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Great American Desert
- Term that was used to describe the High Plains east of the Rocky Mountains; part of the Louisiana purchase.
- "Desert" was somewhat of a misconception.
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genizaros
- Native American slaves who served as house servants, sheepherders, etc. in Spanish, Mexican, and American households in the Southwest.
- Eventually made up one-third of the population of Mexico.
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Californios
Term used to identify a Californian of Latin American descent, during the period in shich California was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and governed from Mexico City.
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Workingman's Party of CA
- Labor organization led by Denis Kearney in the 1870s. They took particular aim against Chinese immigrant labor and the Central Pacific Railroad where they were employed.
- "The Chinese must go!"
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Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Suspended Chinese immigration for more than 60 years. Due to the Gold Rush, many Chinese and other immigrants were coming to the US.
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Timber Culture Act (1873)
- Allowed homesteaders to get another 160 acres of land if they planted trees on one-fourth of the land, because the land was had too much grass.
- Follow-up to the Homestead Act.
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Desert Land Act
Used to promote the economic development of the arid public lands of the West. It offfered 640 acres of land to anyone who would pay $1.25 an acre and promise to irrigate the land within 3 years.
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"Turner Frontier Thesis"
- conclusion of Frederick Jackson Turner that
- the Western frontier created freedom, constantly named as civilization, that broke custom bonds, offered new experiences, and called out new institutions and activities.
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Comstock Lode
- First major U.S. discovery of silver ore, located under what is now Virginia City, Nevada, on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range.
- Nevada = Silver State.
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cow town
- A town or city in the West from which cattle are shipped to market.
- Also a cattle-raising district.
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Chisholm Trail
- Route over which vast herds of cattle were driven from Texas to the railheads in Kansas after the Civil War.
- Trail that Texas Longhorn herders followed.
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Exodusters
- Black Americans who fled the Southern United States for Kansas in 1879 and 1880. After the end of Reconstruction, racial oppression and rumors of the reinstitution of slavery led many freed slave to look for a new place to live.
- Many went to Kansas because of its fame as the land of the abolitionist John Brown.
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"Open" range
Areas of public domain north of Texas where from about 1866 to 1890 more than 5,000,000 cattle were driven to fatten and be shipped off to slaughter.
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"Range" Wars
- Conflict in which competeing farmers fought over water rights or grazing rights to unfenced/unowned land.
- Lincoln County War, Pleasant Valley War, Mason County War, Johnson County Range War.
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"Buffalo Bill" Cody
- American plainsman, scout, and showman. Famous for his Wild West Shows.
- He was a buffalo hunter, hence the nickname and stories told about him.
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Annie Oakley
- American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Her amazing talent and rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
- She became the first female American superstar.
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"Calamity" Jane
- Frontierswoman, professional scout best known for her claim of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok.
- She gained fame fighting Native American Indians.
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Tombstone, AZ
- Founded in 1879 by Ed Schieffelin in what was then the Arizona Territory. It was a silver-mining boomtown and county seat.
- It's most famous because of western gunfighters. It is the sight of the gunfight at O.K. Corral.
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Owen Wister
- American writer.
- Known as the father of Western fiction.
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