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Comstock Lode Discovered
A huge amount of silver was found in Nevada, which brought mining and built up the boomtown Virginia City. It later became a ghost town. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act gave 160 acres of land to anyone willing to live and work there, in an attempt to build up the interior West. -
Dakota attack in Minnesota
Angered by the actions of the state government and officials, Dakota fighters massacred over 400 whites, including women and children. -
Sand Creek Massacre
Chivington, afraid of Cheyenne hostility, attacked the Cheyenne camp along Sand Creek while the men were out hunting and killed over 100 women and children. -
Start of the Long Drive
Cowboys were hired to herd cattle and bring them hundreds of miles from the untamed West to the rail lines for transport. -
Burlingame Treaty
The Burlingame Treaty set official terms for the emigration of Chinese laborers to America, who were instrumental in working on the transcontinental railroad. -
Grant's Peace Policy
Grant offered appointments to reformers and introduced a peace policy which included Indian boarding schools to educate native children just as white children were. -
Glidden invents barbed wire
Glidden's invention of barbed wire made it easier for farmers and ranchers to fence in large areas of land, and led to the end of the Long Drive. -
Little Big Horn
Lieutenant Colonel Custer led his men into Sitting Bull's camp, and the Sioux wiped them all out. This was the last victory of the Plains Indians against the army. -
Exoduster Movement
A group of black communities fled violence and poverty in Mississippi and Louisiana and went to Kansas, part of a mass migration of African-Americans to Kansas and the West. -
Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States
Powell told Congress that the 160-acre homestead plan wouldn't work in such dry regions as the West, and argued that the Mormon irrigation methods should be adopted. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Severalty Act was designed to redistribute tribal lands and force Indians onto individual landholdings as a counter to the reservation system. The Act was a failure, giving much more land to whites than to Indians. -
Wounded Knee
Frightened by the Ghost Dance Movement, the U.S. Army pursued a group of Lakota Sioux who had left their reservation and killed hundreds of them. -
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis
Turner argued in his thesis that the frontier experience had shaped America's national character, and that a Westward-moving line existed between civilization and (Indian) savagery.