The Grassland
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The Grassland
Orlando Lujan Martinez IWAA
The Homestead Act has the reputation of being a benevolent government land give-away. A part of American mythology that has been romanticized in movies and history books. When in truth it was a tragedy for 48 percent of the people who recieved land in the 102 years The Homestead Act existed.
The farmers given land with adequate rainfall were successful but the ones given the arid land of the Great Plains suffered sever hardships and many were defeated. When a farmer failed the same unproductive land was given to another farmer and the sad story would be repeated. It was a betrayal, and a violation of trust by the government. But since the majority of the homesteaders were poor immigrants and the unemployed they were considered expendable in the long term political and economic goals of The Homestead Act. While a disaster for many farmers it succeeded in opening up federal lands, stolen from the Native Americans, to private farm ownership. It was nation building.
Wes Jacksons book Becoming Native to this Place, reports that when Nick Fenton researched the secession of deeds to his land, in North Dakota, he found that between 1885 and 1955, fourteen families had tried and failed to survive on what was now his center eighty acres.
These haunting words of loneliness from, The Giants of the Earth , Ole Rolvaag’s classic novel of the immigrants experience, tell how a Norwegian woman responded to the treeless, unbroken plain of grassland: “All along the way, coming out, she noticed this strange thing: the stillness had grown deeper, the silence more depressing. She realized it had been weeks since she’d heard a bird sing.”
The Homestead Act (1862 to 1976) gave each settler 160 acres, a mule and plow. Unfortunately 160 acres was not enough land to sustain the farmers or produce farm income. Insufficient rain on parts of the Great Plains and other areas was also a problem. Because of these conditions 48 percent of the farmers failed. There were thousands and thousands of victims of this land give-away. Richard Manning documents in Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie , “ They filled the poor houses, insane asylums and graveyards.”
The terms of The Homestead Act required the homesteaders to stay on the land five years, build a house, and improve the land before getting a clear title to the land. This meant plowing up, “sod busting”, the ancient and complex root system that dominated the central plains.
The rich top soil, found beneath the sod, did not guarantee success because some areas did not have the minimum 6 inches of precipitation needed for sustenance farming. The farmers were unaware the free 160 acres would be the beginning of years of near starvation, hardships, and suffering. They lived in poverty in the vastness of the ocean of grass until their spirits were broken. This story was repeated in counties all over the Great Plains.
Allen Reed, president of the Little Museum on the Prairie, dedicated to the homesteaders, attempts to romanticize and idealize the suffering of the Great Plains settlers.by making the dubious statement, “Perhaps the power of the homesteaders comes from the simplicity of their existence.” Power from “ the simplicity of their existence?” What power came from poverty and the defeat of 48 percent of the farmers by the grassland, and therefore did not complete the five years necessary to get a clear title to the land. They were the governments second victims. The Mandan, Lakotas. Dakota and Yankton Sioux, the native tribes of the North American Great Plains, who were murdered for their lands or forced to live on reservations were the first victims of imperial expansion.
The immigrants came to America fleeing poverty, political oppression and religious persecution. They wanted jobs, a peaceful life and instead, found death, poverty and hardship disguise as the benevolent Homestead Act. This deception made the innocent homesteaders odyssey on the arid Great Plains into the greatest of tragedies and betrayals.
Ocean of Grass
Edward Hirsch
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of
miles
So that all she could see was an ocean of
grass
Some days she got so lonely she went outside
and nestled among the sheep, for company.
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and prairie fires swept across the plains,
lightning up the country like a vast tinder box
until all she could see was an ocean of flames.
She went three years without viewing a tree.
When her husband took her on a timber
run
she called the land holy but the wind was harsh
and got down on her knees and wept
inconsolably,
and lived in a sod hut for thirty more years
until the world dissolved in a world of grass.
Sergei Ivanova’s painting The Death of a Settler is a memorial to poor farmers. It shows a poor farmer who has gone east, fleeing the famine, with his family in search of better land and has died on the road. He lays between the wooden harness handles he had been pulling the wagon with all their processions. His wife, laying hopeless on the ground, has covered his face with a cloth and placed a holy icon upon him. A young child sits forlornly on the ground nearby looking at her fathers covered face. The picture is about the death of a poor farmer but it is also a requiem for the mother and child who have little chance of survival, during a time of famine, on the remote wagon road in the Russian Steppes
The Grassland
Orlando Lujan Martinez IWAA
The Homestead Act has the reputation of being a benevolent government land give-away. A part of American mythology that has been romanticized in movies and history books. When in truth it was a tragedy for 48 percent of the people who recieved land in the 102 years The Homestead Act existed.
The farmers given land with adequate rainfall were successful but the ones given the arid land of the Great Plains suffered sever hardships and many were defeated. When a farmer failed the same unproductive land was given to another farmer and the sad story would be repeated. It was a betrayal, and a violation of trust by the government. But since the majority of the homesteaders were poor immigrants and the unemployed they were considered expendable in the long term political and economic goals of The Homestead Act. While a disaster for many farmers it succeeded in opening up federal lands, stolen from the Native Americans, to private farm ownership. It was nation building.
Wes Jacksons book Becoming Native to this Place, reports that when Nick Fenton researched the secession of deeds to his land, in North Dakota, he found that between 1885 and 1955, fourteen families had tried and failed to survive on what was now his center eighty acres.
These haunting words of loneliness from, The Giants of the Earth , Ole Rolvaag’s classic novel of the immigrants experience, tell how a Norwegian woman responded to the treeless, unbroken plain of grassland: “All along the way, coming out, she noticed this strange thing: the stillness had grown deeper, the silence more depressing. She realized it had been weeks since she’d heard a bird sing.”
The Homestead Act (1862 to 1976) gave each settler 160 acres, a mule and plow. Unfortunately 160 acres was not enough land to sustain the farmers or produce farm income. Insufficient rain on parts of the Great Plains and other areas was also a problem. Because of these conditions 48 percent of the farmers failed. There were thousands and thousands of victims of this land give-away. Richard Manning documents in Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie , “ They filled the poor houses, insane asylums and graveyards.”
The terms of The Homestead Act required the homesteaders to stay on the land five years, build a house, and improve the land before getting a clear title to the land. This meant plowing up, “sod busting”, the ancient and complex root system that dominated the central plains.
The rich top soil, found beneath the sod, did not guarantee success because some areas did not have the minimum 6 inches of precipitation needed for sustenance farming. The farmers were unaware the free 160 acres would be the beginning of years of near starvation, hardships, and suffering. They lived in poverty in the vastness of the ocean of grass until their spirits were broken. This story was repeated in counties all over the Great Plains.
Allen Reed, president of the Little Museum on the Prairie, dedicated to the homesteaders, attempts to romanticize and idealize the suffering of the Great Plains settlers.by making the dubious statement, “Perhaps the power of the homesteaders comes from the simplicity of their existence.” Power from “ the simplicity of their existence?” What power came from poverty and the defeat of 48 percent of the farmers by the grassland, and therefore did not complete the five years necessary to get a clear title to the land. They were the governments second victims. The Mandan, Lakotas. Dakota and Yankton Sioux, the native tribes of the North American Great Plains, who were murdered for their lands or forced to live on reservations were the first victims of imperial expansion.
The immigrants came to America fleeing poverty, political oppression and religious persecution. They wanted jobs, a peaceful life and instead, found death, poverty and hardship disguise as the benevolent Homestead Act. This deception made the innocent homesteaders odyssey on the arid Great Plains into the greatest of tragedies and betrayals.
Ocean of Grass
Edward Hirsch
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of
miles
So that all she could see was an ocean of
grass
Some days she got so lonely she went outside
and nestled among the sheep, for company.
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and prairie fires swept across the plains,
lightning up the country like a vast tinder box
until all she could see was an ocean of flames.
She went three years without viewing a tree.
When her husband took her on a timber
run
she called the land holy but the wind was harsh
and got down on her knees and wept
inconsolably,
and lived in a sod hut for thirty more years
until the world dissolved in a world of grass.
Sergei Ivanova’s painting The Death of a Settler is a memorial to poor farmers. It shows a poor farmer who has gone east, fleeing the famine, with his family in search of better land and has died on the road. He lays between the wooden harness handles he had been pulling the wagon with all their processions. His wife, laying hopeless on the ground, has covered his face with a cloth and placed a holy icon upon him. A young child sits forlornly on the ground nearby looking at her fathers covered face. The picture is about the death of a poor farmer but it is also a requiem for the mother and child who have little chance of survival, during a time of famine, on the remote wagon road in the Russian Steppes