Learning Siouxland

What I've learned so far:

1. NW Iowa was the last area of Iowa to be settled. Most of the land was already owned by various "financial interests", so there was very little land that was free to homesteaders.

2. Settlers were commodity farming from the beginning. Subsistence farming has never been normal, and this was planned.

3. Normal homesteads were 160 acres and there was a chronic labor shortage. Policies favored married men because of the labor of the family.

4. Most, if not all, of the "financial interests" behind #1 and #2 were on the East coast.

This sounds a lot like colonialism to me. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that subsistence farming never happened here.