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Chapter 7 : Into the West |
In the early 1860s, many Native American nations lived on the Great Plains, depending upon the vast buffalo herds for food, clothing, and shelter. Then, beginning in 1869, transcontinental railway lines opened the West to increased settlement. The Homestead Act made land easy to obtain, and the railroads actively promoted western land. Pioneer families poured onto the plains by the thousands. The discovery of gold and other minerals and the promise of wealth from cattle also lured many people.
Native Americans fought this intrusion into their ancestral lands, but their cause was doomed. White hunters slaughtered the buffalo to near extinction, and farmers, miners, and ranchers took much of their land. In 1890 at Wounded Knee, armed Native American resistance came to an end.
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