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The Louisiana Purchase was when the United States got the territory of Louisiana from Napoleonic France. The Napoleonic France got $15,000,000 in return. -
The California Gold Rush was a gold rush that started when gold was found in Coloma, California. The news brought an estimated 300,000 to California. -
The Homestead Act of 1862 gave up 160 acres of land as long as you lived there for 5 years and improved the land. One of the problems with it was it did not provide tools and training. -
In May 10, 1869t he presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This also made travel to the west easier. -
On October 27, 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden sent an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West. This helped keep buffalo away. -
The battle of Little Bighorn was when George Custer led his troops to an attack on the Lakota tribe and lost really bad. All of his troops were dead, including him. -
The Dawes Act allowed the Federal Government to break tribal lands. It was signed by President Groover Cleveland. The Native Americans resisted this. Only the Native Americans who accepted the division of tribal lands were allowed to become US citizens. They also could no longer negotiate treaties to protect their land. They also could not vote on laws governing their land. -
The U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a group of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although no one knows from which side. A massacre followed, in which it’s estimated 150 Indians were killed, nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.