the western blog

2005-12-04T11:51:00.000-08:00

Blog #12 Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West
By Hal K. Rothman

Hal Rothman’s Devil’s Bargains brings our study of the American West into the 20th century. I was intrigued (as always) by the writer’s choice of his title. “The Grand Canyon to Vegas—the Desert History…” “Steamboat Springs, Aspen, and Santa Fe—A Vacationer’s Paradise!” Rothman’s title reveals the sullied side of tourism; everything has its price, and bargaining with the Devil proves no exception. In his opening treatise, Rothman reveals that the tourism industry is like a Pandora’s Box, like an attorney’s opening salvo in the courtroom, the bell that cannot be unrung. Far from the economic boon it hopes to create, in the end communities find themselves more at the mercy of corporate sponsors, rather than the service of sightseers. “When tourism creates sufficient wealth, it becomes too important to be left to the locals…” (Rothman 11) sets the frightening tone while visions of a transformed Las Vegas come to mind.

Devil’s Bargains is initially a captivating account of the startup of the tourism industry from yesteryear. I strolled down memory lane as I recalled sipping hot chocolate from a Fred Harvey cups as I put my feet up in a Fred Harvey Lodge overlooking the Grand Canyon’s southern rim. As an aside to Rothman’s introductory element of tourism, i.e. his description of how Harvey found his travel niche, he relates some components of the 19th century rail travel left uncovered in previous reads.

2005-11-27T15:21:00.000-08:00

Blog #12 Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
By Marc Reisner

“ It is Not What He Said, but How He Said It…”

I will not tire you with Reisner’s voluminous accounts of bureaucratic monopolizing of funding and its resulting history of governmental disasters. As I read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert and navigated through the tale behind the mystery and manipulation of America’s water, I encountered many lines of reasoning that were at once compelling, yet also left me dubious. Nevertheless, it was not the “breathtaking” description of what Alaska’s Rampart Dam, with a statistical sketch of 530 feet by 4,700 feet with a lake covering 4,000 feet, would inflict on its unsuspecting environment that caught my attention. Neither was I daunted by the unprecedented ecological damage hypothetically in store for the ducks in “all of the United States south of the Canadian border. The impending doom awaiting the 12,500 geese, swans, approximately 10,000 brown cranes, eagles, sand hill cranes, osprey, and moose (reportedly thousands and thousands) did not even cross my mind. Nor did I shed a tear for what Providence would portend for the quarter million salmon who swam through Rampart Canyon, much less the already sealed fate of those bearing fur—wolverines, lynx, weasels, martins, muskrat, or mink. In that regard, who cannot be spellbound by Reisner’s accounting of the history of water wells in early West Texas? What mesmerized me the most as my eyes traversed the chapter titles and its pages were his many bons mots, the prose itself, and not solely Marc Reisner’s message.

If you can get past one woman’s painful birth reference, then you are in for an informative, literary treat. I found Cadillac Desert a fascinating treasury replete with multiple accounts that began with a relating of how topography influenced early American settlement patterns, to the intricacies of American geographical politics, to yet more instances of Native American betrayals. Reisner’s choice of words is what makes this behemoth-like tale of western water worth reading. His depictions of aquifers, estuaries, and main-stem dams give them a personality. It is reasonable that in a chronicle of water rights and land management that politics would surely rear its ugly head, and in Reisner’s chapter entitled, “Dominy” the political personalities clearly dominate. To introduce Floyd Dominy, a future calculating, politician and bureau-chair extraordinaire, is a case in point; the use of the word eviction in describing the birthing process is seldom used, yet Reisner pulls it off with aplomb. His description of Hastings, Nebraska, as the Plains border, and thus responsible for the many ills that befell Floyd Dominy explain why he remains the cuss that he becomes make sense. As a descendent of Nebraska homesteaders who struggled on their 160 acres, he also explains well the intricacies and difficulties of life on the Plain. Reisner takes a common story, American settlement, throws in the vagueness and complexities of land management, connects it to the political water fight brought on by William Mulholland, Floyd Dominy, Stuart Udall, and even Jimmy Carter and makes it a fascinating read.

2005-11-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Blog #11Roy Baker Re-done.

I have uncovered a number of things, with a variety of questionable usefulness. I, too, have gone to JSTOR to find some research on 19th century Army life on the western frontier. From “Village Constructions,” the article on Army forts on the Plains, gives some good background information about the installation itself, but also an undated map of the Wyoming territory reveals the general topographic features of the territory, replete with the railroads of the time. Additionally, I have acquired a Fort D.A. Russell map dated 1903 and a topographic map dated 1929. Though somewhat more recent for our purposes, there are some features that do not change, for example, railroads, certain fortifications, and the general direction of Cheyenne. This should help with the “physicality” to which Audrey refers in her blog.
Combing through the files of the Archives, I located Fort D.A. Russell’s record of events for the month of October 1890, a sort of work force snapshot. Though difficult to decipher, one gets a breakdown of soldiers from company to company, to include the two soldiers in civilian confinement from C and F company, namely Parkison and Buzzard and Barrett respectively. From the Library of Congress, I combed through the reporter’s sensational view of the Roy Baker’s murder for the first week of October 1890 and subsequent jailbreak from the Cheyenne Daily Leader. Written chronologically, this newspaper report clearly supports many statements from the coroner’s inquest, adds more character depth, and it puts the chain of events in a more understandable timetable. There is some clarification of viewpoints and trial testimony. What is lacking is more information about Charles Lyon’s role, as the press clearly believed Corporal Parkison the killer. From all of this, I intend to continue with my Roy Baker narrative, using additional historical background about the 19th century Army.

2005-11-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

Post #10 Indians in Unexpected Places by Philip J.Deloria
Becoming Mexican American by George J. Sanchez

“The Lady in the Tin Bonnet”
-Or-
Indian Agency Gets the Last Laugh

Having grown up in the West, I was used to making childhood visits to Old Tombstone, Canyon De Chelly, and even the Mogollon Rim. I had friends who lived in Nogales, and we made frequent sojourns to the border town and beyond. I grew up with Indians in unexpected places, and was therefore, accustomed to seeing Indians in different settings. I, too, tittered over some of Deloria’s subjects; yet, I was not quite prepared for the lady with the tin-topped pate. Deloria’s point of how Indians assimilated themselves easily into modernity is convincing as he presents Indians well beyond the familiar notions of Custer et al., He provides a great deal of evidence that counteracts the prevailing notion that, like the frontier, Indians were relics of the past, relegated to the reservation. His book, Indians in Unexpected Places, is well set in the Petrik genre of chosen tomes: each builds on the other and few without an accumulation of accolades. This Native American photo gallery transcends the anguish of Wounded Knee and the Dawes General Allotment Act, as Red Cloud in Tin, a smiling James Young Deer (Indians never smiled!), and the First Nations People in an overstuffed Ford well represent. Though Indians surpassed their painful past into the 20th century, I cannot help but note how exploitation and racism followed them down that Cherokee trail. Indian sports figures were subject to nearly as much racism that penetrated the Negro Leagues, though their showing did not last nearly as long, neither were they invited to the professional ranks. “The Indian’s heritage is all outdoors…his reflexes are sharp…he takes the game…as it comes to him…given the chance, he has the white man lashed to the post…” (Deloria 121). Delete the one description of heritage, and this early 20th century sketch of sport becomes blurred between the races; it is easy to see that the sportswriter Grantland Rice could be categorizing either the red or the black man. Yet whose agency is at work here? In class last week, we recognized the power of the Polaroid. Unfortunately, Deloria may be right when he notes with dismay that Red Cloud’s personal tie with modernity may remain Clouded in mystery. Nevertheless, Deloria has broken the red color barrier ever so slightly in publishing photographs of Geronimo behind the wheel and the Singer’s place in the new teepee. Despite the occasional chuckle, Chief Bender, Princess Red Wing, and Spotted Eagle all have the last laugh as they shatter the myth portrayed in Layton Huffman’s popular depiction of good Indians in quiet, if not mortal repose.

Becoming Mexican American

George Sanchez’s portrayal of early Mexican culture is statistically sound. There are tables that describe marriage patterns, tables that describe naturalization and tables for male naturalizers; there are figures that illustrate religious demographics, maps that range from the railroad, and charts that map out the minutiae of the Mexican neighborhood all the way down to the Plaza; and his sources cross the border along the intellectual spectrum everywhere. Sanchez begins appropriately enough in the villages and barrios below the border that explain the economic exodus northward in the tumult of the Mexican Revolution. His narrative follows the cultural story of Mexicans as they traversed to the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, giving an idea of Hispanic immigration patterns as they settled or stayed north or south. George Sanchez tells the story of how Mexicans assimilated as well, with the help of those who sought to “Americanize” them into California society with a new twist of Nationalism with a Mexican flavor. This book tells an integral story of the soon to be contemporary West. Sanchez explains immigrant patterns of settlement in southern California that show the slow evolution of the modern West, bringing us into the middle of the 20th century. Though he illustrates brief examples of racism that Hispanics encountered, their clash of cultures is muffled by a wide, cross-generational support system. A Mexican history emerges that is free of similar discomforts encountered by African Americans or even Native Americans. Where Native Americans are relegated to comical images, and their impact on society virtually nonexistent, Mexicans have affected American society culturally, politically, and certainly economically. Sanchez’s Becoming Mexican American provides a good foundation for the second half of 20th century Latino history.

2005-11-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

Post #10 Martha A. Sandweiss

Print the Legend: Photography and the American West
-Or-
A Daguerrotype is Worth a Thousand Words

Through a wide swath of photographic historiography, Martha Sandweiss gives a well-honed chronicle of photography and its impact on western settlement over the past 150 years. She begins her portrait (no pun intended) with the grainy, visual images of albumen prints, to the technically clumsy and still, course daguerreotype photographs, to the multi-titled lithographs that outline the technological advancements of photography along the way. I take notice, however, when Sandweiss does not credit these sources of primary importance, much less as sources, until well into the book. As she points out, using photos as primary documents, nonetheless, come with a Sandweiss disclaimer: some pictures are fragmentary and taken out of those circumstances, do not convey the artist’s original intent, while others taken out of that context, become little more than personal mementos of a singular moment. Yet the author’s point that is more telling is in what medium those pictures made it to the public forum, how the image shifted from “archive to attic, museum or scrapbook,” or to what other medium its artist used, affected its interpretation and ultimately its success as western storyteller. This public interpretation through a particular channel dictated whether the photographer and his art made it to the gallery or were banished to the historical cutting floor.

Through Sandweiss’ sequential history of early American cinematography, it is easy to foretell the daguerreotype’s demise. Clearly, it could not compete with the candlelight vigil of New Orleans, neither could it show the visual or literary tale of the painted panorama. Only when it burst onto the scene, it simply had its visual novelty upon which to rely. The daguerreotype offered such promise, such illustrative acuity, and regrettably possibly too much gritty realism, that it is no wonder it paled in comparison to the panorama. Sandweiss clearly points out that the American public was in no mood for the pragmatism and limitations that these copper plates proffered up. With all of the confines in which early daguerreotypes (and ultimately their subjects) were forced to operate, it is easy to perceive why they were not long for this world. This medium was only meant to break ground into this new domain, and for reasons far out of the photographer’s control, it quickly became obsolete lost in the illustrative wake of sketch artists, painters, and print makers.

In addition to an enlightening history of picture taking, throughout my reading of Sandweiss I encountered agency along every path ridden and traveled, every railroad constructed, every final spike hammered, every view portrayed, every Indian carefully staged and dressed, every canyon climbed, and every ruin landscaped. In words that would have piqued the interest of William G. Robbins, her sentiments echo his when she states that eastern consumers’ tastes dictated the subjects photographed and financed. Even Geronimo near his end may have had a capitalistic point, while history commends his contemporary Crazy Horse for steadfastly making his end achieved. Though pictures romanticized the cowpoke’s life and were essentially “more fiction than prose, more mythical personage than real person,” two prominent examples of western agency come to mind. The chilling portraits of the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton in their final repose only serve to immortalize the victims in spite of the circumstances behind their deaths. Conversely, Mrs. Hilton with her heirlooms by her side and and sprawling livestock (albeit a few mules shy of a 20-mule team) illuminating the western background, insists on declaring that they really have come a long way, despite all the eastern naysayers foretelling the forbidding lives awaiting them on the frontier. Both photographs serve their purpose well and tell the story the subject intended, though absurd and a bit macabre it must appear to the modern viewer.

2005-10-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

Blog #8. Women and Gender in the American West

Women, Gender, and all that Jazz
Once again, an award-winning tome has emerged from our syllabus that is replete with the worst of human nature that is probably making Edmund Spencer turn over repeatedly in his grave as his seven deadly sins surface continually throughout Irwin and Brooks’s collection of Western girls’ tales in Women and Gender in the American West. After reading these essays, it is difficult to understand why western historians would leave this fertile ground of litteratura as virgin territory, as it were. “Western history as taught in the academy had its own long lineage of excluding women…demanding a place for those who had been excluded….” (Jensen and Miller 1). All through these pages, many a tantalizing and titillating tale emerge from the streets of San Francisco, the desert sands of New Mexico, the Utah Salt Flats, and the Provinces of Canada. Why historians would neglect and not give the women their due is beyond me. Beneath the cover of Irwin and Brooks’s many pages is a tangled web woven with many common threads: violence, sex, race, power, money, trade, gold, sex, class, politics, tender legal and otherwise, and then some. The front-cover image of a young Juana Hidalgo innocently gamboling her way through the dirt before her 17th birthday is initially captivating to the reader’s eye. A quick glance through the table of contents entices the history reader to peruse further. Just who were these gentle tamers? At first nod, this innocent moniker may explain why history overlooks women’s stories. Did not sheer guts, shootouts, and a cowboy’s long hard day on the Chisholm Trail win the West? Nevertheless, to ignore the stories of Lazarillo and his brother, the drive and enterprise of Juana, the effect of the Page Law on those immoral Chinese women, and the compassion of an older Comanche squaw is to disregard the makeup of half the population and their effect on American cultivation and chronicle.

Two accounts of womanly bravado stand out in this female account of frontier life pre-Turner. The chronicles of cross-cultural captivity across New Mexico’s fluid and often raided borders reveal a difficult history for women, both Native and Mexican alike. Though the oft-mentioned Juana Hidalgo and Maria Rosa are clearly the exceptions, it is striking that the women and children that were traded in Pueblo Plains trade fairs and that the price of their lives was measured in bridles, coins, and mares. One could only hope to be a Comanche bride and fandango to the Shakedown dance in order to survive the chill and degradation of the age-old practice of captivity.

One of Irwin and Brooks’s best-told tales is the Gilded Age version of Wilbur Mills chasing Fannie Fox through the Tidal Basin. It is those strong animal passions, Chaucer’s last sin, which will be a politician’s downfall every time. Lynn Hudson may claim that it is William Sharon on trial, but it is really race, money, gender, and a robber baron on a spit, that are really in the public view in this Victorian, post-Reconstruction tribunal. On the surface, it may have been Sharon v. Sharon, but in the court of public opinion according to the Chronicle and Bulletin, it was black v. white, men v. women, prostitution v. marriage, and white wealth v. black riches splashed across the pages of the dailies. Such liberties the press took in those days in its portrayals of Victorian mores. Yet this trial was the typical example of Gilded Age excesses. Mary Ann Irwin and James F. Brooks have collaborated on a collection worthy of the telling women’s history. Each of these essays has given women their due; all that we need now is the updated sequel.

2005-10-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

Blog #7 The Way to the West by Elliot West

Mr. West’s Way to the West goes much farther than its geographical direction. West, like many of the books that we have read this semester, has produced an award-winning Western story worthy of our time. The Way to the West narrows its focus along the 98th meridian, the main traveling routes and territorial home grounds of the Cheyenne Indians and their Anglo predecessors and adversaries. What ensues is the interpretation of the age-old clash of cultures through glasses of a different tint of rose.

This tome turns on its head timeless theories from our early historical pedagogy, in which we all grew comfortable knowing that the ever-greedy, Anglo trespasser brought down the Indian and his Great Plains companion, the North American bovid. We have all read notions that Indians could not be trusted, and were violent warriors hell-bent on bringing to justice these white agents and invaders. West makes a strong argument that the Indian, in his, yes greed, but more in his desire for tribal advancement, and to some extent survival, was an active participant in his own downfall. In searching for a variety of possible solutions to the North American Indian demise, the author points to “one intriguing possibility—alcohol.” I do not doubt the veracity to that theory, and coupled with the limited ecosystems upon which they became dependent, West presents some plausible arguments that affirm the ruin of the Cheyenne social order.

West clearly outlines three integral elements to his piece of Western social history, the land, animals, and family and their impact on and across the Plain. In the essay on families, West foreshadows for us what is in store for the student of Western race, class, and gender as he portrays the lives and gives the perspective of the eager and not so eager settler families as they made their own Way to the West. Small portraits of Anglo-Indian race and frontier gender emerge as he gives glimpses into the violence and complexities of frontier family life. Frontier life—be it Anglo or Indian—presented many challenges which West depicts, from the marriageable age of Indian girls to the troubled and violent conditions of Nebraska unions. However, what West does best, is place the West itself in the grand and majestic epoch of time in which it merits. He dissolves Western illusions, pooh-poohs unfounded historical notions, and gives the West the respect it deserves by illustrating the painful truth. It is now easy to comprehend why West has received the accolades that he has.

2005-10-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Blog #6-Roy Baker

Roy, Roy, wherefore art thou, Roy? I’ve got it! It was Maud in the parlor with the whiskey bottle! No, wait! It’s right here! It was that double-crossing, no-good Parkison! Wait! Do not confuse me with the “facts”! I know that Miller and Wise had something to do with it because their names always come up on report! Maybe Kate got tired of turning in too many soldiers! What did the sentry really see? What were Reilly and Stone really up too when they were following Briggs back to the barracks?

The coroner’s inquest into the death of army Private Roy Baker presents an interesting challenge to any preconceived notions that I may have held about life on the lonely, Laramie frontier. I am glad, however, to see that some things about Army life never change. Whether it’s Fort Laramie, Fort Russell, or Fort Courage, there are some things that remain constant: stealing, getting drunk, going awol, hurrying on post in time for reveille, losing your pay on payday (thanks to women, cards, debts, getting drunk and other soldierly past times), barracks life, cavorting, plotting, or just generally raising hell. There are few novelties in Roy Baker’s saga that makes it much different from anything I might see on CSI or Law and Order. There is a host of details that comprises any modern murder from several suspects, money-changing hands, some thievery on the side, and women of questionable character, shady soldiers, and stolen weapons. The distinction is that we are working with a legal document in the form of a coroner’s inquest. The difference is that the coroner presents a documented murder, not a fictive one. The facts surrounding this murder present us with a pretty realistic portrayal of soldiers denying knowing, seeing, arguing, (much less drinking or having any relations with Roy) or any involvement beyond anything squeaky clean with the now deceased party. The inquest reveals real life in the West beyond anything Hollywood has presented.

2005-10-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Blog #5: Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Lee Johnson.
Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp by Steven Lubek

Susan Lee Johnson’s analogy of American writer Francis Bret Harte’s fictive account of westerners down on theirs in the “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” is an appropriate one. Her description of the effect of massive immigration and the descending of too-many masses into four California counties is quite effectual; the literal portrayal accurate enough to commit “there was a commotion in Roaring Camp” to the memory of western lore as much as “Call Me Ishmael” is to New Englander’s. She begins her exhaustive California tale of peaceful living among the Miwoks until in mid-century when Mother Nature has discovered lode turned the Sierras on its head. What is revealing about Johnson’s portrayal is the cultural diversity of which she writes, depicting it as, “among the most multiracial, multiethnic, multinational events… [In addition] demographically male…events that had yet occurred within the boundaries of the United States—sort of a precursor to American society. Her intent is to transcend popular culture myths and tell the story untold, to give Joachim, Rosa, and Fou their due. Though it is a tale of social history which she intends to write, she is quick to point out that it was a “California devoid of society…lacking the social glue that the female influence” lent to the area. With outlines of Bulls, Bears, and Dancing Boys, and the incongruity and irony as one imagines Domestic Life in the Diggings, it is easy to understand the social instability that she narrates. She writes of the culture of competition, not just the life involved of mining labor, but “stories about the conflicts work in the diggings provoked.” Her title, “Mining Gold and Making War” illustrates the conflict, the discord, and the fracas that could be (and was) created by Mother Nature shaking the Yatzi cup and letting the Mikwok, Chilean, Mexican, French, free or fugitive, Anglo and bandit chips fall where they may. It is no wonder in this free state that as one dug, gathered, and swirled, the conflicts of race, gender, and ultimately class were bound to surface. Though surrounding our common misconceptions of happy miners discovering their own mother lodes, the reality was a bust, and a violent and often racist one. From Anglos gaining the upper hand to the imposition of the foreign miners’ tax. Enter into this contentious and xenophobic amalgam the hapless Chinaman who must endure isolation, an unjust levy, and the remnants of abandoned gold placers. However, Johnson tells the last (and lasting) tale by giving Chou Yee and Fou Sin their due when she relates the report in her epilogue of the Return to Gold Mountain. Johnson tells more than just the Gold Rush tale in Roaring Camp. She restores the dignity to Joachim, the Chaw’se, and Chou Yee in California history now memorialized on mural in historic state parks.

From the California gold dust, miners and Poker Flat’s Outcasts constructed a somewhat twisted idea of a social world. Those same misfits converged on Cochise County in the late 1870s to form a community where one did not exist previously. Fueled by the lure of a silver ore’s lode, commoners and cowboys alike set up community in a typical 19th century boomtown. Unlike most boomtowns, Tombstone emerged from the silver dust an “embryo city of canvass, frame, and adobe,” replete with the ubiquitous liquor and gambling saloons for which western towns are known. Tombstone may have differed from other boomtowns by bringing an influence of money that brought what author Steven Lubek calls a “veneer of development.” Hidden beneath the façade of money—hotels, theaters, gambling houses, oyster bars, an opera house, and the piece de resistance, a New York style cigar shop—it appeared that Tombstone was on its way to respectability. Situated only thirty miles from the fluid border of Mexico and approximately 70 miles from the long arm of the law in Pima County, amid the backdrop of vice—whorehouses, gambling establishments, jails, and theaters, it is no wonder that Tombstone proved a haven for rustlers, thieves, con men, and cowboys. It is also to this environs that seemed well suited for the law enforcement talents and silver ore seekers known as the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. Steven Lubek greatly details the most-regaled thirty seconds in gunfight lore. The gunfight at the OK corral is surrounded in western myth that he demystifies by defining each of the roles that the brothers played, along with those of the supporting bit players, be they jilted lovers, cowboys with a grudge, or a public prosecutor hell-bent on avenging his brother’s death. Lubek does a good job of bringing to light stories either long buried in lore or lost in the historian’s archives: the Behan-Josie-Wyatt love tryst and the Mountain Meadows massacre come to mind. He details each character beyond just the principal prosecuted from Holliday’s famous temper and itchy trigger finger to the pro-McLaury sentiment post-gunfight, to the politicians involved in Tombstone’s political affairs. Well-documented is the demise of each character from Holliday’s consumption to Fitch’s dalliance in Hawaiian politics to spurned-lover Mattie Blaylock’s supposed suicide. Lubek has covered his boot tracks well in this wild west tale well told.

2005-09-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Blogger #4: One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark

Collin G. Calloway

I disagree when historians divide history into two Western camps: before Lewis and Clark and after. Though the author himself subscribes to this theory, Calloway's book clearly illustrates that the habits of the foremost inhabitants of this land dispute this thesis. Plainly, there are many winter counts long before Thomas Jefferson inquired into the possibility of Western exploration and its affect on foreign policy. Calloway gently takes the exploreres to task for their ignorance of the excavations and their symbolic representations of Indian societies that they left behind, and those who settled after them disregarded. In a sense, Calloway is one of those historians who see the West for what it is: an arid, sprawling vast land of "grand scenery, national parks replete with roadside markers..." that show the West that most Americans know. Nevertheless, his book goes to great lengths to reveal, "a people whose roots in their homelands stretched back beyond memory," along with the true west of those left behind in the dust of pestilence, pox, pioneers, the Plains, the greed and wrath of Pizarro, not to mention the Spanish scourge of slavery. Long before the militia captains rowed west, the hunter-gatherers, fisher foragers, and the long-gone architechtural genius of the Hohokam and Mogollon tribes awaited them.

Calloway's Native American primer, though overwhelming in details, is rich in character as it covers a vast swath of Indian history. He describes in excrutiating detail an idyllic picture of hunter-gatherers and fishing communities in certain locales that had plenty in which to flourish. Conversely, he points out an equally detailed, albeit dim, picture of the the real scourge of Indian culture: those Indian communities as humans subject to natural human flaws were not without their faults who I believe contributed greatly to their own demise. As the Spanish influence extended its 80-year fury across 5,000 miles in equal direction north and south, Native Americans soon learned that their lifestyle, replete with its rich Indian ritual, was no match for Christianity. Long before Western expansion and the ruin of their buffalo livelihood, Native Americans were forced to choose between the new ways of life that Spain imported or cling to that which was familiar. It was in making that choice that made the mighty Maheo's predictions all-too haunting. Though horses could provide trading power and standing within their Indian communities, succumbing to the lure of human nature's double-edged sword, only heightened and hastened their own downfall. As if Spain had not proved injurious enough, their role as human pathogens only proves that Spain was well-deserving of the routing that Britain later doled out. Finally, when many Indian civilizations had come and gone, only two were left standing to carry on the Native American tradition. The last 19th century Indian was left to transact with Lewis and Clark, sodbusters, and the American cavalry. Though diminished, the 20th century Indian is still subject to the white calendar and customs, while his own vanish, just like the old West.

2005-09-18T05:35:00.000-07:00

Frederick Jackson Turner's Thesis
"The Significance of the American Frontier in American History."
Blog #3

For all of his simple legal wording that disclosed the population of the United States, the Superintendent's mere comment on the closing of the frontier set off a flurry of controversy from historians, environmentalists, presidents, to common graduate students. Taking his cue from the 1890 census, and though his theories spill into the 20th century, Turner set off a flurry of controversy in revealing his short-sided 19th century view that the "frontier" as we knew it then was all but gone. Yet, dear reader, all is not lost. Turner clearly makes other reflections on American history that are unfortunately lost in the hubbub of the closed frontier conjecture.

Turner begins his thesis with the belief that American advancement and development have the the oxymoron of both expansion and recession to thank for the development of their character and institutions. "The peculiarity of American institutions (read democracy) is the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people...from the political conditions of the frontier to the complexity of city life." America was different from its European predecessors. Lacking the constraints that the Fjords, the Pyrenees, or Alps presented, we forged along toward the Appalachians and cut our teeth on the challenges to the Sierras and beyond. Turner points to problems that occur in the settling of a new nation, the forming of this new national character. It is again this "clash of cultures" that not only form the nation but flourish in the West. Having been mastered by the wilderness, the colonist, the pioneer, the adventure-seeker need not concern himself with being civilized. One needed to be hearty and brave and noble of character in order to survive the struggles that expansion brought. One need look no further than Roanoke to understand this. Emerging from his primitive state, the colonist in borrowed buckskin garb need not abandon savagery for civilization in order to survive the demands of western tooth and claw. In short order, adjust to the environment, and leave your footprint in the transformed West itself.
Turner offers little more than a simple shifting narrative of American history. He begins with the determined colonist, sidestepping the pitfalls of the James River, following the Delaware and Ohio Rivers, from the Hudson to the Allegheny, along the tortuous Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, to the Willamette and Mackenzie, when the colonist lights out with Huck bound and determined to cross that civilized line. But civilization intervenes and industrialization takes over: profits in furs, expansion along paddled waterways, development along agrarian fields, flurry of the miners' pick ax and mule, the cacophony bellows the Chinaman's quest. Turner's "history of American society...his theory of social evolution," follows a grim and negative course, a narrative of human nature. The cycle begins with the trader in whose breast a savage heart no longer beats, the rancher whose life is far from pastoral, the farmer/exoduster/immigrant/ in search of his forty acres who exploits his environment at his own expense, to the deafening developing din of manufacturing, mining, and industrialization. In order to survive, the trader has evolved--read developed--along each frontier and adapted his methods to endure an environment that can be unforgiving. Turner's thesis of social history does not quite gel when he states that the frontier is gone. He says so himself when he states that we have closed that first door of American history. As long as man inhabits the planet, as long as Americans still exhibit that rugged determinism that Turner mentions, then people will continue to develop (be it East or West) as we pursue the continuum into that second epoch of American history.

though they may have been bedeviled by Nature's thirst, they hardly gave up or dried up.

2005-09-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

The American West Blog (Blog 1)

In their new interpretation of American history, Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher send the reader on a wilder and more circuitous ride through the American West than Pecos Bill or Widow-Maker ever considered possible. However, there is something peculiar, yet delightfully different, about the Yale professors' interpretive chronicle of both the old and new west: Pecos Bill is hardly mentioned in this 550-page tome of the er, frontier. Instead, The American West gives the perspective of America's past through the eyes of Slue-foot Sue, Hop Sing, Jose Jimenez, Tonto, and Paddy O'Doole. The title is misleading, however, as it contains far more than a simple interpretation of how the West was won. It really becomes a primer for a 400-plus year history for the settlers of the continent from Montezuma up through and including Barry Goldwater and the original California cowboy, the Great Communicator himself. With an interpretation of such sundry points of view that span such a wide swath of time, it is no wonder that these viewpoints clearly show the book's point: that America's saga is presented less as a history of traditional battles, but rather a battle or clash of cultures, if you will.

When the Americans beat the British at the Battles of Yorktown, Saratoga, and Bennington, they believed that they had won the right from King George to all the land and property rights, which included the Pequots, the Seminoles, the Hopis, and all other tribes the Great Plains had to offer. To take what the land had to offer, meant that in doing so, it could be taken for whatever price settlers were willing to pay. The price paid by history's unheard voices is a high one, as Hine and Faragher illustrate quite well throughout their treatise. The authors themselves are quite up front with their thesis. "...we face with wonder the deep contradictions in our history and try to make sense of them"...(ix). They fully intend to articulate the voice of the downtrodden and suppressed utterances that never quite made it to press before.

To illustrate the untold and contradictory view of American history, they include 23 more maps and 233 historic and divergent illustrations taken from rare collections that conventional text books do not show. After viewing Sergeant Frederick Williams's graphic corpse, any proud Sioux warrior could have mused that the only good white man was a dead one. Fresh from an Ohio Confederacy victory, the proud Miami chief Little Turtle hardly appears to bare the stalwart visage of a conquering warrior, but in his place is a common Indian sitting for his high school yearbook photo. Everyone knows that the role of the pioneer woman was an exacting and lonely one, and Hine and Faragher amply state that, "not all ranch women loved 'outdoors work,' but all were accustomed to it." The branding Becker sisters take their role one step farther as they give one poor steer the once over. As one begotten Southwestern schoolmarm suggests, "...dainty didn't do in Arizona..." (315). While Indian history is inextricably entwined with white American history, Hine and Faragher's photos do justice to Indian injustice. I am certain that many a young Indian maiden was raised on tales that are portrayed in Alfred Jacob Miller's watercolor of Snake Girl Swinging. No doubt that she proved quite the inspiration for both Pocahontas and Sacagawea. White man's cruel contradictions and folly are well demonstrated in Frank Leslie's illustration of a wild pigeon shooting gallery on the Iowa Plain. Even as the hunting slaughterers haul out the heavy artillery, they miss many of their targets, still leaving behind a butchery of birds. White settlers show their arrogance toward the Indian way of life as they mow down the buffalo with buckshot aboard the iron horse along the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. The carnage and malevolent white character becomes even clearer atop the mountain of buffalo bones. Mexico's history is a colorful one, but when it collides with American soldiers and settlers, the result is, "an orgy of bloodshed..."(396). Texas Rangers posing with Mexican corpses along the Rio Grande illustrate the price of immigration paid by Mexican refugees. Yet despite all these diverse and damning images in this western photo gallery, I am heartened that the white man emerges victorious as Ronald Reagan shows a western version of Law and Order as Wyatt Earp. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

2005-09-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Legacy of Conquest Blog (Blog 2)

Patricia Nelson has written a legacy of American conquest precisely as her name implies. It is not a light, lilting sonnet, but rather an epic dirge of the American West. Hers is a subtle tale of how western property is stolen, both legally and otherwise, from the dusty past of land offices to the present day court, Supreme or otherwise. Professor Limerick stunned this reader by revealing how the original frontier historian Frederick Turner interpreted the 1890 census: no vast tracts of land remained for American conquest...the frontier is gone...(21). To anyone who has ever been broken down on Interstate 10 in the noon-day sun, the West appears truly infinite. Limerick illustrates many things negative, read realistic, about all things western. Like Hine and Faragher before her, she tells that in the grand western scheme of things, conquest has its price. Though settlers left behind a legacy in pursuit of that conquest, it involved a struggle over language, culture, and religion. To Limerick, all things western included the frequently overlooked: the Latin Americans, the Asians, the African Americans, and the womens. While history alludes to the fact that these cultures may have intersected with Anglo Americans, Limerick declares that their courses collided in their conquest of territory and legend, which by the way, continues to present day. In the author's own words, the American West is a preeminent case study in conquest and its consequences...(28).

Limerick tells of a western mantra that guided settlers both then and now. "A belief in progress has been a driving force in the modern world..."(29). Still, her book is a series of contrasts. Inexperience played many a settler for a fool, be it on the Overland Trail or the Yukon Trail. Westerners learned the hard way that Mother Nature ruled the West with an iron fist despite Yankee ingenuity or American might. Many rounds of boom to bust economies, agrigultural cycles, mineral leaching, timber and animal pilfering, and environmental hazards proved Nature had the upper hand. Western fortunes rose and fell according to Nature's whims. Inspite of the dearth of the labor supply, the abundance of investors, the accessibility of the market, and unswerving economics, Mother Nature still held all of the cards. No industry, according to Limerick proved this so as mining. Her examples of contradictions, mining and farming, define not solely the foundation of the West, but profile American history. Even though many a prospector, cowpoke, farm girl, prostitute, settler, farm family, religious freedom seeker, or environmentalist sought to follow Huck's example and light out for the territory, "Western expansion was just hard work..." according to Limerick. Despite their efforts, if Mother Nature did not take them, then capitalism and industrialism would. Individual gold seekers would succumb to the mining companies, farming communities to large agribusinesses, and the migrant farm workers would have little to show for their struggle. Limerick makes a good point that these 19th century western expansion ills would roll over into the 20th century and would find Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his grave.

Patricia Nelson states that despite humankind's cavalier approach to expansion, be it 19th or 20th century, Mother Nature still will not be fooled or regulated. John Fremont in his quest over nature proved her point well. Yet the law of tooth and claw can be no match for Mother Nature, either. Both man and beast are at the peril of Nature's wrath, be it then or now. Moreover, humanity in its wisdom and pursuit of conquest has gotten us in trouble, be it the devastation of Mount St. Helens, the inferno and earthquake of 1906, the onslaught of water on New Orleans, or the 1930s Oklahoma dustbowl. What began in the 19th century with Western expansion continues to this day as our legacy of conquest has proven that humanity is truly dependent upon the whim of Nature, be it then, now, or in the future, distant or otherwise.

2005-09-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

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