| A | B |
|---|
| bumper crop: | an unusually abundant harvest. |
| Cheyenne Indians: | buffalo-hunting Plains Indians who originally lived in what is now Colorado and Wyoming. |
| communal living: | a life-style typical of many Native-American tribes where members of the tribe worked for the common good and much property was held (owned) in common. |
| Comstock Lode: | a large quantity of silver ore discovered in Nevada by Henry Comstock in 1859. |
| cow town: | a town located near a railroad where cattle were loaded onto cattle cars for shipment to market. |
| Credit Mobilier: | a railroad-construction company created to enable company insiders to make illegal profits from the construction of the transcontinental railroad. |
| Custer's Last Stand (1876): | name given to the Battle of Little Bighorn where Colonel Custer and 264 of his men were massacred by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. |
| Dawes Act (1887): | a law which sought to "Americanize" Indians by offering them up to 160 acres of reservation land if they would abandon their tribal way of life. |
| Exodusters: | blacks who migrated west after the Civil War to take advantage of free land offered by the Homestead Act. |
| Ghost Dance: | a religious ceremony performed by Plains Indians during the late 1800s. |
| Granger Laws | laws passed by state governments that helped farmers by regulating certain businesses such as railroads and elevator (grain storage) companies. |
| Great Plains: | a large area of flat, grass-covered land lying east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Mississippi. |
| Greenback Party: | a political movement following the Civil War which urged the government to expand the money supply by printing greenbacks (paper money not backed by silver or gold). |
| Homestead Act (1862): | a law that granted upto 160 acres of land to settlers who agreed to live on the land for five years. |
| Indian reservation: | an area of land set aside for Indian tribes. |
| Interstate Commerce Act (1887): | a law that granted the federal government the power to regulate railroads that passed through more than one state. |
| long drive: | the driving of cattle from the open range to cow towns located along western railroads. |
| "Munn v. Illinois" (1877): | a case in which the Supreme Court ruled that state governments had the right to regulate railroads and other businesses that affect the public. |
| nomads: | people who have no permanent home but rather wander from place to place in search of food or pasture for their animals. (For example, many Plains Indians were nomads who followed buffalo herds.) |
| open range: | an open area of public land on which cattle grazed. |
| Pony Express: | a system, organized in 1860, of carrying mail across the western U.S. by men on horseback. |
| Populist Party: | a political party, formed by farmers and union members in 1892, which favored political reforms and government regulation of certain industries. |
| prairie: | a relatively flat, grass-covered area of land. |
| Sand Creek Massacre (1861): | the massacre of several hundred Cheyenne Indians, most of them women and children, in the Colorado Territory by U.S. troops under the command of Colonel Chivington. |
| Sioux Indians: | Buffalo-hunting Indians who once roamed an area now occupied by the states of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. |
| sodbuster: | a name given to farmers on the Plains because they often had to cut open the thick prairie sod with axes before they could plow it. |
| sod house: | a home built from blocks of prairie sod because other building supplies, such as wood, were scarce on the Great Plains. |
| subsistence farmer: | a person who, instead of raising crops for sale, produces only enough for his or her own needs. |
| thresher: | a machine that separates seeds (grain) from the rest of the plant. |
| vigilante: | a person, who instead of waiting for government to arrest and prosecute a suspected wrong-doer, takes the law into his or her own hands. |
| Wounded Knee, Battle of (1890): | a battle (some say massacre) which crushed the final organized resistance by Indians. A vastly superior force of U.S. soldiers slaughtered nearly 300 Sioux men, women, and children. |
