Quiz: Chapter 26

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered settlers:

• a. 160 acres of free public land if they lived on and improved it
• b. Free railroad tickets west
• c. Gold mining rights
• d. Citizenship for immigrants only

The invention of barbed wire in the 1870s primarily affected the West by:

• a. Ending the open range and the great cattle drives
• b. Expanding buffalo herds
• c. Ending railroad construction
• d. Creating new mining towns

At the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated:

• a. Lieutenant Colonel George Custer's Seventh Cavalry
• b. General Sherman's entire army
• c. Confederate raiders
• d. Mexican federal troops

The near-total slaughter of the buffalo herds in the 1870s and 1880s devastated:

• a. The subsistence economy of the Plains Indians
• b. The cattle ranching industry
• c. Eastern factory production
• d. The railroad industry

The Ghost Dance movement among Plains Indians promised:

• a. The return of the buffalo and removal of white settlers
• b. Peaceful assimilation into white society
• c. Alliance with the U.S. Army
• d. New farming techniques

The 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre is generally considered to mark:

• a. The end of armed Native American resistance on the Plains
• b. The beginning of the Indian Wars
• c. The founding of the Dawes Act
• d. A Native American military victory

The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was intended to:

• a. Break up tribal lands into individual allotments to encourage assimilation
• b. Restore all tribal lands to Native nations
• c. Create new reservations east of the Mississippi
• d. End all federal Indian policy

Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 "frontier thesis" argued that the frontier had shaped:

• a. American democracy, individualism, and national character
• b. Only the economy of the South
• c. European immigration policy
• d. Federal antitrust law

The Grange and the Farmers' Alliance both worked to:

• a. Organize farmers through cooperatives and political action
• b. Promote free trade with Britain
• c. Support the gold standard exclusively
• d. Oppose railroad regulation

"Free silver" was a demand mainly supported by:

• a. Debt-burdened farmers and silver miners seeking inflation
• b. Eastern bankers and creditors
• c. Industrial trusts
• d. Railroad executives

William Jennings Bryan's famous 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech championed:

• a. Free and unlimited coinage of silver
• b. The gold standard
• c. High protective tariffs
• d. Immigration restriction

The "Long Drive" refers to the practice of:

• a. Driving cattle overland from Texas to railroad towns in Kansas
• b. Homesteaders traveling by wagon train to Oregon
• c. Miners hauling silver ore to California
• d. Railroads laying track across the Rockies