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The Homesteaders

II - Problems and 'Solutions'

 

  

 

Source A

Three motherless children and a caved in soddy – Nebraska homesteader George Barnes and family pose for a photo in 1887. The night before it had rained so hard that the roof of his sod house had collapsed.  His wife had died the previous year leaving him to care alone for his three young children.  We do not know anything more about Barnes other than that he died in 1910 in South Dakota.

  

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize

Good notes - from savemyexams

Good mindmap - from getrevising

  What Problems Confronted The Homesteaders and How Were They Overcome?

 

African American Homesteaders

 

Sources - the first homesteaders

Lucy Warner's Diary, 1870-71

Bigelow in the Distance has stories of life on the Plains

 

The Johnson County War - the story in Sources

The Johnson County War - useful teachit exercise

The Spillman Creek Massacre - how useful is Source B?  How dangerous were the Indigenous Nations?

 

AQA-recommended Source

The Diary of Abbie Bright, 1870-71

  What light does the Diary of Abbie Bright throw on the experience of women as homesteaders? - detailed analysis

 

YouTube

Plains farming - Mr Cloke

Ranchers versus Homesteaders - Mr Cloke

The Johnson County War 1892 - Mr Cloke

New Technology and Plains Farming - Mr Cloke

    

  

Problems and Solutions [SOLID CONTACTS]

This topic is well-dealt-with by your textbooks, and by the websites in the 'Going Deeper' section (including the Bitesize page I wrote for the BBC in 2005, which is still going strong).  So I will just give you a quick aide-memoire of problems... click on the u orange arrows to reveal the solutions.

 

PROBLEMS FACING FAMILIES

  • Social isolation 
    • •  PROBLEM: No doctors or midwives / no social life 'because of the distances between farmhouses' / in winter families were shut in 'and longed for spring'.
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Occasional trips into town to buy supplies / local hoedowns / visits to neighbours
  • Outlaws & bushwackers
    • •  PROBLEM: Rival settlers, Bandits and Vigilante cattlemen / local government was non-existent, and some early lawmen (such as Henry Plummer) were worse than the bandits
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Local judges and sheriffs, posses and vigilante groups
  • Lack of wood  
    • •  PROBLEM: for fuel or to build houses
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Dugouts/ Sod houses / Cattle and buffalo dung ‘chips’
  • Indigenous Renegades
    • •  PROBLEM: See Source B
    • •  SOLUTION(?): US Army reprisals / reservations / defeat of the Indigenous Nations
  • Disease
    • •  PROBLEM: Outdoor toilets and open wells / The sod houses leaked, and fleas and bedbugs lived in them 'by the million' / It was impossible to disinfect the floor → the death rate, especially from diphtheria, was high.
    • •  SOLUTION(?): A coat of whitewash to kill the fleas and bedbugs / ‘Soap’ made from boiling fat with potash

   

PROBLEMS FACING FARMERS

  • Colorado beetle and grasshoppers
    • •  PROBLEM: Grasshoppers stripped the cornstalks 'naked as beanpoles' and reputedly sent pregnant women insane / Colorado beetle destroyed potato crops
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Crop-dusting after 1920s
  • Outset costs:
    • •  PROBLEM: eg filing the claim / building a house / buying equipment = at least $800+
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Borrowing, often at huge interest / a second job /
  • Not enough land: 
    • •  PROBLEM: 160 acres was not enough to support a family
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Timber and Culture Act (1873) / Desert Land Act (1877)
  • The hard ‘sod’
    • •  PROBLEM: A hard crust on the soil broke wooden ploughs
    • •  SOLUTION(?): John Deere steel ‘sodbuster’ ploughs
  • Arid conditions
    • •  PROBLEM: There was only 38 cm of rainfall in a year, and the hot summers (80°C+)evaporated dampness from the land / In the 1860s there were terrible droughts, followed by fires
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Wind pumps & artesian water / Turkey Red wheat / ‘Dry farming’
  • Cattlemen and ‘crazy quilt’
    • •  PROBLEM: Cattlemen, who wanted the open range, broke down fences, poisoned water-sources, and lynched homesteaders for 'rustling'
    • •  SOLUTION(?): fighting back – e.g. the Johnson County War.
  • Toil
    • •  PROBLEM: Overwhelming – esp. when on your own
    • •  SOLUTION(?): Sharing work & equipment with neighbours / itinerant labourers and teams at ploughing, planting, harvest
  • Scarcity of wood for Fencing
    • •  PROBLEM: Lack of wood for fencing meant farmers could not keep cattle off their crops; this led to trouble with the cattlemen
    • •  SOLUTION(?): After 1874, barbed wire, though this too led to conflict with cattlemen

   

   

Source B

The two women saw the Indians approaching across the prairie. Mrs Kine plunged into the creek, at a point where she was hidden by some brush overhanging the bank, and held her baby high to keep it from drowning. But Mrs Alderdice, paralyzed with fear, collapsed in a faint, surrounded by her four quaking children. The Cheyennes shot the three oldest boys, killing two of them. They then galloped off with Mrs Alderdice and her youngest child. The baby cried so lustily that the Indians became enraged, choked it to death and left the body beside the trail.

A source, taken from Huston Horn, The Pioneers (1974) quoted a 1998 textbook – for a discussion of its utility, read this article.

   

 

Did You Know

Figures suggest that in the 1860s white Americans killed three times as many Indigenous people as were killed by them, and that that rose to twenty times more in the 1870s. The West was so huge that a fair guess would be that the homicide rate among settlers as a result of Indigenous attacks was just 4% of the homicide rate of modern-day Wales.

 

 

Consider:

1.  Did Barnes (Source A) 'make a go' of his homestead?

2.  Do a Google image search for:

homesteaders 19th century photos

Studying the photographs only (you cannot trust the images drawn by artists) make a list of the different things you notice, linking them where possible to the homesteaders' problems and solutions.  Discuss what they have revealed about 'the life of a Wild West Homesteader'.  Were they all as badly-off as George Barnes?

3.  How useful to an historian is Source B?  After you have had a think, read this article on the Spillman Creek Massacre.

4. Using Johnson County War Story sources in the Going Deeper section, make notes on:
  •  why it happened;
  •  why it failed;
  •  what were its consequences.

  

  • AQA Exam Examples

      1.  Describe two problems faced by:
        •  Homesteaders farming the Plains
        •  ………. living on the Plains
        •  ………. in the matter of law and order
        •  ………. in their dealings with ranchers
        •  Homesteader women living on the Plains.

      2.  In what ways were the lives of the Homesteaders affected by new farming methods and technology?

      3.  Which of the following was the more important reason why the Homesteaders succeeded:
        •  new farming methods and technology
        •  hard work, suffering and perseverence?

  • Edexcel Exam Examples

      1.  Explain two consequences of the Great Plains’ environment for the Homesteaders.

      2.  Write a narrative account analysing the success of Homesteading in the years 1862-76.

      3.  Explain the importance of new farming methods and technology for farming in the West.

  

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