![2012 logo](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/2012-title-graphic-NEW.jpg)
In 1862, Congress passed four landmark pieces of legislation: the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the act to establish the U.S. Department of Agriculture; it was also the year of the fateful Dakota Conflict. These acts and events funda-mentally shaped the Great Plains as well as the nation.
Videos of our featured speaker's presentations are below.
![Donald Worster](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/Worster%20copy.jpg)
An Unquenchable Thirst:
How the Great Plains Created a Water Abundance and then Lost It
Donald Worster
University of Kansas
Co-sponsored by the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues
![Elliott West](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/West_Elliott.jpg)
![Martin Jischke](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/Jischke3652.jpg)
The Morrill Land Grant Act:
Investing in America's Future
Martin Jischke
Purdue University
![Richard White](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/RichardWhite.jpg)
Too Early? Too Many? Too Bad?: Railroads and American Settlement on the Great Plains
Richard White
Stanford University
![David Von Drehle](von-drehle.jpg)
So Many Important Questions: The 37th Congress and the New America
David Von Drehle
Time Magazine
![William Thomas III](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/Thomas%20photo.jpg)
Railroads, Art, and the Making of Modern America
William Thomas, III
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
![Myron Gutmann](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/MGutmann.jpg)
Do People Matter? Population, Farming, and Environmental Change in the Settlement of the Plains
Myron Gutmann
University of Michigan
![Sarah Carter](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/SarahCarter_0.jpg)
Erasing and Replacing: Prairie First Nations and the Homestead Order
Sarah Carter
University of Alberta
![Daniel Wildcat](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/daniel%20wildcat.jpg)
The Coming Tribal Reclamation of the Great Plains
Daniel Wildcat
Haskell Indian Nations University
![David Wishart](CGPS_images/seminars/1862/DWishart.jpg)
The Dispossession of the Eastern Nebraska Indians, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Cultural Genocide
David Wishart
University of Nebraska-Lincoln