| A | B |
|---|
| Wilmot Proviso | Stated that former lands of Mexico would not become slave states. |
| Great Plains | Flat grasslands between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains |
| Gadsden Purchase | Mexico later offered the rest of Arizona and New Mexico territory to the United States for $10 million dollars. We bought it. |
| Oregon Trail | Most popular pioneer route |
| Fifty-Four Forty or Fight | James K. Polk's challenge to Britain to get a border between Canada and the Oregon Territory |
| Alamo | Spanish Mission where Texans were massacred by the Mexican Army |
| Manifest Destiny | Belief that Americans had the divine right to settle the West |
| squatter | Someone who settles on land that they do not own |
| Bear Flag Republic | California independent from Mexico |
| California Gold Rush | Caused a population explosion in Sacramento Valley in 1849 |
| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | The peace agreement following the Mexican-American War, in which Mexico ceded California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming to the United States in exchange for $15 million dollars and debt relief of $3.25 million dollars. |
| Santa Anna | Dictator and General of Mexico |
| Tejanos | Spanish-speaking settlers of Texas |
| John Deere | Inventor of the steel plow |
| Donner Party | Unfortunate pioneers that turned to cannibalism to survive a blizzard |
| Forty-niners | Gold Rush miners |
| Brigham Young | Mormon leader that settled Salt Lake Valley in Utah |
| empresario | Governor and recruiter of settlers in Texas |
| annexation | adding a state to the United States |
| Compromise of 1850 | When California became a free state, the South got the Fugitive Slave Act |
