1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What feature contributed to Galveston’s boom in the last three decades of the 19th century?
a. a coral reef off the coast that protected the city from flood waves
b. a deep-water port that was fit for steam-powered ocean liners
c. a mountain range that shielded the city from the region’s hostile climate
d. an enormous oil deposit under the city that assured the town’s prosperity
[b]
Which of the following statements best summarizes the impact of internal migrations on the American West between 1877 and 1900?
a. Internal migration depopulated some areas and resettled others.
b. Internal migration led to stronger families.
c. It caused the extinction of the buffalo.
d. It restored Native American communities on the reservation.
[a]
What made the American West such an exceptional type of “settler society”?
a. It included migrants from overseas who had traveled thousands of miles by ship.
b. It included groups of natives with existing cultures and histories of their own.
c. It built on a mostly arid landscape with a variety of geographic and climatic extremes.
d. It brought together not just two or three, but multiple different immigrants and
natives.
[d]
The discovery of which natural resource transformed the Arizona territories in the 1870s? a. gold
b. oil
c. copper d. silver [c]
In the “coolie trade,”
6.
In what year was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed? a. 1865
b. 1876 c. 1882
a.
b. c. d.
[c]
Chinese immigrants bought and sold rare Chinese commodities across the Pacific region.
California farmers experimented with refrigerated transportation into Western cities. Chinese laborers and women were sold as indentured laborers and sex workers. Australian mine workers were contracted for copper and silver mines in the American Southwest.
d. 1896 [c]
7. By 1890, the largest city in the American West was a. San Francisco.
b. Denver.
c. Los Angeles. d. Seattle.
[a]
8. Which of the following was central to the organization and funding of the general survey of the West between 1867 and 1879?
a. big corporations
b. Wall street investors
c. the state governments of Arizona and California
d. the federal government
[d]
9. Why did the Homestead Act of 1862 pass so easily at that time?
a. Congress realized the importance of providing equal opportunity to all farmers.
b. The general survey had been completed by then, allowing the government to parcel
the land.
c. Southern opposition to homesteading the West had vanished with secession in 1861.
d. Previous presidents had vetoed homestead acts since 1818.
[c]
10. How did the Bureau of Reclamation prompt the growth and expanding reach of the federal government in the early 20th century?
a. It imposed heavy regulations on farmers.
b. It demanded environmental assessments from every developer.
c. It administered Native American land claims.
d. It provided farmers and ranchers with land and water.
[d]
11. What did boosters mean with the promise that “the rain follows the plow?”
a. b. c. d. [d]
God was watching over diligent farmers.
Western farmers were cursed with bad weather. Deforestation was going to cause droughts.
Hard work and technology could stimulate good weather.
12. Which of the following best assesses the historical significance of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody?
a. He blended the history and myth of the West better than anyone.
b. He was such a popular fictional character that Americans believed in his existence. c. He was actually an unimpressive bureaucrat in the Bureau of Reclamation.
d. He was an environmentalist, founder of the Sierra Club, and protector of buffalos. [a]
13. Which foreign author sold millions of stories about the American West without ever having traveled there?
a. French writer Jules Verne
b. British author Sir Arthur Canon Doyle c. German fiction writer Karl May
d. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
[c]
14. Which of the following was the least likely cause of death in the American West of the late nineteenth century?
a. duelling
b. old age
c. disease
d. industrial accidents
[a]
15. What happened in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885?
a. b. c. d. [b]
16. Which
a. manufacture of industrial goods for the Pacific trade
b. trade with China for the importation of cheap consumer goods
c. small-scale subsistence farming without much contact to the East
d. conversion of natural resources into commodities
[d]
17. The Comstock Lode
a. produced more silver than all American mines up to that point.
b. was a secret society committed to excluding Chinese from Nevada.
c. was a set of laws intended to restory order and morality to San Francisco.
d. was a collection of popular mythic stories about “cowboys and Indians.”
[a]
The first cattle drive successfully crossed the Rocky Mountains.
A race riot killed over fifty Chinese miners.
Gold in the Klondike river triggered a new gold rush.
A drought destroyed 80 percent of the state’s enormous wheat crop.
of the following best describes the economic engine of the American West?
18. IWW leader “Big” Bill Haywood was buried
a. b. c. d. [b]
in Arlington Cemetery.
in the Kremlin.
under the Tower of London. at Wounded Knee.
19. What portion of Westerners lived in urban centers in 1900?
a. b. c. d. [c]
15 percent 25 percent 40 percent 60 percent
20. What drove so many Russian-Germans across the globe in the late nineteenth century?
a. b. c. d. [c]
They sought to escape communist rule.
They were tired of farm life in the harsh Russian environment.
Immigration restrictions under Czar Alexander II forced them out of Russia. They were trying to escape the Russian Empire’s draft for the Crimean War.
21. The “beef bonanza” of the 1880s in Arizona, Colorado, and the Great Plains was driven by
a. the demand of immigrants on the West Coast.
b. the hard work of small ranchers and their families.
c. the demand of Mexican farm populations further south.
d. the heavy investments of eastern and foreign speculators.
[d]
22. Which Plains?
of the following best describes cowboys working in the cattle industry of the Great
a. Cowboys were highly skilled and well-paid workers with life-time careers and stable incomes.
b. Cowboys were mostly older white men who owned the cattle they drove.
c. Cowboys had to be armed while working to protect themselves against cattle thieves
and Indians.
d. Cowboys were poorly paid laborers, at least a third of whom were African American,
Mexican, and Indian.
[d]
23. The chief of the Nez Perce at the time of their defeat in Montana in 1877 was
a. Chief Joseph.
b. Sitting Bull.
c. Crazy Horse.
d. Henry Pratt. [a]
24. Which
a. It consisted of poor white southern veterans of the Civil War.
b. It was larger than the Union Army during the Civil War.
c. It was a small force, and was ethnically very diverse.
d. It concentrated on fighting large battles and big standoffs with native tribes.
[c]
25. The Board of Indian Commissioners appointed by President Ulysses Grant initiated what became known as the
a. Termination Policy.
b. Peace Policy.
c. Reservation Policy.
d. Containment Policy.
[b]
26. The model for Richard Pratt’s Carlisle School for Indians was
a. the Hampton Institute of Virginia.
b. Harvard University.
c. the University Chicago.
d. New York’s Auburn prison.
[a]
27. Why did U.S. military leaders encourage the slaughter of buffalo in the latter third of the 19th century?
a. Troops had to feed themselves because a stalled Congress blocked funds for the military.
b. U.S. officers worried that buffalos were destroying the fragile Midwestern wheat crop.
c. They understood that the destruction of the buffalo crippled the Indians of the Great
Plains.
d. They considered the buffalo a dangerous animal that would prevent settlement in the
West.
[c]
28. How did Indians respond to their disillusionment with failed government policies, ecological catastrophe, cultural collapse, and tribal sovereignty in the late nineteenth century?
a. Some turned to the so-called Ghost Dance that promised a death-like state of grace.
b. Most adapted quickly to the new demands of Anglo-American civilization.
c. Many organized and emigrated to Australia where they suffered discrimination as
Aborigines.
d. They joined the U.S. Army where they found a new sense of community and purpose.
of the following best describes the U.S. military in the American West?
[a]
29. Which valley in the American West was also called the “Incomparable Valley?” a. Death Valley
b. San Fernando Valley c. Yosemite Valley
d. Central Valley
[c]
30. What was one of the consequences of Amendment 24 to the General Appropriations Act of 1891?
a. It led the rapid destruction of millions of acres wilderness in the American West.
b. It motivated the formation of the Sierra Club in opposition to federal environmental
policies.
c. It resulted in a massive flow of federal funds to Western landowners.
d. It brought millions of acres in the American West under federal protection.
[d]
1. Which of the following best assesses the impact of the hurricane that hit the city of Galveston in September 1900?
a. It killed 800 citizens and damaged dozens of oceanfront properties.
b. It was one of the worst natural disasters in the United States prior to the 1927
Mississippi Flood.
c. It was largely a manmade disaster that could have easily been prevented.
d. It shattered beliefs about the ability of new industry to triumph over nature.
[d]
2. Why did boxer Jack Johnson flaunt racial conventions in his private and public life?
a. He had grown up in Galveston where racial conflict did not exist.
b. He was a accustomed to multicultural life in Galveston’s toughest neighborhoods.
c. He grew up in an isolated part of Texas that kept him entirely ignorant of racial
conventions.
d. Johnson offended racial decorum on purpose because he enjoyed spontaneous
fistfights.
[b]
3. In 1890 the census proclaimed the western frontier closed. What did that mean?
a. b. c. d. [c]
Western states officially no longer welcomed immigrants.
At this point all Western territories were under a U.S. jurisdiction.
All of the land west of the Mississippi was now “settled.”
All Native American tribes west of the Mississippi were now defeated or pacified.
4. The tens of thousands of African Americans who fled the rising racial violence of the South after the end of reconstruction were called
a. Exodusters.
b. Buffalo Soldiers.
c. Contrabands.
d. Redeemers.
[a]
5. In the “copper borderlands,” the Longfellow Copper Mining Company drew on mining techniques developed in
a. Great Britain.
b. Germany.
c. Australia.
d. Mexico.
[c]
6. Which
a. They were worse off than the Chinese.
b. They were only welcome in unions.
c. They made up 90 percent of all copper and seasonal farm workers.
d. They were paid less than Anglo workers.
[d]
7. Which
a. Russia
of the following is true about Mexican workers in the late 19th century Southwest?
of these nations first passed a Chinese exclusion act?
b. Australia
c. Canada
d. the United States
[b]
8. During
a. were tolerated and sometimes given grudging respect.
b. were not yet part of the American landscape.
c. succeeded as wealthy farmers and savvy corporate leaders.
d. suffered the brunt of persecutions and lynchings.
[a]
9. What brought federal surveyors into the vast territory between the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada in California?
a. the search for land for new cotton plantations
b. the need to prepare lots to be distributed through the Homestead Act
c. the plan of the U.S. military to exterminate Great Plains Indians one by one
d. the search for a route of the Transcontinental Railroad
the heyday of Western expansion in the United States, Chinese immigrants
[d]
10. The Homestead Act
a. provided title to 160 acre parcels if owners “improved” them within five years.
b. legally required the United States to fight slavery in all its territories.
c. provided American families with the first federal mortgage assistance in history.
d. declared all of the Western territories part of the United States of America.
[a]
11. Why was homesteading west of Dodge City, Kansas, so much harder than to the east?
a. Native tribes were far more prone to attack settlers here.
b. There were no railroads this far west, and no prospects of any to come in the future.
c. Average annual rainfalls dropped below 8 inches in this part of the west.
d. This part of the West was particularly popular with settlers, making homesteading
very competitive.
[c]
12. Promoters and “boosters” of the American West
a. routinely lobbied Congress for free public land for settlers.
b. made tidy profits by focusing on orderly sections of Western cities.
c. had to make do without the skills of advertisers.
d. often promoted places that did not yet exist.
[d]
13. Why did immigrants build elaborate ranching and farming outposts in the deserts of Australia?
a. They had learned the necessary dry-farming techniques in Kansas.
b. There was no other land available after the American frontier officially closed in
1890.
c. They believed the claim of boosters of the American West that rain followed land
cultivation.
d. They did not realize that this part of Australia was arid until it was too late to turn
back.
[c]
14. How did the German Kaiser Wilhelm II get to meet the Indian resistance leader Sitting Bull?
a. Sitting Bull was part of Buffalo Bill’s world tour through Europe.
b. Wilhelm II had traveled to a German-owned western ranch in his young years.
c. Wilhelm visited German immigrants in Washington at the time the U.S. army brought
the chief into town as prisoner.
d. SittingBull was a close friend of German author and Kaiser favourite Karl May.
[a]
15. How did the majority of community leaders and newspaper editors in the American West view vigilantism?
a. They generally approved of it and at times participated.
b. They tried to cover it up and avoid national embarrassment.
c. They decried it as the ruthless actions of working-class mobs.
d. They had no interest in community order or local politics.
[a]
16. Which part of the world became known as the “bread basket of the world”?
a. Central Australia
b. the Great Plains
c. Mexico’s Northern provinces
d. the Ukraine
[b]
17. Why was industrial mining so dangerous?
a. Mining operations in the late nineteenth century were low-capital ventures with little
know-how or experience.
b. Miners were typically inexperienced immigrants who were not accustomed to a full
day’s work.
c. Mines in the American West often dug to unprecedented depths that made shafts less
stable.
d. Union organizers tended to sabotage mining equipment, causing deadly accidents.
[c]
18. His experience with which company in the U.S. allowed Freeman Cobb to build successful stagecoach operations in Australia and South Africa?
a. Great Northern Railroad
b. Wells Fargo
c. The Pony Express
d. Mississippi Steamline
[b]
19. Regional rail development in the 1880s and 1890s used what share of the nation’s annual timber output?
a. 10 percent
b. 15 percent
c. 25 percent
d. 40 percent
[c]
20. Droughts in the Plains during the 1890s
a. did not affect the crop output of the region.
b. sparked political unrest in the area.
c. led to the depopulation of the northern Plains states.
d. triggered significant technological innovation amongst farmers.
[b]
21. What are the origins of the word dogie – the cowboy slang for a motherless calf?
a. Ireland
b. Germany
c. West Africa
d. Apache
[c]
22. Which of the following is an example of vertical integration?
a. Singer Sewing Machines
b. Longfellow Copper Mining Company
c. Wells Faro
d. Mille & Lux
[d]
23. Why did Indian lands once thought worthless become appealing in the late nineteenth century?
a. Americans got to know Native Americans better as they got closer in touch with them.
b. The challenges farmers faced in the Great Plains prompted them to copy Indian
practices.
c. The Homestead and Desert Lands Acts contributed to changing perceptions of “the
Great American Desert.”
d. The climate on Indian lands proved to be far more healthful and beneficial than that of
the Northeast.
[c]
24. What was the most controversial issue of the Peace Policy era?
a. reservations
b. casinos
c. Indian education
d. the Ghost Dance
[c]
25. What percentage of school-age Indian children were enrolled in boarding schools in 1900?
a. 5 percent
b. 15 percent
c. 35 percent
d. 50 percent
[d]
26. The decline of the buffalo herds began
a. with the arrival of the railroads.
b. before the Civil War and Anglo settlement.
c. with settlements sponsored by the Homestead Act.
d. with the end of reconstruction.
[b]
27. The Dawes Act of 1887
a. granted U.S. Indians citizenship.
b. restored tribal rights of landownership.
c. introduced the reservation system.
d. marked the end of Indian poverty.
[a]
28. The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, was an example of the nation’s growing concern with
a. conservation.
b. preservation.
c. animal rights.
d. native culture.
[b]
29. Gifford Pinchot learned the techniques of scientific forestry
a. at the University of Oxford.
b. on an Indian reservation.
c. in France and Germany.
d. during his visit with the Russian czar.
[c]
30. Poland
a. where internal and external borderlands were contested.
b. in which migration was an utterly foreign concept until the 20th century.
c. that experienced more immigration than emigration.
d. in which a strong sense of national solidarity prevented mass emigration.
[a]
1. The amount of labor that women contributed to the establishment of businesses, homes, towns, and communities across the West was
a. not significant.
b. considerable, but less crucial than that of men.
c. proportionate.
is an example of a nation
d. disproportionate. [d]
2. What brought brothers Jim and Robert Metcalfe into the Arizona territory in 1870?
a. They were looking for copper.
b. They were surveyors for the Transcontinental railroad.
c. They were Army scouts searching for Apache resistance leaders Vitorio and
Geronimo.
d. They had bought land there under the Desert Lands Act.
[c]
3. The chief surveyor of the Colorado River System was
a. John Wesley Powell.
b. Robert Metcalfe.
c. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
d. Ferdinand V. Hayden.
[a]
4. Why did Congress create the Bureau of Reclamation in 1902?
a. agriculture in the desert West required massive federal support
b. in order to foster water-conscious new settlements
c. in order to design an irrigation system that would siphon Mexican water northwards
d. Congress was hoping to create federal revenue with the sale of water
[a]
5. The mythic West that Buffalo Bill and other Americans presented to the world suggested an American identity that celebrated
a. community and democracy.
b. hard work and frugality.
c. individual violence and conquest.
d. multicultural understanding.
[c]
6. What prompted the founding of the Western Federation of Miners in 1893?
a. the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada
b. the election of a populist governor in Nebraska
c. a mining accident in Colorado
d. the gunning down of seven strikers in Idaho
[d]
7. A young Herbert Hoover became an ambassador of American culture as a mining engineer by
a. blending his technological prowess with a knowledge of the frontier.
b. adapting to the upper-class societies of foreign nations.
c. relating to common laborers and working class people.
d. aggressively promoting the principles of democracy in every nation he visited. [a]
8. How many territories became states in the 1880s and 90s? a. Two
b. Four c. Seven d. Ten [c]
9. Why did Congress repeal the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1877?
a. It wanted to open the Black Hills for gold seekers and land speculators.
b. The Lakota had asked for a cancellation of the Treaty.
c. The treaty violated the principle of the new Peace Policy.
d. Congress wanted to avenge the killing of Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn.
[a]
10. Who promised to “kill the Indian to save the man”?
a. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody
b. John Wesley Powell
c. Richard Henry Pratt
d. Crazy Horse
[c]
1. How did Theodore Roosevelt view the process of western settlement in the late nineteenth century?
a. He considered it an unpleasant but necessary task.
b. He thought that western settlement had always made America exceptional.
c. He welcomed it because he dreaded the notion of an open frontier.
d. He wanted to slow it down in the interest of Indians and the environment.
[b]
2. The most urban region in the United States in the late nineteenth century was
a. the Northeast.
b. the South.
c. the Midwest.
d. the West.
[d]
3. During the late nineteenth century, Chinese men occupied up to __________ of service industry jobs like laundry and food preparation in the urban areas and on ranches in the American West.
a. 30 percent
b. 50 percent
c. 70 percent
d. 90 percent
[d]
4. The Homestead Act of 1862 was in keeping with the vision of which founding father?
a. Alexander Hamilton
b. George Washington
c. Thomas Jefferson
d. Benjamin Franklin
[c]
5. Which of the following best describes acts of collective violence in the frontier regions of the American West?
a. They were premeditated and typically carried out by upstanding community members.
b. They were the result of urban crowds getting out of control after too much heat and
liquor.
c. They followed the typical pattern of Southern lynchings and focused on black men.
d. They took place in times of prosperity more often than in times of economic
depression.
[a]
6. “Wobblies” was a slang term for
a. the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).
b. Boosters of the West.
c. the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
d. Native Americans raised in Indian Boarding Schools.
[a]
7. What made the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad possible?
a. bipartisan agreements of congressional Democrats and Republicans
b. generous federal land grants and subsidies
c. the influx of Italian immigrant laborers to lay track in the Sierras
d. a series of peace accords with Indian tribes in Nevada and Utah territories
[b]
8. Which of the following best assesses the significance of economies of scale for individual farmers in the late nineteenth century?
a. The harder they worked, the more they profited.
b. The more they invested, the less risky was their business.
c. The more they produced, the less they profited.
d. The less they borrowed, the higher was their yield.
[c]
9. Supporters of industrial education for Indians believed in
a. Social Darwinism.
b. preserving families.
c. equal opportunity.
d. the equality of Indians.
[a]
10. What marked the beginning of the true crisis for buffalo-hunting Indians?
a. introduction of the new Peace Policy
b. completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
c. development of the McCormick Harvesting Machine
d. opening of Indian boarding schools
[b]