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.
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