hist.g4.s.his.homestead_act_mormon_overland
Analyze the Homestead Act (1862), the Mormon migration (1846–1869), and overland-trail women's and children's daily life
Analyze the Homestead Act 1862 (signed by President Lincoln) — granted up to 160 acres of federal land (a 'quarter section', 1/4 of a 640-acre section) to settlers who would file a claim, live on the land for 5 years, and improve it. Approximately 270 million acres distributed over the life of the Act. CRITICAL: this federal land was Indigenous-nation homeland; the Dawes Act (1887, G5 entry) extended the same idea to allocating tribal lands. Analyze the Mormon migration 1846–1869 from Nauvoo IL to the Great Basin/Salt Lake Valley UT as a faith-based migration following expulsion from Missouri and Illinois — distinct from gold-seeking and homesteader migrations. Analyze women's and children's daily life on overland trails through age-adapted diary excerpts (Susan Magoffin 1846 Santa Fe Trail, Catherine Haun 1849 Gold Rush overland). Vocabulary: Homestead Act, quarter section, claim, file, faith-based migration, overland trail.
- Apply distance, scale, and route-mapping skills to overland trails — Oregon Trail, California Trail, Mormon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, Pony Express, Lewis and Clark route
- Profile continental Indigenous nations with present-tense protocol, focusing on the 5 Tribes of Indian Removal and additional named nations across regions
- Treating Homestead Act land as 'unowned' (it was Indigenous-nation homeland)
- Confusing the Mormon migration with the Gold Rush (different communities, different motivations, different routes — though both used the overland-trail system)
- Forgetting the Mormon migration intersected with the Indigenous nations of the Great Basin (Ute, Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute)
- Romanticizing the overland-trail experience without naming the labor of women and children