Unsettling the West: Migration Routes and Homesteading through Oral Histories

Authors

• Sidney Wickham, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

2026

Document Type

Article

Citation

Nebraska Anthropologist (2026)

Anthropology Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Comments

Copyright 2026, Sidney Wickham. Used by permission

Abstract

Westward expansion in the nineteenth-century United States has long been framed through settler-centered historical narratives that emphasize progress and national development. This article employs oral history as an ethnographic method to examine migration routes and homesteading experiences in Nebraska and the broader Midwest, foregrounding how memory, storytelling, and lived experience function as cultural practices. Drawing on interviews with descendants of homesteaders, community members, and museum professionals, alongside diaries, newspapers, and archival materials, this study analyzes how migration was remembered, narrated, and transmitted across generations. Rather than treating overland trails and homesteads as singular pathways of movement, this research situates them as contested cultural landscapes shaped by intercultural encounters, environmental hardship, and uneven power relations. These oral histories reveal shared cultural values surrounding resilience, kinship, land use, and belonging, while also illuminating patterns of adaptation, loss, and survival that complicate dominant narratives of westward expansion. By treating oral histories as ethnographic data rather than supplemental historical sources, this article demonstrates how migration operated not only as a physical movement but as a culturally structured experience that continues to shape regional identity in Nebraska.