ABSTRACT
In the last third of the nineteenth century, a horde of settlers swept west past the Mississippi River seeking their share of America’s prosperity. Discoveries of gold and silver lured some, while land free for the taking attracted others. To encourage settlement of the American West, Congress had passed the Homestead Act of 1862 offering any citizen 160 acres of land if they occupied and developed that parcel of land for five years.1 As settlers streamed west, they encountered vast expanses of tall grasses, largely devoid of trees, except in the relatively sheltered and watered areas along riverbanks. The grasslands of the Great Plains, the largest of their kind in the world, supported a complex ecosystem that included large herds of bison and a still substantial population of native peoples. Within the space of several decades, both populations were largely annihilated as the immigrants from the east modified the landscape into their vision of the American dream that included neither.
