| A | B |
|---|
| mountain man | fur trapper or explorer who opened up the West by finding the best trails through the Rocky Mountains |
| land speculator | person who buys huge areas of land for a low price and then sells off small sections of it at high prices. |
| Santa Fe Trail | trail that began in Missouri and ended in Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Oregon Trail | trail that ran westward from Independence, Missouri, to the Oregon Territory |
| Mormon | member of a church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, they settled in Utah |
| Brigham Young | Mormon leader that moved his people west |
| Stephen Austin | founded a colony in Texas |
| Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna | President of Mexico |
| Sam Houston | command the Texas army |
| Battle of the Alamo | in 1836, Texans defended a church called the Alamo against the Mexican army; all but five Texans were killed |
| James K. Polk | president of US during the War with Mexico |
| manifest destiny | belief that the US was destined to expand across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean |
| Zachary Taylor | a top millitary leader in the War with Mexico |
| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | 1848 treaty ending the US war with Mexico; Mexico ceded nearly one-half of its land to the US |
| Mexican Cession | vast region given up by Mexico after the War with Mexico |
| forty-niner | person who went to California to find gold, starting in 1849 |
| Californio | settlers of Spanish or Mexican descent in California |
| John Sutter | Swiss immigrant that own land in California |
| California gold rush | 1849,large numbers of people moved to California because gold had been discovered there. |
