Book Review: "Trails: Toward A New Western History"

Limerick, Patricia Nelson, ed. Trails: Toward a New Western History. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Trails is a collection of 12 essays by western historians. The central theme of the essays in this book is the new west history movement, which at the time of this book’s publication was in its second decade of existence. Patricia Nelson Limerick, who is the editor of this book as well as the author of several of the essays, designed a series of essays for a traveling interpretive display in the 1980s. The purpose of that display was to bring attention to what Limerick and other western historians believed was a serious problem, the lack of minority points of view in the writing and thinking of the American West. Instead of being simply a collection of 12 essays that support the idea of a new western history, Trails also provides several perspectives from that group of historians that has been termed “old west historians”. The outcome of this (which was the designed purpose) was to foster debate between both camps of western historians and the general public. In the decade and a half since the publication of this book, the perspectives that new western historians advocated for certainly have been adopted and books on various perspectives, not just white male ones, can be purchased at any bookstore.

One myth that is attacked by several of the essayists, who wrote to defend the new west history movement in this book, is the “frontier” which is central to the Turner thesis. The goals of the new west historians clearly state that they wish to create clear-eyed, demythologized, and critical history. In order to do this, historians like Donald Worster argue against Turner and the myths he helped to create, such as the statements made by Turner that frame the development of the West (and therefore the nation) as a process of returning to a primitive condition. The agrarian myth, which will be discussed in more detail, represents the blind optimism that members of the new west circle find distasteful, mainly due to the fact that it lacks a critical approach. The agrarian myth generally refers to the belief in a simple people settling in an extraordinary western land and, once there, being able to build a new and more dignified life than the one they left behind in the East.

The historiographical facet of western history writing is also discussed in this book, as it is necessary to understand how the history of the West changed over time and to trace the origins of many of the myths that new western historians see as erroneous. In discussing the origin of the frontier myth, new west historians wrote that this particular myth grew out of Turner’s personal convictions that the agrarian myth was true and that the historical evidence he had collected for his thesis was proof that the events mentioned in the myth, especially the return to primitive conditions and innocence, had taken place. This is the beginning of western history, according to Donald Worster, who writes an essay on the agrarian myth in Trails. Worster states that western history was born with Turner’s thesis and he also believes that this term is an oxymoron due to the fact that someone who argued that the west had no history created the discipline. This is not to say that Worster shares Turner’s beliefs about the West; rather, he is being ironic. Worster traces the development of western history from Turner through the twentieth century and as he does so, he points out areas where the approaches advocated by the new west history movement could aid in understanding the events of the past. Worster primarily argues against the methods and training of western history students during the early to mid twentieth century; the period when students were educated with the belief that they should not be critical of social, political, or economic motivations; they should be optimistic. This period came to an end at some point during the 1950s with the establishment of increasingly professional graduate level seminars, the introduction of students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to colleges and universities, and the implementation of new methodologies, especially an emphasis on archival research. The students who graduated during this period went on to train other historians in these more critical methods and this allowed schools of thought such as the new west history movement to become established.

The themes of this new type of history should be mentioned. The first major theme of the new west history is that the conquered and subject peoples of the West must be given a voice in the writing of western history. By leaving out minority voices for such a long period of time, a myth has been created which basically says that white Americans found a place in the West to retreat to without conflicts. By omitting minorities and the conflicts that occurred between the colonizers and the colonized, this is the myth that most Americans come to believe, that no other peoples were in the West when whites arrived. This theme of a multi-cultural perspective is reflected today, nearly four decades after the creation of new west history, by the presence of so many books by female and minority authors on the subject of the West in so many bookstores and libraries. At the Little Bighorn Battlefield visitor center bookstore there are a large number of books about the battle told from the native perspective as well as a large number of books written by authors of Native American heritage.

A second theme of the new west history is that the economic development of the West was an assault on nature and has left behind it much death, depletion and ruin. This theme also seeks to dislodge another popular myth that is associated with the agrarian myth mentioned earlier, namely that the West has long been a place where Americans can go to escape the city and get in touch with nature. When viewed from the perspective of this myth, the West is seen as a place of refuge for white Americans. In reality though, it was and remains just the opposite. The West has been tied to the development of industrialism in this nation. Raw materials such as lumber, stone, valuable minerals, and oil among other things, have all been taken from the West and used in the development of industry. Because of the large role played by the West and its environment in the history of this nation, it should be no surprise that environmental history shares a close kinship with western history. Areas of study by environmental historians of the West include: the role of capitalism, industrialism, population growth, military expenditures, and aimless economic expansion of the region. Having just visited Phoenix in March of this year, I can affirm that there is a great deal of aimless expansion going on in western cities.

A third theme of this new history is that the West has been ruled by concentrated power, though that power has often been hidden behind masks of various types. A major myth that this theme of the new west history hopes to eradicate is the belief that the west did not have much trouble with hierarchy and internal power struggles. This myth owes its origins to early western historians who wrote that easterners held the reins of power in the West, which was a simple democratic place. New arguments regarding power and struggle in the West demonstrate this theme by looking at struggles between races, social classes, genders, and other groups within society. One area of research that new west advocates could tap for examples of concentrated power are the cattle barons and their land organizations which sought to secure water rights in the wake of the Homestead Act.

Dissenters of the new west movement in Trails, notable among them Gerald Thompson and Michael P. Malone, state that the study of western history today is akin to the old parable of the blind men who lack the vision to see all of the elephant so they each think that they see something different when they touch the animal. For historians, this parable can be interpreted to mean that few historians can claim to be masters of the field outside of their specialty: women, mining, military, Indians, and social affairs. These categories represent subfields of western history and today, in the aftermath of this level of specialization, few western historians can identify with the broad field of western or frontier history.

Trails is a great historiographical resource for students of both general American history and especially history of the American West. Throughout this book authors present arguments that are designed to tear down earlier myths created by historians from Turner to the 1960s. While this book has a wonderful and inclusive message about the rewards of a multi-cultural perspective, it should be noted that none of the authors of any of the essays are minorities. I think that this is understandable to a degree; Limerick wanted to engage some of the best-known historians of the West in a debate about being open to minority points of view. From this perspective it is at the least a forgivable exclusion on
Limerick’s part.

Book Review: The Great Plains

Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.

In The Great Plains, Walter Prescott Webb introduced his thesis for the development of that region of America, which he used as the title for his book. Webb’s thesis states that, “the Great Plains have bent and molded Anglo-American life, have destroyed traditions, and have influenced institutions in a most singular manner”. According to Webb, there are three major characteristics of the Great Plains region of this nation that are responsible for most of these cultural and institutional changes. Those characteristics include: a comparatively level surface throughout most of the region, a lack of forests (scarcity of timber for building), and the semi-arid climate. These environmental characteristics forced Europeans in general but Americans in particular to adapt many parts of their culture before the Great Plains could be settled. Throughout this book Webb discusses the cultural traditions and institutions that were adapted to the Great Plains environment. The specific traditions and institutions will be discussed in this review, however the structure and organization will be discussed first.

Webb begins his study of the Great Plains in the fashion of the Annales School by tracing the geologic development of the Great Plains, discussing climate patterns, plant life, and finally animal life in the first major chapter before he introduces the reader to the human history of the region. Webb discusses Native Americans, the Spanish in the Southwest, and finally the Americans; each of these three groups is discussed using Webb’s thesis that the environment forced changes and adaptations in cultural institutions and traditions. Webb spends most of his study focusing on the American period of settlement after briefly discussing Native Americans and the Spanish. The major areas of American culture that Webb believed were changed through interaction with the Great Plains environment include: transportation, weapons, livestock, building and fencing materials, water use, agriculture, laws, and literature. In discussing Native Americans and Spaniards Webb is not as thorough as he is when discussing Americans; however, it is interesting to note some of the cultural adaptations experienced by these groups that Webb does mention.

The first human inhabitants were of course Native Americans and Webb begins his discussion of Great Plains tribes by pointing out certain characteristics that these tribes shared, including: a nomadic and nonagricultural lifestyle, dependence on the buffalo for food and material goods, use of weapons primarily adapted to the hunting of big game, beasts of burden for transportation (dogs and later horses), adoption of the horse before contact with Europeans. If Webb’s characteristics are adhered to, eleven tribes could be categorized as true Plains Indians: Sarsi, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Crow, Cheyenne, Lakota, Arapaho, Kiowa-Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, and Assiniboin. Webb’s examination of the Indian population of the Great Plains regions also follows his thesis that the environment forced everything (plants, animals, humans) to adapt in order to survive. In exploring this aspect of his thesis relative to Indians, Webb discusses the adoption of the horse to the activity of buffalo hunting on the plains. Webb does not simply launch into a discussion of the horse at the time Indians came into contact with the animal in the late seventeenth century, rather he begins this part of his study in Asia several thousand years ago.

While Webb’s long winded explanations for how Native Americans came to acquire the horse fills a good deal of this chapter, Webb was also able to make short and insightful statements regarding the impact of a new technology, such as the horse. Webb said that as a result of Native Americans acquiring the horse, “they became more nomadic, less inclined to agriculture, more warlike, and far better buffalo hunters than they had been before”. Not all of Webb’s opinions regarding Indians of the plains can be said to be insightful or even enlightened. For example, when discussing the possible reasons for why the Comanche decided to become horsemen, Webb was almost certain that it had something to do with a desire to “compensate for their short legs”. In the next section, however, Webb again makes insightful comments and helps his thesis by discussing the reasons for the development of Native American sign language, a necessary innovation that was created to enable tribes to communicate with each other once they started moving farther and farther from their original homelands after their adoption of the horse culture.

The section on the Spanish also presents some insights designed to support Webb’s thesis. For instance, Webb discusses how the Spanish were better suited than any other colonial power to adapt to life on the Great Plains given the fact, he states, that Spain shared many of the climatic and physical environment characteristics with that region of North America. Since Spain seemed to have an advantage over the other European powers in adapting to the Great Plains environment, the next logical question would be to ask why they did not make lasting settlements in that region and why they seemed to largely avoid the area with the exception of a handful of expeditions. According to Webb this has something to do with the fact that Spain’s goals for her New World empire dictated that the Great Plains be avoided due to the lack of metallic wealth and the general lack of prospective servants in the form of Native Americans. Spain’s efforts to conquer the region were repelled by the well armed and mounted Plains Indians that inhabited the region, making a direct route between San Antonio and Santa Fe difficult to maintain and keeping Spain on the edges of the Great Plains.

Webb also maintains that there was a failure on the part of the Spaniards to adapt to the environment of the Great Plains. As Webb writes, the Spanish colonial system was akin to the European feudal system and was dependent upon several elements, one of which was large populations of servants. Spain’s colonial system worked best among groups like the Pueblo Indians; less developed groups like the Pawnee and Kansa were not worth the time and effort to conquer since there would be little to gain. So according to Webb, the major reason for Spanish failure on the Great Plains has almost everything to do with their refusal to adopt their colonial system and their cultural institutions to the environment of the Great Plains.

Following Webb’s discussion of the Spanish, he begins to discuss the American period of settlement on the Great Plains. The rest of the book focuses on America and how the culture and traditions of these settlers was adapted to fit the environment of the Great Plains. There are many areas of pioneer culture that needed to be changed and one of the first that Webb mentions was the need for explorers to view the plains region as something more than simply an area to cross through with the goal of reaching the Pacific Ocean. Americans viewed the Great Plains as a problem early on, then, due to the fact that most explorers immediately overlooked them. Webb mentions one of the most interesting adaptations early in his section on the American approach to the Great Plains, namely, the Colt revolver. Webb’s idea for this book came while reading Emerson Hough’s The Ways of the West. In that book, the author mentions that the Kentucky long rifle was the gun of choice in the West. This statement led Webb to adopt his thesis and eventually to write this book, so when it comes to his discussion of how the Colt revolver was much more suited to the Great Plains than the long rifle, Webb’s excitement can be felt while reading the page. Webb lists several important reasons why the rifle was of little use to pioneers, mainly the fact that it could take a minute or longer to load and was difficult to shoot from the back of a horse. The Colt revolver meanwhile was “six guns in one” and was easier to shoot on horseback, which would provide an advantage while fighting against Indians of the plains.

Other adaptations discussed by Webb include the transition from water transportation to primarily horse powered transportation, forest based cattle raising was exchanged for open range cattle raising, wood or stone fencing and housing were abandoned (due to a lack of these materials) for sod and later barbed wire fencing, those accustomed to plentiful water supplies in the East were forced to adapt to much smaller water allowances, new agricultural methods utilizing special seed hybrids were adopted, new laws and forms of literature were also adapted to fit the environment. Many of the new laws dealt with land and water rights to protect citizens from people who were trying to engross or buy up all of the available land with water rights and access. New forms of literature were published that stressed adventure and suffering of pioneers and their families.

Webb’s work was not an original idea, few truly are, but his style is such that the reading is very easy which helped make the book accessible to many people, scholar and layperson alike. Webb’s contribution to historiography needs to be analyzed, especially given the weight of a work like The Great Plains. In understanding Webb’s contribution, it would be best to compare his conception of the West to that of Turner. To Turner the West was a process; a frontier line that was not anchored to a place for any significant length of time and the argument that he made regarding “the end of the frontier” could also have been viewed as him saying that it was the end of the West. For the citizens of this section of our nation that is a disparaging thought. When Webb wrote this book he wrote it from a perspective that shows he believes in place over process in the debate waged among historians of the American West. Webb clearly states in precise terms where the West can be found on any map and he even goes so far as to let his readers know that the region has a very ancient history and that it still exists as a region today and it always will. This is why Webb spent so much of the beginning of his work describing the geologic history of the Great Plains and the history of the flora and fauna, he wanted his readers to understand that the history of the West did not begin when the first Europeans entered the region. Colin G. Calloway also takes this tact in One Vast Winter Count when he focuses on the history of the West before the Lewis and Clark expedition. Webb’s The Great Plains ranks among the great books of western history due to these historiographical

Book Review: One Vast Winter Count

Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press: 2006.


In his book One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark, Colin Calloway takes on the massive task of writing a history of America as Indian country. The author argues that the Native American west is best understood as an area of conflict and change. To explain his argument, Calloway discusses many of the causes of conflict and change in Native American societies before 1800, including: the environment, new forms of agriculture, new economic and political systems and their effect on the culture of indigenous people, and interaction with Europeans. From each of these changes, conflicts emerged for indigenous peoples. The act of crossing the land bridge to North America caused many Indians to adopt new subsistence tasks and to create economies and political organization. The adoption of corn by early Mesoamericans also resulted in vast cultural and religious changes for many people; Calloway discusses all of these issues as he builds a chronological narrative to 1804.

Calloway utilized a small amount of primary sources for this monograph, mostly collected letters of early Spanish and French colonists that have been published in large, multi-volume collections. That is not to say that his work is lacking in documentation; the strength of Calloway’s evidentiary base is in his synthesis of a staggering amount of secondary sources. From this mass of secondary sources, Calloway has created a highly readable account of America as Indian country up to the year 1804. Because of his focus on the west before the Lewis and Clark expedition, the author has created something more than a simple retelling of events through the use of secondary sources. Calloway has written a book that, unlike the efforts of previous historians, does not hurry through a brief sketch of Native American history so that the “real” history of the American West can be told from 1804 to the present. That is the true importance of this work.

The author focuses on conflict and change over time to showcase the rich and detailed history of the American West. While discussing themes related to conflict and change and their impact on Indians, Calloway also builds a chronological history from the ancient beginnings of the indigenous people of this continent to the year 1804, when Lewis and Clark began their expedition to the west. The book is divided into three parts, and each of these parts is divided into a set of chapters, and each chapter is again divided into brief sections that explain the causes of the many conflicts and changes experienced by Indians in the west.
Calloway’s desire to write a history of the American West beginning with and largely dedicated to the study of Native Americans is the biggest strength of this book. His use of a large amount of well-documented sources and an easily accessible collection of endnotes also make this work impressive. It was interesting to read many of the ideas of current researchers in Calloway’s book, especially the concept of Richard White’s “middle ground” and Eric Hinderaker’s ideas about competing empires in the Ohio Valley. At times this book seemed to be a sequel to Daniel Richter’s Facing East From Indian Country, a book that does for eastern United States Indians what Calloway has done for those of the west.

The weaknesses of this book are few. At times it seemed as if Calloway forgot to use commas in sentences, which made their meaning somewhat unclear. Mistakes of that nature are trivial, though. A bibliographic essay at the end of the book would have been nice, as would a list of some of the best books on the subjects Calloway discussed in this book, including: the fur trade, epidemic diseases, Native American economies and trade routes, etc.

Book Review: "Frontier Violence: Another Look"

Hollon, W. Eugene. Frontier Violence: Another Look, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

In Frontier Violence, W. Eugene Hollon examines America’s violent past from colonial times through the late nineteenth century. Hollon’s study of violence on America’s frontiers is a reexamination (as the title implies, “another look”) of whether or not the violence myth has a leg to stand upon. The conclusion that Hollon reaches and the thesis of this work is that “frontier lawlessness was primarily the result, rather than the cause, of our violent society”. In explaining this thesis, Hollon examines incidents of violence which took place in regions far to the east of the frontier long after the process of “civilizing” was supposed to have taken place. Hollon was dissatisfied with the argument forged over time by Americans that violence was brought about by the lawlessness of the West. Since there were no laws in the West, the region was violent. Hollon disagreed with that explanation, stating “perhaps the real violence of the frontier was related more to anxiety, tension, frustration, and prejudice than to any action by outlaws, Indian fighters, and assorted vigilante groups”. Throughout Frontier Violence, Hollon argues that the majority of violent acts were perpetrated against minorities due to the aforementioned reasons.

Hollon examines incidents of violence relating to the colonial frontier, antebellum urban areas, Texas, California, the Chinese, gun culture, Indians and Mexicans, the Northern Plains, and the Southwest. Each of these categories is given its own chapter in Frontier Violence and they are linked by Hollon’s thesis “frontier lawlessness was primarily the result, rather than the cause, of our violent society”. The first chapter explores violence in the colonial period of American history. Hollon provides an interesting study of the Puritans in this chapter as well as providing the reader with an interesting explanation for the foundation of violent American behavior. According to Hollon, the Puritans lived relatively serene lives in England compared to what they faced in America. The intense desire to make their colony succeed, since returning to England did not appear to be much of an option, as well as the frightening reality of their strange new environment in which they were the minority led the Puritans to develop a policy that Hollon describes as shoot first, ask questions later. This policy towards the Native American inhabitants of the Puritan colonies set the tone for future American interaction with minorities or anyone that could be seen as a threat to their survival.

The Puritan inhabitants of New England are not the only group that Hollon studies in this opening chapter. One of the most interesting aspects of Frontier Violence is how Hollon employs his narrative style. The book is filled with intense stories of violence; within the first chapter Hollon writes about the Vikings, the Puritans, and the Spanish conquistadors and how each of these groups reacted to the presence of indigenous peoples. Hollon writes that across the board, when Europeans came in contact with native peoples they developed the attitude that the only means of survival in the new environment in which they found themselves was through violence. Acts of violence during the colonial period of American history were not reserved only for Native Americans, as Hollon argues, violence was also directed against the British by American colonists in response to unfavorable policies and taxes. The argument Hollon develops in this chapter is that violence has traditionally spread from metropolitan areas outward, to the periphery. So if one is trying to trace how violence spread to the frontier regions of America, one only has to examine social, economic and political institutions of the Atlantic seaboard. Violence in America developed in the colonies, was refined in metropolitan areas during the late colonial period and the American Revolution, and then spread to the frontiers; however, as Hollon explains in later chapters, violence would continue throughout the East long after the settlement of the West. In many ways, Frontier Violence was written to help Americans understand contemporary acts of violence in the 1970s, when the book was first published.

The next topic that Hollon explores is the incidence of violence in antebellum urban areas. Violence in urban areas before the Civil War usually took the form of vigilantism. This was especially true in the Southern states where local lawmakers were untrustworthy or access to law enforcement was difficult to come by, which was the case in several poor regions of the South. While this chapter is slow in developing to its stated purpose of examining urban violence, when Hollon does begin to discuss this subject he offers several interesting insights on the character and development of urban violence. According to Hollon, the three decades before the Civil War in the United States saw the greatest levels of urban violence in the history of the country. This is due in large part to the arrival of millions of immigrants from Ireland and Germany and the development of slum regions in eastern cities. With so many new immigrants arriving in this country, native-born citizens saw a rise in the competition for existing jobs and with a poorly trained police force it was difficult for lawmakers to control the level of violence in cities. Hollon provides numerous examples of acts of violence perpetrated against these immigrant groups and it certainly adds weight to his argument that violence is the result of anxiety and the fear of having their survival threatened.

Vigilantism and mob violence was usually the response to the growing crowds of immigrants in large cities before the Civil War, especially in the South where educational levels were lower and white citizens regularly were armed with knives and/or guns. The purpose of this chapter is to show readers that before Americans moved beyond the Mississippi River and began the process of conquest in the West, they were well conditioned to violence, having been raised in violent areas of the East. As Hollon states in this chapter, “violence in the American character was well developed long before large numbers of settlers were ready to move into the Great Plains and the Far West”.

Violence in Texas is explored in chapter three by examining the question of why Texas maintained a frontier mentality that condoned acts of violence by her citizens until well after the physical frontier moved on. By studying Texas violence, Hollon was able to detect what exactly made Texas unique, the answer was the very high level of race hatred that existed for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The early white settlers of Texas early on formed a race hatred for Mexicans and Indians due to the level of hostility that existed naturally between three very different cultures. The Texans, and this goes back to Hollon’s earlier argument, viewed their survival as being threatened by the existence of competition in the form of Mexicans and Native Americans on lands they were trying to conquer. In response to their feelings of threatened survival, the Texans reacted violently, which in turn led the Native Americans and the Mexicans to react violently. On their part, Mexicans attacked Texas settlements for nearly sixty years following annexation; a normal reaction when one considers that these people had their land taken from them by the Texans. While the frontier had moved on much earlier, a frontier mentality remained because of the raids by Mexicans on border towns and due to the length of time it took for Texans to handle their “Indian problem”. Hollon states that the Texans took an inordinately long time resolving this “problem”, something in the vicinity of sixty years while most other regions dealt with similar situations in perhaps one or two decades. Race hatred continued in Texas long after border fights with Mexican raiders and fights between the Texas Rangers and Native Americans, especially when slaves were freed following the Civil War. The Texans expanded their race hatred to include newly freed black slaves.

Violence towards minorities as a theme of Frontier Violence continues with Hollon’s chapter on the early history of California following independence from Mexico. In this chapter Hollon describes the diverse groups who came to settle the state and he discusses acts of violence against the minority population. Hollon claims that while California had a shorter period of violence than compared to Texas, more violence was stuffed into its frontier period than any other state or region. Hollon begins his description of violence in California with the Spanish and later Mexicans who controlled the region. In example after example, Hollon describes brutal violence and repression used against the indigenous inhabitants of the region to punish them for the smallest infraction. If Native Americans ran off from the Spanish mission they would be murdered or whipped until they were nearly dead. If they stole a horse or mule, an entire village would be murdered and their possessions would be burned. When Americans took possession of the region, the violence continued against the indigenous peoples and extended to include the Mexicans and later the African Americans who came to region. California was a very violent region and the murder rate for Native Americans was so high that few of the original tribes of that state exist today.

Chinese immigrants began arriving in California during the late 1840s and soon after they earned the race hatred of that state’s white population. Hollon writes that all minority groups eventually earn the race hatred of white citizens when their group “becomes too visible” and for the Chinese this was during the Civil War. By 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and immigration from that country almost ceased. At first, during the 1850s, Hollon states, the Chinese were looked upon favorably for their intelligence, work ethic and their reputation for dependability. What happened to change the minds of white Californians was the presence of the Chinese in gold mines. Soon the old fears returned: competition for jobs would increase and survival would be threatened. Whites responded to these fears by driving the Chinese from gold mines and laws were passed that only allowed them access to the “tailings” and poorer diggings that whites believed did not yield enough gold to be worth their time. Eventually the Chinese were pushed into urban areas where they found work in the laundry industry and as fishermen. Laws were passed that prevented the Chinese from testifying in court, so often crimes against this ethnic group went unreported and unpunished. Unlike Mexicans, Native Americans and African Americans, the Chinese for the most part did not rise up against white Americans, not when acts of violence were perpetrated against them and not when they were pushed away from their legally owned mines. Violence against Chinese railway workers and coal miners also occurred frequently in western frontier territories as fears of competition for jobs and just plain race hatred were made manifest. In many railroad towns where Chinese workers outnumbered white workers, murders and other acts of mob violence frequently occurred. Hollon argues that not until the Japanese began to arrive on the West coast in significant numbers did the hatred of the Chinese lessen.

The final chapters of Frontier Violence examine themes in a broader context than the ones previously discussed. Hollon explains the gun culture of the frontier region as a sort of myth related to the imagined contemporary necessity of firearms in this nation. According to Hollon the firearm was at one time an actual necessity due to the violence of the frontier region (rattlesnakes, horse thieves, angry and frustrated Native Americans) but over time the need for Colt revolvers and other six-shooter weapons dissipated. However, the myth persists today that Americans need guns. Hollon does not come down on either side of the contemporary gun control debate but he does acknowledge that there are extremist views on both sides. What Hollon does do is analyze the importance of the six-shooter and he discusses how the weapon was used in acts of violence along the frontier. The six-shooter revolver was a weapon that served many purposes, most of which were violent, but some of which were less so, according to Hollon’s analysis. Possessing a six-shooter could bring respect, it could in some cases be seen as an equalizing force and the weapon could serve as a means of protection. In terms of violence, during the Civil War the Colt armory made many of these weapons, hundreds of thousands of young men were trained how to use them and were accustomed to violence due to what they had seen and done during the conflict. With such a large population trained and armed and now out of the military, it is little wonder, states Hollon, that murder rates surged after the Civil War in almost every major urban center and in rural areas incidents of violent crime also increased. An example of this would be the James Gang, trained to fight with Quantrill as guerilla soldiers during the Civil War; following their service they employed their job skills as bank robbers.

In chapter seven, Genocide—or Manifest Destiny, Hollon provides an essay on the history of the violent interaction between Euro-Americans and Native Americans. This is a general survey of the violent conquest of indigenous lands from colonial times through the nineteenth century. Hollon discusses federal Indian policy during the Grant administration, one of the few instances in this chapter where he goes into any degree of depth to make his point that the winning of the West was filled with acts of genocide while being described by white Americans as Manifest Destiny. The policy of exterminating the buffalo to force plains Indians onto reservations is discussed as part of Grant’s Indian policy, as is the loss of sovereignty by the major plains Indians groups during this period. Overall it is an informative chapter, although Hollon has fewer narratives of frontier violence in this section.

The final two chapters of this work examine violence on the Northern Plains and the Southwest, respectively. The Northern Plains was the scene of bloody fighting between large cattle operations owned by so-called cattle kings and small ranch owners and farmers. The problems started following the Civil War when many Americans decided to utilize the Homestead Act and carve out farms in the West. The example that Hollon uses is the Johnson County War that took place in April of 1892. The cattle kings had grown frustrated at the arrival of so many grangers who were fencing off land and restricting access to water sources. Many cattle kings also believed that the small time ranchers and farmers (a.k.a. grangers) were cattle thieves. Hollon admits that some of these newly arrived settlers might have been cattle thieves but the real problem he sees is the fact that so many of the cattle kings believed their survival was being threatened and these people were ready to react violently. Hollon spends most of this chapter on the Northern Plains discussing the Johnson County War, even though only four men died altogether, and he terms it the war of the range. The reason this war was so important, according to Hollon, was that “it marked the dividing line between the Old West, ruled by the cattle kings and the New West of the pioneer homesteader”.

One of the events of the Johnson County War that led to so much frustration on the part of the cattle kings was the fencing of land and the restriction of access to water. In his chapter on the Southwest, Hollon discusses the importance of barbed wire; how it was invented in Illinois in 1874 and how it was readily adapted to use by the cattle kings of Texas, including the famous King Ranch. There were many benefits to the use of barbed wire but because so many people made a living off cattle rustling and using the water rights of other ranchers, violence accompanied the introduction of the wire in Texas. Another discussion topic of this chapter is the level of violence that broke out in New Mexico territory during the late 1870s, especially the Lincoln County War and the participation of hired mercenaries and gunmen like the famous Billy the Kid. The level of violence in this region of the country was immense, even when compared to other regions of the country.

Hollon argues his thesis in a convincing fashion and his narrative style of history is very engaging, especially when he fills his writing with stories of violence that took place on the frontier as these help bring a human dimension to his book. His thesis is believable and is one of the best theories to explain how violence developed in this country and how it spread to the frontier region.

Dual Book Review: "The American West" & "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own"

Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. The American West: An Interpretive History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.

The major theme of both The American West and It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own is an emphasis on the “new” western history approach. Each of these works emphasizes the balanced view that began to emerge in books published in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. What this means for students of the west is that whole segments of America whose significance was at one time ignored or severely downplayed are now brought out into the open. The west becomes a place where pioneers failed and succeeded, a place where mythic heroes could also be villains, and a place where the environment was tamed but also where it resisted the taming influence of Euro-Americans.

The organization of Hine and Faragher’s The American West differs only slightly from Richard White’s It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own. Hine and Faragher begin their history of the west with the arrival of the Spanish to Hispaniola in 1492. Throughout their work, Hine and Faragher strive to include the Native American perspective, to provide a new viewpoint from which to view the events of the early contact period. This is part of the new western history writing, as is the engaging manner in which the authors discuss the culture of the Native American tribes encountered by Euro-Americans. An example of this is the way Hine and Faragher discuss the crops cultivated by the Tainos Indians before the arrival of Columbus as well as the culture and economy of the Eastern Woodlands Indians encountered by the French and English. The authors correctly state that the desire of the Spanish was the conquest of indigenous peoples while the French and English originally regarded the value of the native inhabitants to be in the realm of commerce. For a history of the west this is a new and interesting, if not completely refreshing perspective from which to view the original contact period. What has been left out of this particular work is the reference to the right of Europeans to conquer a “pagan” people, as well as the desire to downplay the violent interaction that often accompanied the contact period. Early on in this work the authors set Turner’s thesis on it’s head by stating the thesis: “the American frontier was the meeting point between civilization and savagery” and then stating their belief that Turner’s thesis, “rang with the arrogance of the victors in the centuries-long campaign of colonial conquest”.

To make the point that the new history of the American West has not gone entirely the other way, to the point where Native Americans are seen as perfect individuals who lived in harmony until Euro-Americans arrived, the authors provide several examples early on. One of the first examples used is a discussion of scalping. The authors do not shy away from telling the reader that warfare was a prominent fact of life, as well as relating that scalping, which was imbued with an intricate level of significance in indigenous society, was a creation of their own culture, not borrowed from the Europeans. The argument is still brought up today that Native Americans were taught how to scalp by Europeans, based on the belief that Native Americans had been living in a Utopian environment at the time contact was made.

Richard White begins his work of writing a new history of the west by focusing on Spanish contact with the indigenous people of the American Southwest. This is one of the major differences between his study and that of Hine and Faragher. The other major difference is the stated scope of his study. Richard White employs a more focused conception of what the west can be, geographically speaking. While Hine and Faragher examine all contact between indigenous peoples of North America and Euro-American explorers and colonizing forces, Richard White focuses on the history of the west of today. For example, he does not discuss Christopher Columbus and the Tainos Indians or the interaction between indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodland region and French and English colonists; he begins as stated previously, by focusing on the American Southwest, which is where the first contact between Native Americans and Euro-Americans took place in the west of today.

For Hine and Faragher, a new conception of the west is employed, focusing on the idea that the “west” was in several different places until we arrive at the end of their study and they focus squarely on the west of today. While viewing the west as a series of successive frontiers is definitely a Turnerian take on the development of the west, the authors are quick to explain that frontiers sprung up wherever Euro-Americans and Native Americans came into contact with each other and it should be noted that the frontiers discussed by Hine and Faragher have little in common with the frontiers discussed by Turner. In The American West, Hine and Faragher explain frontiers as areas of cultural interaction that could be fraught with violence or understanding, unlike the orderly march of civilization across the continent described by Turner. At one time the west for Hine and Faragher was the Atlantic coast and then the Appalachian Mountains, followed by the Ohio Valley and then the Mississippi Valley. Hine and Faragher insist that the term “the west” has always been relative, as demonstrated by the extensive geographic boundaries they apply to their history of the the American West.

Several themes have become common to histories of the new west. While Richard White’s study is one of the first of the large scale reconceptions of western history and the work by Hine and Faragher was published a decade later, it is interesting to compare and contrast the two works to see how they treat these particular topics. Some of those themes include: women and minorities, the role of the federal government in shaping the development of the west, attention to Indian peoples, concern for environmental issues, and myths of the west.

Richard White treats the issue of women in the west in several ways; he discusses the groups of pioneer women who made the trek across the west to the California gold rush and their experiences , he treats various ethnic groups of women including Chinese and Scandinavian women and their push-pull factors for traveling west, but most interesting is the way he discusses the demimonde of the west. White explains that in the west, prostitution was popular and for the most part acceptable wherever mining camps sprung up. White’s discussion of women in the context of purveyors of sexual tricks is interesting for its honesty and informative style. According to White, the demimonde of the west was filled with women who were attempting to flee abusive homes. As they made their way to mining camps and set up trade in brothels, such as the brothel owned by “Chicago Jo” in Helena, Montana, young working girls discovered they could make nearly $120 more per month than the average salary of a saleswoman. White’s discussion of women is certainly on par with the expressed desire of the new west historians to bring attention to a group that was previously marginalized. Another example of how White treats women honestly, without attempting to romanticize their role in the shaping of the west, is his discussion of the fur trade. In his discussion of the fur trade White details the important role played by Native American and Mexican women in securing familial and cultural bases of contact for Euro-Americans throughout the west. Not only were these women sexual liaisons, they also prepared hides for the fur market by scraping and tanning them.

In Hine and Faragher’s work, women are afforded the same equal treatment as White provides; however, Hine and Faragher’s synthesis is able to draw on the large number of sources that have been created since the early 1990s. In The American West, women are discussed as holding various jobs that White does not discuss or does not develop as fully due to the lack of secondary sources when he wrote his study, including the role of forest rangers at Yellowstone National Park and as cattle ranchers. Hine and Faragher provide an interesting history of women as cattle ranchers in the west, usually taking over the ranch of their deceased husband. These histories rely on first hand accounts, usually interviews or diaries of the female cattle ranchers. Women in The American West are portrayed as strong, even courageous at times but also occasionally weak, which makes this sort of history fresh since all three authors come out strongly against romanticizing individuals in western history.

On the topic of the role of the government in the shaping of the west, Hine and Faragher explain that explorations, such as those led by Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long, were highly important in determining the contours of the west and aided in the settlement of the region. By completing maps and other geographic studies of the land west of the Mississippi River, the government facilitated the region’s settlement. Following the Lewis and Clark expedition, a major exploratory force in the west was the Corps of Topographical Engineers, which Hine and Faragher discuss as the arm of the federal government in the west. It is the belief of Hine and Faragher that the United States government learned how to control large public works plans in the west that enabled the federal government to implement other large plans later in the 20th century in the east. From this viewpoint, the west can be compared to a kind of kindergarten of the federal government, according to Hine and Faragher, where important lessons were learned and applied to larger projects in other areas at a later date.

In It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own, the role of the federal government in the shaping of the west is emphasized as having its greatest impact during World War II. White argues that the four-year period from 1941-1945 saw the investment of billions of dollars into factories and infrastructure and brought federal spending in the west to a rough equivalent with the east. White stresses the importance of this period by arguing that it’s significance can be seen in the increased migration to western states, the improvements in education and science in the region, and the much improved condition that accompanied well-paid jobs at government defense factories. Many of the improvements served to change the character of the states in which they were enacted.

Both The American West and It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own place Native American people in a spotlight role. Unlike past histories of the west that treated these groups and their cultures as obstacles for Euro-American pioneers to overcome, Native Americans are discussed whenever possible with an emphasis on their own unique perspective. In discussing the details of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Hine and Faragher utilize primary sources in the form of detailed interviews from actual warriors such as Richard Wooden Leg. This provides an interesting perspective while at the same time allowing Native American voices to be heard. White similarly uses Indian narratives in discussing the fur trade and important battles but he places this more in the context of the process of conquest. White’s narrative discusses Native Americans, from their perspective, evolving from a buffalo hunting lifestyle through conquest and eventually onto reservations While discussing the massacre of Wounded Knee, Hine and Faragher likewise utilize a Native American voice to discuss the outrage felt by the Lakota people at the death of so many of their number, a young man named Black Elk. Throughout both works, either in the form of actual personal narratives recorded by interviewers or drawn from other sources, Native American voices can be heard.

Likewise, both history books address the concern for environmental issues in similar ways. In his work, White discusses the changes brought about by white migration to the west in terms of both the displacement of Native American communities and its ecological impact. White argues that as Euro-Americans migrated west, they killed off the buffalo and destroyed certain plant species which in turn affected human communities and the economy of those communities and also affected the ecology of various regions. White sees the interrelatedness of these events and documents the impacts of white migration and the later forced migration of Native Americans on the environment of the west, denoting one complete chapter to the subject, but also discussing this theme of environmental exploitation throughout the entire work.

In their study, Hine and Faragher denote a chapter to what they term the “plunder and preservation” of the west. In this chapter, both authors document the effects of over hunting, drilling, mining, and the introduction of new species into the habit of the west and their impacts from an ecological as well as socio-economic perspective. Hine and Faragher also go into a significant amount of detail while discussing the impact of the growing tourism industry (which was began by train corporations) in the west. Mirroring arguments that have recently made the news contemporaneously, in the 19th century arguments abounded between preservationists and conservationists as to what type of access the public should be allowed in America’s national parks. The authors place this argument in the context of the current debate about the exploitation of the west and the desire of environmentalists to preserve certain areas from over use.

One of the final themes that each text discusses is the issue of myth making in the west. Hine and Faragher argue that myth making was and remains a way for society to make sense of it’s past. Throughout The American West, the authors discuss myth in terms of the medium of its production, be it cheap dime store novels, more reputable writing, or as a film with the perspective that myths about the American West have always tried to tell their story two ways: as a celebration of pathfinders like Daniel Boone and as a rejection of eastern tradition and civilization. This is why so many western myths can be seen as contradictory.

Richard White also explains the use of myths in the making of western books, art, movies as explanations. White believes that the attempt to explain the west has led to what he calls the “mythic west”; a place that is informed by the real west, but also informs the real west until the reality of the cultural and social west is all but confused in the minds of Americans. White discusses a variety of western books and movies that support his argument that the imagined west is popular throughout the United States; so popular that people who live within the west will actually model their lives after western books and movies in an attempt to be what they are imagined to be by the rest of the country. A great example of this is The Last Cowboy, a book by Jane Kramer about a ranch hand from the Texas panhandle who went to work for a cattle ranch and discovered that his imagined west was at odds with the real west.

Both of these works are very well researched and their sources are painstakingly documented in bibliographies. They both represent excellent syntheses of older studies of the west and primary sources including wonderful narrative accounts. They are also very well written although White’s study is more for undergraduates than the study by Hine and Faragher which could be used by general enthusiasts of the subject or lay readers.

Book Review: Writing Western History

Richard W. Etulain, ed. Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians, Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2002.

This work is a collection of biographies of eminent western historians from the nineteenth to the late twentieth century. To be more accurate, this work briefly describes the personal lives of historians of the American West before launching into studies of each historian’s major works. This work was designed and edited by the historian Richard W. Etulain, who also writes one of the essays, the introduction and the conclusion. The purpose of the work is to explicate how the writing of western history has changed over the course of American history, from the journals of men like Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike who merely recorded events they saw and impressions of people they came in contact with to twentieth century historians like Earl Pomeroy who wrote complex histories of the American West designed to enable others to understand the relationship between the West and the development of the United States. Writing Western History traces this evolution in eleven chapters that focus on ten of the most important historians of the U.S. West: Josiah Royce, Hubert Howe Bancroft, Frederick Jackson Turner, Frederic Logan Paxson, Walter Prescott Webb, Herbert Eugene Bolton, James C. Malin, Henry Nash Smith, Ray Allen Billington, and Earl Pomeroy.

This work begins with an introduction to early interpretations of the significance of the frontier to American history. The two historians mentioned in this section are Royce and Bancroft. Royce’s view of the frontier is similar to the later interpretation of Turner in that it occupies a central place in the development of the character for the American citizen. Unlike Turner, however, Royce believed that the frontier had the force of a centrifuge when it was used to analyze the role of “loners” in building the West. To Royce, the loner figure that embodied the characteristic of individuality to Turner was seen as something of an impediment to the construction of community in the West. Communities would be constructed in Royce’s histories with the arrival of women. Royce places women in a central role in terms of importance while other western historians would largely ignore women for most of the twentieth century until the advent of the New West movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Neither Royce nor Bancroft, the second historian examined in this work, was at the same level of Turner in terms of theorizing about the West. Bancroft recognized the frontier as an important aspect of American history but he was a historian cut from what has been described as the Parkman mold. When Bancroft wrote about the frontier it was in a nationalistic bent, his works are for the most part commercialized history and to go one step further, as this book also points out, they were little more than collections of facts. But still, both Royce and Bancroft were necessary first steps in bringing professional credence to the field of western history. Turner would eventually combine Royce’s attempts to discover the significance of historical events with Bancroft’s attention to primary resources in writing his history of the frontier.

Following the discussion of Royce and Bancroft in which a great deal is learned about the creation of the Bancroft Library and how Royce used Bancroft’s sources, the subject of the book turns to Frederick Jackson Turner. This is the most important part of the book. As it has been argued by western historians like Patricia Nelson Limerick, Turner is of great importance because he created the framework that came to be associated with the history of the American West for much of the twentieth century and the New West history movement was in direct response to Turner’s emphasis of process over place and the absence of women, minorities, eastern capitalists, etc. from his theories. In Writing Western History, Turner’s works are examined in two chapters. The first chapter discusses how he came up with his famous thesis; this is largely accomplished by analyzing his education. Turner earned his doctorate degree from Johns Hopkins where he studied under professors with a wide range of interests. He learned techniques utilized by social scientists as well as German historical scholarship. Turner learned how to treat society as an organism and analyze it using Darwinian methodology. In crafting his dissertation Turner applied all that he had learned at Johns Hopkins. His dissertation shares some of the theoretical traits that his famous thesis would later possess, especially his emphasis on “primitive” and “advanced” elements coming together on a frontier region to form something new.

In 1893 Turner would deliver his famous thesis in Chicago and later that year he would submit it for publication. Over the next few decades, Turner would proselytize among historians and the general public to gather acceptance of his theories with great success. Eventually, Turner’s thesis enabled western history to be viewed as the history of America itself, before falling into disfavor later in the twentieth century. Turner’s famous thesis, which in elementary terms stated that the push into “free and open” land forged the national character and explained American development, has become viewed as the only major work of his career. One of the aims of the two essays on Turner in Writing Western History is to explain the evolution of Turner’s thinking on frontier history. According to this work, Turner’s writings on the importance of the section in American History reflect a change in his beliefs about the west. Whereas the frontier thesis argued that the frontier had closed and a new model of analysis needed to be created for understanding contemporary American history, Turner’s writings on the section seemed to offer that framework. Turner’s sectional thesis, generally stated, was a theory that “a framework that provided constancy (in regards to the process of community) would be important in a frontier-less society as native-born generations replaced their pioneer parents and restless mobility subsided into attachment to place”. One of the major points of Writing Western History is that Turner bridged his early and later thoughts on American history by stating that pioneers possessed two distinct desires: on the one hand they have a desire to wander and on the other hand, they desire to settle down and establish communities. These desires, Turner believed, grew out of the frontier process that “had bred rampant individualism as well as a collective endeavor”.

Throughout the following chapters in Writing Western History, the individual essayists contemplate the contributions of other historians to our understanding of the American West. Etulain contributed an article on Frederic Logan Paxson in which he analyzes the debate on whether Paxson had been able to mark out his own path in western history or if he had adhered to that of Turner. Etulain finds that Paxson was able to mark out his own path while creating groundbreaking syntheses of frontier history. Each essay in this discusses the major works of the collection of ten western historians. This is the common tie that binds the book together, since after all, most of the historians in this work came down on different sides of historical debates and chose to write in different styles and utilize differing methodologies. Etulain analyzes Paxson’s The Last American Frontier, History of the American Frontier, When the West Is Gone, The New Nation, and Recent History of the United States. By analyzing these works, Etulain comes to the conclusion that Paxson was a loyal Turnerian in regards to the frontier thesis but was at odds with Turner when it came to ideas on the importance of the section in American history. Etulain is cautious in his discussion of the similarities of Paxson and Turner, because as he points out, Paxson was not merely an imitator of Turner, he was in many ways a groundbreaker due to his ability to synthesize secondary sources and produce volumes on the frontier in American history, something that Turner’s writers block had prevented him from accomplishing.

The next group of historians that are discussed in Writing Western History include Walter Prescott Webb, Herbert Eugene Bolton and James C. Malin. Webb is one of the most important of the twentieth century western historians thanks in large part to his work The Great Plains. It was this work that established the boundaries of the West for millions of Americans. In contrast to the history of Turner, for instance, in which the West is a process instead of a place, Webb clearly defined the region’s boundaries and stated that the region had existed long before Europeans stepped foot on the continent and in fact, the region was immortal. It was not a dead or dying region as Turner’s frontier thesis had led many Americans to believe. One criticism of Webb’s attempts to establish the boundaries of the West was that by stating that New England or the Ohio Valley or parts of the Mississippi Valley were never part of the West (as Turner’s thesis assumed), Webb was removing what had been a “unifying vision” for Americans. Webb’s other book that is discussed in Writing Western History is The Great Frontier. This work attempts to take the frontier as it is understood in America and extend that analytical tool to the rest of the world, but in particular to Europe. This work actually could be described as an early attempt in the field of Atlantic world history as it primarily centers on events in Africa, Europe, North America and South America. This book was poorly received by many critics for being too general in its analysis of European politics and economic institutions as well as for the view that Webb put forward that many of the countries invaded by Europeans were in fact, “vast bodies of wealth without proprietors”.

The essay on Herbert Eugene Bolton focuses largely on Bolton’s attempt to publish a guide to documents pertaining to United States history stored in Mexican archives. Guide to Materials for the History of the United States in the Principal Archives of Mexico is considered to be the most significant work of Bolton’s career (a career that spanned nearly 90 books and articles). As Donald Worcester argues in Writing Western History, Bolton had a strong desire to study the history of the United States Southwest during the period of Spanish colonization. Bolton wanted to do for the Southwest what Francis Parkman did for the French in North America, and make the history appealing and accessible by publishing documents held in Spanish and Mexican archives. If there is one major drawback to Worcester’s approach in this essay it is that he largely ignores the Borderland’s history that Bolton is so well known for today to focus on Bolton’s trips to archives in Central America and Europe and the publications that resulted following the translation of those sources.

From Bolton, there follows essays on James C. Malin, a largely uninteresting sketch of the man and his contributions to the field of western history written by a former student of Malin’s, Allen G. Bogue. Bogue spends a large amount of time discussing the quirks of his old instructor including the type of humor Malin liked to engage in as well as how Malin would stare at one of the corners in the back of his classroom while he “deeply pondered” a student’s question. What is of interest in Bogue’s essay is the discussion of Malin’s environmentalism several decades before this field became fashionable. According to Bogue, the major contributions of Malin to western history were his “writings on expansion and territorial growth on the antebellum frontier of the Nebraska country”. In explicating the debt owed by historians today to Malin, however, it must be said that Bogue uses far too many pages to sum up that debt. Many times in Bogue’s essay he wanders off topic to explore some personal insight unrelated to the works of Malin; insights which add nothing to our understanding of Malin as a historian.

In the section that follows, a group of recent western historians are examined. The first of these essays begins with Henry Nash Smith and focuses largely on Smith’s work Virgin Land. The author of this essay, Lee Clark Mitchell, is a professor of English. Throughout his essay, Mitchell attempts to apply literary analysis to Smith’s work, which is filled with metaphor. The result is a mix of interesting and confusing insights into Smith’s well-known work. This is probably the most difficult of the essays in terms of the ability of the reader to understand the analytical tools of the author. Mitchell states that what makes Smith unique among western historians is his training in cultural and literary criticism rather than in history. Mitchell believes that this training allows Smith to approach the writing of history from a much different perspective than other authors. Ray Allen Billington offers a much different portrait for recent historians of the American West when compared to Smith. Billington was a supporter of the Turner thesis and worked for much of his academic life to rehabilitate the ideas of Turner. The major book that Patricia Nelson Limerick examines to understand Billington’s theories is Westward Expansion. In this work, Billington explains which parts of the frontier thesis are salvageable and which of Turner’s ideas had to be jettisoned. Billington shared with Turner the belief that the frontier experience was something that was unique and its occurrence had led to America being exceptional when compared to other nations. In attempting to salvage the frontier thesis Billington refined much of Turner’s writings, including Turner’s explication of the frontier process. To Billington, this process was best imagined as a series of zones moving across the country. There were six different types of zones that could be in existence at any given time before the 1890s when the frontier was officially closed. The first zone belonged to the fur traders, next came the cattlemen, followed by miners (where the geology allowed it), then pioneer farmers and then equipped farmers and lastly the urban frontier. Limerick takes Billington to task for what she believes that he left out: women, minorities, soldiers, explorers, loggers, investors, etc. This was also a holdover, it would appear, from the original frontier thesis published by Turner. Although Limerick does find much to disagree with in Billington’s writings, she sums up Billington as a historian that attempted to bridge the gap between the writings of Turner and those of the New West movement with a level of objectivism that in the end is not enough to “bridge the gap” of understanding.

Writing Western History is a fine overview of the historiography of the American West. The book contains many interesting insights into the personal lives of some of the greats of the field. In many ways it is heartening to read about the challenges most of these scholars went through to earn their first job or to publish their first book, even to graduate with their B.A. At least two of these individuals were in their late twenties before they earned their B.A. The most important feature of this book is the ability of readers to use it as a bibliographic resource, that feature alone makes it worth the purchase price.

Book Review: The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism From Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee

Ostler, Jeffrey. The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism From Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Jeffrey Ostler’s work on the history of Lakota-U.S. interactions during the 19th century, culminating in the massacre at Wounded Knee in December of 1890 provides many new insights for those interested in Native American history. Ostler utilizes colonialism as a lens through which to view Indian agency and resistance at a time when the Lakota were experiencing many political, social, and cultural changes. What sets Ostler’s work apart is that it provides a new way of examining the impact of Lakota decision making, resistance, and accommodation practices without ignoring or glossing over the outcome of those choices. By discussing the failure of Lakota strategy along with the successes, Ostler creates a picture of Lakota society and politics that is more human, and less mythologized.

In this work, Ostler states that he wrote a history of the Lakota during the 19th century to fill in the holes of existing scholarship, especially as it relates to the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee massacre. In addition to the task of rounding out historical knowledge relevant to the aforementioned events, Ostler is also attempting to place his own perspective on the question of whether or not the Ghost Dance movement required a military response; whether or not this movement was actually dangerous. Those are two of the most important tasks of Ostler’s work.

Ostler’s book is divided into three sections, Conquest describes the early experiences the Lakota had with the United States, primarily through interaction in the fur trade and spans seven decades, up to 1877. Section two is titled Colonialism and spans from 1877 to the late 1880s; during this period most Lakota were placed on reservations which were ran by civilians with force provided by the U.S. Army. The final section is titled Anticolonialism and the State and this focuses on the emergence of the Ghost Dance movement and concludes with a discussion of Wounded Knee.

As previously mentioned, Ostler uses colonialism as a lens through which to view the Lakota and the changes they experienced throughout the nineteenth century; by beginning his work with the 1804 introduction of the Lakota and the U.S. represented by Lewis and Clark, Ostler sets up his theme and continues to use it throughout the rest of the book. For Ostler, U.S. colonialism begins with the confrontation between Lewis and Clark and the Lakota village at the mouth of the Bad River in September 1824. At this first meeting, many of the same themes that would later dominate Lakota-U.S. relations were first manifested. The U.S. attempted first to display their power and might before the Lakota by staging a sort of military parade; this was followed by the firing of a large airgun and several references by Lewis and Clark in their journals about the Lakota being “the vilest miscreants of the human race.” The references to Lakota character stemmed from the refusal of the Lakota people to settle for a pittance of an offering in goods made by the Corps of Discovery.

In chapters two through four, Ostler continues to use colonialism to discuss the agency and resistance of the Lakota to the presence of the United States on the Northern Plains. As the narrative progresses, the reader begins to understand how colonialism evolved among the Lakota, from the actions of Lewis and Clark, through the first decades of the nineteenth century when the Lakota would regularly join U.S. Army expeditions as interpreters and scouts such as the expedition in 1823 against the Arikara, on down to the 1840s when America’s imperial policy on the Northern Plains ceased to be a hypothetical and started to become a reality as the Oregon Trail brought more settlers out west.

Colonial institutions did not simply appear as functioning entities in the west, the United States built them over several decades during the nineteenth century. As Ostler attempts to explain the development of U.S. colonialism among the Lakota, he also discusses several ways that this tribe developed policies and thereby was not simply acted upon by outside influences. A good example of Lakota agency was the way the tribe reacted to the invasion of their lands by Euro-American settlers using the Oregon Trail beginning in the 1840s. According to Ostler, the Lakota began to feel the indirect effects of agrarian expansion in the 1840s as settlers and cattle destroyed or consumed the food supply of indigenous animals, especially the buffalo. In retaliation, the Lakota decided to charge settlers for the damage they were doing to their economy; this was a good policy in terms of holding those responsible for the damages responsible for fixing them, but the normal reaction of the United States was to call out the cavalry and attack local Lakota villages for “harassing” settlers.

What is unique about Ostler’s account of the history of the Lakota during the nineteenth century is the scant attention he pays the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Ostler dedicates two chapters to a discussion of the Great Sioux War and its impact on Lakota culture, economics, and society while describing the famous battle in which Yellow Hair was rubbed out in a few sentences. This is a unique choice and Ostler should be commended for seeing the battle as it was; in many ways a battle that featured several prominent personalities, several of which were killed. It’s popularity today as America’s second most popular battlefield to visit, after Gettysburg, remains largely due to the credit of the participants. In terms of the impact of the battle and the significance of the victory for the militants of the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes who fought in it, the victory secured none of the terms for which they were fighting.

While Ostler pays little attention to the first part of the military aspect of the Great Sioux War, he discusses the final months of the war in much greater depth. In the closing months of the conflict, military commanders would occasionally meet with Indian leaders, such as the meeting between Miles and Sitting Bull, which took place in October 1876. In discussing the meetings between Lakota leaders and military personnel Ostler further demonstrates how policy was formed and how demands for reservations and concessions were made to men like General George Crook and Colonel Nelson Miles. While it is true that native demands were generally only given lip service by military personnel who had no ability to make good on their promises, by discussing their demands, Ostler is able to show how the Lakota transitioned from one tribal policy to another during this period. The Lakota moved away from a policy of killing their own people for accepting rations to actually working to win their people the best deal from the U.S. government. This transition is presented as another survival strategy created following a reappraisal of U.S. power on the Great Plains. As the Lakota began to face the reality of life on a reservation, a life of not hunting the buffalo freely, and an end to armed resistance to the United States, it is easy to understand what Ostler means by saying that this was certainly a period of transition for the Lakota.

While Ostler discusses the roots of colonialism and imperial conquest he generally tends to downplay intertribal conflict on the Great Plains. An example of this can be seen in the way he compares the United States belief in manifest destiny and the desire of the Lakota to become a Buffalo People. Manifest destiny was the belief that Americans generally shared that their culture and civilization should eventually conquer the entire North American continent, as Ostler succinctly describes the process. In the nation that the United States was attempting to build, other cultures would be forced to adopt a secondary status; however, in describing the period of homeland building enacted by the Lakota contemporaneously, different words with much different significance are utilized. This is one complaint that can be made of Ostler’s work, in terms of how he downplays the way that the Lakota dispossessed other Indian tribes on the Great Plains, the Crow, Pawnee, Kiowa, and Cheyenne. The actions of the Lakota are interpreted by Ostler as magnanimous; the Lakota lived in a world “where they knew there would always be other people on the Plains”, they dispossessed tribes but for good reasons. In the end this explanation of a “good natured dispossession” seems far-fetched.

In the second part of Ostler’s book the effects of colonialism can be seen to touch nearly every facet of Lakota life. A big focus in this section is placed on the education of Lakota children at boarding schools such as Hampton and Carlisle. By sending their children to these boarding schools, and upon their return to the tribe, parents began to understand that any hope of living in peace with the United States and maintaining their own culture was impossible. According to Ostler, cultural genocide was the goal of Indian boarding schools. Students were forced to cut their hair, adopt American style clothing, and were forbade from speaking their language, among other things. The effect of these restrictions was to create a generation of Lakota that was neither white nor red and had a very hard time finding their place within society. One example of the effects of this educational policy was Plenty Horses, who killed an army Lieutenant in January 1891 in order to create a place for himself within Lakota society; before the murder took place Plenty Horses had complained that he no longer had a place within any society, white or red.

Colonial institutions brought other changes to the Lakota, including agriculture and a complete change in economy and labor. While most Lakota in the 1880s had ancestors two or three generations back that had some experience raising crops, the Lakota men of this period had no desire to become farmers. Some old men and a few younger men might eventually bow to agency pressure and take up the plow but according to Ostler, women were the primary agriculturalists of the tribe at the beginning of the reservation period. The work of men, since they could no longer hunt the buffalo, became livestock herders. Once Indian agents understood that raising livestock could meet most of the demands for food and keep the Lakota from starving at those times when rations were delayed or not sent at all, men took up the responsibility of raising the livestock. This again demonstrates Indian agency, and it is an excellent example of a decision made by the Lakota that in many ways worked. The only thing Ostler has to say negatively about the Lakota and livestock raising is that nearly half of the livestock was at one point owned by eight half breeds; however, by the end of the nineteenth century Ostler states that almost every family on Standing Rock Agency had livestock or access to them.

In the final section of The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism Ostler discusses the Ghost Dance movement as an anticolonial response by the Lakota following a decades long trend of the loss of sovereignty. Throughout this section Ostler attempts to answer important questions that he feels have been left unanswered or poorly answered by other historians. Ostler is attempting to make sense of why the military was called out to deal with a seemingly pacifistic revitalization movement. In relation to the previous question, Ostler seeks to answer Mooney and Utley who both wrote in their own histories of Wounded Knee that the Lakota had militarized the teachings of Wovoka.

The conditions that made the Ghost Dance an appealing religion among the Lakota were established following the Pratt and Crook Commission in 1888-89. The Lakota were promised rations and concessions in exchange for agreeing to the imposition of the Dawes Act on their reservations. Few of these concessions were honored, such as the concession of increased beef rations and the creation of better systems of economic cooperation with the United States government. Soon the “accommodationists” among the Lakota began to realize that by agreeing to divide up their land individually and to cede the remainder to the United States in the hopes of appeasing a land government were false hopes. In addition to these negative events, drought conditions were taking their toll on Lakota agricultural efforts, disease and sickness was spread throughout the Great Plains, and the winter of 1889-90 was a very hard one. The conditions were indeed ripe for the implantation of a message of hope, which arrived in late 1888.

The “new messiah” as he was called was a Paiute named Wovoka and word of his deeds was spread far and wide in late 1888 and throughout 1889. The Lakota on Pine Ridge and several other agencies appointed delegations to go west, past the Rocky Mountains and visit with Wovoka, to see if the rumors were true. Unlike Mooney who attempted to place Wovoka in the same category of Christ or Buddha, Ostler believes that he should be placed in a category labeled “prophets of rebellion”. While advocating peace, Wovoka also was teaching his followers that a cataclysmic event was coming which would wipe out, or remove completely, the Euro-Americas of North America. Ostler does a fine job of presenting Wovoka and his teachings at face value. While arguing later on that the Ghost Dance was the product of pacifistic teachings, Ostler does not try to make Wovoka look innocent at this point either, he fully admits that an apocalyptic message was central to Wovoka’s teachings.

As mentioned, the content of the Ghost Dance itself was quite peaceful. The songs sung by Ghost Dancers included themes such as a father, or other family member, and the return of the Buffalo. What Ostler is attempting to do in this section is to argue against the claims of James Mooney and Robert Utley that the Lakota militarized the teachings of Wovoka. According to Ostler, the only basis for this belief lies in the account of Short Bull. Some secondhand accounts state that Short Bull might have uttered a reference to “kill all the soldiers and there won’t be any whites left” at a gathering of several thousand Lakota in 1889. The statement was briefly circulated in the media and then dropped for more interesting news. However, this statement was dug up and circulated widely following Wounded Knee to back up the position of the U.S. Army that the Lakota were militant and wished to kill soldiers, thereby attempting to excuse the guilt of the army for what transpired. Ostler argues that the account, which quotes Short Bull, no longer exists in original form; today it can only be read as part of other quotes and in newspapers following the massacre. The absence of documentary evidence in a period where many records still exist seems highly unlikely to Ostler.

While Ostler is making his argument against the Short Bull narrative he continues working on his larger goal of understanding why the United States ordered military action to be taken against what in reality was assumed by many people to be a peaceful religion and movement. Ostler has performed an in depth survey of many newspapers from this time period and he has searched them all with the purpose of discovering whether or not white settlers were editorializing their fears about Indian attacks from any of the Lakota reservations in Dakota Territory. What he discovers is enlightening but troublesome at the same time. Ostler was unable to find any description of fears concerning impending Indian attacks in any newspapers around the Lakota reservations; this is troublesome due to the fact that the question remains unanswered. Why did the United States believe it was necessary to send armed troops to put down a nonviolent anticolonial movement?

Ostler can think of several probable reasons for why this took place; one of the simplest being that the primary concern of Washington officials was the ghost dancers’ defiance of the agents’ authority and a desire to put the Lakota in their place. However, the answer that Ostler eventually settles on and the one that he gives the most credence is that Nelson A. Miles was to blame for the massacre at Wounded Knee. Miles, as commander of the Division of the Missouri, was the man most responsible for drafting the plan of attack that led to the deaths of several hundred people. Ostler heavily criticizes Miles’ decision to draw up a plan of attack against one reservation when it would have been more effective and the chance for violence would have been lessened if the available troops were spread out over three reservations. The fact that Miles also wrote a report encouraging the belief that the Ghost Dance movement was likely to turn violent against Americans after he had supported the belief that the movement was peaceful also counts against him, according to Ostler. Miles believed (and rightfully so) that the Lakota were suffering greatly and that at that moment they had more reason to take up arms against the United States, and the ability to do so, than ever before.

In the end, Jeffrey Ostler’s answer as to why the massacre took place and those he blamed for the fighting are compelling reasons. Certainly his explanation of a peaceful Lakota interpretation of the Ghost Dance movement is fascinating for how he differs from the classic accounts of Mooney and Robert Utley, both of whom supported troops on the reservation due to what they saw as the militancy of the movement.

Crime and Punishment in the West

Historians of the American West have been studying violence for decades and their conclusions show that this region, while possessing many colorful characters whose exploits have become mythologized by other Americans, was not any more violent than say, the Northeast, where cities like New York witnessed far more acts of violence and crime on a per capita basis than did any state or territory in the West during the 19th century. So the West was not a lawless region; however, as historian William C. Davis argues, "the romantic appeal of the West shrouded its criminality with an extra aura of violent romance".

According to most historians of violence in the West, among these was Eugene Hollon a former professor of history at the University of Toledo, there are several reasons why the West came to have such a violent reputation and why the nation mythologized the violence that took place in the region, thereby exacerbating the effects of any violent act by making it seem much more significant. Top among the reasons for the violent reputation of the West is the fact that the fringe regions of civilization have always attracted "non-conformists" and anti-social types. Far from the restraining influences of government and society, men and women who were possessed of lawless tendencies found the West to their liking. Those individuals who chose the profession of highwayman and bandit would soon discover that although significant amounts of freedom the likes of which eluded them in the East could be found west of the 100th meridian, the lifestyle was a hard one. By all accounts the life of an outlaw was seedy, unglamorous, dangerous, and ultimately deadly with little hope of economic improvement for their material situations.

Violent crime had existed in the West long before the United States conquered the region in the Mexican War and before even Lewis and Clark headed west in 1803. For over 200 years of Spanish occupation, the Southwest and parts of the Great Plains had witnessed violence as new cultures came into conflict on the sparsely populated borderlands of New Spain. When the Americans came during the 19th century, little would change. As was mentioned previously, the West was not a lawless region. While the perception existed that the West was free of invasive government and social influence, there were vigilance committees like those established in the California and Colorado mines as well as citizens who were willing to carry out their own form of justice on criminals. A criminal element existed alongside an element that was quite capable of inflicting significant punishment. While we generally think of crime in the West in the form of shootouts and bank robberies, the number one crime reported in that region was actually embezzlement followed by petty theft.

The myth of the riotous trailman, causing trouble and destruction at the railhead after a long haul on the cattle trails is also just that, a myth. While cowboys were known to cause trouble for cow towns including drunken brawls and saloon fights, no one town held their position as a railhead for any considerable time for rowdy cowboys to get too much out of hand and to cause local citizens much inconvenience. This is not to say that the violence which did occur in some of these cattle towns, notable Dodge City, Kansas, were insignificant; it is more likely that stories of their violence have been greatly exaggerated by an American public that was willing to believe such tales about the "lawless" West, as it was perceived to be.

The first of the well known gang of outlaws in the West got their start following the Civil War. This was the James Gang, which consisted of Jesse and his older brother Frank. Later the James brothers would be joined by their cousins, the Youngers. The James Gang was the first in a series of family crime gangs that can be identified in books written about violence of the American West today. Other gangs would include the Dalton Gang, the Clanton's, and the Reno brothers. Few of these individuals would live to see old age as their profession was quite dangerous. Following the Civil War many ex-Confederates would head West and take up the highway bandit or bank robbing profession. These were men who had been trained in some cases as guerrilla fighters and in many cases they were reacting to what was deemed to be heavy handed Reconstruction tactics on the part of the North. A surplus of disenfranchised and militarily trained young men would create a niche for themselves out West and some, like the James Gang, would claim that they only targeted Yankee banks, Yankee stage coaches, etc.

To continue the theme of how the West's violent reputation developed, some historians have identified the passive emphasis on security that was prominent in many communities of the West during the 19th century. Many communities believed that locks on doors were unnecessary as they knew their neighbors and held the belief that good neighbors did not steal from each other. In many communities of the West, some banks did not even have safes in which to store deposits, they either relied on a lock box (I have no idea if this is the same lock box that Al Gore would later reference in the 2000 election) or the bank manager would take the savings deposits home each night. This is the environment in which gangs started to organize and eventually two of the most famous events that occurred in the 19th century West would come to pass: the fight at the O.K. Corral and the Lincoln County War. I will write a blog on each of these events soon.

Finally, the great Western historian W. Eugene Hollon wrote an interpretation of Frontier Violence in 1974, still viewed as a classic work in this field. In this monograph, Hollon describes the traditional reasons for why the West had a reputation for violence and then he offers several (at the time) new reasons which are quite insightful. According to Hollon, "the cause of violence on the frontier was related more to anxiety, tension, frustration, and prejudice than any action by outlaws, Indian fighters, or vigilante groups".

The magnetism the fringe region of society has towards non-conformists and anti-social types, the general disregard for more stringent community security standards, disenfranchised and militarily trained young men, and anxiety, tension, frustration and prejudice. All of these reasons combined with a strong desire of the other regions of the United States to see the West as it was perceived to be: wild and untamed. In the end the nation fixed on the myth of the West as a Violent region.