18 - The American West - Part 1

Speaker 0 00:00:00 So, uh, it's been a little while Speaker 1 00:00:04 It's been awhile. Sorry about that. Speaker 0 00:00:06 No, it's, it's been an eventful 20, 20 so far. Speaker 1 00:00:10 Yeah. We, we had the best of intentions and, uh, you know, I was listening to someone the other day that said that the key to having a successful podcast is to be consistent and to, uh, make sure that you're recording every week at the same time and releasing your episodes at the same time. Otherwise people lose interest. Speaker 0 00:00:30 Hopefully we can recapture some interest. Um, I think we've got some great things coming up here today. Obviously we're going to talk about the American West and we're gonna kind of continue in the weeks to come through important topics in us history from that point where we're going to get into the 20th century now. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:00:50 Which is exciting officially into the 20th century, but not before covering, I think your favorite topic is the American West. Speaker 0 00:00:58 Oh yeah. I guess. I mean, I love everything. I mean, it's um, yeah, I do have a lot to say about the American West. Um, so, uh, yeah, let's jump right into it. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. Speaker 1 00:01:18 And where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast? <inaudible> Speaker 0 00:01:40 So the American West, um, it's always like a chapter in us history textbooks, Speaker 1 00:01:49 You know, sometimes it's not even a full chapter. Speaker 0 00:01:54 Okay, Speaker 1 00:01:54 Keith? Yeah. So, um, the, one of the main textbooks used in, uh, college textbooks, the phone or textbook, um, it's just a piece of a chapter. It's a soldier and I'm just like, Whoa, that's and I'm, you know, I like that textbook in a lot of ways. I, I mean, we can talk about that another time, but there are some things, and this is one of them where I'm like, this really needs an entire chapter devoted and it's just not, so Speaker 0 00:02:25 Yeah, I thinking back now, yeah, the last time I used the phone or textbook to teach. Yep. I had to like give students supplemental supplemental readings on the American West. Cause there just wasn't much there. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:02:37 Well, I usually what I do is if I'm lecturing, I will still carve out an entire day to talk about it. And so that I'll just make that chapter a little bit longer covering that chapter a little bit longer than I ordinarily would. And then that way I can kind of cover and give you the supplemental reading material, because I really think that you can devote, you can devote an entire class. And we say this every time we're talking about a topic, you can really though devoted entire class. And I think that there are special topics courses that cover the American West, but it certainly deserves more than a, a section of a chapter. Speaker 0 00:03:12 Yeah. Oh, I definitely agree. And speaking of the American West, you know, I'm, I'm broadcasting from California and you're broadcasting from Mississippi, which is the old South. Speaker 1 00:03:23 Yes. It used to be the West. Speaker 0 00:03:26 I mean, yeah, hopefully we can talk about that a little bit. Right. I mean, people don't think of Ohio and Illinois and Indiana and Michigan and Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas as being the West. But like for a substantial portion of early U S history, it was the West. Speaker 1 00:03:45 The folks who settled here were often called pioneers. People who had traveled and, um, left areas. A lot of people who traveled here were in other areas in the Southeast. Uh, but they would come here and establish their homes and things like that, like say around the 1850s, particularly where I am in Oxford and they were known as pioneers settlers. And so it wasn't until, um, the gold rush out in California that, that really started being known as the West because that's when people really started pushing out into those territories. Um, and by people, I mean, white American settlers pushing out into those territory. Speaker 0 00:04:25 Well, we're going to complicate a lot of things today. Um, how's the weather there? Speaker 1 00:04:30 Oh yeah. We've always covered the weather. It's hot. It's Mississippi in summer. It's July. Speaker 0 00:04:36 It's hot here. I mean, you would laugh at, I don't know if you've been in Mississippi long enough to laugh at San Diego's idea of hot, but it's hot. Speaker 1 00:04:45 Well, I lived in San Diego for 25 years, San Diego hot, but it's a Mississippi hot, it's a different type of hot. It kind of gets deep inside of your body. Hot, like internally combusting hot where you feel like you're melting from the inside out like a hot flash, but all the time. Speaker 0 00:05:05 I mean, I, when I lived in that part of the country, I just found I was sweaty all the time. Speaker 1 00:05:11 Yeah. Well, that's the difference, right? It's the difference between the dry and a wet heat. And, um, it, they're very, very different feelings. Although sometimes the temperature is actually cooler here, but it just feels a lot hotter. So, Speaker 0 00:05:24 I mean, so let's, I think the, weather's an interesting entry point into this conversation because, because there were perceptions that there were places that, and let me back up before I finish that statement, I think what I'd like us to do is start from approach and say, okay, look, here's the traditional white American narrative of what the American West is. And then we can kind of unpack that in a complicated, but, but for white Americans and white, early colonists and the British colonies of on the Eastern seaboard, particularly the Northern part of the Eastern seaboard, there was a perception that there were climates, white people were not well suited for, Speaker 1 00:06:07 Right. Those being really warm, warm climate. Speaker 0 00:06:13 And I mean, that is like a universal thing about a lot of the South, the Sunbelt, what we call the Sunbelt today is it's very warm and there was a perception that, that it was not a good climate for people to be in. Um, and we can talk about all the, kind of the racialization of that and the kind of environmental determinism and stuff. But I, but I think it's this interesting thing that there's a reason people settle, Europeans settled, where they settled Speaker 1 00:06:44 Well, and it's the difference between like settler colonialism, right? And not because there's so many, um, you know, in the Caribbean, for example, there were more slaves in the Caribbean than there were, um, slave owners who actually lived and worked there. And that had a lot to do with the climate, um, where people weren't necessarily settling in places like Barbados, but they were exploiting labor and they were, um, trading slaves and making slaves labor in those conditions. But we're managing their, that economy from very far away, oftentimes, and there were just a very few number of white people who were in those areas in order to, you know, be slave drivers essentially. Um, and that was the difference in the Caribbean. And then that's also of course the difference with the Haitian revolution versus, um, what happened in the United States, but that's a different topic, but it is interesting to talk about weather and, and how white settlers ended up moving into these more, uh, I don't know, hot environments, I guess, but where they had originally settled the S in the Northeast, it's chilly, it's cold, you know, white people stay white up there. Speaker 1 00:07:59 There's not a lot of sun. Um, Speaker 0 00:08:02 Well, and I think it was, it was a recognizable environment to them. It seemed to have a lot in common with the parts of Europe they were coming from. Whereas once you get into the South of the, you know, um, I mean, South Carolina is an interesting case because it does exactly what you said, where you have a large, we're talking coastal, South Carolina places they're growing rice and cash crops. Um, you end up with enslaved population is being used for the work and you have a very small minority white population that doesn't really live that, that lives as close to the coast as possible. Speaker 1 00:08:43 Right. And then they have these fiefdoms, I guess, that go for miles and miles and miles in many different directions, but they're yeah, they are trying to avoid being in the thick of, um, the harsh, harsh climates, the harsh climates that they were forcing other people to labor in, but then you're right. Like there's this discussion that well it's because white people aren't meant to be in that climate, Speaker 0 00:09:09 Right. There was this whole, I mean, one of the justifications that, um, Bartelle on day Las Casas and other kind of early defenders of indigenous Americans use to argue for the enslavement of African people. And they're being brought over to, to the Americas to work is that they are naturally resistant to things that you would encounter in these hot environments. And, and we hear that today and we're like, that's an awful idea. Speaker 1 00:09:40 Right? Well, and the thing is, is it's all about comfort, right? Well, you know, white people feel uncomfortable and they think, Oh, well, it just must be us who feels uncomfortable. It's like, well, everybody feels uncomfortable in heat. There's no, there's no distinction. Speaker 0 00:09:57 I don't think anybody likes a 98 degrees with 98% humidity. That's not fun times. Um, so I mean, we've got this environmental thing and the environment in the West and much of the West, whether we're talking about the, kind of the great Plains, the Rocky mountains, the coastal West, you know, the Pacific coast, the South, the Southwest is we kind of imagine it today. The climates in most of those places, the environments are very different than kind of these early English settlers are used to. But I mean the English settlers, aren't the only people. And I want to start with this question of, well, where do we start the history of the American West? I mean, you're teaching the American West or you're helping your children kind of work through this, or you're just kind of interested in it. Where do you start? I mean, when do you start Speaker 1 00:10:49 Well? So that's, what's interesting is typically a discussion of the American West is placed in the U S history sequence after the civil war, Speaker 0 00:11:01 Which is, Speaker 1 00:11:02 It's so weird, right? Yeah. Oh, very, Speaker 0 00:11:05 It's weird. But at the same time, I understand that justification because I think the key term is the American West and by American, they made the United States of America. They don't mean like the Americas. They mean the United States Speaker 1 00:11:19 Trying to chart the path of settlement. Um, and when that really starts to happen. And we do know that that ramps up in the post civil war context, um, even though there were gold and silver rushes prior to that, and most famously, we know the California gold rush that's happening in the late 1840s and through the 1850s. Um, and that will be touched on, but when you start seeing mass settlement and movement migration of people, and it's in the post civil war context, Speaker 0 00:11:51 I mean, that's, you know, that's, and that's one of the challenges of teaching years. History is if you do a chronological approach, you end up with things like the American West that span a huge kind of amount of time. And where do you put it? Um, the civil war I think is, is a watershed moment and things that happen. And then we can get to that a little bit later, but I personally would say 1803 is the decisive moment that we have to start talking about an American yeah. Speaker 1 00:12:20 Because of the purchase. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:12:23 I think the Louisiana purchase, which is, which is interesting. I mean, the Louisiana purchases is a compelling moment because here you've got Thomas Jefferson who's, uh, an anti-federalists who's, um, you know, a Democrat, um, he P forwards this idea of an agrarian future for the United States. Uh, he wants these yeoman farmers kind of small landholders freeholders to kind of be indicative of what the country stands for. Um, any ends up doing something that I would argue the 1803 purchase, the Louisiana purchase from France does more to increase the size of the federal government than virtually anything else in history. Speaker 1 00:13:13 Well, most certainly, and, and at first such a steal of a price too, but what's so crazy to me about it is he's purchasing all this land that doesn't really belong to anybody like any one entity, right? There are so many people who live on this land that have their own tribes and nations and their own setups of governments, so to speak, right. I mean it, and he just it's purchased, it belongs to the United States now, but does it, I mean, Speaker 0 00:13:45 Well, I mean, let's, let's talk about what the purchase is and what that means. Like the, so you've got the purchase 1803, $15 million from France, uh, Francis cash strapped. They need the money. Um, part of them being cash strapped had to do with their French revolution, but also part of it had to do with debts. They had accrued helping the United States during its war of independence. Um, so the United States pays 15 million for that. And it's interesting. It's I think a way to consider the Louisiana purchase is it's a, you are buying off of the European powers to recognize that you have sovereignty over this area, Speaker 1 00:14:24 Right. That you're pushing out other Imperial powers in the region. Speaker 0 00:14:28 So you're pushing out the English, you're pushing out the French, the Spanish, all of these people, none of you have a claim on this territory now ignores the indigenous people that live there. Um, and you know, I mean, that's, you could call that a theme of 19th. And most of the, at least the first part of the century for us history is, you know, the byline could be, it ignores the indigenous people. Um, and you know, so for a while, it's just in theory, right? I mean, Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1806 kind of travel around, they're looking for this water route. Like the goal is to find how can you get goods from the Gulf of Mexico, where the Eastern seaboard using things like the Ohio river, the Mississippi river, the Missouri river, they discover or not discover they encounter for the first time. Um, how can you use this to get goods to the Pacific ocean? And they ultimately find out there's this huge mountain range. And there are no rivers that actually go over the mountain range, but they do a lot to kind of map out what this land looks like. And they start to create kind of American ideas of, of what this land is, what it could be. Um, and you end up with this woman. Who's interesting. Sacca, Julia. Um, are you old enough to remember the SACA Giulia dollars? Speaker 1 00:16:06 Yeah, I do. I remember the secretary of dollars. I remember when I was really little, we would collect them a little dollar coins and then the Susan B. Anthony ones too. So women aren't on paper money, but there are women on two coins. Speaker 0 00:16:21 Yes. Um, so I mean, second Julia becomes kind of the representative of the good native, right? Speaker 1 00:16:30 Yeah. I mean that whole situation is obviously a problem, but yeah. Speaker 0 00:16:36 Yeah. We can have an old episode devoted to that expedition and Sacca, Julia, and what she is and what she isn't, how voluntarily she's there. Um, but I mean, she is, she is a trope, right. She becomes Speaker 1 00:16:52 The narrative, right. She's part of the traditional narrative that you get through elementary school and it's, she's someone's name who, you know, right. So if you were to ask maybe like a seventh grader name to women in us history, I mean, they might name SAC as you were, or if you were saying to native women, they would say like probably sack Julia and Pocahontas or something. Right. Like it's very much a part of the standard narrative, almost like the Disney narrative of I'm surprised Disney doesn't have a film about soccer, Juliet. Um, but yes, part of that longer narrative romance is this age romanticization of, um, American history that we have to like go through and dismantle by the time people get into college. But on this expedition, um, that we do start seeing a mapping of this region and we start just how vast and large the United States is. And Speaker 0 00:17:58 Yeah, it's, it's a huge, it's a, it's a doubling of the United States in size, but it's also the incorporation of a large group of people. The United States doesn't really have much information Speaker 1 00:18:12 Group of people who weren't a part of the decision to, Speaker 0 00:18:16 Well, yeah, right. Speaker 1 00:18:19 The United States. I mean, Speaker 0 00:18:20 I mean, that's some of the, I mean, that's the thing is that, so France, theoretically is the European power that has sovereignty over this region, but France never really controls this year. Speaker 1 00:18:30 No news is the interesting point there because new Orleans actually isn't a part of the purchase, but that was the point that everyone was interested in as a trading point or, and all of that. And new Orleans was actually owned by like French, Spanish, you know, like it went through many different iterations, but that was what most people were interested in because it opened up a trading possibilities. But all of the rest of the Louisiana purchase this doubling of the United States and size, it was just vast land that nobody that had been unchartered by European powers, it was well traversed by natives. And you know, of course, traders and travelers and such throughout the, those territories and regions for centuries, but it had not been mapped and it had not been surveyed by European powers. And so they send out this expedition in order to survey. Speaker 0 00:19:30 So, so I'm going to bring up several books during this and I'm going to put it in the notes so people can find these easier. But the first book I want to bring up is a book that kind of deals with this, but deals with it by going back a little bit and saying, look from the 17th century till about 1815 or so there are encounters between Europeans and indigenous people in the great lakes region, right. Which is the old Northwest. So there's the Northwest ordinances. When you hear about them, they're not referring to Washington, Oregon, Idaho. They're actually referring to places like Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana. Um, so Richard White writes this book in 1991, the middle ground. And it's a groundbreaking book. I mean, it's, there are giant texts in history and this is one of them, both literally and figuratively. Um, it's about 900 pages long. Um, but it does something interesting. And what white argues is that these two, not two, it's more complicated when these groups encounter each other, neither of them really has the knowledge or the ability to completely overcome the other group. So there's this period it's about 150, 160 years long. There's this period where they really kind of have to find what he calls a middle ground. Right. They have to kind of compromise, um, kind of learn to live with one another in a lot of ways. Speaker 1 00:21:17 Well, it's about, yeah. About learning accommodating one another, right? Because there is such a steep learning curve in both directions. And this is another, this book is so groundbreaking also because it, again, complicates that history that we get from the time we're little and it's like, it's not that, you know, the Indians and the pilgrims had a meal together. And then that was it. Everything was solved. You know, everyone was friends. It's like, there are multiple language languages, cultural differences. And, and it's not just, Oh, there's one language that needs to be learned. Just like every single one of these tribes has their own customs rules, languages, um, all of this, you know, all of these different traditions. And so that middle ground space, it's not just about the physical location. It's not just about the physical kind of barrier. We're talking about these regions between, you know, settled native areas and then the Europeans encroaching on it. Um, but it is, it's the middle ground culturally. And I would say that there is never really, I mean, the, the book covers up until like the early 19th century. Right. Speaker 0 00:22:32 1815, I think. Is that right? Speaker 1 00:22:34 So there's, it's maybe they're just talking about trying to figure one another out during this period, but there's also Wars that happen, right? I mean, major Wars between the verdict, the French and Indian Wars, right? Like, it's not like, Oh, everyone's just sitting around and trying to figure each other out and be nice and stuff. I mean, there's, it's bloody, it's violent. Um, it's, it's uncivil contact that's happening even though there is, you know, somewhat of a learning curve and a middle ground that's carved out. It's not without violence and conflict in that period. Speaker 0 00:23:09 So I'm glad you said violence and conflict because the other book that comes out slightly before this one that exists kind of these early texts in this new American West history is Patricia Limerick's legacy of conquest. You know, this is one of my favorite books because what I love that she does is she strips away the romanticism of the American West. And she has this very capitalistic approach to it all. And at the end of the day, she's all, she's like, it's about money and competition and control and profit that at the end of the day, that's what the American West is about. And if you approach it from this way, suddenly there is this through line and it kind of helps you understand different events because suddenly you're like, Oh, it's about money. Speaker 1 00:24:02 Yeah, everything is Speaker 0 00:24:06 So Patricia Limerick, this book comes out in 1987. Um, again, it's, uh, a great foundational work. And, and honestly, if you want to kind of understand how the old view of the American West, um, is kind of dispelled in the late eighties, early nineties, these two books, Richard White's middle ground limericks legacy of conquest. These two books are essential because they kind of put the brakes, pump the brakes on those old views and say, it's more complicated than that. And what can we do with it? And then we move to kind of recovering indigenous voices and voices of people who aren't necessarily the ones who have been valorized in the histories before. Right. And we push back from that kind of view of the American West is this inevitable, this manifest destiny, this, this, the United States is eventually just going to spread. There's not much you can do to stop it. And it starts to see it as much war contingent. Um, and it starts to reveal some of the really detestable things the U S government does in its expansion of power and its attempt to control this new rule. Speaker 1 00:25:19 So I would say, and I don't know if you share this, but this is one of the most difficult, Speaker 0 00:25:34 Difficult, what, Speaker 1 00:25:35 It's one of the most difficult topics to teach in a us history course, because it is such an uphill battle to pick apart what people have known, right. To pick apart like the romances, you know, the romanticized version of U S history to say like, Oh, the cowboy and the West and the wild West. And I mean, all these films and, and, you know, TV shows and everything. I mean, there's such what happens in our minds about the West is so radically different than what was actually happening. And for me, it's one of the hardest topics to discuss because when you confront students with the fact that, Hey, people lived there, it was bloody, it was violent. Um, it's, it makes them uncomfortable. I mean, and there are a lot of topics that we go over that makes students uncomfortable. And like, I think that that's kind of our job is to make people uncomfortable to think, but this is one of them where they're not fully prepared for it. You know, I think that they're prepared to be uncomfortable talking about slavery. They're prepared to be uncomfortable talking about Jim Crow. They're unprepared to face discomfort about the narrative, about the American West, the narrative about manifest destiny, because that's one that they don't, that's not at the forefront of, of their thought. And I think that they want to hold onto some things. And we've had this discussion where I've had students come to me, like, where are we ever going to talk about something happy? Speaker 0 00:27:07 Oh yeah. I've had students say that too. It's like, yeah. I've had students say, you know, I feel like we spend a lot of times talking about all these awful things the United States does. And I'm like, first of all, not true at all, but second of all, well, I mean, we've done awful things. And I think the, you know, I think once you talk about the Louisiana purchase and kind of start to unpack that, I think the next natural place to go is to a figure that's in the history, in the news a lot lately, Andrew Jackson and the Indian removal act. Um, and this is about moving indigenous people out of the old Southwest. Speaker 1 00:27:49 Yes. For moving Speaker 0 00:27:52 Forcibly, removing this is the trail of tears. I'm removing them to this place that they are promised is going to be there as for the rest of time. Right. Right. So the Oklahoma territory, which is initially called Indian territory is North of Texas. I mean, we could get into a whole thing about Texas and its independence from Mexico. Let's, let's just put it at this. It has to do with slavery. Texans wanted to own slaves, Mexico, outlawed, slavery. That's why Texas declares independence, Speaker 1 00:28:27 Mexico Outlaws slavery before the United States. I will say that again, Mexico outlawed slavery before the United States, that blows the students' minds. They can't, they can't wrap their head around that. Speaker 0 00:28:41 Yeah. I mean, it's so Andrew Jackson, you know, he's this complicated guy, um, because Speaker 1 00:28:50 A really nice way to put it Speaker 0 00:28:52 Well, because I think there are a couple of things he represents that are interesting and important. And Eric Foner, you know, you referenced Eric, Foner his book, uh, his textbook, but I think phoner talks about this as well. Um, Andrew Jackson is instrumental in expanding universal white male suffrage. Speaker 1 00:29:13 Yes. The comment, the era of the common man is what they call it. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:29:16 Right. And phone his argument, whether you agree with it or not is that you have to have incremental expansion of suffrage that you can't move towards black men voting until you have all white men voting. You can't move to women voting until you have all men voting. You can't move like that. There's this incremental like way the United States approaches this. Speaker 1 00:29:43 Like everyone needs to wait their turn kind of a thing. Speaker 0 00:29:47 I, I, I think it would be reticent to put it that way, but that's kind of how it comes off. Speaker 1 00:29:52 Well, I think that he, I don't think he's arguing that it had to be that way. I think he's arguing that way in order to make it palatable to those in power. I don't think he would say, well, it couldn't have happened any other way. I think he would just say like, this is the way it happened in order to allow people to slowly process change. Is that fair? Speaker 0 00:30:15 Yeah. That's yeah. That's a fair word to say it. Yeah. That's a much better way to say it, but I mean, so Andrew Jackson did a lot of bad stuff, a lot of bad stuff. Um, you know, and we could have a whole conversation about memorialization and I hope we do, because I think there is an interesting, I think a story is, need to step up and be part of this conversation Speaker 1 00:30:39 We are. Yeah. I think there's yeah, Speaker 0 00:30:43 But you know, Andrew Jackson is representative of this idea also that white men can basically do whatever they want. Speaker 1 00:30:52 Hmm. Speaker 0 00:30:54 And sometimes they try to kind of frame it as ultimately good, you know, Jackson and his apologist kind of say, well, it was better if Indians were removed from the, from Georgia and these places to the West, because then they could carry on the way they lived. And they wouldn't have to worry about kind of conflict with white people in these areas. And that's never what it's really about. Right. It's always, it's, it's about getting the land. These people are on, there's a gold rush that happens in North Georgia. There's like, it's all about that. And, Speaker 1 00:31:31 And it's about erasing civilization in order to replace it with your own civilization. I mean the United States and so many moments. And I would say that one of the major themes phoner would say the major theme is freedom, but I would say one of the major themes is legitimacy legitimizing itself. The United States is always trying to legitimize its own culture, its own space, its own right. Considered right to spaces and places lands. And I think so much of it is about, well, if we just erase the people who are already here, then we just kind of start over with our own thing. We don't have to intermarry with people. We right. I mean, if we just removed the people who were there, because that's a very different approach than say the Spanish. Speaker 0 00:32:20 Right. Well, I mean it, yeah. And I think it's, it goes back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. Like there's another great book changes in the land. Um, Cronin, um, it's, it is related to a history of the American West in odd ways. But it's the idea that, you know, when the Mayflower gets to where it will be Massachusetts Bay, they encounter a landscape that has been altered by indigenous people, but they also encounter kind of empty villages because diseases that have been brought across by previous Europeans had ravaged much of the indigenous population. And they actually found these abandoned places. And you know, if you're kind of a religious zealot, like many of the pilgrims were, um, this is a sign from God in your mind that this is how it's supposed to be, that this land has been cleared and made ready for you. Um, and I think that is a recurrent theme and kind of the encounter between, you know, Americans and indigenous. Speaker 1 00:33:36 Yeah. Just make way, Speaker 0 00:33:37 Make way it's a manifest essay thing. So that, that term doesn't get coined until a bit later in the 1840s. But I mean, this idea that, you know, it's, it reminds me of the blues brothers, we're on a mission from God and you better not get in our way. And if you do, we'll either destroy you or we'll just push you further into places we don't really like yet. Speaker 1 00:34:06 Yeah. I haven't really even seen. Speaker 0 00:34:08 Right. Right. So, so there's this removal, there's forcible removal of indigenous populations to what becomes the Indian territory. Um, and at the same time, we have an incredible expansion of slavery that's happening in the American South at the same moment. And I think the two are really intermingled. You cannot separate the two is that, Speaker 1 00:34:36 Yeah, I agree. You can't separate the two. And it goes to the Limerick argument, right? It's about expansion of slavery onto these lands to expand this slave economy. And in order to expand the slave economy, you have to remove the indigenous people from these lands. And we're talking places like Mississippi, Alabama, people were being removed Georgia and being pushed out into, you know, Oklahoma where it's the dust bowl basically. Um, and they're very connected and it is all motivated by, by profits. Speaker 0 00:35:14 Well, and it's this and it's cotton, right? I mean, this is cotton is, you know, there's this, um, Speaker 1 00:35:22 Anything you can empire of cotton, Speaker 0 00:35:24 I am spent Becker. Like I love these another great book. That's not exactly about the American West, but as an important idea that feeds into it is this idea of this commodity approach to history. This, that cotton makes a lot of things happen. Cotton room requires an incredible amount of land. It is labor intensive at a couple of key moments during its, Speaker 1 00:35:48 But it's people who want to profit from the growth and sale of cotton, right? That's like, you know, once people notice the profitability of it they'll stop at nothing. I mean, genocide, they, you know, they're moving people, forcibly people are being killed in mass in order to profit from. Right. Speaker 0 00:36:11 So it's interesting you use that word. Um, I, I am reticent to use that word for what the United States does and the great Plains, um, for a couple of reasons. And it's not, it's not me saying what happens with things like removal and what happens to the great Plains is not something terrible genocide to me implies, um, involvement of the state somehow like really, but it's like Speaker 0 00:36:49 There has to be an intentionality there, whereas removal, the intent was not to kill these people. It was to remove them. Um, and I think there's a distinction there because I think if we look at kind of the two kind of primary cases of genocide, I don't know, it's, I've been having a conversation about this with some colleagues quite a bit lately, genocide, I think is really a 20th century and later phenomenon the way we conceptualize it today. Like, so the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, um, are the two things that kind of frame how we look at genocide today. And that's not to say that, you know, States have not done things that have resulted in catastrophic loss of human life, but there's an intentionality that's a little lacking. And this, this gets into another topic in the American West, which is, um, most of the people in the great Plains, the Northern great Plains particularly relied on bison. And there's this question, this outstanding question of what part does the United States government have in destroying bison populations in an attempt to undermine indigenous people? Speaker 1 00:38:10 I think I've been on mute. Have I been on mute? Yes. Oh my God. Okay. I am so passionate about this argument right now because I mean, no, I mean you to say that there's not state intervention, of course their state interventionists, like you, they are forcibly removing people going around, slaughtering all the bison. Um, I mean, and this happens later in the 19th century, um, after some, some major conflicts that are happening in post civil war, but like the, they are absolutely systematically removing people, but either by, by moving them fiscally, but, but killing them on the way. I mean to say that it's not going to kill people to decimate their food supply, to starve people. I mean, and that's state sanctioned and these are tactics learned during the civil war that they take off after, you know, after the civil war is over, they take off and like deploy these tactics across the great Plains and it's, it's chilling people in mass and to see the population of the United States native population be more than decimated. And it's all because of state sanctioned and state, um, sponsored activities. I mean, no, is it the Holocaust? No, because it's, the Holocaust is different in many ways, but it's not to say that it's not genocide. Speaker 0 00:39:43 I mean Speaker 1 00:39:44 The killing of an entire group of people based on who they are as a people around and like, you know, soldering white people. I mean, you know what I'm saying? It's race based. Speaker 0 00:39:57 No, I mean, this is, and this is why I've been having this conversation with colleagues is right. It's it is kind of this, um, story. And sometimes we really get wrapped up in semantics and here's the thing. Um, the intent, even for the Indian removal act, the intent is not to exterminate native American populations. That is not an explicit intent. Whereas you move to things like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, that is the explicit intent of those things. Those things are designed to do that specifically. And I think Speaker 1 00:40:38 You're telling me that bison isn't Speaker 0 00:40:40 Well, so the killing of bison, it's interesting. You bring that up because I think it's most people now who kind of specialize in the history of the American West really squirm a little bit when we talk about intentional killing of the bison, um, there's no, there's no smoking gun. There's there's no. And I talk about this a little bit in my own project that there's no, that, you know, people have looked for some kind of smoking gun and kind of bureaucratic, um, work that says, you know, there's this moment, here's the moment the U S government decides the best way to, uh, subdue indigenous people is to destroy Bisons. Right. Um, although that seems to happen, uh, there's nothing there that indicates again, intentionality about that. Although they may have kind of happened upon that. Um, but what I, I, you know, I think the genocide debates interesting, and I think it's an interesting conversation, but let's, let's go back a little bit to the civil war. Let's talk about the civil war and its impact on the American West, what happens and you are on mute. Speaker 1 00:42:02 Yeah, no, I, um, I don't really want to move away from the genocide talk, but we will want to say about the civil war though in the American West, because the Wars fought over whether or not there will be slavery in these new territories, um, whether or not it can push out and, and it becomes political because, um, they don't want the slave holding States to hold so much power. If there's more vast territories where slavery's going into them because there's abolition societies trying to stop slavery. Um, but the, the West is so key to why the civil war is fought in the first place and it's over, how will we manage this territory? Speaker 0 00:42:43 I mean, you can make an argument. The civil war doesn't happen the way it does without the American West. Most certainly that, that this huge amount of land, you know, the link between the Louisiana purchase and then, uh, the Mexican American war, um, and kind of the land that the United States gets as a result of that, there's this huge question about what is slavery going to be expanded as a nod? And I think that's an important thing to look at, but what I wanted to look at more is this, there had been plans made for what was going to happen to this vast territory, the United States, theoretically controlled, um, but Southern slave holding States really resisted things like settling on a railroad plan, settling on a lot of other plans to bring white settlers out into the American West. And when the civil war happens and you have Southern succession, suddenly all those States that had resisted kind of putting, uh, a railroad across the middle of the country or creating a system whereby people could get homesteads, suddenly all those States are gone and we get this rapid passing of key acts, right? Speaker 0 00:43:57 So we get homestead acts, we get the Pacific railway act. All of these things happen during the civil war. It's all happening during the 1860s, right? Pacific railroad act is 1862. They decided to put this Intercontinental railroad basically right across the middle of the country. The previous debate had been, should it be in this to the South or the middle? There wasn't really much of a debate about it being to the North yet. Um, but the, the debate is solved, right? When the Southern States secede the debates solved, they pass the Pacific grower at act. And so the railroad acts passed at 1862, which is again, a huge generator of wealth for pre people. Um, and seven years later it's completed, right? And suddenly you can move goods from California to the Eastern United States Speaker 1 00:44:51 Game changer. Speaker 0 00:44:52 It is, it is a fundamental reordering of space, right? And, and, you know, I would point to Steven Kearns space and time as a great book that talks about the reordering that railroads do to the way we look at space, but at the same time, 1861, the Telegraph line is completed across the country, 1861. We don't think of right at the beginning of the civil war, there's a Telegraph line that links the entire links one coast with the other. We don't think about that. I mean, it's, it just shouldn't we don't think about telegraphs and the civil war. Speaker 1 00:45:33 Well, but then this infrastructure building, right, arguably is one of the reasons the North is able to win the war in the first place because the South still refuses to build any infrastructure. And when I say still, I mean, in 2020, uh, I mean, there's just a lack of infrastructure here in ways that it's not the same in other places, right? And, and that you can point to this moment, this era where, you know, one part portion of the country just kinda launches itself into this new era of advancement and technology and, um, transportation, communication and all this. And the other part just kind of hold continues to hold back and, and still kind of, um, longing for those days of, you know, Thomas Jefferson wanting the agrarian nature, right. And it's th th the civil war is a splitting point in so many different ways. Um, obviously there's violence that erupts, but it's, it's cultural. I mean, there's just a cultural divide and the development of the West is indicative of that divide and, and the way that it develops and, um, the way that the war goes in the favor of the union, of course, it, um, really shapes the way that the West is developed and that the infrastructure that, um, is developed all again toward that profitability, um, moving goods, moving people and, uh, moving the markets, right? Speaker 0 00:47:10 Yeah. So we get, so we get this huge technological shift that happens. Um, but I think it's important at this point to pause and talk about yet another new wave of scholarship that comes out about the American West, that kind of, again, pumps the brake on this narrative and said, look, this isn't empty space. These people are moving around, and it's actually not a space where the, the only conflict is between indigenous people and Americans. That there's actually a very complex series of political realities going on. Um, and you get a couple of great books again, you know, I, I love to bring these texts up cause they're just so fantastic, but you get, um, Anne Hyde, 2012, empires, nations, and families, she basically, and, and notice it says empires. Um, and she really is talking about multiple, um, empires that are present in the region. Speaker 0 00:48:15 And, uh, not only kind of European empires, right? So we're not just talking about the United States, whether it is, or it isn't an empire. We're talking about kind of the last remnants of the British empire in North America, but we're also talking about the Spanish empire and we're talking about indigenous empire, and this is where I bring in Pekka Haim alignment, Comanche empire. And then he has a newer book, uh, Lakota America, where he kind of continues this thing. But the idea is that these indigenous people had their own political goals and their own kind of organization systems. And in many ways that meant the United States was not always their main focus Speaker 1 00:49:02 And they had their own conflicts too. Right. Speaker 0 00:49:05 Right. And, and the idea that the Comanche who are kind of in North Texas, um, the Comanche really became a core, you know, Heinlein, its argument is the Comanche for a while become real masters at playing these empires off against one another. Speaker 1 00:49:24 Yeah. And in the midst of the civil war. Right, Speaker 0 00:49:27 Right. That they're able to really kind of play the Northern the union against the Confederacy, but also play Mexico off against, um, the rest of these other two kind of, uh, uh, polities, um, as well as kind of managing their own relations with other indigenous populations Speaker 1 00:49:47 That happened too during the French and Indian Wars in the 17 hundreds. Right. I mean, there's a long history of that going back. I was like, you know, how do we play these white people off of one another? Yeah. Speaker 0 00:49:59 Right. And it's, but it's, what's surprising is for the French and Indian war, we kind of understand it a little more and accepted a little more people are surprised to hear it's happening in the 18th. Speaker 1 00:50:11 Yeah. That there's just still this vibrant, um, massive empire that lays right in the middle of the war geographically. This empire is right smack in between in the middle. Speaker 0 00:50:25 These are relatively new and they're relatively new people. Um, and they have employed new technologies, um, to create kind of this new culture and this new way to run things. And, you know, so you've got to inject that in there and, you know, post civil war. And this is what my research really focuses on. But post civil war, the United States does take on lessons. It learns from the civil war and applies them. I argue. And a lot of other historians who kind of re examining this period really focuses it on solving what they call the Indian problem once and for all and well, so here's where it gets complicated. Whereas I would argue the removal act is not genocide. Once you move to all these officials talking about settling the Indian problem, now it starts to sound a little like, Oh, how is this gonna play out? Speaker 0 00:51:32 Um, and the issue seems to be though that almost all of them are talking about incorporating Americanizing these populations, and what's the fastest way to do this. So you get the development of Indian schools, right? Places where, um, uh, children from various tribes are kind of taken forcibly, oftentimes from their families, from their families sent to these Indian schools, the Indian schools Americanize them. And there's kind of this, Oh, there's this whole like list of things. They do that, that just, you read them. And they're heartbreaking to read what they're doing to these children. They're cutting the children's hair. Um, they are making them dress as white children. They're making them learn English. They can use parents, right? They're Aly, they're alienating them from their, their people. And what you end up happening then is a lot of times you get these children who are kind of raised in Indian schools, then try to go back to their homes and they suddenly find themselves not welcomed there. Speaker 0 00:52:42 And they, they find themselves occupying neither space. They're not wide enough to be part of American society, but they are now no longer Indian enough to be part of their home communities. And so the United States does this. The United States also does some things with allowing Indians into the army and that's my whole kind of field. But, but it's, I think the new scholarship really focuses back on the people themselves and talks about the experiences of this people and what it was like for them and what it must have been. And, and the American West, I think that's where it's most interesting now, is it as an idea, and it's an idea that has it's complicated, um, because if you think of it from a very white European perspective, it obliterates other people, anything that stands in your way is obliterated, Speaker 1 00:53:43 Or just not even discussed or ignored, ignored, I think ignored us is the best way to put it when, in terms of how we're educated about it. I don't think that people were ignored. I think that they were systematically removed and killed and displaced and all of that. Um, but when we talk about it in school, now it's more just ignored because you talk about American progress. You talk about mining towns, you talk about booms. Um, and you, you know, it's talked in the, at least when I went to high school, it was talked about as like, well, it's just this vast unoccupied space. And it's what the wild West and people came in and built their towns and mind and whatever. And that was it. And it's, again, I think that that is one of the biggest uphill battles is trying to convince students that like, Hey, it was a lot more complicated than that. And there were a lot more groups of people to talk about too. I mean, you have, um, Chinese immigrants who've come, Speaker 0 00:54:47 We haven't even touched on, right. Oh yeah. Speaker 1 00:54:53 That an hour. And we haven't gotten to, Oh my gosh. Like any of these things, but you have groups of people. I mean, you have, um, Mexican people, indigenous people, uh, Chinese immigrants. I mean, there's so many different groups who are inhabiting this space in the West and all, you know, working toward this profitability and, you know, in these mining towns and all this stuff, but it's not as simple as like, Oh, you know, guys just went out with their cowboy hats on and mean, it's just not, it's just not, it's not funny. Speaker 0 00:55:28 Well, that's the thing is, I mean, there are some important things to remark though. I mean, first of all, the great Plains specifically, and the Rocky mountains, the population density, indigenous population density is very low. Um, so it's not, it it's an odd thing because a professor of ours, professor of Hillary, Hillary, and I both had, he used to call it the tastes like chicken rule that people always try to relate something they've never seen before to something they already know. And I think what happens is you see, if you look at indigenous populations in the great lakes, um, early contact populations in the great lakes or the Southeast, or even the Northeast, the density is much higher and you get to a place like the great Plains and the population density is a lot lower because it's a lot harder to live in the great Plains. Speaker 1 00:56:29 Let's bring it kind of full circle here and say, the reason that the population density is lower is yeah, it's difficult to live there in Southern California. It's difficult to live there there's no water. Speaker 0 00:56:43 Well, I would say we even live in paradise in Southern California compared to what it must have been like to try to set up a homestead in Nebraska. Speaker 1 00:56:53 Well, there's a lot of that, but that's the point though, is there's so many places in the West where it doesn't really make sense to settle down and to live permanently and people coming out and like we're shutting up, we're shutting up camp. Well, there's a reason why people that, that was nomadic tribes in those regions. It's because they had lived there for centuries and knew you can't really just settle down here. There's no water source. There's no, you know, there's, there's all kinds of different, um, problems in different regions. But I'm thinking, you know, my Southern California head right now, she's like San Diego doesn't really make sense to live there. Speaker 0 00:57:37 I guess Speaker 1 00:57:39 There's no water. You steal water from other places. There's no water there. Speaker 0 00:57:47 There's not enough water to pop, to support the population that lives here. That is true. Um, so I think where we should end today is, uh, 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner. Speaker 1 00:57:59 Can we do part two though? Speaker 0 00:58:00 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. We haven't talked about the Mormons. We haven't talked about DAUs. We haven't talked about things like the great Arizona orphan abduction. Like none of these interesting things we haven't talked about, the Chinese Speaker 1 00:58:17 One thought and then we'll, we'll come back. Okay. Speaker 0 00:58:20 So, I mean, the final thought I want to end up with is Frederick Jackson Turner gives this speech 1893 to the American historical association where he says the American frontier is closed. The 1890 census has revealed that the frontier is closed, um, that there is basically no new land left to settle in the continental United States. And he throws it out there as kind of a warning because tying back to kind of Jefferson's whole idea of the yeoman Republic and that we would always have land to expand on. And this was a natural pressure valve for the nation. That is, you kind of got restless young populations, they would move West, settle those populations. Eventually those places would become fully civilized and then their children or grandchildren will move further West. And this would just continue to continue to continue. Well, 1893, Turner's like, it's done. Speaker 0 00:59:17 We have no more, what does that mean? And you know, overseas, I mean, so that's one interpretation of it, right? It's like, well that we have to go overseas. We have to look to the Pacific. Um, there's a lot of problems with things Turner says, right? His whole idea of the frontier. I mean, the word frontier implies certain things that just start not materially true ever for this region. Right. It implies there's no one there. Um, there's also an implication that the people that do live there really doing anything useful with the land, which kind of ties back into Patricia Limerick's ideas about it's all about extraction and profit and production. Um, but I think Turner is this interesting moment because again, the American West, I think is an idea. And when Turner says this, I think it kind of freezes the American West and the popular, popular imagination that when we think about the American West, we think about the American West is Turner frames as this idea of a place where anything goes, where people can go and be free and kind of set up a homestead or rustle cattle or whatever. And that persists even to this day. Right. And we can talk a lot more about this. And the next part where we talk about modern perceptions of the West is, but I mean, that's, that's kind of where I would like to land and it is, Speaker 1 01:00:51 I think that makes sense. And I think that that'll allow us a nice segue into Cowboys and popular imagination. You know, we can talk about Chinese talking about the Mormons. We can talk. I mean, we can talk about all those things, but you're right though. I mean, if we settle on this idea, if we end on this idea that the West is just an idea that I think can help us frame even more of a complex conversation and end to even circle back to what we started in the beginning is like the West can't be talked about in a chapter. And it can't most certainly can't be talked about in a section of a chapter. I understand that, you know, we have to have a class and we have to move along and everything, but that the idea it's so expansive and it covers such a broad period of time, which we proved by going all the way back to the beginning. Um, and it also, you know, it covers a large geographic space with many different people in many different events. So we can keep talking about the West, um, in our next episode. But I think that that's a good place to stop. Speaker 0 01:01:59 We'll talk about Teddy Roosevelt's Pearl handled pistols. Speaker 1 01:02:04 Let's make our next episode soon rather than Speaker 0 01:02:07 We will. We will be back next week. We are back on a weekly schedule. We will be releasing the next episode next week. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jeff, Speaker 1 01:02:17 Hillary <inaudible>.