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A person who seeks to claim land by improving it through agriculture.
This trope came into its own in America with the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160 acres of public land "free" if a homesteader filed a claim and succeeded in making a viable farm of the land.
In fiction, the Determined Homesteader is determined to have a place that he owns in his own right, come hell or high water. And generally, every horrible thing that could happen to a piece of land will during the course of the story. Drought, flooding, fire, locusts, hostile natives, land barons who want all the acreage in the valley, and anything else the writer can throw at the homesteader will not be neglected. But somehow, the Determined Homesteader will hold on. Even if a good-faith offer to buy the land at a fair price comes up, he won't sell, no sir.
Often has an equally resolute wife, as well as several children of both sexes.
Even killing a Determined Homesteader doesn't necessarily end the story, since most of them will leave a Determined Widow. Commonly found in Westerns. Usually part of Settling The Frontier.
Examples:
Comic Books
Film - Animated
- Beans from Rango qualifies as one, refusing to sell her dad's ranch to the mayor.
Film - Live Action
- Joe Starrett, the farmer for whom Shane worked and to whom Shane bonded, and leader of the other homesteaders; "The one real man in this valley," as described by Shane himself.
- The main character in all three versions of 3:10 To Yuma
- Aaron Edwards and his family in The Searchers, as well as his neighbors.
- The townsfolk of Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles, although this being a comedy, their determination wavers a bit.
Literature
- Pa Ingalls of the Little House on the Prairie series.
- The Lermer family in Robert A Heinlein's Farmer In The Sky are Determined Homesteaders In SPACE, as is Lazarus Long in one part of Time Enough For Love.
- Henry Gale, uncle of Dorothy, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Less so in the movie, where the farm is long-established and prosperous enough for full-time hired hands.
- William Thornhill, a deported convict in New South Wales, in The Secret River.
- Hatsue and her husband, Kabuo, in Snow Falling On Cedars.
- The Countess Sandriliene fa Toren in Circle Of Magic shows this side of herself in The Will of the Empress - she is determined to own and take care of her land no matter how the Empress threatens her. But in the end her friends pressure her into giving it up - fortunately it goes into good hands.
- Karl Oskar in The Emigrants.
- Matthew Stark in Cloud Of Sparrows was one of these earlier in life, and almost succeeded before his wife was killed.
- Pretty much all the protagonists of the novel The Octopus, with the antagonists largely being affiliated with the railroad company that still owns half the homesteaders' land.
- The Grapes Of Wrath details the lives of Determined Homesteaders whose Heroic Resolve is threatened when the Dust Bowl obliterates their crops and the modernization of agriculture defiles the Good Old Ways.
- The Pioneers in Dark Life determinedly homestead the sea floor—in jellyfish-shaped houses, no less!
- Deconstructed in the Young Jedi Knights series, where the people of Zekk's homeworld Ennth take this to Too Dumb to Live extremes. Due to orbital oddities of its moon, Ennth goes through cycles of worldwide seismic activity every seven years, whereupon the inhabitants pack up and move to space station refuges, then return when things calm down and rebuild everything. Anyone else would have moved to another planet a long time ago.
- Many examples in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books/stories on the borders of the Pelagirs.
Live-Action TV
- An episode of Sliders played with this; a goon in the employ of a businessman from back East is trying to force out the local farmers. By the end of the episode, the goon's been fired for violating his orders, the businessman is shown to be level-headed and reasonable, and the settlers are preparing to move on to California. They had no problem with selling; they just refused to be forced out.
- Found in Firefly, especially in the episode Heart of Gold, about a once-Companion determined to keep the brothel that she and her girls call home.
Music
- The song "The Little Old Sod Shanty on My Claim" as sung by Marc Williams.
Tabletop Games
- A Determined Homesteader Recycled In Space is one of the many character backgrounds available in Traveller. Ardin Enlisson Helmgard is a sample character on page 91 of the volume Sword Worlds that gives a splendid picture of the archetypical homesteader, as well as the self image of the Sword Worlder people in Traveller.
Video Games
- You play one in the game Frontierville, though this is a Lighter and Softer take where your character can't actually die or be completely dispossessed. By completing various goals, you can add a Determined Homesteader's Spouse and Determined Homesteader's Children.
- Harbormen in Neverwinter Nights 2 are this in spades. No matter how many times West Harbor gets overrun by Githyanki or wrecked by the King of Shadows' minions, they just rebuild (in a swamp!) and dig in deeper. They even have a reputation in-universe for being tenacious and stubborn.
- In Storm of Zehir, West Harbor is besieged by a pair of black dragons. Clearly the town is the Butt Monkey of the Sword Coast.
- One Self-Imposed Challenge for The Sims 2: Seasons makes your sim earn their living purely by gardening and fishing... after buying the biggest empty lot and using up all their starting money. If the player uses expansions after Seasons, the sim can buy a lot so big they literally can't afford furniture/housing at first.
Webcomics
Western Animation
Real Life
- Hoy! Real Life! These guys: http://urbanhomestead.org/
 They are a family devoted unconditionally to their little plot of land, their scrappy-but-lovable farm animals, and living independently even in today's modern world. The catch? THEY'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CITY. On a miniscule 1/10th of an acre in the middle of a bad neighborhood of Pasadena CA, they grow 6,000 pounds of food a year and are completely self-sufficient. Now THEY are some Determined Homesteaders!
- One of the colorful cast of characters in Pennoyer v. Neff, a US Supreme Court case every law student reads in first-year Civil Procedure dealing with the issue of jurisdiction, is the defendant, Marcus Neff. Neff was an illiterate but apparently hardworking pioneer who had claimed a homestead in Oregon...and just before he was about to seal his title to it, went to California to participate in the Gold Rush (hey, there's determined, and then there's "free gold just across the border"). This proved to be an extremely bad move for Neff, because it led to a ridiculous chain of events that simply has to be read to believed...and immortalized him in one of the foundational cases of American law. Strange, that.
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