Notes
After the Civil War, settlers, miners, ranchers and railroads moved onto the Great Plains and beyond.
- The Homestead Act (1862) offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who farmed it for five years.
- Exodusters: Black Americans who moved from the South to Kansas around 1879.
- Cattle drives, mining booms and railroads drew more settlers. Hunters killed off the buffalo, which Plains peoples depended on.
- Conflict with Plains nations: Lakota and Cheyenne forces defeated Custer at Little Bighorn (1876). The army killed roughly 150 to 300 Lakota, many of them women and children, at Wounded Knee (1890).
- The Dawes Act (1887) broke up reservation land into individual plots to encourage assimilation. Native nations lost about two-thirds of their land.
- Boarding schools separated Native children from their families and banned their languages.
- In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued the frontier had closed.
Practice
The Homestead Act encouraged western settlement by:
Millions of acres were claimed by settlers under the act.
The main goal of the Dawes Act of 1887 was to:
It aimed at assimilation and resulted in the loss of most remaining Native land.
The near-extinction of the buffalo hurt Plains nations mainly because:
Losing the buffalo destroyed the base of Plains life and forced many onto reservations.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 5 test.