Posting 3 (for 26 Sept.): Meetings in the West

Also see my comments on Kent's blog posting

My response to:
Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark
Bernard DeVoto, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark

In my mind two themes of the readings stood out most: the West as a place of meetings, or encounters, between tribes, peoples, and civilizations and the dependency of Europeans and white Americans on the Indians as they pushed into the West.

Calloway emphasizes the West as a place of meeting (and cultural conflict) and the expedition of Lewis and Clark is a story of meetings. Calloway describes the Spanish movement north and early encounters with Pueblos and Apaches; Comanche movement that brought them into encounters with other Indians and the Spanish; the French movement into the Great Lakes region that brought them into contact with Hurons and other Great Lakes tribes; the French movement down (and up) the Mississippi; and the movement of Indians like the Sioux from east of the Missouri to west of the Missouri and its impact. Calloway thus shows that Turner was not wrong to emphasize movement in his interpretation of the West; there was far more movement, in many more directions, though, than Turner acknowledged. And the impact of these movements was not just West to East (or pioneer to American character), but an exchange between numerous peoples.

And of course the story of Lewis and Clark's journals during their expedition is a story of movement into the West and encounters with Western peoples. But Calloway shows that Lewis and Clark's expedition was not the beginning of the American West or even the first journey into the West--it was one of many and occurred very late in the history of the American West.

The other theme shared by both books is the dependency of Europeans on Indians (something absent from Turner). Throughout Lewis and Clark's journey their dependency on the Indians is apparent-- for horses, for food (at times), for good will, and for geographic guidance. And Calloway shows that even as the Spanish attempted the conquest of New Mexico, Texas, and California, they depended on independent Indian nations as allies and trading partners and on subject Indians as servants, laborers, and slaves. Furthermore, Calloway explains the French imperial system in North America with its reliance on traders' and trappers' marriages into friendly Indian nations and its dependence on Indian trading networks. And the French were perhaps even more heavily dependent on their alliances with Indian peoples to defend their North American empire.

In sum, these two books show that the West before 1804 was a far more complicated place, with a far longer history than popular myths would have it. Lewis and Clark did not venture into a new West but an old West of which white Americans would become a part.