The year is 1871. It's been weeks on the trail since you and your family left Eastern Missouri,

heading west with a caravan of other pioneering families and route to your registered

claims in the new state of Kansas.

Your excitement and exhilaration for this adventure has been considerably tamped down by the days and nights of drudgery and rough sleeping.

And when the wooden spokes on the back wheels snapped, you'd spend dreary days waiting for a repair

to be done, finally sending your wife, three months

pregnant with your new one, and two small children ahead with another family.

Now you're back on the trail, alone, catching up.

But today it rained for hours, and the long slog

through the mud was hard on the mules.

As dusk begins to fall, you spot a single cabin ahead by the trail with a sign scrawled in print general store

several people are in the yard and one of them waves it would be nice to stop and rest

how nice to eat food not cooked on an open fire.

You decide to bring your wagon to a stop.

But this will be the last meal you'll ever eat.

Because you're about to dine with the bloody benders. Hello all. Welcome to another episode of American History hit. I'm Don Wildman. Thanks for

joining us. On May 20th, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which established the conditions

for pioneering settlement of U.S. government surveyed Western lands.

If you qualified, if you were a U.S. citizen or intended citizen who had

never borne arms against the U.S. government, you could apply to lay claim to 160

acres of, say, Kansas, which had become a state a year earlier in 1861, as long

as you agreed to live there for five years as your primary residence.

...