The story of people who are moving and settling in order to find a suitable place for living in the Great Plains has always been a central experience in American agricultural history. As Jackson Turner points out in his famous essay:
“Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, is continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development… American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating Amrican character. The true point of view i n the history of this nation in not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.” From the nation’s earliest days, farming has had a very important place in the U.S. economy. Throughout frontier literature the virtues of the farmers, their initiative, hard work and selfsufficiency, were praised as being unequalled in American history. But this heroic picture forgets that there farmers have always been dependent upon some uncontrollable facts as the weather, prices or government policy.
American farmers are known to produce large yields per hectar, what has to be charged to the abundance of natural benefits. “Some of the richest farmland in the world can be found in the American West.” Between the close of the Civil War and 1900, the United States developed as one of the world’s leading economic powers. Revolutionary methods of production, vast new markets, and new forms of corporate organizaiton were created by successful indurstrialists. A rapidy expanding railsroad system as well as innovations in farm machinery led to a ubiquitous growth of agricultural poductivity.
To sum it up, farmers embody the real hero of the New World, as they were bringing civilization in their wagons into that unknown land. Though there were many obstacles hindering their moveme nt, the farmers learned to adapt to the special demands of the nature and established villages, roads, railroads, schools and churches. “Amricans were a pioneering and an agricultural people who had experienced a constant love affair with the land.” This research paper tries to analyse environmental backgrounds as well as the history of the western movement including typical farm life examples.
Contents:
1.) Introduction
2.) The Great Plains – environmental background
2.1) Distinguishing characteristics
2.2) Soil variations
2.2.1) The Prarie soils
2.2.2) The Chernozems
2.2.3) The Chesnut soils
2.2.4) The Desert soils
2.3) Climate
2.3.1) Rainfall
2.3.2) Evaporation
2.3.3) Wind
2.3.3.1) The hot winds
2.3.3.2) The chinook
2.3.3.3) The norther
2.3.3.4) The blizzard
2.3.4) Hail
2.4) Further dependances
2.4.1) Building materials
2.4.2) Transportation
2.4.3) Water supply
3.) History of the migration movement
3.1) Pioneering before 1860
3.2) Booming years
3.2.1) Land-taking and land speculation
3.2.2) Occupying the West
3.3) The last frontier
3.4) Hardships
3.4.1) Prarie fires
3.4.2) Droughts and dust storms
3.4.3) Grasshoppers
3.4.4) Dependance upon railroads, banks and market prices
3.4.5) Results
4.) Supporting factors
4.1) Homestead Act – 1862
4.2) Contest for settlers
5.) Farm life
5.1) Living conditions on prarie farms
5.1.1) Dwellings
5.1.2) Daily works
5.1.3) Sozial life
5.2) Changes
6.) Conclusion - from majority to minority
Bibliography
1.) Introduction
The story of people who are moving and settling in order to find a suitable place for living in the Great Plains has always been a central experience in American agricultural history.
As Jackson Turner points out in his famous essay:
“Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, is continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development… American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating Amrican character. The true point of view in the history of this nation in not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.”[1]
From the nation’s earliest days, farming has had a very important place in the U.S. economy. Throughout frontier literature the virtues of the farmers, their initiative, hard work and self-sufficiency, were praised as being unequalled in American history. But this heroic picture forgets that there farmers have always been dependent upon some uncontrollable facts as the weather, prices or government policy.
American farmers are known to produce large yields per hectar, what has to be charged to the abundance of natural benefits. “Some of the richest farmland in the world can be found in the American West.”[2] Between the close of the Civil War and 1900, the United States developed as one of the world’s leading economic powers. Revolutionary methods of production, vast new markets, and new forms of corporate organizaiton were created by successful indurstrialists. A rapidy expanding railsroad system as well as innovations in farm machinery led to a ubiquitous growth of agricultural poductivity.
To sum it up, farmers embody the real hero of the New World, as they were bringing civilization in their wagons into that unknown land. Though there were many obstacles hindering their movement, the farmers learned to adapt to the special demands of the nature and established villages, roads, railroads, schools and churches. “Amricans were a pioneering and an agricultural people who had experienced a constant love affair with the land.”[3]
This research paper tries to analyse environmental backgrounds as well as the history of the western movement including typical farm life examples.
2.) The Great Plains – environmental background
“It is said that Nature makes the man to fit his surroundings. If that be the case, then a descripiton of the land partly, at least, describes the people. Our homeland was proportioned on a big scale. There seemed to be nothing small, nothing limited, in our domain. Our home…was one of great plains, large rivers, and wooded mountains. So wide were the prairies that the sun seemed to rise out of one distant edge and in the evening to set in the opposite distant edge. The weather was extreme. The winter was cold with sleet and ice and the temperature often below zero. The winds ere so strong they made us feel the strength. The summers were hot and violent with color…. We grew used to strength, height, distance, power.”[4]
The historian Walter Prescott Webb stresses in his book The Great Plains that foreigners coming to the United States were confronted with three main “environmental encounters”:
the high summer temperatures as well as humidity levels of the Southeast, the arid Southwest and interior West and last but not least the great nearly endless grasslands in the center of the country. As Schantz and Zon define:
“Grasslands characterize areas in which trees have failed to develop, either because of unfavorable soil conditions, poor drainage and aeration, intense cold and wind, deficient moisture supply, or repeated fires. Grasses of one kind or another are admirably suited to withstand conditions of exess moisture, excess drought, and fires which would destroy tree growth.”[5]
And as agriculture always depends upon soil quality as well as upon the weather conditions this paragraph is concentrated on these special background knowledges.
2.1) Distinguishing characteristics
Webb counts three distinguishing characteristics. But at least the presence of two of the three features includes the area to the Great Plains.
At first the author names a level surface of great extent. That enables the Great Plains to spread “[…] from mountain base to mountain base.”[6]
Secondly Webb claims that “(i)t is a treeless land, an unforested area.”[7] As this region unrolls west of the Mississippi River the boundary between the timber line and the fallowing prairies spreads along the ninety-fourth and ninety-eighth meridians. In the west the treeless area reaches the Rocky Mountains and even the Pacifc slope. If just considering this fact as border making, the Plains extend already from the ninety-fifth meridian.
The third characteristic Webb mentions is the sub-humid or arid climate that predominate the region of insufficient rainfall. It ranges from twenty-five to fifteen inches from east to west. As a result of comparing the timber line to the rainfall scale “[…] there is a V-shaped region between the timber line and the humid line ghat is sufficiently well watered for agricultural purposes, but treeless withal […] sometimes called the Praire Plains […].”[8]
2.2) Soil variations
The upper soil of the Great Plains rests upon a “structural slope of marine-rock sheets, uplifted with general uniform eastward inclination.”[9] The variation in thickness of the soil mantle, called the débris apron, lies between a few feet and five hundret feet.
These historically based features together with the climate cause different soil qualities ranging from very fertile Prairie soils to totally deserted soils. “[…] the United States has about all kinds of soils found anywhere in the world exept the Tundra of frozen North […].”[10] Each of them needing special treatment to produce at its best.
2.2.1) The Prarie soils
As Van Hise has said, this “[…] is the garden of the United States; it is the very heart of the country […] (with) by far the largest percentage of improved lands of any states in the Union […].”[11] Althought the Praire soils aren’t as fertile as the Chernozems the abundant rainfall causes a higher productivity. As people were settling this region before the Civil War it was fully occupied by 1860. The already mentioned V-shape (see 2.1) starting in northwestern Indiana and ending in northwestern Minnesota and southern Texas, shows its spreading throughout the country. As the break between timber and grass is generally distinct a continuous tall-grass prarie is stretching out. The soil is rather “[…] dark, humus-filled, base-saturated […]”[12] and is therefore able to support agricultural farmers even in years of depression. This type of soil is also able to preserve moisture and as a consequence huge crop amounts can be rised out of them.
2.2.2) The Chernozems
The Chernozems while belonging to the lower Great Plains extend from North Dakota to Texas. The vegetation resembles that of the Prarie soils but rainfall is just on a medium level. Hot summers and cold winters impress the climate of that zone. As humus and minerals are sufficiently in the Chernozems “[…] the result is the richest soil the world can show.”[13] But to be successful a farmer needed to own at least one full section. Homes were built in lager distances as were seen in the Praries though all of them were adapted to wheat growing.
2.2.3) The Chesnut soils
The next region extending to the Rocky Mountains including the west river region are the Chesnut soils. The brown soil is less enriched with humus than the richer soils in the east. But this short-grass country are comparable to the fertility of the Praries as there is a lower rate of water erosion. Inspite at least the whole area is only suitable for grazing as evaporation is very high. The “dust bowl” is often located in this Chesnut soils as cultivation has caused uncontrollable wind erosion.[14]
2.2.4) The Desert soils
The Desert soils are “[…] the poorest of Great Basin soils […].” And therefore the white man has forced the Indians to life in reservations in this unprofitable region. This region is so dry that even grassing at a very low level would include a huge risk of failing. It’s nearly impossible for “[…]a sheep (to) pick a living off a hundred acres […].”[15]
2.3) Climate
The climate is always composed of various factors as the annual or sesional rainfall, the wind in all its appearances and the evaporation rate making soils more or less fertile. As productive farming depends upon all these topics it might be helpful to get to know the following explanations.
2.3.1) Rainfall
“The distinguishing climatic characteristic of the Great Plains environment from the ninety-eighth meridian to the Pacific slope is a defiency in the most essential climatic element – water.”[16] It influences plant life and animal life as well as human life and institutions. The average rainfall of that area doesn’t exeed fifteen inches (whenever the average percipitation is less than twenty inches it’s deficient). There are three types of rainfall: the Great Plains type, where rain is falling mainly in the summer month; the intermountain type, with summers wet and winters dry and at least the Pacific type where the reverse is the case.
2.3.2) Evaporation
“The rate and amount of evaporation also are of importance in an arid and semi-arid region.”[17] If scientists calculate the effective precipitation they always have to subtract the evaporation rate. As this loss of moisture is much higher in the south than in the north its getting clear why more percipitation is needed in the southern part of the Great Plains and the climate is in fact significantly drier than in the northern area. Therefore “(t)he vegetation zones tend to cut diagonally across the precipitation zones.”[18]
2.3.3) Wind
“Nowhere in the world, perhaps, has the wind done more effective work than in the Great Plains.”[19] Especially in the High Plains reaches the wind a high velocity as the smooth and treeless surface allows it to blow without obstacles. Therefore the wind in the Great Plains is the strongest ever seen in the United States.
Carla Due remebers a tornado destroying their farm:
"We got married in '34, and we moved on my parent's farm. In '35 there came a tornado through our place and just tore it all up. "Oh, my goodness. It was just purple and you could see it was coming along the ground. We just ran to the house and down in the basement. It was not a basement. It was as cellar on the part of the house. And we stood own in the cellar."There was a beautiful big cattle barn. It was just wonderful. You drive into one side and drive on around to clean it. And there was hay in the middle for the cattle. It took that about half a mile up into the air, and then just made little pieces of wood with spikes in and scattered them all over several sections. We had a big horse barn. It moved it off the foundation and took the top off of it. And it was sitting like this, with about 12 head of mules inside of it. We were so worried about them.”[20]
Professor Ward hits the nail on the head when he says:
“Very striking is the braod zone of the Great Plains, with wind velocities closely resembling those along the eastern seaboard and the Great Lakes – winds which are ocean-like in character, as vast stretches of the Plains are themselves ocean-like in their monotony and in their unbroken sweep to the far-away horizon […]. Over this great treeless country, but little retarded by friction, blow winds of remarkable uniformity and of relatively high velocity, averaging ten to twelve miles an hour, and even reaching fourteen or fifteen miles […].”[21]
These winds are often responsible for the scarcity of water. But to examine their effects more detailed a proper distinction is needed as there are four different types of wind.
[...]
[1] Turner, Jackson, quoted in:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/settlement/thinking4.html
[2] http.//www.odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/ECO/1991/chap8.html
[3] Fite, Gilbert C.: The Farmers’ Frontier 1865-1900, 21974, p.1.
[4] Luther Standing Bear, quoted in: Nelson, Paula M.: After the West was won, 1986, p.2.
[5] Schantz, H. L. and Raphael Zon: Natural Vegetation, Atlas of American Agriculture, Part I, Sect. E, p.7.
[6] Webb, Walter P.: The Great Plains, 31981, p.5.
[7] Webb: The Great Plains, p.4.
[8] Webb: The Great Plains, p.6.
[9] Johnson, Willard D.: The High Plains and their Utilization, Twenty-first Annual Report of the United States
Geographical Survey, Part IV (1899-1900), p.627.
[10] Shannon, Fred A.: The farmer’s last frontier 1860-1897, 1989, p.7.
[11] Van Hise, Charles R.: The Conservation of N atural Resources in the United States, 1917, p.272.
[12] Shannon: The farmer’s last frontier, p.16.
[13] Shannon: The farmer’s last frontier, p.17.
[14] see: Shannon: The farmer’s last frontier, p.18.
[15] Shannon: The farmer’s last frontier, p.18.
[16] Webb: The Great Plains, p.17.
[17] Webb: The Great Plains, p.20.
[18] Webb: The Great Plains, p.20.
[19] Webb: The Great Plains, p.21.
[20] Due, Carla, quoted in: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/movies/due_life_02.html
[21] Ward, Robert: The Climates of the United States, pp.156f. àNACHSCHAUN
- Citation du texte
- Susanne Weid (Auteur), 2004, Prarie Farmers, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/47055
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