Closing the Frontier

Question 1

The Homestead Act of 1862

Answer 1

Granted a quarter section of the public land free to any household head who lived on the land for at least five years and improved it.

Question 2

The Morrill Act of 1862

Answer 2

Created colleges for the scientific study of soil, grain, and climate conditions.

Question 3

Oklahoma Land Rush

Answer 3

• The conclusion of Worcester v. Georgia and the Indian Removal Act.
• Required five major native American nations known as the “Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks) to relocate to Oklahoma.

Question 4

April 22nd, 1889 (Oklahoma Land Rush continued)

Answer 4

• Settlers poured into Oklahoma, known as “Sooners.”
• These settlers were homesteaders, land companies, and those dispossessed by warfare/economic hardship in the South.
• Natives were once again, forcibly removed from their land.

Question 5

Curtis Act

Answer 5

• Abolished tribal jurisdiction over all Indian territory.
• Forced members of Indian nations to dismantle their governments and abandon their estates.
• Subjected them to federal law.

Question 6

Grant’s Peace Policy

Answer 6

• Grant wanted to either relocate Natives to reservations or assimilate them to U.S. customs, traditions, and citizenship.
• Federal Government wanted to make schools and establish a new economy for Native Americans to “Americanize” them.
• Hired Quakers to government positions to help educate Native Americans.

Question 7

Indian Territory & Reservation Policy

Answer 7

• Reservations were lands granted to Native American nations that would be ran by the tribal nation under the supervision of the Department of Indian Affairs rather than the state.
• They would receive funding from the Federal government, like a state would, however the funding throughout the 19th century was routinely insufficient which often led these tribal communities malnourished and ill-supplied.

Question 8

Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862, 1864, & 1867

Answer 8

• Allowed for funding of America’s Transcontinental Railroad which was completed in 1869.
• Connected San Francisco, California, to Omaha, Kansas, and hooked-up with other railways back east.
• Allowed for goods and people to move faster throughout the country than ever before.

Question 9

Farming Improvements

Answer 9

• Refrigerated rail cars
• John Deere’s Singing Plow (turned grass in the great plains into soil)
• The harvester
• The reaper
• Farms became more like factories

Question 10

Impacts of mass farming

Answer 10

• Because farms acted like factories, a low-paying workforce was necessary.
• Chinese and migrant farmers were used.
• Animals like grizzle bears, wolves, and buffalo died off.
• More and more water was needed to supply farms (led to irrigation systems which would dry-up the nearby lakes/streams).

Question 11

The Forrest Reserve Act of 1891

Answer 11

Gave the President the power to establish forest reserves to protect watersheds against the threats posed by lumbering, overgrazing, and forest fires.

Question 12

The Sand Creek Massacre

Answer 12

• As the 1850s and 1860s progressed, more miners were moving into Colorado to search the Rocky Mountains for gold.
• In November of 1865, U.S. troops attacked a village of Native Americans consisting of Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes in Colorado.
• Violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 (lands in Colorado were promised to both the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes)

Question 13

Black Kettle

Answer 13

• Cheyenne chief who negotiated new deals with the U.S. Government from 1851-1864.

Question 14

The Sioux Wars (1850s-60s)

Answer 14

• Sioux and Cheyenne forces led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, two Sioux chiefs, began attacks on forts from Utah all the way to Montana.
• Conflict between the Sioux people and U.S.

Question 15

Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)

Answer 15

• Sioux and Cheyenne forces agree to leave the forts, and stop raiding U.S. forces/towns.
• U.S. troops would allow Sioux and Cheyenne forces to live peacefully throughout the area.
• These tribes were still forced off of the land as the Transcontinental Railroad brought more and more people westward.

Question 16

Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867

Answer 16

Promised Southern Cheyenne, Comanche, Arapaho, and Kiowa (all nomadic tribes) lands south of the Arkansas River for purpose of hunting buffalo.

Question 17

The Red River War

Answer 17

• After the Medicine Lodge Treaty, Hostilities were settling down from the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado.
• Commercial buffalo hunters began wiping out the population of buffalo, which led to a smaller food source for the Native American tribes.
• Federal Government also failed to provide enough food, weapons, and materials for housing that was promised from the treaty.
• The Comanche organized war parties to go to war against the Federal troops
• Comanche were defeated and forced to surrender at Fort Sill, in Oklahoma.

Question 18

The Sioux Wars (1870s-80s)

Answer 18

• The discovery of gold in the Black Hills mines of Wyoming and South Dakota brought more and more people (miners) to the area.
• With more and more people encroaching on Native American lands, the Sioux Wars once again erupted between the Sioux/Cheyenne and the Federal government.

Question 19

Colonel George B. Custer

Answer 19

• A very enthusiastic and colorful characters in the Sioux Wars.
• Renowned for his bravery.
• Was given orders to scout the Sioux tribes at Little Bighorn, but ended up leading an attack against overwhelming Sioux forces.
• In the East and West, Custer was viewed as a martyr.
• Public perception of Native Americans reached an all-time low.

Question 20

The Massacre at Wounded Knee

Answer 20

• December 29th, 1890, Federal troops surrounded the Lakota and opened fire, on a group consisting mostly of women, children and the elderly over 250 people were killed.
• Only about 50 children survived.
• The surviving children were put in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.