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Chapter 17 Sample Questions Arts And
Humanities History Of The Americans.
Between 1870 and 1900, the population of rural America shrank from 80 percent to 66 percent while the agricultural sector of the economy experienced what change?
It grew through mechanization, commercialization, and expanding urban markets.
For what reason did hundreds of thousands of Americans migrate to the West in the three decades after 1870?
To own their own land
Which group or groups composed the population of the area from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean during the last decades of the nineteenth century?
People from various parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas
Which of the following terms best characterizes Virginia City, Nevada, and other mining centers in the late nineteenth century?
Sprawling industrialized communities
Which of the following quotes can be attributed to General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose words summed up the U.S. government's policy toward Native Americans after the Civil War?
"Remove all to a safe place and then reduce them to a helpless condition."
Who was Geronimo?
An Apache warrior and chieftain who led raiding parties and killed ranchers on both sides of the Mexican border
Which of the following characterizes life for women on the western frontier in the late nineteenth century?
They were forced to work hard to accomplish even the simplest tasks.
The vast majority of territorial appointees chosen by the president were
beneficiaries of the spoils system.
What occurred under the "outing system" of the 1880s?
Indian children were forced to live with white families over summer vacation.
By the 1870s, homesteaders discovered that most of the prime land in the West was
already in the hands of speculators.
Which of the following describes the Indian wars on the Great Plains after the Civil War?
The wars began when Euro-American settlers invaded Native American lands.
Which two factors helped stimulate the land rush in the trans-Mississippi West?
Homestead Act of 1862 and the opening of the transcontinental railroad
Of the 2.5 million farms established between 1860 and 1900, homesteading accounted for what proportion?
One-fifth
How did the landscape of the trans-Mississippi West change between 1870 and 1900?
Family farms gave way to commercial farming.
By the late nineteenth century, farmers were no longer the self-sufficient yeomen anchoring the Republic as originally described by which of the following men?
Thomas Jefferson
What was the outcome of the second Treaty of Fort Laramie?
It was violated by the U.S. government after gold was discovered in the Black Hills.
Which of the following describes the changes experienced by the Californios between 1860 and 1880?
The group's population fell by more than 60 percent.
What did the state and federal governments do to encourage railroad construction in the decades after the Civil War?
What did the historian Frederick Jackson Turner argue about the importance of the western frontier in American history in 1893?
The western frontier made the United States different from Europe.
What did the Homestead Act of 1862 promise to potential migrants to the West?
160 acres free to any citizen or prospective citizen who settled on land west of the Mississippi River for five years
For what reason were African-American troops serving in the West during the Indian Wars known as Buffalo soldiers?
Native Americans thought their hair resembled that of the bison.
What was the outcome of the Dawes Act of 1887?
Division of reservations and allotment of individual plots of land to Native Americans
Which of the following explains why the U.S. army gunned down unarmed Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota in 1890?
American soldiers feared an uprising provoked by a militant interpretation of the Ghost Dance religion.
What was the Comstock Lode?
The richest vein of silver ore found on the North American continent
Chinese workers made up what proportion of the workforce that built America's first transcontinental railroad?
90 percent
In what manner did William Tecumseh Sherman successfully defeat the Comanchería?
Using the scorched earth policy he'd perfected during his March to the Sea
How did the invention of barbed wire revolutionize the cattle industry?
The wire allowed ranchers to fence in their cattle.
Which of the following describes the federal government's approach to territorial government in the West in the late nineteenth century?
Benign neglect
What was the outcome of the transformation of agriculture to big business in the South and West during the post-Civil War era?
An increasing number of laborers worked land they would never own
It enriched speculators in San Francisco and other California cities.
What was the outcome of Native Americans' settlement on reservations in the late nineteenth century?
They came to depend on government assistance.
Although the Chinese men were thought to be hard workers, anti-Chinese prejudice barred them from work in which jobs?
Mining occupations
What was the easiest way to get rich in the American silver mining industry?
Selling claims to land or forming mining companies and selling stock
What occurred after Geronimo surrendered to General Miles in 1886?
The government sent nearly five hundred Apaches to Florida as prisoners.
Which of the following describes how life in the agrarian West compared to life in the mining West?
Equally speculative and exploitative
Henry Miller and Charles Lux fit into which of the following categories?
Pioneers in the field of agribusiness
What did settlers passing through the western portion of Kansas and Nebraska and the eastern portion of Colorado in the years after 1870 call the area?
The Great American Desert
Why did the U.S. government decide to move Indians to reservations around the mid-nineteenth century?
The government's policy of Indian removal further west was no longer practical because western land was no longer inexhaustible.
Why did the federal government do so little to halt corruption and scandal in the western territories?
Distance, funding, and local hostility limited the government's ability to prosecute cases.
Why did the Plains Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which ceded some of their land to allow the passage of wagon trains?
They hoped to preserve their culture in the face of white onslaught.
