Chapter 16 Vocab Preview Crossing the Continent

Boost your Westward Expansion knowledge with essential vocabulary practice!

Matching Match each word with its meaning. Use your book to help you. Pony Express business in which mail was delivered by express riders on horseback telegraph replaced the Pony Express and sent messages along wires using electricity transcontinental railroad railroad that crossed the continent Homestead Act government plan that offered free land to pioneers willing to start new farms on the Great Plains homesteader a settler who claimed land through the Homestead Act sodbuster a Great Plains farmer who had to dig through tough sod before planting crops exoduster African American pioneer who started a new life in Kansas or Nebraska cattle drive cowboys moving herds of cattle north to the railroad lines that extended across the Great Plains barbed wire twisted wire with sharp points used by homesteaders to keep cattle off their farmland reservation an area of land set aside for Native Americans Battle of Little Bighorn Lakota defeat of General George Custer's US troops