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2009

Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As A Policy of Public Domain Disposal

Richard Edwards University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected]

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Edwards, Richard, "Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As A Policy of Public Domain Disposal" (2009). Great Plains Quarterly. 1229. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1229

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING AS A POLICY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN DISPOSAL

RICHARD EDWARDS

The Homestead Act has been heralded as the greatest democratic measure of all history . ... In truth, the Homestead Act was but the proclamation of a promise that was yet to be fulfilled. The enactment of law is one thing; the operation of that law is another. -Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage

The Homestead Act was the hope of the poor man. -Mari Sandoz, "The Homestead in Perspective"

After 1862, the federal government deeded 285 million acres to homesteaders. Half their claims were fraudulent, backed by false identities, fake improvements, or worse. -Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America

The inspiring story of homesteaders claiming have often been much more ambivalent, even free land and realizing their dreams became one harshly negative, about how successful it was in of the enduring narratives of American history. practice. While the public often views our his­ But scholars who have studied homesteading tory differently from scholars, in this case the disparity appears both substantial and persis­ tent. Perhaps it is time to revisit homesteading Key Words: commutation, fraud, free land, pre­ and reassess whether homesteading really was a emption, public land, settlement. good idea or not'! Richard Edwards is a Fellow in the Center for Great Certainly homesteading once powerfully Plains Studies and Professor of Economics at the fired the American imagination. The prom­ University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His current interests ise of free land was such a startling idea include the economics, history, and demography of the that it created a sensation on both sides of Great Plains and the conservation of its biodiversity. the Atlantic, much like Henry Ford's later announcement of the five-dollars-a-day wage. [GPQ 29 (Summer 2009): 179-202] It offered a seemingly magical possibility, one

179 180 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

FIG. 1. Large family on a successful homestead. NPS Photo. Courtesy of The Homestead National Monument of America.

that people wanted so strongly to believe that tion continued after its adoption as widely it proved essentially impervious to contrary perhaps as before, and within as well as without evidence. This vision, this "hope of the poor the law." Historian Fred Shannon observed, ''A man," became deeply rooted in American premium was put on perjury." Western author culture, literature, and memory-in such (and Stanford University professor) Wallace books as Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers! and O. E. Stegner observed that "[iJn actual practice Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, in histories like almost the only real benefit that the landless Mari Sandoz's Old Jules and personal jour­ and moneyless man .. . could derive from the nals like Elizabeth Corey's Bachelor Bess, in public land laws was the chance for a little Elinore Pruitt Stewart's letters to the Atlantic graft."3 Monthly (later published as Letters of a Woman More recent scholars have seemed to accept Homesteader and the basis for the 1978 movie this earlier generation's negative appraisal of Heartland). President George Bush in his 2005 homesteading. Observing how New Western inaugural address linked the Homestead Act History scholars and others have conducted a with "a broader definition of liberty," and col­ searching reassessment of the very meaning of umnist George Will declared, "Rarely has a success or failure in various western endeavors, social program worked so we11."2 historian Katherine Harris in 1993 noted a The academic counter-story has had a dif­ surprising omission: "One western enterprise, ferent tone. Scholars have stressed the appar­ however, stands outside the debate, thanks ently widespread speculation, monopolization to an uncharacteristic unanimity of opinion. of land, perjury, and even outright fraud that Lacking glamour and now quaintly anach­ seemed to accompany homesteading. Paul W. ronistic, homesteading, all contenders agree, Gates, the premier scholar of public lands, once was a failure." So, too, economic historians noted that "speculation and land monopoliza- have been quick to dismiss homesteading as a CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 181

failure. Geoff Cunfer, in a widely praised book, one could provide more definitive answers. noted that Nonetheless, some preliminary conclusions seem warranted. An important story of Great Plains history I argue that homesteading created many is that the rural population in the region individual farms occupied by "actual settlers." rose dramatically for fifty years, from about Moreover, the law likely was more progressive 1870 to 1920, and has declined steadily and egalitarian in its land disbursements than since then.... One could make a compel­ other methods of public land distribution, ling argument that the Homestead Act was and it marked an historic and salutary first by a failure if its goal was to spread a strong, permitting usually excluded groups, including prosperous American society across the women and blacks, to share the benefits. But continent. the operation of the Homestead Law was far from perfect. Homesteading was inefficient in For these or other reasons, historians have distributing land to landless settlers, result­ anyway largely lost interest in the general ing in a substantial and unnecessary loss of process of homesteading. Since the 1968 pub­ the public domain to persons not intended lication of Paul Gates's monumental History to receive such land. Partly this inefficiency of Public Land Law Development, few scholars resulted from the substantial abuse and fraud have worked to challenge or reconfirm his gen­ in the operation of the homestead acts. eral findings. So, too, when scholars today cite Although mixed, my assessment is more homesteading-related statistics, they are almost favorable than would be gained from reading always relying on decades-old studies. As noted most of the principal historians of homestead­ below, some outstanding research has appeared ing. The differences are these: I believe that on a few topics, particularly on women's par­ the early homestead scholars were too preoccu­ ticipation in homesteading, but very little on pied with the violations of the homestead laws homesteading in genera1.4 and insufficiently attentive to homesteading's This neglect of homesteading seems mis­ actual outcomes. And many contemporary placed. Even in the minds of its harshest critics, historians, in my view, have been too accepting the lure of free land was understood to be a of this conventional wisdom that homestead­ central and in many ways dominating element ing was largely a disappointment and a scam, in attracting settlers to the Great Plains and leading them to underplay and thereby distort parts of the interior West. And now we learn, homesteading's positive role in American history. for example, that a desire to acquire free land and control it produced powerful and complex HOMESTEADING'S PART IN DISPOSING OF gender dynamics among settler families. So, THE PUBLIC DOMAIN after a long fallow period, perhaps it is time for scholars to revisit the question of how home­ When Abraham Lincoln signed the Home­ steading really worked.5 stead Act of 1862, he brought to a close a long In this paper I review the path that scholars struggle by free-land advocates like New York have followed to arrive at such skepticism Tribune editor Horace Greeley, U.S. House about homesteading's benefits. I then provide Speaker Galusha Grow, the Free Soil Party, a tentative reappraisal of homesteading as a and others to provide free land to settlers. national policy for public land distribution. "Preemption"-the process whereby settlers (One topic I do not treat is homesteading's simply moved on to public lands, started their role in the sad tale of Indian removal from the farms, and were permitted later to purchase regions to be settled.) This reappraisal is unfor­ their land-had been legalized in a series of tunately tentative, reflecting the fact that con­ increasingly permissive laws passed in the ante­ siderable scholarship remains to be done before bellum period, but it still required purchase. 182 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

FIG. 2. Family of seven seated in front of their dugout dwelling, 1894. Note the well-equipped work area outside. Photo by J.Y. Dedrick. Courtesy of University of Oklahoma Libraries.

The Homestead Act was to be different; it a citizen. The age requirement was reduced permitted the would~be settler or "entryman" for veterans, and the law specifically permit­ to claim 160 acres of public land, or 80 acres ted women-that is, single women, widows, if the land was on a government-retained sec­ even women whose husbands had abandoned tion within a railroad grant (later acts allowed them-to file. It contained no racial restriction. larger claims). It required the settler to register The act also contained a provision permitting his or her claim with a local land office, reside the entryman to "commute" his or her home­ on the land for five years, make some minor steading claim, that is, to purchase it, usually improvements on it, and then prove up his or at the standard price of $1.25 per acre, after an her claim by providing evidence, affirmed by initial short period of residence. Homesteading two "credible" witnesses, that he or she had was permitted anywhere on "unappropriated" complied with all the requirements. The entry­ public lands (lands not set aside for other pur­ man paid some recording fees and would soon poses) where such land was otherwise available receive from Washington a patent (deed) to for sale. The law thus opened lands in thirty the land-thereby obtaining free land. states, though principally hom~steading was The Homestead Act allowed any person centered on the states north of Texas and west to register a claim who was at least twenty­ of the Mississippi River. one years of age (if single) or was a head of a In the lower forty-eight states, the public household, and was either a citizen, or, if not a domain consisted of a vast territory of approxi­ citizen, declared his or her intention to become mately 1.442 billion acres, nearly all of it CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 183 acquired between 1781 and 1853. We can trace to use four basic criteria or tests: First, did in broad terms the disposition of this land. The the law achieve its stated purpose? The 1862 national government today continues posses­ statute carried the heading ''An Act to secure sion of about 26 percent (380 million acres) of Homesteads to actual Settlers on the Public the original public domain. It transferred about Domain." Did it do so?8 Second, what was the 22 percent (328 million acres) to individual distribution of benefits from homesteading­ states. Roughly 51 percent of the lower-forty­ and specifically, did the Homestead Act benefit eight public domain, about 734 million acres people with low incomes and few assets? Those but perhaps as much as 815 million acres, was who proposed homesteading-providing what transferred to private owners. Public land was is sometimes termed "legislative intent"­ passed to private owners through sales, grants certainly hoped and expected that it would. to railroad corporations, veterans' bonuses, Third, was it an efficient way to provide land homesteaders' claims, and other distributions, or to "actual settlers"? To what extent did it waste it was stolen, misappropriated, reserved, or oth­ public resources (public land) to achieve this erwise disappeared from the public land rolls.6 end? And fourth, did homesteading produce Homesteaders received patents to about 17 other outcomes, unintended consequences, percent (253 million acres) of all lower-forty­ that ought to weigh in the balance when we eight public lands. An additional number assess it as a national policy? Such conse­ of homestead claims were commuted-paid quences may have been either socially positive for, rather than claimed for free by right or deleterious. of residence; these transfers, amounting to somewhere between 16 and 34 million acres, SCHOLARS' CHANGING VIEWS OF would account for another 1 to 2 percent of the HOMESTEADING public domain. In some regions, homesteading played a very large role in land distribution. As noted, prior generations of scholars have In Nebraska, for example, 45 percent of the fashioned negative or at best equivocal evalu­ state's land was patented by homesteaders; in ations of homesteading. Their answers have North Dakota and South Dakota, 41 percent; changed over time, and not all have agreed in Montana and Oklahoma, 34 percent; in with each other. The first extensive evaluation Colorado, 33 percent. Such a calculation does of homesteading in practice was conducted not measure the economic value of home­ by a congressionally chartered Public Land steaded land compared to other dispersals, Commission in 1880. The five-member com­ nor does it tell us anYthing about the indirect mission included John Wesley Powell, Thomas impact of homesteading (e.g., settlers attracted Donaldson, and other well-known advocates of by the chance for free land but who wound up reforming the public land laws. Commissioners purchasing their land instead) or the cultural traveled throughout the West and heard a good significance of homesteading. True, as Paul deal of testimony. When their five-volume Gates frequently reminded us, homesteading report was published, Congress mostly ignored was only one of the ways by which public lands it, but the study received much wider notice were transferred to private owners-direct sales, when Commissioner Donaldson separately veterans' warrants, agricultural college scrip, republished and extended the report as The and other mechanisms were also important. Public Domain: Its History, with Statistics. Still, in the homesteading regions, free land was Donaldson remained a true believer in home­ the central force attracting settlers and driving steading itself: settlement-whether or not it was ultimately the means by which they acquired titleJ The homestead act is now the approved and How would we determine whether home­ preferred method of acquiring title to the steading was a good national policy? I propose public lands. It has stood the test of eighteen 184 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

years ... [and] stands as the concentrated tional four decades of the law's operation. wisdom of legislation for settlement of the Though positive toward the idea of homestead­ public lands. It protects the Government, ing, he saw its operations as more nuanced: it fills the States with homes, it builds up "In summarizing the story of the Homestead communities, and lessens the chances of Act it would be easy to indulge in flattering social and civil disorder by giving ownership commendation, or, within the bounds of truth, of the soil, in small tracts, to the occupants to criticize it harshly. Neither treatment is in thereof. It was copied from no other nation's accordance with the merits of the case." The system. It was originally and distinctively problem, as Hibbard saw it, was that home­ American, and remains a monument to its steading's benefits had proved to be temporary, originators.9 as was reflected in rising farm tenancy:

But Donaldson was outraged by the rampant The plan to diffuse wealth, create a land­ misuse and often criminal abuse of the laws owning, home-owning, people was part on preemption, timber culture, commutation, and parcel of the free land movement. The and public land sales, and he believed the success of this portion of the program may frenzy to manipulate these laws inevitably also have been real, but at best it was temporary. corrupted the homestead law. He had heard Where land was almost as free as water half testimony about cattlemen who employed a century ago it has risen in value to several dummy entrymen to grab critical chunks of hundred dollars per acre, and the owner­ land bordering on water sources, lumbermen ship of it by those operating it has become and minerals exploiters who used preemptions a problem difficult of solution. Tenancy has to strip public lands of their timber or coal and passed the fifty per cent mark in many coun­ then abandon them, and the California land ties in which homesteads were the order of barons who managed to accumulate enormous the day in the seventies. As an ultimate acreages within a few families. As Donaldson solution to the land question . . . it was a put it, palliative, not a remedy.

One hundred and sixty acres was deter­ For Hibbard, then, the Homestead Act when mined upon after many years as the true viewed from greater historical distance had unit of disposition for a home. Upon this failed our first test, providing land to actual are the country settled. The abuse of this [is settlers, those "operating" the land. Moreover, now documented]; 1,120 acres to a person he worried that in its operation "[f]raud was under the several laws is now the rule, and invited and the challenge accepted."l1 a million acres at $1.25 per acre, if you have Hibbard was followed by a generation of the money, in the South. It is of the highest historians who were even more dubious about national importance that not another acre homesteading's benefits. Three giants of public of the public lands shall be sold outright for lands historiography, Fred Shannon, Roy cash, warrants, or scrip. Robbins, and Paul Gates, directly questioned whether the law had operated in the public Donaldson's pleas for reform failed to find favor interest at all. Shannon set the tone for this in the Congress.lo more negative appraisal in an early (1936) Evaluation of homesteading now passed article in which he argued that homesteading from policy advisors to historians. Benjamin H. did little to help the poor in the East: Hibbard, the first great authority on public land law after Donaldson, published his A History The trouble with the Homestead Act in of the Public Land Policies in 1924. Hibbard of operation, as with the Preemption Act, was course had the benefit of observing an add i- that Congress merely adopted the law and CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 185

FIG. 3. Marble Williams with Turkey. Marble Williams homesteaded in Montana with her sister Janet. Photograph by Evelyn Cameron. Courtesy of Montana Historical Society.

then did absolutely nothing in the way of And again ... 'Nearly everywhere the large helping the needy persons out to the land or landowner has succeeded in monopolizing extending them credit and guidance in the the best tracts, whether of timber or agri­ first heartbreaking years of occupancy. cultural land.'

Shannon's other concern was the ease with In his landmark book, The Farmer's Last which the laws permitted speculators and cor­ Frontier, Shannon cataloged the homestead porations to acquire enormous tracts of public law's many flaws, including its failure to assist land: poor settlers, its encouragement for specula­ tors and corporations to get control of the best The evidence of [speculators'] activities in land, its invitation to widespread chicanery monopolizing the public domain is abun­ and virtual land theft through commutations, dant .... A premium was put on perjury. and its enticing of poor settlers into "the arid [The Public Land Commission reported stretches" where they had little chance to suc­ that] ... '[i]n very many localities, and per­ ceed. For Shannon, the homestead law failed haps in general, a larger proportion of the several of our tests: it failed to provide land to public land is passing into the hands of spec­ actual settlers (speculators and corporations ulators and corporations than into those got much of it); its distribution of benefits was of actual settlers who are making homes.' skewed toward the rich, and it failed to help the 186 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 poor, especially the eastern urban poor; and it (1968). In an early and influential essay, he was inefficient because it permitted great loss of announced his concern: "The Homestead public land. He was brutal in summing up: "In Act of 1862 is one of the most important laws its operation the Homestead Act could hardly which have been enacted in the history of the have defeated the hopes of the enthusiasts of country, but its significance has been distorted 1840-1860 [for free land] more completely if and grossly misinterpreted." And what was the the makers had actually drafted it with that misinterpretation? As Gates saw it, earlier writ­ purpose uppermost in mind."IZ ers, including especially Hibbard, had viewed Roy Robbins, in his comprehensive 1942 the Homestead Act in isolation and failed to study Our Landed Heritage, was the most see that restrained in his language; still, he character­ ized the third of his four phases in the history its adoption merely superimposed upon the of the public domain as follows: old land system a principle out of harmony with it, and that until 1890 the old and the [T]he third period, 1862 to 1901, [was] a new constantly clashed.... [S]peculation period coinciding with the rise of industri­ and land monopolization continued after alism in our national history, and a period its adoption as widely perhaps as before, ... reflected in the West by the ruthless exploi­ actual homesteading was generally confined tation by the corporate and capitalistic forces to the less desirable lands distant from rail­ which had gained complete ascendancy over road lines, and . . . farm tenancy developed the settler as the pioneering agent. in frontier communities in many instances as a result of the monopolization of the For Robbins the principal flaw was that most of land. the best land was not available to homestead- ers: To illustrate the fundamental problem, Gates quoted William Sparks, commissioner of the From the beginning of the post-Civil War General Land Office in the mid-1880s, who period, the benefits of the homestead law wrote that when he took office, "I found were much overrated.... [E]xtravagant that the magnificent estate of the nation in statements regarding the operation of the its public lands had been to a wide extent settlement laws had to be qualified as it wasted under defective and improvident laws became more and more apparent that nei­ and through a laxity of public administration ther homesteading nor preemption could astonishing in a business sense if not culpable operate effectively in a wide open public in recklessness of official responsibility." Gates domain. It quickly became evident that argued that the profligate granting of lands to neither law could work effectively as long as the states (much of which was quickly sold off) there were extensive grants to railroads and and to railroads, the continuation of cash sales, speculative interests. the prodigal granting of military land warrants and agricultural college scrip, the exclusion of So for Robbins also, the homesteading law (and homesteading from Indian lands, and preemp­ preemption) failed our first test because "cor­ tions, as well as other excessive grants and inept porate and capitalistic forces" gained control of policies, meant that homesteaders were pushed much of the land.13 to marginal lands or deprived altogether.I4 Paul W. Gates became the most influential Gates again approvingly quoted Land Com­ of these mid-twentieth-century historians as missioner Sparks: a result of a string of important papers and monographs, capped off by his magisterial and "The vast machinery of the land depart­ authoritative History of Land Law Development ment appears to have been devoted to the CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 187

FIG. 4. Land advertisement, 1872. With all the inducements in this ad and especially after the best public land had already been claimed, many migrants might have agreed that "These terms are better at $5, than to pre-empt United States Land at $2.50 per acre." Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division. 188 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

FIG. 5. Bismarck, Dakota Territory, in 1873, view of Main Street showing a frontier town. From postcard, courtesy of Robert Meacham Collection.

chief result of conveying the title of the consonant with the ideas of the New Deal for United States to public lands upon fraudu­ which he worked. But by the 1960s his views lent entries under strained constructions of had become more modulated. He signaled his imperfect public land laws and upon illegal change in a 1963 essay in which he noted that claims under public and private grants." revelations of bonanza farms, illegal enclosure of public lands using dummy entrymen, huge Thus for Gates, too, the homestead law failed land acquisitions by timber companies, and muster. It failed our first test not because home­ other abuses steaders could not get land but rather because the best land was granted or misappropriated have led historians to misunderstand and to speculators and land monopolizers; and it underestimate the role of the Homestead failed our third test, efficiency, because fraud Law and related settlement measures. and illegal claims resulted in much loss of Recent textbook writers have declared that public lands. Overall, Shannon, Robbins, and the Homestead Law was "not a satisfactory Gates established what turned out to be an piece of legislation"; it was a "distressing enduring consensus that homesteading (and disappointment"; "farmers only benefitted preemption and commutation, to which it was slightly from it"; it ended "in failure and dis­ closely tied) had failed to operate satisfactorily illusionment"; two-thirds of all "homestead in distributing the public domain.ls claimants before 1890 failed." Gates, however, came to change his posi­ tion over the course of his career. As a young Once again, Gates argued, previous historians scholar, his strong language about the excesses had misunderstood, but this time they erred in of speculation and land monopolization was the opposite direction. He continued: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 189

FIG. 6. Bismarck, Dakota Territory, in 1888, view of Fourth Street looking north from Broadway, showing a city that already has sidewalks, tree-lined streets, multi-story buildings, entertainments, and other evidence of city culture. From postcard, courtesy of Robert Meacham Collection.

I must confess that I may have contributed But overall, the homestead laws' "noble pur­ to this misunderstanding some twenty­ pose and the great part they played in enabling six years ago when I wrote a paper, "The nearly a million and a half people to acquire Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land farm land, much of which developed into farm System." . .. The article was intended as a homes, far outweigh the misuse to which they corrective for some of the ideas then preva­ were put." Thus at least in regard to our first lent concerning [homesteading]. test, Gates now argued that the homestead law had been a considerable success in putting Downplaying his earlier paper's strong lan­ actual settlers on their own land. He reaffirmed guage as a kind of youthful indiscretion, Gates and amplified this interpretation in his great now concluded, History of Public Land Law Development. The book, a towering intellectual achievement, It is clear that [the Homestead Law] was remains the definitive history of laws governing most successful in the period from 1863 the public domain.I6 to 1880 when the greater proportion of Scholarship since Gates has moved in new homesteads were being established in the directions and mostly lost interest in home­ states bordering on the Mississippi River. steading either as the centerpiece of Great It was successful also in parts of Kansas Plains settlement or as national policy. Between and Nebraska well east of the 98th merid­ 1970 and 2008, the American Historical Review ian .... The misuse of the Homestead Law published just one article with "homestead" or was becoming common between 1880 and "homesteading" in the title, and it concerned 1900. the Homestead (Pennsylvania) Steel Strike, 190 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 not homesteading. The Western Historical blacks' migration to the Plains; the ecological Quarterly published only four articles over the impacts of settlement; and the impact of white thirty-eight-year stretch from 1970 to 2008 settlement on Native Americans.19 with "homestead" or "homesteading" in their titles and one additional article that focused REASSESSING HOMESTEADING-CONTEXT on homesteading. In the recent Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, homesteading (as dis­ Was homesteading truly as marginal and tinct from "women homesteaders" or "films tainted as suggested? Let us turn to the ques­ about") does not rate a separate entry, and it tion of homesteading as a policy of public land is treated instead in a general entry on settle­ dispersion. In doing so, we must keep in mind ment. Textbooks carry increasingly pale and several key aspects of the context in which it scanty discussions of homesteading. Instead, occurred. scholars have tended to fold homesteading The first element of context is that virtually into a broader story of the settlement process everyone agreed that the public domain should in which homesteading merits only brief men­ be quickly transferred to private hands so that tion. it could be "improved" and made productive. And the curious result is that, in the part Public lands were seen as being wasted so long of the, story that remains, the negative over­ as they were idle. As one of Galusha Grow's all assessment of homesteading of the early biographers put it, Gates (and Shannon and Robbins) has been accepted instead of the more positive assess­ The state of the public mind [about govern­ ment of the later Gates. For example, historian ment land] ... was very clear.... The popu­ Louis Warren, in his award-winning 2005 lar belief concerning land and labor was book, Buffalo Bill's America, makes a startling that a citizen going to the commonage was claim: "After 1862, the federal government conferring a benefit on the Government. deeded 285 million acres to homesteaders. Half He was an asset to the Government merely their claims were fraudulent, backed by false in his presence on the lands. Working the identities, fake improvements, or worse." Even lands, he was bestowing upon the soil labor Shannon might be surprised by this claimP which was his own. Undoubtedly one of the major barriers to any new scholarship in this area is the inac­ Nor was there ever any substantial constitu­ cessibility and difficulty of working with ency, until much later, for retaining public homesteading records. Developing even a small land, especially in the agricultural areas, for database has until recently meant accessing ecological preservation or "public pursuits" records in paper form at the National Archives (what we would now term recreation) or for in Washington, DC, or in tract books and similar public purposes. The only questions similar documents in scattered among regional were how and to whom and on what terms the depositories. The situation has improved some­ public lands would be privatized.2o what with the establishment of a digital site for Another important element of context the Government Land Office records (www. was the ubiquity and constant press of squat­ glorecords.blm.gov) and some small-scale digi­ ters. Throughout the nineteenth century a tization, but most records, and the most data­ large population was eagerly seeking land and laden records, remain undigitized.18 willing to find farms for themselves in the One bright spot is that recent scholars have unsettled regions of the public domain. Like greatly enriched the Gates-era narrative by the flow of illegal immigration today, squat­ exploring the participation of women home­ ting was pervasive, insistent, unstoppable, steaders, with reflections on the construction and enjoyed considerable public sympathy. of gender and identity; the experiences of Attempts to hold off unauthorized settlement, CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 191

FIG. 7. The Beginning of a Nebraska Town. Friendville on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, 1875. Sketch by E. A. Curley from Nebraska: Its Advantages, Resources, and Drawbacks, by Edwin A. Curley (London: Sampson Low, 1875). Note the hope (or folly) expressed in the hotel's name and the trees planted in foreground. whether in the military tracts or Indian lands Preemption Act Congress abandoned the idea or elsewhere, were largely futile. The modern that squatting was trespass and wrong, and eye might see homesteading and other land authorized (future) preemptions, but attempted programs as similar to today's real estate proj­ to restrict them to surveyed lands. By 1853 this ects, say a new housing development, where restriction too was abandoned, in recogni­ interested buyers show up to consider purchas­ tion of the fact that squatters just moved in ing property that has been clearly defined and wherever they wanted, whether the land was laid out. But squatting meant that the process surveyed or not. Many factors contributed to often occurred in reverse order-early settlers allo~ing legalization via preemption, but the moved into a region, and the laws and surveys most basic was simply the impossibility of stop­ and grants had to catch up. ping the flow of people onto the land.21 The long history of preemption mapped A further element of homesteading's context this phenomenon. "Preemption" was simply a was that speculators-or less pejoratively, land euphemism for legalizing squatters. Starting in investors-were everywhere. Indeed, invest­ 1830, Congress periodically passed retrospec­ ing in land was a long-established and mostly tive preemption acts that forgave intrusions reputable activity engaged in by many, many by squatters and allowed them to legalize their players both large and small. Although it was claims; squatting was wrong, these bills in (and is) easy to focus on the few immensely suc­ effect said, but it could be forgiven for $1.25 cessful and therefore notorious speculators, the per acre. Since squatters were the first to arrive truth was that nearly everyone tried to cash in. and could take up the very best land, the pre­ Despite often overheated rhetoric of condemna­ emption price was often a bargain. In the 1841 tion, speculation was hardly dishonorable. An 192 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 early traveler to the West, Timothy Flint, wrote that

land speculators constituted a particular party. It required prodigious efforts to become adroit .... [W]hen [speculators] walked about it was with an air of solemn thoughtfulness upon their countenance[s] as though wisdom would die with them.... [A] great and fortunate land speculator and landholder was looked up to with as much veneration by the people, as any partner in the house of Hope in London or Gray in America.

Of course stories often appeared of specula­ tors profiting from insider dealing, fraud, and outright theft, and they provoked outrage; but like recent corporate scandals that did little to undermine the legitimacy of big business in gen­ eral, speculation scandals did little to damage the standing of the everyday "land investor." Aside from Henry George and the Single-Taxers, no serious effort was made to prevent people from FIG. 8. A House Twelve by Fourteen. Drawing by profiting from the rising value of their land, Miss M. H. Vanderveer for Beyond the Mississippi for the simple fact that it was widely assumed by Albert D. Richardson (New York: Beinecke, to be the landowner's right, and besides, every 1869). Richardson claimed (140-141) that "in most landowner hoped to benefit. Indeed, many set­ land offices a man cannot pre-empt unless he has a house at least twelve-feet square. I have known tlers and even homesteaders counted on rising a witness to swear that the house was 'twelve by land values in their own form of speculation. fourteen,' when actually ... [it was] twelve inches Nineteenth-century farmers were said to be per­ by fourteen." Such amusing tales of fraud circulated petually over-invested in land, betting that land widely, but how common they were in reality is prices would rise. As Roy Robbins explained, unknown. "Many settlers had invested in lands on credit hoping to payout of the increase in the value of their holdings .... Some were able to do so but many were not." From time to time reformers To defraud the government of a few acres like Commissioner Donaldson proposed that of valuable land was not considered a very the homestead acts should be amended to limit grave crime during the formative period speculation by homesteaders, but such limita­ of American history. Such defrauding, tions were uniformly rejected by Congress.zz however, can hardly be blamed upon the Another element of the context was the frontiersmen as a class, for among them were pervasive sense that cheating the govern­ also to be found honest and enterprising ment, chiseling as it was known, was not really citizens. dishonesty. The land laws, and in particular relinquishment, commutation, and preemp­ Gates recognized that defrauding government tion, seemed to encourage cheating, and many of land had a long pedigree, but he maintained people evidently did. As Robbins stated, that the widespread willingness to cheat was CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 193 something new and specifically related to the new land laws:

The chief difference between [earlier] scan­ dals and the misuse and gradual breakdown of the land system after the Civil War was that it was no longer people of influ­ ence who were responsible. Instead, many ordinary people (one hesitates to say all westerners) were showing a willingness to perjure themselves when testifying on land matters.23

One could perhaps explain the pervasive­ ness of fraud simply by the fact that the reward FIG. 9. Dixie Queens. Two young girls are eating was so tantalizing and the chance of getting lunch in a one-room school house in Lane County, caught so small. The General Land Office Oregon, 1912. One girl is holding a "Dixie Queen Plug Cut Smoking Tobacco" tin while the other did not have the funds to employ more than whispers in her ear. The week's lessons are written a few anti-fraud agents (sixty-one in 1890, for on the blackboard behind them. Courtesy of Special example), and the local land offices were often Collections and University Archives, University of overworked and disorganized operations. But Oregon Libraries. it also reflected something more-a sense that the public domain was there for the taking, that someone would get the land anyway, and Elinore entered a homestead claim, which as a that "the government" itself had no moral single woman she was entitled to do, but then claim to it. As Commissioner Sparks described the next week she and Clyde Stewart took out it, "the prevailing idea running through [the a marriage license. Whether this was strictly land offices) was that the government had no legal was unclear, as Smith observes, but it cer­ distinctive rights to be considered and no spe­ tainly was not within the spirit of "one home­ cial interests to protect; hence, as between the stead per family." Elinore was still required government and spoilers of the public domain, to live on her place, which she did not do. the government usually had the worst of it." Smith speculates that Elinore, worried about This notion combined with the willingness a potential contest to her claim, relinquished to cheat: "Men who would scorn to commit her homestead a year later (signing "Elinore a dishonest act toward an individual, though Rupert" despite now being married). The claim he were a total stranger, eagerly listen to every was· immediately filed upon by her mother-in­ scheme for evading the letter and spirit of the law, Ruth Stewart, a qualifying widow. Five settlement laws, and in a majority of instances years after Ruth received her patent, she sold I believe avail themselves of them."24 it to Clyde for one hundred dollars. As Smith Sherry L. Smith's intriguing account of points out, this claim was just one of several Elinore Pruitt Stewart's land dealings offers that Clyde and Elinore worked to expand their illustration of this phenomenon. Stewart holdings.25 became one of the best-known homestead­ ers through her lively letters to the Atlantic REASSESSING HOMESTEADING­ Monthly; she presented herself as a plucky OUTCOMES settler who by upholding the true American values of honesty and hard work had right­ Considering all of the above, and remem­ fully gained her rewards. Yet as Smith shows, bering the extremely poor quality of available 19-4 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 data, and further recalling the paucity of recent functioning farms, even if they themselves no scholarship on the topic, is it nonetheless longer operated them? For all these reasons and possible to arrive at any conclusions about others, the Land Office total of final entries is a homesteading as a policy for disbursing the highly unreliable estimate of how many actual public domain? I think a few conclusions may farms were created.28 be advanced, though they must remain highly Paul Gates addressed this question in his tentative.26 1963 essay, comparing for six mountain states One conclusion, related to our first test, the original and final homestead entries with is that homesteading apparently did create census data on the overall number of farms. many individual farms occupied by "actual Recognizing the looseness of the putative settlers," fulfilling the Homestead Act's stated causal link, he nonetheless hazarded the aim. Bureau of Land Management data (one conclusion that for the great period of farm­ version, at least) show that 1,622,107 final making, which he declared was largely over homestead entries, including commutations, by 1900, "it seems to take about four original were logged between 1868 and 1961, transfer­ entries and two final homestead entries to ring 270,216,874 acres from the public domain produce a farm." Applying his rule of thumb to private ownership. But these impressively to all 1,413,513 original entries or the 599,402 precise figures mask great uncertainty about final entries filed between 1863 and 1900 yields what ~ctually happened on the ground, making estimates of 353,378 and 299,701 farms created it virtually impossible to state exactly how by homesteaders; it seems reasonable to adopt many actual farms were created. Despite this 300,000 as a minimal estimate. Two popular problem, we nonetheless can have considerable college textbooks on the history of the West confidence in concluding that the various acts state that roughly 400,000 farms were created did create a large number of owner-occupied over the whole span of the Homestead Act, but farms.27 they fail to indicate how they arrived at their The data problem in using final entries estimate.29 to calculate actual farms created is severe. Despite the statistical lacunae, other evi­ Misuses of the homesteading laws, includ­ dence reinforces the view that homesteading ing the commutation provision, for purposes was indeed significant in establishing "actual other than actual settlement, create one prob­ settlers" on the land. Most important is the lem. Moreover, people had many reasons for large number of personal stories in which obtaining patents other than wanting to farm homesteading plays a central role in estab­ the land themselves. They may have filed to lishing the family farm. The many individual enlarge the holdings of other family members tales, recounted not only in articles and books such as spouses or brothers who already farmed but also in countless town and county jubilee nearby, as evidently Elinore Pruitt Stewart did. and centennial publications and elsewhere, They may have homesteaded simply to gain make it clear that homesteading was crucial in an asset that they intended to lease out or sell establishing many farms. While such stories do rather than to farm. That was the case of Isabel not permit us to make a numerical estimate, Procter {later Flath}, a young North Dakota neither can their evidence be ignored. A total woman who homesteaded in eastern Montana of 1.6 million final homestead entries were for two years while teaching school; Flath made between 1868 and 1961; some unknown owned the land for several decades afterward, but presumably significant portion of them, never farming it herself. Some homesteaders perhaps 400,000 or more, created new farms allegedly filed multiple times (though that was occupied by "actual settlers."30 illegal), moving from state to state and rely­ Considering our second test, how much free ing on the incompetence of the General Land land wound up being transferred to the poor­ Office not to notice. Did they leave behind est segments of society, the lack of evidence CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 195

really precludes drawing any firm conclusion. I the transfer of more than 53 million acres­ know of no quantitative studies on the income this program would have resulted in a sig­ or social backgrounds of homesteaders or that nificant wealth transfer from the public to the compare the incidence of benefits from dif­ non-rich.33 ferent types of public land disbursements. We In a different way as well, the Homestead would need to rely on anecdotal evidence and Act's distribution of benefits must be judged expert opinion, which argue in both directions. progressive. It marked a historic and salutary Some of the evidence and expertise {including first by permitting usually excluded groups, some reviewed above} leans toward the side of including women and African Americans, arguing that it was too costly for the poor to to obtain a share of the public domain. The move to the frontier region and set up for suc­ Homestead Act of 1862 did not restrict eligibil­ cessful farming, thereby mostly excluding them ity for its participation and benefits by either from homesteading's benefits. On the other race or sex. (It did restrict eligibility by marital side are case histories of settlers, like those status, requiring filing by a "head of a family," described by John Ise and Mari Sandoz, or so most married women could not make an even the fictionalized families of Willa Cather entry.) It also made land immediately avail­ and O. E. Rolvaag {which were loosely based able for settlement to immigrants, requiring on real cases}, where very poor homesteaders only that they swear an intention to become succeeded in claiming free land and build­ American citizens. ing viable farms. How common the successes Both blacks and women took advantage of were is impossible to say. Here, clearly, further their new right. There is some evidence that research should be very revealing.3! women may have constituted as much as 10 Still, despite the difficulties, there seems to 12 percent or more of the filers, with their little reason to doubt that some significant land participation perhaps less in the early period transfer to the poor occurred. Edwin Curley, and greater later when residency requirements an English journalist for the London paper The were shortened. The most significant group of Field, was initially highly skeptical of the lure black homesteaders was the Exodusters, fleeing of free land, decrying it as "a delusion and a the South at the end of Reconstruction. While snare." But after extensive travels in Nebraska, different estimates have been given, it appears Kansas, and Wyoming in the 1870s, he com­ . that by 1880 at least 6,000 and perhaps as many pletely changed his mind, writing, "Many as 20,000 African Americans had settled in men have gone to Nebraska without ten dol­ rural Kansas.34 lars clear, and have succeeded well" and "the Considering our third test, we must con­ agriculturalist may go there with a very small clude that homesteading was a fairly inefficient capital and excellent prospects."32 method of distributing land to landless settlers, After 1900 settlement moved to even drier and its inefficiency resulted in a substantial loss western regions, and the character of home­ of the public domain. We can think of it this steading changed somewhat; but between 1868 way: The Homestead Act resulted in successful and 1900, there were 599,402 final entries transfers {those that produced farms occupied logged for which 80,103,409 acres were granted, by "actual setters"} and all other transfers, the for an average farm of about 134 acres. Some latter category including both unsuccessful and substantial {but unknown} portion of these illicit transfers. Unsuccessful and illicit trans­ homesteaders were most likely to have been fers constituted wastage-public land given people of poor or moderate means. Even if we away or stolen that did not contribute to the adjust the homesteading totals to account for goal of actual settlement. How big was home­ fraud and misuse-say we reduce them by a steading's wastage? We lack good quantitative third, which would mean there were around estimates, forcing us again to rely on the views 400,000 "legitimate" final entries resulting in of contemporary observers and on anecdotal, 196 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

Fig. 10. Self-portrait by Evelyn Cameron kneeding dough in her kitchen, Terry, Montana, 1904. Anxious to give her nieces in England a glimpse of the day-to-day life she led, she made up an album of photographs including several portraits of herself at work. Courtesy of Montana Historical Society. CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 197 local, and incidental evidence. Contemporary granted by patents, 22 million were via commu­ (but interested) observers such as Sparks and tation-about 24 percent. A later report indi­ Donaldson believed that there were large losses cated that during the first decade of the new from the public domain, and they detailed century in North Dakota, 5,781,000 acres were them in their reports. Wastage was especially commuted compared to only 5,614,000 acres large after the first wave of settlement-after, on which final proof was made; that is, more say, 1880 and especially after 1900. Such was commuted than settled. For Benjamin evidence suggests that a significant amount Hibbard, the explanation was clear: of land made available through the various homestead acts wound up in the hands of non­ In the early years of the homestead law the "actual settlers." settlers were genuine homesteaders. They One of the causes (but only one) of wast­ settled upon the land because they wanted age was abuse and fraud. Figuring out how farms. Twenty years later the situation had much, and what consequences it brought, is changed greatly.... [Commutation] was difficult, because again we have little research the means whereby large land holdings quantifying its extent. There are many anec­ were built up through a perverted use of the dotes that speak to this issue, a good number Homestead Act. supplied by the various commissioners of the General Land Office in their annual Reports, Studies of the great speculator empires, such others recorded in the documents of the mas­ as those of William Scully, the Brown-Ives­ sive litigation that homesteading engendered, Goddard group, and Ira Davenport, reveal that still others visible only after patient and smart they depended on the full range of public land research such as Sherry Smith's puzzling out laws to aggregate their holdings-they used Elinore Pruitt Stewart's story. Some local stud­ agricultural college scrip and military warrants, ies, such as those of Pierce and Gage counties cash sales, Indian allotment purchases, and in Nebraska, have documented how these areas other means. Within this mix, misuse of the experienced a high level of cancellations and homestead acts, especially commutations and relinquishments of homesteads, which is evi­ relinquishments, certainly played some role, dence, according to Paul Gates, "of the extent though how important is not known.36 of the land business, the buying and selling of Surprisingly, simple fixes were available: land, more than anything else." That is, it was the right to commute claims could have been evidence that homestead filings were not being abolished, and the land of any filer who aban­ used by actual settlers but rather by land deal­ doned his or her claim before achieving a ers to gain control of public land.35 patent could have been made to revert to the The biggest loopholes, the largest causes of government. These two simple measures would wastage, were the commutation provision and likely have eliminated much of the fraud. Yet its cousin, the sale of relinquishments (when despite repeated appeals for reform, particularly an entryman, illegally and for a fee, formally by land commissioners Sparks and Donaldson, abandoned his homestead claim before prov­ Congress consistently refused to pass either ing up, so that the purchaser could file on it). measure. The result was that homesteading As Thomas Donaldson documented, during incurred far more wastage than was necessary. the first couple of decades of homesteading, We should recognize, however, that some few filers resorted to commutation: up to June "abuse" of the homesteading laws was in fact 30, 1880, not over 4 percent of the homestead a creative and perhaps even socially positive initial entries were commuted. But afterward, response to the poverty of settlers, the 160- commutations came to playa bigger and bigger acre maximum, and other limitations. That role. The Public Lands Commission reported is, some and perhaps a significant amount of that from 1881 to 1904, out of 96 million acres the manipulation and cheating on land laws, 198 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 including clear illegalities, might be termed domain that the government had opened, and, "benign abuse" that reflected attempts by poor as Commissioner Sparks had put it, felt that "a settlers to create viable farms within the harsh strict compliance with the conditions imposed restrictions they faced. There were two situa­ is not essential.'>37 tions in particular that enticed settlers to skirt A final conclusion, related to our fourth test or violate the law. The first was simple poverty. of unintended consequences, is that the home­ In order to establish a viable farming opera­ steading laws moved public land into local land tion, more was needed than just land. The markets, producing several beneficial effects. homestead acts provided no assistance for the There was of course much land available for penniless settler. To obtain the capital required sale nationally, but local land markets tended for successful homesteading-many months' to be much thinner. A local market could be supply of food, labor to break the prairie, seed, dominated by a railroad's land department or farm equipment, animals, and building materi­ one or two large speculators, to which home­ als for house and barn-some entrymen chose steaded lands could provide something of an to file claims and then, either by selling their antidote. Whether by successful homesteaders homesteads as relinquishments or by making selling farms after proving up, or through relin­ deals for commutations, walked away with quishments and commutations, or by banks the proceeds, perhaps to repeat (illegally) the and others who foreclosed on failed farmers, process elsewhere. Certainly some and perhaps this process brought land into the market many -homesteading "failures" were in fact for sale. The land then became available for part of an intentional strategy used by some purchase by small and middle-sized farmers. poor settlers to accumulate sufficient capital to Of course it also made such land vulnerable establish viable farms. to purchase by speculators. Even so, small and A second circumstance that encouraged middle-sized farmers and new entrants into illegal or shady dealing was the fact that, as farming benefited by having more sellers and settlement moved beyond the 99th or lOOth more competition in local land markets.38 meridian, a 160-acre farm was no longer suf­ Homesteading was the centerpiece of nine­ ficient to support a family. Farmers needed to teenth-century non-Native settlement of expand their holdings, and so they evidently the West, especially the Great Plains. As turned more readily to schemes utilizing Katherine Harris noted in her in-depth study preemptions, multiple homestead filings by of 492 homesteaders in two Colorado coun­ a spouse or other family member (as Elinor ties, "of all the motives attracting settlers to Pruitt Stewart did), and other possibilities. For northeastern Colorado, the most compelling example, since there was no restriction pre­ was simply the desire to own land." It was a venting homesteaders from owning preemption powerful lure, bringing migrants from all over lands, a settler could file a 160-acre preemption the United States and abroad. It resulted in and after six months pay up and take title, file the transfer of some quarter-billion acres of on an adjacent 160-acre homesteading entry public land, and it likely established families on and also (after 1873) file on a 160-acre timber 300,000 or more actual farms before 1900 and culture entry, thereby gaining control of 480 a significant number afterward. It set in place acres for the preemption price of two hundred the basic agricultural structure of this vast dollars. This creative use of the homestead portion of the country, whose effects continue laws, so condemned by later easily scandalized down to the present day. Our understanding of scholars, really represented a continuation the general process of homesteading is mostly of the spirit of squatting. Settlers with few dependent on scholarship that is nearly a half­ resources were willing to bend or even break century old, scholarship that while wonderfully the laws to create viable farms for themselves. insightful was nonetheless conducted without They saw the immense bounty of the public any of the more modern technological aids for CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 199 the handling of data and without the wider, Department Administration of a Legal Imbroglio, more diverse perspectives that have enriched 1863-1934," Western Legal History 7 (Summer/Fall recent scholarship. Perhaps we are now ready 1994): 282-307. Certainly one aspect of Gates's History that most urgently needs reformulating is his for a second look.39 treatment of women's role in homesteading. 5. David Wishart, ed., The Encyclopedia of ACKNOWLEDGMENTS the Great Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). On gender dynamics see for example I wish to thank Todd Arrington, Mark Katherine Benton-Cohen, "Common Purposes, Worlds Apart: Mexican-American, Mormon, and Engler, and Merrith Baughman of the National Midwestern Women Homesteaders in Cochise Park Service at Homestead National Monu­ County, Arizona," Western Historical Quarterly 36, ment, and the students in my Great Plains no. 4 (Winter 2005): 435-39. Studies Seminars for assistance, helpful com­ 6. The figures in this and succeeding para­ ments, and encouragement. graphs were calculated from several sources, which are inconsistent with each other and in any event should be taken as reflecting only general magni­ NOTES tudes. See Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition (New York: Cambridge University 1. I use "homesteading" to refer to any claims Press, 2006), table Cf78; Public Land Statistics 2005 for free public land made under the Homestead (Washington, DC: Bureau of Land Management, Act of 1862 and similar acts, including the Timber U.S. Department of the Interior, June 2006), tables 1-1, Culture Act (1873), the Desert Land Act (1877), the 1-2, and 1-3; "Homesteads" (pamphlet) (Washington, Kinkaid Act (1904), and the Enlarged Homestead DC: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 1962); and Act (1909). the Web sites of the U.S. National Park Service 2. Mari Sandoz, "The Homestead in Perspec­ (http://www2.nature.nps.gov/stats/acrebypark03cy. tive," in Land Use Policy in the United States, pdf) and the U.S. Forest Service (http://roadless. ed. Howard W. Ottoson (Lincoln: University fs.fed.us/documents/feis/data/sheets/acres/appendix_ of Nebraska Press, 1963), 47; George W. Bush, state_acres.html). See also Gates, History of Public "Inaugural Address," Washington Post, January 21, Land Law Development, 502 and appendix A. These 2005, A24; George F. Will, "Acts of Character issues are discussed in Richard Edwards, "Why the Building," Washington Post, January 30, 2005, B7. Homesteading Data Are So Poor (And What Can 3. Paul W. Gates, "The Homestead Law in an Be Done About It)," Great Plains Quarterly 28, no. 3 Incongruous Land System," American Historical (Summer 2008): 181-90. Review 41, no. 4 (July 1936): 655; Fred A. Shannon, 7. Data from Todd Arrington, Homestead "The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus," National Monument, Beatrice, NE, mimeo, n.d. American Historical Review 41, no. 4 (July 1936): (Dakota Territory homesteads divided between 646; Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth North Dakota and South Dakota.) Meridian (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954),222. 8. In an era in which a bill entitled "Clear Skies" 4. Katherine Harris, Long Vistas: Women and relaxed standards on power plant pollution and Families on Colorado Homesteads (Niwot: University another called "Healthy Forests" increased logging, of Colorado Press, 1993), ix; Paul W. Gates, History we may properly question whether an act's title con­ of Public Land Law Development (Washington, DC: veys its true purpose. Government Printing Office, 1968); Geoff Cunfer, 9. U.S. House, Report of the Public Land Com­ On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment mission, 46th Cong., 2nd sess., 1880, H. Exec. Doc. (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2005), 7. From 46; Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain; Its the considerable literature on women homestead­ History, with Statistics, 3rd rev. (Washington, DC: ers, see for example Dee Garceau, "Single Women Government Printing Office, 1884),350. Homesteaders and the Meanings of Independence: 10. Donaldson, Public Domain, 533. Places on the Map, Places in the Mind," Frontiers 11. Benjamin H. Hibbard, A History of the Public 15 (Spring 1995): 1-26; Elaine Lindgren, Land in Land Policies (New York: Macmillan, 1924), 408, Her Own Name: Women as Homesteaders in North 409, 454-55. Walter Prescott Webb provided an Dakota (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, equally negative but different evaluation reflecting 1991); Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and his southwestern perspective in The Great Plains Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: (New York: Ginn and Company, 1931), 428. University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and James 12. Shannon, "Homestead Act," 644, 646; inter­ Muhn, "Women and the Homestead Act: Land nal quote from U.S. Senate, Report of the Public .. 200 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009

Lands Commission, 58th Cong., 3rd sess., 1903-5, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988). On African S. Doc. 189, pp. 23-24; Shannon, Farmer's Last Americans, see Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Frontier, 54. Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: 13. Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Alfred A. Knopf, 1976). On textbook treatment of Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton homesteading, see for example Walter Nugent's Into University Press, 1942),423, 236-37. the West: The Story of Its People (New York: Vintage 14. Gates, "Homestead Law," 652, 654-66. Inter­ Books, 1999), which discusses the settlement of nal quotation from the Report of the Commissioner Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory but of the General Land Office, 1885 (Washington, DC: barely mentions homesteading (as distinct from Government Printing Office), 3-4. settlement and farm-making). 15. Sparks quotation in Gates, "Homestead Law," 20. James T. DuBois and Gertrude S. Mathews, 655-56, from the Report of the Commissioner of the Galusha A. Grow: Father of the Homestead Law General Land Office, 1885, 3-4. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 190. 16. Paul W. Gates, "The Homestead Act: Free 21. See Gates, History of Public Land Law Devel­ Land Policy in Operation, 1862-1935," in Ottoson, opment, chap. 10. For an interesting discussion of Land Use, 32-33, 41, 43. This is a rather odd state­ this process from outside the usual historical circles, ment by Gates. The Mississippi River of course see Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why borders Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Louisiana. Three of these states-Iowa (3% of total Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000), chap. 5. acreage transferred via homestead patents), Missouri 22. Flint quoted in Robbins, Our Landed Heri­ (8%), and Louisiana (9%) were mostly settled with­ tage, 30, from Timothy Flint, Recollections of the out homesteading. The real center of homesteading Last Ten Years (1826; reprint, New York: Alfred A. occurred in the next line of states-Oklahoma Knopf, 1932). (34%); Kansas (25%), Nebraska (45%), and South 23. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage, 268; Gates, and North Dakota (41%). Thus Gates seems to be History of Public Land Law Development, 419. saying that homesteading was most successful where 24. Land Office Report, 1885, 50 (quoted in it was least important in land dispersal (data from Gates, "Homestead Law," 472, 655-56). Todd Arrington, Homestead NatiQnal Monument 25. Annual Report of the Commissioner of the of America; Dakota Territory homesteads divided General Land Office, 1890 (Washington, DC: between North and South Dakota). Government Printing Office, 1890), 79; Sherry 17. Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America: L. Smith, "Single Women Homesteaders: The William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Perplexing Case of Elinore Pruitt Stewart," Western Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 72. For support of his sur­ Historical Quarterly 22, no. 2 (May 1991): 163-84. prising and quite specific assertion, Warren cited the As Smith notes, "Her book presents a classic case, popular textbook by Robert V. Hine and John Mack familiar to historians, of an individual who says one Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretative thing and does another" (165). History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 26. See Edwards, "Why the Homesteading Data 2000) which had stated (335-36) in less colorful but Are So Poor," 182-86. no less definite language: "After a detailed study, 27. Numbers taken from "Homesteads" (BLM historian Fred Shannon estimated that between pamphlet), 2; as noted earlier, these data con­ 1862 and 1900 half of all homestead entries were flict with figures given in the BLM's Public Land fraudulent." Unfortunately, however, no such study Statistics, 2005, table 1-2. There remain large and or result by Shannon can be found (aside from his unresolved inconsistencies among these sources and comment quoted above). Professor Hine informed those listed in note 6 above. me in a private communication that this assertion 28. Mountrail County Historical Society, Tales may be dropped from future editions. of Mighty Mountrail County (Stanley, ND: 1979), 2, 18. See Edwards, "Why the Homesteading Data 366. Other data sources do not appear to move us Are So Poor," 188-89. much closer to knowing the conversion coefficient 19. Among many outstanding pieces of research between final entries and actual farms. For example, on women homesteaders that could be cited, in from various sources such as the decennial censuses addition to those cited in notes 4 and 5 above, are and state data, we know that the total number of Barbara Handy-Marchello, Women of the Northern farms increased greatly during the homesteading Plains: Gender and Settlement on the Homestead period. Take Nebraska as an example: the number Frontier, 1870-1930 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical of farms in the state increased from about 3,000 in Society Press, 2005); and the essays in Wava G. 1860 to 121,525 in 1900. During these same years Haney and Jane B. Knowles, eds., Women and 69,001 homesteaders made their final entries; if Farming: Changing Structures, Changing Roles we add the years 1901-1905 (because farms listed CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 201 in 1900 could be held by homesteaders who had would rank as less than, for example, the amount not yet proved up their claim), a total of 74,166 granted to families of victims of the 9/11 disaster homesteaders obtained patents during this period. ($15 billion) or the victims of Hurricane Katrina If everyone of the homesteads had resulted in a new (circa $60 billion), not to mention the huge bank farm occupied by an "actual settler," homesteading bailouts of 2009; moreover, the homesteading trans­ would have accounted for 61 percent of the new fer was given out over 33 years, or an average of just Nebraska farms created between 1860 and 1900. $145 million (in 2008 prices) per year. (Homestead However, for reasons given in the previous two data from "Homesteads", BLM pamphlet, 5-12; paragraphs, it seems highly likely that many of the prices from Historical Statistics of the United States, homesteads did not result in new farms; unfortu­ Millennial Edition, table Cel and http://www.bls. nately, until more painstaking research using, for gov/cpi/home.htm#data.) example, local land and probate records is done we We obtain a rather different view of the impor­ have no way of knowing, even in a gross way, what tance of homesteading if we recognize that the the correct percentage would be. Figures calculated homestead transfers were made in a substantially from "Homesteads", BLM, 1962, 5-14; Nebraska poorer economy than today's. Suppose we calcu­ Agricultural Statistics, Historical Record, 1866-1954 late the transfer as a percent of gross domestic (n.p. [Lincoln: Nebraska Department of Agriculture product (GDP). For 1884 GDP is unavailable, but and Inspection], n.d. [1957]). (for that period) a close alternative, gross national 29. Gates, "Homestead Act," 42; Robert V. product (GNP), was about $11.98 billion, so the Hine and John Mack Faragher, Frontiers: A Short homestead transfer of $214 million represented History of the American West (New Haven: Yale about 1.8 percent of GNP; in 2008 the GDP was University Press, 2007), 334; Richard White, "It's about $14.2 trillion, so an equivalent transfer of Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New 1.8 percent of GDP would be about $256 billion. History of the American West (Norman: University Spread over 33 years, this would be an average of of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 143. $7.7 billion (in 2008 prices) per year, much larger 30. See for example E. R. Purcell, ed., Pioneer than the earlier estimate but still less than, for Stories of Custer County, Nebraska (Broken Bow, example, contemporary farm subsidies; of course NE: E. R. Purcell), 1936; and G. R. McKeith, farm subsidies do not go to poor and landless ed., Pioneer Stories of the Pioneers of Fillmore and people. (GNP data from Historical Statistics of the Adjoining Counties (Exeter, NE: Press of Fillmore United States, Millennial Edition, tables Ca214 and County, 1915). Ca217; and from the Bureau of Economic Analysis 31. John Ise, Sod and Stubble: The Story of a Kansas at http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/ Homestead (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, gdpnewsrelease.htm.) 1936); Mari Sandoz, Old lules (New York: Hastings 34. Handy-Marchello, Women of the Northern House, 1935); Willa Cather, My Antonia (Boston: Plains. Katherine Llewellyn Hill Harris, "Women Houghton Mifflin, 1918); O. E. R6lvaag, Giants in the and Families on Northeastern Colorado Home­ Earth (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927). steads, 1873-1920" (PhD diss., University of 32. Edwin A. Curley, The Field 41 (March 15, Colorado, 1983), cited in Patricia Nelson Limerick, 1873): 244; and Nebraska: Its Advantages, Resources, The Legacy of Conflict (New York: Norton, 1987),53, and Drawbacks (London: Sampson and Low, 1875), 352; Benton-Cohen, "Common Purposes, Worlds 428,430. Apart," 434-35, 442,450; Painter, Exodusters; Robert 33. We can gain some idea of the economic sig­ Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to nificance of the land transferred to homesteaders Kansas, 1879-1880 (Lawrence: Regents Press of during the nineteenth century as follows. Between Kansas, 1978). 1868 and 1900, final homestead entries resulted in 35. John Arnett Caylor, "The Disposition of the the transfer of 80,103,409 acres; if you assume that Public Domain in Pierce County, Nebraska" (PhD one-third were fraudulent, went to speculators, etc., diss., University of Nebraska, 1951); Yasuo Okada, then 53,402,219 acres were transferred to "legiti­ "Public Lands and Pioneer Farmers, Gage County, mate" homesteaders. If valued at $4 per acre, this Nebraska, 1850-1900," Western Historical Quarterly land would have been worth $213,608,876, or, say, 4, no. 1 (January 1973): 73-75; and Russell C. Lang, about $214 million. We can estimate the value in Original Land Transfers of Nebraska: How the West today's prices by inflating the total as follows: 2008 Was Almost Given Away (Baltimore: Gateway Press, consumer prices were approximately 21.9 times 2001). higher than 1884 prices (the approximate midpoint 36. Donaldson, The Public Domain, 350; U.S. of 1868-1899); hence $214 million would be worth Senate, Report of the Public Lands Commission, 58th about $4.7 billion in 2008 prices. A $4.7 billion Cong., 3rd sess., 1905, S. Doc. 189, p. 123; Hibbard, transfer of public property to private individuals History of the Public Land Policies, 386; see the 202 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 useful discussion in Lang, Original Land Transfers of up land for white (and occasionally black) settle­ Nebraska, chap. 15, and the studies cited therein. ment; homesteading's ecological consequences; 37. General Land Office Annual Report, 1885, 50. its discouragement of communal or village-type 38. A fuller treatment would need to consider the settlement; and the social isolation and psycho­ many other consequences, some intended and some logical deprivation suffered by settlers who were so not, that flowed from homesteading, including for geographically separated. example Indian clearance that was required to free 39. Harris, Long Vistas, 82.