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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 11:01:41 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         Richard White 
Subject:      Richard White's Opening Statement
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Dear Colleagues,


There has been a remarkable resurgence in Western history over the last
twenty-five years, but it has not taken place without significant
controversy.   There were two quarrels really.  One took place largely in
universities among academic historians.   The other was much more public and=

emotional, and the intensity of feeling it provoked surprised many
historians.  I will return to this second argument at the end of my
introductory statement, but first I need to sketch out the original academic=

quarrel over the West and the current state of scholarship.

The original debate over what came to be called the "New Western History" ha=
s
now largely died away.  Basically, it was about what counted as the West in
Western history.   One group of scholars argued for a heavily modified
version of Frederick Jackson Turner=92s frontier thesis in which there were =
a
series of  "Wests" in American history beginning on the Eastern Seaboard and=

continuing, one after another, across the continent.  These scholars sought
to maintain the importance of the frontier even as they threw out most of th=
e
actual content of the Turner thesis.

 A second group of scholars, myself included, argued for the West as a
region.  The trans-Missouri West, we contended, was different from regions
farther east even as it was intrinsically related to them.   Although some
historians, such as Donald Worster, stressed environmental qualities,
particularly aridity as the source of Western difference, others stressed
institutional and social factors.

In the wake of these debates, I would now phrase the birth of the West as an=

American region as an outcome of the Civil War.   Before the Civil War,
American expansion was bifurcated.  There was a northern expansion and a
southern expansion.  One depended on free labor and the other on slave labor=
.
Both took place under the auspices of a weak central government.   The Civil=

War had its roots in these two linked expansions and the quarrel over whethe=
r
western territories such as Kansas were to be slave or free.  The Civil War
changed the nature of American expansion.  After 1865 there would be but a
single expansion that sought to replicate the institutions and values of the=

North.  It took place under the auspices of a state that, while still weak b=
y
modern standards, took a major role in the government and development of the=

area beyond the Missouri River.

 The regional West that arose across the Missouri differed in several
ways from earlier regions incorporated into the United States.  Before the
Civil War, the movement of population east of the Mississippi largely went
from east to west.  In the postwar West, native-born Americans, European
immigrants, and African Americans, as well as displaced Indian peoples, all
continued to move west, but now they encountered continued migration from
Mexico, (and later in the twentieth century from Central America) as well as=

an easterly migration from Asia, particularly China and Japan, and a
southerly migration from Canada.  The result of these migrations was a
complicated set of racial and ethnic identities that made the West more of a=

multiracial society than a society divided along binary racial lines - -
black and white - - as it was further east.

 The speed of these population movements and the integration of this
region into the United States took place far more rapidly in the West than i=
t
had further east.  Resistance by Indian peoples was put down far more quickl=
y
than it had been east of the Mississippi. In the West, as in the East, virgi=
n
soil epidemics - - the introduction of diseases to which Indians had less
resistance than Europeans or Africans=97hurt the capacity of Indians peoples=
 to
resist, but in the West Indian peoples also confronted a modern industrial
nation with far more resources and a greater population than it had possesse=
d
in earlier conflicts.  In the West the conquest differed in outcome as well
as in speed.  Although some western Indian peoples were removed form their
homelands, most remained on a reserved remnant of their lands.

 American expansion during the nineteenth and early twentieth century
took place with such speed in the West because, unlike expansion east of the=

Mississippi, which relied largely on the muscle power of humans and animals
and on waterpower, it was the result of steam.  The railroads rather than
covered wagons are the real symbols of the late nineteenth- century West.
Far from being the most backward and primitive section of the country, the
West was the most modern.  It was the most urban.  It deployed new technolog=
y
with great rapidity.  New forms of social organization initially faced less
resistance from entrenched local communities because in the West existing
local communities - - Indian peoples and Mexican Americans - - were either
conquered, disregarded or, in the case of Indians, faced compulsory measures=

to force their social transformation.

The invading communities were new and could not replicate, even when they
wanted to, the more complicated social patterns of the places they left
behind.  This did not mean that there was no conflict within these
communities.   Class conflict was just as apparent, and arguably more
violent, in the West than in the East.

 The modernity of the West existed in relationship to changes in the
East.  The West, with the possible exception of California, remained in a
largely colonial relationship to the East until World War II.  There was
little manufacturing.  The West largely produced raw materials or semi
finished materials for national or world markets, and was dependent on the
East for capital for development.    First, the Depression and then, more
significantly, World War II led to waves of federal investment that created =
a
Western infrastructure and manufacturing capability, originally in defense
industries, that changed regional relationships between the West and the
East.  Although Westerners see themselves as the most individualistic sectio=
n
of the country, perhaps no section of the country has historically depended
so heavily on the federal government.  This can be seen not only in federal
investments, but also in the large areas of the country from the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific Coast that still remain in federal hands: national
forests, BLM lands, Indian reservations held in trust by the federal
government, and more.

 The West, as a region, can only be understood in relation to the larger
UnitedStates of which it is a part, but historians are becoming increasingly=

aware that it can also only be understood in relation to other areas that
surround it: northern Mexico, western Canada, and large parts of the Pacific=

Basin.  The boundaries between the western United States always have been an=
d
continue to be quite porous.

 Although the debate between those advocating frontier studies and those
advocating regional studies dominated the academic argument, the public
argument centered on the conflict between academic and popular understanding=
s
of the West.  The West has supplied the basic mythic narrative of American
nationhood, American individualism, and American nature, and many Americans
embraced and cherished this American story.    It is the West that has come
to stand for an American future in which Americans - -usually represented as=

white men - - can take their fate in their hands and create both themselves
and their country.  The Western has come to be the cultural vehicle for many=

of these stories.  Pioneers and cowboys, log cabins and wagon trains are
national icons.  They stand for core American values-=97democracy, equality,=

individualism, and a belief in progress.  They are such powerful symbols and=

can be combined into such powerful stories that they sometimes shape history=

as people try to act them out in a more complicated and recalcitrant West.
This mythic narrative often masks the more complicated narratives that I hav=
e
outlined above.  Indeed, in standing for American nature, the West threatens=

to move beyond history itself. Western nature, preserved in wilderness areas=

and national parks, supposedly contains a land before history, largely
unshaped by the touch of humans.

Virtually no academic historians supported this popular understanding of the=

West, and most western environmental historians were rejecting popular
versions of wilderness.  Recent western historians have argued, for example,=

that we created wilderness, we did not find it.  Long before whites, Indians=

had shaped the land.  And to create wilderness, Indians and their uses of th=
e
land had to be banned.  The modern idea of wilderness itself is very much a
nineteenth century construct.  Wilderness is not a place before history; it,=

too, has a history.   Recent Western history, in creating new and more
tangled narratives of the Western past, ran headlong into these deeply held
cultural beliefs.  The conflict that followed, however, did not leave
academic historians on one side of the divide and non-historians on the
other.  Many Americans proved quite willing to reexamine and reinterpret a
complicated past,

I do not think that the problem with teaching history is that students do
not know anything about history but rather they "know" basic stories that
tend to blind them to more complicated issues. One of things that I have
found in teaching Western history, for instance, is that the basic
narratives of western migration into the wilderness with its theme of
individualism and self-reliance is so basic to students understanding that
they don't so much resist counter interpretations as assimilate them into
their existing narratives.  I wonder if any of you encounter similar
problems and what you do about them?

        In talking to high school and junior college teachers who have used
my books in the West, they tell me that some students react by asking, as
one student put it, "how come this guy hates this country?"  Do you run into=

reactions that any critical history must necessarily spring from the
author's hatred or dislike?

        I dislike myth versus reality approaches to the West because, in my
view, the myth is essential to understanding the reality since many people
tried to act out the myth itself and this becomes a part of the history.  I
know others differ about this, and this is worth some discussion.

        One of the hardest things to get college students to recognize is
that races and ethnicities are constructed and not something genetically
inherited like eyes and skin color.  The sense that the various groups who
now inhabit the West are the results of their interaction in this place can
be a difficult idea to communicate.  Is it a subject that even comes up in
high school or junior college teaching?

        Do the kinds of quarrels and issues that engaged academic historians=

have any resonance in the classroom?  Or are students mostly interested in
details about familiar stories with a familiar cast of characters? I'd be
interested in hearing how any of you use familiar stories to move to wider
issues.

        I often used family histories as a way to both involve students in
the past and to show the connections between the regional, national,
international and familial.  I'd be interested in hearing of any similar
attempts to integrate student's personal concerns with the larger history.


Richard White
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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 11:23:33 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         polly kaufman 
Subject:      Richard White's opening statement
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I found Richard White's opening statement to be extremely useful.  I am
writing to ask for some suggestions.  I have a Fulbright to teach upper
secondary school teachers in workshops in American Studies in Norway next
year.  One of the topics I am considering offering is the history of the
American West.  I would be interested in suggestions of what other points
or understandings or examples (Richard White has offered some excellent
ones) you think would be most useful in presenting this topic to teachers
who will them present what they believe was important to their students.
Thanks for your help.  Polly Welts Kaufman, University of Southern Maine,
Portland
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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 11:42:07 CST
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "JOHN N. DRAYTON" 
Organization: University of Oklahoma
Subject:      Re: Richard White's opening statement
In-Reply-To:  

List Moderator:
I'm a new subscriber. Would you please send me a copy of Richard
White's opening statement.
Thank you
John Drayton
John N. Drayton
Director
University of Oklahoma Press
Phone: 405-325-3189; FAX: 405-325-4000
Web site: www.ou.edu/oupress
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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 12:52:22 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Re: Richard White's Opening Statement
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Dear list members:

I'm particularly interested in Dr. White's last paragraph:

"I often used family histories as a way to both involve students in the past and
to show the connections between the regional, national, international and
familial.  I'd be interested in hearing of any similar attempts to integrate
student's personal concerns with the larger history."

  I usually get a "no response" look when I mention using family history as a
means of relating to period or regional U.S. history studies.  I began my M.A.
program for just that reason--to put my own varied family history in the context
of the times and places in which people lived.  One rather lengthy project
involved researching and writing a narrative of a pioneer company my
gg-grandfather led across the plains in 1860 and a demographic study of the 263
members of the company.  Resources included diaries, letters, autobiographical
material, newspapers,  census records, ships' registers, and genealogical data.


There has been an explosion of books on the West in the last twenty years,
especially on those other than "white males."  I don't think it would be too
difficult to create a syllabus that would enable students to study the full
range of peoples of the West--with or without Dr. White's book (which I have
read).

Lynda Durfee
Grad student (MA Spring 1999), George Mason Univ.
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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 13:50:43 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         mike o'malley 
Subject:      Re: Richard White's Opening Statement
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Dear Colleagues:
        I hope I'm not quibbling, and I'm probably reflecting an outdated
point of view, but I have to respectfully disagree with one of Richard
White's points, about post Civil War expansion being "a single expansion
that sought to replicate the institutions and values of the North." First,
if by values you mean free labor, well maybe this is a northern value, but
by values do you mean free soil values, or the values of industrial
capital? Are the values of prospectors and the values of homesteaders both
"values of the north?" Was the homestead act specifically reflective of
northern values and institutions, or consistent with the land hunger that
characterized most of American history?
        Maybe more useful here is the fact that in the mythology of the
West as it developed at the turn of the century, the trans-Mississippi West
appeared as a place valuable because it reflected specifically Southern
institutions--dueling, pre-industrial codes of honor, and white supremacy.
For example I would give Owen Wister's *The Virginian,* a work by an elite
Philadelphian that managed to see the West as the South's final triumph.
This tendency continues into the classic western movies--the West appears
as the "real" America, which is southern.
        Here I am catching onto a debate which has largely settled down...

Mike O'Malley
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Date:         Mon, 5 Apr 1999 18:14:46 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         John McNeill 
Subject:      Re: Richard White's Opening Statement
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Dear Colleagues,

Richard makes several important points, however I would take issue with a
few of them.  He states: "Although Westerners see themselves as the most
individualistic section of the country, perhaps no section of the country
has historically depended so heavily on the federal government.  "

I think that many Westerners would argue that this historical dependence
was, and is, more of a forced interference by a domineering, self-serving,
Eastern business autocracy than a dependence.  The term dependence implies
an inability to survive on their own.  I would argue that many in the West
would have survived just fine, without Eastern Interference, given the
chance.  Perhaps, with less Eastern interference, Westerners might have
found a way to accomodate the "Native American's" who had moved into this
region previously.

A second issue is that of the definition of "Westerners."  Why do people in
the "East" insist on defining the "West" as either the The trans-Missouri
West as Richard suggests or the series of Wests as others suggest.  As a
"Westerner", I would suggest that many of us would argue that only those
states from the Rockies to California would be in the West. I would argue
that people, cultures, and geography in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon have
as much in common with those from Missouri and Kansas as those from Missouri
and Kansas have in common with those from Massachusetts and New York. To
link everyone from Missouri to California into one group, and call them
"Westerners" is not only short sighted, but oblivious to the realities of
existing either today or 100 years ago.

To say that there were only two types of migrations (Northern/Free and
Southern/Slave) ignores the migrations from 1849 to 1865 of the "49er's" who
were searching for gold, not really caring about either slavery or freedom,
and the Mormons who were escaping religious persecution, again not desiring
a tie to either the North or the South.

Richard also makes the statement that "The West, as a region, can only be
understood in relation to the larger
United States of which it is a part, but historians are becoming
increasingly aware that it can also only be understood in relation to other
areas that surround it: northern Mexico, western Canada, and large parts of
the Pacific."

Why?  In the first place this is like saying that I can only be understood
if you understand all men.  Of course there is a relationship between any
part and the whole, but to say that you can't study the part with out
studying the whole and how it fits in, makes no sense to me. Yes, you can
study the West in relationship to those it interacts with, however, you
don't need to.  To say that it can "only be understood in relation to other
areas" is a very simplistic and absolutist a view. It is very possible to
study the West and it's intradependencies without looking at its
interdependencies with those beyond its "borders."

John McNeill
History Teacher/Technology Coordinator,
South Jordan Middle School
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Date:         Tue, 6 Apr 1999 16:44:51 -0700
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From:         Richard White 
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Dear Colleagues,

        I will try to respond to issues raised on the list every few days, but I
hope that this does not become a conversation in which I reply to the list.
 It is far more interesting when people talk to each other.
        I'll start with the issues Mike O'Malley raises.   When I say that after
the Civil War the West is largely an extension of the North, I mean that
the issue of slavery is settled and the kinds of conflicts that wracked the
territorial system in the 1850s are over.  The free labor society with its
praise of small freeholders and its embrace of the Homestead Act was
largely Northern.  It is no accident that the Homestead Act and railroad
grants go through Congress quickly after secession.  Similarly, the active
recruitment of immigrants, both native-born and foreign, that so quickly
developed the West was far more typical of the North than the South.  The
capital that developed the West was from the East and Europe.
        I think that pre-industrial codes of honor in the West can be exaggerated.
 Western violence was more likely to be class violence and centered on
industrial labor conflicts.  The kind of white supremacy apparent in the
West was endemic to American society and not peculiar to the South.    I
don't see much South in the West outside of Texas, Oklahoma, and perhaps
sections of Arizona until the migrations of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
        I also found John McNeil's comments interesting.   John repeats what has
been an important Western line of thought about the relation of the West to
the East, but it is one that I disagree with.  The West was a creation of
the East in the sense that most Western farmers, ranchers, and all miners
and timbermen etc. were tied to Eastern markets and depended on railroads
to get their goods to market.  They resented the dependence on Eastern
capital, but it was quite real.  They turned to federal aid to gain
independence from eastern business and came in time to resent their
dependence on the federal government.
        There is, I am afraid, little evidence to think that Indians would have
been better off without the federal government intervening between them and
American settlers.  Those places where local settlers or travelers
dominated relations with Indian peoples - - Nevada, northern California,
southern Oregon - - had the most brutal Indian relations in the West.
        John McNeil's narrowed definition of the West is not an uncommon one, but
I think the deeper issue is whether Westerner demands some kind of
homogeneity any more than the term American did.  There is no single
Western identity.  There is a set of historical relationships that define
the West.
        I would say that the Gold Rush, as Malcolm Rohrbaugh's wonderful recent
book shows, was very much about the development of a free labor society in
the West.  The outlawing of slavery in California, the celebration of
individual labor, the emergence of John C. Fremont as a political leader
who would be the first Republican candidate were all signs of this.  The
Mormon migration was, in a sense, separate from the North/South divisions,
but it became sucked into them quickly enough.
        Finally, John's point about relations with Mexico and Canada is well
taken, but again, the more I as a historian look at these borders, see how
recent they are, and see how much we miss when we fail to look across them,
the more I am convinced that we need to reassess them and write a more
transnational history.

        The family history responses have been very useful.  I have used the
assignment in a variety of classes for years.  It demands a lot of work,
but it is one of the best ways to get students to think historically.  Most
come into the assignment thinking that life is pretty much what individuals
make of it.  Seeing how history shaped the lives of their ancestors, and
howsocial constraints that shaped their ancestors ambitions and
achievements, forces them to consider similar factors at work in their own
lives.  The assignment is also a corrective to the tendency of younger
people in particular to see themselves as the culmination of history.  "My
great-grandparents," one told me years ago, "came to this country so that I
could get a college education."  The possibility that his
great-grandparents never gave him a thought was the beginning of trying to
figure out what the lives and ambitions of his great-grandparents might
have been about.
        Dorothee Kocks has sent me a web-site developed by one of her students as
a result of a family history assignment.  It is at
http://www.hum.utah.edu/Ivy/index3.htm


Richard White
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Date:         Wed, 7 Apr 1999 09:13:07 -0500
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              from pm3a22.bratt.sover.net [207.136.199.246] 207.136.199.246
              Wed, 7 Apr 1999 11:15:03 -0400 (EDT)
From:         Janet Goh/Walter Mosch 
Subject:      Re: Richard White's Opening Statement
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While I haven't read Richard White's book, in reading both his initial
posting and subsequent response, I was stunned by how Eurocentric is his
perspective of the "American West."

>In the postwar West, native-born Americans, European
>immigrants, and African Americans, as well as displaced Indian peoples, all
>continued to move west, but now they encountered continued migration from
>Mexico, (and later in the twentieth century from Central America) as well as
>an easterly migration from Asia, particularly China and Japan, and a
>southerly migration from Canada.  The result of these migrations was a
>complicated set of racial and ethnic identities that made the West more of a
>multiracial society than a society divided along binary racial lines - -
>black and white - - as it was further east.

Note that "native-born Americans" refers to members of the white racial
class, the unnamed normative group both then and now in US society.  While
Richard White indicates that the result of these migations was the
transformation of the US into a more multiracial society, he fails to note
the importance of whiteness in determining power relations within society
East and West - whether it be in People vs. Hall (1854), the Chinese
Exclusion Acts, or within a court system that allowed Anglos to occupy 4/5
of the land granted to Chicanos by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Particularly odious is the term "displaced" Indian peoples - it makes it
sound as if there was some natural disaster that displaced these people.
Would we refer to Albanian Kosovars as merely "displaced" people?  When we
choose our words in this way, it fails to illuminate why these people were
forcibly "displaced" - by the actions of the government and white Americans
who had the government's backing.   Do we then also miss out on an
opportunity to help students to understand the concept of the racialization
of savagery and the sordid history of race relations in this society?  My
experience has been that students generally have no idea how we got to
where we are today in terms of race relations........as though the problem
stems from affirmative action and Prop 209 will fix everything.


>The invading communities were new and could not replicate, even when they
>wanted to, the more complicated social patterns of the places they left
>behind.  This did not mean that there was no conflict within these
>communities.   Class conflict was just as apparent, and arguably more
>violent, in the West than in the East.

The "invading communities" (read: white people) seemed pretty adept at
replicating the social pattern they left behind - i.e. white supremacy.  By
painting the violent subjugation of Chicano, Asian and Indian peoples as
"class conflict," one can overlook the importance of white supremacy in the
shaping of the "American West."


>I do not think that the problem with teaching history is that students do
>not know anything about history but rather they "know" basic stories that
>tend to blind them to more complicated issues. One of things that I have
>found in teaching Western history, for instance, is that the basic
>narratives of western migration into the wilderness with its theme of
>individualism and self-reliance is so basic to students understanding that
>they don't so much resist counter interpretations as assimilate them into
>their existing narratives.  I wonder if any of you encounter similar
>problems and what you do about them?

Certainly, this can be expected initially.  In my opinion one needs to
teach students to think critically and laterally.  Most importantly, we
need to show students the relationship between our history and where we are
today - there is a direct correlation.  My experience has been that this
type of analysis makes history relevant and students become more adept at
understanding today's social relations.

While I chose a couple of paragraphs from Richard's original posting to
look at, there were many more that could have been analyzed in the same
way.  In my opinion, if we limit our view of white supremacy to its most
extreme and violent manifestations, then we miss the point.  I agree with
Richard that students come with baggage that cause them to resist counter
interpretations.  However, I believe that students need to be exposed to
perspectives other than the Euroamerican one if they are going to make any
sense of this.  If the language of white supremacy is (inadvertently) used
in our teaching, if the white perspective is the one that is deemed most
important, then why should students (and particularly white students) be
receptive to interpretations that would be fostered by viewing history from
the perspectives of people of color?



Walter
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 7 Apr 1999 12:43:49 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         douglas sackman 
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I know of no more illuminating examination of the "racialization of
savagery" as it has been intertwined with the "displacement" of Native
Americans than Richard White's own _The Middle Ground:Indians, Empires, and
Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815_. His multiperspectival
portrait of the shattered worlds of the Great lakes region is eye-opening;
the book vividly captures the existential, cultural and political aspects
of becoming refugees, of the violence of what might be called
"deterritorialization" (Rosaura Sanchez, adapting the term from French
theorists Guattari and Deleuze, uses this term to describe the
post-Guadalupe Hidalgo California scene in her book _Telling Identities_).
The work relates racial constructions of the other to the struggle over
land, identity and processes of resource extraction. Mutual worlds between
and among Indian peoples and various classes of Europeans and European
empires were forged and then shattered--the shards affecting relations for
a long time. I agree with Walter's essential points, but only point to
Richard's own work for its ability to disrupt and shake up Euro-centric
approaches in ways that carefully avoid comfortably re-seating an
alternative centrism.

The "middle ground" is beginning to be widely adopted as an alternative to
the concept of "frontier", one that reminds historians to look for two or
more perspectives, and at how movements into contested zones of
intercultural conflict, contact and exchange come from multiple directions
and follow divergent motives. Dynamics of unequal power are neither ignored
nor assumed; they are explained as they worked out in struggles over land
and power. Interestingly, _The Middle Ground_ doesn't have much to do with
Western history--at least according, implicitly at least, to Richard.  For
while other of his works appear in the bibliography of his recently
published pamphlet on Western history, _The Middle Ground_ is absent. This
ommission logically follows from Richard's regional defintion of the West.

This brings me to the comment I would like to make about Richard's opening
statement. He portrays the frontier versus region debate as now somewhat
archaic. But I think the issue, while deeply transformed, is breathing
again (like the character in Monty Pythons Holy Grail saying "I'm not dead
yet..."). . One of the champions of a reconstructed frontier
concept-Gregory Nobles-cites approvingly White's notion of the middle
ground. In his recent synthesis of "new Western History," _American
Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest_  (1997), Nobles
utilizes his own version of the middle ground as his defintion of
_frontier_ ("a region where no culture, group, or government can claim
effective control or hegemony over others" (xii). In her essay in the
_Frontier in American Culture_ (1994), Patricia Limerick, who had once
dubbed the frontier the "f-word," proposes a bit of a detente; while she
still maintains that the word frontier uses historians before historians
can use the word, she seems ready to accept its rendering in Spanish,  _la
Frontera_, as an alternative lacking the same destructive cultural baggage.
(By the way, I would highly recommend _The Frontier in American Culture_
for teaching: based on a Newberry Exhibit, it has  Richard's essay on
Buffalo Bill and Turner and reproduces an assortment of frontier icons that
students can grapple with directly). Kerwin Klein makes a persuasive case
for the utility of frontier redefined as something like a zone of contested
hegemony, in the course of presenting an interesting geneology of the term,
in his article "Reclaiming the 'F-Word: Or Being and Becoming Postwestern"
({Pacific Historical Review 1996 [don't know the month]; see also his
_Frontiers of Historical Imagination_].

In my own course on the American Wests,perhaps perilously, I've been trying
to incoporate both frameworks--sticking mostly to a plains and beyond
geographical perspectives but looking at different "frontier" dynamics in
different Western subregions. In sum, I think the discussion over frontiers
and regions is conintuing fruitfully, if not with the same spotlight of
focus that occured earlier and with much less polarization. And I think the
ongoing discussion of concepts of region and frontier and their deployment
in new works are crucial to imagining pedagogical approaches that allow
students to break down the monolithic West in order to better grasp the
complexities, contingencies and legacies of its history.


Doug Sackman
Oberlin College







douglas c sackman
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
oberlin college
department of history
10 north professor street
oberlin ohio 44074-1095

douglas.sackman@oberlin.edu
440 775 8191
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:07:45 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "Margaret M. Manchester" 
Subject:      Finding the South in theWest
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This is in reply to Richard White's statement, "The kind of white supremacy
apparent in the
West was endemic to American society and not peculiar to the South.    I
don't see much South in the West outside of Texas, Oklahoma, and perhaps
sections of Arizona until the migrations of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s."

On the one hand, I agree that the racial attitudes that justified Jim Crow
were endemic to American society and not peculiar to the South.  On the
other hand, I would argue that one CAN find the South in the West, although
in transmuted forms.  For example, the arguments used to justify "Mexican
schools," (See Gilbert Gonzales, CHICANO EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF
SEGREGATION) the exclusion of Chinese, and "Jim Crow-Indian Style" (See
Orlan Svingen, "Jim Crow Indian Style, AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY 11/1987)
stem from the same notions of scientific racism and stereotyping as those
used to justify the marginalization of African-Americans in both the East
and the West.  A good example of this would be the decline in the status of
black Nevadans between the 1870s and 1950s to the point that Nevada was
called the "Mississippi of the West."(See Elmer Rusco, GOOD TIMES COMING?
BLACK NEVADANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY)

Given the racial attitudes of white Americans, it is not surprising to find
varying versions of this relating to the different peoples of color
encountered in theWest.

Students in my seminar on the American West have commented one the
continuity of these threads as they consider the primary source material
available in a number of different readers.  They find the process of
studying this area of American history is as primarily about debunking
myths that continue to endure in American culture.  They ask whether
students in the West who study about the West learn and perceive this
material differently than students in the East.  I think it's an
interesting question--I wonder if I would find it more painful if I were
discussing some of the readings with students of color in the southwest
than with students from New England?

Margaret Manchester
Margaret M. Manchester, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History/
Director, American Studies Program
Providence College
Phillips Memorial Library 316
Providence, RI  02918
email:  mmanch@providence.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:47:43 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Where do the Mormons Fit in the Picture?
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Dear Colleagues:

Would anyone care to comment on how they deal with Mormons in teaching courses
on the West?  Richard White, in It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own, gave
them a total of less than two pages in scattered references throughout the book.
 Didn't they "replicate ... the more complicated social patterns of the places
they left behind"?  Do they constitute a non-majority "ethnic" group (at least
in the 19th century)?

I find it odd that most of the books written by "New Western historians" seem to
draw a circle around the Great Basin and act as if it doesn't exist.  For
example, Lillian Schlissel's book on women's diaries (Women's Diaries of the
Westward Journey) doesn't include even ONE by a Mormon woman.  Granted, the
Mormon women only went as far as Utah and the ones in Schlissel's book went to
California and Oregon, but the experiences (and hardships) on the trail were
similar.

Lynda Durfee
grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 8 Apr 1999 10:44:18 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Norma Smith 
Subject:      Re: Response
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Dear Colleagues,

One quibble/clarification, lots of appreciation, and some suggestions/support.

I certainly appreciate Richard White's analysis of Western history, how we
think about it, and how we might teach it better.  and the responses.

Like Mike O'Malley, I got a little stuck on the phrase, "a single expansion
that sought to replicate the institutions and values of the North." I'm not
too sure what all exactly this refers to- it's pretty big. What came
immediately to my mind was the *forms* white supremacy (as an institution
and as a set of values) took in the North in contrast to how it played out
in the South, so that what we're left with, historically, is
less-acknowledged and (sometimes) less well-articulated *forms* of
race-based exclusionary ideology and practice.  In some ways, that
difference itself is a later popular western  myth, based in the fact of a
more  "multicultural" atmosphere- more cultures numerically, but not so
different in terms of diversity of power relations?  A longer continuum of
power, and more complex instead of binary- still looks like white supremacy
to me.   We're still weighed down by what's now being called "modern"
racism. I can see how this fits with Richard White's claim about
institutions and values of the North (Modern= Northern & Western)- tho' he
doesn't take it in that particular direction, in this piece. Of course this
still interacts with the conquering, disregarding, and forced social
transformation of communities of color as the West "expanded" (contracted
for those already here), and also, for Mexicans, Chinese, and others,  the
slotting them into social positions, in some ways similar to the experience
of European immigrants in the East.... in some ways very different.

>"how come this guy hates this country?"

What a great question to start with! It shows that young people do "think"
in terms of how they *feel* or how they perceive others feel. It's a saving
grace to hang onto and utilize: harness that passion -that recognition of
experiencing history as real and personal- and direct it back to the minds
and you can clarify or change the shape of ideology- how ideology is seen.
The question to shoot back to them is, does criticism/critical thinking =
hate?  What makes you think *that*?  (This is not a rhetorical question,
but a question *about* rhetoric.)

>I do not think that the problem with teaching history is that students do
>not know anything about history but rather they "know" basic stories that
>tend to blind them to more complicated issues. One of things that I have
>found in teaching Western history, for instance, is that the basic
>narratives of western migration into the wilderness with its theme of
>individualism and self-reliance is so basic to students understanding that
>they don't so much resist counter interpretations as assimilate them into
>their existing narratives. I wonder if any of you encounter similar
>problems and what you do about them?

Yes. I think one way to go is to hone in on the very specific phrases that
get used. For example: "My grandfather was a self-made man." And reply,
yes *and* who were the people who herded his cattle, chopped his cotton,
built the railroad he depended on, mined the diamonds he brokered, wove the
fabric that he sold, raised "his" kids? Talk/read about how communities
support the individual, even loners. Look at westerns and assign a paper
about the community support system behind each Individual portrayed. (what
different communites supported each step of "progress?") Make the students
*articulate* their familiar stories and then look behind the stories. and
ask the (historical) question: How did that happen?

>I dislike myth versus reality approaches to the West because, in my view,
>the myth is essential to understanding the reality since many people tried
>to act out the myth itself and this becomes a part of the history. I know
>others differ about this, and this is worth some discussion.

YES. culture makes history. I agree and I guess it's hard for me to see how
anyone can deny this....  History has the dimensions of time and events-
and, I guess, of individual personalities, as it used to be taught.  It
also has the dimensions of social and political power- how those get played
out- also of community/culture/ideology. all dynamic dimensions.

>One of the hardest things to get college students to recognize is that
>races and ethnicities are constructed and not something genetically
>inherited like eyes and skin color. The sense that the various groups who
>now inhabit the West are the results of their interaction in this place
>can be a difficult idea to communicate. Is it a subject that even comes up
>in high school or junior college teaching?

It comes up, and we need to keep bringing it up in a setting where it gets
discussed in useful ways. Why would it not come up for younger or more
working class students? I think the thing is to keep the challenge (of
recognizing the social construction sites) in the air.

>Do the kinds of quarrels and issues that engaged academic historians have
>any resonance in the classroom? Or are students mostly interested in
>details about familiar stories with a familiar cast of characters? I'd be
>interested in hearing how any of you use familiar stories to move to wider
>issues.

Yes to both. We need to construct the classroom in such a way that we take
into account and enhance the accoustical properties that will allow for
that resonance.  Make it possible/probable that these issues can be heard.
I think students are hungry for something new- like, for example, being
required/expected to think. We can *use* the details of familiar stories
and look at them in new ways that engage the minds and interest of
students. BTW, what's the difference between "the kinds of quarrels and
issues that engaged academic historians" and "...details about familiar
stories with a familiar cast of characters?" it's about untangling familiar
stories. back to your concern about the "knowledge" that's aready there,
accreting details to support itself. surely that happens in academia.

>I often used family histories as a way to both involve students in the
>past and to show the connections between the regional, national,
>international and familial. I'd be interested in hearing of any similar
>attempts to integrate student's personal concerns with the larger history.
>

Offer a solid (and as concise as possible) introduction to your analysis,
with concrete examples which include re-analysis of old stories from the
new perspective. Then, *early,* assign the students to apply this type of
analsysis to a "familiar" story of their choice. Something that touches
their lives or the experience of their family or community. This assignment
can take the form of a "racial autobiography" or a family history focussed
on a particular aspect, such as "women's work." If the introductory reading
and lecture/discussion has done its work, we'll get a race-class-gender
aware story that can be the base for class discussion for the remainder of
the semester. The class can theorize together. I think the details are
important, something concrete to hang onto until the students feel
confident in their own analysis- then they can focus on a different set of
details. In my experience, what we want to do is excite the student. some
spark. some connection. Challenge them to think about old stuff in new
ways.

Some good dangerous questions: What's the mixture in your family? How did
that happen? Or, Here we are in the West, How did we get here? or,
alternately, There they are in the West, How did they get there? What's
that mean for us, here in the East or South or Midwest? Or, There we
(African Americans) were in the West; How/why did we get there (in the 19th
Century, in the 'mid-20th Century); why are we coming back here (to the
South)? There's a lot of fairly new writing that can lead to thoughtful
illumination of these questions for students. A lot of it can be found in
disciplines other than History. Pedagogy/Multicultural Education; Cultural
Studies; certainly Literature.  To contemplate these kinds of questions
integrates history in an interdisciplinary way- which is a more natural way
to think anyway- my opinion. How teach history without teaching how to
think about culture, anyway? or without raising these questions about how
to teach, that is, how and why people learn?



Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
 Oakland, CA   94618
 (510) 465-2094  (phone & fax)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 8 Apr 1999 17:10:55 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Richard White 
Subject:      Wests
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Colleagues,


        The most recent comments raise some interesting issues, at least for me,
about how we conceive not only of a specific history - -the West - - but
how we do history.
        I'm glad to know that I can still be shocking, and I am somewhat relieved
to be attacked for being Eurocentric.  I'm so used to being attacked for
leaving the perspectives of white people out that being assaulted from the
other direction (even if Walter hasn't actually read the book) is comforting.
        Walter is perfectly right that I should have identified the category he
points to as native born white people, but after that I am afraid that I
see the issues he raises as far more difficult and complicated than he
does.   I'll repeat Walter's points for those who missed them.

        " While Richard White indicates that the result of these migrations was the
transformation of the US into a more multiracial society, he fails to note
the importance of whiteness in determining power relations within society
East and West - whether it be in People vs. Hall (1854), the Chinese
Exclusion Acts, or within a court system that allowed Anglos to occupy 4/5
of the land granted to Chicanos by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Particularly odious is the term "displaced" Indian peoples - it makes it
sound as if there was some natural disaster that displaced these people.
Would we refer to Albanian Kosovars as merely "displaced" people?  When we
choose our words in this way, it fails to illuminate why these people were
forcibly "displaced" - by the actions of the government and white Americans
who had the government's backing.   Do we then also miss out on an
opportunity to help students to understand the concept of the racialization
of savagery and the sordid history of race relations in this society?  My
experience has been that students generally have no idea how we got to
where we are today in terms of race relations........as though the problem
stems from affirmative action and Prop 209 will fix everything."


        The nice thing here is that Walter gives some specific examples that are
quite interesting, but first there is the issue of whiteness.  Whiteness is
important in nineteenth-century United States, and the sense of the country
being a white man's republic was by mid-century deeply imbued.  But
whiteness was itself still shifting under construction and had significant
variants.  It also played out in combination with numerous other factors
that Walter's emphasis tends to mask.
        There is no denying that race and arguments of white superiority were
important in Chinese Exclusion, but they were hardly the only factors.  The
debate over Chinese Exclusion made it very clear that for many whites,
class was for more important than racial solidarity.  Working class whites,
particularly German and Irish immigrants in California, were far more
likely to oppose the Chinese than middle and upper class whites.  Different
class interests were at stake.  Similarly, white superiority was itself at
issue since the central claim was that Chinese workers would outcompete
white workers.  This was a new defensive racism very different from
arguments that African Americans or Indian peoples would naturally fade
away before a superior race.
        The second example, the land issues surrounding the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, is similarly more complicated than the inevitable working out of
white superiority.   First of all, the courts by and large upheld the land
grants.  The arguments made against the grants was that they rewarded an
elite at the expense of ordinary people.  They were unfair and
undemocratic.   John C. Fremont was as much a target as Californio land
holders.  Land loss came because of the cost of defense of the grants,
fraud, and lawyers' fees.  This is not to deny a racialization of the
Southwest, but the land cases are not the best examples.
        Walter's conflation of Californios,  Nuevo Mexicanos, and others into the
modern term Chicano which most Nuevo Mexicanos actively rejected, sets up
another problem of losing the particularity of this history and reducing
people to poster children for white victimization.
        As for Walter's analysis of "displaced,"  this is the  kind of reading
that I  think does not serve students very well.  Displaced people has been
synonymous with refugees for a very long time.  I used it quite
purposefully to indicate the complexity of Indian population movements that
could involve displacement by other Indian groups, could arise from
economic changes in the fur trade, could be compelled by white military
action or settler pressure, could be the result of fraud.  If Walter
suspects naturalizing, he could have looked at my larger work on Indian
peoples and either verified or eliminated his suspicion.  This is the kind
of strained reading that I try to discourage in students.

        Finally, to quote Walter quoting me again:

 "The invading communities were new and could not replicate, even when they
>wanted to, the more complicated social patterns of the places they left
>behind.  This did not mean that there was no conflict within these
>communities.   Class conflict was just as apparent, and arguably more
>violent, in the West than in the East.

The "invading communities" (read: white people) seemed pretty adept at
replicating the social pattern they left behind - i.e. white supremacy.  By
painting the violent subjugation of Chicano, Asian and Indian peoples as
"class conflict," one can overlook the importance of white supremacy in the
shaping of the "American West."



        Walter seems to think of white supremacy as a package rather than
something that varied across time and place.  Neil Foley's new book, The
White Scourge, does a nice job of understanding whiteness in Texas but he
specifically sees it as something worked out in a certain context as
different traditions of racial thinking and ranking collide.  As for the
rest, I think Walter is taking the quote out of context.  White settlers by
and large did not think of Indians, Chicanos, and Asians as part of their
communities.  This is one of the ways whiteness functioned.  Their
communities were, however, not homogenous even as they excluded other
groups by race.  There were strong class patterns.
        Furthermore, racial violence was not the only violence deployed against
non-whites.  Class conflict in the West could and did afflict non-whites.
        For me Walter's statement raises several general issues about race,
whiteness, and white supremacy..  The first is the sense in which
historians can try to portray a single factor - -whiteness in this case - -
as determining complicated sets of power relations.  Walter's examples seem
to me to serve as a way to see how race becomes important but that social
difference and conflict do not reduce to race.   The second issue is the
way that modern racial concepts can be read back inappropriately.  I would
argue that racial concepts did not, for example, dominate American Indian
policy until quite late.  The "Friends of the Indians," for example,
insisted on Indian racial equality even as they insisted on cultural
inferiority.  This is not to say that there were not racists in the West.
They just did not control Indian policy and would not until the early
twentieth century.
        Finally,  I think that the perspectives of the past are no more easily
divided up racially than modern perspectives are divided racially.
Walter's people of color is, of course, a racialized construct that lumps
everyone together who is not white, but is or is not white has shifted over
time and is shifting as we speak.  Race is critically important to the
Western past but race as a master category and the sorting of the present
and the past solely on racial terms strikes me as dangerous politics and
dangerous history.
        Margaret Manchester raises interesting points, but I think that a close
reading of the instances she cites shows up ways in which what is happening
in the West, while not unrelated to the larger racism of American society,
is a particular working out in a multiracial situation.  Again Neil Foley's
wonderful book is the best way to see this.
        As for teaching this material in the West, I now teach at a very diverse
and very privileged university.  I am constantly amazed at the complexity
of students' understanding of their lives.
        I'll touch two other comments more briefly.  Norma Smith amplifies some of
the questions that I raise quite usefully.  I hope her points get discussed.
        Lynda Durfee's point about the Great Basin is well taken.  One of my
graduate students, Ned Blackhawk, has rightfully complained that the Great
Basin is a black hole in American history.  I wrote Misfortune while
teaching in Utah and I may have been reacting against the Mormon tendency
to see their narrative as the center of Western history, but I would
strongly caution against page counts about Mormons or any other group
because the implication is that general discussions about Western economy,
culture, social relations, race, etc. have no pertinence to Mormons who
have a special history.  I am not really interested in a larger history
that is only a collection of individual histories set alongside each other.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 9 Apr 1999 14:23:51 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Ilze Choi 
Subject:      Re: Richard White's Opening Statement
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I am neither a teacher nor an historian so I hope I am not here
"illegally."

I am very interested in history, particularily Indian history and have
done a great deal of reading in this area.  And I need to read a lot
more of general history as well. I also realize that Mr. White wants to
focus on historical interrelationships and not special histories.

What causes me to write is the following paragraph which I thought was
striking and also disturbing:

        <<<>>>

This reaction raised some questions in my mind such as:

Does this student consider it unpatriotic to present the darker aspects
of American history? Does he or she disbelieve the historian or think
that negative history should be kept to a minimum?

Do reactions such as this intimidate teachers or academic historians who
might fear the hostility of wealthy alumni or the anger of powerful
groups in the local community?

What is the reason for teaching history?  Is it to help understand the
present or is it to underscore the ideology and value system of a
dominant group in power?

Are the changes in historical interpretation a reflection of a
community's influence on how history is written or taught?

For example, _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_ by Dee Brown, a best-seller
when published, seems to be now under criticism as "biased" by some.  It
was also apparently banned for a time at the gift-shop of the Little
Bighorn Battlefield National Monument for the same reason. Since the
bookshop was then a concession of an organization strongly favorable to
Custer, how unbiased were the books that were selected?

For what it is worth, I offer my opinion that history should be taught
as fully and accurately as possible without excluding or disregarding
any group since history is our only hope for mutual understanding and
justice in our very diverse society.

Ilze Choi
New Orleans
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 10 Apr 1999 14:42:57 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Erin Clune 
Subject:      Teaching the West in US Surveys

I wanted to post some specific questions about Teaching the West  to the
list, but I hope they're questions that also respond to broader theoretical discussions here about the "representativeness" of the West in American narratives:

Although  I am a graduate student working on a dissertation  on the South, I have recently planned a modern U.S. survey syllabus that includes what some might consider a predominance of reading on the West.  By "predominance," I meant 2 of 5 required books, and they are works that I consider to contain (explicitly or not) Western themes and narratives.  These are Limerick's Legacy of Conquest, and Sanchez's Becoming Mexican American.   While I believe the historical content of these books is Western in many respects, however, I assigned them because I also think each reflects and comments upon large lecture themes in U.S. history, from industrialization, to capitalism, to immigration, globalization, Progressivism, et cetera.

 Aside from the brilliance of these books as products of the craft, I was drawn to them most because of their particular relevance to these big themes, and not even primarily because they are "Western" subjects.(That is to say, I was not trying to make a concerted effort to represent the West to my students in New York City, or that type of thing)

And I have noted my particular area of study, only in order to note a contrast: as important as I believe the "South" is to these themes in the survey course and in U.S. history writ large, I might think twice before assigning two of five works on the "South" as such. In this spirit of comparison and theorization, the questions I pose are as follows:

What do others do/think about teaching the West as part of the survey?  How much does it depend upon the location of one's school (my own undergraduate training in California, for example, did not  incorporate mucht more Western study than my graduate training has in New York City)? How appropriate is that?  Does is seem  reasonable to characterize both of these works to students as 'Western" in their thematic orientation?  And how might others characterize them to students, re: the western specificity issue?

Erin Elizabeth Clune
New York University
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 12 Apr 1999 14:42:51 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Woman's Suffrage in Western States
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Dear Colleagues:

I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if any) to
suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major articles/theses on
this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's participation in
the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same numbers
(proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions, etc.   I
know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
there must have been others elected to state and local offices.

I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from
the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ. Press
1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West, since
Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.  Hardly a
mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted suffrage
prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi were
only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist movement).

P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!

Lynda Durfee
grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 12 Apr 1999 16:22:21 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Ilze Choi 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
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This will probably only be marginally helpful but you might find some
interesting information in _Lost Bird of Wounded Knee_ by by Renee
Sansom Flood. Although it is about an adopted Lakota Indian girl, much
of the book also describes the life of her adoptive white mother Clara
Colby who was a suffragist from Nebraska and a close associate of Susan
B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It has footnotes as well as an
extensive bibliography that includes dissertations, some relating to
suffrage topics.

Ilze Choi
New Orleans, La.

Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:
>
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if any) to
> suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major articles/theses on
> this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's participation in
> the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same numbers
> (proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions, etc.   I
> know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
> there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>
> I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from
> the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ. Press
> 1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West, since
> Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.  Hardly a
> mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted suffrage
> prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
> another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi were
> only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist movement).
>
> P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>
> Lynda Durfee
> grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 12 Apr 1999 17:59:09 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Vince DiGirolamo 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain

Thanks for the wake up call.  I have a few recommendations concerning
suffrage and the political participation of women in the West.

One is Sherna Gluck's book, From Parlor to Prison (1976; 1985) which I
recall contains oral histories of western suffragists.

Another is my article, "The Women of Wheatland: Female Consciousnss and the
1913 Wheatland Hop Strike" in Labor History (Spring/Summer 1993).  It
focuses primarily on the role of women in the strike but briefly examines
how and why the ensuing trial of IWW members became cause-celebre among
California suffragists.

 Another article I just taught to good effect is Mary Jo Wagner, "Helping
Papa and Mamma Sing the People's Songs: Children in the Populist Party," in
Wava O. Haney and Jane Knowles, eds., Women and Farming (1988), 319-37. It
doesn't deal with suffrage but innovatively addresses the question of
western women's participation in the political process.


> ----------
> From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
> Reply To:     Forum on the American West
> Sent:         Monday, April 12, 1999 2:42 PM
> To:   AMERICANWEST@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject:      Woman's Suffrage in Western States
>
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if
> any) to
> suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major
> articles/theses on
> this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's
> participation in
> the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same
> numbers
> (proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions,
> etc.   I
> know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado,
> but
> there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>
> I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics
> from
> the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ.
> Press
> 1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West,
> since
> Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.
> Hardly a
> mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted
> suffrage
> prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers
> to
> another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi
> were
> only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist
> movement).
>
> P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>
> Lynda Durfee
> grad student, GMU
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 12 Apr 1999 22:46:13 +0100
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Mary Scriver 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
In-Reply-To:  <00748E7C6AA2D211973F0000F860108D2278F1@mail.colgate.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Look for the name "Jeannette Rankin."  She was one of the first female US
Representatives and had the courage to vote against entry into WWI.  If you
find material about her, you will have tapped into a whole network.

Prairie Mary
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 08:56:59 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         douglas sackman 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

"Suffering for Suffrage: Western Women and the Struggle for Political,
Legal, and Economic Rights", chapter 8 of Sandra Myers' _Westering Women
and the Frontier Experience 1800-1915_, presents a good overview of the
issue.

Doug Sackman

douglas c sackman
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
oberlin college
department of history
10 north professor street
oberlin ohio 44074-1095

douglas.sackman@oberlin.edu
440 775 8191
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 08:54:20 -0600
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "Marcia T. Goldstein" 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
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Start with Carolyn Stefanco's "Networking on the Frontier" in Susan Armitage and
Elizabeth Jameson's The Women's West, which focuses on the Colorado suffrage
movement which won the vote in 1893 by popular referendum!  Here, women formed
cross-class alliances with male political reformers, labor unions,
African-Americans, and the farmers' movement.  The role of Populism and the western
labor movement are explored in other works also.
I understand the frustration!  The video "One Woman, One Vote" devotes an entire 4
minutes to western suffrage (out of 2 hours!).   But PBS in Salt Lake City produced
an excellent video on western suffrage a couple of years ago, which would be worth
looking at.  Contact them for more information.

I will forward more on Colorado and western suffrage shortly -- and can answer
questions if that would be useful.
Marcia Goldstein, Colorado Coalition for Women's History
University of Colorado Boulder

Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:

> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if any) to
> suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major articles/theses on
> this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's participation in
> the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same numbers
> (proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions, etc.   I
> know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
> there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>
> I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from
> the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ. Press
> 1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West, since
> Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.  Hardly a
> mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted suffrage
> prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
> another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi were
> only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist movement).
>
> P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>
> Lynda Durfee
> grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 09:03:38 -0600
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "Marcia T. Goldstein" 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I forgot to add a question for Richard White:  why do you call early suffrage
victories in the west a "mystery"? (see p. 359).  Is that because not enough work
has been done on it?  Or is women's suffrage a particularly elusive topic?  There
are few other "mysterious" subjects in your book (which I admire greatly!)   We
could/should demystify western suffrage don't you think?
Marcia Goldstein, grad student
Univ. of Colorado Boulder

Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:

> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if any) to
> suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major articles/theses on
> this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's participation in
> the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same numbers
> (proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions, etc.   I
> know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
> there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>
> I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from
> the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ. Press
> 1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West, since
> Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.  Hardly a
> mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted suffrage
> prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
> another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi were
> only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist movement).
>
> P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>
> Lynda Durfee
> grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 08:53:25 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Richard White 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
In-Reply-To:  <37135CCA.D2366F2E@ecentral.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        A quick answer to Marcia Goldstein.  I regard it as a mystery because
there has been no good clear explanation as to why Western states and
territories should grant women the vote more quickly than in the East.
        The mistake, as Gingy Scharff has indicated, is that we might be looking
for a single overarching Western explanation when several different, if
overlapping, processes might have been at work in various parts of the West.

Richard White


At 09:03 AM 4/13/99 -0600, you wrote:
>I forgot to add a question for Richard White:  why do you call early suffrage
>victories in the west a "mystery"? (see p. 359).  Is that because not
enough work
>has been done on it?  Or is women's suffrage a particularly elusive topic?
 There
>are few other "mysterious" subjects in your book (which I admire greatly!)
  We
>could/should demystify western suffrage don't you think?
>Marcia Goldstein, grad student
>Univ. of Colorado Boulder
>
>Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:
>
>> Dear Colleagues:
>>
>> I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if
any) to
>> suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major
articles/theses on
>> this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's
participation in
>> the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same
numbers
>> (proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions,
etc.   I
>> know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
>> there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>>
>> I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party
Politics from
>> the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ.
Press
>> 1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West,
since
>> Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.
Hardly a
>> mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted
suffrage
>> prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
>> another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi
were
>> only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist
movement).
>>
>> P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>>
>> Lynda Durfee
>> grad student, GMU
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:51:20 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Colleagues:

Thanks for the many suggestions I received.   This subject really got the list
members going!  Two people suggested chapter 8 (Suffering for Suffrage) of
Sandra Myres' book Westering Women.  In the footnotes, she cited several dozen
articles on women's suffrage in western states, but these are almost exclusively
state studies published in state and regional historical journals.  As her book
was published in 1982, it doesn't reflect more recent research/publication.

Myres gave pages counts in several major works on suffrage as evidence of  how
western women have been overlooked in the suffrage story (footnote #84), and
wrote (pp. 234-5):

"Part of the problem in trying to analyze the Western suffrage movement is that
there has been so little work done in the field.  With the exception of the
pioneering efforts of T. A. Larson and some recent work by one or two young
historians, most women's suffrage and feminist historians have almost entirely
ignored the West.  Writers have concentrated on the national suffrage leaders
and on the history of the movement in the Eastern states.  Western suffrage
votes are treated as some sort of aberrant political behavior rather than as
part of the mainstream of the suffrage movement.  Furthermore, no attempt has
been made to analyze the seeming apathy on the part of most Western women in
regard to suffrage.  Clearly men, not women, took the lead in Wyoming and Utah
and played a significant role in the other successful Western campaigns.  In
fact, little evidence exists that women were active in large numbers in any of
the Western states.
  This seeming apathy may be misleading, however.  A number of women's diaries,
journals,  and reminiscences contained clear indications that they were aware of
political events and supported women's rights even when they did not participate
in suffrage campaigns."

Hasn't someone somewhere done a thesis on women's suffrage and involvement in
politics in the West as a whole and/or published a book?  [I'm not
volunteering--at least, not right now!]   For anyone looking for a thesis or
book topic, this seems to be almost unplowed territory, at least, in terms of a
regional study.

Interestingly, the legislation granting suffrage in Wyoming and Utah was passed
without any prompting from the women in those states.  I was familiar with the
Utah suffrage story and the involvement of prominent Mormon women in the
national movement, but had found only scattered references to the effort in
other states.

The Library of Congress has a collection of documents from the National American
Woman Suffrage Association.  It is very tedious to search, but I did get 59 hits
for "Wyoming"  as a starting point.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html

Again, thanks for the many suggestions.  I was really looking for the "killer
book" or thesis on the subject and not planning on doing a major research
project, since I've just completed the work for my M.A.   I will, however,
compile a bibliography on the subject from your suggestions, Myres' book, and
periodical indices.  Perhaps I'll do an historiography on the subject as well.

One of the most bizarre items I've come across (in research on another subject)
was a 2 February 1916 letter written by W. P. Monson (apparently an LDS church
official in New York City) to the governors of the western states, in response
to accusations in the press that the Mormon Church "controlled" the vote in
those states.  The first two questions in the letter were "Is 'equal suffrage'
shared by the female portion of the population of your state?"  and "Is such
suffrage limited or absolute?"  Here are the responses to that question:

Arizona:  "Both sexes in Arizona exercise the same rights and privileges under
the elective franchise."

California:  [No response.]

Colorado:  "In reply to your questions as to equal suffrage, I beg to state that
'equal suffrage' is enjoyed by the female portion of the population of
Colorado."

Idaho:  "In Idaho there exists Woman Suffrage, unlimited and absolute."

Montana:  "'Is 'equal suffrage' shared by the female portion of the population
of your state'?'  Ans. Yes.  'Is such suffrage limited or absolute?'  Ans.
Absolute."

New Mexico:  "I have to inform you that woman's suffrage has not been adopted in
New Mexico except for voting in district school elections."

Nevada:  "(1)  Nevada has equal suffrage.  (2)  The suffrage is absolute with
men and women."

Oregon:  "Oregon has equal suffrage.  It is absolute."

Utah:  "(1)  Equal suffrage is enjoyed by the women of Utah.  (2)  Equal
political rights are granted under the provisions of Section 1, Article 4, of
the Constitution, which reads:  'The rights of the citizens of Utah to have and
hold office shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.  Both male and
female citizens of this State shall enjoy equally all civil, political and
religious rights and privileges."

Washington:  " ... women in the State of Washington have full suffrage."

Wyoming:  "I wish to say that equal suffrage is enjoyed by the women in Wyoming
and it has been a part of our state and territorial constitutions since the
territory was organized in 1869.  Such suffrage is absolute.
---------

Lynda Durfee
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 13 Apr 1999 17:11:28 -0800
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Susan Kilgore 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
In-Reply-To:  <00045E9E.1637@tmac.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Lynda--
Check out Patricia Limerick's *Legacy of Conquest* for more information
about women in the west.

Susan Kilgore
Washington State University

>Dear Colleagues:
>
>I wonder why books/articles on women's suffrage pay scant attention (if
>any) to
>suffrage in Western States.  Has anyone come across any major
>articles/theses on
>this subject?  I'm particularly interested in western women's participation in
>the political process:  whether they registered and voted in the same numbers
>(proportionately) as men,  made speeches, participated in conventions,
>etc.   I
>know of some that were elected to the legislature in Utah and Colorado, but
>there must have been others elected to state and local offices.
>
>I recently read Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics
>from
>the Civil War to the Progressive Era by Rebecca B. Edwards (Oxford Univ. Press
>1997).  I expected to find at least a chapter on suffrage in the West, since
>Western states were the first to grant partial/full suffrage to women.
>Hardly a
>mention.  Not even a table giving states/dates for states that granted
>suffrage
>prior to ratification of the 19th amendment (a footnote referred readers to
>another source).   If I recall correctly, women west of the Mississippi were
>only briefly mentioned in this book (in connection with the Populist
>movement).
>
>P.S.  This is a very sleepy list!  You can't ALL be grading mid-terms!
>
>Lynda Durfee
>grad student, GMU
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 15 Apr 1999 22:28:26 -0600
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "Marcia T. Goldstein" 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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    Thanks to Richard for pointing out what I have discovered as well:  the western
suffrage story has many versions and explanations, depending on the state or
subregion one is looking at.  I think a good study (which I would like to do) would
look for the diversity of conditions, motivations, and explanations, but still try
to explain why there is such an obvious chronological divide between east and
west.   The data I have seen shows that by @ 1915, all of the western states
(besides New Mexico) were in the suffrage column, and virtually none east of the
MIssissippi.   My theory is that is has something to do with demographics, the
influence of Populism and radical labor, as well as political timing.  Organized
women with "moral" expectations and political savvy could fill political vacuums in
the west which may not have existed in the more established, populated east and
South.
    There are several dissertations on Colorado suffrage both 15-20 years old.  One
is by a political scientist, Susan Marilley, called "Why the Vote?"  which focuses
on political strategy and tactics.  Another older one (which is primarily a factual
narrative) is by Billie Barnes Jensen (I don't recall the title).  Carolyn
Stefanco's work is the best and most recent, and her dissertation focused on women's
agency and organizational strategies.  The last I knew, she was at Cal Poly in San
Luis Obispo.  She would be a very good resource for additional scholarship.
    I think one reason for the recent dearth of western suffrage material is that
the subject seemed to focus so much on the story of white middle/upper class women.
As new western historians, we should be trying to find connections and interactions
between the many groups that converged and conflicted in the west.  The political
sphere is a great place to look for class, race, and gender conflict, as well as
"hidden" agendas.  As a western labor historian, I have been trying to explore the
suffrage story as it impacted workers in the west.  For example, Colorado's
anti-corporate political dynamics were greatly influenced by  cross-class alliances
between the white m/c women's movement and the very politically active labor
movement in the 1890s-WWI.    Until 1910 (Calif suffrage), Denver was the only large
city where women could vote during the Progressive Era, so a lot of political
experimentation went on here.   Suffrage was won as a result of the
labor/women/Populist alliance and it seems as though that alliance continued after
women won the vote.  The Western Federation  of Miners formed a Women's Auxiliary as
an organizing tool to get working class women to vote against anti-labor
politicians, and also to win support from urbanites.  The 8-hour day for miners, and
the 8-hour day for women were very closely linked here --- these grass-roots, public
campaigns (referendums, boycotts, legislative, and legal battles) were coordinated
via coalitions between woman legislators, Progressive politicians like Judge Ben
Lindsey (the "father" of the juvenile court system), the Colorado Federation of
Women's Clubs, and the Colorado Labor Federation.   Meanwhile, the voices of the
"laundry girls" for whom the protective legislation was supposedly designed, are
difficult but important to locate.  Women's clubbers and female legislators who
advocated the legislation were careful to exclude domestic workers who worked in
their own kitchens.
    Another interesting issue is to look as women's more direct political influence
in early western environmental struggles as they pertain to working people --
especially urban air and water pollution and workplace/mine safety.  Women
farmworkers struggled to include health and safety issues in the unions' agenda.
Male miners, on the other hand, were more ambivalent about safety issues -- part of
the solidarity of miners was built around the "manliness' of working in constant
danger.
Also, why did western women's groups often lead in preservation vs. utilitarian
political struggles over the establishment of National Parks?

In sum, we need not only to look closer at why and how women won the vote in various
western contexts.  Analyzing the impact and aftermath of suffrage might be even more
instructive in explaining the western "difference."
Marcia Goldstein, Denver

Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:

> Dear Colleagues:
>
> Thanks for the many suggestions I received.   This subject really got the list
> members going!  Two people suggested chapter 8 (Suffering for Suffrage) of
> Sandra Myres' book Westering Women.  In the footnotes, she cited several dozen
> articles on women's suffrage in western states, but these are almost exclusively
> state studies published in state and regional historical journals.  As her book
> was published in 1982, it doesn't reflect more recent research/publication.
>
> Myres gave pages counts in several major works on suffrage as evidence of  how
> western women have been overlooked in the suffrage story (footnote #84), and
> wrote (pp. 234-5):
>
> "Part of the problem in trying to analyze the Western suffrage movement is that
> there has been so little work done in the field.  With the exception of the
> pioneering efforts of T. A. Larson and some recent work by one or two young
> historians, most women's suffrage and feminist historians have almost entirely
> ignored the West.  Writers have concentrated on the national suffrage leaders
> and on the history of the movement in the Eastern states.  Western suffrage
> votes are treated as some sort of aberrant political behavior rather than as
> part of the mainstream of the suffrage movement.  Furthermore, no attempt has
> been made to analyze the seeming apathy on the part of most Western women in
> regard to suffrage.  Clearly men, not women, took the lead in Wyoming and Utah
> and played a significant role in the other successful Western campaigns.  In
> fact, little evidence exists that women were active in large numbers in any of
> the Western states.
>   This seeming apathy may be misleading, however.  A number of women's diaries,
> journals,  and reminiscences contained clear indications that they were aware of
> political events and supported women's rights even when they did not participate
> in suffrage campaigns."
>
> Hasn't someone somewhere done a thesis on women's suffrage and involvement in
> politics in the West as a whole and/or published a book?  [I'm not
> volunteering--at least, not right now!]   For anyone looking for a thesis or
> book topic, this seems to be almost unplowed territory, at least, in terms of a
> regional study.
>
> Interestingly, the legislation granting suffrage in Wyoming and Utah was passed
> without any prompting from the women in those states.  I was familiar with the
> Utah suffrage story and the involvement of prominent Mormon women in the
> national movement, but had found only scattered references to the effort in
> other states.
>
> The Library of Congress has a collection of documents from the National American
> Woman Suffrage Association.  It is very tedious to search, but I did get 59 hits
> for "Wyoming"  as a starting point.
>
> http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html
>
> Again, thanks for the many suggestions.  I was really looking for the "killer
> book" or thesis on the subject and not planning on doing a major research
> project, since I've just completed the work for my M.A.   I will, however,
> compile a bibliography on the subject from your suggestions, Myres' book, and
> periodical indices.  Perhaps I'll do an historiography on the subject as well.
>
> One of the most bizarre items I've come across (in research on another subject)
> was a 2 February 1916 letter written by W. P. Monson (apparently an LDS church
> official in New York City) to the governors of the western states, in response
> to accusations in the press that the Mormon Church "controlled" the vote in
> those states.  The first two questions in the letter were "Is 'equal suffrage'
> shared by the female portion of the population of your state?"  and "Is such
> suffrage limited or absolute?"  Here are the responses to that question:
>
> Arizona:  "Both sexes in Arizona exercise the same rights and privileges under
> the elective franchise."
>
> California:  [No response.]
>
> Colorado:  "In reply to your questions as to equal suffrage, I beg to state that
> 'equal suffrage' is enjoyed by the female portion of the population of
> Colorado."
>
> Idaho:  "In Idaho there exists Woman Suffrage, unlimited and absolute."
>
> Montana:  "'Is 'equal suffrage' shared by the female portion of the population
> of your state'?'  Ans. Yes.  'Is such suffrage limited or absolute?'  Ans.
> Absolute."
>
> New Mexico:  "I have to inform you that woman's suffrage has not been adopted in
> New Mexico except for voting in district school elections."
>
> Nevada:  "(1)  Nevada has equal suffrage.  (2)  The suffrage is absolute with
> men and women."
>
> Oregon:  "Oregon has equal suffrage.  It is absolute."
>
> Utah:  "(1)  Equal suffrage is enjoyed by the women of Utah.  (2)  Equal
> political rights are granted under the provisions of Section 1, Article 4, of
> the Constitution, which reads:  'The rights of the citizens of Utah to have and
> hold office shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.  Both male and
> female citizens of this State shall enjoy equally all civil, political and
> religious rights and privileges."
>
> Washington:  " ... women in the State of Washington have full suffrage."
>
> Wyoming:  "I wish to say that equal suffrage is enjoyed by the women in Wyoming
> and it has been a part of our state and territorial constitutions since the
> territory was organized in 1869.  Such suffrage is absolute.
> ---------
>
> Lynda Durfee
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:20:03 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
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Dear Colleagues:

In response to Marcia's comments:

1. Billie Barnes Jensen did her MA thesis at the Univ. of Colorado in 1959.
Below are citations for several of Ms. Jensen's articles:

"Colorado Woman Suffrage Campaigns of the 1870s," Journal of the West, 12 (April
1973), 254-271.

"Let the Women Vote," Colorado Magazine, 41 (Winter 1964), 13-19.

2.  I did find an "omnibus" book on woman suffrage in the West as a region by
Beverly Beeton.  I checked at Amazon.com, and it's out of print. This was
apparently her Ph.D. disseertation at the University of Utah in 1976.   Only one
library in the entire Washington DC area has the book.  Ms. Beeton also
published several articles on suffrage in Utah.

Beeton, Beverly. Women Vote in the West:  The Woman Suffrage Movement,
1869-1896.  New York:  Garland Publishing, 1986.

3.  I've compiled a bibliography on woman suffrage in the trans-Mississippi West
from the citations in Sandra Myres' book, Westerning Women, plus additional
material from Catherine Lavender's bibliography on western women at her West Web
page.  This is a direct link to Lavenders' bibliography, which has heavy
emphasis on Native American and other non-white (European ancestry) women.

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/reviews/genderwest-rev.txt

My list is by no means complete, and doesn't have much after 1982.  However, I
will work on it over the next several months when I can check some of the
article data bases and look at Beverly Beeton's book.  If anyone wants a copy of
what I have now ( 5 1/2 pages), please e-mail me directly and specify format
[it's in Word 7.0, but I can convert it to text or some other WP format].  I
don't know if the list accepts attachments, so I won't try that route.

4.  The woman suffrage page at the Library of Congress web site does have a lot
of useful information.  The NAWS printed an annual yearbook on the
status/progress of woman suffrage by state.  I looked at the yearbook for 1917,
and the report gave statistics on the male/female population 21 and older (per
1900 census) and comparisons between the total number of voters in each state
before and after woman suffrage.   This is from the introduction:

    The first part of the book deals with the progress,     extent and results
of Woman Suffrage; the second   taken upon certain questions affecting women and
    children; the third part deals with miscellaneous   information for the
general use of suffrage workers     and others. As far as possible each Division
is  devoted to subjects of like character.

Especial attention is called to the Tables, contained in the Second Division,
which show how widespread has been the demand for Woman Suffrage throughout the
United States.

Here's the site's main page.

      http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html

Have a great weekend everyone!

Lynda Durfee
durfee_lynda@tmac.com

____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
Author: Forum on the American West 
Date:       4/15/99 10:28 PM

    Thanks to Richard for pointing out what I have discovered as well:  the
western
suffrage story has many versions and explanations, depending on the state or
subregion one is looking at.  I think a good study (which I would like to do)
would
look for the diversity of conditions, motivations, and explanations, but still
try
to explain why there is such an obvious chronological divide between east and
west.   The data I have seen shows that by @ 1915, all of the western states
(besides New Mexico) were in the suffrage column, and virtually none east of the
MIssissippi.   My theory is that is has something to do with demographics, the
influence of Populism and radical labor, as well as political timing.  Organized
women with "moral" expectations and political savvy could fill political vacuums
in
the west which may not have existed in the more established, populated east and
South.
    There are several dissertations on Colorado suffrage both 15-20 years old.
One
is by a political scientist, Susan Marilley, called "Why the Vote?"  which
focuses
on political strategy and tactics.  Another older one (which is primarily a
factual
narrative) is by Billie Barnes Jensen (I don't recall the title).  Carolyn
Stefanco's work is the best and most recent, and her dissertation focused on
women's
agency and organizational strategies.  The last I knew, she was at Cal Poly in
San
Luis Obispo.  She would be a very good resource for additional scholarship.
    I think one reason for the recent dearth of western suffrage material is
that
the subject seemed to focus so much on the story of white middle/upper class
women.
As new western historians, we should be trying to find connections and
interactions
between the many groups that converged and conflicted in the west.  The
political
sphere is a great place to look for class, race, and gender conflict, as well as
"hidden" agendas.  As a western labor historian, I have been trying to explore
the
suffrage story as it impacted workers in the west.  For example, Colorado's
anti-corporate political dynamics were greatly influenced by  cross-class
alliances
between the white m/c women's movement and the very politically active labor
movement in the 1890s-WWI.    Until 1910 (Calif suffrage), Denver was the only
large
city where women could vote during the Progressive Era, so a lot of political
experimentation went on here.   Suffrage was won as a result of the
labor/women/Populist alliance and it seems as though that alliance continued
after
women won the vote.  The Western Federation  of Miners formed a Women's
Auxiliary as
an organizing tool to get working class women to vote against anti-labor
politicians, and also to win support from urbanites.  The 8-hour day for miners,
and
the 8-hour day for women were very closely linked here --- these grass-roots,
public
campaigns (referendums, boycotts, legislative, and legal battles) were
coordinated
via coalitions between woman legislators, Progressive politicians like Judge Ben
Lindsey (the "father" of the juvenile court system), the Colorado Federation of
Women's Clubs, and the Colorado Labor Federation.   Meanwhile, the voices of the
"laundry girls" for whom the protective legislation was supposedly designed, are
difficult but important to locate.  Women's clubbers and female legislators who
advocated the legislation were careful to exclude domestic workers who worked in
their own kitchens.
    Another interesting issue is to look as women's more direct political
influence
in early western environmental struggles as they pertain to working people --
especially urban air and water pollution and workplace/mine safety.  Women
farmworkers struggled to include health and safety issues in the unions' agenda.
Male miners, on the other hand, were more ambivalent about safety issues -- part
of
the solidarity of miners was built around the "manliness' of working in constant
danger.
Also, why did western women's groups often lead in preservation vs. utilitarian
political struggles over the establishment of National Parks?

In sum, we need not only to look closer at why and how women won the vote in
various
western contexts.  Analyzing the impact and aftermath of suffrage might be even
more
instructive in explaining the western "difference."
Marcia Goldstein, Denver
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 11:19:05 EDT
Reply-To:     Laucarlson@aol.com
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Laurie Carlson 
Subject:      Re: Woman's Suffrage in Western States
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        I've not done research in this area but wonder what interrelationship
there was between allowing women to vote and child labor -- it seems that
there may have been a direct link, that hasn't been explored.  That would
explain why western states didn't concern themselves so much with whether or
not women could vote (and thereby take control of the labor force they were
creating).  In the west, children worked on farms, not factories, which was
much different (and more acceptable) from their situation in the east and
southeast.  It seems that suffrage was uncontested after child labor
legislation had been put in place (although that was done in states first,
rather than as federal legislation).  Reading newspaper accounts at the time
regarding child labor issues is rather shocking because the attitude was
callous.  It may have been something most people would rather ignore, similar
to the earlier attitude towards slavery.  Of course women (mothers) who could
vote, would have changed all that.

Is there anything out there that supports this?  Or corrects my thinking?

Thanks!

Laurie Carlson
Cheney, Washington
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:03:17 -0700
Reply-To:     lgbarber@calweb.com
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Lucy Barber 
Subject:      New Topic: Unforgiven
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I'd be interested in what people think about Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven as
a tool to discuss the history of the West.  There was much that I found
interesting about it -- its stance as an anti-hero movie, its racial
diversity, its portrayal of western women as "independent", and of course
its emphasis on the "limits" of the west.  But still it was oddly
disturbing:  it seemed to reinforce notions of patriarchy, of law and order
as inherently good -- if done right.

what do you all think,

best,

Lucy Barber





____________________________________________
Lucy Barber                 Spring 99 Office Hours
Assistant Professor   (Starts April 2, 1999)
                       M: 1-3 pm  W: 9-10 am
Department of History
One Shields Avenue
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA  95616

Office:  Social Science/Humanities 3231

lgbarber@ucdavis.edu
office: 530/754-8242
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 12:57:33 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Re: New Topic: Unforgiven
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Dear Colleagues:

I know "Unforgiven" was supposed to have "broken new ground" with a level of
violence that was supposed to be a statement AGAINST violence.  It still had the
usual suspects:  reporter, crooked lawman, prostitute with a heart of gold, etc.
 I don't know that it was THAT different from dozens of other "shoot-em-ups."

So why should anyone be surprised that "Unforgiven" protrayed (some) western
women were "independent"?  I can think of a number of "westerns" where women
were portrayed as "independent."

As long as we're on the subject of portrayal of the West in film, let's come up
with some "good" movies (i.e., fairly realistic portrayal of people of the
West). Of course, we're not going to find ones that are perfectly accurate, but
there are some reasonably good ones that don't have whooping "savages" and
cavalry charges.

How about "Westward the Women"  with Robert Taylor?  This is the story of a town
of men in California that sent Taylor to Chicago (I think) to get enough brides
to go around.  The women had to learn to drive the wagons and endure all the
usual hardships.  Taylor's character developed a grudging respect for the women.

Another one is "The Wagonmaster" with Ward Bond, Harry Carey, and Jane Darwell.
Bond leads a wagon company of Mormons across the San Juan River into Utah.  Some
of us "older" folks might remember Bond played a wagonmaster in a 1950s TV
series called "Wagon Train."

Lynda Durfee
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 15:37:11 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         Susan Lyn Englander 
Subject:      Woman Suffrage in the West
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While we were in the Master's Program at San Francisco State University,
Rebecca Mead and I produced theses on woman suffrage in California.  My
thesis, written in 1989,"The San Francisco Wage Earners' Suffrage League:
Class Conflict and Class Coalition in the California Woman Suffrage
Movement, 1907-1912" is available from Edwin Mellen Press.  Mead's
thesis, written in 1991, is titled "Trade Unionism and Political Activity
among San Francisco Wage-Earning Women, 1900-1922."

Susan Englander
UCLA
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Date:         Fri, 16 Apr 1999 22:40:51 -0700
Reply-To:     gpabst@kksf.com
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Greg Pabst 
Organization: KKSF 103.7
Subject:      Re: New Topic: Unforgiven
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It's amazing that this topic gets so much action... tho, culturally, I
understand.

George MacDonald Fraser's _Hollywood History of the World_ has a fairly
simple thesis.
To wit: the movie has to be reasonably accurate (moving events around
only for dramatic effect, cleaning up or combining characters is OK if
it's honest and moves the action forward), and

**Does the film give you a sense of having been in that time and
place?**

Using this "historic litmus test," I recommend:

_Shane_

_One Eyed Jacks_

_Blackrobe_

_Will Penny_

_A Thousand Pieces of Gold_

and _Jeremiah Johnson_

And, Lynda Durfee. Yeah, Ward Bond (one of John Wayne's "repertory
players") was the absolute coolest!

Greg Pabst
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Date:         Sat, 17 Apr 1999 21:40:38 +0200
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Pierre Lagayette 
Subject:      Western History
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Dear Colleagues,

Allow a European "Americanist" to join in the discussion so expertly opened
by Richard White. Let me thank him for accepting to moderate a discussion
that, by virtue of emulating Milton's "marketplace of ideas", is likely to
turn erratic, unpredictable, and/or intellectually dull, depending on the
whims, prejudices, interests, interpretations, propaganda, etc. conveyed by
the participants' contributions. Mine might not elude the ususal pitfalls of
large-scale, uncontrolled, debates, and before you have finished reading
this message, I may have already been labelled a greenhorn, a fop or a
fuddy-duddy. Yet, I would like to express both my deep satisfaction at the
fact that this kind of forum could be available at all to those of us
interested in the American West or involved in teaching the topic, and my
alarm at the strange turn this discussion has taken after White's so
brilliant and stimulating introduction.

If I may go back to his initial statement (April 5th), I was quite sensitive
to his summary of the various arguments developed by western historians, and
especially the notion of the West as region. I am concerned, however, about
the concept of "region" itself. After all, "regionalism" is only a handy
tool to help subdivide larger scientific sectors or disciplines. But it is a
well-known fact that regional geography, regional history, regional
literature, regional folklore, not to mention regional demographics as
conceived by the Bureau of Census, deal with (sometimes overlapping but)
mostly unidentical areas. Besides, assumptions that the West would be (in
many ways) different from other "regions" of the US, 1)are based on the
predetermination of what a region is, and in that case I wonder WHO decides
and on WHAT grounds; 2)works only if we consider that eastern "regions" are
the standard by which western ones will be measured -- which makes me uneasy
when I try to identify the West for what it is, and not for what it is not.
In fact, I thought I perceived in White's depiction of the "regional West"
an institutional vision of the West, the region being essentially understood
as territory eventually absorbed into the American Nation -- which sends us
back mostly to Turner's organic conception of the US as nation.
The West is essentially a creation of the American psyche and, as such, is
quite impervious to rational explanations. In addition, I stick to the
relativist view that "west" is only a direction, that you have as many
"wests" as you have identifiable cultures, many wests with widely different
physical and imaginary features -- almost a sort of empty shell, eternally
(the Earth moves) waiting to be filled by human dreams, goals and hopes.
This being said, the trans-Missouri West had the double advantage of
emptiness AND singularity (uniquely spectacular and beautiful landscapes)
that allowed it to incarnate values that White describes as "core American
values" but which I think we should consider, more widely, as
post-Enlightenment values (especially equality and a belief in progress) --
universal enough to attract the widest variety of human types and
nationalities to the West. The idea of a West whose settlement exceeds the
conventional scope of the East-West migration is not just attractive, it
establishes the West as crossroads, a place of convergence that, indeed,
further undermines the comparison of this "region" with eastern ones.
To see the West as meeting-place rather than as a place where divisions have
become exacerbated (as, say, in the South), is to legitimize its democratic
character and its representing some sort of ultimate stage of the American
political and social experiment.
Dependence on the Federal government, as stressed by Richard White, was
certainly a precondition for constructing a national identity, and we can
trace the need for eastern control of territorial development back to the
Louisiana Purchase. The rest is only a matter of institutional handling of
lands, a story of boosting alternatively individual, pioneer entreprises (of
the Jeffersonian, pastoral, persuasion) and collective projects, like
railroads, hydroelectric power, or the National Parks system (which, I
think, borrow from a Hamiltonian ideology -- see Gallatin's extraordinary
1808 "Report on Roads and Canals").

Now, although I do agree with White that "the modern idea of wilderness is a
19th century construct", it seems to me that such observation is likely to
turn the wilderness into a mere cultural artefact -- which it is not.
Certainly the wilderness came to assume some economic value from the time it
was felt to become a vanishing commodity. What Americans do not fully
realize, though, is that both the setting aside of "official" wilderness
areas, much like the preservation of native territories, work on the
expectation of a total occupation and/or exploitation of the available land
-- which is an extension of the European model. In fact, the US is still, by
European standards, a land of "land aplenty" and moving into the wilderness
is still possible -- than God -- outside designated areas. What happened in
the 19th century, about the wilderness, is that Americans exchanged the
age-old apprehension of the unknown for a fear of scarcity of space that was
largely supported by government environmental policies.

Teaching history
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 17 Apr 1999 22:17:08 +0200
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Pierre Lagayette 
Subject:      Western History II
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This is a follow-up on my previous message.

Teaching history, as Richard White pointed out, may be an excruciating
experiment in mutual misunderstanding. Yet, my own experience should be
widely different, since I address a different kind of public. No suspicion
of hatred here. But students tend to get that picture of the American West
which Hollywood and Disney have imposed on the rest of the world. Their
receptivity, however, to innovative treatments of the western myth has
remained intact. They had more to say about Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" than
even about "Unforgiven".
As for a discussion of the myths, I often feel that American culture, like
all others, needed its creation story and found it in the West. Undermine
the foundation and you challenge the people's own sense of being a part of
the history that became created in the West -- which means of their national
history. I had the fine opportunity of teaching American Studies to American
undergraduates and I was glad, at times, I could take shelter behind my
externality to the culture I was describing.
I'll take shelter once more to say a word about how quickly it seemed to me
the discussion on Western history, as introduced by Richard White, shifted
towards a discussion of gender history or even, for all the respect due to
Mr.Eastwood, to a movie such as "Unforgiven". Suffrage is certainly a useful
angle to approach western history, but it is only one aspect of it and, seen
from afar, seems only to contribute to the fragmentation of the discipline
that badly needs more coherence and more synthetic treatment.
I hope something useful comes out of this large-scale discussion.

                                        Pierre Lagayette
                                        Professor of American Studies
                                        Department of English
                                        University of Paris IV -Sorbonne
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 08:48:51 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
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From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
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Dear Prof. Lagayette and Colleagues:

I apologize if anyone is offended that my questions regarding woman suffrage in
the West dominated the discussion last week.  It just so happened that a lot of
list members had opinions on this subject.  I think that the question of why
woman's suffrage in the West is so often overlooked in published books and
documentaries on the U.S. woman suffrage movement is a valid one.  Having said
that, this is my LAST word on the subject, unless someone wants to e-mail me
privately.

We have about 160 list members, yet less than 20 have posted messages.
Certainly, anyone is free to start a new topic and send the discussion off in a
new direction.

Perhaps Dr. Lagayette or someone else would care to comment on the German
fascination with the "West."   German tourists seem to predominate among foreign
visitors to National Parks in the Southwest, and I recall reading about a
"western theme" park in Germany.

I'll sit back for a while and keep my fingers quiet.

Lynda Durfee
graduate student, GMU
durfee_lynda@tmac.com


____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Western History II
Author: Forum on the American West 
Date:       4/17/99 10:17 PM

This is a follow-up on my previous message.

Teaching history, as Richard White pointed out, may be an excruciating
experiment in mutual misunderstanding. Yet, my own experience should be
widely different, since I address a different kind of public. No suspicion
of hatred here. But students tend to get that picture of the American West
which Hollywood and Disney have imposed on the rest of the world. Their
receptivity, however, to innovative treatments of the western myth has
remained intact. They had more to say about Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" than
even about "Unforgiven".
As for a discussion of the myths, I often feel that American culture, like
all others, needed its creation story and found it in the West. Undermine
the foundation and you challenge the people's own sense of being a part of
the history that became created in the West -- which means of their national
history. I had the fine opportunity of teaching American Studies to American
undergraduates and I was glad, at times, I could take shelter behind my
externality to the culture I was describing.
I'll take shelter once more to say a word about how quickly it seemed to me
the discussion on Western history, as introduced by Richard White, shifted
towards a discussion of gender history or even, for all the respect due to
Mr.Eastwood, to a movie such as "Unforgiven". Suffrage is certainly a useful
angle to approach western history, but it is only one aspect of it and, seen
from afar, seems only to contribute to the fragmentation of the discipline
that badly needs more coherence and more synthetic treatment.
I hope something useful comes out of this large-scale discussion.

                                        Pierre Lagayette
                                        Professor of American Studies
                                        Department of English
                                        University of Paris IV -Sorbonne
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:20:48 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         douglas sackman 
Subject:      Re: Western History II
In-Reply-To:  <0004BF77.1637@tmac.com>
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I very much enjoyed Pierre Lagayette's comments--engaging and
provocative....right up to the point when he writes that studying women's
suffrage "seems only to contribute to the fragmentation of the discipline
that badly needs more coherence and more synthetic treatment." This can't
be the only thing it does. If freedom clings inexorably to the myth of the
West, certainly we need to know more about how freedom was expressed on the
ground through the franchise--prime symbol of liberty. The discussion
intimated just how much we don't know about this. And just how do we sort
out those topics that provide merely an angle on the West from those that
can lead to more coherence? A coherent picture of the West which, for lack
of knowledge, must erase the ways constructs of gender affected freedom and
life in and through political as well as domestic spheres, hangs together
with sinews of ignorance.

Doug Sackman
Oberlin College

douglas c sackman
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
oberlin college
department of history
10 north professor street
oberlin ohio 44074-1095

douglas.sackman@oberlin.edu
440 775 8191
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 08:35:08 -0600
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         "Marcia T. Goldstein" 
Subject:      Re: Western History II
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Touche Douglas!
I note that France did not grant the vote to women until 1944.  Perhaps
opponents of  the franchise for women there felt it would unduly fragment
French society.  Indeed, as we have seen in western history, the search for
coherence can lead to fragmentation by failing to account for, and silencing,
the diversity of people who make up the region's past and present.
The "coherent" story of the American West is one of conquest and conflict, as
well as convergence.
Marcia Goldstein

douglas sackman wrote:

> I very much enjoyed Pierre Lagayette's comments--engaging and
> provocative....right up to the point when he writes that studying women's
> suffrage "seems only to contribute to the fragmentation of the discipline
> that badly needs more coherence and more synthetic treatment." This can't
> be the only thing it does. If freedom clings inexorably to the myth of the
> West, certainly we need to know more about how freedom was expressed on the
> ground through the franchise--prime symbol of liberty. The discussion
> intimated just how much we don't know about this. And just how do we sort
> out those topics that provide merely an angle on the West from those that
> can lead to more coherence? A coherent picture of the West which, for lack
> of knowledge, must erase the ways constructs of gender affected freedom and
> life in and through political as well as domestic spheres, hangs together
> with sinews of ignorance.
>
> Doug Sackman
> Oberlin College
>
> douglas c sackman
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> oberlin college
> department of history
> 10 north professor street
> oberlin ohio 44074-1095
>
> douglas.sackman@oberlin.edu
> 440 775 8191
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 11:05:41 EDT
Reply-To:     JBrowne865@aol.com
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         JBrowne865@AOL.COM
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I agree with Douglas Sackman about the history of women's suffrage's
importance to the study of the West.  It is only when women's history (or any
other subcategory) is studied as a thing apart that it could perhaps
contribute to the "balkanization" of American history.  Since notions of
freedom and equality are so  important to our other creation myth, our
founding and revolution, it seems to me that political participation (as well
as marginalization) for women is helpful in shaping our understanding of our
history in general.

Dorothy Browne
CUNY Graduate Center
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 09:19:09 -0700
Reply-To:     lgbarber@calweb.com
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Lucy Barber 
Subject:      Using Unforgiven to think about Freedom in the West
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Dear all,

I just wanted to let you all know how I ended up using a very short clip
from Unforgiven in my introduction to US history since 1865.  I showed only
the part at the beginning where Clint Eastwood (Henry Monney??) is working
with his children to separate the sick pigs from the healthy ones and the
Scholfield kid comes up to try to tempt him into "going back to wickedness".
Monney tells Scholfield that he's given all that up -- including drinking.
The clip set up well the rest of my lecture which was on the problems in
cities, and the west as the "alternative" and the limits in the West.  It
also inadvertently set up the reading for the discussion section, which is
about the temperance movement.  So I appreciate the comments on and off the
list about the very real limits of Unforgiven as a "real" Western -- but I
did want to note that it seemed to catch the students, many of whom had
apparently seen it, but I'm not sure if they had really thought about its
portrayal of the west.

Thus, I want to reinforce the idea that there is a "creation" myth about the
West -- and it is one that American students carry and Europeans and many
other people seem to have a fascination with (in New Zealand, there is a
chain of stores specializing in faux Western memorabilia).  Yet, I think to
challenge students to think about that creation myth -- that has long
historical origins, as a teacher I have to acknowledge that myth in all its
variations from present-day Hollywood portrayals (like Unforgiven) to its
historical roots in "Go West, Young Man." I'd be interested in hearing from
others about how they work with this "myth"/"history" issue, since my
students still seem to expect some truth (indeed, I do at times as well).

thanks to all for the interesting comments,

Lucy Barber

___________________________________________
Lucy Barber                 Spring 99 Office Hours
Assistant Professor   (Starts April 2, 1999)
                       M: 1-3 pm  W: 9-10 am
Department of History
One Shields Avenue
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA  95616

Office:  Social Science/Humanities 3231

lgbarber@ucdavis.edu
office: 530/754-8242
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 11:56:10 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Mike Flores 
Subject:      Re: Western History II
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello all! The preponderance of Deutschen Tourists in the West has been
explained previous by a few colleages of mine as a psychological need for
living space. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland has one of the highest population
per square kilometre densities in the EC, and the World. Hence, Why not?
The United States prides itself on the existence of "Wide Open Spaces"
(as the currently popular song goes), and it is ingrained on the psyche of
Anglo-American Kultur. Is it any wonder that many of the settlements of
the West after 1850 were founded by Central and Northern European Immigrants?

-Mike Flores, Humanities Department, South Texas Community College, McAllen, TX

Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM wrote:

> Dear Colleagues:
>
> We have about 160 list members, yet less than 20 have posted messages.
> Certainly, anyone is free to start a new topic and send the discussion off in a
> new direction.
>
> Perhaps someone else would care to comment on the German
> fascination with the "West."   German tourists seem to predominate among foreign
> visitors to National Parks in the Southwest, and I recall reading about a
> "western theme" park in Germany.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 21 Apr 1999 12:19:48 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Durfee_Lynda@TMAC.COM
Subject:      Pioneer Demographics
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Dear Colleagues:

As we struggle to study and understand the West both as a region and as place in
time and myth and the people that populated it in the 19th century, I'm
wondering if there have been any large-scale demographic studies?  I'm thinking
it would be useful, for example, to use 1860 census population schedules to make
comparisons between settlers of Nebraska (mostly farmers), the Colorado
territory (Spanish-speaking in the south and gold rushers in the north), Mormons
in Utah, homesteaders in Oregon, all kinds of people in California, and so
forth.

I've only seen gross population totals and separate totals for men and women,
mostly used in the context of explaining cultural/social differences between
areas heavily male and those where there were higher proportions of women.  John
Mack Faragher provided some useful tables in Women and Men on the Overland
Trail, where he analyzed the place of emigration (89% from the Midwest), place
of birth (98% born in state other than the state from which they emigrated to
the West), occupation (61% farmers), and family status.

Would such a study be useful in explaining some of the differences in
development between parts of the West?  Would such a study only confirm what we
already think we know about the population or provide new insights?   For
example, there are several dozen farming families enumerated near Ft. Laramie
(in the Nebraska census) in 1860, yet I'd wager that most people think Ft.
Laramie was just a army installation and trading post in the middle of nowhere
along the Oregon Trail.  Yet a look at the census, for both the fort and the
surrounding area gives a "snapshot" picture that probably couldn't be
reconstructed even with dozens of journals and other first-hand accounts.

I'm also wondering to what extent the Native American population was enumerated.
 For example, there were several thousand Pawnees west of the Missouri River
along the Platte in Nebraska in 1860, but I didn't find them in the census,
though emigrants passing through were counted in those counties.


Lynda Durfee
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:36:10 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Richard White 
Subject:      Re: Pioneer Demographics
In-Reply-To:  <0004F16E.1637@tmac.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Dear Colleagues,


        As far as I know, there are no western demographic equivalents to Davis'
 Frontier America: 1800-1840.

        I am also not sure what state or territorial level comparisons might
tell us.  The best local studies such as William Bowen's
Willamette Valley and Jon Gjerde's From
Peasant's to Farmers.

        The interesting question is, given the critical distinctions within
ethnic and other social categories that both make is how much large
scale, relatively crude comparisons will tell us.



Richard White




At 12:19 PM 4/21/99 -0400, you wrote:

>Dear Colleagues:

>

>As we struggle to study and understand the West both as a region and as
place in

>time and myth and the people that populated it in the 19th century,
I'm

>wondering if there have been any large-scale demographic studies?  I'm
thinking

>it would be useful, for example, to use 1860 census population schedules
to make

>comparisons between settlers of Nebraska (mostly farmers), the
Colorado

>territory (Spanish-speaking in the south and gold rushers in the north),
Mormons

>in Utah, homesteaders in Oregon, all kinds of people in California, and
so

>forth.

>

>I've only seen gross population totals and separate totals for men and
women,

>mostly used in the context of explaining cultural/social differences
between

>areas heavily male and those where there were higher proportions of
women.  John

>Mack Faragher provided some useful tables in Women and Men on the
Overland

>Trail, where he analyzed the place of emigration (89% from the Midwest),
place

>of birth (98% born in state other than the state from which they
emigrated to

>the West), occupation (61% farmers), and family status.

>

>Would such a study be useful in explaining some of the differences in

>development between parts of the West?  Would such a study only confirm
what we

>already think we know about the population or provide new insights?
For

>example, there are several dozen farming families enumerated near Ft.
Laramie

>(in the Nebraska census) in 1860, yet I'd wager that most people think
Ft.

>Laramie was just a army installation and trading post in the middle of
nowhere

>along the Oregon Trail.  Yet a look at the census, for both the fort and
the

>surrounding area gives a "snapshot" picture that probably couldn't be

>reconstructed even with dozens of journals and other first-hand
accounts.

>

>I'm also wondering to what extent the Native American population was
enumerated.

> For example, there were several thousand Pawnees west of the Missouri
River

>along the Platte in Nebraska in 1860, but I didn't find them in the
census,

>though emigrants passing through were counted in those counties.

>

>

>Lynda Durfee

>

>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 21 Apr 1999 21:44:15 +0100
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Mary Scriver 
Subject:      Re: Pioneer Demographics
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.5.32.19990421183610.008d45e0@whiter.pobox.stanford.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Parallel to the pioneer demographics, one might consult "American Indian
Holocaust and Survival: a Population History Since 1492" by Russell
Thornton.  U of Oklahoma Press.  ISBN 0-8061-2220-X

There are two forces that may compromise this book a bit-- I'm guessing.
One is the changing understanding of how Indians got to this continent,
which is beginning to shift over to an interest in small-boat hopping along
the coast as opposed to trudging over through Beringia.  This is much
stimulated by the finding of ancient (13,000 years old) human remains in
Southern California and Chile, and artifacts sought out through computer
models of where the ancient Western coast was.  The other rapidly expanding
field is disease theory, particularly on the level of DNA analysis which
can tell you where your germ came from and maybe the path it traveled.  A
tiny population migration pattern within the human community.

Come to that, a thorough study of disease among the Oregon Trail folks
might be pretty interesting.  The hints I get are that the early travelers
were running to escape Midwest epidemics and after the first few weeks on
the trail, the exercise and plain food tended to make them healthier.  But
the later trail travelers, moving along a path contaminated by travelers
with no rest stations, lost the children and the weak along the way.

Prairie Mary
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 21 Apr 1999 22:00:36 +0100
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Mary Scriver 
Subject:      Geology
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.5.32.19990421183610.008d45e0@whiter.pobox.stanford.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Stegner has famously suggested that the "American West" is defined by low
rainfall.

A geologist I was talking to has suggested that in terms of plate
tectonics, the East half of the US was formed by the tearing apart of the
continent, a widening and rifting, filled in by drifting soil.  But the
West "half" of the US, which in my mental picture of the US is really about
2/3's, is a landscape formed by cramming together of the tectonic plates,
so that on the east side of the Rockies, it is uplifted prairie underlain
by the oil deposits left by cretaceous vegetation along the ancient inland
shallow sea that often occupied the midwest.   The violence of this action
provoked volcanic action in the West, raising the Cascades; and the the
glaciers, after scraping down through Canada, melted and ponded in huge
reservoirs of water whose occasional escape through the present Snake River
channel or the Red River channel or the Missouri-Mississippi complex, made
badlands and scablands with no topsoil-- OR highly fertile land if it
ponded again and settled out.

I would like to see an interpretation of first the early peoples and then
the Euro-migrations in terms of the underlying geology-- the economic
opportunities, the hardships, and the constant struggle of the latecomers
to make the West more like the East or like Europe.

This geologist's point was that the early US euro-types had the idea in
their head that the West was simply a flipped over and equivalent version
of the East-- that is, the continent had a backbone and bilateral halves,
like a human body.  But it doesn't.  The accumulating Western coast crams
valleys and plateaus and basins up against the Rockies, which on its
eastern shoulder holds up one end of the prairie so that the whole thing is
slanted.

Anyway, we are far too inclined to think that a few people entering the
territory over a few decades have "made" the West, and far too unaware of
the massive and millenial forces under and through the land.  Geology acted
upon by climate patterns determine destiny.  Or, certainly, economy which
surrenders culture.

Prairie Mary
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 22 Apr 1999 11:01:41 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Dinah Gieske 
Subject:      Re: Pioneer Demographics
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I'm wondering if anyone is thinking about Littleton, Colorado as we write
about the nature of the West. I realize that these school shootings have
occured all in the North and South as well, but two of the shooting
incidents have occurred in Colorado. There was an article in the New Yorker
a while back about militia movements as a uniquely Western phenomenon, I'm
wondering if there is any connection here.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 22 Apr 1999 10:16:36 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         CYNTHIA ANDREN 
Subject:      Re: Pioneer Demographics
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That is an interesting thought and one that would be worth looking into.

Cyndy
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 22 Apr 1999 08:31:31 -0700
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Matthew Klingle 
Subject:      Violence in the West
In-Reply-To:  
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Dear colleagues:

        Actually, there is a rich literature on violence in the west,
although much of it focuses on the 19th century.  Most scholars seem
to begin with Richard Maxwell Brown's classic study, _Strain of
Violence_.  A good overview of the topic, by the same author, can be
found in _The Oxford Dictionary of the American West_.  Richard Slotkin's
famous trilogy--__Regeneration through Violence_, _The Fatal Environment_,
and _Gunfighter Nation_--also remain classics on violence in the West.

        For more recent studies, see James Aho's book, _The Politics of
Righteousness_ focuses on right-wing and militant fundamentalist Christian
groups in Idaho.  Richard White's "The Current Weirdness in the West," his
presidential address to the Western Historical Association, published in
the Spring 1997 _Western Historical Quarterly_, links Western violence to
larger political and social changes in the region.

        What I am curious about in the Littleton shootings is how
prominent race seemed to be in the attack.  What are the historical
connections between race, violence, and regionalism?  What kind of
parallels can we draw between the South, the West, and the North? Stepping
back from the particulars of region, the rising tide of anti-Chinese
violence in the West paralleled the establishment of Jim Crow laws in the
post-Reconstruction South.  Given the current focus on constructions of
whiteness in recent social and cultural history, could we start thinking
anew about how violence was one crucible for shaping racial categories and
regional identities?

Matthew Klingle

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew W. Klingle                      Department of History, Box 353560
Ph.D. candidate                         315 Smith Hall
                                        University of Washington
                                        Seattle, WA  98195-3560
                                        206.543.5790 (msg.)/206.543.9451 (fax)
                                        klingle@u.washington.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 24 Apr 1999 21:31:25 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         David Lion Salmanson 
Subject:      Re: Re-focus on teaching.
In-Reply-To:  <0004BF77.1637@tmac.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

We seem to have gotten a little off track.  But when we have talked about
teaching, it largely seems to be in the mold of the big college lecture,
reading, paper format.  The lecture is where the students get "the truth,"
the textbook provides more truth, and the paper is where students get to
try to be historians with no real sense of how historians do what they do.

I did not learn history under this model.  I was lucky enough and
priveleged enough to attend one of those small liberal arts schools where
the lecture class is practically non-existant and every professor
seemingly has endless amounts of time for undergraduates.

Since I began my graduate education at a Big 10 institution, I have always
been appalled by the lecture model of education.  I once had the
opportunity to teach my own class on Western History but it was a 15
person seminar so I could assign four papers and pile on the reading.  The
course tackled several different periods and topics in depth but was not a
survey.  The paper assignments ranged from a critical essay on a secondary
source, to a primary document analysis, to a close reading of some
cultural feature of contemporary L.A that involved some additional
research beyond the syllabus on the part of the students.  This is not a
model most of us can practice and stay sane.

So, how do you dismantle your own authority as lecturer, empower students
to write their own histories that are credible, and impart a sense of
history as a process rather than as an end result?

Anyone willing to share lesson plans, experiences, etc.

-David Lion Salmanson
University of Michigan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 26 Apr 1999 01:41:04 GMT
Reply-To:     mikef@stcc.cc.tx.us
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Michael Flores 
Subject:      New topic
Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0


How do we define the West? One of the problems associated with teaching this concept is that we need to define it. So, what is "West"? Is it west of the Appalachians, as it was in 1763? Or is Midway Island, as it was in 1942? What is "West"? Teaching here in South Texas, as I have since last Summer, and being a native Californian, I have come across the complexities and perplexities of trying to define a West for my students. So, is Texas West or South? The 100 degree meridian is too artificial, and Interstate 10 is unreliable. I am south of the Nueces River, but east of the 100 meridian. Being from California, I feel I'm in the South, not the West. My colleagues are also unreliable, as they can never agree. Was ist? Que paso? What gives? I disagree that Texas is so big, that it is an exception; thus, it is both. It either is or is not. Can we come to an agreement as a forum, or are destined to become, como se dice, a Tower of Babel on this matter? The longer I live and teach in this state, the less I like its histoire, and the more disagreeable I find the kultur.

Michael Flores, professor of History,
Humanities department, South Texas Community College

PS: Is it just me, or is everyone grading examinations?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 25 Apr 1999 21:45:15 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Shannon Bonner 
Subject:      Re: New topic
Comments: To: mikef@stcc.cc.tx.us
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
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    Hello.

    I am an Art History graduate student from Michigan State University a=
nd I would like to contribute my thoughts on Michael Flores definition of=
 the West.

The West, for many Americans, could be perceived as a place to venture to=
 in the hopes of escaping to a pure, simple lifestyle or ultimately to di=
scover oneself.
I would argue that the West is not just a geographical location on a map,=
 but refers to the peoples who once occupied and settled these western re=
gions.   These people could be interpreted as holding the spirit of endur=
ance, and perhaps that is the most significant lesson the region has to o=
ffer.

Shannon Bonner
bonnersh@pilot.msu.edu
http://www.msu.edu/~bonnersh


Michael Flores wrote:

> How do we define the West? One of the problems associated with teaching=
 this concept is that we need to define it. So, what is "West"? Is it wes=
t of the Appalachians, as it was in 1763? Or is Midway Island, as it was =
in 1942? What is "West"? Teaching here in South Texas, as I have since la=
st Summer, and being a native Californian, I have come across the complex=
ities and perplexities of trying to define a West for my students. So, is=
 Texas West or South? The 100 degree meridian is too artificial, and Inte=
rstate 10 is unreliable. I am south of the Nueces River, but east of the =
100 meridian. Being from California, I feel I'm in the South, not the Wes=
t. My colleagues are also unreliable, as they can never agree. Was ist? Q=
ue paso? What gives? I disagree that Texas is so big, that it is an excep=
tion; thus, it is both. It either is or is not. Can we come to an agreeme=
nt as a forum, or are destined to become, como se dice, a Tower of Babel =
on this matter? The longer I live and teach in this state, the less I lik=
e its histoire, and the more disagreeable I find the kultur.
>
> Michael Flores, professor of History,
> Humanities department, South Texas Community College
>
> PS: Is it just me, or is everyone grading examinations?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 25 Apr 1999 22:54:22 -0400
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         jacksond@LAFVAX.LAFAYETTE.EDU
Subject:      Re: New topic
Comments: To: Michael Flores 
In-Reply-To:  <199904260133.UAA28039@stcc.cc.tx.us>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

It is with great trepidation that I tap out this response to Michael=20
Flores' recent posting regarding how we "define the West" because I fear=20
this line of discourse could become bogged down very quickly.  But let me=
=20
ask Michael to explain exactly why he believes that Texas MUST be either=20
West or South but not both (or either)?  Or, in other words, why must El=20
Paso and Texarkana both be included as part of the same=20
geographical/cultural region.=20

DC Jackson
Lafayette College

On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Michael Flores wrote:

>=20
> How do we define the West? One of the problems associated with teaching t=
his concept is that we need to define it. So, what is "West"? Is it west of=
 the Appalachians, as it was in 1763? Or is Midway Island, as it was in 194=
2? What is "West"? Teaching here in South Texas, as I have since last Summe=
r, and being a native Californian, I have come across the complexities and =
perplexities of trying to define a West for my students. So, is Texas West =
or South? The 100 degree meridian is too artificial, and Interstate 10 is u=
nreliable. I am south of the Nueces River, but east of the 100 meridian. Be=
ing from California, I feel I'm in the South, not the West. My colleagues a=
re also unreliable, as they can never agree. Was ist? Que paso? What gives?=
 I disagree that Texas is so big, that it is an exception; thus, it is both=
. It either is or is not. Can we come to an agreement as a forum, or are de=
stined to become, como se dice, a Tower of Babel on this matter? The longer=
 I live and teach in this state, the less I like i
>=20
> Michael Flores, professor of History,
> Humanities department, South Texas Community College
>=20
> PS: Is it just me, or is everyone grading examinations?
>=20
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:30:37 +0200
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Pierre Lagayette 
Subject:      Re: Western History II
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear Colleagues,
I was away for a week and did not read the messages on the list until today.
I enjoyed my moment of "machismo", but my point was not to suggest a
possible comparison between the 19th Amendment and the French Ordinance of
October 5, 1944 on women's vote -- even though Richard White pleaded for
transnational history ! I feared, but it seems I was mistaken, that we would
once again be dragged into a discussion where women's rights would be
considered as the center of Western history. I have seen so many students
stretch their favorite critical angle to the bursting point that I probably
tend to see procustean leanings where there are none. My intention, at
least, was not to silence anyone. On the contrary.
Since this is supposed to be a discussion, I have chosen to take up Doug
Sackman's argument about women's freedom (a response to my own remarks) in
an attempt to develop another exchange, precisely on freedom. Here is one of
the basic principles on which it seems the "ideology" of the West has been
built. No other aspect of human life and behavior has been so closely
associated with the American West -- whether it be the freedom generated by
open spaces, that associated with human enterprise, or that which,
politically, materialized the promises of the Declaration of Independence.
Yet, how could this idea of freedom develop when detailed study after
detailed study of living conditions in the West (from women's diaries on the
Oregon Trail, to the fate of Native Americans, of Black soldiers in indian
wars, of Forty-Niners, to the working conditions of immigrants on the
railroads, or in California fields) disprove the connection?  When Doug
Sackman writes that "freedom inexorably clings to the myth of the West" I am
tempted to reverse the proposition and wonder about the reasons why the myth
of the West inexorably clings to the idea -- not the reality -- of freedom.
In fact, I suspect that we are looking for manifestations of freedom in the
West and find them, somehow, because not finding them might undermine what I
called before the "creation story" -- i.e. the construction of the perfect
Republic, the triumph of democracy.
How come that we could transform what I take to be one of the most
undemocratic, unequal, social orders -- that of the Frontier -- based on
greed, self-interest, violence, immorality, unpolished behavior, etc., not
only into a success story but into a sort of blueprint for all democratic
experiments ?
There seems to me to exist a huge gap between the idea of ourselves we want
to project on such a fantastic adventure as the "conquest of the continent"
and the basic means by which the conquest was achieved. We could always
plead for an eclipse of individual freedomS, necessay to establish final
collective freedom, yet I wonder (to take just two examples) how free the
toiling pioneer or the panning gold-digger felt while trying to pick up the
pieces of his Nebraska or California dreams.
Or, for that matter, does franchise guarantee freedom ? It is, certainly, as
Doug Sackman insists, a "prime symbol of liberty", but symbols serve only
ideologies and if voting rights do not stimulate real social changes, they
are no instrument of liberty.
This being said, what worries me most is that necessary vision of the West
(geographically undetermined) as culmination of the American democratic
experiment, as epitome of freedom -- and its associated dejection (See
Kerouac's "end-of-the-continent sadness") when the reality of the West does
not match the hopes. I am looking for simple, coherent explanations (sorry
for my distrust of "fragmented" ones) here, and wonder if anyone could make
suggestions. Maybe my concern is outdated or marred by ignorance, but all
help will be welcome.

Lastly, to answer Lynda Durfee's query about German fascination with the
West, I merely can say that I have noticed a very significant interest of
Germans in Country Music. I get here a few German TV channels, one of which,
ONYX, a music channel, has regular special programs on country music and
airs other video clips of country music stars. They do have, also, German
country music bands.
Note also, that "Disneyland Paris" (or "Eurodisney"), the theme park in
Marne-la-Vallee, has a permanent "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show", in
addition to its "Frontierland", that attracts quite a big number of
tourists. Much would have to be said, also, about this spectacular
exportation of a "legendary" West.

                                        Pierre Lagayette
                                        Professor of American Studies
                                        Department of English
                                        Universite de Paris IV - Sorbonne



At 10:20 AM 19/4/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I very much enjoyed Pierre Lagayette's comments--engaging and
>provocative....right up to the point when he writes that studying women's
>suffrage "seems only to contribute to the fragmentation of the discipline
>that badly needs more coherence and more synthetic treatment." This can't
>be the only thing it does. If freedom clings inexorably to the myth of the
>West, certainly we need to know more about how freedom was expressed on the
>ground through the franchise--prime symbol of liberty. The discussion
>intimated just how much we don't know about this. And just how do we sort
>out those topics that provide merely an angle on the West from those that
>can lead to more coherence? A coherent picture of the West which, for lack
>of knowledge, must erase the ways constructs of gender affected freedom and
>life in and through political as well as domestic spheres, hangs together
>with sinews of ignorance.
>
>Doug Sackman
>Oberlin College
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 09:01:31 -0500
Reply-To:     Forum on the American West 
Sender:       Forum on the American West 
From:         Ilze Choi 
Subject:      Re: Western History II
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Politicians often speak of "freedom" but usually do not specify freedom
from what.  After thinking about it, it seems to me that one of the
chief freedoms Americans cherish is freedom from government or central
government which has been a strong principle from the very beginning of
the colonization of America as I have discovered while reading
_Tocqueville in America_ by George Wilson Pierson (John Hopkins
University Press, 1996, orig. 1938).

It seems that as the Europeans spread into the continent, the government
was following them. As the settlers built their communities, they formed
town governments or as Tocqueville described them, "little republics."
Hostility to centralized government often arose when it tried to impose
protections (weak and indifferent as they often were)of the Indians or
otherwise obstructed the pursuit of wealth on Indian lands.

For the Euro-American the West does represent freedom.  De Tocqueville
observed how Americans can lose fortunes easily, move further west and
create a new fortune.  The open continent with unlimited resources
represented a kind of freedom.  In Europe, for example, there was no
such freedom due to many factors such as lack of land, lack of
resources, laws of inheritance, class and ethnic boundaries, etc.

However, for minorities such as Indians, African-Americans, Hispanics
and Asians, this freedom did not apply.  I recall being informed that as
late as 1946 Indians in Arizona were not allowed to vote in state
elections.  State power or local control often translated into
oppression of non-whites.  Minorities were often victims of the "tyranny
of the majority."

As an amateur reader of history, I see the evolution of historical
interpretation as giving us a much better picture of the past because
those groups formerly left out or treated as insignificant footnotes,
are now included.  It may tarnish some cherished myths but knowing our
history fully is very healthy for the development of a truly civilized
country.

Ilze Choi,
New Orleans

Pierre Lagayette wrote[quoted in part]:

<<< the basic principles on which it seems the "ideology" of the West has been
> built. No other aspect of human life and behavior has been so closely
> associated with the American West -- whether it be the freedom generated by
> open spaces, that associated with human enterprise, or that which,
> politically, materialized the promises of the Declaration of Independence.
> Yet, how could this idea of freedom develop when detailed study after
> detailed study of living conditions in the West (from women's diaries on the
> Oregon Trail, to the fate of Native Americans, of Black soldiers in indian
> wars, of Forty-Niners, to the working conditions of immigrants on the
> railroads, or in California fields) disprove the connection?  When Doug
> Sackman writes that "freedom inexorably clings to the myth of the West" I am
> tempted to reverse the proposition and wonder about the reasons why the myth
> of the West inexorably clings to the idea -- not the reality -- of freedom.>>>>>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 10:58:44 EDT
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        This is very simplistic, but I think Joseph Campbell's work on
mythology comes to mind when thinking about how we envision ourselves and the
West.  The Hero's Journey concept he describes in mythology and literature
can be applied to explanations of how Americans (and western European
cultures) have envisioned the American West.  It gets interpreted along the
ideals of the heroic journey into the unknown, the encounters with foreign
people (Native Americans), the assistance of a mentor-sidekick (so often seen
in western movies/literature), etc.  Like Natty Bumpo, the "idea" of the West
has served a purpose for many people who would never ever go there.  The
mythology excludes women's realities (no one has been able to define an
accurate "Heroine's Journey" myth) and there's no place in it for the idea of
"community,"-- .

        The harsh realities of the real west only reinforced how difficult it
was (and therefore heroic) for individuals to exist there, and maybe that
explains why many people cling to economically-depressed geographic areas of
the West today with a  heroic attitude about themselves and their staying "on
the land."

Laurie Carlson
Cheney, WA
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 12:31:52 -0700
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check out Eric Foner's THE STORY OF AMERICAN FREEDOM, published by Norton
(1998).

It doesn't offer "simple, coherent explanations" but rather explores the
contradictions Pierre Lagaye raises-  which I'd say is a more fruitful
direction to send our minds in anyway-   without being defeatist about the
enterprise of coming towards ( not *to,* as a set destination)
understanding.  That way we can worry less about how necessary a particular
vision is.

Pierre Lagaye wrote:
This being said, what worries me most is that necessary vision of the West
(geographically undetermined) as culmination of the American democratic
experiment, as epitome of freedom -- and its associated dejection (See
Kerouac's "end-of-the-continent sadness") when the reality of the West does
not match the hopes. I am looking for simple, coherent explanations (sorry
for my distrust of "fragmented" ones) here, and wonder if anyone could make
suggestions. Maybe my concern is outdated or marred by ignorance, but all
help will be welcome.

Norma Smith
5337 College Ave #424
 Oakland, CA   94618
 (510) 465-2094  (phone & fax)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 28 Apr 1999 16:04:45 -0400
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Dear Colleagues:

According to an article in Tuesday's Wall St. Journal (p. B1, lower left
corner), the European fascination with the American West exists in England as
well as on the continent. In Fawkham, England,  members of the Laredo Western
Club "are finishing up a six-bedroom hotel for the cowboy town they started
building almost 20 years ago.  Nearly 50 people now descend on these wooden
shacks and storefronts every other weekend dressed up like cowboys, cattlemen
and homesteaders from America's Wild West."  According to one member, "dressing
up like a cowboy gives him a sense of what it was like living on the untamed
American frontier."

I recall that there is a famous series of "western" novels written by a German
author.  Does anyone recall his name?

It seems ironic that as Americans (at least some of us) try to demythicize the
West, our European cousins prefer the popular culture version.

Lynda Durfee
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Date:         Wed, 28 Apr 1999 15:22:00 -0700
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>I recall that there is a famous series of "western" novels written by a German
>author.  Does anyone recall his name?

I suspect you are talking about Karl Mai.
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Date:         Wed, 28 Apr 1999 13:54:16 -0700
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I believe the German writer is Karl Mai (pronouced My) and I am told that he
never visited the United States.  I recently heard that someone is going to
translate/reprint one of his novels into English.

The lure of the American West is international.  My husband is the webmaster
for Westerners International and looking at the list of Corrals outside of
the United States is amazing.  There are at least 5 Corrals in the Czech
Republic.  While I am sure many are enamored with the mythic West, serious
scholarship does exist (i.e. Joseph Rosa).

Shelly C. Dudley
Sr. Historical Analyst
SRP
scdudley@srpnet.com
(602) 236-6627
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 28 Apr 1999 15:55:40 -0700
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As a former Arizonan, this stuff seems most bizarre - but understandable
in a local-booster sort of way.

In the winters in The Valley of the Sun (read: Phoenix/Scottsdale/Mesa
in the 1950s, when national news would piss us off by ALWAYS identifying
us as "Phoenix, Arizona" as if there were other, more prominent
Phoenixes) we saw thousands of Snow Bunnies, long term tourists in
flight from (primarily) mid-western winter.

They all bought an amazing amount of genuine crap, pleated "Squaw
Dresses" for the women. "Bolo" ties for the men, strings with a slide
made up of a silver concho, petrified wood or (the coolest) a real dead
scorpion embedded in a bubble of plastic goo.

We made fun of 'em, even if they were our own grandparents and cousins.
And felt righteous.

(Arizona cultural footnote: in those days "riding Iowa-style" was a
consistent 18 mph, two old men in front, two old women in back.)

A few years ago on a trip "home," my teenage daughter was writing a
paper on the myth of the west and - since it was due within 3 or 4 days
- before we left Sky Harbor (now THERE'S an airport name to conjure
with) I guided her to the "old" terminal and its mural depicting the
conquest of the southwest. El Greco-proportioned figures including
Coronado, his dour priest, Marcos de Niza, the submissive Indios,
starving horses, etc., etc. We shot a series of photos to illustrate her
paper and she was off and running. The result: an "A" paper.

While the English, Germans, Japanese (and in the 50s - and maybe still -
mid westerners) love the mythology, we gotta 'fess up to the fact that
its merely what we dished up to 'em when it was good for the
tourist/movie/book/airport business.

As a Boy Scout in the late 50s I sat on the porch of Zane Gray's cabin
overlooking the Mogollon Rim and noted that the scenery looked nothing
like the description in the novels. The canyon was, for starters, not
purple but dusty brown.

May I also suggest that the importation of American Culture - of which
this is merely a part - is a genie that, once released from the bottle,
is impossible to stuff back in. No matter how much we bleat about its
inauthenticity.

Greg Pabst
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 29 Apr 1999 05:02:45 GMT
Reply-To:     mikef@stcc.cc.tx.us
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Hey, Lynda! Was it B. Traven? -Mike Flores