Jim's 616 Blog

History 616 Devil's Bargains

2005-12-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

I thought this book was overwritten. In an effort to lighten the reading load I have structured my blog partly as a quiz.
Question 1: Identify one of the author’s thoughts that he does not run into the ground within 3 paragraphs.
2. Define “vast” limitation. For extra credit define the opposite of “vast” limitation.
3. How many pages in chapter 1 do NOT contain the word “postmodern?”
4. How many pages in chapter 2 do NOT contain either the words “myth” or “mystery?”
5. How many times does the author use the term “fin de siècle” in each of chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6? (I quit counting after that) (fin de siècle = French: “end of the century.” Of, relating to, characteristic of, or resembling the late 19th-century literary and artistic climate of sophistication, escapism, extreme aestheticism, world-weariness, and fashionable despair…” definition found at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9125584)
Answers to Question 5: Chapter 2 - three. And just to preserve continuity between chapters 2 and 3 he uses the phrase in the next to last line in Chapter 2, and the first line in chapter 3. Twice each in chapters 4 and 5. In chapter 6 he uses the phrase at least five times, including twice within three paragraphs 153-4.

Most self contradictory, overused and distracting neologism: “Neonatives.” This apparently is from “neo” meaning “new” and “native” meaning “to be born.” Everyone is a native of (that is was born) somewhere. The author apparently wants to make the point that some persons who were born in places B thru Z claim/act as if they were born in place A. But I felt that repeatedly making disparaging references to such a conceit by calling them “neonatives” is distracting. What he really means in each case is “non-native.” Maybe the author is still living in his birth town/region/state. This may explain his apparent lack of wider contact with the world, which in turn might have led him to think the repeated use of “neonative” in this context was cute. Actually this person sounds like some Welshman, Scot or Yorkshireman who considers someone from the next valley as a foreigner. When I lived in Yorkshire (a county in England) my next door neighbor (30 something years old) stated that he had never been out of the county – repeat county.

Automobiles. Define “infinite places” as in “Automobile tourism spread its impact among many communities, as smaller numbers of visitors reached infinite places.” P. 149. I found his philosophical exploration of the automobile a bit “mysterious.” For example: “The automobile gave travelers freedom of movement and a broader range of experience than did railroad tourism but it did not always offer them a feeling of personal satisfaction derived from accomplishment.” (p. 168) Accomplishment? What kind of “personal” satisfaction does ANY form of transportation “offer?” He continues “Although drivers and passengers might appear enthusiastic when they arrived on the rim of the Grand Canyon, their triumph was tempered by their dependence on the very technology that their travels attempted to escape.” Is that the primary goal of travelers – “escaping technology?” Some people travel to see technology. Is it true that although some/many/most/all/ANY (?) drivers and passengers “might appear enthusiastic,” some/many/most/all/ANY (?) are in some way adversely affected by this experience. This man may actually be too sensitive for any form of transportation. How does he know of this phenomenon? In what way was their “triumph” “tempered?” For that matter what triumph? And if there was “triumph,” what evidence of “tempering?” Has the author, or anyone else observed these characteristics in the population? I have another hypothesis - The author is actually a psychoanalyst posing as a historian because psychoanalysts have even more difficulty getting non-fiction published than psychoanalysts.

Skiing. “Skiing offered a way to personally achieve the strong sense of individual control over raw nature that American travelers craved. “STRONG sense of control”, “RAW nature” – WOW! An avalanche of adjectives! My emotions are exhausted – I don’t know what to say! A population that is “CRAVING control.” The “craving” of control makes some/many/most/all/ANY(?) American travelers seem like politicians. Even Freud is reputed to have said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It’s a good thing the author is such a keen analyst, otherwise we might not have been enlightened with the nugget that “[l]acking dependable transportation, the Aspen [ski resort] venture was doomed.” Without this revelation, might readers have thought that in many/most tourist ventures dependable transportation was not an important factor. Raw…

Most self-evident statement “Outdoor experience, camping, fishing, skiing, and the like, offered real and unavoidable contact with nature.” - page 169. I really appreciate the author pointing out that contact with nature was ”unavoidable” in outdoor experience. That subtle characteristic of the outdoors might have escaped the less intellectual among the book’s readers. On the other hand one might postulate that such contact was INTENDED by most who participated in such an experience. What the author could have made of that if he had seen it was consciously intended. On further reflection there may be some who participate in outdoor experience who do not intend such contact – an interesting idea for a journal article (abnormal psychology).

Another quiz: How many pages in the book have a reference to Sun Valley, Idaho? Answer 62. Another question. How many more people have visited Sun Valley in person rather that via the movie Sun Valley Serenade? For that matter were the exteriors in Sun Valley Serenade really Sun Valley? (I thought the music in Orchestra Wives was better that the music in Sun Valley Serenade but Sun Valley Serenade did have Sonje Henie.) Actually Sun Valley is in second place in number of references - Aspen, Colorado has 90! I haven’t visited either place but I haven’t seen any movies with “Aspen” in the title or which featured Glenn Miller’s music so I worked off of Sun Valley instead.

One aspect of western tourism that the author overlooked was extraterrestrial tourism. This topic could have been used to further develop the “mythical”/”mysterious” aspects of the West in Chapter 2. The author could have included descriptions of some of the truly mysterious Western tourist attractions such as Roswell, New Mexico (alleged to be the only spot on earth listed in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial tourist guide books www.alienresistance.org/), Area 51 (allegedly in Nevada and allegedly the location of various mysterious United States military goings-on AND allegedly the final (?) resting (?) place of the extraterrestrial tourists who landed (?) at Roswell), the Nevada Test Site or Alamogordo, New Mexico (two of a small number of mysterious AND radioactive tourist sites, http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org/ and http://www.atomictourist.com/trinity.htm), and the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot (http://www.mysteryspot.com/). Actually, I just might contact the author with my hypothesis on how these sites are related. You see if an extraterrestrial tourist was intending to visit the Nevada Test Site for some intended or unintended contact with really raw nature, and his/her/its navigational aids were disturbed by the alleged gravitational anomalies at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot (probably and understandably overlooked as a hazard to extraterrestrial tourist transportation) he/she/it may just have accidentally arrived at Roswell and subsequently been interred or interned at Area 51. Well, as the author pointed out in mentioning the hazards of early train travel, that’s the way tourism sometimes crumbles.

My definition of a “Devil’s Bargain” – voluntarily committing oneself to reading this book (or this blog). Incidently, this book is OK as history. It has a thesis - tourism changes things - makes its case and is well documented. It overemphasized skiing and Las Vegas and underemphasizes the beaches, the cities (eg San Francisco) and the state and national parks.

Hist 616 Cadillac Desert November 28

2005-11-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

Through about page 250 I was profoundly and positively moved by the breadth and depth of this diatribe of the water policies of the various political, engineering and administrative actors in the western United States over the last 125 years. I remain in awe of the scholarship and plain hard work Mr. Reisner puts on display here. As a native Californian I am familiar with most of the geographic areas he describes in the state, and somewhat familiar with most of the water projects and policies he examines and explains. Beyond page 250 I guess I experienced the effects of some kind of water torture, as the myriad of geologic, hydraulic, political, economic, sociological and organizational details became too much. I began to feel that the message was so important that I wished Reisner had pursued a different organization in telling the story. It seemed like a story that cried out for maps and charts and tables. I lost track of the people, organizations, agencies, and projects. In other words I got buried/drowned. I think that if I had not been somewhat knowledgeable about the geography and policies before I read the book I would have drowned earlier.

A few concepts I thought were important: on pages 115 and 116 Reisner offered his belief that “…the Reclamation Act [of 1902], or some variation of it, was, by the end of the nineteenth century inevitable.” I am fairly sure that that kind of presentism would NOT pass muster in a graduate seminar but given the overwhelming positive contribution of the book is not fatal. His analysis though is spot on and very important – “To resist a federal reclamation program was to block all further migration to the West and to ensure disaster for those who were already there – or for those who were on their way.” It does though beg the question on how the “system” that Reisner describes evolved, because Reisner clearly describes how the water programs were not designed democratically nor directly in the interests of a large number of migrants, but rather apparently for a few entrepreneurs. I don’t believe you could EVER sell the idea that ANY politician believed they were allocating the huge sums of money involved to help working or middle class people irrigate their small farms. He seems to try to say that again on pages 157-158.

What remains inexplicable for me is how so many prominent politicians and courts went along (and it had to be an informed participation for many) with the scam which ignored the provisions of the various statues on water which stated that “subsidized” water was not to be available to large land owners, specifically setting the acreage limits very low and who deliberately ignored the horrendous cost-benefit ratios involved in many of the projects. It really amounts to massive, willful and fairly public criminal corruption on the part of many, including many liberal notables. As a Californian, I already knew about Edmund G. Brown as a political hack and the profound hypocrisy of his “radical” son Jerry, who dated “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, served two terms as governor of California and is currently serving his second term as Mayor of Oakland, California (population 400,000 in 2000). Jerry’s official “bio” on the City of Oakland website (http://www.oaklandnet.com/government/mayor/biography.html) modestly notes that he “appointed an extraordinary number of women and minorities to high government positions, including the first woman, African-American and Latino to the California Supreme Court …[and] after leaving the Governor’s Office, … spent six months in Japan and worked briefly with Mother Teresa in India…. [and in 1992] defeated Bill Clinton in Maine, Colorado, Vermont, Connecticut, Utah and Nevada during the 1992 Presidential primaries.”

As a historian, I’m not sure what Reisner’s game is when he says “[w]e didn’t have to build main stream dams on rivers carrying vast loads of silt…but federal engineers were enthralled by dams. ….We didn’t have to mine a hundred thousand years’ worth of groundwater in a scant half century…” etc - his emphasis. No but we did. His job is to explain why we did it and he did explain. For him to ask the question, even rhetorically, seems to lessen the impact of his fine work, maybe even cause the reader to question his committment to his own explanations. It seems to me that the real crime is that many of the relevant laws appear to have been written rather realistically, but the politicians and judiciary have let all of us down by not enforcing and reinforcing the law. Reisner has done an important job with his book; the real story though is the prosecutions that should have taken place for malfeasance and misfeasance haven’t.

Becoming Mexican-American and Native Americans

2005-11-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

In his Pulitzer prize-winning book The Uprooted: the Epic Story of the Great Migration that Made the American People, Harvard historian Oscar Handlin famously wrote, “once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America…[but] I discovered that the immigrants were American history.” I think this is the most important idea we should hold as we contemplate and comment on immigration. It seems to me that Sánchez does a very important service by bringing out the details – time, place, political, economic and social conditions – which have affected Mexican immigration into the United States. Among the questions that scholars of immigration in America seem to study are the meaning of American citizenship and the evolution of immigrants’ attachment or lack of attachment to the United States. I thought Becoming Mexican American did an excellent job of identifying the details of the multiple dimensions of these questions as they applied to Mexican immigrants, indicating how they operate in a unique immigrant environment in this country that can support them in so many ways in their identity as Mexicans and at the same time does not require them to make as many cultural changes as individuals in other groups might find necessary if they do not desire to change.

Another particularly interesting and important element of the book is the author’s development of the importance of conditions in Mexico, not only on the decision some Mexicans make to emigrate to the United States, but also on those emigrants while they are in the United States. The historical ethnocentrism of “Anglos” should not be a surprise to graduate students in history and I think the author does a competent job of explaining the reasonable roots of that ethnocentrism as well as the unreasonable ones. Some of the author’s points helped me understand is current issues associated with Mexican immigration and possibly how those issue might be addressed, however it does seem to me that the numbers of Mexican immigrants today and the effects of that immigration on the educational, and social welfare systems in the United States are unprecedented.

In Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American West, David G. Gutierrez tates that “The most crucial development as a result of expansion and domination is the subsequent construction of elaborate sets of rationales which are designed to explain why one group has conquered another and to establish and perpetuate histories that help set… and enforce… priorities [repress] some subjects in the name of the greater importance of others, [naturalize] certain categories and [disqualify] others.” I think that people construct “elaborate sets of rationales … designed to explain [themselves]” for almost all political and social issues so I don’t find that observation particularly illuminating in the case of Mexican immigration, and Americans are not unique in their “tremendous ability to rationalize and justify …[any type of] expansion” [522] Colonial powers do this unashamedly – the British fought a war against China in the nineteenth century in part to preserve their right to sell opium there, against the wishes of the Chinese government. And it is part of the definition of winning the battle to gain territory that the winner has the “power …to explain what had occurred.” [523] I had not really questioned much of the description of Spanish culture that he describes as the “Spanish fantasy village” so I found that (unverified) idea useful. I do not really understand why a group would expend great effort to come to the United States then “reject liberalism and notion of assimilation.” 528 It seems that if a person vote with their feet to come to a new country, at least SOME aspects of that country recommend themselves to the person.

In Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the Twentieth-Century American West Dave Rich Lewis

“In the search for escape and a sense of authenticity in a manufactured world, white Americans have placed American Indians outside history, relegating them to an idealized past that never existed, refusing them to be or become modern….. In the end, all stereotypic images …persist to the detriment of Native American peoples.” 223-4 Deloria talks about the significance of Native Americans but it seems to me that most Americans today know little about the significance of ANY individuals or groups on American history and Native American history has be neglected but it is also more difficult to recover as little of it is recorded in the medium that most in Western society understand best – textual accounts. His simile of the stereoscope is a bit misleading. It is not the depth we miss out on, there are some number of concrete element in the picture that are just flat missing.

I just started on Deloria but I found his discussion of ideology and discourse in the first chapter quite interesting.

Print the Legend Photography and the American West

2005-11-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

The author's stated goal was to understand the West and photography together. I didn't find that she made the case that photography had a significant, specific influence on the West or people's perception of the west. There seemed to be a great deal of somewhat interesting detail about the technical limitations of photography between the introduction of the Daguerreotype (1839) and the development of the Kodak camera and flexible film in 1888, however the author made most of her points about this aspect of photography over and over, detracting from its impact. Further it did not seem that the author drew a great representational distinction between techniques such as lithography and photography. It was a useful if relatively elementary treatise on how photographers deliberately and unconsciously manipulated and arranged their subjects. I found the description of the impact of Banvard's moving mural to be at least as interesting as the descriptions of the impact of photography. Statements such as " the meaning in nineteenth century western landscape photographs is a slippery concept," and questions such as "At what point is a photograph created? - The moment it is taken, or back in lab?" are no more answerable today than in the mid nineteenth century and do not particularly advance any point that the author attempts to make.

To my mind the more important questions the author raised were “How did early photography alter and shape the ways in which people formed memories, recollect past and [gain and convey] broader cultural imaginings of the West? and How are photographs to be understood as primary source documents? It seems that the author answered the last question by suggesting that photography should be used with great caution as primary source documents, unless of course you are studying photography itself. I would have liked the author to demonstrate, if possible, how photography actually DID shape cultural imaginings but I think that she did not do that. She discusses how the subjects of photographs often created a reality with a particular pose or staging, but the author offered no evidence to me that these same subjects were deluding themselves or that they were successful in representing themselves to others in a particular way through photography.

Toward the end the author states (p 340) "If photographs have shifting meanings, unstable sorts of messages ... should we discard them as historical documents?" and answers No! She then again implies that they have questionable utility as historical documents - "the very qualities that make old photographs problematic as historical document - their quirky selectiveness, there capacity to sustain shifting meanings, their illusions of veracity, their emphasis on the vernacular - are the very conditions that make them fascinating and compelling." I'm not sure of her "final answer." The best part of the book for me was the author's chapter on Photography and the American Indian. It seemed that Native Americans were interested but at least some Native Americans showed more implicit understanding of photography's value than did the author.

I like photography but I don't take it "seriously." It can be fun and interesting – and on a personal level it can still be a minor drudgery. I enjoy some exhibitions of photography but after having traveled fairly extensively I am highly skeptical that photography generally has great power to usefully depict other places and times.

Women and Gender in the American West

2005-10-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

I found almost all of the essays in this book very interesting, and even I think I understood most of them. I was surprised to find even the most of the essays which contained a great deal of theory were written well enough to be intelligible to the general history reader. (Yes in women’s history I put myself in that category) I thought the first essay "The Gentle Tamers Revisited" a very good introduction as it clearly framed many of the important questions and identified the stereotypes. It also informed us that the number and proportion of women in particular areas of the west differed significantly by place and time. The essay Going About and Doing Good: the politics of Benevolence was interesting too in providing detail to a aspect of the social history of San Francisco.

I thought that The Eastmans and the Luhans: Interracial Marriage between White Women and Native American Men was poorly reasoned. . Why would marriage between Mabel Luhan and ANYONE be seen as representative of the “reality” of interracial marriage. Even today her behavior would be considered somewhat eccentric given the “facts” of her sex life. The author asks “Why did Mabel Dodge Luhan and a significant number of white women suddenly become so openly passionate about Indian men?” (p322) How many? How many makes whatever number she postulates “significant?” I don’t think that a “significant” number of people “suddenly” became interested because of the influence of “an emerging anthropological theory- cultural relativism…” (p. 323) While there very well may have been “shifting conceptions of race and gender in the period from 1875 to 1935” I don’t believe that these circumstances, involving hardly “typical” people, make the case. Today there are plenty of stories about the marriages and sexual practices of some show-business celebrities - but they attract publicity just because of the novelty of the practices, their great wealth , their deliberate celebrity or all of the above.

I found portions of “A memory sweet to soldiers…” interesting and other parts hard to understand, sometimes for the theory and sometimes for the argument. After several pages of heavy theory my hopes ran high when I read “ My argument, then, runs like this: Gender is a relation of difference and domination constructed such that is appears “natural” in day-to-day life. The West is historically a place of disrupted gender relations and stunning racial and ethnic diversity, a diversity structured by inequality and injustice.” I would say that gender differences and domination are more than “appearances.” And what makes for “stunning” racial and ethnic diversity? Her statement the “we need to ask what studying gender can do for the history of the West, and what studying the West can do for the politics of gender” does seem to be very true. (p. 499)

I found Johnson's sexual textual analysis to be a bit sophomoric – calling attention to the caption on the cover illustration stating that Calamity Jane in buckskin leveling …. “a pair of cocked revolvers. ” How else does one describe a revolver, the hammer of which is in a position that it may be immediately fired (unless of course it is a "double action" revolver. Just think how she could have worked "double action" into her analysis. Later on (p. 508) she suggests that the book titles in Frontier Women, Westering Women, the Women’s West, Western Women: Their Land Their Lives were "crafted as if to say, ‘The game’s over, boys. It’s my ball and I’m going home.'" This sets up her "clever" double entendre in the next sentence "but the trouble was that the boys had balls too, and so instead of stopping the contest…" WOW.

And Johnson certainly should understand that even if the public HAD KNOWN that Custer allegedly “took sensual pleasure in his cinnamon-scented locks...” he would have been a celebrity, maybe even a hero just BECAUSE he died as he did. Not heroically to everyone but spectacularly nonetheless. If she really doesn’t know that then she needs to do a bit more reading and living in the world that non-academics live in. Analyze that!

Hist 616 Post 3 Jim J. Colony and Empire

2005-10-24T00:41:00.000-07:00

Although he makes the claim over and over, I wasn’t convinced by the author’s argument that the metaphor of Colony and Empire was the best one for the relationship involving “the West” with “the East.” Stylistically, I found the author rather dry and repetitive. However, the author had many interesting and important things to say and there is a lot to think about in this book. When I tried to do this blog I found that I could not easily gather and express my thoughts in a way that did justice to the book or my thoughts about it. Certainly the West relied on the East for capital and under the capitalist system those who put up the capital have control. And certainly it is true that those who put up great amounts of capital have always wielded great political power.

I found his section comparing the South and the West to be particularly weak in part because he acknowledges a number of significant differences that did not necessarily illuminate he points on either region. In a book that tried to say so much I could not, in a relatively quick read over a week, fully grasp some of the big ideas he is trying to make. It did seem to me that he found ANY social or economic outcome that did not result in painless change and virtual equality of social and material status as evil and unnatural.

I found the author's choice of words puzzling in many places. For example on page 163 he states that “the flow of investment capital has been one of unequal exchange in which financial and industrial centers persistently draw resource-rich peripheral regions within their spheres of influence.” What is the word “persistently” intended to tell us here? Would it be more logical to expect that capitalist would only “occasionally” attempt to exploit resources? Persistently seems to suggest there is a mindless or deliberately malevolent force at work. He says inhis epilog - page 193 that “The West as Westerners have known it is changing. It will never be the same.” WOW, after all his research – really profound.

Even though I did not agree with many of his points and I did not find his style engaging, I might very well dip into this book again as I feel there are pieces of his prose are worth considering at a more reflective pace.

Jim J. 616 Post for Tombstone and Roaring Camp

2005-10-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

I love this western history stuff. I might have been a convert if I’d taken this course earlier in my graduate career. It has given me a direction for a dissertation. All in all one of the best course choices I’ve made at GMU. Yes, Paula, I will tell Professors Censer and Holt that too.

Going to school in northern California in the 1950s and 60s, the gold rush was one of the “important events” of state history. Even sports fans couldn’t get away from it as the San Francisco 49ers was/is our local professional football team. And if you didn’t go camping in the “gold country” you would probably at least would have taken a school field trip to Sutter’s Mill, Oroville or Placerville or some other such place and panned for gold. I greatly enjoyed all these activities. I think I've been to most of the towns that appeared in this book. And everybody in Northern California thinks of the 49er’s sourdough bread as the California “state bread.” But it was fascinating and "educational" to learn that Gold Rush society was even more complex, interesting and exotic than I had realized. I agree with Johnson that most probably think of the 49ers (the gold miners) as white men with a few Chinese and some prostitutes added as leaven. And if you live in California you might well guess that Hispanic people were there too. But Johnson beautifully describes a much more varied social landscape. I was also very impressed that she could tell an interesting social story AND an economic one. It seems often when an author does one well in a single book other dimensions are slighted. All in all the book truly FELT like California. The story that I didn’t know at all, to my chagrin, was that of the Indians of that area. Johnson did a superb job to that too. Calloway would be pleased. There is also alot of Limerick in Johnson’s story: the “West” as a place where cultures and nationalities clash and sometimes cooperate.

As I commented about Roaring Camp, Murder in Tombstone just FEELS right. I am in awe of the detail that the author has presented in such an engaging way. If I had been reading the book to really understand and make a judgment about the gunfight I would have to draw a diagram from myself listing the various stories side-by-side. Unfortunately the pace of a course like this and the need to do things other than study make that impossible. It is a book that I will recommend to my grandchildren though. Before they see too much Hollywood western “history.” This story also brings home to me the difficulty a person experiences when he or she has been exposed to so many different and bowdlerized versions of the OK Corral story, and so many and different characterizations of the Earp brothers by Hollywood stars and television. For a long time I have been unable to bring myself to watch dramatizations of historical events or persons just because they are often so dismissive of the “facts” of the real events, but it strikes me that a movie of the story of the OK Corral that was faithful to this book might very well be interesting, if in the end ambiguous.

Hist 616 Post 3 Jim J. "Winter Count" and Lewis and Clark

2005-09-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Certainly Lewis and Clark failed to understand the subtleties of the Indian cultures they encountered. But their accomplishments need no defense. Look at the magnitude of their task. Just imagine being charged with being trade representatives to dozens of different and to them unknown people of very different and potentially hostile cultures and speaking NONE of the languages. Carrying a large amount of trade goods while navigating thousands of miles through what was for them terra icognita, and being charged with cataloging the flora, the fauna, the climate, the geography. Just the act of WRITING these journals in longhand in the field would be a full time task. They survived the trip and they brought back much information and apparently made a favorable impression on most of the Indians with whom they came in contact is even more impressive. They had their bad days and their bad decisions. But I see towering strengths and a few understandable weaknesses. For men of their time they were startlingly efficient, effective and positive.

One Vast Winter Count
Another magnificent accomplishment. There is much to admire here. I was particularly interested in the author’s exposition of the impact of the horse and to a lessor extent the gun on different Indian cultures. How the horse particularly changed the division of labor within different groups and how it even led in some instances to changes in marriage customs. The book well described the cultural arrogance and racism of the majority of the different European groups in the New World and it also reminded the reader that many Indian cultures had that same cultural arrogance and inflicted mass warfare and slavery on other Indian groups – reminding us that what we count as inhumanity is not the exclusive sin of the Europeans. Calloway mentions but does not emphasize as much as other authors do the mutual dependence that Europeans and Indians developed over time. Europeans providing metal goods, weapons and some textiles that became much coveted by Indians, and Indians providing luxury goods – primarily fur – and many necessities such as food and the techniques to grow food in different areas, without which in many cases the Europeans would have perished. I wonder though about sources. Given the linguistic Inability of most Europeans at the time, and the virtual absence of Indian written records, much of what ANY writer says about the period must at some level be inference and conjecture. At one point Calloway writes that it is “Most likely” that crops and orchards were abandoned due to epidemic disease and intertribal warfare generated by competition for European trade had depopulated a particular valley [215]. Obviously there is much in this story for European culture to profoundly regret and in many ways the stories of the many different Western hemipshere Indian groups is sad and disgraceful. Calloway provides context and conjectural details of those stories.

Hist 616 Post 3 Jim J. "Winter Count

2005-09-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

Hist 616 Post 2 Jim J. Turner and Other Thinkers on "The West"

2005-09-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

I think Turner was on to something. Yeah, he made huge and insensitive errors in his formal Frontier Thesis in, for example, not recognizing the presence on the continent of Indians prior to the arrival of Europeans and Africans. But he is on to something in this sense: “the West” has had a strong influence on the imagination of white would-be settlers since the eighteenth century. It seems from the objective evidence – namely that lots of them came and continue to come “west” – that lots of people thought and still think that “the West” has offered and continues to offer economic, cultural or some other types of opportunities that were not available in “the East,” “the Northeast,” or “the South.” Now, ask me what that certain something was yesterday or is today and I can’t really tell you – certainly not in this space. Maybe it’s the climate. There are very few places in the United States that so many people enjoy such a temperate climate than in California, which accounts for a big chunk of the population of “the West.” Other suggestions: Anyone heard of the Silicon Valley? Or the Imperial Valley (produce)? or the Napa Valley (wine country)? Or Death Valley (Ronald Reagan and sand)? Squaw Valley (Winter Olympics)? San Francisco and the Golden Gate, Los Angeles (freeways, the original Disneyland, smog and the Summer Olympics), and San Diego – true climatic heaven. Now New York has New York City, and Michigan has Lake Michigan and Detroit. Maine has lobster and Massachusetts has Boston but Montana and Colorado and Texas and Utah and South Dakota STILL have huge unsettled areas which are majestic and awe-inspiring just to view. Most people living there are aware of those attractions every day. “The West” has roughly 25% of the population of the United States and California has 40% of the population of the West. California IS big and possibly more diverse by any measure than any other state or section, and has 1000 miles of coastline on the biggest ocean in the world. Maybe the attraction of the west has been that in a “mature” and “civilized” eastern North America, there has been “someplace” – the West – which has been relatively “wide open,” where there was lots of “space” even if most chose to settle in towns and cities. The West is STILL experiencing population increases where other areas are not. Whatever IT has been it attracts people. And as for the “special nature” of people who were willing to go to places that at the moment they arrived did not have the “comforts” of “civilized eastern or southern” society, I think that is true. It is illogical to suggest that the initial wave of white immigrants to the various “western” locales were a cross-section of society defies logic. SOMETHING was either pushing or pulling on them and through strength or weakness they responded. Having lived in Europe and the Far East for 21 years, I still think, despite my “liberal” education, that in aggregate people from the United States are different (not better) than European or Asians. The difference is a larger proportion of people who are willing to take risks, to move house, and yes a spirit of independence. Our genes are European and Asian and African and Native American. The difference just could be our experience. If not on a mythic “frontier” then with some other element of North America.

Seriously, Turner got a lot wrong in his famous thesis but listen to Patricia Limerick on Turner. With the quoted passages in the following paragraphs those of our very own deluded Fredrick Jackson Turner, Professor Limerick helps FJT to redeem his reputation as a historian. She calls this passage (from Turnerians all… by Patricia Nelson Limerick in the American Historical Review Jun, 1995, Vol 100 No 3): The Frontier Antithesis by Frederick Jackson Turner with the assistance of Patricia Nelson Limerick

“In the history of Indians lies fresh and important territory for exploration. Scholars are now uncovering “evidences of the rise and fall of Indian cultures, the migrations..., hinted at in legends and languages, dimly told in the records of mounds and artifacts, but waiting still for complete interpretation.” As one indication of the natives' importance, in various areas of North America, “the Indians had burned over large tracts,” creating a new landscape before European arrival. The patterns of trade between and among Indians shaped the fur trade between whites and Indians. “It was on the foundation, therefore, of an extensive intertribal trade that the white man built up the forest commerce….”

“In the Trans-Mississippi West, “the systematic slaughter of millions of buffalo ... destroyed the economic foundation of the Indians. Henceforth they were dependent on the whites for their food supply.” The Far West offered compelling evidence that the pioneers, like the Indians, found themselves in a state of dependence. ...”

“In the Trans-Mississippi West and elsewhere, international forces were clearly at work in shaping the frontier process. American history was clearly shaped by “worldwide forces of reorganization incident to the age of steam production and large-scale industry….”

“Constructed Providence” did not provide a clear definition of “the West” and that’s probably OK but eight western subregions [447] and not all of them geographical! that's a bit too vague.

It seems to me that “Fighting Words: the Significance of the American West in the History of the United States” is wrongheaded on several counts. The author suggests that there are serious claims that “… the historicized West is itself more representative of the national character than any other chronological or regional chapter in the text of popularized American history.” [187] Maybe some do make the claim, but this is a strawman question, not a REAL historical question – the West is representative of only the West. The author does think that the ward/ guardianship relation is a better model. I would rather think a partnership. Those willing to move either their capital or labor West became partners with the government – not necessarily willing or equal partners but dependent on each other. If no one had moved west there would be no labor to produce or consume; if there was no government in the west, the men and women moving west would have been and continue to be in an unequal and ultimately unsuccessful contest against distances and drought. The author states [197] that “[w]e need fewer studies of hardy settlers of whatever century, and more light shed upon the faceless and nameless pioneers of the BLM, INS…the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.” Probably true, but the individuals who staffed these vital agencies were also hardy settlers. On page 202 the author makes the facile jibe at Anglo ethnocentrism by criticizing proposals for using/teaching only English in the West. He states that this claim is “cultural arrogance and cultural thievery” and that it falsely promises the hope of a lessening of dependence. Maybe, maybe not. But it is certain to this arrogant Anglo that failure to learn English will guarantee dependence in what is now primarily an English-speaking economy (I did NOT say English-speaking culture.) This kind of criticism comes often from the same people who criticize Anglos in the West for NOT mastering Spanish. Those who speak only Spanish should not be seen as “naturally” dependent, but speaking Spanish-only certainly impedes economic (NOT cultural) independence. His suggests [205] that the popular image of the West is “made up of stereotypes pasted together. But none are so true as to never be false.” There are crackpots everywhere but no one worth listening to believes that the popular stereotypes of the West are “so true” or is making a claim of infallibility. He rails against extreme and worthless positions. Many of the positions that he portrays as extremes have much more reasonable foundations worthy of debate. This is one of the most trivial, poorly argued and least insightful papers I have ever read. At least Turner was attempting to understand, to explain, and certainly his original thesis was ethnocentric. Deverell explains little and doesn’t sound good doing it.

Just to show that I can be positive, I found the Roundtable on the Claims and Prospects of Western History to be positive and thought provoking on western historiography. Just to pick a FEW of the highlights – I liked the concept of “westering” [32]. I also noted the tension that David Gutierrez observed between the geographic definitions of “the West” vs. a “different conceptualization of and relationship to the same physical landscape.” [35] Is it too much to ask historians or others to have a more complex, multifaceted definition – if a definition is really needed? I also took note of the metaphor that the “very notion of western history has often tended to flatten or even erase the histories and alternative cultural orientations” of certain groups. A little later he laments “assumptions [about the West] that stubbornly deny the complexity, variability, and multiplicity of senses of place and positionality that have always existed in the region.” Kathleen Underwood suggests that women in the west “profited much earlier from the broadened access to higher education than did women in longer-settled regions.” [39] Whether the population of the west was more liberal in this regard due somehow to the elevating effects on intellectual thought due to the salutary physical and intellectual environment OR due to the clear need to educate as many as possible of the population in a sparsely settled region is beside the point. Westerners DID take a different and positive position on this issue and therefore DID differentiate themselves from “the East” and definitely from “the South.” I do take issue of the application of “colonial theory” to the question of the nature of the relationship between “the West” and “the Rest” of the country. To my knowledge the United States did not see “the West” as a colonial entity in the classic sense. The U.S. at no time controlled access to nor commerce within the western territories or between those territories and the U.S. as colonial. Did the settlers and the U.S. do bad things to the indigenous peoples? Yes. There was a brief imperial moment but on a time line that moment was too short to establish a colonial relationship.

Hist 616 Post 1 Jim J. The American West and Legacy of Conquest

2005-09-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

In Legacy of Conquest Professor Limerick sets out to do nothing less than define/redefine Western history. She debunks the myths of pioneer independence and that in the United States the “Anglo” fulfilled his (her) destiny in the 18th and 19th centuries by settling the largely uninhabited spaces of North America west the 100th meridian. Instead, she describes the West as a meeting ground of diverse peoples - Indian American, Anglo American Latin American and Asian/Asian American – attempting to occupy and ultimately contesting “common ground” for physical and cultural dominance. The history of the west is one of “a place undergoing conquest.” She observes, and convinces, that Western history became and remains a “center” for each of these groups, and “an actor in everyone else’s play.” She continues that “understanding any part of the play now requires us to take account of the whole.”

Coming from California, I knew some of this “new” western history. There the Spanish heritage is inescapable, and even for a non-activist Anglo a source of pride. I enjoy the Mexican food, the Spanish language (and although I have mostly forgotten it in the 40 years since high school, it is spoken everywhere), the exotic place names and history, and a generally positive perception of California Spanish culture. Being brought up near San Francisco and the gold country makes one aware of the Chinese elements of California history, and today many greengrocers and large independent fruit sellers are of Japanese heritage. Until the 70s and 80s most Anglos were less aware of Native Americans; now their presence is more prominent due to the large number of casinos they operate. And every Californian of my generation was introduced to Fremont, Sutter, and Stanford in elementary school, and that introduction was reinforced at intervals in and out of school. Water is always a topic of conversation as some of us are aware that California is classed as having a semi-arid climate. The contests Limerick talks about are there too: Anglo condescension, Hispanic marginalization, industry vs. environment, etc.

In looking for another perspective on Limerick’s themes here, I wanted to get her later book, Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckoning in the New West (2001) but settled for an essay which might be useful for next week: “Turnerians all: The dream of a helpful history in an intelligible world,” The American Historical Review, June, 1995, Vol. 100, No 3. In this essay Professor Limerick refers to The Legacy of Conquest as her “Frontier Antithesis,” challenging Fredrick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” of 1893 (reading for next week). Early in the essay she uses a compilation of Turner’s writing to construct in his own words a refutation of his famous thesis “The Frontier Antithesis by Frederick Jackson Turner with the assistance of Patricia Nelson Limerick” but later states her own Antithesis. One of the points of this essay is that one hundred years on, while rejecting his Thesis, historians in many ways have followed Turner in his “presentism” in that they believe that the present can used to explain the past - how we have arrived at this present. Limerick writes of some of the ideas she advances in Legacy “As Turner knew and as I now know (and it seems to have caught us both equally by surprise), the present turns out to be even more complicated, more muddled, and more maddening than the past. A historian who goes around declaring that an understanding of the present will deepen our understanding of the past is a historian who will eventually have to eat crow. The 1990s have served me a generous helping of this unattractive substance.” Quite honestly I didn't see the presentism when I read the book, but then I guess that is the point - she didn't either.

Coming from the West and having done a reading course with Professor Petrik meant that The American West: a new interpretive history wasn’t really new for me. Although consuming it as if drinking water from a firehose due to the criminally short period of time given for the task, I admired it for its scope and its deliberate goal of presenting the diversity and interactions/ clashes that Professor Limerick writes about. It makes a great survey text but necessarily lacks depth.