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Show 80 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT emigrants from south of the line) shown little interest in being acquired by the United States but they had whipped American forces in a number of major engagements, driven them back, and taken possession of the Illinois country. When the War was over, the United States delegates at Ghent could feel lucky that peace could be obtained without territorial concessions. One might have assumed that the Louisiana Purchase and the acquisition of Florida would have satisfied the land hunger of Americans for quite a time. Yet long before the Indians had been removed from all but a small part of these great areas, and before the lands were surveyed and opened to settlement, Americans were looking elsewhere for additional territory. While some of the world's richest prairie land located in Iowa, Minnesota, and eastern Nebraska was untouched by white settlement and while millions of acres of potentially productive cot-tonland in the South were going begging, Marcus Whitman and Jason Lee were leading settlers to remote Oregon (1835-45), Stephen F. Austin and other empire-builders were establishing colonies in Texas (1822-36), and a few Americans were acquiring imperial ranchos in California. By the 1840's Brigham Young and the Saints were moving into one of the most inhospitable regions of the continent in their search for "a place" where they could enjoy freedom of religion and which they could develop according to their own ideas of community life. Extension of the frontier by these men eventually added to the United States Texas with its 246,-776,000 acres, of which 78,842,880 became part of the public domain; 180,644,480 acres in the Oregon country (present day Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana); and 334,479,360 acres in California and the Interior Basin. Together with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, there was then added to the area of the United States in a short period-from 1845 to 1853-780,963,360 acres of which 612,928,640 acres were public domain. Texas Independence and Delayed Statehood Mexico, once it had gained its independence, welcomed American immigrants, promising huge tracts of land to promoters who would contract to bring in a certain number of settlers. In 1820 it entered into an agreement with Moses Austin, later confirmed to Stephen Austin, whereby he was to have a 200,000-acre tract in Texas on which he agreed to colonize 300 families. Each settler who made specified improvements, including building a home and putting land into cultivation, was to have 640 acres, 320 acres for his wife, 160 acres for each child, and 80 acres for each slave. For promoting settlement and surveying the land Austin was to receive 12H> cents an acre. While settlers were being brought in, Mexico adopted two colonization laws in 1823 and 1825 which provided for a general policy of colony promotion. Under the Act of 1823 "empresarios," or colony promoters, were offered 65,000 acres for each 200 families they introduced; each family thus colonized was to be given a labor (177 acres) of cultivable land and cattle ranchers were to have an additional 24 labors, or a square league of 4,428 acres. Compensation was reduced from the 12 J/2 cents an acre that Austin had demanded for promotional work and surveying, "to $30 for a league, $3.50 for a labor of irrigable, and $2.50 for a labor of non-irrigable land." Families immigrating to Texas independently were allowed one-fourth as much land in addition. All grants could be augmented for large families or for special services. Improvement requirements were included. Under the Colonization Act of 1825, empresarios were allowed as compensation 5 leagues of grazing land and 5 labors of farmland for every 100 families-up to the maximum of 800 families-brought into Texas. Thus they could earn 22,140 acres of grazing land and 885 of farmland for each 100 families, or-the maximum allowed by law- 177,120 acres of grazing land and 7,080 acres |
