On April 28, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill sponsored by Moses P. Kinkaid of O’Neill, which allowed homesteaders to claim 640 acres of land in certain parts of western Nebraska where smaller farms were impractical. Most of the new farmers, called Kinkaiders, had higher hopes than they ever had profits. “The Kinkaider Comes and Goes,” the title of a 1930 article by Mari Sandoz, telegraphs the end of the story. Still, the Kinkaid Act brought many people and and some permanent settlement to the Sandhills. And enough stuck around long enough to create a song, later collected by Nebraska folklorist Louise Pound:
THE KINKAIDER’S SONG
You ask what place I like the best
The sand hills, O the old sand hills
The place Kinkaiders make their home
And prairie chickens freely roam
In all Nebraska’s wide domain
Tis the place we long to see again
The sand hills are the very best
She is queen of all the rest
The corn we raise is our delight
The melons too are out of sight
Potatoes grown are extra fine
And can’t be beat in any clime
The peaceful cows in pastures dream
And furnish us with golden cream
So I shall keep my Kinkaid home
And never far away shall roam
Then let us all with hearts sincere
Thank him for what has brought us here
And for the homestead law he made
This noble Moses P. Kinkaid
To read more about visionary and 10-times-elected U.S. Congressman Moses P. Kinkaid click here:
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/museum/teachers/material/nebdata/noted_nebraskans.pdf
To see the brick and sandstone building in O’Neill where Kinkaid practiced law, now part of the Nebraska Historic Buildings Survey, click here:
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/histpres/nebraska/holt.htm
To find out more about the long-term effects of the Kinkaid and other acts, click here for Francis Moul’s, “The Biggest Partner: The Federal Government and Sioux County, Nebraska,” Nebraska History 80 (1999): 150-165.
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/1999-Fed_Gov_Sioux.pdf
