Syllabus

Exams

Terms

Graduate Students

Graduate
Student
Papers

Suggestions for Further Study
American Dreams and American Land Policy

Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987.

A history of the American West that picks up and discusses in detail many of the themes discussed in lecture.

Kocks, Dorothee.  Dream a Little: Land and Social Justice in Modern America.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

A study of western literature that opens with an account of the extent to which 19th-century homestead policy provided a safety net for white American citizens.

Emmons, David M.  Garden in the Grasslands: Boomer Literature of the Central Great Plains.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

A detailed account of the promotional literature designed to attract immigrants and settlers to the Great Plains.

McDonnell, Janet A. The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Argues that the major motivation behind US policy in the period of the Dawes Act was to put Indian land to use for the benefit of the non-native populations.

Hoxie, Frederick E. Parading Through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in the America, 1805-1935. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Chronicles allotment and subsequent pressures to sell Indian land while focusing on Indian strategies employed as a means of preserving a land base and a tribal identity.

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. New York: Washington Square Press, 1984.

A fictional account of late nineteenth century homesteading families on the Nebraska prairie.

Erdrich, Louise. Tracks. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989.

Fictional account of the changes in a Chippewa Indian community in the era of allotment

Film, Video and Music

The West. Produced by Stephen Ives, Jody Abramson and Michael Kantor. Written by Geoffrey C. Wood and Dayton Duncan. 1996. Video.

I.M.C. VIDEOTAPE VT3908 tape 8.

Silber, Irwin ed. Songs of the Great American West. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

Folk songs and ballads of the late nineteenth century, most of which focus on the European –American desire to settle the West. MUSIC M1629.S578 S6

The World Rushed In: Settlement and Expansion in the West

Many images of homesteading families and communities from the late-nineteenth century West. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/westweb/pages/settle.html#pics

George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. 1879.

An example of late-nineteenth century thinking that advocated widespread land distribution.

Chronological Synopsis of Idaho Laws with Effective Dates Concerning Community and Separate Property and Homesteads, 1864-1946.

Available in the Law Library.

Stewart, Elinore Pruitt.  Adventures of a Woman Homesteader.  Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Stewart's letters describe her life as a single mother homesteading in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, beginning in 1909.  Originally published in 1914.

	Jones-Eddy, Julie, ed. Homesteading Women: An Oral History of Colorado, 1890-1950. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992.
	Native American Documents Project

A wealth of statistical data on the Dawes Act and homesteading, government reports and links to other suggested readings. http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/