Page 16 - 2015_Cabin Days curriculum booklet

Second, it was government that gave white settlers that public land at dirt cheap prices,
land prices that declined as the years went by and as pioneers hollered for cheaper and
cheaper land. This public land giveaway program is one of the largest forms of federal aid in
American history. It's a massive government handout, though we don't usually label it that.
Most of us think the government's land policy was a good thing, but we seldom
acknowledge its social welfare qualities.

Indiana Division, Indiana State Library.
So, when our celebration of pioneers emphasizes their hardy independence, it ignores the
manner in which they demanded, depended on, and prospered from government aid.
Another kind of ambiguity should temper our romantic myths of pioneers. Our pioneer
stories celebrate their successes, collectively and individually, and ignore failure. What we
know of ourselves was equally true of pioneers; some failed, at least some of the time.
A few pioneers succeeded magnificently. William Conner built a grand brick house on the
prairie overlooking White River in 1823. (Conner made much of his money, by the way,
from federal government service, as a kind of pioneer defense contractor.)
But for every Conner there were other pioneers whose lives were not successful, certainly
not in a material sense. A good example is the Lincoln family. The Lincolns left Indiana in
1830, when Abe was 21, worse off than when they arrived in 1816. This was not a frontier
of success for Thomas Lincoln, and his son never forgot that fact.