriched speculators in San Francisco.
B) It remained in the state's rapidly expanding mining towns.
C) It funded local education and construction projects.
D) It discouraged immigrants from migrating to the region.

Question 32

What were the "chips" that served as the most prevalent form of fuel used for cooking and heating in the plains in the latter half of the nineteenth century?

A) Coal that had spilled from railroad cars
B) Charred wood leftover from Indian bonfires
C) Twigs, old corncobs, and sunflower stalks
D) Chunks of dried cattle and buffalo dung

Question 33

Which group or groups composed the population of the area from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean during the last decades of the nineteenth century?

A) Native-born whites
B) African Americans fleeing the oppression of the South
C) People from various parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas
D) Waves of Mexican refugees

Question 34

For what reason were African American troops, known as Buffalo soldiers, serving in the West during the Indian Wars?

A) The first black regiment to come west originated in Buffalo, New York.
B) Native Americans thought their hair resembled that of the bison.
C) They were as scarce as the buffalo on the Great Plains of the late 1800s.
D) They were the soldiers primarily responsible for the extinction of buffalo herds.

Question 35

Which of the following describes women in Virginia City by 1870?

A) They were still outnumbered by men at a ratio of ten to one.
B) They complained about the city's filth, lawlessness, and disorder.
C) They worked primarily in dancehalls, saloons, and brothels.
D) They worked primarily as housekeepers.

Question 36

Which of the following describes the changes experienced by the Californios between 1850 and 1880?

A) Their numbers increased from 19 percent to 82 percent of the state's total population.
B) They solidified their claim to historic land.
C) Their percentage of the state's population fell by more than 60 percent.
D) They began their steady assimilation into American life.

Question 37

For what reason did hundreds of thousands of Americans migrate to the West in the three decades after 1870?

A) To find work in the steel industry
B) To own their own land
C) To secure territorial appointments in government
D) To earn wages in the expanding agribusinesses

Question 38

Which of the following describes how life in the agrarian West compared to life in the mining West?

A) Slow paced
B) Free of hardship
C) Equally exploitative
D) Free of economic competition

Question 39

Who eventually replaced Chinese workers, especially in agriculture, after the Chinese Exclusion Act?

A) Japanese workers
B) White southerners
C) Black southerners
D) Mexican workers

Question 40

What was the purpose of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?

A) To respond to Chinese laborers' demands for higher wages and better working conditions
B) To decrease the Chinese population of the American West
C) To limit the number of Chinese immigrants to America for a period of three years
D) To reduce anti-Asian prejudice in California and other areas of the West

Question 41

Describe the government's philosophies for the Indian boarding schools in the late nineteenth century. What happened to Indian children once they arrived at these schools?

Question 42

When Americans spoke of the West after the Civil War, to what areas were they referring? Describe the various ways in which people hoped to make a living in the West in the nineteenth century.

Question 43

What factors accounted for the decline of the cowboy and the rise of the cattle king?

Question 44

Who among whites protested the conditions on Indian reservations during the 1880s? How did Congress address these problems?

Question 45

Which of the following describes African American cowboys in the West in the late nineteenth century?

A) They had a substantial presence in the region but not in the fiction of the time.
B) They were prominently featured in the dime novels of the post-Civil War era.
C) They were an insignificant presence, particularly in Texas and California.
D) They were celebrated in popular fiction despite their small numbers in the region.

Question 46

What did the state and federal governments do to encourage railroad construction in the decades after the Civil War?

A) They gave railroad companies 180 million acres of public land.
B) They gave railroads rights-of-way across homesteaders' land.
C) They sold land to railroad companies at bargain prices.
D) They reclaimed acreage already settled by farmers and sold it to the railroads.

Question 47

Of the 2.5 million farms established between 1860 and 1900, homesteading accounted for what proportion?

A) Three-quarters
B) Two-thirds
C) One-half
D) One-fifth

Question 48

Between 1870 and 1900, the population of rural America shrank from 80 percent to 66 percent while the agricultural sector of the economy experienced what change?

A) It benefitted from the steady growth of the diversified family farm.
B) It suffered from the removal of government subsidies for small farms.
C) It grew through mechanization, commercialization, and expanding urban markets.
D) It became the primary source of income for laborers in the Northeast.

Question 49

Describe what life was like in the West for Californios and Chinese immigrants in the post-Civil War years.

Question 50

Describe how the concepts of imperialism and colonialism explain the process of westward expansion in the United States in the nineteenth century?

Question 51

Describe three important changes in the way farming was carried out after the Civil War.

Question 52

What did settlers passing through the western portion of Kansas and Nebraska and the eastern portion of Colorado in the years after 1870 call the area?

A) The Comstock Lode
B) Homestead Act Lands
C) The Great American Desert
D) The Near West Plains

Question 53

How did the invention of barbed wire revolutionize the cattle industry?

A) It helped ranchers separate their herds from one another.
B) It expanded safe grazing areas.
C) It allowed ranchers to fence in their cattle.
D) It prevented disputes over ownership of cattle.

Question 54

Describe life in Virginia City, Nevada, in the 1870s.

Question 55

What was the outcome of the transformation of agriculture to big business in the South and West during the post-Civil War era?

A) An increasing number of laborers worked land they would never own
B) Agricultural yields fell dramatically overall
C) The widespread use of machinery halved the size of the agricultural labor force
D) The total number of farms fell by more than half

Question 56

By the late nineteenth century, farmers were no longer the self-sufficient yeomen anchoring the republic as originally described by which of the following men?

A) Thomas Jefferson
B) George Washington
C) Andrew Jackson
D) James Madison

Question 57

Explain why newly freed slaves, poor whites, and Hispanics had become sharecroppers and migrant workers by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Question 58

Henry Miller and Charles Lux fit into which of the following categories?

A) Pioneers in the field of agribusiness
B) Small ranchers threatened by the consolidation of the ranching business
C) Enlightened benefactors of migrant laborers.
D) Adherents to the old Republican ideal of the self-sufficient yeoman farmer

Question 59

What was the Ghost Dance religion? Why was it so important to those who participated in it? Why did it frighten the white settlers in the West?

Question 60

By the 1870s, homesteaders discovered that most of the prime land in the West was

A) already set aside for protection by the federal government.
B) held by Native Americans, who refused to relinquish it.
C) already ruined by industrial enterprises seeking mineral wealth.
D) already in the hands of speculators.

Question 61

How and to what extent did the American West reflect the major social, political, and economic trends more typically associated with the industrial Midwest and Northeast in the late nineteenth century?

Question 62

What attitudes did white settlers and those in the U.S. government have toward Native Americans after the Civil War? Describe the ways in which Native Americans attempted to resist white domination of their culture.

Question 63

Match the term with the definition.
1887 law that divvied up reservations and allotted parcels of land to individual Indians as private property. In the end, the American government sold almost two-thirds of "surplus" Indian land to white settlers. The law dealt a crippling blow to traditional tribal culture.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 64

Match the term with the definition.
Silver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada. Discovery of the ore touched off a mining rush that brought a diverse population into the region and led to the establishment of a number of boomtowns, including Virginia City, Nevada.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 65

Match the term with the definition.
Religion founded in 1889 by Paiute shaman Wovoka that combined elements of Christianity and traditional Indian religion and served as a nonviolent form of resistance for Indians in the late nineteenth century. The practice frightened whites and was violently suppressed.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 66

Match the term with the definition.
Land given by the federal government to American Indians beginning in the 1860s in an attempt to reduce tensions between Indians and western settlers. On these lands, Indians subsisted on meager government rations and faced a life of poverty and starvation.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 67

Match the term with the definition.
Legislation that promised 160 acres in the trans-Mississippi West free to any citizen or prospective citizen who settled on the land for five years. The act spurred American settlement of the West. Altogether nearly one-tenth of the United States was granted to settlers.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 68

What were the benefits and costs of economic and technological development in the western United States between 1870 and 1900?

Question 69

Most people associate the clash of cultures in the trans-Mississippi West after the Civil War with the continuing antagonism between Native Americans and white settlers. The cultural conflict in this region, however, was actually much more complex. Discuss the various groups of people settling the West in this era. Who were they, where did they come from, and what were they seeking?

Question 70

Match the term with the definition.
1882 law that effectively barred Chinese immigration and set a precedent for further immigration restrictions. Fueled by racial and cultural animosities, the act's passage led to a sharp drop in the Chinese population in America.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 71

Match the term with the definition.
1890 massacre of Sioux Indians by American cavalry in South Dakota. Sent to suppress the Ghost Dance, the soldiers opened fire on the Sioux as they attempted to surrender. More than two hundred Sioux men, women, and children were killed.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 72

Match the term with the definition.
Institution established in Pennsylvania in 1879 to educate and assimilate American Indians. It pioneered the "outing system" in which Indian students were sent to live with white families in order to accelerate acculturation.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 73

Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" posited that the availability of plentiful land in the West provided a "safety net" that released social tensions and provided opportunities for social mobility that Americanized Americans. To what extent do you think the experiences of the individuals and families who migrated to the trans-Mississippi West between 1870 and 1900 actually bear out Turner's conclusions?

Question 74

Match the term with the definition.
Mountains in western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming that are sacred to the Lakota Sioux. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States guaranteed Indians control of the land but broke its promise after gold was discovered there in 1874.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 75

Match the term with the definition.
Railroad completed in 1869 that was the first to span North America. Built in large part by Chinese laborers, it and others opened access to new areas, fueled land speculation, and actively recruited settlers.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 76

Match the term with the definition.
1876 battle begun when American cavalry under George Armstrong Custer attacked an encampment of Indians who refused to remove to a reservation. Indian warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull annihilated the American soldiers, but their victory was short-lived.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee

Question 77

Match the term with the definition.
Indian empire based on trade in horses, hides, guns, and captives that stretched from the Canadian plains to Mexico in the eighteenth century. By 1865, fewer than five thousand Comanches lived in the empire, which ranged from west Texas north to Oklahoma.

A)Battle of the Little Big Horn
B)Black Hills
C)Carlisle Indian School
D)Chinese Exclusion Act
E)Comanchería
F)Comstock Lode
G)Dawes Allotment Act
H)first transcontinental railroad
I)Ghost Dance
J)Homestead Act of 1862
K)reservations
L)Wounded Knee