Introduction to American Studies

1. Introduction to American Studies Settling the West

2. What to do with Federal lands? • When new states were formed, most of the land remained under Federal control • Even today this is the case (Nevada) • Pre-Civil War • During the Civil War • Homestead Act of 1862 • Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862

3. The federal government controls 86.1 percent of the land • Of the remaining 13.9 percent, 11.5 percent is privately owned, 1.6 percent tribal, 0.4 percent local, and 0.4 percent state government owned • Black areas indicate federal owned or controlled lands

4. Township and Range system • Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 • Township consists of 36 sections • Each section is 1 square mile or 640 acres – 259 hectares • Sections divided in quarter sections (160 acres/65 ha) • 1 section left for local schooling

6. 60” = 1524 mm • 40” = 1016 mm • 20” = 508 mm • Minimum required for maize is 20” • Desert is defined as less than 500 mm annually • Average for ČR is 693 mm

8. Advertising for homesteads • This poster alerted many to inexpensive land for sale in Iowa and Nebraska • CREDIT: "Millions of Acres. Iowa and Nebraska. Land for Sale on 10 years Credit by the Burlington & Missouri River R. R. Co. at 6 per ct Interest and Low Prices . . . " Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Co., 1872. An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera, American Memory collections, Library of Congress.

9. The High Prairie – Lower Brule Indian Reservation (South Dakota)

10. The reality of homesteading

11. CREDIT: McCarthy, John, photographer. "John Bakken Sod House, Milton, North Dakota." Circa 1895. The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections, American Memory collections, Library of Congress.

12. A Nebraska homesteading family, 1880s

13. A sod house (circa 1880-1900)

14. Life in on the Plains

17. Selling railroad lands

18. A History of the Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)