History616

Post Thirteen: Devil's Bargains

2005-12-04T20:00:00.000-08:00

The readings this week demonstrate that the myth of the West is still alive and well and in the case of tourism the myth is being well fed. In Devil's Bargain, Hal K. Rothman provides an interesting look at how tourism has changed and is changing the American West. The fact that tourism allows a self absorptive creation to take hold of the communities that embrace it is a central theme of Rothman. The hope of tourism to bail out poor economies is a warning that Rothman gives us readers. It is a warning that many communities do not often hear. In the post-industrial world there seems to be not much choice for some communities and for some the only choice. Las Vegas being the classic example given of entertainment tourism.

Rothman examines how tourism was established in the late 19th century as railroads are able to transport wealthy Americans across the western continent to locations in Yellowstone without the travelers having to interact with the people and the land they sweep by as they sleep. The three types of tourism - heritage or cultural tourism, recreational tourism, and then entertainment tourism are laid out as evolutionary with the earliest forms the cultural fin de siecle tourism down to the entertainment forms of tourism we see often today. The dangers of tourism are real. Yes they do change the identity of the communities that embrace them. Power and money are transferred to corporations that come in and invest capital where no local money can support developmental tourism of the magnitude seen in Las Vegas or Hawaii. Neonatives arrive and take on the auspices of locals often displacing local peoples' jobs. I have seen this happen in Hawaii. But instead of being upset with the multinational companies who own the tourist industry that can displace local jobs, locals (native Hawaiians) often seem more upset with the Federal Government.

Anger at the Federal Government was the source of an article by Richard White entitled, The Current Weirdness in the West. Richard White shows that this anger at the Federal Government capitalized by the Republican right seems odd given the history of the Federal Government's involvement in supporting western industry, farms and land. But he also points out that the far right capitalizes on this anger at a time when the Regean deficits and end of the Cold War cut back on Federal funds flowing to the region. The media's fascination with Ted Kaczynski the militas, and the Freemen are explained as a lack of understanding about the history of the West. Also are the issues that the federal government does not regulate such as abortion that angers many conservatives. The invented histories of the past seem to be what drives many conservatives according to White. This is a return to the myth of the West that has influenced Western history all along.

Post Twelve: Cadillac Desert = Great History

2005-11-27T11:24:00.000-08:00

This is an exceptional book. I couldn't really find a negative aspect about it to comment on. It has a basic thesis that settling the West had its hazards that are still before us today due to the lack of water. But rather than drumming his thesis into the ground as William Robbins does with the West's economy and capitalism, Marc Reisner manages to weave a series of stories into a narration that many times reads like a novel. The story of John Welsey Powell's expedition down the Colorado was riveting. The mutiny at the rapids encountered on August 27, 1869 was an incredible moment in a dramatic story of the expedition. Some of the men want to quit, but Powell sticks to his guns and shoots the rapids with the rest of his party minus the three "mutineers" who climb out of the canyon. Powell then proceeds to the end of his journey on the Colorado River, an expedition successful in importance as the one by Lewis and Clark. Then with irony Reisner reveals the fate of the three who climb out of the canyon only to be shot by Shivwits Indians.

With Powell's story Reisner was only warming up. The Red Queen chapter was equally as engaging. To learn how Fred Eaton and William Mullholland bambozzled the people of Owen's Valley to surrender their water rights to the City of Los Angeles is a story of the arrogance of power. The tale included a high ranking federal government official, J.P. Lippincott, also involved in the scheme to defraud Owen's Valley, and a flood that created a disaster of historic proportions. Towards the end of the chapter Reisner shows Eaton and Mullholland as old men weeping together - two former friends who become bitter enemies trying somehow to reconcile their personal and professional failures.

Cadillac Desert is a historiography of the West. It exposes the Western myth, further defining it as it was shaped in the late 19 century as "The Rain that follows the Plow" over the objections from John Welsey Powell who knew better. The settlers were also casualties manipulated by first by the Homestead Act, and then by the Reclamation Service that ignored Powell's assertions on how much land was need for homesteading in the arid West. The settlers were also the pawns bought out by the speculators and ignored by the Reclamation Service who were supposed to protect their interests. With all the problems with the lack of water in the West, Reisner concludes: "The West's real crisis is one of inertia, of will, and of myth". (p517) We again are turned to the problem of the Western myth in Western History affecting us even today.

Post Eleven: Roy Baker Paper Build Out

2005-11-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

In my quest to build out on the Roy Baker Inquest Paper, I desire to examine the effects the peacetime army had on Roy Baker, Fort D. A. Russell and Army life in general. I began my research with Ray Swider to examine the logs from Fort D. A. Russell to determine who was on guard duty the night Roy Baker was killed. A search of the Old Army Section of the National Archives resulted in no guard log is listed as a holding there. There were general instructions/orders to the guard issued by the Commanding Officer (Col Mizner) or his Adjutant from the 1878-1883 time frame. But these were not the daily log that would have recorded who was on guard duty the night Roy Baker was killed.

A subsequent trip to the Archives examining general correspondence, revealed a report by the Post Adjutant, First Lieutenant Ruhler to the Commanding Officer Colonel Mizner. The subject of was statisics and other information relative to desertion of enlisted personnel at Fort D. A. Russell. In this four page report the Post Adjutant recorded the number of enlisted who deserted by company during the fiscal years ending on 30 June 1887, 1888, and1889. Basically it shows a high number of enlisted deserters during those years. It also compares the enlistment statistics of those who signed up at the depots with those who enlisted at the post itself. Those who enlisted from the depots had a 27% desertion rate compared with those who enlisted on post that had a 53% desertion rate.

The report provides explanation of the desertions in the geographical location of Fort D. A. Russell. The remote location, the harsh climate forcing men indoors without adequate exercise and the lack of opportunities for activities such as fishing, hunting and swimming compound the enlisted men's dissatisfaction with the fort. It goes further to state that even with a high number of passes and furloughs issued to the men(higher than other posts in the Army) to go to the nearby town of Cheyenne, desertion is still a problem. It concludes with a basic assumption that some men who desert will desert at any location regardless of circumstances and army administrative efforts to contain them. I will bring this copied report to class on Monday to present and give to the archive blog.

Another aspect of my report is to examine any moral efforts to address the "recreational activities" of Army soldiers with prostitution. If it appears that I am going beyond what is reasonable in my build out, I will remain with efforts to address peacetime problems with its soldiers at Fort D. A. Russell.

Post Ten: Indians in Unexpected Places and Becoming Mexican American

2005-11-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

At first I thought we were in for another heavily conceptual perhaps even esoteric text when reading the introduction to Indians in Unexpected Places, but even though the introduction was heavy on the conceptual, it provided the necessary framework in the essays which were well written and fascinating. It was in the introduction that Philip Deloria outlines the concepts of stereotypes, ideology and discourse. With Deloria's explanation of ideology, we can better understand the mindset of White Americans as they perceived Native American Lakota on the eve of Wounded Knee in 1890. The other Indian incidents of White Clay Creek, Paha Canweknayanka, and Lighting Creek demonstrated a changing white concept of Indian violence against pacified Indians. As Philip Deloria stated his emphasis was to avoid representing Indian History as a study of government policies concerning Indians. "Rather than tracking policy changes, I take as my unifying theme, the changes and persistences found in the ideological discursive frames that non-Indians used to generalize their expectations of Indian people." (p12)

Deloria would reassert Wounded Knee as the iconic end to Indian violence as a means of the Lakota nation to wage war. He compares Wounded Knee to Turners thesis of the closing of the frontier as two converging moments in Western History. David R. Lewis, in his article, goes further to show Turner portraying Indians as "a consolidating agent in our history" posing "a common danger". Deloria exposes Wounded Knee for what it was - a massacre. The eighteen Medals of Honor awarded for the two week campaign demonstrates what white ideology can do when allowed to express itself under perceived threats of Indian violence.

In Deloria's second essay, he reveals that Cody's Wild West Show sustained American's view and fascination of Indian violence and pacification. "Every experience within and around the show helped spectators to a visceral understanding of the expectations surrounding the violence and pacification. (p65) The Indians in Cody's Wild West were "not performing, they were reliving a past in which they remain stuck". (p67) Indian participation in the show was one of mobility, a curiosity to see the world as the show toured European as well as U.S. cities for 30 years. Many actors like Luther Standing Bear became actors in unexpected places trying to find a niche in twentieth century modernity.

With Mexican Americans assimilation into white society was not the kind of goal that many Indians embraced. George J. Sanchez paints a picture of Latinos rejecting naturalization as Zeferino Ramirez did in order to retain their ethnicity. Perhaps because their ethnic background embraced a European past and they didn't share a culture still dominated by reservation style pacification as the Indians did. Deloria shows that Wounded Knee changed dramatically Indian response to white culture. They didn't challenge white culture or rather its authority overtly. Deloria might agree with Sanchez that culture is actively contested. The idea of Indians in unexpected places compares to some degree with a desire of some Mexican Americans to remain culturally invisible - not taking on older cultural traditions while embracing those that help them survive.

Post Nine: Print the Legend

2005-11-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

This well written book shows how the 19th century invention of photography was used to tell the story of the American West. It was also used to support a legend and myth created by a nationalist sense of purpose. The expansionist thrust into the newly acquired territories following the Louisiana Purchase and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to include the Mexican American War saw the employment of photography to record historical events. These photographs including the earlier daguerreotypes were primary source documents that were received by 19th century photographers, daguerreotypists and the American public in different ways.

Martha Sandweiss captures how the daguerreotypes were first used. She exposes their technical limitations and their inability to be reproduced. Moreover demonstrates that the public could not effectively view the daguerreotype an effective means to explain the nations expansion into new territories. It took other forms expression to provide narration and explanation that the early photographs could not do by themselves. Only indirectly were the daguerreotypes used to construct paintings arranged in linear sequence to form the panoramas of the American West. Sandweiss tells the engaging story of the many varieties of panoramas that became popular during the day. From John Banvard's panorama of the Mississippi River to John Welsey Jones's pantoscope that depicted Overland travel through the West. Jones's pantoscope, a panorama that employed 1500 daguerreotypes as a basis to sketch Western scenes that provided the basis of the sequenced paintings. Along with the visual scenes were the necessary narration that provided education and entertainment for those viewers attending the "virtual" trip across the country in the comfort of a darkened theater. The message here was clear. The daguerreotype was too small. If it was to be used for public viewing it had to be recreated in the forms of sketches and paintings.

Martha Sandweiss also tells the story of how wetplate photography was progressively used by government topographers and railroad photographers to more directly tell the story of expansion into the American West. Because of the photograph's ability to be reproduced it can be placed into media that can support the message of westward migration of the Americans. Sandwiess does allude to Westward expansion which takes on a different tone during and after the Civil War when this expansion forms a basis in part for the reunion of the country. The description of how Emanuel Leutz's mural Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way and how it is placed in the U.S. Capitol in 1862 is revealing. Note the timing of that imperial statement. It comes at a time when focus on another part of the country (the West) becomes an anticipated focus towards reunion of North and South.

Along with painting the picture of American expansion into the West, Sandweiss shows how the expression of Western expansion through photography dealt with the American Indian as a vanishing race. "If the disappearance of the native peoples was inevitable, Americans bore not real cupability... it was simply natures course, no one was right or wrong." (p273) Even with photography used as a accurate method to portray the physical object such as the American Indian, it could be still used to tell the story of the storyteller - to interpret the photograph to support the myth and legend of the American West.

Post Eight: Women and Gender in the American West

2005-10-30T22:33:00.000-08:00

This book struck me as essential in defining the role of women in the American West. Previous works distort, invent, or plainly omit womens' roles in the history of the West. As the first essay points out, Dee Brown's The Gentle Tamers, needed revision. The four categories of imagined women in the West were stereotypical and unrealistic: the gentle tamers, sunbonnetted helpmates, hellraisers, and badwomen. The idea that women were scare throughout the West (part of the western myth) was also challenged in The Gentle Tamers Revisited, demonstrating that there was no scarcity of women except in certain areas where that scarcity did not last for long. Additionally authors Joan Jensen and Darlis Miller point out that in many areas such as in California, a high rate of single women were present and that the 1862 Homestead Act allowed single women to stake a claim.

By contrast, Antonia Castaneda in her essay, Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History, goes further to point out that Jensen and Miller only focused their work on the contributions of White Anglo Women who supported and augmented white men's attempts to colonize the West. Her essay by far is the most interesting. Castaneda asserts that women of color contributed to history with the context of cultural conflict. This notion of cultural conflict would be explained in Peggy Pascoe's essay as opposite to the classic idea of culture as a static set of values, beliefs and attitudes of a given society. Castaneda also asserts that American feminists such as Jensen and Miller predominately support the Anglo-American view towards women of color. She suggests that it takes third world feminists to tell a more accurate story of Native American, Mexican, Asian, and African American Women in the American West. She also challenges and debunks other stereotypes as well - Indians as sexual savages to captive white women (p83) and resistance to domination by Native Americans and Mexicans (p81). In rewriting Western history, Castaneda's essay is a needed historiographical work that challenges the myths of women of color who lived in the American West. And by challenging the myths and stereotypes of women and color she also challenges those historians who supported those myths all along.

Another essay I liked was Peggy Pascoe's Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: the Case of Interracial Marriage. Here she showed that the miscegenation laws challenged the white colonizers notions of race, gender, and intercultural relations. Also demonstrated was the fact that cultural history is "shifting from a paradigm of seeing culture as a unified system of values and beliefs toward a paradigm as a series of conflicts over meaning played out along such dividing lines such as race, class, and gender". (p61) In other words, what we did know and understand as history, can be redefined and rewritten based on new ways of challenging the basic beliefs and values we thought were once static and unchanging - the beliefs and values that forged the Western Myth.

Post Seven: Colony and Empire

2005-10-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

The big thing that struck me while reading Colony and Empire, was that it stated its main theme - that the West was primarily influenced by capitalistic forces - many times to the point of redundancy. This thematic drum dept beating throughout the book, but especially during the Preface and the first chapter. I believe that economic forces supplied by Eastern and foreign capital were at work to shape industry and the settlement patterns of the West in the latter half of the 19th century. However in Colony and Empire William Robbins seems to overstate the obvious. He also went to lengths to critique other Historian's works especially in the first chapter. While acknowledging those who debunk the Western exceptionalist myth, he puts those on notice who either omit or do not emphasize enough the capitalistic influences in the American West as if this was the supreme issue for Western History to embrace.

Robbins writing style was also more difficult to read especially when compared to last week's reading by Elliot West. Robbins' use of esoteric and conceptual language contrasts to a more simple and direct style of writing found in Elliot West and other writers we've encountered such as Steven Lubet and Patricia Nelson Limerick. I did encounter several incomplete sentences including the one that opened Chapter Four. I'm not a writing expert but I did find the read more difficult than others we've encountered in this course. Perhaps its because the other writers we've encountered were so exceptional that William Robbins stands out more against their writing styles.

William Robbins does depart from this stiff writing style and his use of esoteric language further into his book. During his stories on James Jerome Hill of the Great Northern Railroad and the logging and timber industry in Everett Washington his writing becomes more engaging and easier to read. Within the context of the economic and capitalistic influences in the American West, Robbins puts forth many examples. He asserts that capital investment from Western Europe primarily from Britain fuels the mining industry in the American West. (p 87) He also demonstrates that global prices on raw materials from the West contribute to a boom and bust local economy that often devastates communities. Robbins agrees with Patricia Limerick with respect to the federal government taking land from the Indians as an "act of a victorious aggressor dictating settlements to a subjugated people". (p65) With respect to Mexicans and Mexican Americans, he does make the argument that it was the erection of capital infrastructure that eroded tradition culture on both sides of the U.S. Border citing the mining industry in Sonora and the emerging commercial farm system in the lower Rio Grande Valley. (p36) Many of these assertions and others are backed up by other works referenced in the footnotes. However it would have been more persuasive if he walked us through some of the local historical narratives such as the revolutionary reactions to capitalistic influences in the commercial farms of the lower Rio Grande. He does this in the later chapters of the book using local history narratives of the mining and timber industries of the Northern West for example.

Post Six: The Way to the West

2005-10-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

Elliot West gave me new insight on how interconnected life was in the American West - a new perspective for the American Indian, White migratory settlers, and the ecological balance of nature they encountered while occupying the same space on the Central Plains. The nature of the seasons, such as winter forcing Indians into river valleys (microenvironments) because the grasslands on the open plains would not yield nutritional value to their horses. When these winter lodgings became crowded with other Indians as whites pushed up the same river valleys enroute to other parts of the West, an ecological crisis occurred. During the summer whites with herds of cattle, mules, and their horses decimated the river valleys of grasses and timber making them progressively useless to the Indians over the years between 1840-1860. Here and throughout the book, Elliot West used the relatively new science of ecology to explain a dynamic of interconnectedness that previously was not drawn out for earlier historians.

Along with the White man's culpability into the Indian's demise, Elliot West did a good job in demonstrating that the Indian's tribes migration onto the Central Plains during this time competed for resources (including Bison) and accelerated their own inability to live off the land. Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, Pawnee, Plains Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa fought for resources amongst themselves. I found it revealing that it was their collective peace treaty of 1840 that also led to the Bison's decimation due to an "open season" on all Bison in sight. Even Western Mythology seems to accept blame for white buffalo hunter slaughtering the Buffalo nearly into extinction.

Indian trade would also be a factor I never realized that led to the Indians decline. Classic warfare with Whites and diseases are prominent in literature. However the rush to acquire more goods by accelerating the killing of the Buffalo at the rate of 43 bison to 1 Cheyenne warrior was telling. (The ratio of 6 bison to one Indian was the norm for sustaining life in the tribes.) Then too was the propensity to trade for alcohol and firearms to fight other tribes before buying food for their own people was telling of the economic conditions the Indians chose for themselves. It was a different West that Elliot West was telling, apart from the classic tales and history told in earlier times. I enjoyed it.

Post Five: The Roy Baker Story

2005-10-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

Was this testimony sequential? If seems as if it built on itself with each testimony elaborating to a certain degree on the ones that preceded it. Early on Roy Baker was quoted as being concerned about Privates Wise and Miller so much that he borrowed a pistol to defend himself. Corporal Parkison states that Baker was making threats against Wise and Miller but he seems to be the main accuser here. As the testimony proceeded different witnesses including Kate came forward to testify that Pvts Miller, Wise and Baker made up their differences before Baker was killed. The argument was over a prostitute named Maud. A note of interest many of the Privates returning that evening testified that they went "home" instead of returning to the Fort to ensure they were present at reveille. Was home at Kates? Didn't all Privates reside on Post and in the barracks? Or were there married enlisted of lower rank living out in town?

Corporal Parkison's circumstantial evidence piled up as the testimony is laid out. He had a revolver like the one the coroner exhibited. But was the murder weapon found? Kate the madam of her house/brothel testified that Baker and Parkison left her place at 11:00 on the night of the murder and then Parkison shows up at 1:00 asking for Baker who according to Kate never returned. Others see Corporal Parkison that evening acting suspicious - acting drunk when he wasn't drunk or seen drinking - wearing his hat with the brim pulled over his eyes. Privates Miller and Wise had alibis, but Parkison didn't have any.

It was Corporal Parkison's conspiracy to desert and steal weapons with Privates Baker, Lyons, and McDonald that really shaded the whole event and helped implicate him further. But was he guilty of killing Pvt Baker? And what happened to the other alleged co-conspirators of the desertion plot - McDonald and Lyons? What was the motive for Parkison to kill Baker? Perhaps Baker was going to reveal their plans to desert the Army or perhaps he just wanted out of the deal in which case "the dead tell no tales and death was the penalty for the one who would give it away."

Post Four: Tombstone and the California Gold Rush

2005-10-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

In Response to:

Roaring Camp, The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Johnson
Murder in Tombstone by Steven Lubert

In reading Roaring Camp, Susan Johnson paints this historical world of the California Gold Rush in a vivid and thoroughly researched manner. Her initial story of the Joaquin Murrieta saga and the events that unfolded after Anglo ruffians raped his wife, lynched his half brother Jesus and horsewhipped him were enough to sympathize with Joaquin's reported response to get back at the whites. Newspapers sensationalized his response apparently blaming all bandit attacks on this one Joaquin even though he could not have been at all places during the times that they occurred. These newspaper accounts, particularly from the San Joaquin Republican, were dramaticized to serve larger local political objectives stigmatizing the immigrant Mexican population which had grown during the Gold Rush. Susan Johnson spells out that "the Anglo American opposition took three basic forms; individual incidents of harassment; mining district "laws" that excluded Mexicans and other non-U.S. citizens from particular areas; and a statewide foreign miner's tax charging foreign nationals twenty dollars a month to work the placers". (p31-32 Johnson)

Susan Johnson goes further to persuade us that the Gold Rush "particularly as it occurred in California's Southern Mines, marked a time and place of tremendous contest about color and culture and about wealth and power, and that the relative absence of women, the overwhelming presence of men of many nations and colors and creeds, and the wild fluctuation of local economies ensured that white, American-born, Protestant men who aspired to middle-class status would be anxious about issues of gender, of race and culture, and of class. After all many such (white) men assumed that they collectively, should subdue and rule the newest territorial acquision of the United States." (p51 Johnson) Certainly this anxiety over issues of gender, race, culture, and class by whites are illuminated throughout other parts of her book such as her statement that "in California, 'whiteness' was defined in oppoition to a variety of 'non-white' peoples". (p 71 Johnson)

The Joaquin Murrieta story in Roaring Camp shows an attempt of the Conquest of History by Anglo Americans and also by Mexican American accounts of the same story which idealizes Joaquin. But the concept of the Conquest of History can also be extended to Murder in Tombstone where legendary Wyatt Earp is examined in a different light when the details of his life and trial for murder in Tombstone Arizona are chronicled. It was attorney Thomas Fitch which saves Wyatt Earp from conviction of murdering the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton, otherwise this Western American icon would not have been so brightly celebrated.

Post Three: Exploration of the American West

2005-09-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

In Response to:

Colin Calloway, One Vast Winter Count
Bernard DeVoto, Journals of Lewis and Clark

In reading One Vast Winter Count one gets a full appreciation of the enormous numbers of Native American tribes and their long march out of their pre-historic past and into their first contact with European explorers and then conquerors. The extent of the conqueror in contact with Native Americans in the West was remarkable. From the initial contact of the explorers, invaders as Calloway calls them, like de Vaca and Coronado, to the colonizers like Juan de Onate, Spanish attempts to take over from the Indians control over their land, culture and religion succeeded. The history of the Pueblo peoples was carefully drawn out for the reader and it was easy to sympathize with the Pueblo tribes and how they were brutally dominated and exploited by the Spanish and the Catholic Church in New Mexico.

After reading Calloway, it's easy to see that pre Lewis and Clark history of the West was full of colonial exploitation of the land and many native American peoples who stood in the way of Spanish colonial objectives. There was a regional revolution worth commenting which was the 1680 Pueblo Revolt that last for twelve years. As Calloway states: "Seen from Native American communities, the revolt was a dramatic bid for independence in an ongoing process of resisting foreign domination by responses that ranged from partial accommodation to open rebellion". (p165 Calloway) Calloway's historical work One Vast Winter Count does support Maria Montoya's thinking that the West was a place "with close connections to other imperial sites". In his book Calloway sets the stage for imperial interference in the West after Lewis and Clark.

Benard DeVoto's book Journals of Lewis and Clark was a great read. When comparing the Lewis and Clark expedition to the conquests of the Spanish explorers, Lewis and Clark learned how to explore with panache. The Corps of Discovery's encounters with the Native Americans, while not without tense moments were not the brutal encounters of Coronado, De Sosa and the other Spanish invaders. Notably, it was on multiple occasions, the actions of the Shoshone guide Sacajawea that enable the Lewis and Clark expedition to successfully deal with the different Native American tribes they came in contact with. On her own Sacajawea saves they expedition from disaster from the Nez Pierce. It was an unfortunate encounter with the Blackfoot Indians where Lewis and others in his expedition kill Blackfoot Indians that tarnish the overall good relations Corps of Discovery had with the Native Americans they encountered. If only U.S. and Native American encounters post Lewis and Clark's expedition could have been so idyllic.

Post Two: Frederick Jackson Turner

2005-09-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History is an idealistic work that emphasized the greatness of the American spirit while closing the "first" chapter on the American West due to the frontier no longer being present during the time Turner wrote his thesis. The duality of these elements - the closing of the history of the West while speaking loftily of prospects for Americans seemed optimistic when comparing Turner's contemporary Americans to historical Americans of the past. In commenting on the historic American Turner emphasized: "He knew not where he was going, but he was on his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy, and buoyant." (Chapter XI page 1 Turner) This ebullient American prophesy coupled with other idealistic and sometimes moralistic descriptions of the western past contributed to transform western history into legend and then legend into myth.

William Deverell's article, Fighting Words, The Significance of the American West in the History of the United States, challenges Turner's views. He goes further to assert that study of Western History includes the study of many places and processes. The places he suggest are regional and are varied. He does state "that the remote, heroicized West is itself more representative of national character that any other chronological or regional chapter in the text of popularized American history". (p 187 Deverell) But he does not totally reject Turner's approach as he states: "I am heartened by Professor Chronon's encouragement that the West is studied best when it is studied in light of the broadest concerns and problems of American History". (p 187 Deverell)

Virginia Scharff's article, Claims and Prospects of Western History: A Round Table, strengthens the assertion for a regional and local approach to the history of the West. She introduces John Mack Faragher's revelation of his exposure to the local history of Southern California where he grew up in the Artesia and Redlands areas. Faraher's father migrating from
South Dakota to California after losing his farm during the Depression revealed a personal history that highlighted (from Deverell's article) a regional history of the West that incorporated a process - the process being environmental catastrophe and economic depression. The books Faragher encounters in his youth describes a different West compared to the West Turner left behind for us. This is a West from a non Anglocized point of view. I would like to explore some of these works including Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America by Theadora Kroeber and Ruth Tuck's Not Without a Fist.

Post One: The American West and Legacy of Conquest Reviewed

2005-09-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

The readings definitely put the history of the West in a different light. Both texts we read mentioned Fredrick Jackson Turner's declaration that the American Frontier was the "meeting point between civilization and savagery". However in Patricia Nelson Limerick's introduction in the Legacy of Conquest, the problems Turner left to the history of the West was illuminated. She clearly demonstrated that Turner's thesis of 1893 declared the frontier gone "and with its going has closed the first period of American History". She went on to say this thesis stagnated historical analysis because other proteges did not challenge his thesis (until recently).

With Turner's thesis remaining unchallenged for decades, ideas such as history's views on the American Indian also remained stagnant. It's no suprise now that we have seen Indian self-determination and resistance to the federal government emerge in the later half of the 20th century. Resistance through modern organizations like the American Indian Movement confronted Indian stereotypes that were set in stone when Turner tried to close history's chapter on the American West. Hire and Faragher touched on Indian attrocities such as the Southern Cheyenne massacre and U.S. treaty violations as best perhaps as they could because of the book's broad scope. But to get a better feel from the Indian perspective on these and other attrocities I suggest reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.

Regarding set in stone stereotypes, Patrica Nelson Limerick's book The Legacy of Conquest, showed that George Catlin contributed greatly to the Indian stereotype. Catlin had a great admiration for the Indian as a noble savage but viewed that these noble savages "could not coexist with civilization". (p 182 Limerick) As the author asserts: "many of Catlins assumptions of Native Americans still play a large role in Indian-White relations today" (p185 Limerick) - thanks in large part to Fredrick Jackson Turner. As the Hine and Faragher text quotes Russell Means, "We're still here, and were still resisting, John Wayne did not kill us all." (p543 Hine and Faragher)