Westward Expansion
Unit Guide
American Voices/Swearngin
Resources for this Unit: Ch. 18 (textbook); “Reading Like a Historian” class assignments; class notes; film The West.
Essential Questions:
· Why did the West have such an important role in the American imagination? Does it still?
· How will “closing the frontier” affect the United States? What new benefits will open up? What challenges will be created?
· What new social patterns will emerge in the West? Which old social patterns will be transplanted in the West?
I. Headin’ West
Big Issues:
1. Was the American West really a “frontier?”
2. Why will people move there? Where will they come from, and why?
3. Will there be enough land and resources for everyone?
Key Terms & People (Ch. 18.1, film, class notes and assignments):
o Manifest Destiny
o Frontier
o Comstock Lode/gold rush
o Boomtowns/ghost towns
o Cattle Kingdom
o Chisholm Trail
o Santa Fe Trail
o Transcontinental Railroad
o Union Pacific, Central Pacific Railroad Companies
o Leland Stanford
o Panic of 1873
o Chinese Exclusion Act
II. Contested Spaces
Big Issues:
1. What negotiations took place between Native Americans and the U.S. government to control Western land?
2. What was the role of reservations in controlling the West?
3. How did Native Americans attempt to maintain their ways of life, but also adapt to survive?
Key Terms & People (Ch. 18.2, film, class notes and assignments):
o Great Plains, Southwest/Four Corners, Mountain West, Pacific Coast
o Treaty of Fort Laramie
o Reservations
o Crazy Horse
o Treaty of Medicine Lodge
o Buffalo soldiers
o George Armstrong Custer
o Sitting Bull
o Lakota Sioux
o Battle of the Little Big Horn
o Massacre at Wounded Knee
o Massacre at Sand Creek
o Long Walk
o Navajo
o Geronimo
o Apache
o Ghost Dance
o Sarah Winnemucca
o Chief Joseph
o Nez Perce
o Dawes General Allotment Act (aka Dawes Severalty Act)
III. Power to the People
Big Issues:
1. How will settlement in the West affect national politics?
2. How will settlement in the West impact national economic plans?
3. What environmental problems will emerge with Western settlement?
4. How will the frontier be “closed?”
Key Terms & People (Ch. 18.3, film, class notes and assignments):
o Homestead Act
o Morrill Act
o Exodusters
o Sodbusters
o Dry farming
o Annie Bidwell
o National Grange
o Free Silver
o William Jennings Bryan
o Populism/Populist Party
o National Parks