Late Homesteading

Native Land Dispossession through Strategic Occupation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9437643
AutoresDavid W Allen (0000-0001-6028-4672), Douglas W Allen (Simon Fraser University, autor correspondente), Bryan Leonard (0000-0002-5824-1099, Arizona State University, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume119
Fascículo1
Páginas56-70
Data de publicação2024-02-16
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055423001466
OpenAlexW4391910495
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas38

U.S. homesteading has been linked to establishing federal sovereignty over western lands threatened by the Confederacy, foreign powers, and the Indian Wars in the last half of the nineteenth century. However, the bulk of homesteading actually took place in the early twentieth century, long after these threats to federal ownership ceased. We argue that this “late homesteading” was also an effort to enforce federal rights, but in response to a different threat—a legal one. Questionable federal land policies in the late nineteenth century dispossessed massive amounts of Indigenous lands, and exposed the federal government to legal, rather than violent, conflict. Late homesteading was used to make the dispossession permanent, even in cases where a legal defeat eventually occurred. Examining the qualitative evidence, and using data on the universe of individual homesteads and federal land cessions across the 16 western states, we find evidence consistent with this hypothesis

Geography · Government (linguistics · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Threatened species · American Environmental and Regional History · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Ecology · Land Rights and Reforms · Law