Impacts of Westward Expansion
11th Grade · Social Studies · 45 min
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Learning Objective
I can analyze the social, economic, and political impacts of westward expansion on different groups in the United States.
- 1
After the Civil War, railroad companies like the Kansas Pacific hired people to hunt buffalo to feed their crews, leading to the popularization of figures like Buffalo Bill.
- 2
The Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas aimed to establish peace between the U.S. government and several Native American tribes by encouraging white settlement north of the Arkansas River and moving the tribes onto reservations in present-day Oklahoma.
- 3
The treaties signed at Medicine Lodge Creek and Fort Laramie both contained clauses that allowed Native tribes to continue hunting outside of reservations as long as there were buffalo, but General William Tecumseh Sherman predicted that the buffalo would soon become extinct near the railroads.
