Volume 44- No. 25
June 20, 2013
by lyle e davis
So now, Congress had passed the law and President Abraham Lincoln had signed it.
It started out as a lie.
By our government.
The stage was set.
Imagine that. A government that was less than honest with its people.
Now all that was to be done was to entice people to move into this great paradise. At least, that’s how it would be portrayed.
Back in the late 1800’s, the government had a problem. It had a lot of unclaimed federal land, much of it west of the Mississippi, a great deal of it in a territory we now know as Montana.
Well! That just wouldn’t do! The government wanted that land occupied by white settlers. Just one of the benefits of that would be to erase the land claims by Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Sioux, Crow and other native peoples. There wasn’t much there. In the northern third of the territory, about a 100 miles south of the Canadian border and westward as far as the Rockies, you found about 26 million acres of land. Lots of shortgrass prairie and sagebrush.
One of the railroad barons of the time, James J. Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railway, also wanted that land occupied by customers who would need materials such as farming implements, horse tack, household good, seed grain, any number of things, all of which would need to be shipped in. By train. Eventually, the trains would also carry wheat in the opposite direction. The railroad would make money, coming and going.
Say . . . what if the Great Northern Railway got together with Congress and came up The Paper - 760.747.7119
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with a scam . . er, plan, to settle the area? Both parties would benefit. Both parties could fund multimillion dollar advertising and propaganda campaigns to entice folk to move into the area. Wouldn’t that be just ducky?
And so it was done. A conspiracy of sorts was hatched, by Congress, by Mr. Hill, and others in the business of generating commerce, even if it needed a bit of a little white lie here and there. Or maybe more than a bit.
Congress was persuaded to pass a law in 1862 that would change the face of our nation . . . and of that barren territory that we know today as the state of Montana. That law was The Free Homestead Act
of 1862.
This law entitled anyone who filed to a quarter-section of land (160 acres) provided they lived on the land for five years. Otherwise, after living on the land for six months, homesteaders could choose to buy it outright for $1.25 per acre. Each homesteader was also assessed a $10.00 filing fee. Several hundred miles east of Montana, where the average rainfall is much higher, 160 acres was plenty of land to support a family and produce an abundance of crops. But in Montana, especially in eastern Montana there was, and is, an arid climate, crops do not grow well without irrigation. On high desert-like plateaus, it can be difficult to find water for irrigation.
The trumpet call was sounded of “Free land! Opportunity! A future!” Congress and the Great Northern Railway spent millions of dollars in assuring ambitious Americans that this Homestead Act would allow you practically free land, enough to feed your family. But, the land wasn’t quite free . . . and it was far from enough. Farming and ranching was to become a boom or bust situation . . . and far more busting than booming. A pamphlet issued in 1912 by the Great Northern Railway, titled "Montana Free Homestead Land," bragged that the state's climate was healthful, the winters "not severe because of the dry air," and the yields of winter wheat "phenomenal." Act now, urged the pamphlet. If you want a piece of this bounteous giveaway, it said, "you had better start for Montana at once."
The ad campaigns worked.
Frontier fact: Between 1880 and 1890, the population of Montana grew from 39,000 to 143,000. Montana would soon become the most homesteaded state in America.
For as little as $22.50, a homesteader could rent a freight car to bring his family and all
“Montana Tough” Continued on Page 2