Homesteading? Civil War? Indian Sovereignty?

[Ken Egan]

Humanities Montana is considering building programs (conferences, reading series, Speakers Bureau threads) around several historical issues.

What do you think of these issues?

The Homesteading Boom, 1909-1919
Montana and the Civil War (Montana Territory was formed in 1864)
1972 Montana Constitution
Montana Tribes--Sovereignty and Interdependence
Changes to the Land: Land Use and Sustainability since 1864
Other?

[Carol A Buchanan]

Why limit the homesteading discussion or program to 1909-1919, when my grandmother, with her semi-invalid brother, and two small boys (one of whom grew up to become my father) homesteaded along the Milk River near Malta in 1900? She fled the poverty and the slums of St. Louis in search of a better life. My father, who died in 1979, left a stories and recollections from those days. I've published one story as "Comes a Stranger" through the online publication, New Works Review,www.new-works.org and on my Web site (http://www.swanrange.com) after New Works Review ceased activity last summer.

I don't understand why this should be an "issue." These were courageous people taking advantage of an opportunity to better their circumstances.

[E. B. Eiselein]

When talking about homesteading, many people seem to forget that the land had belonged to the Indian nations that inhabited Montana and that this land was taken from them in less than honorable conditions. This ties in with an understanding of Indian sovereignty and treaty rights.

[Mark Ratledge]

"Montana Tribes--Sovereignty and Interdependence" is a great idea. A conference or a reading series could draw on issues illuminated during the past Lewis and Clark bicentennial and possibly be a sort of continuation of parts of that discussion, and draw from the current speakers bureau and others involved with tribes' responses to the bicentennial.

[Carol A Buchanan]

Montana and the Civil War appears to have been little studied among Civil War scholars and interested citizens. I searched nationwide through the Civil War Round Table and found one erroneous essay on Montana's vigilantes during that era. Other than that, the subject remains relatively untapped and not well understood.

My five years' research as an independent scholar led to writing a historical novel, God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, which won the 2009 Spur award for best first novel. I should like to help educate Montanans and others about this era in Civil War and Montana's history.

Carol Buchanan, PhD

[Bob Danley]

Changes to the Land: Land Use and Sustainability since 1864; The Homesteading Boom, 1909-1919 and Montana Tribes--Sovereignty and Interdependence are interconnected via a land use theme. Obviously, citizens would profit by reflecting on historic/cultural land use practices as lessons for today's decision making. Especially if we all want to maintain Montana as the last best place for many quality of life issues. I would enjoy the HM developing each separately, but perhaps joining them if there are budget constraints under the big tent of A Reflection on Historical and Cultural uses of Montana lands.

[Tim Lehman]

These are all great issues, and I agree that some fit well enough together that they could be joined. I'm thinking especially of homesteading, which was and is an "issue" in the sense that there have been concerns about the environmental costs of farming in a dry land. Joseph Kinsey Howard's Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome makes a good place to start. He tells the (apocryphal?) story of the Indian who watches the farmer plowing the prairie and comments, "Wrong side up." This could make an interesting discussion connecting homesteading with land use changes through the rest of the century.

I'd also like to put in a word for more public discussion of the 1972 Montana Constitution. This was a rare moment in the history of the state, perhaps the nation. It deserves our attention, and I suspect we could tap the resources of people who were there. It'd be fun trying.

[Michael Turcotte]

I believe "Montna Tribes--Sovereignty and interdependence" has the potential to educate people all across Montana and can be interwoven with all of historical issues. This would be a very interesting conference, reading series, or speaking engagement should it materialize.

[Kathleen Ely]

Like Carol Buchanan, I believe the influence of the Civil War in Montana has not been studied enough. Of course, I live in Helena, where we have the furthest north monument to the Confederacy -- a fountain placed just across from the Civic Center by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909. Unionville is five miles up the road because Helena was where those Four Georgians landed after bailing out of the deep South. The reason I can see Thomas Meagher, an infamous and excellent Civil War general, from my office window is that those disaffected folks from further west of here who didn't get the capitol in their town wanted some sign of Lincoln's party (and Catholicism) in this strongly Democratic, (and Protestant) Confederate leaning town. Aside from recent scholarship on the vigilantes (Buchanan and Allen) I think you would be hard-pressed to find works to draw from on this topic. That alone suggests it would be worthy.