Westward Expansion Outline Questions
1. How many Indians lived in North America in the late 1800s? What part of these Indians lived on the
Great Plains?
2. What animal was the basis of the Indian's life on the Great Plains? What essential necessities of life
did this animal provide for the Indians on the Great Plains?
3. How many buffalo were found on the Great Plains at the end of the Civil War (in 1865)?
4. What was the size of the American buffalo herd in 1889?
5. What were several reasons for the "virtual extermination" of the buffalo on the Great Plains?
6. At the height of its popularity, how many buffalo were being hunted and killed per year on the Great
Plains?
7. Describe the difference between the "old" and the "new" Indian policies?
8. What caused most of the "Indian Wars" in the west between the 1860s and 1890?
9. What did writers such as Helen Hunt Jackson and Sarah Winnemuca write about in the late 1800s?
10. What was the major provision of the Dawes Act of 1887?
11. What industry/business brought white settlement into the mountains of the west---the Rocky Moun-
tains and the Sierra Nevadas?
12. How did mining affect:
the railroads?
the "Indian problem"?
farming?
13. How much gold and silver was produced in the mines of the west between 1860 and 1900?
14. What type of men were the first to settle the Great Plains?
15. What influence did the "coming of women" have on settlement of the Great Plains?
16. Which territory was the "first to grant women the right to vote” in 1869?
17. What were four major cattle trails that flourished on the Great Plains during the days of the "open-
range" cattle industry?
18. When did the "open range" cattle industry end on the Great Plains?
19. What were two reasons for the end of the "open range" cattle industry?
20. What were five major provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862?
21. What were at least five major problems that settlers on the Great Plains had to overcome in order to
survive?
22. Why did the Government encourage building railroads out west?
23. How did the railroads get paid for?
24. What affect did the Pacific Railway Act have?
25. What were 4 reason for building the Transcontinental Railroad?
26. What is the difference between Push Factors and Pull Factors?
27. What companies built the Transcontinental Railroad?
28. What two groups of immigrants were the main source of labor for build in the railroad?
29. What is the significance of Promontory Point, Utah.
30. List 5 impacts the Railroad had on Settling the West.
31. What were some of the corrupt practices of the railroads?
32. What was the Wabash Case?
33. What was the Interstate Commerce Commission?
34. How did the ICC begin changing the relationship between the Federal Government and America’s economy?
35. List 4 Problems the Railroads caused.
Reconstruction
36. What was the Civil War and when did it take place?
37. What was Reconstruction and when did it take place?
38. During Reconstruction, how did the Federal Government see to it that the form Confederate states complied with their requirements?
39. What was the difference between Scalawags and Carpet Baggers?
40. How did most white southerners feel towards Scalawags and Carpet Baggers?
41. What did the Freedman’s Bureau do?
42. What were the Black Codes?
43. What affects did Republican control of the Southern States during Reconstruction have?
44. What were the Civil War Amendments?
45. Describe the following Constitutional Amendment: 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
46. What does Equal Protection Under the Law Mean?
47. What does Due Process mean?
48. Who were Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce?
49. What was the Compromise of 1877?
50. What was the Result of the Compromise of 1877?
51. Who were the Redeemers?
52. What did the term Solid South mean?
53. What was Sharecropping?
54. What did Sharecropping result in?
55. After Reconstruction ended, Jim Crow laws were passed in the South. What was this?
56. What was the Supreme Court Case Plessy v. Ferguson?
57. What does Separate but Equal refer to?
58. What was the importance of the Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education?
59. Who were W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington?
60. Describe how their major ideas and how they were different from each other.