Frontier Cooking: Homesteaders

The overland emigrants bound for homestead lands were another significant group to travel west, from 1840 to 1860. Shopkeepers, traders, schoolteachers, and small farmers, they moved west to claim free land and settle in growing communities. The early years of settlement on farms differed according to time, location, and settlers’ backgrounds. Emigrants arriving west from the Mississippi often arrived at their destinations with little capital to begin homesteading. Those emigrating from the cities left behind a cash economy to rely on hunting, growing, and bartering. They also had to learn to farm; some were successful, but others abandoned farming for more familiar pursuits in the growing towns and cities. Despite habit and homesickness, the emigrants found that, no matter how hard they tried to replicate the foods of home, differences abounded in the West.