1862 Homestead Act
The Homestead Act, enacted on May 20, 1862, amidst the Civil War, provided that any adult head of household, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Women who were single, widowed, divorced, or deserted could file a homestead claim in their own name. Homesteaders were required to live on and “improve” their 160 acres by cultivating the land. After five years living on the land, the homesteader was entitled to the property, free and clear, after payment of a small registration fee. Additionally, free title to land could be acquired after only a six-month residency and small improvements if the claimant bought the land at $1.25 per acre.
Poster Advertising “Indian Territory – That Garden of the World – Open for Homestead and Pre-Emption,” 1889
Courtesy of Docs Teach, NARA
Once-Known Ute Man, 1910, Southern Ute Reservation
CSPM Collection, Horace Poley Photograph
Importantly, the millions of acres of land granted under the Homestead Act of 1862 in thirty states were the traditional or treaty lands of many Native American tribes. As stated by the University of Richmond’s Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Mapping the Homestead Act, 1863-1912, “…it is evident that the Homestead Act’s offer of free land was only possible because the U.S. government had through coerced treaties, threats, and force evicted Indigenous nations from their ancestral homelands. The ‘public land’ offered for distribution were only available because Indigenous nations had been removed to small reservations. When Congress passed the Homestead Act in May 1862, most of the area where homesteaders in the following decades would claim land was still ‘Indian Country,” even according to the U.S. government’s legal understanding. The fact that these lands became accessible to settlers was a clear result of the expulsion of the previous Indigenous inhabitants.” (© and Courtesy of University of Richmond, “Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Mapping the Homestead Act, 1863-1912″)
