Little Piece of Earth: The Hidden History of the Homestead Era on the U.S. Great Plains, 1804-1976

FAIN: FEL-282663-22

Sara Mills Gregg
Indiana University, Bloomington (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)

Research and writing leading to a multilayered environmental, social, and policy history of the Homestead Era on the U.S. Great Plains (1804-1976).

"Free Land" was a rallying cry of the 19th century. Land distribution is often understood as the culmination of the "more perfect union": a crucial place for locating the democratic ideals embodied in the United States. But the land was not free, and the nation-state's claims to western territories were contested by Indigenous peoples already living there. The 1862 Homestead Act and subsequent land laws supporting the development of the American West are disrupted by larger histories of Indigenous knowledges and land uses, processes of displacement and relocation, and battles against the challenging climate of the trans-Missouri West. This project reclaims stories that shaped the nation on its western fringes through a layered microhistorical approach that captures the textures and tensions associated with land transfers by centering on natural history, Indigenous land claims, the expansion of the nation-state, and homestead histories in four square-mile sections of the Great Plains.

Media Coverage

Historian brings Montana single mom homesteader to life (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Brett French
Publication: Billings Gazette
Date: 3/10/2022
Abstract: Story featuring work on the Montana movement for "Little Piece of Earth."
URL: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-regional/historian-brings-montana-single-mom-homesteaders-history-to-life/article_5e171048-22d9-532d-bdbe-aad768638761.html

Associated Products

Monarchs of the Great Plains: Plant Power and Colonial Legacies in North America (Web Resource)
Title: Monarchs of the Great Plains: Plant Power and Colonial Legacies in North America
Author: Sara M. Gregg
Abstract: North America’s charismatic migratory Monarch butterfly is in crisis, as habitat loss, intensive petrochemical agriculture, and climate change all threaten the survival of the species. While recent population declines have garnered significant public interest, trends over a longer time scale merit additional attention, especially the boost the “milkweed butterfly” and its host plant received from nineteenth-century settler-colonial modifications of the continent. As Euro-American farmers uprooted grasslands and forests with the plow and axe they opened new territory for windborne milkweed, the Monarch’s host plant, and launched an unexpected population boom in the late nineteenth century. By reviewing contemporary concerns about the survival of this species within larger patterns of landscape change we can employ historical data to help contextualizes recent developments contributing to habitat destruction and fears of species collapse.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://springs-rcc.org/monarch-butterflies-great-plains/
Primary URL Description: SPRINGS: The Rachel Carson Center Review

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