Chapter 26 Focus Questions:
Essay question: What do you think was the major technological innovation that influenced life on the Great Plans frontier? Why?
Objective Questions:
1)What promiseswere made by the US government to the Native Americans causing them to surrender their lands?
2)What does the book say about the reality of “tribes”?
3)What were Buffalo Soldiers?
4)What caused the Indians to battle the whites? (3)
5)Which side (Indian or government) often did massacres and cruelty?
6)What tribes were the following Chief’s associated with: Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo?
7)What did the government abandon as a result of the defeat of Captain William Fetterman in 1866, and what did they guarantee to the Sioux?
8)What caused a new round of warfare to start in 1874?
9)What finally pushed the Nez Perce Indians into war?
10)What finally forced the Plains Indians to surrender?
11)What happened to the buffalo and why?
12)What was it like for Indians who ended up on reservations in the 1870s and 1880s? (3)
13)Who wrote A Century of Dishonor and what was the point of the book?
14)What did the novel Ramona center around?
15)What was similar between humanitarians who advocated kind treatment of Indians and extremists who sought to exterminate Indians?
16)Define assimilation and what was passed to encourage it.
17)How did the government deal with the development of the Ghost Dance religion and what tragedy happened as a result?
18)Where was the largest single source of silver and gold discovered in 1859 and what did that cause to happen?
19)Why was mining so important to the west? (how did it help Manifest Destiny)
20)Why did mining cause the conflicts between Indians and whites to intensify?
21)What was the frontier like for women? (how did they make money? How were they treated?)
22)What were the wild frontier towns were the three major cattle trails ended?
23)What was the major problem of the Homestead Act regarding the Great Plains?
24)Who encouraged large numbers of Europeans to come to America to farm on the northern frontier (think land and railroads)?
25)What were the new problems faced by the American homesteaders in the American West?
26)What did geologist John Wesley Powell warn about the west in 1874?
27)Why are hydraulic engineers so important?
28)Who were the “Sooners?”
29)Which group of Americans was least likely to migrate to the cattle and farming frontier of the West?
30)What announcement was made by the Superintendent of the Census in 1890 and why did that upset people?
31)Who was Frederick Jackson Turner and what was his thesis?
32)What is the “safety valve” theory and was it valid?
33)How did Denver and San Francisco serve as safety valves?
34)What was the root cause of the “farm problem” in the late nineteenth century and what other problems made it difficult for farmers to survive economically?
35)What did the farmers believe was the greatest problem that they faced?
36)With agricultural production rising this caused what kind of farming to spread rapidly throughout the Midwest and South?
37)Why were farmers slow to organize and promote their interest?
38)What was the first major farmer’s organization and what was its original purpose?
39)Why were granges considered a godsend for many farm men and women?
40)What were the Granger Laws designed to regulate?
41)What was the Farmers’ Alliance and what industry did they hope to have the federal government regulate?
42)What weakened the Farmers’ Alliance?
43)What political party was the direct successor to the Farmers’ Alliances and who was their candidate in the presidential election of 1892?
44)Why would southerners refuse to desert the Democratic Party for the Populist Party in the 1892 election?
45)How did the Populists hope to win the support of labor (what did they oppose that unions also opposed)?
46)Why did white southern farmers refuse to abandon the Democratic Party for the Populists?
47)Why did Jacob Coxey’s “army” march on Washington?
48)Who was Richard Olney?
49)How did the Cleveland administration justify intervention in the Pullman strike of 1894?
50)How did Labor unions, Populists, and debtors see the brutal Pullman episode? Who was it an “alliance” between according to those groups?
51)How did the depression and episodes such as the Pullman Strike affect the election of 1896?
52)What were McKinley’s qualifications to be the Republican nominee in 1896?
53)Who was Mark Hanna and what did he believe the prime function of the federal government was?
54)Who were the major candidates in the 1896 election?
55)Describe William Jennings Bryan. (3)
56)Why did Bryan gain the Democratic Party primary?
57)What was the major issue of the 1896 election and why did the Republicans win?
58)How did voter turnout change in the aftermath of the 1896 election (how did it effect the agrarian voters) and what party dominated during that time?
59)What finally relieved the social and economic hardships of the late 19th century?