Rules are Rules

Membership in these "association clubs" that governed new settlements prior to Federal guidelines, was  usually acquired easily and quickly.  The membership rules varied from length of residency  (2 months) to whether one could see his chimney smoke from the location of the meeting.  The rules adopted by these community clubs however, were simple and easily understood - and religiously enforced.  They provided protection to the members from outsiders and from each other in unlawful actions.  There was no patience with legal technicalities, nor did they tolerate anyone taking advantage  of the law or each other.  The law was enforced promptly and effectively. 

One example from Johnson County Iowa dealt with a claim jumper with a good whipping by the committee.  A more drastic example in 1839 in Iowa City involved another claim jumper (someone who tried to take over someone else's land already claimed).  Mr. Crawford tried to take over the claim of one William Sturgis, the rightful owner.  Crawford refused to surrender the claim as requested several times.  A meeting was called for on November 7 and sixty men marched to Crawford's cabin where he was still inside building.  After another request to leave the claim was refused, and even an offer to pay him for the labor he had done, the men took the four corners of the cabin and in 15 minutes there was not a log left standing.  Mr. Crawford was still standing with ax in hand in the center of the vacant lot.  

The ruling of these association clubs was law since no lawyer, judge or jury could be found that were not members of the ruling association.  Apparently there was no appeal or recourse for a person, as Mr. Crawford discovered when he tried to get his own justice against their actions.

Next time...Land Offices Arrive

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 25, 1876, Native American forces and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer near Montana's Little Bighorn River.  Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, leaders of the Sioux tribe of the Great Plains, had resisted the government confining their people to reservations, and even though they killed Custer and most of his men, within five years, they were confined to reservations.  A sad fact of our history as Americans.

Homesteading the West

The government offered land in the West for settlers who lived on the land and farmed it for 5 years. Their was a limit on the number of acres that a settler could claim - 160 acres. Congress hoped that this would encourage small, independent farmers rather than plantations. In 6 months, Kansas and Nebraska had 224,500 acres that had been claimed. An authentic receipt issued to such a settler of that period shows a payment of $6.00for 160 acres of prairie land.

Actually land was divided into squares of 640 acres each and each square further divided into quarters of 160 acres each of which the quarters were available under the Homestead Act.

The provisions of the Homestead Act - living off the land for 5 years, were intended to keep speculators from taking huge tracts of free land and then selling them off in pieces at a profit such as the railroad baron did for $2.50 an acre.

It the these areas of remote land, the laws were near impossible to enforce, though, and land agents had so vast an area that they could not even make inspections of settler's claims. So, of course, the laws were frequently ignored or broken after a short time on the claim.

Here is an example: One federal regulation required that a settler build a 12 by 12 house with windows on his claim. To visit every house to make sure it was 12 by 12 with windows as well was just not possible. Some land sharks even build log cabins on wheels that rolled them from claim to claim. Another would build "minature" 12 inch by 12 inch cabins with sticks.


There was another way that settler's could increase their land - next time we look at pre-emptions.