the plains

• what did white Americans call the Great Plains?

  the great American desert
• what were the 3 main factors that disrupted indigenous lives?

  • railroads
  • cattle industry
  • gold prospecting
• what did railroads take away?

  the grassland that the buffalo needed to feed on
• what did the railroad disrupt?

  the buffalo hunts and enabled the extermination of buffalo by hunters
• what did the railroad lead to for indigenous?

  being moved onto reservations
• what did the railroad lead to?

  conflicts that developed into the great Sioux war
• how much land were railroaders given?

  40 million acres
• what did the route of the northern pacific railroad go through?

  the indigenous territory where they depended on buffalo hunting and traditional lives
• why did buffalo numbers decline?

  cattle fed the same grass as the buffalo so as cattle numbers increased buffalo numbers declined
• what happened when buffalo became hard to find?

  indigenous went to work on ranches and as cowboys
• what happened when indigenous worked on ranches?

  gave them a more settled way of life moving them away from the nomadic life they once lived
• what did indigenous do on the trails?

  organise patrols as some hated trespassers
• what did some indigenous do to people on the trails?

  attacked cowboys and stole horses/cattle from long drives
• what did the US army do as a result of the indigenous attacks?

  ride out to attack tribes and make things worse
• what did gold prospectors do?

  murder indigenous peoples and forcibly remove them from land to claim gold
• what did gold prospectors do?

  bring new disease with them which would devastate indigenous population
• why was gold prospecting the most catastrophic?

  brought change rapidly
• when was gold discovered in Montana?

  1862
• what did gold in Montana do?

  made prospectors cut straight across Lakota Sioux hunting grounds as it was the quickest route to the gold
• what trail did some prospectors cross over?

  Bozeman trail
• what was wrong with the Bozeman trail?

  it broke terms of the fort Laramie treaty
• why did the Bozeman trail break fort Laramie treaty terms?

  it allowed railroad surveyors across the land not gold prospectors