Lesson Y8-U07-L05

Y8-U07-L05 Destroying a Way of Life Quiz: KS3 History, Unit 13

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y8-U07-L05, Destroying a Way of Life: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 History (National Curriculum), Unit 13: Year 8: The Wild West, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. In what year was the transcontinental railroad completed across the Plains?

    • 1876
    • 1890
    • 1869
    • 1851

  2. How did the railroad damage the Plains Indians' way of life?

    • It replaced the buffalo as the main source of food
    • It split the great buffalo herds in two
    • It built forts to protect the tribes from raids
    • It moved the tribes onto the Oregon Trail

  3. Roughly how many buffalo were there around 1840?

    • About 300,000
    • About 3 million
    • About 300 million
    • About 30 million

  4. How many buffalo were left in the wild by 1885?

    • Only a few hundred
    • Around 3 million, still a large herd across the Plains
    • Around 300,000 animals, spread across the northern Plains
    • Around 30 million, almost the same number as in 1840

  5. Why did the buffalo slaughter accelerate after the 1870s?

    • Settlers passed laws that banned the hunting of buffalo across the whole Plains
    • Disease spread quickly through the buffalo herds and killed most of them
    • Repeating rifles and hide-tanning, with railroads to ship hides
    • The US Army ordered the tribes to hunt the buffalo for food for the railroad

  6. What did the buffalo provide the Plains Indians with?

    • Food, tipis, clothing, tools and fuel
    • Gold, silver and copper for trade
    • Land titles recognised by the US government
    • Horses and rifles for hunting parties

  7. What did the Dawes Act of 1887 do?

    • It ended the reservation system for good and returned all land to the tribes
    • It banned settlers from crossing the Plains by rail and on foot for ten years
    • It split tribal reservation land into small family plots, breaking up the tribe
    • It gave the Sioux the Black Hills as sacred land, promised forever in writing

  8. What does 'assimilation' mean?

    • Forcing one group to give up its culture and live like another
    • Recording the history of a tribe in writing so that its stories are preserved
    • Moving a whole tribe to a new reservation far away from its ancestral homeland
    • Sharing land equally between two peoples under a shared government and laws

  9. Which cause of the Plains Indians' decline was part of government policy to erase their culture?

    • Harsh winters on the open Plains that killed livestock and families alike
    • Diseases such as smallpox and measles that spread quickly through the camps
    • The Little Bighorn victory in 1876, which the tribes won against Custer's men
    • Boarding schools that banned native languages and dress

  10. What was the Carlisle Indian boarding school's aim, as described in Source B?

    • To kill the Indian in the child and save the man
    • To record native languages in writing
    • To return children to their tribes after one year
    • To train children to become army scouts

  11. What did Source A, attributed to General Philip Sheridan, suggest about why the buffalo were wiped out?

    • The slaughter was an accident caused by careless settlers' guns on the trails
    • The buffalo were removed to make room for the Little Bighorn battlefield
    • The buffalo were killed only to supply meat for the railroad workers on the line
    • The army encouraged the slaughter to defeat the Indians by starving them

  12. Why was the slaughter of the buffalo considered one of the most significant causes?

    • It was the only cause that the tribes could have prevented by better planning
    • It was the first cause that happened after the railroad had been completed in full
    • It caused more deaths than any battle with the US Army during the wars of the 1870s
    • The whole way of life rested on the buffalo for food, shelter and clothing

  13. Why did the railroad count as an 'enabling' cause?

    • It made other causes possible by carrying hunters, settlers and soldiers
    • It was built by the Plains Indians themselves to trade buffalo hides eastwards
    • It ended the wars by bringing peace treaties and reservations to the Plains tribes
    • It directly killed more Plains Indians than any other single cause of their decline

  14. Which of these was the main reason the tribes could not win the long war against the US Army?

    • The tribes were not brave enough to fight the army in open battle on the Plains
    • The army was made up only of volunteers recruited from the Plains tribes themselves
    • The army was bigger, better supplied by rail and could replace its losses
    • The tribes had no horses or weapons with which to fight back against the army

  15. Why does the Plains Indians' Little Bighorn victory show that winning battles was not enough?

    • Because the victory led at once to the signing of a lasting peace treaty with the army
    • Because the army sent far larger forces that the tribes could not replace
    • Because the tribes lost the battle and had to surrender to the army that same year
    • Because the battle was fought by settlers in the defence of the railroad towns

  16. Which disease was one of the deadly illnesses that Plains Indians had no resistance to?

    • Smallpox
    • Tuberculosis from the railroad
    • Malaria in the open Plains
    • Scurvy from eating too much buffalo meat

  17. Why was disease such a deadly cause for the Plains Indians?

    • They had no immunity, so outbreaks could wipe out whole communities
    • They refused to accept medicine from the US Army doctors who came to the camps
    • Disease spread only among the army and the settlers, never among the tribes themselves
    • Diseases only affected children who were kept on the reservations after 1880

  18. Why is disease considered a less significant cause than the buffalo slaughter?

    • It weakened the tribes indirectly and was largely an unintended result of contact
    • It only affected the army, which had no contact with the tribes on the Plains at all
    • It killed far fewer people than any battle fought on the Plains during the Indian Wars
    • It happened only after the Little Bighorn in 1876 and had no lasting effect on the land

  19. Which cause best shows that the destruction of the way of life was a deliberate policy?

    • Boarding schools and the Dawes Act of 1887
    • The harsh Plains winters that killed livestock and left families hungry
    • Disease such as smallpox, which spread through the camps and reservations
    • The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869 across the Plains

  20. In which year was the Carlisle Indian boarding school founded?

    • 1869
    • 1887
    • 1879
    • 1892

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