"Coming to a New Eden"

Day 2 of my residency at the Homestead National Monument, I've learned about the 1862 Homestead Act and how it gave people (including women and freed slaves) in 30 states the chance at land ownership, as long as they improved or "proved up" their land by living on it and making it agriculturally sustainable. Of course, this same act that helped those who believed they'd never own land of their own took the land away from Native Americans. For Native Americans, the idea of owning land was anathema to their way of thinking. One was on this earth for a short time; it was impossible to believe that a person could own a piece of land and all of the resources upon it.

I read a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson today that I think sums much of this up: "If man owns the land, the land owns him." For better and for worse, I think.