Audrey's Takes on the Texts

BLOG # 14: Devil's Bargains

2005-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

WRAPPING IT ALL UP

It looks like another Blog Flog may be brewing. While I agree that Devil’s Bargains was often disorganized, wordy, repetitive, annoying, and frustrating (see especially Jim and Ray), I found many of Rothman’s ideas fascinating. His tourist differentiations (see Dave for a good synopsis) were probably apt; I think our class would most resemble fin de siecle hegemonic tourists. High-end travel companies are catering more and more to just this type of educated traveler who (ostensibly) seeks knowledge and understanding instead of “mere” experience, recreation, and padding a travel resume. Surprisingly, Rothman feels such educated people can feel “unique or at least part of a rare breed, intellectually and morally above other tourists. This conceit is common among elites—academic and environmentalists among them—who believe they are more knowledgeable than others” (p. 14). Ouch. (Rothman is negative a LOT--that usually sends up a little red flag to me. And I agree with Dan that Rothman makes far too many generalizations about tourists.)

Which do people want more, skiing in Aspen or Aspen’s chic cachet? Do people most want to ride a horse at a dude ranch or get back home and tell everybody? Is bagging a travel trophy to a status place its greatest travel incentive? Can we really know our OWN travel motives, much less those of others? People travel for many reasons, and Rothman explores them philosophically and psychologically. What travel does to/for a person and what a person WANTS travel to do to/for him are just as important to him as detailing what tourism DID to places like Santa Fe, Aspen, and Jackson Hole. It appears from blogs that most of us have visited many of his examined places; we are aware that tourism changes places and people, often to their detriment. This is old news. But to discount Rothman merely because his thesis seems self-evident and simplistic might block our reception to some less obvious but interesting ideas.

Western myth vs. reality has been a frequent topic in our class. Now we are going a step further: the myth of the myth--replicas of reality, constructed realities, a “manufactured authenticity” (p. 118). Resort locals are actors in the play. Even more surreal, they don’t even KNOW they are acting. Jim cited Rothman’s seemingly ridiculous statement that “outdoor experience, camping, fishing, skiing, and the like, offered real and unavoidable contact with nature” (p. 169). Rothman may be saying (tongue-in-cheek) that some tourists want to add those activities to their self-enhancing repertoire but don’t really WANT the accompanying bugs, cold, etc.; they want the Experience, not the experience. In addition, Rothman may be saying that “merely” BEING in a place as tourist does not really TAKE us there. (This reminds me of a philosophical dialogue about Reality between Jim and me when we blogged Print the Legend.) Are tourists really “seeing the West” when they are driving 65 MPH on an Interstate? What IS the West? (Remember our first class!) Or was there ONCE a West, but marketing its myth destroyed it?

Rothman’s asserts that many tourists actually prefer the inauthentic and no longer understand why the authentic deserves greater significance. How could tourists have come to prefer fake to real, to believe that “caverns similar to those at Carlsbad could be experienced in an IMAX theater from a better perspective at less expense in a shorter time” (p. 339)? Image has become everything—even more important than its real counterpart. The “ethos” of Las Vegas (an odd choice of words since it sounds so like “ethics”) allowed that the city could “transform itself to fit people’s desires on demand” (p. 341); as in Disneyland and theme parks, there was “packaged unreality” (p. 25).

Rothman frowns on change, but maybe the wisest person is the one who agrees with Heraclitus (“all is flux, nothing stays still”), expects change, and can adapt (see Ray). It is easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia. Would the ski towns we enjoy really be “better” if they had remained deteriorating mining towns? Who should judge what is good or bad in a place? Does a place have a “soul,” and what destroys it? What MAKES place? I highly recommend Robert R. Archibald’s A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community, a text I loved in Dr. Pitcaithley’s “Historic Preservation” class. Dr. Pitcaithley—who is mentioned in Rothman’s Acknowledgments--recently retired as chief historian of the National Park Service. He once lived in or near Santa Fe. I would love to hear him comment on Rothman’s negative takes on his former town.

Well, noble history cohorts, friends, and armchair travelers to the West, I have truly enjoyed the ride with you. This has been a great group, and I hope I will see you all again, whether in class or life…..or could the two be one?

ADDENDUM. My best friend Nancy lives in the Colorado Rockies and just read my blog. She sent me this song from a singer-songwriter we both like, Greg Brown. Nancy wrote: "When we attended his concert in Aspen a couple of years ago, he introduced it rather pointedly and sang with great relish."

"Boomtown"

Here come the artists with their intense faces,
with their need for money and quiet spaces.
They leave New York, they leave L.A..
Here they are - who knows how long they'll stay -

[chorus:]
It's a Boomtown
got another Boomtown
and it'll boom
just as long as boom has room.

Here come the tourists with their blank stares,
with their fanny packs - they are penny millionaires.
Something interesting happened here long time ago.
Now where people used to live their lives the restless
come and go.

[repeat chorus]

Nice to meet you, nice to see you
in a sheepskin coat made in Korea.
Welcome to the new age, the new century.
Welcome to a town with no real reason to be.

[repeat chorus]

The rich build sensitive houses and pass their staff around.
For the rest of us, it's trailers on the outskirts of town.
We carry them their coffee, wash their shiny cars,
hear all about how lucky we are
to be living in a ...

[repeat chorus]

The guy from California moves in and relaxes.
The natives have to move - they cannot pay the taxes.
Santa Fe has had it. Sedona has, too.
Maybe you'll be lucky - maybe your town will be the new...

[repeat chorus]

BLOG # 13: Cadillac Desert

2005-11-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

I have commented on the blogs of RICK , DAN , JIM , BEN , RAY , JOHN , and DAVE . (Oh, heck, maybe I should just go ahead and comment on EVERYONE'S, for Pete's Sake!)

We have talked a lot this semester about the concept of agency. After thinking long and hard about this disconcerting book, I have decided that the thing that is upsetting me the most is the helpless feeling that the environment and I have had so little agency in the decisions that changed rivers forever, wasted taxpayer dollars, took away crucial wetlands and salmon breeding grounds, and created future nightmares with silt, salt, and water scarcity. Many of the people who have innocently (or naively) moved west to its sunny “Paradise” had agency, yes—but acted under the influence of misinformation and subterfuge.

The glib promises that there will always be plenty of water out West remind me of the promises of the transcontinental railroad to the future farmers who moved to the “Edenlike” Midwest. Our course has busted many myths this semester, but now I find the most frightening one busted: score after score of leaders, politicians, and government bureaucrats have sold out, pushed through detrimental public works, and hidden unpleasant truths. Land that should never have become cities has water expensively shipped in, and more people come; desert which was never meant to grow more than scrub grass is expensively irrigated, while lush Southern farms are paid NOT to grow things. The situation is like a house of cards, or a line of dominoes; but as we learned in The Way to the West, the environment will eventually have the last word.

The analogy that hit me the hardest is the statement that a dam will be there for centuries, like the pyramids--even if the water disappears. If the water doesn’t disappear, the dam will turn into a high waterfall. For some reason, that prognosis especially seemed bleak and depressing—mirroring the highlighted (opposite title page) English romantic poet Shelley's 1817 poem about Ozymandias's (Ramses II's) overweening pride and the foolishness of building monuments to oneself. That was one of the first poems I studied when I was learning what adult poetry was all about, and its concluding, haunting lines “round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away” have never found such apt comparison. At the exact halfway point of the book (p. 258), Reisner misspells damns for dams. Whether Freudian slip, purposeful pun, or accidental typo, it captures—in a black comedic way-- the essence of the book.

Although Cadillac Desert is more environmental expose than traditional history, the vignettes of leaders and politicians are extremely interesting to me as a history student. John Wesley Powell, Jedediah Smith, and Floyd Dominy are among the most fascinating and finely delineated. In addition, it is enlightening (and depressing) to see former leaders and politicians whom I had thought of as intelligent and foresighted so easily copping out on pushing through useless or wrong-headed water projects.

I have not had time to research Reisner and his sources, or the credibility of his evidence and conclusions. He obviously holds a personal antipathy to dam-obsessed engineers, politicians who are all too happy to dine at the pork barrel, and the agricultural giants who get water cheaply and at the same time deny it to those small farmers reclamation originally intended to help. In Dr. Schrag’s “Technology and American Identity,” we spent a lot of time on the electrification of America, and the changes it wrought. We cannot completely discount all attempts to harness power as misguided (Reisner does concede that dams in the Northwest and the hydroelectric power they generated helped win WWII).

I cannot remember when a book has so entranced and enraged me at the same time.

BLOG # 12: Progress on Roy Baker Research, etc.

2005-11-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

(P.S. I have just written a comment and plaintive plea
to Dr. P. on RAY'S BLOG .)

First, progress on the Roy Baker Research Project. I e-mailed everybody 17 pages (Word document) of cut-and-pasted research found on the best fifteen websites from the first 20 pages of Google entries for Ft. Russell. I will also post a more user-friendly synopsis of the document on our new Roy Baker Archives blog. My main goal is to give a construct of “physicality” and general historical background so we can add more concrete descriptions of Ft. Russell in our papers as we do the build-out. In other words, the generalities and vague adjectives we may have used in paper # 1 can be replaced by more concrete evidence and description. Although Ft. Russell is not the crux of our paper--and I don’t want to imply it is, or suggest writing too much about the Post-- it’s still important to know more about it as we build out our papers. More general knowledge about Ft. Russell is basically a secondary construct that we can utilize to deepen and ground our papers in the build-out.

My major problem/worry is that so many of the sites are not of our usual academic historical calibre: many are descriptions of the history of the Post put out by military newcomer guides, magazines, military information services, etc. Obviously, the reliability of online information like this is harder to judge than in a book by a known historian with bibliography. Sometimes on what seems the best of the Fort Russell general history websites, it can be difficult to fathom the author at all. Since most of us only need a rudimentary outline of history and background for the Post to build out our papers, looking at a dozen of so of the better sites will probably give an adequate overview, with information outside a common denominator most suspect for possible error (most of the sites I am citing seem generally consistent in their information and probably accurate. As Dr. P. said, the military kept good records, and many of the better Ft. Russell history sites I'm citing are put out by military publications staff who had access to these records.)

Now for the more important part of my research. Dr. Petrik suggested that I do research on prostitutes in the West, especially (hopefully) those in Cheyenne. At first, I groaned, thinking that would add more to my workload; in later reflective contemplation, I decided researching this topic might be more important than digging into general info on Ft. Russell--especially since so many guys in class want to concentrate on military research. Ancestry.com has turned up just about nothing so far; I'm starting to wonder if prostitutes preferred to use assumed names.

I have ordered two books from Amazon: Anne Butler’s Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery (which Dr. P. mentioned last week) and Ann Seagraves’s Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West. I plan to compose a detailed “essay” or a compilation of ideas and evidence that could be used in connection with our Roy Baker papers. From the description on Amazon, it looks like the Butler book actually mentions Cheyenne, so I’m hoping something specific may arise. I look forward to sharing my findings with you, but they may be some of the last research submissions, depending on shipping speed (Thanksgiving intervenes) and my reading velocity. I’m madly reading the long Cadillac Desert every chance I get so I can shift gears and devote all my time to the Butler and Seagraves books when they arrive.

P.S. re Cadillac Desert… I was only halfway joking when I said in my presentation last week that I felt like cutting class so I wouldn't have to put down this book. Not only it is a page-turner from its subject, style, and fascinating (and often shocking) historical anecdotes, but the significance of Reisner’s thesis regarding the water-depleted and abused environmental future of much of the U.S. (and, through the web-of-life principle, us all) cannot be overemphasized. It has been a long time since I’ve been so disturbed by a book. As I’ve told you in a previous blog, I have been a naturalist docent in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania (with accompanying training in environmental science and the principles of ecology), so I’m particularly interested in these kinds of examinations. As soon as I finish Reisner’s book, I plan to read some other sources and reviews to see to what extent (if any) he may have exaggerated problems, or been scientifically off-base. I’m almost hoping that he has overstated his argument, because it's very scary in its implications.

Comments on My Cohorts' Blogs: Deloria/Sanchez

2005-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

This week, I commented on RAY'S blog, with a reference to JOHN'S blog included within.

BLOG # 11: Indians in Unexpected Places

2005-11-13T20:03:00.000-08:00

Philip Deloria must have listened to his history professors when they reminded him to have a central argument and thesis. His biggest shortcoming may well be excessive repetition of the word expectation. No one can mistake that he is going to look at and question white cultural expectations about Indians and discover how much of what whites have called anomaly is more accurately a typical human engagement in modernity and change. He is going to trace changes in expectation over time and share “a secret history of the unexpected” (p. 14). He is going to introduce us to Indians in places we never knew they were and help us overturn myth, stereotype, and assumption about expected Indian cultural behavior.

In the process, we will meet people, events, and works we have never heard of. Although we have looked at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in other texts, I continue to find it a fascinating phenomenon. Ironically, when Cody tried to move into film, he flopped because of the very authenticity he had successfully promoted in the live shows; audiences wanted a dramatic narrative and a good story line in the new medium of film. The surprise here was that Cody had done a movie at all; and that from 1910 to 1913, over one hundred films about Indians appeared each year (p. 74)—some, surprisingly, about cross-race romance, Indians going off to Harvard, etc. This was the narrow time window of opportunity that Deloria concentrated on in his book: the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the public was more receptive to a more complex look at the Indian’s place in culture and society—before the audience demanded the clichés of the whooping savage Indians surrounding the wagon trains. It was amazing to me that James Young Deer and Princess Red Wing could be Indians AND in charge of making films, even if for only a short time (see, I harbored expectations!). Their challenges to white’s familiar expectations unfortunately marginalized them and the studio system finished them off professionally.

Another subject I found interesting was the Indian boarding school system; other than reading about Carlisle Indian School in previous texts, I had not realized there was a general educational system like this. It seemed amazing that Carlisle could actually beat Harvard in 1907 and I had never heard about it. As a woman who seldom watches football or baseball, I appreciated Deloria’s observation of how “the unifying power of spectator sports offered a sense of community” (p. 118). I don’t think I had ever really considered watching sports en masse a potentially equalizing experience.

Although it seems logical and understandable that Indians could make particularly good use of automobiles on the wide plains and that they would enjoy mobility and freedom like any other human being, the pairing of an Indian with such a piece of technology seemed like an anomaly to most whites. They both criticized Indians for not being modern, then they criticized them for “squandering” their money on modern automobiles; Indians couldn’t win white approval either way. Expectation cut two ways, both of them unfair. The introduction of the automobile was a parallel to the introduction of the horse: Indians took to both immediately—in other words, adapted transportation “technology” to their needs (a very “modern” thing to do).

Probably the most fascinating chapter to me was the one on music. I consider myself knowledgeable on classical music, yet I have never heard of Cadman or Farwell, and I didn’t know there were Indian operas. Alice Fletcher’s admittance that she initially found Indian music “so much distressing noise” made me think of similar comments I have heard when eating in restaurants in the Far East. Native American music—and much music of countries outside the European/American musical tradition—can sound atonal, unmelodious, primitive, and chaotic to the unaccustomed or uneducated ear. Fletcher and Fillmore failed to understand the structure of Omaha melody, and the two wrongly introduced harmony into their transcriptions, which negated its accurate representation. It is a lesson to all those who expect certain things AND expect their way to be the “right” or only way. Do any of you remember the night Dan brought up the relatively unknown film "Songcatcher" and I agreed with him that it was an under-acclaimed gem? That movie reminded me very much of Deloria’s chapter on music and the difficulty in “transcribing” unusual music of the people, most often vocal, to the masses, with concomitant appreciation and understanding. (The one familiar composer mentioned by Deloria was Dvorak. Those of you who listen to FM103.5 know that Washington listeners perennially vote his “New World Symphony” in the top five of their favorites. Yet here was a non-American composer writing music that supposedly defined America, whereas music composed by a Native American could never be expected to do such a thing!)

If I might use a Giffordian analogy, I am NOT going to tip my cards tonight to show what I think of our second text, Becoming Mexican American. Since this blog is over 850 words already (groan, zzzzzz), I will delay any such revelations until I present tomorrow night. Hopefully I will follow in the unexpectedly vociferous Kent’s capable footsteps as Part Two of “Revenge of the Quiet People” possibly unfolds (but I’m not making any promises...)

Comments on My Cohorts' Blogs: Print the Legend

2005-11-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

I have commented on the blogs of DAN , STEVE , JIM , and RAY (Ray's site is accessible by this revised blog link, NOT by the original class blog list).

P.S. Interesting to see the value of daguerreotypes in the marketplace today; check out this one on eBay. Notice the tiny size---no wonder these type of photos didn't take off in the marketplace (aside from being hard to reproduce). And here is an example of a contemporary artistic photographer who purposefully chose the technique of daguerreotypes for his portraits. Don't they have an interesting otherworldly quality? I find some of the older photos in our book similarly endowed with an almost metallic-like mysterious quality.

BLOG # 10: Print the Legend

2005-11-06T20:08:00.000-08:00

I can only compare the subject of our text this week with a book choice in Dr. Censer’s summer 2002 French Revolution class. His “controversial” text was Rebecca Spang’s The Invention of the Restaurant. If I remember correctly, I was the greatest (and possibly only) supporter of this odd selection that was, admittedly, tangential to the main business of the French Revolution. Sandweiss’s book struck me similarly. I’m guessing it may have been the book Dr. P. could most easily have sliced from the syllabus; I’m so glad she didn’t.

As I near the end of the M.A. program, I find myself stewing more and more on ideas about the presentation of history. This book stirred up a lot and was a mental springboard for some new thinking about the meanings and implications of words like reality, truth, narrative, myth, authenticity, and accuracy. Is the visible the most or the least trustworthy? What does “true to nature” mean? How is meaning shaped? Is a completely unmediated photo an illusion? Can photos be “accurate”? How is information conveyed? What is the difference between describing and explaining? Can a photo be factually authentic, or factually authoritative? Think of all the ways history can be narrated—through words definitely, but how much can be translated through images? Then there are some interesting statements in Sandweiss that provoke reflection, e.g., “[Photography] makes most history seem personal” (p. 327). And--so obvious that it seems silly to mention it-- the photographs in the book were extraordinary, the slickness of the thick paper a sensual treat, and the plethora of photographs a welcome breath of fresh air in a sea of word-heavy history texts.

Now I am going to go a little personal to prove how Sandweiss is correct in her view that the photographs of the West influenced the perception of it and contributed to the myths so often surrounding it. My maternal grandfather was born in 1886 and had children (including my mother) late in life AND lived to almost 100, so I had the privilege of his superb company during many weekends of my childhood. Until his later years, he lived in a log cabin on 160 acres and rejected electricity, telephone, and indoor plumbing. Unbeknownst to me, I was experiencing the nineteenth century when I visited him. Nights in the cabin were illuminated by kerosene lamps, heat and cooking were by woodstove, drinking water was carried from a spring, and entertainment most often came from stories from my grandfather and the bringing out of the treasured stereoscope. The stereoscope cards—enough of them to fill a very large shoebox—concentrated on The West. The countless hours my beloved big sister and I spent scrutinizing the exotic and breathtaking (seeming)3-D photographs locked me early into a lifelong love affair with the West, including all it implied and represented in these cards. I knew better than most young children that photography had power; I am now learning how much power myth also has.

Enough effusion; needless to say, I loved the book. A few random and unrelated remarks…. *The technical evolution of photography was fascinating. *I can’t believe I had never heard of the popular panorama canvas rolls. *I can only compare the public’s resistance to photography’s realism (and lingering preference for more dramatic illustration) to the general public’s initial lukewarm and suspicious reception to computers. *Another busted myth added to our growing class list is the common belief that most 19th century photos of Native Americans were made under coercion; most often, they were taken willingly and there was some sort of exchange. *The otherwise careful Sandweiss surprised me by confusing Ken with Ric Burns. *I started listing limitations of the medium of photography, but decided not to reproduce it here---they will all no doubt come up in class discussion. I think their benefits far outweigh their limitations! ***Altogether a great and interesting read!

Comments on My Cohorts' Blogs: Women & Gender

2005-10-31T08:24:00.000-08:00

I have commented on the blogs of DAN , JIM , BEN , JOHN , STEVE , RICK , and RAY .

BLOG # 9: Women and Gender

2005-10-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

I know this book filled a niche in our syllabus, so its inclusion was certainly needed and justified. I wonder what (if any) other choices Dr. P. may have considered in the anthology category. And I’m curious: are there any good single-author books that she also considered?

First, the pro’s. Mormon plural wives, Mexican-American women strikers, women captives who navigated captivity by negotiation, Aboriginal women in British Columbia: the essays on these subjects were clearly written and fairly interesting, and the women discussed, although narrowly localized, were pieces of western women’s history worthy of a serious look.

On the downside…..I always come excited to women’s histories; after all, I am a woman, what’s not to like? In this anthology, though, I felt barred from the sorority of many of its women historians by semantics. Instead of (what is to me, at least) clear writing with specific nouns, there were lots of words like poststructuralist, postmodernism, discourse, discursive, deconstruct, reconceptualizing, performative, etc. I have noticed in class that some classmates use these terms fluently, but frankly, I haven’t studied postmodernism (or whatever I would need to study to understand those terms!), so feel lost at fathoming all the theory and “fuzzy” words.

As a gift to those of you who hate long blogs like I usually send, I’m going to cut this one short. I will probably write many comments to your blogs; I’m anxious to know what you all felt about this book---especially the men.

Comments on my Cohorts' Blogs: Colony and Empire

2005-10-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

I have commented on the blogs of DAN , BEN , DAVE , RAY , and KENT .

BLOG # 8: Colony and Empire

2005-10-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Last week after class, I joked with Dr. Petrik that two consistent threads in each of my eleven history classes have been the inclusion of a Marxist author and a mention of Henry Adams. Well, true to form, Henry Adams popped up on page 91 in Robbins’s book.

I just read Dan’s first blog-of-the-week and left the first comment-of-the-week. If Dan and I are representative, it looks like finally our class might have a good book to flog. Since most of our other books have been well liked, this possible change in attitude might result in some extra liveliness this week on the blog circuit and in class discussion.

Robbins uses the construct of capitalism on which to hang his argument. In his view, the history of the west cannot be understood without inquiring into its economy (and its relationship to politics), power structure, dependency vs. power dichotomy, and the influences of outside capital. Last week, Elliott West used the construct of ecology on which to hang his argument, and with better results. Why? Because of STYLE (remember our little discussion?).

For a small book, Robbins was surprisingly hard to read. The book did not flow easily, and Robbins lurched from topic to topic. His early inclusion of so much on Canada and Mexico (and his later comparisons about the South) reminded me of what I disliked in Roaring Camp: insertions that disrupted flow and seemed out of place, if Robbins’s subtitle could be taken seriously. His discussions of Sam Houser and Jerome Hill felt almost the same; they reminded me of Calloway taking a turn in style and plot in the last chapter of his book. I understand Robbins's reason for their inclusion, however, and did learn something from them—but I’m talking about style now. Incongruity is fun in literature, but not as much fun in history. And are all Marxist histories so deadly serious and plodding? These are traits I have noticed in previous ones, too (but I hate to generalize—just adding fodder to provoke lively discourse).

The look at posh residences like Aspen and Jackson Hole was particularly interesting. These former rough and tumble places have been translated by capital into class-delineated fake versions of the West. I loved this sentence: “The glamour and glitz associated with affluent, postmodern Aspen are symbols of historical deception” (p. 101-102). If any of you also subscribe to Architectural Digest, then the oft-highlighted massive fortress-like “Western-style” enclaves of the rich and famous are familiar to you. If you have taken Dr. Pitcaithley’s “Historic Preservation”, however, you have to ask yourself where community belongs in this equation.

Robbins deals mostly with the northern West. I’m anxious to hear Dr. P’s personal takes on his Montana inclusions. I liked his multiple discussions re the Frederick Jackson Turner thesis and myths. I realize that we’ve possibly over-discussed this by now and we have all gotten the point, but I still enjoy tossing the topic about in my mind. I also liked that Robbins spent a lot of time discussing cities. Although the greatest western population and power were in urban areas, “yet the most persisting themes in western literature are centered primarily on symbols and images of rural, backcountry life” (p. 167). Having been called to defend literature at various times and in various classes, let me now say that the previous sentence is one reason I chose to pursue an M.A. in History, not English. OK, I just passed 600 words; history has taught me that if I write any more, no one will read and comment. I will add more thoughts in comments.

Comments on My Cohorts' Blogs: The Way to the West

2005-10-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

I wrote a very long comment on the blog of RAY about his thoughts on the meaning of the word "frontier." (By the way, you can't get Ray's blog up from our class blog list, but you can access it by this link.) I also wrote a comment to a comment (is this a first?) to DAN. And another belated short comment just added for KENT. Ooops, and yet another just added, on the blog of STEVE.

BLOG # 7: The Way to the West

2005-10-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

Examining Connections and Consequences: The Way to the West

When I began this book, I figured Dr. Petrik had included the Central Plains for geographical balance (“boring!” I initially feared). As you will see, my opinion of this book and Dr. Petrik’s probable rationale for its conclusion soon radically changed.

The Way to the West is our shortest text, but I’m betting it packs more power per page than any of them. It is a series of explosions, with chapters relentlessly detonating myth after myth. Elliott West contends that the way to know the West is by uncovering those myths imposed from outside it and by scrutinizing a web of interacting forces, each allotted a chapter. In his last paragraph, he reiterates his thesis: “the way to understanding the West is...by webs of changing connections among people, plants, institutions, animals, politics, soil, weather, ambitions, and perceptions” (p. 166). Author West, like the popular William Cronon, fits into western historiography as an environmentalist (too often dismissed as “tree hugger”). I am not a flaming environmentalist, but I have been a naturalist docent in three different ecological zones (including Colorado), and what I have gleaned about the imperative of understanding the web of life and the interdependency of all things on earth are some of the most important concepts I have ever learned. To ignore the connectedness of all things and the consequences from disruptions of the web is foolish and often selfish shortsightedness, to be undertaken at mankind’s own risk. We are not used to historians taking this tack. The Way to the West is an important and powerful book.

Our previous texts have been generally complimentary toward the Native American. In West’s book, however, the Indian, like the perennially accused white man, joins in contributing to the demise of an ecology that worked for the central plains before too many Indians crowded in during the nineteenth century. In fact, it is man in general who is most indicted in this book, whether by hoarding protected river ravines for food, water, and shelter; introducing horses and cattle who overgraze; or trying to duplicate the East, oblivious of (or regardless of) environmental impact. The effect of any change in a fragile and precarious region where annual rainfall is low may have far-reaching, rapid, and often devastating effects.

In this book and most of our others, I am forced to confront the old media-induced western myths I’ve held and cherished since childhood, as well as the ways I construed the west while living there. West’s condemnation of easterners who impose myths of freedom, pristine wilderness, and exceptionalism hit me close to home. Our entire course has concentrated on debunking most of my old narratives of the West. I came into the class expecting to learn about settlers moving westward and the histories of the various western states, and instead, books like this are making me see a more accurate picture. In place of my old comfortable and romantic tunnel vision, I am forced to turn my head 360 degrees. For those who think an M.A. in History is “useless,” I would offer that nice little result alone as justification for it.

Comments on My Cohorts' Blogs: Roy Baker

2005-10-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

So far, I have commented this week on the blogs of DAN, BEN, STEVE, JOHN, DAVE, and
KENT.

BLOG # 6: Roy Baker et al

2005-10-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

This is odd, only two people have sent in a blog so far, and it's late on deadline night. Hmmm....could it be that, like Rick, we are all pulling our hair out? I know I am! (By the way, Rick, I too --unlike the fortunate Dan-- am not sure who the heck killed Roy. I've been too busy just trying to READ the thing!)

What I have gleaned most from our Roy Baker packet so far is probably not what Dr. Petrik was shooting for. First of all, I have almost fallen off my chair with laughter over the mistranslations undertaken by us all (thanks, Kent, for forcing us to take on this useful and eye-opening exercise!). I also want to thank the classmate who saw panties instead of parties, as well as our fellow history cohort who misquoted Private Miller as saying “if there was a woman in it to drop it right there as he wouldn’t believe the best G.D. woman in Christendom [Cheyenne!].” Seeing just how easy it is to contort meanings in history by only one word is a lesson we should all learn as we deal with primary documents.

Like probably most of you, I had to go over the wonderful transcript Jim prepared for us to try to fill in the questionable words. There were so many that it was hard to read the document smoothly. It is very interesting, by the way, to see how handwriting has evolved in only one hundred years (e.g., the 1890 rendition of the lower-case “r”). While certainly beautiful and fluid to look at, the handwriting was shockingly hard to fathom without the crutch of context. It was much easier to figure out words when the whole transcribed text was before me to read, so I'm glad I plowed through it again.

I’m not going to spill the beans on my opinion of whodunit---I’ll save that for the paper. However, I will share that I learned a lot of social history from this inquest. I never dreamed military privates had so much "fun" and stayed up all night so often (at least in THIS town!). I was amazed at the great volume of drinking going on. I don't know if this is a fair cross-section of the average military post in the west, or whether Laramie, Wyoming was an awfully boring place. The corollary plots reminded me of some of our busted western myths: a small group of soldiers were thinking of going AWOL to live a great life in the wilderness. Our next author Elliott West is going to comment especially on just such myths about the west. Also, I know Dr. P. has done research on prostitutes, and I’m looking forward to her take on the many “popular” females who pop up constantly in the inquest. Oddly, sexuality didn’t seem the focus---did these men mostly miss women to talk to, wives, mothers, sisters? In short, I guess I’m trying to say that this document has made me stew about a lot more than who killed Roy Baker. It’s obvious that I’m going to have to make a chart to keep up with all the different versions of The Truth (no offense, Joaquin Smith). Coming on the heels of our Tombstone book, I am beginning to have a much greater appreciation for attorneys (sorry to pick on you again, Dave, but we’ll be looking to you for your take on it all), judges, jury, historians, and anyone who has to take such a plethora of testimonies (with a dose of lies thrown in for good measure) and sift them to get at “the truth.” This has been a very odd assignment, but an extremely valuable one.

Blogs commented on (Roaring Camp & Tombstone)

2005-10-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

It's probably obvious by now that I comment on a lot of blogs. I have truly enjoyed stewing about other people's ideas on all of our books. This week, I commented on the blogs of Dan, Jim, Kent, Rick, and Steve (possibly more). I am going to try very hard to quit writing such long blogs so I'll get some comments too!

Blog 5: Murder in Tombstone & Roaring Camp

2005-10-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

I love transitions between texts. This morning over coffee, I started our next text, Elliott West’s Way to the West. I happily discovered we would study the central plains in addition to the “traditional” West. My husband was born in Wyoming and raised in a small town in southwestern Nebraska. . Last year, his father died and we spent some time there closing up his dad’s house. The experience of being there is always a love/hate dichotomy: the strange and compelling beauty of the surrounding rolling plains vs. the utter boredom and feeling of desolation being “in the middle of nowhere.” In Elliott’s introduction, he writes that the West “will conjure up at least a few famous events and characters associated with this country: George Custer, Wyatt Earp, and Buffalo Bill Cody, cattle drovers and railroad workers,…Marshal Dillon and Festus…” (p. 4-5). By golly, Wyatt Earp got second place in Elliott’s list of mythic characters of the west--the ones who, in a sort of Pavlovian response, step forth when the average American pictures The Old West.

Lubet’s title is interesting. Notice he does not choose “Trial in Tombstone.” For those of you who have not finished the book, you may want to read the rest of this paragraph later. The book’s last chapter was as much a shocker and change of tone, a 90 degree turn, as the last chapter in One Vast Winter Count. Earp turns into as much a murderer as the Cowboys he hated. The level-headedness he had previously and consistently seemed to exhibit, his reputation for using guns as a last resort, in fact the entire personal character that helped save him from a murder charge, evaporate after his brother Morgan is slain. The Wyatt Earp we put on the western pedestal as kids (and maybe as adults) turns into the type of man we don’t revere, an opportunist who runs from the law rather than upholds it. Not to be outdone, the noble and wise Judge Spicer becomes a prospector and what we today would call a “loser,” eventually “wandering” into the desert and dying of thirst or starvation. The book’s title is given a whole new justification. Was justice meted out in the trial of Doc and the three Earp brothers? Lubet lays the historic evidence on the table, but doesn’t shove an answer down our throats. He allows us to weigh and consider, a likable feature of good history books.

The book does several important things. Most obviously, it tells a good story. The trial follows one of the most famous events in Western history. While everyone can picture the four lawmen standing down the bad Cowboys, few know the subject of the book’s subtitle: “The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp.” History, then, is expanded upon and the context and aftermath of the famous incident are elucidated, which is always a good thing for the history student. I found the elucidation of the techniques of attorneys and how their minds (allegedly) work almost more fascinating. (Dave, we’re counting on you to give us your take on all this!) If we look through the lenses of both the defense and prosecuting attorneys, we get an approximate way to examine history: from all angles and possibilities. Not since After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection in History 602 has a text served so extensively as a trainer on how to go about mining the “truth.” As I suspect we will find in the Roy Baker packet, the Truth in Tombstone will never be quite graspable. And here’s another good reason for this book: I think it’s going to mirror the pattern we will use in writing our Roy Baker paper.

As a finishing aside, I wonder if any of you have ever checked into the contemporary exploitation, commercialization, and contorting of History as documented in Ebay listings. I typed in “Wyatt Earp” and came up with some rather interesting findings. A copy of a purported semi-nude photo of Johnny Behan’s Josie/later wife of Wyatt was up for sale. This seemed a bit suspicious, and I did some research and found an interesting article from a well-respected Maine antiques magazine debunking this notorious photo’s legitimacy (Lubet alike mentions on p. 154 Josie’s purported autobiography/memoirs, generally disclaimed now by historians). Yet another reminder to examine all claims to “Truth”! In addition, a poster up for bids announces what Wyatt Earp allegedly intended to do with annoying children.
Last but not least, a purported copy of Wyatt Earp’s autograph(sadly, NOT from his Tombstone epoch, the seller allows) is for sale, with the unfortunate misspelled title “Very Scare [sic] Wyatt Earp Siganture [sic].” (P.S. to PhD candidates: there is an uptapped wealth of dissertation material here: “ U.S. Social History as Characterized on Ebay,” and/or “The Pronounced Proclivity of Ebay Sellers to Employ Creative Spelling” [with apologies to Meriwether Lewis]). But I digress….

COMMENTS ON ROARING CAMP

Since my previous blog was a bit long, I’ll make up for it by a shorter one on Roaring Camp. I just read the other blogs sent in so far, and probably more so than the blogs on any of our other books, they seem to be similar in content, so I’ll try not to be too redundant since I agree with most of them. Apparently so far there is not a lot of controversy or vastly differing opinions on this book. I expect gender issues will stir up the most varied opinions--that always seems to be the case in class discussion when gender is involved. I thought it was kind of interesting and often amusing how men compensated for the lack of women—and even more amusing how some weren’t quite so sure they wanted the influx of non-prostituting white women to create order in their largely male society and to reintroduce traditional social conventions into the world the men had come to know and, for the large part, adapt to.

If the Southern Mines (with their greater diversity) have been so neglected in history (Jim can confirm this), then this book was a good thing to fill that void. After our past readings, we can also appreciate how important it is for white Americans (and especially historians) to realize that a full history of American involves many ethnic groups. I was particularly surprised that people from France and Chile also came looking for gold---I had no idea! Johnson’s narratives on the Chinese were also very enlightening. The many parts about the Miwok Indians took on a new perspective after having just read One Vast Winter Count last week.

I want to emphasize a particular topic Johnson addresses which I also have become interested in: the creation of narrative and memories and what they mean in the study of history. Such a breaking of myth and the counternarratives that naturally follow have also been seen previously seen in Limerick’s book. Like most of our previous authors, Johnson wants to shed new light on old narratives, to create “alternative plot lines” (p. 27). There are “tensions between memory and history” (p. 50) and between “what has been remembered and what forgotten” (p. 52). The “dominant cultural memory has refracted history” (p. 340). “We must turn in particular to those who are producing countermemories…doing battle with dominant narratives that reinscribe social inequities” (p. 343). She shines a light into previously de-emphasized places and gives the social world of the Gold Rush a new, more accurate, image.

Winter Count/Lewis & Clark Comments

2005-09-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have commented on the blogs of Dan, Jim, John, Dave, Kent, and
Steve.

Blog # 4- Winter Count/Lewis & Clark

2005-09-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I glad I stayed up late to finish the entire Winter Count. Near its end, Calloway took a giant bend in the road and introduced a whole new thesis, tone, and warning to America. It was sobering, and I think, probably justified (although I wonder if his moralistic tone is appropriate for what was up to that point pretty straight history). I am constantly puzzled by the seeming lack of worry about the Midwest’s water table going constantly down, the drought in the west while many people still nurture yards with eastern grass, the endless influx of people into California who must get their water from far away. Similarly, no one worried about killing too many buffalo or beaver either. Calloway showed us great Indian nations or cultures that rose and fell, even though they respected the land and ecological balance much more than we currently do. (Calloway didn't only emphasize environmental consequences, by the way; just an example.) Great cultures could also be decimated by sudden, unpredictable events like epidemics, too. Never before had I been aware of the massive smallpox effect on the Native American population. Calloway implied that the white man didn’t defeat the Indians so much as epidemics did. It gave a whole new slant to Lewis and Clark. What we have imagined these legendary explorers seeing as “new, pristine, untouched” had indeed already been touched—usually negatively—by traders seeking profit, or imperial powers seeking land. (I appreciated learning a lot about Spanish and French occupation history from this book.)

Calloway floored me with the depth and breadth of Native American history far back into the past. I had no idea. It also surprised me to discover that the Indians moved around so widely, traded with one another, adapted so well, and moved in and out of negotiation and relationships with the Spanish, French, and English as it suited their needs. Intertribal trade, widely flung across the continent, was surprising; it sometimes seemed the Indians were traveling by jet, not by foot or horse. It was telling when Lewis and Clark came upon something they had traded earlier—the Indians were moving much faster than they were. The achievement of Lewis and Clark, although thrilling and magnificent from the white man's viewpoint, paled after the sweep of Calloway’s book. We seem left more with the courage and success of a group of Americans who had the guts to venture into territory uncharted by the white man and the outdoor skills (and luck) to return alive to tell about it.

It was particularly fascinating to read about the importance and ramifications of corn and, later, horses into Indian culture. I wonder if I was the only one in class who had never heard the word calumet (I guess old westerns preferred “peace pipe”). And discovering that Indian cultures long ago could produce something almost equivalent to the work required in building the Great Pyramids was a real eye-opener. I wonder if current elementary and high school textbooks tell any of this history now; they sure didn’t when I was a kid. Like Hine and Faragher, this book was so dense with facts, names, periods, tribes, etc., that only a photographic memory could digest it all. Regardless, the author’s greatest goal is achieved: our very small slice of Anglo history is added to the balance of the "other"
American history before the white man, and we are found wanting. Interestingly, instead of concentrating on the “typical” Native American history covering Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Custer’s Last Stand, etc., Calloway chose to concentrate on history up to Lewis and Clark.

I found the Lewis and Clark journals pretty interesting and readable despite the freewheeling spelling. I’m always fascinated at learning how people deal with and survive in the wild. Of course, part of the story Calloway told is appropriate here: the white man survived in his explorations west largely because of the Indian, who taught, led, traded, fed, and tolerated his presence. Lewis and Clark’s journals do not give the Indians the autonomy and intelligence that Calloway does; theirs was the contemporaneous attitude of white superiority/native inferiority. We cannot condemn Lewis and Clark personally for their attitudes without committing the sin of presentism, but we can regret that they, like probably most of us in class, did not realize the vast history and rich culture already in place when the first white man arrived.

2005-09-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

I have posted a comment on Jim's site.

BLOG # 3: Turner et al (Roundtable, etc.)

2005-09-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Note to my 616 friends: I didn’t read your blogs until I had completed mine. I was surprised at the different approaches we all took---kind of like the Roundtable. Most of you concentrated on Turner; I probably did the opposite. Now I feel in sort of an intellectual muddle of ideas; I hope, Dr. Petrik, that this is an ordinary and expected reaction after plowing through seven journal essays (some not written with clarity and ease of reading as top priorities), synthesizing the ideas of those essays enough to write a decent blog, then considering the many varied ideas and opinions of my history cohorts…

Our challenging essays from seven twentieth-century historians question definitions of the “West,” the significance or non-significance of that label, different perspectives available in arriving at various conclusions about it-- and Turner’s thesis. Is the West a place, a process (Emmons defines this well on page 438), an invention of the eastern power elite (as Emmons would argue), or something altogether different? Like Emmons, Montoya sees the West as a construct of capitalism (however, Montoya expands it into a worldview of comparative imperialistic endeavors). In an almost parallel way to Emmons, Deverell sees the West constructed by issues of power. Each of the seven would consider himself a member of the “new western history” movement, defined variously as a “reassessment of the canonical triumphalism that has been western history” (Deverell, 195), or an effort to “critically debate, assess, and reconceptualize the theoretical underpinnings, subjects, methodologies, and directions” of [traditional] western history (Gutierrez, 34). Montoya spatially transcends her peers as she advocates global connections to international imperial and colonial history; she wants us to look outside even the “new history” box. All want out of the famous Turner box.

Looking at the West with a less macroscopic lens than Emmons, Deverell, or Montoya, Ronda qualifies views of the West from different “prospects”—his being Monticello (Jeffersonian visions and illusions) and Guyman, Oklahoma (the folly of those illusions, exposed). Perhaps Ronda would be the most forgiving of Turnerian error; each historian’s prospect is narrowed according to his place, time, and circumstance. Faragher believes local history can help explain the continental and even the global; place is important. Gutierrez qualifies that idea by seeing the sense of place in the west as “complex, variable, and multiple.” Mexicans, for example, saw the “West” as “El Norte” (the North). He and Montoya admit to Latino roots, and the different perspective that ethnic identification provides.

All would release the West from myth and Turner’s generalized, ethnocentric concepts of American exceptionalism and the frontier’s making of the American character. The West is separate not because it reflects Turner’s theory, or because of its environment, grandeur, or beauty, but because —according to Emmons-- it was settled at a different time and “under the rules of market capitalism and national states” (445). He contends that Turner’s theory “fit perfectly” the needs of this industrial capitalism. Deverell in a similar vein recommends less myth-inducing stories of hardy settlers (which Turner would have liked) and more attention to “land- and gold-hungry Anglo Americans [who] became the shock troops of a nation flexing its imperial muscles” (194). Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment: Could there be a slight better-than-thou, presentist view from our “more informed” prospects that makes Turner so maligned? Is the pattern to overturn old theses embedded in the obligatory quest for new ones? It may be human nature to want to classify and quantify (Emmons quoted and seemed to admire Herbert Gutman’s designation of 1893 as the year the U.S. emerged as a fully industrialized nation; can Gutman, like Turner, be criticized because he imposed an arbitrary period?). Deverell reminds us of Howard Lamar’s admonition that one day we may again “celebrate the image of the West offered to us by thinkers such as Turner and Jefferson not so much because they were right but because they (and their imagined, mythic West) gave us all something to shoot for, as a region, as a nation, as a people” (206). Although it would be simpler (for the history student) and more pleasant (from the Anglo viewpoint) to accept Turner as accurate visionary, one consensus granted by all of our seven historians-of-the-week is that there is no longer “a single, all-powerful conceptual model by which to explain the American West” (Deverell, 203)—in other words, Turner is passe. That’s pretty obvious as early as page one when he refers to Native Americans as “savages.”

Sometimes I miss the old, innocent days when I thought that to study history, one “simply” learned “what happened.” This week’s seven modern looks at western history from multiple viewpoints is our semester’s shortest reading assignment. To put it both poetically and mathematically, I believe its difficulty is inversely proportional to its page quantity. The inability of these seven historians to—with certainty--define, delineate, or agree on serious and complex questions about the American West makes for a very thought-provoking yet hair-pulling journey into the deep waters of historiography.

Blog # 2: Limerick's Legacy of Conquest

2005-09-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Limerick admits to getting the idea for this book at a western conference where government and business officials inferred that the current problems of the west were recent and disconnected to the past. She must have been plenty stirred up at that conference; her writing style seems almost brusque and she sometimes comes close to bitter. She is troubled by the persistence of Turner’s version of the legacy of the west and wants to confront the reader with a look at a continuous sweep of western history, full of complexities, moral issues, and diversity. Her thesis falls on page 18: the conquest of the west shapes the present; we ought to learn about the connections between past and present. And on page 195: “Conquest left a troubling legacy and…no end to the frontier could do away with that legacy.” If she succeeds in her argument, she will have helped bust categorization and stereotypes and will have introduced ethnic and racial groups, natives, newcomers, businesspeople, and politicians to one another (349).

Although Limerick touches on some of the same subjects and themes of Hine and Faragher, she injects more personal interpretation. In fact, she makes it clear that her book is not a summary or survey, but “a revived version of western history,” “an interpretation and synthesis” (30). Politicians, the general public, and even many universities have been hard pressed to let go of Turner’s old thesis. Limerick wants to shake us up, to make us see issues from other viewpoints, to examine what we have assumed and taken for granted so long. She wants us to consider the territorial histories and perspectives of ethnic minorities who lived in the west first. If there is one skill graduate history classes have instilled in me it is necessity to seek multiple viewpoints; Limerick feels that is especially important in looking at western American history. A recurring theme of hers is the innocent victim as dominant motif in American history—this was an interesting concept to me. The seeking after scapegoats and the need to lay blame elsewhere ironically clash with the western show of toughness, independence, and self-reliance. Such ironies persist throughout her book. The book examined so many issues and ideas that, alongside Hine and Faragher with no class discussion or lecture in between, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.
On a more personal note, my favorite two sentences in the book were the following. “In a response that makes history seem predictable, Land Commissioner Hayward took to drink” (60); and “Western diversity forced racists to think—an unaccustomed activity” (260). Her writing style and approach are in marked contrast to our first text, and different in fact from most graduate history texts. I was also drawn to her long look at Gifford Pinchot and her discussion of environmental issues (e.g., park policies with bears; man’s illusion he could master nature and his mistake with forest fires; how our sentimental natures can eradicate predators important to the food chain and web of life). Another topic that struck me was the very great involvement of the federal government in the west’s economy—probably more deep than in any other area of the country. The resultant dependence and resentment of those ostensibly being “helped” is pretty interesting. It’s hard to comment on this book in only three paragraphs, it’s late, the deadline approaches, and I’m anxious to read the other blogs. I purposely held off reading any blogs about this book for fear I would forget “my own ideas.” Now I’m anxious to see what you all thought of Limerick. See you in class!

BLOG # 1: A Big Book for the Big Picture

2005-09-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

The American West: A New Interpretive History by Hine and Faragher

For some strange reason, the typical graduate class instructor seems to shy away from books that give the “big picture” (otherwise known as overview). Do they smack too much of yesteryear’s chronological histories which were in my undergraduate days the bane of all required freshmen survey classes? Are there not many good new ones now available? Are narrow focus books better, or just more favored in the grad world? Since I was not a history undergrad, I really appreciate and need the big picture sometimes. Interpretive comments, like the frequent ones interspersed by Hine and Faragher, distinguish their text from the “overview” history books I remember from long ago that purported to share only “what happened” (apparently lifeless writing was mandatory in the old survey books). The American West kept me engaged (but I must admit I was prejudiced toward liking the book because of the happy three years I spent in Colorado). Also, as I near the end of my graduate program, it feels so good when the dots of past texts start connecting in a web of greater understanding. (I experienced a similar emotion this summer when I rented the Ric Burns’ 7-part New York City documentary; it was kind of like a Eureka moment when you suddenly realize “all my history classes and all my hard work have been worthwhile!”). I felt this way when reading our text this week: it especially brought back Black Elk (Dr. Levine’s “Autobiography” class); Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (History 610), and almost everything from Dr. Schrag’s “Technology and American Identity.” Just as the human memory works because of connections, understanding in history also seems dependent on them. So, in short, bravo to our first text!

Even though the authors make clear they are not attempting to write a comprehensive history, the scope of the book is broad enough in time period and subject matter so it would be hard to say there is one thesis running throughout. A guess at an approximate (and partial) thesis would be this: in order to understand the history of the west, one must get beyond the popular image of the white man pushing west (all the while justified by Manifest Destiny), delve into pre-white history and the immigration of other nationalities into the West, question motives and results (whether intended or not), and face contradictions and myths perpetrated by the old white version of the history of the west. When reviewing the book in preparation for this blog, I felt almost overwhelmed by the overload of names, dates, tribes, government acts, unions, court decisions, conflicts, etc., that I had been exposed to and flustered by how many I had already forgotten ((even after a slow and careful reading!). It is as if I had jumped into the deep end of the pool first. Hopefully, this book will serve as a framework on which to hang greater understanding as our class begins reading more focused works (e.g, The Gold Rush, water issues, impact of capitalism on the West’s development, etc.).

A few random comments. It is odd that, in retrospect, I have not had any graduate class that has looked at the midwest in any detail, or scarcely at all (except for Chicago); it’s nice to learn a little about places like Cincinnati, Detroit, and St. Louis (the "early" west). I liked the chapter about the art of the west and how it so influenced (and often distorted) the American popular perception. Surprising factoids abounded: Horace Greeley was merely quoting an Indiana newspaper with the phrase “Go west, young man”; our VISA card’s ancestry goes back to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As an ex-English teacher, I am always happy to see when well-known writers are connected to history: Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Sinclair Lewis (and a hoard of lesser ones with their myth-producing dime varieties, exposed). Many of the authors of our other texts are mentioned or referred to (Turner, DeVoto, Sanchez, Sandweiss, Johnson especially). Even our noble leader Dr. P. is mentioned on page 265! The examination of ethnic contributions to the American West, the all too often sad story of the Native American’s treatment and cultural dislocation; and the environmental impact of deforestation, irrigation systems, and mining made this interpretive history a very interesting and valuable one to me.
P.S. Questions: What is the “meaning” of the magnified strip on the book’s cover (the part with the woman’s enlarged moccasin)? Who is RLS in the book’s dedication? (I do know the answer to this one; f you don’t know but are curious, ask me in class.)