Question

SSUSH 11 - Examine connections between the rise of big business, the growth of labor unions, and
technological innovations.
SSUSH 12 - Evaluate how Westward Expansion impacted the Plains Indians and fulfilled Manifest Destiny.
Vocabulary- Write the Definition and Importance
Urbanization
Transcontinental Railroad
Homestead Act
Plains Indians
Reservation
Dawes Act
Wounded Knee

Answer 1

Urbanization
- Definition: The rapid growth of cities during the late 19th century as people moved from farms and abroad to work in factories, transportation, and service jobs.
- Importance: Urbanization was driven by industrialization and technological innovations (steam power, electricity, mass production). It concentrated labor and consumers, enabling large-scale factories and big business, and it created crowded living/working conditions that spurred the growth of labor unions and progressive reform movements.

Transcontinental Railroad
- Definition: A coast‑to‑coast railroad system completed in 1869 (Union Pacific met Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah) that linked eastern markets to the West.
- Importance: It revolutionized transportation and commerce, lowered shipping costs, created national markets that fueled big corporations, promoted mass migration and settlement of the West, and accelerated displacement of Native peoples. It also stimulated related industries (steel, coal, timber) and time standardization.

Homestead Act (1862)
- Definition: Federal law that granted 160 acres of public land to settlers who lived on and improved the land for five years.
- Importance: It encouraged westward migration by making land accessible to millions, helping fulfill Manifest Destiny and agricultural expansion. But it also led to increased conflict over land with Plains Indians and contributed to environmental strain on marginal lands.

Plains Indians
- Definition: Diverse Indigenous tribes (e.g., Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, Arapaho, Pawnee) whose cultures, economies, and lifeways on the Great Plains were often centered on buffalo hunting and nomadic or semi-nomadic patterns.
- Importance: Plains tribes were profoundly affected by railroads, settlers, and the federal policy of expansion—losing land, food sources (buffalo decline), and autonomy. Their resistance and treaties shaped federal Indian policy and military campaigns during westward expansion.

Reservation
- Definition: Land set aside by the U.S. government for Native American tribes, often established by treaties or executive orders.
- Importance: Reservations confined Native peoples to limited areas, undermined traditional economies and sovereignty, and facilitated settlement and resource extraction by settlers. The reservation system became a central tool for controlling and assimilating Native populations.

Dawes Act (1887)
- Definition: Federal law that broke up tribal lands into individual allotments (usually 160 acres per family head) and sold "surplus" land to non‑Native settlers, aiming to assimilate Native Americans into white agrarian culture.
- Importance: It accelerated loss of tribal landholdings (millions of acres) and eroded tribal governance and communal life, further dispossessing Native peoples and enabling settlement and ranching/railroad expansion—advancing Manifest Destiny at the expense of Indigenous sovereignty.

Wounded Knee (1890)
- Definition: The massacre on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek (South Dakota), where U.S. troops killed approximately 150–300 Lakota men, women, and children during an attempt to disarm a band of Lakota.
- Importance: Wounded Knee symbolized the violent end of large‑scale Native armed resistance on the Plains and the tragic human cost of U.S. expansionist policies. It marked a definitive shift toward full federal control over Native peoples and closure of the frontier era.