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Homestead Act
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)Under this act, government land could be bought for $1.25 an acre or claimed free if a homesteader worked it for five years. But the best parcels--near a railroad line, with access to eastern markets--were owned by the railroads or speculators and sold for much more, around $25 an acre (p. 487-488). -
Cattle Boom-and-Bust
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)Ranchers came to expect profits of 25 to 40 percent a year. Millions of dollars poured into the West from eastern and foreign interests eager to cash in on rocketing cattle prices. High profits soon swelled the size of the herds and led to overproduction. Increased competition from cattle producers in Canada and Argentina caused beef prices to fall. And nature imposed its own limits. By the 1890s, the open range and long drives had vanished. Only large corporations remained (p. 486-487). -
Completion of first transcontinential railroad
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)Once Chinese crews broke into the flat country of the desert basin, the two railroads raced to claim as much federal land as possible. With Chinese laborers banished from the scene, a silver hammer pounded a gold spike into the last tie at Promontory Summit, Utah. East and West were finally linked by rail. Travel time across the continent was slashed from months to barley a week (p. 484-485). -
Battle of Little Big Horn
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)The Battle of Little Big Horn or commonly referred to as "Custer's Last Stand," was a battle that took place between the U.S. Cavalry and northern tribe Indians, including the Cheyenne and Sioux. From a deep ravine Sioux leader Crazy Horse charged Custer, killing him and 267 soldiers. This battle did not end the war between whites and Indians, but never again would it reach such proportions nor would Indians win many victories like that of the Little Big Horn (p. 476). -
Jim Crow Laws-Segregation
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)During the 1880s, nothing challenged tradition in the South more than race. The earliest laws legalized segregation in trains and other public places where blacks and whites were likely to intervene. Soon a complex web of "Jim Crow" statues drew an indeliable color line in prisons, parks, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and all other public gathering places except streets and stores (p. 471). -
Dawes Severalty Act
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)This act ended reservation policy by permitting the president to distribute land to Indians who had severed their attachments to their tribes. The goals of the policy were simple: to draw Indians into white society as farmers and small property owners and (less high-mindedly) to bring Indian lands legally into the marketplace (p. 480). -
Wounded Knee
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)Alarming settlers referred to the ritualized shuffling and chanting as the "Ghost Dance." The army then moved to stamp out the Ghost Dance for fear of another uprising. The cavalry fell on a band of followers at Wounded Knee. As the soldiers were disarming the Indians, a shot rang out, setting off a blaze of gun fire. Hundreds of Sioux died and twenty-some soliders lay dead with them too. Wounded Knee was a final act of violence against an independent Indian way of life (p. 480). -
Plessy vs. Ferguson
[Experience History: Interpreting America's Past](Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff)Homer Adolph Plessy, an African American, agreed to test a Louisiana law requiring segregated railroad facilities by sitting in the all-white section of a local train. He was arrested promptly. The case of Plessy vs. ferguson worked its way up the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that segregation did not constitute discrimination as long as accommodations for both races were "seperate but equal." The doctrine of separate but equal nonetheless became part of the fabric of American law (p.471).
