for settlement. Arrangements were then made at Washington to have the amount remitted.167

Thus at last did the American Fur Company resume with a clean slate its trading operations with the Sacs and Foxes in their new homes west of the Black Hawk Purchase. As the wild game animals in the territory along the Mississippi became more and more scarce and white settlers were crowding in closer upon the native inhabitants, the profits of traders decreased in proportion. Only the Indians' removal farther west, ahead of the oncoming wave of whites, offered hope of the revival of business in furs and peltries. Thus it happened that upon the heels of the Sacs and Foxes departing from their villages along the Mississippi went their traders from Rock Island. The scenes of barter and exchange were being shifted westward as the vanguard of sturdy Anglo-Saxon conquerors with axe and plow began to reach the west bank of the Mighty River, not in search of furs but in their quest for excellent lands and better homes. JACOB VAN DER ZEE

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA

IOWA CITY IOWA

167 Senate Documents, 1st Session, 23rd Congress, Vol. IX, No. 512, pp. 699, 717.

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AS A FIELD FOR

HISTORICAL STUDY1

"Questions of land domination and of land distribution have formed the ultimate ground of political division and debate among men ever since the human race, in the evolution of society, passed from political organization on the basis of common territory. The great leading

factor in the formation of our governmental polity, and in the subsequent divisions of party among us, has always been, in the last analysis, a question relating more or less directly to the distribution of the national domain considered as the source and seat of political power. "2

Such a factor in human development is of course too vast to be successfully claimed by any one of the currents of historical progress since its influence has been wide and deep upon educational, social, financial, and economic life. The public domain has engrossed the efforts of statesmen and legislators; Indian wars have grown out of it; and land grabbers, speculators, and timber thieves have feasted thereon.

In the history of the West the public domain can well be regarded as the fundamental factor. The nearness, cheap

1 The total area of unappropriated and unreserved lands in the United States on June 30, 1913, was 297,927,206 acres (land surface). The total area of the States (land surface), not including Alaska and our insular possessions, is 1,903,289,600 acres, and the difference between this area and the unappropriated and unreserved lands on June 30, 1913, or 1,605,362,394 acres, is the total area disposed of to and including June 30, 1913.- Letter from the Assistant Commissioner of the General Land Office, dated September 15, 1913.

2 Quoted from Welling's The Land Politics of the United States, published by the New York Historical Society, 1888. Cf. Trimble's The Influence of the Passing of the Public Lands in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXIII, pp. 755–767.

568

ness, and accessibility of the soil yielded that easy prosperity of life and that high standard of abundance which contrasted sharply with the crowded and restricted areas of the Old World. The public domain has given us conceptions of vastness and space as well as continental standards in viewing our national growth and its problems.3 These conceptions were continental, national, and distinctly American rather than local, sectional, or European.

From historians, it would seem, the public domain has not received the attention or at least not the emphasis which has been given to other phases of historical study. Forty years ago it was practically a dark continent to investigators. The colonization and settlement of New England lives in the works of Palfrey and Fiske; Parkman has recited the struggle for a continent; Bancroft and others have treated the constitutional period; Henry Adams has brilliantly depicted the political and diplomatic events of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. But no Winsor or von Holst or Rhodes has exploited the public domain; and studies and researches in that field are not, as yet, commensurate in numbers or quality with the importance of the subject.

The sources on the public domain are generally accessible though not so abundant, apparently, as those on military or diplomatic history. Donaldson's The Public Domain (with statistics), prepared and printed by the government, is an encyclopaedia upon the subject down to December 1, 1883. Its 1302 pages teem with historical information concerning territorial acquisitions, boundary disputes, treaties, surveys, and land ordinances - from the Ordinance of 1785 to

3 Cf. Wilson's The Proper Perspective of American History in The Forum, Vol. XIX, pp. 544-559; Turner's Contributions of the West to American Democracy in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XCI, pp. 83-96; and Callender's Economic History of the United States, pp. 666, 667.

4 Likewise published as House Miscellaneous Documents, 2nd Session, 47th Congress, Doc. No. 45, Part IV.

the Homestead Law of 1862. Facts and figures concerning railroad grants, donations, military bounties, purchases and sales of lands, private land claims, Indian reservations, and mineral lands constitute an inventory of national progress and an eloquent portrayal of natural wealth.

The eight volumes of the American State Papers, Public Lands, aggregating over 7000 pages are an almost inexhaustible mine of historical material for the forty-eight years ending with 1837. Petitions and memorials, administrative reports, surveys, and Supreme Court decisions are printed therein; thousands of land claims are recorded; there are descriptions of lead and salt mines; the minutes of land commissioners are long and detailed; while there is other matter concerned with land policies inaugurated by Great Britain, France, or the Kingdom of Spain.

In the proceedings of Congress may be found the debates on great land policies which became crystallized into such notable statutes as the Land Ordinance of 1785, the Act of 1800, the Preëmption Law of 1841, and the Homestead Act. Webster, Foote, Benton, Clay, and scores of others have contributed their discussions to various phases of the subject. And those statesmen who believed in the "manifest destiny" of the United States express in these records their faith and hope in the public domain.

Annual reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office from 1826 to the present time describe the manifold operations of that office from year to year. Detailed statis

5 The Gales and Seaton edition is referred to, the second volume of which was printed by Duff Green.

6 That is, in the Journals of the Congress of the Confederation, the Annals of Congress, the Congressional Debates, the Congressional Globe, and the Congressional Record.

7 The office of Commissioner of the General Land Office was created on April 25, 1812, and became subordinate to the Treasury Department. The General Land Office was recognized by the law on July 4, 1836. Since the creation of the Interior Department (March 3, 1849) the General Land Office has been a bureau of that department.- Donaldson's The Public Domain, p. 164.

tics describe the work of land offices; the administration of federal statutes is explained; charges, investigations, and prosecutions are noted, and lists of grants and patents are recorded. "The General Land Office holds the records of title to the vast area known as the public domain, on which are hundreds of thousands of homes. Its records constitute the 'Doomesday Book' of the public domain of the United States. ''8

Published writings of such American statesmen as Washington, Franklin, Madison, Gallatin, and Clay contain other material. Benton's Thirty Years View presents many speeches on the public domain by a thoroughly western man. The census bulletins portray the growth and settlement of our public area; Niles' Register duplicates many of the documents and speeches of Congress; and in the thirty volumes of Thwaites's Early Western Travels 1748–1846 are preserved the first impressions of travellers relative to surveys, purchases, grants, land companies, land offices, reserves, public sales, preëmption claims, and squatters.

But at the present time the essay, the monograph, and the volume have made a beginning of exploring and exploiting this almost untilled field. An early work (1885) is Adams's Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States; Sato's History of the Land Question in the United States 10 is a preliminary survey of the subject; the Bureau of Education has issued several circulars descriptive of land grants for educational purposes; while in 1910 there appeared Mr. Payson J. Treat's The National Land System 1785-1820.

To write the history of the public lands in a middle western Commonwealth like Iowa would be to exhibit in miniature a considerable portion of the history of the public

8 Donaldson's The Public Domain, p. 166.

Printed in Johns Hopkins University Studies, Third Series, No. I.

10 Printed in Johns Hopkins University Studies, Fourth Series, Nos. VII, VIII, IX.