I. Westward Expansion - Core Knowledge Foundation in 1805 as part of their voyage of discovery....

I. Westward Expansion

242 Grade 5 Handbook

Teaching Idea

Create an overhead of InstructionalMaster 30a, Important PhysicalFeatures of the United States. Have stu-dents state one fact they have learnedabout each feature shown. For exam-ple, “James River: The first permanentEnglish colony in North America wasfounded along the James River.”

The purpose is to help students cre-ate mental maps of events and thephysical settings in which theyoccurred or which contributed to theirhappening. Provide an example, suchas how the flatness of the Great Plainsmade open-range ranching possibleuntil farmers began to fence in theiracreage.

Return to this map and this connection-building activity throughout the study of this section.

The success of the Erie Canal stimulated a boom in canal building. Amongthe most important were the Champlain Canal, connecting Lake Champlain andthe Hudson River, the Chesapeake Canal, the Ohio Canal (which was never com-pleted but was meant to connect Pittsburgh and the Ohio River to the PotomacRiver and the Atlantic Ocean), and the Miami and Erie Canals in Ohio, whichconnected Lake Erie to the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Canal building continuedfor many years until canals were gradually replaced by railroads.

Appalachian MountainsThe Appalachian Mountains are the oldest mountain chain in North America

and stretch from Newfoundland to central Alabama. They are about 1,800 miles(2,897 km) long and range from 120 to 375 miles (193 to 604 km) wide. Thehighest peak is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, named for Maria Mitchell, a19th-century astronomer. It rises 6,684 feet (2,037 m) above sea level. TheAppalachians are divided into various ranges, such as the White Mountains inMaine and New Hampshire; the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania, Maryland, andVirginia; the Blue Ridge Mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia,Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and the Great Smokies inNorth Carolina and Tennessee. Major rivers that flow through the mountains arethe Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Tennessee. The mountainsare rich in iron and coal deposits, but proved a barrier to westward movement inthe colonial era until Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail, also known as theWilderness Road, through the Cumberland Gap in 1775. Further north, settlerstraveled down the Ohio River on keelboats to get through the mountains.

Rocky Mountains and Continental DivideThe Rocky Mountains extend for more than 3,000 miles from Alaska to New

Mexico. The highest point in North America is Mount McKinley in Alaska. It rises20,320 feet (6,194 m) above sea level. The major ranges of the Rocky Mountainsare the Southern, Central, and Northern Rockies in the contiguous United States,the Brooks Range in Alaska, and the Canadian Rockies. The Rocky Mountainswere more formidable barriers to travel than the Appalachians because theRockies are in general more than twice as tall as the Appalachians. The major passthrough the Rockies for travelers in the nineteenth century was South Pass inWyoming. The Oregon Trail took this route.

Of major topographical interest is the Continental Divide that runs north andsouth through the mountains. Rivers to the east of this long, high crest flow tothe east toward the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans, and rivers to the west of the divideflow toward the Pacific on the west. Lewis and Clark, whom students should havestudied in earlier grades and will study again this year, crossed the ContinentalDivide in 1805 as part of their voyage of discovery.

Great PlainsThe Great Plains stretch south to north from Mexico into Canada roughly

along the 98th parallel. The plains are a plateau, or high flat land, that slopesdownward from the Rockies. The plains vary in width from 300–700 miles(483–1,127 km) and cover all or part of the following states: Montana, Wyoming,Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma,and Texas.

The area experiences hot summers and cold winters. Rainfall is typically onlyabout 20 inches a year, but some parts may also have heavy snows. Natural

Use Instructional Masters 30a–30b.

Study the map. Then use it to answer the questions on Master 30b.

Important Physical Features ofthe United States

Master 30a Grade 5: History & Geography

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Purpose: To read a map featuring rivers, mountains, and other important physical features of the United States

ContinentalDivide

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Lake Superior

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Lake Erie

Lake Ontario

A T L A N T I C

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Gulf ofMexico

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vegetation is typically short grasses; however, the rich soil in some areas makesthe region a major grain producer. Before the Civil War, the Great Plains were set-tled by whites who moved there in larger numbers after the war.

Early Exploration of the West

Daniel Boone, Cumberland Gap, Wilderness TrailDaniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734. As a boy he hunted animals,

first with a spear and later with a gun. He became a crack shot and is said to haveshot his first bear at age 12. Boone took part in the French and Indian War in 1755.

For many of his adult years, Boone was a “long hunter.” He would hunt alonein the woods, hundreds of miles from white civilization, for months at a time.One of his hunting trips lasted 18 months.

In 1769, Boone and some others passed through the Cumberland Gap in theAppalachian Mountains into Kentucky. They found a land filled with buffalo,deer, and wild turkeys, as well as meadows perfect for farming. Boone was sepa-rated from his party and spent the winter of 1769–70 in a cave.

In 1775, Boone began working for the Transylvania Company, which wantedto establish a colony called Transylvania in the frontier areas of Virginia andNorth Carolina. The scheme collapsed, but not before Boone had blazed theWilderness Road in 1775. This wagon road, which was often nothing more thana wide place in the forest, ran from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap andinto the Ohio River Valley.

The Appalachian Mountains had long been a natural barrier to westboundtravel, but the Wilderness Road allowed settlers to travel through the mountainsmore easily. Settlers moved along it into what would become the states ofKentucky and Tennessee. The road was a main route west in the southeasternstates until the National Road was completed in 1837. The Wilderness Road,which eventually became part of U.S. Highway 25, is still around today.

After blazing the Wilderness Road, Daniel Boone continued to hunt andexplore. During the Revolutionary War he was taken prisoner by the Shawnee. Heso impressed his captors with his great skills as a hunter and woodsman that hewas accepted as a member of a Native American family. Eventually, however,Boone returned to his original family.

After several more years in sparsely settled Kentucky, Boone went west toMissouri in a dugout canoe. When someone asked him why he was leavingKentucky, Boone allegedly replied: “Too crowded.” He lived in Missouri for therest of his life, dying in 1820 at the age of 85.

Boone published his memoirs, The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, in1784. In them he describes his explorations and his many encounters with NativeAmericans. After his death, Boone was romanticized and marketed as anAmerican hero, a man who lived close to nature, fought Native Americans, andhelped “win the West.” His genuine adventures have been supplemented andembellished with numerous additional stories. 47

Lewis and Clark In 1800, France, under Napoleon Bonaparte, had acquired the Louisiana

Territory from Spain. Napoleon was interested in rebuilding France’s holdings inNorth America. In 1802, Americans were banned from using the port of New

History and Geography: American 243

Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy learning moreabout Daniel Boone and some of hisadventures. In addition to Boone’sautobiography, many biographiesare available.

Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy listening topoems about key figures involved inwestward expansion. A number ofpoems are included in Stephen andRosemary Benet’s Book of Americans(see More Resources). Poetic profilesin the book include “Lewis andClark,” “Zachary Taylor,” “DanielBoone,” “Sam Houston,” “WestwardWagons,” “Clipper Ships andCaptains,” “Jesse James,” and “P. T.Barnum.”

CK_5_TH_HG_P231_324.QXD 2/13/06 1:55 PM 43



Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy hearing excerptsfrom letters and autobiographies ofpeople who participated in the goldrush of 1849. One well-known set ofdocuments is a series of letters byWilliam Swain written to his wifeSabrina Swain and his brother GeorgeSwain. Another interesting document isthe memoirs of Luzena Stanley Wilson.Excerpts from both the Swain and theWilson materials can be found online.(See More Resources.)

Cross-curricular

Teaching Idea

Have students do research on theCalifornia gold rush or another factorthat influenced westward expansion.Suggest that they use online and printresources. Their final products couldtake the form of written or oral reportswith accompanying artwork illustratingsomething learned from the research.Have students submit a bibliography(formal or informal) of the material theyconsulted to create their project andwritten report.

Gold Rush and the ’49ersIn January 1848, John Sutter hired James Marshall to build a sawmill on the

American River, which ran through Sutter’s property near Sacramento, California.As he worked, Marshall noticed in the riverbed shiny flakes that looked golden inthe light. When he examined them more closely, he saw they were gold. Thoughthe two men tried to hide Marshall’s discovery, word got out and the rush to findgold was soon on. 52

Californians took to the rivers and streams looking for gold. Much of it waseasily found in streams and riverbeds by panning. Miners literally used pans withsmall holes poked through their bottoms. They let the water flow through theholes, and the heavy gold sank to the bottom of the pans.

By the following summer, 100,000 people arrived in California—not justfrom the east coast of the United States but from Europe and much of the PacificBasin, especially China, as well. Most came overland by horse and wagon train,but many came by boat. Some sailed around Cape Horn at the tip of SouthAmerica and up the coast, while others sailed to Panama, trekked overland, andtook a ship again from the west coast of Central America.

The ’49ers, as the miners were called, were an enterprising group of men andwomen. Most miners were young men who expected to make their fortune andthen return home. Some family men brought their wives and children along,expecting to stay. Single women, hoping to find gold or to earn money cookingor doing laundry for the miners, traveled to California as well. Some free blackscame, as well as some southerners who brought their slaves to mine for them.Even though few miners found a substantial amount of gold, many stayed for theclimate and the rich farmland.

Native American ResistanceFrom the beginning, the new United States’ dealings with Native Americans

resulted in a string of conflicts, misunderstandings, epidemics, skirmishes, wars,broken treaties, and unfulfilled promises. At first, the federal government recog-nized Native Americans as sovereign nations and negotiated treaties with themfor their land. Sometimes these treaties were freely negotiated, and other timesthey were the result of wars. The Treaty of Greenville (1795) is an example of atreaty that was forced on the Native Americans as a result of war. The treaty, bywhich the native peoples of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin,Michigan) gave up most of their lands, was an outcome of the Battle of FallenTimbers (1794). The Treaty deprived Natives of claims to roughly two-thirds ofthe land of modern-day Ohio. Federal troops under General Anthony Waynedefeated a force of Shawnee, Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Fox, and Sauknear what is today Toledo, Ohio. Later, the War of 1812 would break the back ofNative resistance in the rest of the region.

As more settlers pushed the frontier back by moving west and south from theoriginal thirteen states, they came in contact with more Native Americans. ManyEuropean Americans considered the Native Americans uncivilized, and saw themas obstacles standing in the way of settlers’ ambitions. The settlers continued topush the Native Americans westward. Sometimes the army tried to prevent set-tlers from encroaching on Native American lands, but at other times the army

Teaching Idea

Tell students that many sports teams’names are based on historical events.Find out the names of professionalsports teams and see how many relateto history of the area (e.g., the SanFrancisco ’49ers’ name comes from thegold rush of ’49).




The war lasted from May 1846 to September 1848. Under the Treaty ofGuadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ended the war, Mexico ceded to the UnitedStates all or part of what became the following states: California, Nevada, Utah,Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona.

General Zachary Taylor was known to his soldiers as “Old Rough and Ready.”He was a soldier for forty years, fighting in the War of 1812, subduing NativeAmericans in the Midwest, and defeating the Seminole in the Second SeminoleWar in Florida. He became a national hero after his defeat of General Santa Annain the Mexican-American War.

Taylor was nominated as the Whig candidate for President in 1848 and won.Although it was his success that added large tracts of land to the United States, heopposed the expansion of slavery into any territory seeking admission to state-hood. He died after only sixteen months in office.

Opposition to the WarOpposition to the war was strong among some Americans. Southerners and

Westerners felt they would benefit from a larger United States and supported thewar. Many Northerners, on the other hand, opposed the war on moral grounds;they opposed the addition of more slave states to the Union. One of those whowas against the war was Henry David Thoreau. In his “Essay on the Duty of CivilDisobedience,” Thoreau asked whether a man had the right to disobey a law orgovernment he felt was wrong. He concluded that there was such a right:

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his con-science to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I thinkthat we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable tocultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obliga-tion which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Thoreau went on to explain his opposition to a government more concerned,in his eyes, with conquest than justice. 54

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people havechosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and pervertedbefore the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war,the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing govern-ment as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consent-ed to this measure.

Thoreau had actually declined to pay his taxes, and spent one night in prison.Was he ashamed of this? On the contrary, Thoreau wrote: “Under a governmentwhich imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is . . . a prison.”

Thoreau’s opposition did little to affect the war, though his ideas about civildisobedience would influence the thinking of others, including Gandhi andMartin Luther King, Jr., who chose nonviolent resistance, such as going to jail,rather than cooperation with unjust laws.

B. Westward Expansion After the Civil War

Homestead Act of 1862Settlement of the Great Plains—the land between the Mississippi and the

Rockies—did not take place to any great degree until after the Civil War. Duringthe War, Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, which encouraged people


Cross-curricular

Teaching Idea

Many teachers like to teach railroadsongs while students are studying thehistory of the railroad. Downloadunits from the Core KnowledgeFoundation’s website on railroadsongs, and have your class teachthem to younger students. For exam-ple, teachers following the Sequenceteach “I’ve Been Working on theRailroad” and “John Henry” to Grade2 students and “She’ll Be Comin’’Round the Mountain” to Grade 1 stu-dents. (These songs can also bereviewed in this grade.) After teach-ing the songs, fifth graders can sharea few interesting facts about rail-roads with the younger students.

to settle in the Plains. The government announced it would give 160 acres of landto any citizen or immigrant who was willing to farm it for five years. Land couldalso be bought for $1.25 an acre after six months of living on it. Before this lawwas passed, people had either bypassed the Great Plains in favor of the fertileNorthwest or were lured to California by the get-rich-quick tales of the gold rush.But the Homestead Act changed that. In the next 40 years, the U.S. governmentgave away 80 million acres of land under the act.

In the late 1800s, largely because of the Homestead Act, many thousands ofwhite Americans, as well as many freed slaves (known as Exodusters) andEuropean immigrants, relocated to the Great Plains. These settlers establishedfarms and ranches on the plains. Because trees were scarce on the Great Plains,many settlers built “sod houses” by cutting and piling up blocks of grass and turf.Farmers battled with great swarms of grasshoppers and other insects thatdevoured their crops. They raised windmills to bring water up from below theearth’s surface, and they used a new invention called “barbed wire” to help fencein their livestock.

Life on the Great Plains was hard. Some parts of the plains were fertile andreceived enough water for successful farming, but other parts suffered occasionaldroughts, which made farming impossible and led to blinding dust storms. Whenthese droughts struck, they drove farmers out of business.

“Go West, young man!”—Horace GreeleyHorace Greeley was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, an influ-

ential newspaper during the mid-1800s. In 1851, he wrote an article advisingyoung men how to make their fortune. He said the following:

If you have no family or friends to aid you . . . turn your face to the greatWest and there build up your home and fortune.

In time, this advice was boiled down to “Go West, young man!” Thousandsof young men and women did just that.

RailroadsRailroads had several advantages over roads, rivers, and canals. Railroads

were dependable, cheap, and convenient. The first railroads were built in Britishcoal mines, but in 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson line was inaugurated betweenAlbany and Schenectady, New York. In 1853, when the Baltimore and OhioRailroad reached Wheeling, West Virginia, it achieved what the Erie Canal haddone years earlier—it crossed the Appalachians to join east and west. A rail net-work spread quickly across the Northeast and the upper Midwest in the 1840s.The 1850s were the great railroad-building years in the Southeast.

By 1861, some 300,000 miles of railroad track had been laid down in theUnited States. The Midwest was the focus of much of this track laying, making iteasier for people to travel there from the East. As a result, land in the Midwestbecame more expensive as more and more settlers arrived. The fast, cheap trans-portation the railroads provided allowed for goods, such as wheat and corn, to beeasily shipped to the Northeast for sale. Manufactured items, such as farm toolsfrom the Northeast, could, in turn, be shipped to consumers in the Midwest. Overtime, larger, faster, and more powerful engines pulling heavier cars requiredtracks made from stronger iron, and eventually steel rails. Coal powered the





steam engines, and iron and steel were used in the construction of railroads,bridges, and engines. The demands of the emerging railroad business were anenormous stimulus for such industries after the Civil War.

The Transcontinental Railroad Construction of the transcontinental railroad began in 1862. The route ran

from Nebraska to California. The Union Pacific built west from Nebraska, and theCentral Pacific built east from California. Irish immigrants did much of the workon the eastern section, which consisted of largely flat and gently rolling plainsuntil it reached the Rocky Mountains. Chinese immigrants did most of the laboron the western portion, and it was rugged, dangerous work that took them overand through mountains and across gorges and desert.

The federal government paid the two companies for each mile of track laid,with higher payments for work in the mountains. The two competing railroadscontinued building east and west until they met in 1869 at Promontory Point,Utah. The completion of the railroad was marked by a final golden spike beingdriven into the ground. By the 1890s, four more transcontinental railroads hadbeen built joining East and West across more northern and southern routes.These railroads made it easier than ever before to move across the continent.

Cowboys and Cattle DrivesBy 1860, Texas longhorns—cattle—numbered 3 to 4 million on the open

range in Texas. Open range means that the land was unfenced. Much of the Plainswas owned by the federal government and no one lived on or worked it. Most ofthe cattle were descended from cattle brought to Mexico by the Spanish. Mexico,at one time, had included Texas. The longhorns on the Plains were unbranded,which meant that no one owned them. Seeing a potential business in these mav-ericks, as they were called, Americans in Texas began to round them up and drivethem to market. Mexican vaqueros, the Spanish word for cowboys, taught theAmericans how to rope, brand, and drive cattle. Many words associated withranching are Spanish in origin, such as lariat (a rope to tie a horse), chaps (leatherleggings worn over pants to protect the legs), and lasso (a long rope with a slid-ing noose, used to catch horses or cattle).

Open-range cattle ranching had begun on the Texas Plains in the 1840s and1850s and by the end of the Civil War had moved up through the northern Plains.Initially, ranchers in Texas had driven their herds to New Orleans for sale. Afterthe Civil War, however, with the coming of railroads linking the Plains with theMidwest, ranchers began to drive their herds to railheads in Kansas, Missouri,and Nebraska. From there, the cattle were shipped to meat-packing factories inChicago, and then sent to the growing cities of the Northeast.

Depending on where the cattle drive started and where it was to end, cow-boys could be on the trail for as long as two months. It is estimated that some30,000 cowboys, several thousand of whom were African American, drove cattlenorth over the Sedalia, Chisholm, Western, and Goodnight-Loving trails.

A rancher would hire eight or ten cowboys to herd his 2,000 or 3,000 headof cattle to market. There was always a trail boss and a cook and helper who rodein the chuck wagon. The cowboys had specific jobs. Two would ride point—out

Use Instructional Master 33.

Study the map. Then use it to answer the questions below.

Cattle Drives and Railroads

Master 33 Grade 5: History & Geography

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Purpose: To read and interpret a U.S. map featuring cattle drive and railroad routes

1. Which Midwestern city and Pacific coast city were linked by the combined Central Pacificand Union Pacific railroads?

2. How many cattle trails are shown on the map, and in what place did they all begin?

three; San Antonio

Omaha and San Francisco

Western Trail

Chisholm

Trail

PromontoryPromontoryPointPoint

Union Pacific RailroadCentral Pacific Railroad

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SacramentoSacramentoOgallalaOgallala OmahaOmaha

ChicagoChicago

KansasKansasCityCity SedaliaSedalia

IdahoIdahoTerritoryTerritory

WyomingWyomingTerritoryTerritory

KansasKansas

UtahUtahTerritoryTerritory

IllinoisIllinois

MississippiMississippi

ColoradoColoradoTerritoryTerritory

New MexicoNew MexicoTerritoryTerritory

OklahomaOklahomaTerritoryTerritoryS

edalia Trail

Western Trail

Chisholm

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Sedalia Trail

PromontoryPoint

Union Pacific RailroadCentral Pacific Railroad

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SacramentoVirginia City Ogallala Omaha

Chicago

AbileneKansasCity Sedalia

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IdahoTerritory

WyomingTerritory

Dakota

Territory

Nebraska

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MontanaTerritory

WashingtonTerritory

Oregon

California

Nevada UtahTerritory

Iowa

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Illinois

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ColoradoTerritory

ArizonaTerritory New Mexico

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Cattle trails

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Teaching Idea

Create an overhead and copies for eachstudent of Instructional Master 33,Cattle Drives and Railroads. Have stu-dents locate and name each railroad onthe map. They should identify the statesthrough which each runs. It may behelpful to have students label the stateson their maps first and then identify thevarious routes.

Teaching Idea

Use the overhead you created fromInstructional Master 33, Cattle Drivesand Railroads. Have students identifythe railroads that served each cattletrail.

Cross-curricular

Teaching Idea

Collaborate with the music teacher toteach the students “Git Along LittleDogies” while you are teaching aboutcattle drives.


Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy listening to youread “The Spelling Bee at Angels” byBret Harte. This comical poem tells ofa cowboy spelling bee, which endswith a shoot-out. The poem is avail-able on the Internet. (See MoreResources.)

Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy listening to bal-lads and songs about the West, suchas the ballad “Jesse James.” Lyricscan be found online or in Songs ofthe Great American West by IrwinSilber. (See More Resources.)

in front of the herd. Two would ride drag—at the back to round up and urge lag-ging cattle to keep up with the herd. Two would ride swing (left side of the herd),and two would ride flank (right side). Their jobs were to move the herd along andto keep it from veering off course.

The worst thing that could happen on a cattle drive was a stampede. When astampede occurred, the herd took off at a run. Cattle herds were nervous and any-thing could set them off—a gunshot, a bolt of lightning, a clap of thunder, or aloud yell. That’s one reason cowboys sometimes sang—music soothed the cattle.To stop a stampede, several cowboys would work their horses to force the cattleto run in a wide circle. As more and more cattle were added to the circle, the sheersize of the herd forced it to slow its pace.

By 1890, not only had the frontier closed, but open-range ranching hadended as well. The federal government had encouraged the opening of the Plainsto farmers with the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. Farmers and sheepranchers built fences and dammed streams and rivers, blocking the free access ofcattle to grazing land and water. Under these new conditions, cattle could nolonger survive in large numbers on the open range. In the future, cattlemenwould raise cattle on fenced-in properties called ranches.

The “Wild West”From the 1850s through the 1880s, the West was—in different places and at

different times—lawless, brutal, and deadly. Many of the early settlers in the Westwere unmarried men, and some western towns were hotbeds for drinking, gam-bling, brawling, and prostitution. But as more people came, especially men withfamilies, law and order soon followed. Mining camps run by vigilante committeesbecame respectable towns and, eventually, cities. As the open range disappeared,so did the long-haul cattle drive and the freewheeling life of the cowboy.

But the Wild West has lived on in dime novels and the Wild West Shows ofthe nineteenth century, and in movies, radio, and television shows in the twenti-eth century. The sheer brutality of life on the Plains became romanticized over theyears. It began with newspapermen sending stories about the exploits of Billy theKid and the James Gang to their eastern papers. Curious Easterners flocked to seeBuffalo Bill’s Wild West, featuring Annie Oakley shooting her rifle from the backof a horse and Native Americans dressed in buckskin chanting war songs. Someof the people in these shows have entered into the popular imagination andbecome part of cultural literacy.

OutlawsBilly the Kid (William H. Bonney)

• cattle rustler and murderer in New Mexico

• caught, tried, and sentenced to hang, but escaped, killing two guards

• killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett

Jesse James

• with his brother Frank, led an outlaw gang known as the James Gang

• bank and train robber, murderer

• Arkansas, Texas, Colorado

• killed by one of his own gang for the reward





Teaching Idea

Students may enjoy looking at postersfrom Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows.These posters are available online.

Teaching Idea

You may wish to check out a number ofinteresting websites on the buffalo sol-diers. (See More Resources.)

Teaching Idea

Students may be interested to know that,in addition to the buffalo soldiers, whocame west to fight, some AfricanAmericans moved west to farm. Manywere motivated by the terror wagedagainst former slaves by the Ku Klux Klanand other groups. These settlers wereknown as Exodusters, after the biblicalstory of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt.

Teaching Idea

Ask students if they or anyone theyknow has ever bought anything thatthey thought was foolish. Relate theirpersonal experience to what WilliamSeward experienced when purchasingAlaska. Conduct research to see whatthe average price of an acre in Alaskais today. Looking back, was it really awaste of money?

Wild West Show EntertainersBuffalo Bill (William F. Cody)

• former professional buffalo hunter, Pony Express rider, and Union scoutduring the Civil War

• His Wild West Show featured Native Americans such as Sitting Bull, aswell as trick riders and sharpshooters like Annie Oakley.

• His show started in 1883 and toured the United States and Europe fordecades. The show featured a stage-coach robbery and lots of gunfights.Audiences of up to 20,000 attended. Even Queen Victoria of England sawthe show.

Annie Oakley

• Born Phoebe Ann Oakley Moses, she learned to shoot at age 9.

• At age 15 she entered a shooting contest against well-known marksmanFrank E. Butler. Annie won the match and later married Butler.

• Known as “Little Sure Shot” for her height and her skill with a gun, shecould hit a dime tossed in the air from 90 feet away and shoot five or sixbullets through a playing card tossed in the air before it hit the ground.

• sharpshooter with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show from 1885 to 1902

• The musical Annie Get Your Gun, with music by Irving Berlin, includingthe famous songs “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and“Anything You Can Do,” was loosely based on the life of Annie Oakley.55

Buffalo SoldiersDuring the Civil War, African-American units were formed within the Union

Army. (See next section.) After the Civil War, the United States Congress author-ized the creation of six regiments of African-American soldiers. The 24th and25th Infantries and the 9th and 10th Cavalries were sent west to fight in thePlains Wars (See Section III, “Native Americans: Cultures and Conflicts,” pp.297–313). The Native Americans, whom they fought, may have named theseAfrican Americans “buffalo soldiers” out of respect for their courage. Fourteenbuffalo soldiers won the Congressional Medal of Honor. The black units were dis-banded in 1952, and the soldiers integrated into the rest of the army after the fed-eral government banned segregation in the armed forces.

“Seward’s Folly”In 1867, Czar Alexander of Russia was looking to raise money and offered to

sell Alaska to the United States. While Native Americans had lived on the land forthousands of years, the Russians were the first Europeans to the area and hadestablished a settlement there in 1784. Secretary of State William Seward imme-diately agreed to the purchase price of $7.2 million, or about 2 cents an acre. MostAmericans considered it a waste of money and jeeringly referred to it as “Seward’sFolly” and “Seward’s Ice Box.” However, when gold was found in 1880, the dealno longer seemed so foolish. The gold soon ran out, but many miners stayed toearn a living by fishing, farming in the southern part of the territory, or timberingin the dense forests. Today Alaska is still sparsely populated but is the home ofimportant oil reserves.

Annie Oakley


Teaching Idea

Have students choose either to drawa cartoon depicting “Seward’s Folly”or write an editorial describing the“folly” of Seward’s agreement to buyAlaska. You may need to help stu-dents define folly in order for them tounderstand what critics of the landdeal meant.

You might also point out that thepresident and the Senate had to agreeto the purchase. Seward could notauthorize the use of $7.2 million of thecountry’s money without the Senate’sapproval.


1890: The Closing of the FrontierIn 1890, the U.S. Census declared the frontier closed. The frontier had ceased

to exist as a clearly defined line between settled and unsettled areas. Only pock-ets of frontier remained. The continental United States was either divided intostates or organized as territories on their way to statehood. Between 1864 and1912, thirteen states were admitted to the Union, making the contiguous UnitedStates complete. A process that had begun with the founding of St. Augustine in1565 had ended.

Many historians have argued that the frontier experience had transformedEuropeans into Americans and defined what it meant to be an American.

ReviewBelow are some ideas for ongoing assessment and review activities. These are

not meant to constitute a comprehensive list. Teachers may also refer to thePearson Learning/Core Knowledge History & Geography series for additional infor-mation and teaching ideas.

• This section provides an opportunity for students to complete short researchreports on Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, Tecumseh, or other impor-tant figures during early exploration of the West. Using the Language Arts sec-tion, provide the class with topics for short reports to write in formal style. Eachday of a week, provide a mini-lesson on different aspects of report writing, suchas correct paragraph form or bibliographies. Share these reports when completed.

• So many events and people are named in this section that a good way toreview the information is to have students do one of the following:

Have students create crossword puzzles with at least 12 clues about peopleand events from this section, and then exchange them with each other. Checkfor accuracy.

Play “Who/What Am I?” Have teams of two create five identifications. Thenpair teams together and have them take turns asking their identificationquestions.

• Have students write up interviews with prominent people from this section.Divide students into pairs and have them research important events from a per-son’s life. Then, have them write up questions on index cards to ask that histori-cal figure. Have the pairs take turns conducting their interview in front of theclass, with one person playing the role of the interviewer and the other the roleof the prominent person. After the interview, discuss if the information present-ed is accurate and make corrections accordingly.

• In order to have a balanced and well-rounded understanding of this period,students should be able to understand how events looked from the perspective ofwhite Americans and also from the perspective of Native Americans. Have students write a paper from a point of view not their own. What would it be liketo have the settlers come onto their land if they were Native American? Have stu-dents practice using examples from history to support their point of view. Sharethese papers aloud.

The Big Idea in ReviewThroughout the 1800s,Americans moved west,settling lands previouslyoccupied by NativeAmericans.


I. Westward Expansion - Core Knowledge Foundation in 1805 as part of their voyage of discovery....

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