Mapping the Interior: Land Offices, Technology, and Bureaucratic Development in 19th Century America

Abstract

Founded in 1812, the General Land Office (GLO) was the bureaucratic engine of American settler expansion. Beginning in the early 1800s as a loosely affiliated network of land offices, the GLO would develop throughout the 19th century into the primary institution which determined the pattern and process of settlement in the American west. In this dissertation, I argue that the GLO developed this power through a process of bureaucratic consolidation. As the agency consolidated, the GLO utilized technologies of mapping and contract to claim autonomous power. These technologies of land management were bound to the racial and social order of American political development. Political elites created early land offices to establish control over settler populations. Rather than seeking to dominate these distant populations through force, elites used the public provisions of the land office to encourage settlers to recognize the American state. I demonstrate this process using the case of Mississippi Territory, where land offices gave formal recognition to settler property rights, providing economic security for settlers and forming the foundation for the growth of enslavement in the region. As settlement expanded under President Andrew Jackson many of the processes undergirding the structure of early land offices became increasingly untenable under the GLO. In 1836, this would become a crisis for the agency, creating a critical juncture and leading to the first major consolidation of the GLO after Congressional action. However, in passing new legislation, Congress failed to change the fundamental structure of GLO technologies. In 1849, the GLO would consolidate again, becoming part of the newly created Department of Interior. In this new department, the office would seek to exercise autonomous power through its technologies of mapping and contract. Examining the case of Oregon Territory, I show that, collaborating with the Office of Indian Affairs, the GLO would claim the power to map Indian Reservations, despite lacking the formal authority. This project would lay the foundation for allotment, leading to the seizure of Indigenous land and the forced assimilation of Native nations. By the end of the 19th century, the consolidation and autonomy of the GLO had reached their peak. However, with new modes of land management emerging, the outdated technologies of the GLO would struggle to adapt. As a result, the 20th century would lead to the decline of the GLO as a center of bureaucratic power.