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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 397 the Indian lands were sold; the state was given indemnity lands many years later which had to be entered in western counties as there was no public land available farther east. The 276,000 acres thus allowed were located for the most part in Trego and Ness Counties in the vicinity of the 100th meridian. Many were the complaints of settlers against the location of the indemnity sections in these counties for they reduced the amount of land open to home-steading and compelled settlers wanting land to buy at as high as $3.25 an acre.24 Another limitation on the amount of land open to homesteading was the acreage included in the Indian reservations, which amounted to 175 million acres in 1862. Five treaties with Indian tribes authorized the sale of 9,500,000 acres in Kansas to railroads. As has been noted, angry opposition to the secret negotiations leading to these treaties, and the fear that the use of treaty making was threatening the public land system persuaded the Senate not to ratify the Osage treaty for the sale of 8 million acres. However, the Osage land when ultimately ceded was not permitted to become a part of the public domain, subject to homesteading. Instead, it was to be sold for the benefit of the Indians at a minimum of $1.25 an acre. Individual allotments to Indians might and generally did pass quickly to white ownership, but at a price. In 1887 Congress adopted in the Dawes Act a general policy of allotting to individual Indians tracts they were to own in fee simple. In this way the breakup of the remaining reservations was begun. As all previous experience had shown, the Indians were not familiar with individual ownership and quickly lost their allotments. By 1933 the reservations had thus been whittled down to some 50 million acres of the poorest lands but homestead- ers seeking free land had no part in this reduction. Anxious landseekers moving westward after 1862 may well have wondered whether the Homestead Act was the boon it was supposed to be. The 125 million acres of railroad lands, the 140 million acres of state lands, and the 175 million acres of Indian lands were all closed to homesteading. So also were the millions of acres held at high prices by speculators who had bought in the fifties. In every public place advertisements called attention to privately owned land whose advantages were said to surpass those of lands open to homestead. Thus the American Emigrant Company, which had bought the swamplands of a number of Iowa counties, summed up under the caption "Better than a Free Homestead" all the disadvantages of free land: "Under the homestead law the settler must, in order to get a good location, go far out into the wild and unsettled districts, and for many years be deprived of school privileges, churches, mills, bridges, and in fact of all the advantages of society." Land-lookers were told by the Burlington and Missouri Railroad in 1878: "You can judge for yourself whether it is not better to purchase land at four or five dollars per acre, on ten years credit, and six percent interest, that is good land and near a railroad, and will quickly advance to twenty-five dollars per acre, rather than go upon the far western or southern plains and homestead land upon which you are never certain of half a crop, and which will never advance in value." 25 24 Lee, "Kansas and the Homestead Act," pp. 104-105. 26 Pamphlet: Two Thousand Families Wanted for Iowa (no date, no place); The Old B & M Railroad Ahead. Keep to the Right Latitude. 750,000 Acres of the Best Lands for Sale. Southern Iowa and Southwestern Nebraska (1878), p. 24. It was probably more common for the railroads to include information concerning government lands open to homestead without discriminating against them. See Guide to the Union Pacific R.R. Lands. 12,000,000 Acres Best Farming and Mineral Lands in America (Omaha, 1870), pp. 2&-36. |