Frontier Settlement and the Homestead Act

Frontier Thesis

  • Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis:
    • The frontier breeds liberty, individualism, and democracy through exploration and settlement.
    • Constant expansion leads to recreation, innovation, and progress.
    • Contrasts the frontier with the settled boundaries of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
  • Greg Grandin's Frontier Thesis (2.0):
    • Views the frontier as a pressure relief valve for social conflict.
    • People could leave tense situations and expand westward.
    • Avoids social conflict by seeking freedom on the frontier.
    • The definition of the frontier changes over time, initially physical, then metaphorical and overseas.

Homestead Act of 1862

  • Allowed adult heads of household to claim 160-acre plots of government land in the West.
    • Plots become theirs after five years of cultivation and use
    • Distributed roughly 1,500,000 homesteads on about 500,000,000 acres of land.
  • Life on Homesteads:
    • People lived in sod houses.
    • Life was incredibly difficult, with common abandonment and death.
    • The romantic frontier vision guided movement.
    • Reality involved rugged hard work and sacrifice.

Community of Homesteads

  • Community-oriented homesteads were more likely to last.
  • Vital tasks like cabin raising, log rolling, haying, and harvesting were easier in a group.
  • Tool borrowing was common due to poverty.
    • Example: families share shovels, hoes, and plows.
  • Communal grazing lands were maintained together.

Women on Homesteads

  • Over 100,000 single, widowed, and divorced female heads of household acquired homesteads.
  • Many worked outside the homestead in jobs like teaching or domestic work in exchange for help maintaining their homestead.
  • Some women expanded their family plot through bureaucratic trickery.
  • They faced intense sexism but had opportunities to own property and gain influence.
  • This coalition of women homesteaders gave momentum to the early suffragette struggle.

Limits to the Homestead Act

  • Only 80,000,000 acres of land went to homesteads as pictured.
  • Large landowners and railroad companies got the majority of lands.
    • Railroads alone got 75,000,000 acres.
  • Laborers and farmers were unable to pay for tools, leading to homestead failure.
  • Normal homesteaders got less prime land than large landowners and railroads.
  • Despite these limits, image of the frontier drove settlement.

Cowboys and Vaqueros

  • Vaqueros (Mexican or Mexican American cowboys) taught cowboys their trade.
  • Cowboys herded and rounded up livestock.
  • Wore chaps for protection from the elements and terrain.
  • Often worked supplemental jobs such as farmhand, ranch repair, and laborer.
  • They were not affluent.

Mexican Americans

  • Mexican Americans have been around since the Mexican American War, which ended in 1848.
    • They chose to remain and become citizens.
  • Treated as second-class citizens with formal segregation at local levels.
  • Texas:
    • Most Mexican Americans worked on ranches of the landed elite.
  • California:
    • Smaller farming and ranching communities were the primary mode of subsistence.
  • New Mexico:
    • Biggest center of Mexican American life.
  • Mexican Americans faced violence and displacement as more settlers, Anglo Americans, arrived. However, they did not face, nearly, the amount of violence as Native Americans would face in forthcoming lectures.