| A | B |
|---|
| John Jacob Astor | created one of the largest fur business |
| mountain men | men hired by eastern companies to trap animals for fur in the Rocky Mountains and other western regions of the United States |
| Oregon Trail | a 2,000-mile trail stretching through the Great Plains from western Missouri to the Oregon Territory |
| Santa Fe Trail | an important trade trail west from Independence,Missouri,to Santa Fe,New Mexico |
| Mormon | a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
| Brigham Young | became head of the church |
| Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla | a priest led a rebellion |
| empresarios | agents who were contracted by the Mexican republic to bring settlers to Texas in the early 1800s |
| Stephen F. Austin | started a successful colony |
| Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna | attention to the growing unrest |
| Alamo | Spanish mission in San Antonio,Texas,that was the site of a famous battle of the Texas Revolution in 1836 |
| Battle of San Jacinto | (1836)the final battle of the Texas Revolution;resulted in the defeat of the Mexican army and independence for Texas |
| manifest destiny | a belief share by many Americans in the mid-1800s that the United States should expand across the continent to the Pacific Ocean |
| James K.Polk | narrowly defeat Clay |
| vaqueros | Mexican cowboys in the West who tended cattle and horses |
| Californios | Spanish colonists in California in the 1800s |
| Bear Flag Revolt | (1846)a revolt against Mexico by American settlers in California who declared the territory an independent republic |
| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | (1848)a treaty that ended the Mexican-American War and gave the United States much of Mexico's northern territory |
| Gadsden Purchase | (1853)U.S.purchase of land from Mexico that included the southern parts of present day Arizona and New Mexico |
| John Sutter | Swiss immigrant |
| Donner party | a group of western travelers who were stranded in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-47;only 45 of the party's 87 members survived |
| forty-niner | a gold-seeker who moved to California during the gold rush |
| prospect | to search for gold |
| placer miner | a person who mines for gold by using pans or other devices to wash gold nuggets out of loose rock and gravel |
