“They are not surpassed … by an equal number of citizens of any equal country in the world”: squatter society in the American West

Abstract

ABSTRACT Prior to the passage in 1862 of the Homestead Act, much of the West was settled by squatters—settlers with no legal claim to the land they lived and worked on but who claimed it as their own. They often used democratically elected claims associations to facilitate their expansion into the West, and while they were not directly connected to the U.S. state, also cannot be thought of as completely separate from it. Like filibusters and conspirators, they sought to advance what they perceived as American interests, although they were not officially sanctioned to do so by the federal government.