Deck 17: The Transformation of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1860-1900

Question 1

The Ghost Dance was

A) a "shaking" circle dance taught to Indians by Shakers in order to convert them to the Shaker religion.
B) a cycle of ritual songs and dance steps designed to bring about the destruction of European Americans and their removal from Indian lands.
C) the term used by American soldiers to describe the methods by which Indians surrounded them in a battle.
D) a performance by "Princess Wovoka" that became popular in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
E) a traditional wedding dance in which Sioux women asked the ghosts of their ancestors to ensure fertility.

Answer 1

a cycle of ritual songs and dance steps designed to bring about the destruction of European Americans and their removal from Indian lands.

Question 2

Much of the labor constructing the railroads throughout the West was provided by the following groups except

A) Chinese
B) Irish
C) African-Americans
D) Mexicans
E) Norwegians

Answer 2

Norwegians

Question 3

Which of the following statements concerning "Buffalo Bill" Cody is not true?

A) He was a famous scout.
B) In the popular imagination, he came to represent an idealized hero.
C) He represented the American government in negotiations with the Apache.
D) He killed over thousands of bison in the late 1860s.
E) Edward Judson wrote a widely-read dime novel about him.

Answer 3

He represented the American government in negotiations with the Apache.

Question 4

The Board of Indian Commissioners was

A) a council of representatives from all the tribes of the Plains Indians that established Indian self-government on reservations.
B) an agency established by Congress to reform abuses on reservations.
C) a militant Indian organization dedicated to preserving tribal customs.
D) an Indian social-welfare organization that encouraged Indians to produce traditional crafts for sale.
E) a board of inquiry established to investigate the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Question 5

Which of the following was not one of the features of Lakota Sioux culture?

A) It included the belief that life is a series of circles-the circles of relatives, band, tribe, and nation.
B) It included a belief in a hierarchy of plant and animal spirits whose help could be invoked through the Sun Dance.
C) It included ceremonies in which young men "sacrificed" themselves through self-torture to gain access to spiritual power.
D) Children were subject to harsh discipline and physical punishment to teach them obedience and respect.
E) They adapted to the environment.

Question 6

The Fort Laramie Treaty required that

A) northern Plains Indians move to a reservation in South Dakota.
B) Apaches surrender their landholdings in the Southwest.
C) Navajo Indians abandon their hunter-gatherer culture and adopt farming.
D) Comanche Indians sell their land to white settlers for pennies on the dollar.
E) Pueblo Indians leave New Mexico for California.

Question 7

What is dry farming?

A) It is farming in frontier areas where the sale of alcohol was prohibited.
B) It is plowing deeply and harrowing lightly to raise a covering of dirt that would retain moisture after a rainfall.
C) It is specializing in "dry" grains such as corn, oats, and wheat, rather than more perishable produce such as fruit and vegetables.
D) It is growing crops in desert-like conditions.
E) It is a method of drying up flood plains to reclaim land for agriculture.

Question 8

As a result of the Red River War,

A) Indian independence on the southern Plains came to an end.
B) Indians in Oklahoma preserved their freedom for another 20 years.
C) Indians defeated white soldiers in most of the battles but lost the war.
D) Indians were able to force the government to grant them control of North and South Dakota.
E) American soldiers massacred what remained of the Cheyenne Indians.

Question 9

General George Armstrong Custer's purpose in bringing his troops into the Black Hills of South Dakota was to

A) find a location for a new fort.
B) Christianize the Indians, using force if necessary.
C) confirm rumors about the existence of gold.
D) negotiate a peace treaty with the Sioux at Little Bighorn.
E) drive the Indians out of the Black Hills.

Question 10

Which of the following characterized frontier communities?

A) cooperation among neighbors as a form of insurance in a rugged environment.
B) communal households and a trend away from nuclear families and toward frontier polygamy.
C) deep suspicion of neighbors or any outsiders who were not kin.
D) widespread homosexuality because of a shortage of women on the frontier.
E) matriarchal leadership, because the men tended to be away from home for months at a time.

Question 11

Where did a massacre of Indians occur in 1890?

A) Little Bighorn
B) Red River
C) Wounded Knee
D) Dead Man's Pass
E) Fort Laramie

Question 12

Which of the following describes a method that many late nineteenth century eastern reformers wanted to use to deal with Native Americans?

A) They wanted to provide them with formal schooling in English and destroy their native culture.
B) They wanted to build special schools so that Indians could study and pass on their native cultures.
C) They wanted to put Indian men into the army so that they would learn the discipline of the white man.
D) They wanted to move them to cities so that they could be modernized and Americanized.
E) They wanted to allow them to roam the western prairies, far from urban corruption and westernizing influences.

Question 13

Which of the following was not one of the advances in technology that enabled the Great Plains farmer to increase the land's yield tenfold?

A) Gasoline-powered canal boats.
B) Efficient steel plows
C) Improved threshers
D) Specially-designed wheat planters
E) Improved grain binders.

Question 14

Which of the following contributed to the fighting style of the Plains Indians?

A) Chinese immigrants introduced gunpowder in the nineteenth century.
B) The Spanish introduced horses in the sixteenth century.
C) Hessian soldiers introduced firearms in the eighteenth century.
D) The French introduced swords in the sixteenth century.
E) English setters introduced them to the bow and arrow in the seventeenth century.

Question 15

The 1887 Dawes Severalty Act was designed to

A) treat Indians as equals to white men.
B) inspire greater tribal unity.
C) destroy Indian tribes by allowing the greater use of force by the military.
D) undermine tribal bonds by treating Indians as individuals.
E) provide Indians with the capital necessary to build a diversified economy.

Question 16

Which of the following statements accurately describes most Great Plains Indians in the mid-nineteenth century?

A) They lived in permanent villages and did some farming.
B) They lived in nuclear family units and seldom saw others beyond their immediate relatives.
C) They hunted the migratory buffalo herds and utilized the all of the animal's body.
D) They adjusted quickly to reservation life because they were used to living in tribal communities.
E) They lived in cities with populations of 50,000 to 75,000.

Question 17

The Treaty of Fort Laramie led to the

A) surrender of Sitting Bull and his exile to a reservation in Florida.
B) establishment of the Great Sioux Reserve in what is now South Dakota
C) protection of the Bozeman Trail, which guaranteed that Indians could continue traditional nomadic migration patterns.
D) creation of a network of boarding schools whose purpose was to Americanize and uplift the Indian.
E) relocation of Chief Joseph and the Nez Percés Indians to land in Canada.

Question 18

Which of the following statements best describes the attitude of western state governments regarding woman suffrage?

A) They believed that the West was a place where "men were men and women were women," and only men should vote.
B) They generally supported woman suffrage, sometimes hoping that it would attract women, families, and economic growth.
C) They preferred to wait and see how the "experiment" of woman suffrage would work out in the more progressive eastern states.
D) It was not a major concern, because there were few women in most western states.
E) They refused to grant women suffrage because they feared women would vote for prohibition, put an end to gambling and brothels, and in general "clean up government."

Question 19

The Homestead Act

A) offered 160 acres of land to any settler who would pay a $10 registration fee, live on the land for five years, and cultivate it.
B) offered 40 acres and a mule to former slaves who relocated to the frontier after the Civil War.
C) granted ex-soldiers from Homestead, Pennsylvania, a parcel of western land as payment for service during the Civil War.
D) was devised by Massachusetts senator Henry Homestead to break up Indian reservations and provide 160 acres of land to Indians for farming.
E) created reservations to which Indians were forced to move.

Question 20

The Desert Land Act allowed western ranchers to

A) divert water from rivers for irrigation.
B) use raise both sheep and cattle.
C) claim 160 acres free if they lived on the land for five years.
D) acquire 640 acres for $1.25 cents an acre.
E) seize land by force if necessary.

Question 21

The Five Civilized Tribes were

A) punished for siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War by the relocation to their reservations of thousands of Indians from other tribes.
B) rewarded for siding with the Union during the Civil War by being granted exclusive use of the Indian Territory.
C) Christian Indians who could read and write and had adopted the ways of white men.
D) destroyed at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
E) the only Indians granted the right to vote along with black freedmen.

Question 22

Which of these individuals-a president, a painter, and a writer-were deeply influenced by the frontier myth, enjoyed the physical challenges of the West, and rejected the constraints of the genteel urban world of their youth?

A) Franklin Roosevelt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Henry James
B) Grover Cleveland, Jackson Pollock, Helen Hunt Jackson
C) Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Remington, Owen Wister
D) Rutherford B. Hayes, Asher Durand, Theodore Dreiser
E) Benjamin Harrison, Frederic Church, Hamlin Garland

Question 23

Which of the following was not a reason the days of the open range and great cattle drives came to an end after the mid-1880s?

A) The ranges were overgrazed and too crowded.
B) Severe winters and dry summers in 1885 and 1886 caused severe hardships.
C) The demand for beef declined as more people turned to cheaper food.
D) The expansion of the railroads throughout the West cut across grazing areas.
E) Cattle prices declined.

Question 24

Which of the following statements best describes cowboys?

A) Cowboys were well paid and generally enjoying comfortable working conditions.
B) Cowboys were almost always white, because there was a deep prejudice against blacks and Mexicans among cattlemen.
C) Cowboys were usually the owner-operators of cattle ranches.
D) Cowboys were usually ne'er-do-well drifters.
E) Most were in their teens and twenties and worked for a year or two before pursuing different livelihoods.

Question 25

Why were there violent clashes between cattle ranchers and farmers during the late 19th century?

A) Farmers were using barbed wire to keep roving livestock out of their crops.
B) Ranchers tended to be African American or Mexican-American, while farmers tended to be Irish or German immigrants.
C) Farmers paid high land taxes, while cattle ranchers paid only a small sales tax on each steer sold at market.
D) Ranchers wanted to fence off the lands to keep their cattle from roaming too far from home, which conflicted with the need for farmers to expand their land in order to be profitable.
E) In general, farmers had been soldiers in the Union army, while cattle ranchers had served in the Confederate army, so they were fighting a continuation of the War Between the States.

Question 26

The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 occurred when

A) thousands of settlers rushed into the Oklahoma Territory on April 22, 1889, to stake out homesteads.
B) gold was discovered in the Oklahoma Territory.
C) oil was discovered in the Oklahoma Territory.
D) Congress forced the Santa Fe Railroad to sell land it had been hoarding.
E) thousands of "Exodusters" fled Mississippi for freedom.

Question 27

Which of the following statements does not apply to the schools that white reformers and the federal government established for Indians in the late 19th century?

A) The schools attempted to get Indians to abandon their traditional cultures.
B) The schools focused primarily on vocational training.
C) The schools did not completely stamp out Indian identity.
D) They included boarding schools modeled after those established for emancipated slaves.
E) There were large federal tuition grants to enable Indians to attend Eastern Ivy League colleges.

Question 28

Whose campaign to protect the wilderness led to the establishment of Yosemite National Park and the founding of the Sierra Club?

A) Joseph G. McCoy
B) Hamlin Garland
C) Owen Wister
D) John Wesley Powell
E) John Muir

Question 29

The cultural adaptation of Spanish-speaking Americans to Anglo society went relatively smoothly in

A) California
B) Arizona and New Mexico
C) Texas
D) Florida
E) Vermont

Question 30

What was Deseret?

A) It was the location of the first gold discovered in California.
B) It was the location when the eastern and western branches of the Transcontinental Railroad met.
C) It was a new country that Brigham Young and the Mormons tried to create.
D) It was the name of James Fenimore Cooper's first book.
E) It was a food dish from the Great Plains which was made from buffalo meat.

Question 31

Which of the following statements concerning the first transcontinental railroad is true?

A) It was financed entirely by private capital, with no government subsidy.
B) It was built primarily with forced labor of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche prisoners of war and black slaves.
C) It was completed in 1869 with the joining of the Union Pacific and Central tracks in Utah.
D) It was a patchwork of short state railroads, built with little thought to transcontinental connections.
E) It was chartered originally by the Confederacy in its hopes to take over the West and then continued by the Union after the South's defeat.

Question 32

Helen Hunt Jackson

A) taught settlers how to burn bison dung.
B) rebuked the government for constantly breaking the treaties with the Indians.
C) was the first dime novelists.
D) lobbied Congress to establish schools for Indians.
E) wrote the first stories of the glories of military service in the West.

Question 33

Frederick Jackson Turner was

A) a painter of American western landscapes.
B) a historian who put forth the thesis that the frontier was the key to the American character.
C) the author of Ramona, a tale of doomed love set on a California Spanish-Mexican ranch.
D) a one-armed veteran of the Civil War who charted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
E) the author of Roughing It, a mining novel.

Question 34

"Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West

A) established the model that county fairs would follow in programming annual livestock contests.
B) was actually the brainchild of Helen Hunt Jackson.
C) presented mock battles of army scouts and Indians as morality dramas of good versus evil.
D) counteracted the dime-novel image of the West.
E) was more successful in Europe than the U.S.

Question 35

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, where did the federal government attempt to confine all Plains Indian tribes?

A) Texas and Arizona
B) California and Oregon
C) Nebraska and Kansas
D) Utah and Montana
E) Oklahoma and South Dakota

Question 36

After the discovery of the Comstock Lode, Virginia City, Nevada, experienced

A) an orgy of speculation and building.
B) an increase in the police force.
C) a religious revival.
D) an exodus of the female population to Reno.
E) looting by mobs and random terrorist activity by snipers.

Question 37

What did "agribusinesses" need to be successful?

A) Minimal investments of capital
B) Minimal investments in labor
C) Heavy investments in equipment
D) 160-acre farms
E) Small government subsidies

Question 38

Which of the following characterized relations between Anglos and Mexican-Americans in Texas in the 1840s and 1850s?

A) Intermarriage
B) Harassment of Mexican-Americans by Anglos and retaliation by Mexican bandits
C) Friendship cemented by their mutual hatred of blacks and Indians
D) Peaceful coexistence because most Mexican-Americans assimilated into Anglo society
E) None of these choices

Question 39

Which of the following was not one of the methods that Joseph G. McCoy employed to turn the cattle industry into a bonanza?

A) He built a new stockyard in Abilene.
B) He guaranteed the transport of his steers in railcars.
C) He earned kickbacks from the railroads.
D) He surveyed and shortened the Chisholm Trail.
E) He built giant stockyards in Chicago, where cattle dealers could raise steers cheaply and save large sums in transportation.

Question 40

What did mining, cattle ranching, and wheat farming have in common?

A) Most people who tried their hand at them made money.
B) Slow economic growth made them safe investments.
C) Boom and bust economic cycles affected them.
D) The work itself was not hard.
E) They depended on massive government subsidies.

Question 41

Who led a raid against Brownsville, Texas in 1859?

A) César Chavez
B) Alberto dé Léon
C) Eric Estrada
D) Juan Cortina
E) Don Delivega

Question 42

The discovery of gold led to enough settlers moving to Alaska for it to establish its own territorial government. Where was the gold discovered?

A) near Anchorage.
B) in the Canadian Klondike.
C) in the Aleutian Islands.
D) near Juneau.
E) on Mt. McKinley.

Question 43

To protect their interests, in the 1880s Mexican-Americans in Arizona and New Mexico

A) formed a vigilante group called Las Gorras Blancas (the White Caps).
B) lobbied the government for more soldiers.
C) built forts that protected their land.
D) hired mercenaries to patrol their land and expel any trespassers.
E) worked to convince the Mexican government to re-annex the American southwest.

Question 44

The 1898 Curtis Act

A) gave each Indian tribe $10 million as compensation for wrongs done against them in the past.
B) established the University of Arizona for Indian children.
C) dissolved the Indian Territory and abolished tribal governments.
D) paid the Apaches $5 million in exchange for their move to Mexico.
E) set the stage for the Oklahoma Land Rush.

Question 45

What crop was found to grow very well in the Dakotas in the 1870s?

A) Cotton
B) Tobacco
C) Rice
D) Wheat
E) Soybeans

Question 46

The 19th century conservation movement

A) destroyed the old legend of the western frontier as the seedbed of American virtues.
B) emphasized the abundance of western land.
C) attempted to educate the public about the destruction of the environment.
D) lobbied against the continual flooding of the Sacramento River.
E) secretly funded entrepreneurs to avert government legislation.