1. What does this source tell us about the lives of Homesteaders?

2. Lesson Objectives
To understand the role of government (manifest destiny and Acts) in providing a catalyst for people to move onto the plains 
To identify the role of other key catalysts such as the railroad and the civil war in the settlement of the Plains

3. How are the late settlers different to the early settlers?
Think! - Land - the early settlers moved as far west as they could:
Gold miners - California
First Farmers - Oregon
Mormons - Great Salt Lake
The late settlers wanted a lot of land in and around the Plains and down towards the southern states (Texas) (see map next page!)

4. Late Early The Plains - Plains Indians first, then Homestea-ders
Oregon - Farms
Great Salt Lake -Mormons
Texas and Plains - Cattlemen and Cowboys
California - Gold

5. The Land Rush 1850s Homesteaders started to move onto the Low Plans
By 1880 they were moving onto the High Plains

6. The Sooner State (Oaklahoma)
In 1889 the government opened up another 2 million acres of land in Oklahoma
On 22 April at midday a gun was fired and between 50,000 – 100,000 people in wagons and on horseback rushed from the starting line to claim their land

8. What were white peoples attitudes about
Reminder
What were white peoples attitudes about
the American West
in the 1840’s?

9. Source A
In regard to this extensive section of the country, I do not hesitate in giving the opinion, that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence…the scarcity of wood and water will prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of settling in the West.
A description of the Great Plains by Major Stephen Long,

10. So why did families bother moving there
in the first place?
Pull factors
Offer of land
Start of a new life / adventure
Advertising by railroad companies
Letters from those already living there
Push factors
People came from Europe escaping poor quality land, poverty, unemployment, persecution (Jews from Russia)
Soldiers returning from the civil war
Ex-salves seeking a new life away from slavery
Economic problems, failure of crops, people hungry