Peoples and Environments in the American West

History/Environmental Studies 376, Spring 2005

Professor: Rebecca Edwards Office: Swift Hall 35

e-mail: reedwards Office hours: Tuesdays 1-2:30,

office phone: x5675 Thursdays 2:30-4, and by appt.

The West is America, only more so.

--Wallace Stegner

This course explores the history of the trans-Mississippi West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Themes include economic transformation; federal power and Western politics; social conflict and accommodation; and human negotiations with natural environments. We consider the West as a geographic place, episodes in the history of the frontier as a process, and the role of the imagined West in American mythology.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course you should have a better understanding of the diverse past of the trans-Mississippi West, major environmental and economic transformations in the region, and historians' varied approaches to the study of frontiers. The research assignment will enable you to explore a single topic in depth, giving you practice in framing a research agenda, conducting research, and developing a persuasive argument based on the evidence you find.

Course Materials

The following are available at the bookstore and on reserve at the library:

William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and

Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943

Patricia Nelson Limerick, Something in the Soil: Legacies and

Reckonings in the New West

Richard Manning, Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the

American Prairie

James Welch, Fools Crow

Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Additional materials are on reserve in the library.

Course Requirements

Participation (roughly 25% of final grade). This course meets only thirteen times, and your presence and active participation are crucial on every occasion. No absence should go unexplained, and more than one absence may adversely affect your final grade. Each week you are expected to complete the readings, share your thoughts, and listen carefully to others.

Your participation grade includes e-mail responses to the readings prior to any six of the days marked with an asterisk (*) on the course schedule. Responses should be no more than one paragraph long and will be judged on clarity and thoughtfulness. (Note: it takes more work to write one carefully crafted paragraph than it does to jot down six rambling paragraphs as they pop into your head.) E-mails may pose a question or problem raised by the assigned text(s) or connect a theme in the new reading(s) to previous texts and debates.

Written assignments:

1. Short essay on the geographic location of the West, due Jan. 31 (roughly 10% of final course grade)

2. Group project on the radical West, due Feb. 28 (10%)

3. Project on three cinematic Westerns, due April 4 (15%)

4. Historiographic essay, due April 18 (5%)

5. Final research paper (35%), comprising a prospectus and bibliography, a class presentation on April 25, and a final paper due by 5 p.m. on Friday, May 9, at my office, Swift 35.

Policy on late papers: Except in case of illness or emergency that requires an absence, extensions cannot be granted on short papers whose content will be discussed in class. Any request for an extension on the research paper should be made in advance of the deadline. If no extension is granted the late policy is as follows: for the first three days, the grade falls by one-third letter for each day of lateness. (Thus an A paper becomes an A- in the first 24 hours after it was due, a B+ in the next 24 hours, and a B in the next.) After three days the grade will fall by one full letter per day (the A paper now becomes a C, D, and F.) Weekends count as days; if you plan to complete an overdue paper on a Saturday or Sunday we can make arrangements in advance for you to deliver it. You must complete all the assignments in order to pass the course.

Note on Disabilities: Academic accommodations are available for students with disabilities who are registered with the Office of Disability and Support Services. Please schedule an appointment with me early in the semester to discuss any accommodations for this course which have been approved by the Director of Disability and Support Services as indicated in your accommodation letter.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Jan. 24 Introduction to the Course

Jan. 31 Where Is the West, When Was the Frontier?

SHORT ESSAY DUE TODAY AT THE START OF CLASS

Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," (1893), chapter 1 of The Frontier in American History, online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/chapter1. html

(three copies are also on reserve)

Limerick, "The Case of the Premature Departure," and "Turnerians All," from

Something in the Soil, 93-105, 141-66

Richard White, “When Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill Cody Both

Played Chicago in 1893,” from Frontier and Region, ed. Robert C. Ritchie

and Paul Andrew Hutton (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 201-212 (on reserve)

Donald Worster, "New West, True West," Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992),

19-33 (on reserve)

Walter T. K. Nugent, "Comparing Wests and Frontiers," Oxford History of

the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, Martha

A. Sandweiss (New York: Oxford, 1994), 802-33 (on reserve)

* Feb. 7 Thinking about a Place: Grassland

Manning, Grassland, ch. 1-5, page 131-8 from ch. 6, and ch. 8, 11, and 13

* Feb. 14 Newcomers

RESEACH PROSPECTUS AND PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

James Welch, Fools Crow

OPTIONAL but highly recommended: Limerick, ” Haunted America,” from Something in the Soil, 33-73

* Feb. 21 Economic Transformations

Cronon, Nature's Metropolis, chapters 2-6 (pp. 55-309)

Feb. 28 The Radical West

GROUP PRESENTATIONS TODAY

SPRING BREAK--take Hsu’s book and the Arizona Orphans with you!

* March 21 More Newcomers

Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home , chapters 1-4 (pp. 1-123)

Limerick, "Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West," Something in the Soil, 186-213.

* March 28 Contested Borders

Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

April 4 The Frontier Myth and its Legacy

SHORT PROJECT ON WESTERNS DUE TODAY

* April 11 Work and Nature

White, The Organic Machine

* April 18 The Urban West: Peoples and Landscapes in Southern California

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY DUE TODAY

Sarah Deutsch, George J. Sánchez, and Gary Y. Okihiro, "Contemporary Peoples/Contested Places," Oxford History of the American West 639-69 (on

reserve)

Mike Davis, “Fortress L.A.,” from City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los

Angeles (New York: Random House, 1992), 223-63 (on reserve)

Mike Davis, "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn," from Ecology of Fear; Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Holt, 1998), 95-147 (on reserve)

April 25 RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

* May 2 Nature, Kin, Spirit

Williams, Refuge

Friday, May 6: research paper due by 5 pm.

Short Essay: Where Is the West, When Was the Frontier?

Where should we draw the cartographic boundaries that define the American West? In a three-page, double-spaced paper (accompanied by maps if you wish), explain where you would draw the lines and why the areas inside your boundaries share one or more “Western” characteristics, or shared them at a significant moment in history.

To begin, read the materials assigned for this week. Then peruse maps and other data on the historical and contemporary West. Consider the question from several angles before choosing one or two factors you consider most compelling. Here are some suggestions:

physical landscape: elevation from sea level, average annual rainfall, rivers and

watersheds, geological formations, weather patterns, bioregions

human geography: population per square mile over time, ratio of men to women, immigration patterns, place names

economic geography: mineral resources, crops and livestock raised, growth of

railroads or highways, agriculture or tourism as a percent of revenue

politics: forts, posts, capitals; years in which territories formed or states entered the Union; historical voting patterns

federal land ownership: placement of Indian reservations, national parks,

forests, wilderness areas, military bases, nuclear test sites

Print sources: A collection of atlases, historical almanacs, and census data has been gathered on a special shelf in the library, along with a CD-ROM called the Great American History Machine. You may also wish to look at the following (on reserve):

Atlas of the New West

Contemporary Atlas of the United States

Cultural Regions of the United States

Web sources: The University of Texas library operates an excellent map index:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/

Topographic maps, with links to other resources, reside at Vassar’s Geology/ Geography Department site. You may also explore the U.S. Geological Survey site (accessible from U. Texas), which offers a bewildering array of options.

Due at the start of class on January 31. You must use proper citations and include a bibliography, as indicated on the class writing guide.

Project: The Mythic West on Film

For this project you should view three of the following Westerns:

The Great Train Robbery (1903, silent) Little Big Man (1970)

Covered Wagon (1923, silent) Buck and the Preacher (1971)

Stagecoach (1939) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

My Darling Clementine (1946) Dances with Wolves (1990)

Fort Apache (1948) The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)

Shane (1953) Unforgiven (1996)

The Searchers (1956)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

The Wild Bunch (1969—warning, extremely violent)

To help you get oriented to the history of Westerns and make your selections, there is a good short history of Westerns as a film genre, with brief analyses of most of the above films, at www.filmsite.org/westernfilms.html.

An excellent scholarly starting point is Richard Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. The following may also be of interest (all on reserve, as is Gunfighter Nation):

Mark Carnes, ed., Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies

Clyde Milner II, et al, eds., The Oxford History of the American West, especially Richard Maxwell Brown, “Violence,” Anne M. Butler,

“Selling the Popular Myth,” and Brian W. Dippie, “The Visual West”

Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, especially chapters 9-10 on the dime-novel origins of Western heroes and heroines

Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of

Industrialization, 1800-1890

Jane P. Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns

William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam

America

Write an essay in which you analyze a key theme in the Westerns you viewed. You may draw on previous readings and discussions or strike out on your own. You might, for example, consider the role of arid landscapes in your films; the rise of a “paramilitary” ideal in the Vietnam era (a la Gibson’s book); tensions within the mythic frontier family; or changing portrayals of American Indians, or of Anglo women. One copy is due at the start of class on April 4. The paper should be about four to five pages, double-spaced, with proper citations to all sources.

4) In the week before April 4 the class will divide into groups, via Blackboard, to discuss films and prepare a brief presentation for the April 4 discussion. We will arrange this in the week of March 21, just after spring break.

Historiographic Essay

The goals of this assignment are to help you prepare for the research paper and to give you practice in assessing the state of historical research in a small sub-field. You should develop your research topic in tandem with this assignment, and above all you should conduct research in primary sources while you review the secondary literature. Otherwise you may gain extensive knowledge of a field in which you yourself cannot conduct research.

In an essay of approximately three to four double-spaced pages, explore the conclusions reached by the best or most recent historians (at least two, no more than three or four) about that sub-field. Note where controversies or unexplored issues lie.

See the Research Assignment, below, for more details. Due at the start of class on April 18.

Research Assignment and Sources on the West

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?

--Albert Einstein

Your assignment is to write a 12- to 15-page research paper. The topic is limited only by your imagination, primary sources available to you, and the course focus. To complete this assignment:

1. meet with me during office hours to discuss possible paper topics

2. turn in a prospectus and preliminary bibliography on February 14

3. turn in the historiographic essay (separately graded) on April 18

4. give a brief in-class presentation on April 25 (if you are wise, you will have written a draft of the paper by this time; you may submit a rough draft for my comments if you can bring it by this date (this is optional)

5. submit the final paper by Friday, May 6 at 5 pm.

Essays will be graded on the following criteria, roughly in order of importance: presentation of a clear, focused and sustained argument; persuasiveness of evidence; depth of research in primary sources; demonstrated familiarity with major secondary works that bear upon the topic; clarity of expression; use of proper citation format for the notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and bibliography; and mechanics (spelling and grammar).

Here are some points to keep in mind. In a twelve-page paper it is unwise to address a topic such as “The Oregon Trail” or “Capitalism in California.” Answer big questions by asking small ones. When you get at the general by way of the particular your historical argument will gain, rather than lose, significance.

Equally important, no one can write a good research paper with insufficient primary sources. The Vassar Library has rich and extensive sources on the West but they do not cover every topic. There are some questions NO library can help you answer, and some types of evidence (such as micro-level quantitative data) that take years to assemble. Adapt your research to the primary sources. NOTE: if you need materials through Interlibrary Loan you must begin early.

You might begin with a course reading that inspires you, or browse textbooks such as John Mack Faragher and Robert V. Hine, The American West; Walter T. K. Nugent, Into the West; Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”; and Clyde Milner, et. al, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (all on reserve). Or browse periodicals such as the Journal of American History, Western Historical Quarterly, Western Folklore,or Journal of Asian-American Studies.

A sample project might look like this.

1) DEFINING A TOPIC. You are interested in the radical People’s Party (Populists) of the 1890s. You talk with the professor who recommends that you begin with Robert McMath’s American Populism, Lawrence Goodwyn’s The Populist Moment, and the first chapters of Michael Kazin’s Populist Persuasion. You browse them, read key sections, and also read the short treatments of Populism in White’s “It’s Your Misfortune” and Faragher and Hine’s American West. You spend an afternoon browsing the Journal of American History and search America: History and Life for the most recent works on “Populist Party” and “People’s Party.”

2) PRIMARY RESEARCH. At the same time you start digging for primary documents. You discover that Vassar owns a microfilm copy of the Populist newspaper American Nonconformist, published in Kansas by the Vincent brothers. This and additional memoirs and political writings in our library, plus several web sources, confirm that you have enough primary materials to write about the Populists. You quickly note the presence of women in some of these sources, including a volume of letters from Texas Populist women, edited by Marion Barthelme. You also find Luna Kellie’s memoir of Nebraska Populist activism at the grassroots. Aha, more women! Going back to the Nonconformist you notice women’s letters and activities in its pages.

3) SECONDARY READING. In the meantime McMath, Goodwyn, et al have led you to a key question: was the move away from cooperative economic organizing into electoral politics bad for the People’s movement? Based on reading and thought you narrow this further: was it good for women’s participation? What did women themselves think about the move? Some broader exploration in women’s history—especially on the lives of farmwomen on the Plains—might help complete the picture.

4) WRITING THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC ESSAY (see separate assignment, above). You might start by noting Goodwyn’s claim that electoral politics was a disaster for the People’s movement. Then the essay might turn to Michael Lewis Goldberg’s An Army of Women and discuss how it complicates Goodwyn’s argument because Goodwyn did not consider women at all. Barthelme, on the other hand, in the introduction to an edited collection, follows Goodwyn’s line of thinking. You note that there is disagreement among these authors about the definition of “politics” and the results of People’s party campaigns. You quote from two women’s letters (found in your research in the Nonconformist) which show that farm women and labor activists may have had different points of view. You end your essay by noting that Goldberg, Barthelme, and others raise a question: “did women support the creation of the People’s party?” The preliminary answer seems to be yes, but these historians have not yet fully answered the question, “which women did and which did not?”

5) CRAFTING THE RESEARCH PAPER. You will finish conducting research in the primary sources in order to answer the questions raised, or fill the gap identified in, your historiographical essay. NOTE: This is one very exceptional instance when you may cut and paste from one assignment to fulfill another.

Here are a few highlights of Vassar’s holdings to stimulate your imagination. In addition, the Web offers rapidly expanding resources (be careful of provenance and authenticity—when in doubt consult with me). Explore and enjoy!

Good subjects to browse in the online catalogue and on the shelves:

West (U.S.)

California Missions

Far Western Frontier

Frontier and Pioneer Life--West (or by state)

Overland Journeys to the Pacific

Pacific States--History (or by state, i.e., Texas--History)

Pioneers

Relations with Indians of the Plains

United States--Bureau of Indian Affairs

United States--Dept. of the Interior

Women Pioneers

Magazines and newspapers:

Vassar has a lengthy run of the San Francisco Chronicle. Otherwise the Western collection is limited; try, however, Bret Harte’s Overland Monthly, San Francisco, 1868-1875 and 1883-1897, and Sunset, Los Angeles, 1916-1934. Substantial coverage of Western affairs also appears in national journals.

Social and political history sources:

The Far West and the Rockies Historical Series, 1820-1875 (15 volumes)

Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

American Women’s Diaries--West (on microfilm, with textual guide)

Pamphlets in American History (on microfilm, with textual index)

Abstract of the [Twelfth] Census of the United States

Political and legal records:

The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History, ed. Washburn

Congressional Globe (up to 1873) and Congressional Record (1873 to the present)

U.S. Statutes at Large, Corpus Juris, U.S. Reports (federal laws and legal decisions)

You can find some state laws in the Library catalog (ie, Subject=California Law)

Intellectual and cultural history sources:

Almost unlimited. Writings by and about such figures as John Muir, Mary Austin, O. E. Rolvaag, John Wesley Powell, Othniel Marsh, George Catlin, Buffalo Bill, and many others are available in rich abundance. The foundation of early national parks, early photographs and anthropological studies of Native Americans, dime novels, Westerns, and many other topics suggest themselves.

Web Sources:

The Library of Congress has an American Memory project with numerous photographs and documents, and the National Archives has substantial records online. Another big site is the University of Michigan’s Making of America Project, currently 500,000 pages (http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/) . Many Western state institutions--such as the California State Library and the Kansas State Historical Society--have scanned rich collections of primary documents.

Be wary about the provenance of all Web documents. When in doubt, ask the instructor about the validity of a source you have found.