This page shows questions in the Transportation public release module at MSDE. 8th Grade Social Studies
"Transportation"

Source A

FARM LANDS FOR SALE.

THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY

Is now prepared to Sell

OVER TWO MILLIONS OF ACRES of PRAIRIE FARM LANDS,

In Tracts of 40 Acres or upward,

ON LONG CREDITS AND AT LOW RATES OF INTEREST!

They were granted by the Government, to encourage the building of this Railroad, which runs from the extreme North to the extreme South of the State of Illinois. The Road passes, from end to end, through the richest and most fertile Prairies of the State.  . . .  The recent opening of nearly six hundred miles of the Company’s Railroad throws open their lands for cultivation, they being scattered for several miles in width, on each side of the Road, throughout its entire length.

The soil is a dark, rich mold, from one to five feet in depth, is gently rolling, and peculiarly fitted for grazing cattle and sheep, or the cultivation of wheat, Indian corn, etc.

The economy in cultivating and the productiveness of Illinois lands are well known. Trees are not required to be cut down, stumps grubbed, or stone picked off, as is generally the case in the cultivation of new land in the older States.  . . .  Wheat sown on the newly-turned sod is sure to yield very large profits . . . 

Corn, grain, cattle, etc., will be forwarded at reasonable rates to Chicago, for the Eastern market, and to Cairo for the Southern.  . . .  The rapid increase and growth of flourishing towns and villages along the line afford a substantial and growing home demand for farm produce.

Source B

The Transcontinental Railroad was completed 150 years ago, in 1869. In 1800s America, some saw the railroad as a symbol of modernity and national progress. For others, however, the Transcontinental Railroad undermined the sovereignty of Native nations and threatened to destroy Indigenous communities and their cultures as the railroad expanded into territories inhabited by Native Americans.

What roles did Native Americans play during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad?

It is important to distinguish between different nations and their relationships to the railroad. The railroad did not impact Native peoples in a uniform [similar] manner.

Lakotas, for example, had developed a way of life organized around the expansiveness of the Plains and of the life on it, especially the massive buffalo herds. As the Lakota writer and political leader Luther Standing Bear described it, Lakota people moved through their land, following buffalo herds.  . . .  When the Union Pacific Railroad was being built, Lakota expansiveness confronted the expansionist drive of the United States. This represented two distinct and competing ways of living in relationship to the land and the living beings on it.

Other Indigenous peoples found themselves drawn into a closer relationship with railroad construction. For instance, some Pawnee men worked as scouts for the U.S. Army, defending railroad construction parties  . . . 

How did the U.S. government’s role in railroad construction affect Indigenous peoples?

The U.S. Congress granted millions of acres of land to railroad companies. According to treaties  . . .  Congress granted land to railroad companies that was not legally under its control. The different forms of Indigenous resistance to railroad construction were neither savage nor illegal. These were forms of resistance to uphold treaties  . . . 

The possibility of Indigenous resistance posed risks to investors. In response, the U.S. government enlisted the U.S. Army to ensure that resistance could be contained. The Army and state militias enforced the progress of construction through military occupation of Indigenous communities, deliberately targeting villages and food sources. This took the form of massacres of entire villages;  . . .  assassination of tribal diplomatic leaders; attempts to isolate children from their families; and the wholesale destruction of the buffalo herds. The goal was to destroy the ability of Indigenous nations to contest the invasion and occupation of their lands. The railroads themselves facilitated these military tactics by enabling swift troop and supply movements over great distances  . . . 

Despite the efforts of both railroad officials and military authorities, Indigenous peoples resisted. In the summer of 1867, for example, Cheyenne raids led to the complete disruption of railroad construction.