HugginsGMUHIST616

2005-12-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

Posting 13: Tourism in the West

Also see my comments on Dave's blog posting.

My comments on:
Hal K. Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West

Several themes appear to be central to Rothman's book in addition to his central narrative of the three types of tourism: Las Vegas/Nevada as colony; the centrality of Vegas to understanding the West in post-industrial America; tourism as personal consumption--which Las Vegas and entertainment tourism epitomize; and a critique of corporate capitalism (at least in regards to its negative effects on Western communities).

Rothman, particularly with his chapters on Las Vegas, is in the West as colony school. Rothman interprets Las Vegas as "a colony of the rest of the nation, especially of California" (290). "Nevada," he says, "derived its sustenance by trading raw materials – gold, silver, and the possibility of quick freedom in personal or economic terms – for the finished products of American society" (291). Western tourist destinations are not just colonies in economic terms. According to Rothman, they are also colonies because they reshape themselves to fit the cultural ideals of tourists.

It seems that Rothman’s heart is on the Las Vegas story; for Rothman, Las Vegas entertainment tourism epitomizes twentieth-century tourism, all other forms were merely a prelude. But I find it difficult to accept this narrative of entertainment tourism as paramount – maybe in cash/profit but many still prefer the National Parks. Rothman follows the dollars, not hearts. Did it "succeed and envelope" heritage and recreational tourism, or is it a different type of tourism altogether that appeals to people seeking entertainment, not nature and history? But Rothman's description of entertainment tourism as "tourism without deep meaning" seems to be on the mark.

Rothman's real critique seems to be the detrimental effects of corporate capitalism on Western cities and their people. (Though there is also some critique of the way tourists themselves have reshaped the West to suit their cultural needs). He must make entertainment tourism paramount in his narrative, because it is essentially, at least in its post 1980 configuration, the production of corporate capitalism. Though he admires the visionary genius of entrepreneurs like Steve Wynn, Rothman prefers Las Vegas as it was before corporate capitalism. In some ways, he sees Las Vegas under the mob as more of a community than corporate Vegas, with its service economy, glass ceiling for workers, and extracted profits.

2005-11-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

Posting 12: The Federal (Water Project) West and the Urban West

Also see my comments on Jim's blog posting

My comments on:
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
John M. Findlay, “Far Western Cityscapes and American Culture Since 1940”

John M. Findlay states in his essay that "the urban dimension of modern western history has not been accorded the place it merits." Both Findlay and Marc Reisner set out to correct this problem. Reisner adds the dimension of environmental history to the history of the urban West. For Reisner the environmental damage of federal water projects are a direct result of the rise of an urban West where it should not be. Findlay asserts that historians have failed to perceive the American West as an urban region; instead they have interpreted it as a "wild, rural, and pastoral" place. Findlay adopts the Turner thesis of the West, but in his interpretation it is not the rural West that has influenced the culture of the East in the twentieth century, but the urban West. And, like William Robbins, Findlay asserts that the West’s cities are its vital regions.

However, for Reisner, the cities are not the vital regions; the Western rivers are. Man must work with the rivers not against them: the environment is supreme. Reisner focuses on the role of federal water projects in shaping the twentieth-century West. Several themes are evident in his book: Reisner is anti-city ("sanitary slums"); anti-technology (instead of main-stem dams "we could have built more primitive off-stream reservoirs"); runaway federal agencies (the Bureau of Reclamation is bad and the Corps of Engineers is worse); and of course Reisner is similar to Elliott West in his assertion that the environment is supreme. Man cannot rule the environment and must work with it; the environment should be supreme in Western development.

Also, Reisner's interpretation of the West falls under the "West as colony" interpretation. Reisner argues that without the largesse of the federal government the urban West as we know it would never have developed. The urban West was and is wholly dependent on the federal government despite it leaders' reluctance to acknowledge that fact. Reisner, who could not be further from Robbins in his outlook, nevertheless agrees with him that the West was a federal colony. Moreover, Reisner recognizes the positive aspects of federal water projects that Robbins would emphasize--the economy was enriched; jobs were created, flood protection was provided, irrigation stabilized and saved land, rivers were put to productive use, and industry was developed; and he can not ignore the critical role of Grand Coulee's 2,138,000 kilowatts of electricity in winning World War II (but he doesn't spend much space on it). Reisner, though, sees all this as only "productive, creative vandalism."

Reisner, though, in my view is guilty of selective history. Reisner's interpretation of the federal water projects in the West is not the only one that can be made. What Reisner chooses not to emphasize is important. For instance, he chooses to emphasize the corruption involved in hydroelectric power and deemphasizes to the point of almost irrelevancy rural electrification that was a major goal of the New Deal and that moved many rural folk into the twentieth century and allowed them, particularly women, to take advantage of the labor saving devices of the mass production economy. And of course he chooses not to write about the other positive aspects of federal water projects mentioned above; instead he writes about their negative aspects. His choice of emphases almost determines his conclusions; they are preordained.

2005-11-20T20:28:00.000-08:00

Posting 11: Status of the Revision to My Baker Inquest Essay

As I currently envision my rewritten essay, the main revisions will be three: reorganizing the paper, adding more detail and background on Cheyenne society, and incorporating material from the works of turn-of-the-century novel writer Charles King, who served at Fort D.A. Russell and wrote novels about army life in the West based on his own experiences.

The reorganization will involve dividing the essay into two parts based on two of the "stories" from the inquest testimony: the desertion conspiracy story to examine army life and the story of Baker’s last night and murder to examine Cheyenne society. I will deemphasize the reconstruction of the timeline and events of Baker’s last night.

Secondary sources that I will use for this revision include:
1. Oliver Knight, Life and Manners in the Frontier Army
2. Shirley E. Flynn, “Cheyenne’s Harry P. Hynds: Blacksmith, Saloon Keeper, Promoter, Philanthropist” Annals of Wyoming 2001 73(3): 2-11
3. Charles A. Volan, “Hell on Wheels: Community, Respectability, and Violence in Cheyenne Wyoming, 1867-1869” PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004.

In addition to the inquest documents, the primary sources that I will use for this revision include:
1. Charles King’s novels Campaigning with Crook and The Deserter
2. Excerpts from his other novels and writings contained in Knight’s book
3. Material that may be referenced in the Flynn article and available at the Library of Congress

I have all the above in hand except the Flynn article and King’s novel The Deserter. The bound copies of the Annals of Wyoming are in a section of the Library of Congress being inventoried and there is a 3-4 day wait for the items. The Deserter is available from the Library of Congress, but it is stored at Ft. Meade and there is a 3-4 day wait for it.

2005-11-13T22:22:00.000-08:00

Posting 10: Cultural Change and Cultural Conflict in the Twentieth-Century West

Also see my comments on Marty's blog posting.

My comments on:
Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places
George J. Sanchez: Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945
David G. Gutierrez, "Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American West," Western Historical Quarterly (November 1993)
David R. Lewis, "Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the 20th-Century American West," Western Historical Quarterly (November 1993)

Sanchez and Deloria have two different interpretations of the cultural encounters in the twentieth-century West. Deloria sees bi-polar cultural conflict ("Indian and non-Indian people"). But Sanchez sees no such bi-polar cultural conflict; instead he sees a process of adaptation in becoming Mexican American. Guitierez also frames his essay in a bi-polar opposition of cultures ("ethnic conflict"), with Mexican Americans fighting to overturn stereotypes and imposed cultural narratives (though he does give a positive nod to Camarillo's work revealing the diversity of Mexican-American experience) and his essay more akin to Deloria's view than that of Sanchez in that respect. Lewis also addresses Deloria's themes of stereotyped representations of Indian peoples and their importance in myths of white Americans and the refusal of whites to let Indians become modern.

Sanchez's main themes are diversity of experience and agency. Agency is important to Sanchez, as with Castaneda in "Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History" but he does not use the cultural criticism method and he writes without Castaneda’s presentism and her "contest of cultures." According to Sanchez Mexican Americans, particularly those of the second generation, assumed a new ethnic identity. He shows that there were struggles within as well as without the Mexican-American community. Mexican Americans adopted different cultural strategies and there was a diversity of cultural/family experience. They did not define themselves in opposition to the dominant culture, but instead sought ways to integrate into it without denying or losing their Mexican heritage. His emphasis is on the individual agency of Mexican-Americans; government cultural programs and the Church hierarchy were not effective--individual choices were far more important in shaping Mexican-American identity. Also, he explains how this cultural change occurred without social mobility. And the emphasis is on cultural change, not cultural conflict. There is a theme of social justice, but it is far more muted that in Deloria, Castaneda, or Kaminsky.

Deloria's main theme is Native Americans fighting against representations of Indians in American culture that have stereotyped them as primitives prone to violence. The main opposition in Deloria’s book is between the real Indian culture, engaging with modernity, and the mythic Indian culture of white American imagination (their "cultural expectations"), acting as a tool of domination. He shows how Native Americans worked both within and against these cultural expectations, and how Indians who did not conform to cultural expectations, who challenged the narratives, helped to show the fictitious nature of "the stories that insisted on racial difference." But Deloria's themes are presentist because he uses the style/technique of cultural criticism, similar to Amy Kaminsky in "Gender, Race, Raza" and Castaneda. Also he has a theme of desiring to overturn injustice, and Deloria even seems to express resentment that African Americans have been culturally incorporated as Indians have not--Indians have been used as symbol/representations but none of their cultural productions have been incorporated into the mainstream culture.

2005-11-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

Posting 9: The Photographed West

Also see my comments on Dave's blog posting

My comments on:
Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

Sandweiss’s book takes us to another area where the myth of the American West interacted with the reality of the American West: photographs of the West and its people.

The photographs she examines supported the myth (and shaped the reality) of the West. They "shaped popular thinking about the very subjects they portrayed." They helped Americans imagine the West. They were "increasingly influential as a way of creating and shaping national visions of the far West." But, as with Elliott West's idea that fantasies imported from the East changed the West, Sandweiss argues that the combination of image and text also "spun predictive tales" about a West that could only come into being by changing the West as it was. Moreover, the photos themselves also were shaped by the myths of the West: "Indeed Americans' preexisting visions of the West shaped, to some extent, how photographs of the place would be made, marketed, and understood" (3-4). But despite their support of an imagined West, Sandweiss notes that the photographs produced a tension, because the camera showed exactly what was in front of the lens rather than the drama and excitement of novels or romantic paintings. But Americans never gave up their desire for the dramatic, romantic West.

This book is at the border between art history and history, using photographs as primary source documents. "Why, we must always ask, did a photographer make a particular image and who did he hope to influence with it," Sandweiss asks. This is the realm of art history. In the absence of the photographer's answer to this question, can we ever get beyond reasoned judgments about the artist's intent? Photographs, despite their seeming concreteness, are very difficult primary documents to "read." They are much more difficult to interpret than manuscripts – which, as we know, are difficult enough to interpret. But despite the difficulty of interpreting photographs, they do provide illumination of the ways in which Americans imagined the West – they were the shapers of imagination.

Sandweiss’s analysis is best when she examines the photographs in the context of "patron and publisher," marketplace and technology (reading photographs in history). Her reading of images through history as she calls it, her analysis of the photographs outside their publication context – outside their history – seems like a less effective technique of analysis for doing history. As she says they are then mere "artifacts of the past" – the realm of antiquarians, not historians.

Sandweiss, despite these difficulties, does a very good job of using these photos to "look at how American audiences created and sustained the enduring gap between the complex West of history and the West of the imagination."

2005-10-30T20:58:00.000-08:00

Posting 8: The Intercultural (and Deconstructed) West

Also see my comments on Kent's blog posting

My response to:
Mary Ann Irwin and James F. Brooks, eds., Women and Gender in the American West

The unifying themes of the essays in this book are not only women and gender but also intercultural relations.

Peggy Pascoe, in addition to her discussion of race as a social construction, provides a guide to understanding several of the other essays with her discussion of the difference between the two types of cultural history and her dissatisfactions with them. First there is the social historians' Clifford Geertz-type "thick description" that emphasizes community strength, collective consciousness, and active agency. But this type of cultural analysis encapsulates each culture so studied and does not study relations between cultures. Second there is the cultural critical approach: "replacing the old social history project of reclaiming the voices of powerless peoples with a different project – that of critiquing dominant peoples’ depictions of subaltern 'others.'" But by emphasizing shaping forces, it risks de-emphasizing agency. Pascoe believes that to avoid the problems with these approaches historians must be aware of the "tensions between the power of the dominant, on the one hand, and the agency of the oppressed, on the other," choose areas of investigation where multiple cultures are present, and "focus on the problem of recovering the perspectives of the powerless, as well as the powerful."

Antonia Castaneda and Amy Kaminsky certainly use the cultural critical approach in their essays, though Castaneda is concerned with preserving agency. They both see the West as a place of (violent) cultural contest (Castaneda writes of "brutally violent conflicts" and "cultural conflict." Both see the West as a colony and Western history as needing to be decolonized. For Castaneda explaining the West as a place of cultural conflict in “a context of colonization” is the main purpose of her essay. For Kaminsky the main goal is explaining that race is an unstable cultural construction and that gender is a fundamental part of that construction. She wants a comparative intercultural, not multicultural, examination of the West ("deconstructing, reconceptualizing, and reconstructing" the West). Also Castaneda also condemns multicultural history as proposed by Jensen and Miller because it marginalizes "those historically constituted as other" – it only explores Anglo conceptions of women of color. Although both writers offer much for historians to consider in their inquiries into history, both are guilty of presentism – the risk of the cultural critic "historian." History for them is NOW; there is no difference (Castaneda: "It was – and remains"). Their single axis of inquiry is oppression and the goal is justice – historical inquiry is only a vehicle to expose past and present injustice. Kaminsky, in particular, is presentist and her essay borders on an op-ed piece: history is not the main objective, it is a vehicle. In this respect she reminds me of Ian F. Haney Lopez's White By Law.

Susan Lee Johnson is not as easy to place historiographically as Castaneda and Kaminsky. She doesn’t quite seem to be in the cultural critic camp of Castaneda and Kaminsky, but she is poststructuralist and her theme is clear: historians must get beyond the male West and the white West to find the real West. Whiteness obscures race and the focus on men obscures women. Undoubtedly there is a history to recover there that has not been studied, but it raises questions of its own. For Johnson white men are in the way of the real discovery of the West (and post-structuralism can get them out of the way by deconstructing the domination of gender). Although Johnson does not want to completely remove white men, I would like to ask her if it is a valid interpretation to remove white men from a history of which they are so large a part. In other words, does a West devoid of (white men's) institutions and ideologies – Robbins's West – have any meaning?

Lynn M. Hudson, departs from the Kaminsky-Castaneda-Johnson approach, and uses Pascoe's type of historical writing. She is not interested in exposing injustice as a primary project but in examining the past. But she too is "intercultural." She uses cultural awareness to tell and analyze an interesting story about both the powerful and the powerless in the West – a story where several cultures intersected.

2005-10-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Posting 7: Capitalism as the Story of the West

Also see my comments on Dave's blog posting on Robbins

My response to:
William G. Robbins, Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West

Understanding the role of political economy in the history of the West, or any region, is immensely important and Robbins does an outstanding job of explaining the ways that capitalism shaped the course of the West’s politics and economic development. Understanding the West’s role in America’s capitalist economy is indeed "essential to understanding power, influence, and change in the American West..." (7).

Although Robbins's book was clearly envisioned as a corrective to what he considered the failure of the historiography to correctly address the importance of political economy in shaping the West, there is a problem with taking political economy too far as an explanatory device (which I think he does): you can end up with a scientific, neo-Marxian "system" view of history that posits the centrality of a process that is leading in an inevitable direction to an inevitable result (whether that is socialism or capitalism). Political economy is a key component of political culture and capitalism is a form of economic relations. AND THAT IS ALL.

Robbins's comparison of the post-Civil War West and South was off the mark in several respects. He puts forward a view of the New South as lacking in industrial development except for textile mills, but this interpretation does not agree with the New South of Ed Ayers in his book The Promise of the New South. (Robbins references this book once but does not see the New South as Ayers does.) Robbins fails to note the importance of extractive industries and the railroads in the economic transformation of the New South that Ayers emphasizes. Robbins says that one of the factors that made the West unique was labor mobility, but Ayers shows that in regards to the extractive industries this was also a characteristic of the New South's economy. In short, Ayers sees much of the dynamism in the South that Robbins sees as unique to the West. But Robbins's point that the West and South were both dependent regions after the Civil War is a good one.

Robbins analysis of the Western myth, however, is right on the mark. I find myself in agreement with Robbins's point that the essential reason that Canada lacked a rhetoric of dominance and conquest in its movement west was because America was forged in a successful revolution and Canada in counterrevolution. Myth as fable is definitely ingrained in the dominant national mood, and as Robbins says, we as historians need to understand these myths so that they do not inhibit our scholarly work. "Our task is not to celebrate myth but to look beyond it for understanding."

2005-10-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

Posting 6: Environment, Complications, and Connections

Also see my comments on Dave's blog posting.

My response to:
Elliott West, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains

Elliott West's goal in his essays is to make us realize that animals, plants, environment, and perception are as critical to understanding the American West as people, institutions, and politics, the focus of most traditional history. He also shows us how interconnected these elements have been in shaping the course of Western history.

The central themes of West's essays are encapsulated in his statement that "any place has to be understood as a meshing of family, society, history, and natural setting" (165). But West not only shows interconnection; he also considers these elements in new ways: weather as one of the central factors shaping Western history; white and native families as "competing systems of creating and maintaining people"; grasses as a central player in the story of the bison's decline; and westerns and western fantasies as "narrative colonialism."

The story of the decline of the bison is the foremost example of this interconnectedness and thinking in new ways. The Cheyenne come to the plains to pursue the buffalo (affecting the nature of Cheyenne community and families), but then what the westering pioneers and their horses and cattle do affects the grasses, changes in the grasses affect the buffalo, buffalo movement and decline then affects the Cheyenne.

Additionally, West, like several other historians whose books we have studied, contradicts some of the myths of the American West. But he goes beyond just deconstructing a myth when he turns to the myth of Easterners dreams and fantasies of the West. He shows have these fantasies, imposed on the West from outside, have actually shaped the West. "Pioneer narratives have molded the land, shaped social relations, and fed dream-based economies that continue to thrive." Western novels and movies are the preeminent embodiment of these fantasies, and he shows how the western has also "been one of America’s pre-eminent examples of stories as power" (165).

The best part of West's essays, then, is how they show us the complicated relationships between environment, families, animals, institutions, politics, and perception. "The way to the West is to remember the connectedness of life there."

2005-10-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Posting 5: Again, the Real West

Also see my comments on Dan's blog posting

My response to:
Baker case coroner's inquest documents

The Laramie County coroner's inquest into the death of army private Roy Baker, like Lubet's Murder in Tombstone and Johnson's Roaring Camp from last week's reading, gives us a window into the real American West. In this case we get a glimpse into the reality of life in and around Cheyenne, Wyoming and the nearby Fort D.A. Russell in 1890.

Like the myth of the West, there is plenty of violence, but not gunfights in the street at high noon. Instead there is an assassination beside the railroad tracks on a dark, windy night. Instead of dedicated soldiers on patrol for Indians, we read about a scheme to steal revolvers, rob a safe, steal horses and mules, desert to the mountains, and live a life of banditry. Unlike the portrayals of army life in the cavalry movies of John Ford, social life does not revolve around the barracks. Instead it takes place in the saloons and bordellos of Cheyenne. Drinking, scheming, gambling, arguing, and whoring seem to be the main components of off-duty life. Moreover, many of the soldiers also seem to reside at Kate's house when not on duty.

The coroner's inquest testimony also gives us many glimpses of the varied social life of these soldiers and the people of Cheyenne, that reveal a complexity not often seen in the myth. For instance, we read testimony from several African Americans: an officer's cook (Briggs) and two men who played piano at the Cheyenne bordellos (Madison and Marnell). In contrast to the raucous social life of most of the soldiers interviewed, we read of Private Spencer who on the night of the murder was attending a meeting of the Epworth League at the parsonage of the Methodist church. Also, we read in the inquest of a cross-dressing infantry soldier, Private Pence, who told the coroner that at Salt Lake Kate's, "I put on a dress skirt & Maud put her hat on my head-I-played the Girl went up to Wise & asked him to buy the drinks …"

Here, then, we find primary documents (as close as we can get to the "facts") that debunk the myths of the American West. This record of the Laramie coroners inquest, like the journals of Lewis and Clark, the other primary source we have read, shows why historians of the West (at least since the Turnerian influence died), don’t write to the myths of the West: the "facts" do not support it.

2005-10-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Posting 4 (for 3 October class): Dismantling the Myths of the West

Also see my comments on Jim's blog posting for our 3 October class.

My response to:
Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
Steven Lubet, Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp

Both of these books are about dismantling the popular myths of the American West. In Johnson's case, the myth dismantled is that of the independent, white Anglo American moving to California to stake his claim and moving on an unchallenged, almost effortless trajectory to dominate the mine fields and then the state. In Lubet's case, the myth dismantled is that of the "good" lawman and the "bad" outlaw. And in addition to exploding popular myths, Johnson also revises much of the work done by previous historians on the California mining camps of the 1840s and 1850s.

Instead of the easily dominant Anglo miner, Johnson reveals California's Southern mines as an area of contest and anxiety and the Gold Rush as a far more complicated affair than the myths would have it. The Gold Rush in California’s Southern Mines, Johnson explains, "marked a time and place of tremendous contest about maleness and femaleness, about color and culture, and about wealth and power" (51). And far from Anglo Americans being the only persons of significance in the story of the Gold Rish, Johnson shows that the Gold Rush "was among the most multiracial, multiethnic, multinational events" that occurred in the American West. In addition to dismantling popular myths, Johnson revises the work of previous historians in several ways. Applying the tools of women's history and ethnic studies, she foregrounds the lives of those in the Southern Mines who were not male and Anglo to show that, far from being on a dominant trajectory, the experience of Anglo males in the mines was "as historically and culturally contingent … and as limited in their ability to 'explain' the Gold Rush as that of any other group of participants" (52). Also she shows that the Southern mines did not follow the trajectory of industrialization.

Lubet reveals both the Earps and their Cowboy enemies to be far more complicated figures than myth would have it. Wyatt Earp was a lawman but also a politician and a man on the make. And, though they were cattle rustlers and thieves, Ike Clanton, the McLaurys, and several of the other Cowboys were also active in political campaigns, even campaign officials, and were liked by many. And Lubet shows how the gunfight itself was far more complicated than traditional accounts would have it. Foregrounding the trial of Wyatt Earp makes its own point. There was law in the Old West (though perhaps not always justice).

Both these authors, then, like Calloway, show that the American West was a far more complicated place than the myths would have it to be.

2005-09-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-09-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

Posting 2 (for 19 September meeting): Interpretations of the West

Also see my comments on Dave's blog posting for week two.

My response to:
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
Articles from The Western Historical Quarterly
William Deverell, "Fighting Words: The Significance of the American West in the History of the United States"
David Emmons, "Constructed Province: History and the Making of the Last American West"
Scharff, Ronda, Faragher, Guitierrez, Underwood, and Montoya, "Claims and Prospects of Western History: A Roundtable"

The first thing that strikes me about this week's readings is that 100 years after Turner penned his thesis on the significance of the frontier in American history, historians of the West are still trying to refute him. Both Deverell and Emmons set their arguments in opposition to the Tuner thesis. Emmons argues against assigning the settlement process "qualitative values" and applying them selectively, as Turner did in his interpretation. And Deverell opens his essay by noting the popular (and Tunerian) view that the West is representative of the American character. He then goes on to argue against any "single, all powerful conceptual model" that explains the American West or "America by looking at the West." Montoya also places his interpretation of the West in opposition to Turner's thesis. What is it about the Turner thesis that has given it such a long life in the historiography of the West? A contemporaneous thesis in Southern historiography, William Dunning's interpretation of Reconstruction, has long since been overturned by historians of the American South. No Southern historian bothers to, or feels a need to, refute his thesis.

The answer I would put forward to my question is that the long duration of the Turner thesis of the West is a result of the power of myths in the American mind. The myths of the American West are still current in the American mind and Turner's thesis spoke directly to those myths. The myths of Southern history on which Dunning founded his interpretation of Reconstruction were annihilated by the Civil Rights Movement.

I found Emmons' thesis, the West as a region, with sub-regions, made distinctive by its historical experience of the economic and political forces of the East (or North), were well argued and convincing. His comparison with the historical development of the South as a distinct region was insightful, but I disagree with him in regards to when the South became a distinctive region.

Montaya's argument that the West was not exceptional (as Turner argued) but "a region that reflected the broader trends of nineteenth-century imperial and colonial endeavors throughout the rest of the world" is intriguing.

Finally, Gutierrez, though he doesn’t make the direct connection in his essay, points to another area where Western historiography can be compared to Southern historiography of three or four decades ago: breaking the interpretation of the region as monolithic, with only one culture of importance. Gutierrez's arguments against "the legacy of intellectual imperialism" and the associated "hegemonic conceptual unity" that has been prevalent in the historiography of the West seems well founded to me. Although it seems that the work by Western historians in the last decade and a half (the New Western Historians) has begun to break this intellectual imperialism, I believe much still needs to be done (at least in regards to getting the history into the American mind) in regards to the tendency of western history "to flatten or even erase the histories and alternative cultural orientations of peoples who have lived [in the West]."

2005-09-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Posting 1

My thoughts on Hine and Faragher, The American West and Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest.

A major theme of western history for Limerick, though only briefly discussed in Hine and Faragher with relation to the Lewis and Clark expedition, railroad development, and the mining industry, is the importance of federal support to Western development. Limerick also expands this theme to "a phenomenon of dependence" (89) – the opposite of the myth of the independent adventurer of the West.

Another theme of Limerick's that is also an important one in Hine and Faragher's account of the history of the West, particularly their history of Anglo American's struggle with Native Americans, is the "contest for cultural dominance" (Limerick, 27). As it applies to the relations of Native Americans and Anglo Americans, I believe this contest is more appropriately termed "cultural warfare." Although Hine and Faragher do not use this term, the theme of cultural warfare is woven throughout their story of US relations with the Indians. (In particular see 225-226, 375-376, and 465).

A point noted by both Limerick and Hine and Faragher is the different interests of farmers and miners that kept them from forming a long-lasting political union. Perceptively, Limerick notes that was due to the fact that "Western farmers, as property owners and entrepreneurs, were at once in the system and against it" (129).

I have a few problems with Hine and Faragher’s history. Their account of the Revolutionary War in Indian country is poor. It leaves some campaigns out and does not convey a sense of the devastation inflicted on Iroquois, Cherokee, and Shawnee towns. Although it is true that these Indian nations had not been defeated by 1783, the destruction in their homelands was vast, and Hine and Faragher’s summary gives a false since of victory in 1783. (A much better account is given in Colin G. Calloway's The American Revolution in Indian Country.) In fact, as they later relate, the Northwest Indians' greatest victories were actually after 1783 (their defeats of the armies Generals Harmar and St. Clair). But the way the war had been fought in the years 1777 to 1783 pointed the way for Gen. Wayne's decisive victory at Fallen Timbers in 1794. Hine and Faragher should not have broken up their account. The years 1777-1794 were a continuous 20-years war in Indian country.

Also, Hine and Faragher seem to be hostile to ideology, or as they call it "ideological thinking," calling it "propaganda" (200). Their definition is too narrow and borders on cynical. They are clearly not writing, or even interested in, intellectual history. In my own work in Jeffersonian and Jacksonian-era politics, ideologies, or, as they were often termed by the political leaders of the time, "principles," were quite important to their political culture. Ideology is not automatically a tool for "the interests of the established power" as Hine and Faragher claim. It can also be, and often was, a way set of deeply felt political principles. It should not be dismissed so sweepingly as a political trick at the disposal of unscrupulous politicians.

A final, shared theme, though not explicitly stated in Hine and Faragher but clearly present in their history, is well stated by Limerick: "The West was not where we escaped each other, but where we all met."

2005-09-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

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