William Cody

Hired by the Kansas Pacific Railroad to kill buffalo on the

Plains

Free silver

Populist demand for the unlimited

production of coinage

Long Drive

Cattle drive that began in Texas

each spring

Homestead Act

Gave land on the Plains to any settler who would live

there for five years

Dawes Act

Proposed to make Native Americans

landowners and farmers

boomtowns

Cities that grew very quickly around gold

mining sites

The National Grange

Network of local farmers’ organizations

Buffalo Soldiers

African American soldiers in segregated units after

the Civil War

Crazy Horse

A Sioux military leader

Transcontinental Railway

Construction completed in May 1869

Little Bighorn

Site of a battle between George Custer’s troops

and the Sioux and Cheyenne

sodbusters

Had to develop new methods of farming on

the Plains

Populist Party

Had its roots in the Farmers’ Alliances

Union Pacific Company

Laid railroad track westward from Omaha,

Nebraska

Federal income tax

A Populist proposal

Wounded Knee

Marked the end of armed conflict

between whites and Native Americans

vaqueros

Hispanic ranch hands in the Spanish

Southwest

Central Pacific Company

Hired 10,000 Chinese laborers at low wages to work on railroad tracks

Dakota Territory

A reservation meant for the Sioux people

cowhands

Captured the imagination of the

nation