This month my friend Staci died. At her funeral in Malta, Montana, Fr. Pete, who went to Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, where my dad went to college, connected the Book of Ecclesiastes to homesteaders proving up their ground.
In May of 1862 President Lincoln signed the Organic Act making Montana a territory. That same month Lincoln also signed the Homestead Act of 1862 that brought farmers and ranchers to eastern Montana.
Settlers were granted 160 acres, which they were required to prove up. The land grants meant thousands of Native Americans were forced from their lands and onto reservations. One of those was the Fort Belknap Reservation, established in 1888 in north-central Montana, named after William W. Belknap, the secretary of war under Ulysses Grant. Belknap was impeached for corruption, charged with “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.”
The history of conflict and displacement of the A’aninin and Nakoda Tribes, and the history of people like Belknap, who used military trading posts to give illegal kickbacks – is an integral part of the human story on the Great Plains.
In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln described the challenges facing We the People and said the role of the people’s government is “to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.”
The Homestead Act implemented that belief – for women and for men. Open to any citizen or intended citizen, it allowed women to own land, and helped lead the way to women’s suffrage. The only knock-out factor? Homesteaders had to certify they had never borne arms against the United States.
Montana had the most successful claims under the Homestead Act. To make a claim, homesteaders paid $18: $10 to make a temporary claim on the land, $2 for commission to the land agent, and $6 final payment to receive an official patent on the land. In addition, homesteaders had to show five years continuous residence, building a home, farming the land, and making improvements. Union soldiers could count the time they served in the Civil War toward the five-year residency requirement.
While “proving up” was often framed in terms of ownership, successful homesteaders saw themselves as stewards of the land. To survive, they had to understand and respect the limitations of nature.
The reading at Staci’s funeral from the Book of Ecclesiastes illustrates that respect, and depicts the alternating, necessary events that connect us to the land, and to each other.
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes reminds us of the circle of life, that everything – and every one – that dies remains a part of what lives, a part of our story.
Proving up was not a solitary act. Homesteaders relied on neighbors for barn-raisings, harvests, and survival. The land was not “free.” It came with consequences to the Indigenous people who lived here long before the homesteaders came. The land carried, then and now, obligations to community and to history.
Staci’s dad, Willie Doll, talks of being a steward of the land. In the same way, we are all stewards of the gifts we have been given.
Fr. Pete asked us, what time is it for you? How will you prove up your ground? In Staci’s words, “Mother nature does not give time back, not to the human body or the land.”
All together.