The Promised Land: Settling in the New World
Almost everyone who moved to North America from the time of Columbus until years after the Second World War, and in many cases even now, only came because they believed the situation in their home country was worse. Tens of thousands of posters in Europe and in European newspapers promised opportunity and free land, with pictures of wheat fields and apple orchards, mountains and waterfalls in a New under populated, almost uninhabited Land – without ever mentioning the fact the land already belonged and was being stolen from indigenous peoples whose populations according to some estimates had been reduced 95% by the introduction of germs or disease the Europeans brought. While it is likely the disease was for the most part brought by accident, there are recorded instances where the native peoples were deliberately given smallpox contaminated blankets.
Nevertheless, in spite of being invaders, essentially liberating the land from the natives who already lived there, the situation for the most of the new arrivals was rarely ever great. The Free Land or Promised Land was not as it was made out to be. Most immigrants did not know how to hunt or farm even if they wanted to. In the cities life was hard. There were so many poor children with or without parents orphan trains took or abducted unparented and even parented children from the cities to the West where if they were lucky they might be adopted, or if unlucky, become unpaid labor slaves. Two hundred thousand children from 1854 to 1929 were relocated in this manner.
No one in my family was personally subjected to these trains, however I mention them because the very existence of such Orphan Trains indicates the hardship of the times.
