Chapter 16 Open Book Test

CHAPTER 16

THE CONQUEST OF THE FAR WEST

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Many early explorers called the region of the American West between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains the

A) Great Homestead

B) Wild West

C) Mississippi Plains

D) American Breadbasket

E) Great American Desert

2. In the mid-1800s, Anglo-American settlers in the Far West included all of the following groups except

A) miners

B) sailors

C) cattle ranchers

D) farmers

E) sheep ranchers

3. The caste system of the Spanish Southwest had as its bottom group

A) the Spanish

B) the Indians without tribes

C) mestizos

D) the people of mixed race

E) the Pueblos

4. The Plains tribes exhibited all of the following characteristics except

A) they were dependent on the buffalo for survival

B) their tribes were made up of several smaller bands, each of which had its own government council

C) they were finally able to band together to fight the white man

D) they were the fiercest opposition the United States had yet to face from Native Americans

E) their religion was centered on a belief in the spirituality of the natural world

5. By the early nineteenth century, the most powerful tribe in the Missouri River valley was the

A) Sioux

B) Arapaho

C) Nez Perce

D) Pueblo

E) Apache

6. The weaknesses of the Plains Indians in their struggles with the white settlers included all of the following factors except

A) they were not aggressive or warlike

B) they were vulnerable to eastern diseases

C) they usually would not work together to defeat the whites

D) they had neither the economy nor the technology to stand up to a long war

E) intertribal conflicts diverted their attention from white encroachment

7. When the United States began to govern Hispanic New Mexico, it created a territorial government composed of

A) a mixture of Hispanics and Indians

B) a mix of Anglos, Hispanics, and a few Indians

C) a combination of whites and mulattoes

D) a mixture of Anglos and Hispanics

E) almost exclusively Anglo-Americans

8. Chinese who lived in the western United States worked in all of the following occupations except

A) owners of small businesses

B) members of criminal gangs

C) laborers on the transcontinental railroads

D) developers of gold mining corporations

E) miners in the gold industry

9. In California, anti-Chinese sentiment grew to the point that

A) the federal government deported many Chinese

B) the state government banned anti-Chinese political parties

C) the state government passed a special income tax on Chinese only

D) the local governments required Chinese to live separately in Chinatowns

E) the federal government prohibited any further Chinese immigration into the country

10. Settlers came to the West in pursuit of all of the following economic opportunities except

A) pasture lands capable of supporting cattle and sheep

B) large stands of timber

C) readily available supplies of water

D) large amounts of gold and silver

E) the availability of cheap farmland

11. To encourage settlement, the federal government passed a law that permitted settlers to buy land for small amounts of money if they lived on that land. The law was called the

A) Homestead Act

B) Settlement Act

C) Farmers’ Act

D) Township Act

E) Desert Land Act

12. The federal government aided settlement into the Great Plains region by all of the following means except

A) offering settlers large areas of land at very small fees if they would live there for five years

B) making it easy to establish western territorial governments

C) giving cash bonuses to every settler who established residency in the new territories

D) changing federal land law frequently to adjust to western circumstances

E) increasing homestead allotments several times in the 1870s

13. The multiracial working class in the western United States of the late 1800s

A) enjoyed equal opportunities to rise to management positions

B) united in common opposition to the practices of management

C) had a greater social mobility than the working class of the East

D) contained a higher percentage of single people than the workers in other parts of the country

E) made strides forward by creating its own political parties

14. Mining in the West was characterized by

A) mining cooperatives inhabited by Chinese immigrants

B) areas that rapidly declined after the deposits were mined

C) men who developed an area after a great deal of preliminary planning

D) prospectors who discovered deposits and then stayed until they were completely mined

E) many working-class miners finding their fortunes

15. The western mining industry of the late 1800s exploited large deposits of all of the following minerals except

A) gold

B) platinum

C) silver

D) copper

E) quartz

16. In general, women in the mining areas had all of the following characteristics except

A) they often came with their husbands

B) they were greatly outnumbered by men

C) they had domestic duties similar to those of women in the East

D) they could not find any work as wage laborers in mining towns

E) they worked as prostitutes in sexually imbalanced mining communities

17. The great cattle trails ran through all of the following states except

A) California

B) Kansas

C) Oklahoma

D) Texas

E) Wyoming

18. At the end of the Civil War, the number of cattle roaming the Texas ranges was approximately

A) 250,000

B) 1 million

C) 3 million

D) 5 million

E) 7 million

19. The cattle kingdom of the West depended on all of the following factors except

A) the railroads

B) the great cattle trails

C) open-range ranching

D) U.S. Army protection

E) the hard labor of cowboys

20. The natural enemies of the ranchers included all of the following groups except

A) Indians

B) blacks

C) sheep breeders

D) farmers

E) rustlers

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