19 - The American West - Part 2

Speaker 0 00:00:00 So a part, two of our journey West of the Mississippi, did we decide, we were talking about the trans Mississippi West? I don't think we even used that. Speaker 1 00:00:11 No, we didn't discuss it, but we're back to continue talking about all the different things that we couldn't come the last time, the American West, I guess, you know, what's funny is I'm glad that we started as far back as we did last time, because it is really important to start far back. But when we had originally conceptualized it, I was thinking in us history sequence terms and was like, Oh, we're going to talk post 1865. And then you're like, let's go back to 1803. I'm like, all right. But then it caused like a whole, like, we have to do two parts now because it's just, it's a lot. And like you were saying, unless you're discussing things to magically, this isn't a topic that can be discussed chronologically, um, within, uh, like a segment of a class really Speaker 0 00:01:03 Well. And it's so closely tied to the story of certain groups of people. Right. And we can kind of talk about them during today's episode that it's, you want to give it good time in the classroom. You want to give a good time if you're kind of talking about this with children or AR or whatever at home. I mean, you want to give space to this because it it's such a formative thing for the United States and our concerns, our conceptualization of what we are as Americans is so wrapped up in the American West. Would you agree with that? Speaker 1 00:01:41 Absolutely. It's, it's very much a part of the popular imagination too. And I think when a lot of people imagine the United States, they think of the American West. I think that that tends to be it. Um, I had a professor in undergrad who was from London and he said that when he came here, he came to the United States. He just really, really wanted to be an American. So the first thing he did was went and bought cowboy boots, but he taught it university San Diego. And like nobody's wearing cowboy boots in San Diego. Right. And he's like, I had a cowboy hat. He grew a few man choo he's, like everyone was looking at me funny. And I'm like, yeah, it's not like, but you know, I think it's very much a part of the popular, popular imagination of, you know, what is the United States. And a lot of times the American West, Texas, the wild West, like that kind of stuff like that, imagery, I think plays into a lot of people's idea of what the United States is. So to be able to get a grasp on it and to discuss all these different moments and groups and the expansion and the time periods, um, and, and talk about it as a theme, I think is really important. I'm glad that we were able to do two episodes to kind of tease it out a little bit more. Speaker 0 00:03:04 Well, that's a fantastic intro. Let's get started with today's podcast. Speaker 2 00:03:09 <inaudible> Speaker 0 00:03:29 Hello and welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff, Speaker 1 00:03:34 Where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast? Speaker 0 00:03:38 The American West, before we get started though, before we get kind of back to our topic of the American West and how's the weather out there hot it's July, Speaker 1 00:03:48 July, Mississippi, but I've heard that it's not as hot as California, California has been very, very hot the last couple of days. I know Speaker 0 00:03:56 <inaudible>. Speaker 1 00:03:59 Yeah. So here, I mean, it's like seasonally disgusting, so it's like expected heat. Um, but it's, it's 88 degrees right now with very low humidity. So I feel like we're, we're doing pretty well. I don't think it's that bad. Speaker 0 00:04:16 Well, it has been pretty miserable here. Speaker 1 00:04:19 It's toasting and there's a fire. Yes. Speaker 0 00:04:22 And there's this ship at the Navy yards on fire. Um, and it's funny, you know, we live up next to the zoo and the wind yesterday when the fire was going on, the wind was blowing directly on shore. So none of the smoke was getting up to us. It was going due West from the shipyards instead of kind of North East or due East instead of Northeast, which would have had asked. And then last night about midnight, the wind shifted. Um, and suddenly it just, it was this stink of burning rubber and oil. Um, and we like everybody in the building woke up, cause people thought there was a fire or something. And then it's like, Oh, it's the ship. And then, yeah. Um, and you can look out and like, see, even right now I can look out in the back and I can see of smoke coming over from it. I mean, they had helicopters like dumping water on it today. I don't know like how long this fire's going to burn. I mean, eventually Speaker 1 00:05:26 It's going to be about a week. It's going to take about a week for it to simmer all or summer down. Yeah. So I'm sorry for the air quality, but also for the people who were injured and the explosion, and that's just really sad, but we needed on top of the pandemic, you know? Speaker 0 00:05:41 Oh, well, yeah. That's yeah. That's when it rains, it pours. Um, but anyway, so the American West part too, I know last time we kind of traced out this broad history up through the civil and even handed at things after the civil war, including, uh, what many historians who look at the era called the Indian Wars. And, um, I mean, I'd like to talk a little bit about that word today, if we can, but, uh, the Indian Wars and then kind of the conclusion of those and Frederick Jackson Turner, his famous speech in 1893, when he talks about closing of the frontier. Um, and we're, we're kind of looking towards the last part of the 19th century and then looking to the 20th century because the, the story of the American West doesn't a magically end after Turner says the frontiers closed at all. Um, but I mean, let's talk about that word. Speaker 0 00:06:40 I use Indian historically inaccurate. Of course it is, it is historically inaccurate, right? And it's funny, and this is an exercise I do with my freshmen. When I teach the U S intro sequence, we talk about this, um, because they look through the syllabus, we, you know, the kind of the first day of the class, we kind of go through the syllabus and they look, and there's always something I have in the syllabus, um, where we talk about the people who were in the Americans before Europeans arrived. And there's an article I have them read that is basically what do we call these people? And always, I have a couple of students who were like, well, Indian is incorrect and they kind of offer all these other words, um, native American, um, indigenous people. We can even go to really obscure where it's like our talk fitness people. Speaker 0 00:07:37 They don't use that word, but, um, some people in academics do. And the article I have them read that is in defense of the word, Indian is actually written by, um, someone who is a member of a recognized tribe in the United States. And her point is there is no good word that puts all these people together as one group, because they are not one group. There are a varied group as varied as you know, any groups across Europe or Africa or Asia. Um, and so any word is going to be on satisfactory and what they do, what her, what our argument is much. Like you have people within the black community and people within the, um, gay community did this, they take a word that has issues and they kind of own it, right. They kind of take ownership over it and say, this is the word we want to call you. And this is a big difference between us history, our history in general, and kind of other fields in academia is we're one of the few that actually use this term. And I always have this essay that I have people read, because I want to use the term that the people who are closest related to these historical actors I'm talking about in the American West want to be used. Speaker 1 00:09:05 So that's an interesting, I think it's an interesting conversation. And like, I certainly understand using an article like that, but I think you could find just as many people who would say, well, you know, we didn't get together and all decide this, right. I mean, I'm sure that there are a lot of people who are still very offended by it. And so when I teach, I mean, I try not to use the term Indian just because to me, it's like, it's just wrong. Right? I mean, it's like the, you know, settlers got here and thought it was Indian and it wasn't, I ended up calling everybody Indians and then it just spirals out of control. And while I respect that, some people are like, yeah, that's fine. I also, I think just the better way to describe people living here is to say indigenous, but that may be, you know, that may not be helpful either. Speaker 1 00:09:55 I mean, um, the other, the other thing that I try to talk about too, is like our borders and how the modern map of the United States. Like it didn't look like that for a really, really long time. Like the map that we see today wasn't really completed until into the 1950s. Right? And so when you take away those arbitrary lines, really that we've drawn over certain number of time. Like there, there was a lot of flow. There was, you know, flow between regions between what we would have a state lines. And there were different tribes and bands and villages and everything of different people, uh, and to consider how varied it was, uh, the languages, the culture, everything. Uh, I was just looking at a map of California today and what we call California now and like looking at how many native different native tribes there were just in the state of California alone with our own unique languages. I mean, it gets complicated to me to just say, Oh, they're Indians. That being said, it is a way for everybody to understand what you're talking about. Right. I mean, in the United States, I think people in India would be like, what? Speaker 0 00:11:10 Right. Well, that's, so one of the things this article, this, the cessation she talks about is a lot of people who are involved in kind of, um, reworking education from the perspective of a member of a tribe. Um, she says, you know, and, and they agree with her on this, this idea of if you know, the tribal desert, the tribal affiliation of someone you should use that first before you resort to it, something kind of, uh, some broader term like Indian or American Indian, or native American, or even, uh, indigenous person use their actual tribal designation, tribal affiliation. If you know, it barring that you can move to other things. And, you know, that's what I try to do in my own work. When I know that somebody is a member of, you know, a certain group, I try to use that term. Um, if it's unknown, um, then I might resort to a more general term, but I usually, if it's a specific person and it's unknown, I refer to them by their name actually, and kind of put it out there, but, you know, I think this is, and some people might listen to this and think, well, this is a really nitpicky kind of conversation, but I think there's something really important in how we refer to historical actors. Speaker 0 00:12:41 And I feel in people who study the civil war and kind of the antebellum South, the industry of slavery in America, this conversation is kind of an ongoing conversation as well. Right. We don't ask historians. We generally don't like the word slaves anymore because it really, and flattens the experience of people. Speaker 1 00:13:09 When you say it's slaved people, Speaker 0 00:13:12 Enslaved peoples, or, or you refer to them by their name or who they are. Speaker 1 00:13:18 Well, so there's the, there's also a big conversation between people about capitalizing the be in black or not capitalizing Eric, you know, things like that. I mean, there's a lot of power in words. And in the way that we talk about things and the way that we talk about history and it's, it's a subject, like you said, it may be sound nitpicky, but it ends up trickling down into the very way that we teach young children. And so words are powerful and important. And to really tease these things out and how these conversations is not just important for historians, but it's important for everybody, particularly in this moment where we're really trying to, re-examine a lot of what we have been taught as like this, you know, like the knowledge that we've been given and that the things that we've been taught in school, like there's a lot of things that are coming into question. Speaker 1 00:14:08 And so it's up to people, I think, like us to have these nitpicky conversations, to help kind of disseminate a new paradigm or, you know, and, but, but inclusively, right. To think about how can we talk about these things and then, um, help everybody get involved in the conversation in a way that they feel comfortable. Right. Cause that's where we're weird about it right now. It's like, what do I, what is, why do I get to say what people should or shouldn't be called? Right. Cause every time I've read anything about it's like, people are like, I want to be referred to by my tribe. So to me, if I, like you said, if I know the tribal say the tribe, but I think saying name is also really important. Um, but when you're writing an entire dissertation and often like in so much of your dissertation, you had to cut in front this exact issue. I mean, how are you going to discuss huge groups of people who were impacted by, you know, the military in those regions or, or whatever your chapter was about, but it's important to confront Speaker 0 00:15:15 Well it's and what I ended up doing, a lot of times, even in the stuff I'm writing now is the word Indian gets used a lot by the government in its programs and policies and initiatives. So when I use that word, it's a signal to the reader that I'm talking about, government programs, government policies, those things. And when I switched to a tribal name, it means I'm actually talking about kind of the responses people had to those people who these policies were intended to, to kind of Speaker 1 00:15:48 Nuance, but it's important. Like that's a subtle change, but it's, there's a lot of meaning and thought behind it. And so I guess that that's, that's an important point. It's like, there's, you have to confront those things in order to write. And then you're subtly kind of shifting the conversation right. Between men or not. And yeah, Speaker 0 00:16:11 Well, and what we want to avoid doing is replicating what we look at the government does to people in these spaces across the 19th century and end of the 20th century, what they do to them, which is they treat them all as identical have micronized them. And they don't recognize that there's a variety of cultural experiences and worldviews there. They kind of compress them all Speaker 1 00:16:39 With different interests. And that's what worries me when I, when I confronted with having to use the word Indian or indigenous or native it homogenizes and it lumps everybody into one category. I mean, it's like calling somebody African. Okay. I mean, it's, it's difficult. I mean, I know, but we do a lot of different groups, right? Like European, right? Like your European people are all different too. Right. Speaker 0 00:17:08 I think it happens less with European people. I think there's a distinction there. There's a, there's an awareness that there's a difference between people from region a Speaker 1 00:17:18 We'll make a little more of an effort. Yeah. I guess that's what I'm saying though, is like we homogenize, I think like, that's the, I don't like going this level, like, that's the, that's the structure, right? That's the structural inequity where you're just like homogenize an entire continent African, or you homogenize the people an entire continent, native, Indian, indigenous, but then you'll be like, Oh, he's French. Speaker 0 00:17:46 Well, you might even get more granular than that. It's like, you know, he's, you know? Yeah. It's like, Oh, he's from Paris. That's much different than mine. Right. And it's so, but I mean, that's kind of some of the challenges here is, I mean, there are, I mean, let's talk about the challenges of studying Western history and studying, creating some kind of cogent story of the American West. And one of the biggest issues is this kind of nomenclature, like how do we refer to people? But I think in tandem with that is a lack of indigenous voices or a supposed lack of indigenous voices. Because one of the things my work I try to do is show there are indigenous voices there. You just have to look a little harder. Speaker 1 00:18:37 Well, and they're not archived in the same manners, like voices from the federal government or papers or things like that because the archivist has an incredible amount of power and what we decide to save or not also plays a huge role in that where you can be looking, looking, looking, and it's hard to find stuff because you have centuries of white heteronormative. Right. Kind of things where it's just like, well, we're going to record the history of straight white men or, you know, cause it can go in so many different directions, but it's hard to find stuff, um, where you're looking for indigenous voices, um, because of just what saved, but it's there and you found a lot of it. Right? I mean, so how do you want to talk? Speaker 0 00:19:27 Yeah. So it's, uh, one really amazing source. Um, the depression does a lot of terrible things, the United States, but one really good thing it does is the WPA does all these interviews with people. And there's a whole host of problems with how they conduct the interviews, the questions they ask, all of that. I mean, we could devote a ball type part series to, to the problems of it. But what they actually do is they get recordings of people who had experienced things like the civil war who had been an enslaved person who had been an indigenous person that had been sent to an Indian school, who had people who had lived through major events in the 19th century, their voices were recorded and we got to hear them, but, and these recordings still exist today and you can hear them. And there's just something about it to hear these peoples in their own words, talk about their experiences. And it's an amazing collection and there are indigenous voices there. But what I found was a lot of the people who gave interviews, who were indigenous, they, the transcripts were kept, but the recordings weren't. Hmm. So you can't Speaker 1 00:20:48 Actually hear the voices Speaker 0 00:20:50 I can sometimes, but I found there seemed to be a higher percentage of those where the recordings are lost than other groups. And it was kind of sad because you wonder why, why that is why those recordings are discarded. Are they really lost? Are they like sitting somewhere? Um, but I mean, they're there. So, you know, I can't get the same granular detail I could get with, um, you know, German immigrants and are coded. Speaker 1 00:21:22 You do have to wonder though, what if the transcription is actually accurate? Do they reflect what was actually, you can see episode five on conspiracy theories if we want to go there, but you have to wonder, right. Speaker 0 00:21:35 Well, yeah, because that's the, but you know, and that's the whole, one of the problems with the WPA and the interview format and everything is there's, there is embedded in the poll process, some problems that can lead you to certain questions, being stressed and other questions being minimized. Um, and you also, sometimes it's infuriating. Some of the recordings I did listen to, I mean, you can follow along of what they were being asked and the respondent says something really interesting. And then the interviewer doesn't pursue that really interesting, Speaker 1 00:22:11 Like say no, like I want to hear more about back. Speaker 0 00:22:15 Well, and this is, this leads us to, you know, kind of back to this, what we referred to last time and what the government called the Indian problem. One of the guys that I listened to, excuse me, um, was, uh, um, he had immigrated, um, from Germany, very young, excuse me. And he, uh, joined the army when he was old enough to, and he gives this interview and the reason he wanted to join the army. And this was, uh, after 1876, this was after, um, a customer had been killed. Um, uh, he said he wanted to join to go kill in ENS. And to hear him say that, and you know, suddenly you say something that I had suspected for a group, a certain kind of there's, cause this is an upsurge in the enlistments for him to say it and the way he said it and the frustration, because he found himself in the army and he found himself actually not being put in a situation where he could do that. Speaker 1 00:23:34 So many people, I think, joined the military with the idea of what's going to happen. And then yes, Speaker 0 00:23:43 As they did. And what happens is the U S military actually, you know, it does have these engagements, military engagements and very bloody confrontations, but for the most part, the U S army after 1876 is kind of, it's something we call it, uh, uh, constabulary force, right? It's, it's basically, they're the policemen of places that are still territories, not States. And, um, and that role shifts even more towards the end of the 19th century. And whereas early on, their role had been to kind of protect white people as they came out West the role increasingly, and this is something I touched on, on my research towards the end of the 19th century becomes to at least in the minds of some of the people in charge, some of the officers in the army to protect indigenous people from these kind of ruthless land grabbing, right. Vigilantes, land grabbers, all these people moving in from the East, um, to protect them from, from those groups. And Speaker 1 00:24:52 It was just this lawless region. Exactly. Speaker 0 00:24:55 Yeah. Because it's, you know, it's, there had been told there's nothing, you know, the people living here, aren't doing anything with the land, the land. Speaker 1 00:25:03 Yeah. Speaker 0 00:25:04 Um, but I mean it's, so they, I mean the West, you know, it's, it's a complicated space and what it even is, is a complicated question. Like what do we mean when we talk about the West? Like where do we mean? Speaker 1 00:25:24 Well, I think you said in the beginning of the episode, like the trans Mississippi West, right. Like whatever's West, but you know, what I think is an interesting question though, just kind of building on what you're talking about with the military and you have, you can have, you have such a command over this era of course, because you're an expert in this era, but I would really like to ask listeners to think, if I asked you to tell me five things that happened between 1875 and 1900, what did you learn? You know, what did you learn in school about what happened during this time? It's very little, it's not covered. And we kind of touched on this a little bit in the last week's podcast about how it ends up being the West and the discussion of it ends up being kind of a footnote, um, a paragraph or two, a section of a chapter. Speaker 1 00:26:15 Um, and, and what do you learn about it? I mean, and what do you learn about this era, but really, I mean, it's so important to understand some of the things that are happening with the mass migration of people and, um, and how that's impacting the development of the, the majority of the United States. What we, you know, today would draw our borders and say, West of the Mississippi, that's a lot of, it's a lot of, that's a lot of space that a lot of people move into. And so to have just like a paragraph or a section of it is it's really kind of sad. Right? Speaker 0 00:26:54 Well, it's, I mean, and there are so many critical moments whether the moment has to do with kind of consolidating federal control over this space, whether it has to do with ordering the militaries relationship with, um, indigenous people or with the public more broadly speaking. But I mean, there are a couple of dates I want to throw out here. And, and it's funny cause people think our stories are obsessed with dates and we really aren't. Um, because you know, this thing happened on this day. Well, it was the culmination of things that proceeded it. And it was, you know, Speaker 1 00:27:35 On a specific date, right? Speaker 0 00:27:38 1876, you know, um, 1876, some momentous year for the United States, they're celebrating the 100th anniversary that Centennial, they were only 11 years out from the end of the bloody civil war. Right. And they're celebrating this Centennial. And, uh, there was this big, um, exposition in Philadelphia and news arrives by July 4th that, um, George Armstrong Custer and, um, elements of the seventh cavalry had been annihilated, uh, at, uh, the battle of little, big Speaker 1 00:28:19 Battle, a little bit corn, Speaker 0 00:28:24 You know, it's the way funding had been going for the army and the post civil war era, the Army's funding had been cut and cutting, cutting, cutting cut. And there was kind of, they were trying to deal with what they viewed as the Indian problem. Um, and the Indian problem was basically there were people living in the places white people wanted to live. That's basically what the Indian problem is. What do you, Speaker 1 00:28:49 It's a great way to describe it, right? That's because that's exactly that phrase was used commonly. The Indian problem was we want to live here and you live here. Speaker 0 00:29:01 We want to, but, and I don't want to just stop at that definition though, because there were some people who, uh, a problem that they identified when they spoke with the Indian problem is they wanted to incorporate these people within the United States, Speaker 1 00:29:16 Right. Assimilate through stimulation. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:29:18 Right. Well, they get to a simulation initially, it's this, they want to figure out how do you even do this? And eventually they arrive at this idea of assimilating them, that you actually have to fully Americanize them. You have to kind of strip them of their old language, strip them of their old cultural practices, strip them of their old religion and teach them how to be kind of a model middle class, white Protestant Americans. And this is where the Indian schools, this is why the Indian schools really flourish is because this is a concerted effort to kind of do this. And so this kind of question of the Indian problem and what was going to happen, and the military funding had been gone down and had been going down and then this battle of little Bighorn happens and it's kind of a wake up call in the army and they decide they really have to deal with this. Speaker 0 00:30:14 And the funny thing is, I mean, it's not funny, haha is by the time the U S military kind of gears up its engine to militarily, confront many groups of people who are kind of acting outside the bounds of the U S government, um, it's almost completely taken care of because kind of the other, and there's more that goes on here than this, but the other kind of big moment, I would say, as far as military confrontation, um, is wooded knee. And, you know, wounded me happens December, 1890 and uh, January of 98, 1891 and wounded, he was, it was the culmination, I think in many ways of the way Western Europeans, militarily, brutalized, indigenous people, and then try to couch it in the language of, well, they had guns or something like that. I mean, do you, how does that sound Speaker 1 00:31:31 Well, but also, I mean, so you jumped like 1876 for the battle of little big horn, and then you go to wounded knee, you're talking like over a decade difference, right. Almost two decades at that point. But it's interesting that you said it was like practically resolved at this time. And one of the major things that ends up happening, and it's just a product of time passing. And we talked a little bit about this during the first part is the decimation of Buffalo, the Sioux and the Cheyenne warriors who were led, you know, in the battle of little big horn led by sitting bull and crazy horse. They're defending their tribal land. They win this major battle. Um, over 250 men die, of course at that battle. Um, and they're in defense of their, their land and it's in the Dakota territory, but eventually they have to give up this land anyway because of the decimation of their food source. Speaker 1 00:32:24 And so there's almost this natural culmination of events where it, it kind of doesn't end with a major battle or major spark it's like people are starved out of their, of their, they're forced to relocate. They're forced to give up their land because they're moving in and looking for food sources and, you know, kind of going into, I don't want to take us down a rabbit hole again, but we were talking about genocide last week. And like, you know, this is one of those things for me that qualifies as a genocide. And I don't want to like measure it up to the Holocaust because I don't, I don't really want to do that. I don't think that that's useful comparison. But if you're thinking about like whole group of people being targeted by something by policy, or, you know, killing all these Buffalo, killing off their food sources, I mean, millions of people end up dying as a result of that. Speaker 1 00:33:23 And so there, there, isn't a major like moment where it's like, boom, all of the Indian land is gone now and everybody has been pushed off or forced out. It's a slow burn. And it's, it's a slow burn that culminates perhaps toward the end of the 19th century, but which starts centuries prior with the arrival of European immigrants and the arrival of disease and the arrival of technology in the arrival of, you know, um, people who are hungry for land and, and money and space and all that. I mean, it's a really slow burn where there's a die off of people who were being pushed from lands. Food sources are being, um, decimated or contaminated. Um, disease is ravaging all these people. Um, and so by the end of the 19th century, it's like, it's kind of petering out at this point after taking decades and then centuries. And so that's another reason why a discussion of the West is difficult because it's a really complicated series of events that leads to the eventual outright takeover of the entire space, uh, that, you know, West European settlers end up just taking over the whole region. Speaker 0 00:34:43 Well, it's, it's interesting because yes, I, I jumped, there's a big time difference between kind of, um, little big horn unmuted day. But one reason I do it is that from 1876 to 1890 91, it is more than a decades worth of time. But all of the imagined confrontations between the U S army out in these wooden stockaded forts versus restless Indians, plaguing travelers, and all of these things, all the real history of that, all the real moment that that happens is in that is happens between those two events. That that is when the conflict gets, it's kind of hottest. Speaker 1 00:35:29 I think, I think too, though, a really important point of time, right? Between those two moments is the Dawes act well, that's Speaker 0 00:35:38 Next to my notes, right? It's like, it's like, so there's not just a military action going on and you know, military action. It's one way to look at this, but there is this whole kind of administrative action that's going on. And the Dawes act in 1887, if you step back and look at it and you don't know what ends up being done with it, it actually sounds like it might help the individual individual members of these tribes. Right. Speaker 1 00:36:17 Maybe Speaker 0 00:36:18 If you don't know what's going to be done with it and you don't kind of know the doubletalk that's in it, it kind of seems like, well, this is going to guarantee they can't lose their land. And it basically, it's what the Daws are promises is that each head of household to get 160 acres. And if you're not how to household, but you're over 18 years of age, you get 80 acres. And basically what you have to do is you have to separate from your tribal organization, you've done Eric and I's, Speaker 1 00:36:52 It's a forced Americanization attempt. Right, Speaker 0 00:36:54 Right, right. And you know, it's the Americanized part, that's the big problem. Right. Um, but there is a problem with the land. The, the idea of individually owned land is so different than the way many of these groups, conceptualized ownership. Speaker 1 00:37:20 Yeah. It's asking people to really deny not just their culture and not just their language and their dress and their customs and their religion and everything, but it's asking them to deny their literal worldview and some people accepted and some didn't, but, but the government comes in and makes 2 million acres of Indian land available in Oklahoma. And this is really relevant right now. Right? Because the latest Supreme court case, one of the latest Supreme court cases gave out land back, right? I mean, this is like, we didn't intend for this to happen, but like, this is a really pertinent issue right. At this moment where it's almost overturning part of that, the Dawes act of 1887. Um, but what happens when the government makes this 2 million acres of Indian land available in Oklahoma, this brings tens of thousands of white settlers, um, Speaker 0 00:38:19 Upwards of a hundred thousand. Speaker 1 00:38:20 Yeah. And it, and the Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land. And they're holding 1877. So the U S acquired 1.5 billion acres of land from native in area 25 times, the size of great Britain just said, boom, this is ours. Now you can have some of it. If you're willing to act in this way, if you're willing to dress in this way, if you're willing to speak this language, if you're willing to attend our schools, if you're willing to deny your culture, religion, everything else, you can have some land, Speaker 0 00:38:57 But not really, but not really. I mean, that's the, so when I teach this, when I teach kind of the experience of people who did actually go to the Indian schools, who did do everything according to the Dawes act rules, we talk about how it became a moving target, that they were never actually allowed to reach that Speaker 1 00:39:18 Always about broken treaties and broken promises. This goes all the way back, right? It's always about breaking promises, Speaker 0 00:39:26 But they were being trained in the Indian schools to do jobs that there was no way they were going to get hired for. They are being trained to take on what reviewed is traditionally white middle class jobs. They weren't going to get those jobs. Somebody was going to take one, look at them and say, Nope, don't want, Speaker 1 00:39:46 Even if they Americanized or dressed a particular way. Right, Speaker 0 00:39:50 Right. It didn't matter. It did not matter. And, um, you know, this is the legacy. I mean this, so I would say this, I think the, the military kind of the final defeat, it wounded the combined with the Dawes act combined with, um, this kind of betrayal of Oklahoma or Indian territory, which was supposed to be there's. Imperpetuity remember, we talked about that last time about when Jackson engineered the removal, this land in Oklahoma was supposed to be there as forever, forever, right. And suddenly forever Speaker 1 00:40:26 To make up for pushing them away from where they had known Alabama, Georgia, these areas, Oklahoma was somehow going to make up for that. But even Oklahoma got taken, Speaker 0 00:40:37 But you combine all of these things together. And it's the legacy of that for indigenous people through the 20th century becomes one of constantly fighting against kind of popular representation, uh, the popular history. They it's Chris created about the American West, where Indians are kind of homogenized and they're all wearing head dresses and they're all kind of bare chested on horses. Um, setting covered wagons on fire, all of this, they, you know, they're not allowed to, um, kind of narrate their own past. They're forced to kind of constantly be at odds with a narrative that's put on them because one of the biggest kind of themes that crops up in American film, which becomes a huge kind of unifying cultural phenomenon, there are westerns right, where they mythologize this past, this confrontation with Indians, this Indian problem. And it really is viewed as a white guys going out and shooting Indians is really viewed as a manly American thing. Speaker 1 00:41:56 Well, and playing Cowboys versus Indians, right. Saying, you know, there's, you know, and that's like, leave it to Beaver style kind of stuff. Right? The 1950s, you get this romanticization of the American West and you start seeing all these, these films in the 1950s and 1960s and John Wayne. Um, but Cowboys were also romanticized as being the opposite of an Indian, but Cowboys didn't live a particularly, uh, romantic life. That's, that's interesting to me too, I'll often cover that where it's like, you know, a lot of people who were doing cattle drives were, um, black men, Mexican men, uh, poor white men. They're these symbols of like life and freedom on the open range, but there's really nothing romantic about them. They're really low paid wage workers. Um, they're, you know, going from place to place, they're not well fed. They, they're not going around and just shooting Indians. I mean, and that's, what's so interesting about the, there's this, you know, binary of like, are you a cowboy or an Indian in the West? And they're at odds with one another, but like, that's just a totally wrong depiction of what's going on. Is that fair? Speaker 0 00:43:12 Oh yeah. Well, first of all, they're not, I mean, if, if you want to have the Indians battling somebody, it would be U S army soldiers. It wouldn't be right. Speaker 1 00:43:23 Yeah. I mean actually, Speaker 0 00:43:24 And settlers and vigilante, drunken groups of vigilante settler. Speaker 1 00:43:29 Yeah. Not Cowboys. Cause Cowboys had an actual job and it wasn't fighting Indian people. Speaker 0 00:43:36 Right. And Cowboys, you're talking about just a handful of people traveling together with large herds of cattle. Right. Speaker 1 00:43:45 Which stops cattle drives stop by the late 19th century because people privatized land and fence it. So you can't, yeah. You can't take people, you can't take cattle all the way across the open range anymore because it's not open anymore. People have grabbed the land and fence the land. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:44:06 Right. Well, when you had only one transcontinental rail line, you had to drive cattle to the rail line, but as we get more and more rail lines and connector lines, you don't need to drive them all across the great plays. You only have to drive them to the closest rail line and you know, so the need for them decreases. Um, I mean, it's interesting, you mentioned them because the next place I wanted to go and I want to make sure we get to this before run out of time is the American West is so critically important for the history of labor in the United. Speaker 1 00:44:38 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:44:40 I mean, it, I would say the most important thing the American West does in the 20th century is it determines, helps determine labor relations. And it's really a contest between how much power and authority the federal government has over both States and municipalities and the individual. And, you know, we, you know, we get these major later labor uprisings at the end of the 19th century Pullman a dispute, you've got the cock sites who are marching and going to go to Washington. Um, but at the same time, um, you get the emergence of a labor union spaced in mining and other kind of fields. Speaker 1 00:45:28 I think the, the, uh, professions shift dramatically, what people are mostly employed doing is very different than that, of the Northeast, right? I mean, you've got mining, you've got railroads and mining in a lot of different ways. Copper mines, um, very different from say a coal mine out in Virginia or something like that, right? Like the labor shifts and the people who were performing the labor, also the demographic shifts. And you do, you start seeing the emergence of, of different types of labor unions in this time period. Um, and you see immigration coming from a different direction, right? We see immigrants coming from China, uh, male laborers coming from China to work in the railroads and to work in mining and such, uh, coming to California and then kind of dispersing across the American Southwest and labor does start to take a different shape. It looks different. Um, and the, the required labor is different. And then you see the emergence of these labor unions is fueled by, uh, the different types of labor being performed in the West. You know, just day to day, life just starts to look different Speaker 0 00:46:45 Well, and you also have a large, uh, push of immigration from, uh, South Asia as well, right? So you get these, you get, uh, so coming from the East, you get kind of this huge upswing of immigration from Ireland, from Germany, uh, even from places like France and Scandinavia in England coming in, and, uh, you get huge populations from Northern Europe who are moving into kind of the Northern great Plains, but on the opposite side of the Rockies, coming from the Pacific coast, you get Chinese laborers are brought in to work, uh, in California initially. Then they do things like, uh, help build the transcontinental railroad, but also indispensable when it comes to mining activities, you get South Asian immigrants who come in. And when I talk about immigrants, I'm talking almost universally male. Speaker 1 00:47:39 Yes. It's not until the very late 19th century that you start seeing families immigrating. It's predominantly all the way up until the late 19th century. It's predominantly single men who are coming. And that creates a whole different atmosphere. A lot of these Western towns, they're just male dominated spaces, Speaker 0 00:48:03 Right? So you get, um, and there's a famous piece. That's written a monograph that kind of argues that virtually every woman at a frontier town would at sometime in her life engage in sexual labor, she'd be a sex worker. I, I disagree with it. I disagree with it completely. My research shows they actually, when a woman was a sex worker, it's actually noted that she was Speaker 1 00:48:31 For a lot of women who were sex workers. It was a sex worker, right. Nothing against sex workers, Speaker 0 00:48:41 But, you know, but you do end up with these towns. Um, one of the little ones I look like, look at it in Montana for a long time, it's a male, female ratio was like 75 to one. Speaker 1 00:48:55 So what's happening in those towns? Speaker 0 00:48:59 Well, I don't know, there's obviously sex happening. And, um, and that's like a whole different conversation. That's the history of sex, which is a different thing. But, but I mean, yeah, Speaker 1 00:49:12 You can go there at some point because we'll talk about Speaker 0 00:49:17 Right. I mean, the funny thing is of these towns though, they generally don't have these disparities, these kind of stark ratios between men and women for very long, especially if they're designed to be a sustainable town. I mean, that's one of the things you get the town fathers. One of the things they push for is getting women in and getting families and because that leads to right, and that leads to stability. Um, I, you know what, I think we need to devote an episode to Chinese workers in the American West and what that entailed. I think we need a whole episode where we really talk about that because there's just not, I mean, we're, we're getting near the end of today. Uh, we we've just barely touched on this. I mean, it's, it's a fascinating topic. It is. Um, it is as fraught with tragedy as the story of indigenous people and the kind of confrontation with the federal government. Speaker 0 00:50:25 Um, and you know, again, this goes back to conversation. We had last time that sometimes our students are like, we just talk about all these terrible things we did. Um, well, you know, that's, we did a lot of terrible things. Um, and, and kind of where I want to kind of end today is I just, I do, I do want to at least give a little clarity on the battle of wounded knee or the massacre wounded, because I think it's important for people to understand exactly what happens there. Um, this is December, 1890, this is in the great Plains, Northern great Plains. It's bitterly cold up there. If you've ever traveled to the Dakotas in December. You'll know what I mean. The wind comes whipping down the Rockies and just bitingly cold. And really the U S army had been rounding up groups of Indians who refuse to remain on reservations. Speaker 0 00:51:24 And, um, a group of Lakota Sioux, uh, had been followers of the ghost dance movement. The ghost dance movement had been broken up again. Something we really didn't get to talk about much, but, um, they had been kind of sequestered in this one place and were being moved and sitting bull had been killed. Uh, he was a prominent leader, uh, just the month before, a few weeks before actually. And, um, the seventh cavalry. And it's not a coincidence that it's the seventh cavalry. This is the same unit that had been massacred in 1876, a little big horn are pursuing them. And eventually they get, um, these people to surrender, uh, at wounded knee Creek. And an encampment is set up there while they kind of decide what they're going to do. So 106 men were separated from 250 women and children and they, uh, and this was on December 28th and on the 29th that morning, they go around to forcibly collect weapons from these men. Speaker 0 00:52:37 And what happens next is unclear. But there seems to have been some kind of dispute over the surrender of a firearm. Now, remember these rifles aren't just used for war. They're also used to shoot Buffalo to shoot other game to survive. Um, but some kind of dispute happens. A shot is fired and kind of chaos breaks out. Now the U S army has a technological advantage here because first of all, most of the 106 men had been disarmed already. Second of all, the us army had Hotchkiss guns, which are kind of a primitive level machine guns. And these Hotchkiss guns open fire, and 300 people are killed in this confrontation, 300 Lakota Sioux. Now you notice as 106 of the men were identified as warriors. That means almost 200 people of those killed were not in fact, identified as warriors. These are civilian casualties. Um, and the effect is kind of profound in some groups, pictures go back to the East and people kind of see this. People are embarrassed by it. People are horrified by it, um, are kind of initial claims that we're going to change what we do, that we need to change this, but nothing ever comes of that. There's no kind of, there's kind of a, uh, ringing of hands at the tragedy, but no real move to fix the problem. And it's a really depressing end to the story of the federal takeover of the great Plains. Correct? Speaker 1 00:54:37 Gosh, I was on mute again. So I was saying it's like the late 19th century version of thoughts and prayers was a ringing of hands and it was a, Oh, we're so upset about it. Um, but nothing really happens, but it does kind of stop the mass conflicts that were occurring. Right. I mean, but Speaker 0 00:55:02 Because I think it scares the crap out of people and they realize this crazy government will take machine guns and shoot us. Speaker 1 00:55:08 Yeah. Well, and yeah, what's crazy too. I mean, and I was on mute this entire time. Uh, what's crazy too, is you're talking non-combatants, you know, people who are not, and you know, I, you ha you have the narrative from the army. It was like, Whoa, we don't really know what happened. A shot went off. Okay. Yeah. Shot went off. But then you massacred hundreds of people non-combatants like, you took it. Well, first of all, yeah, you disarmed them, took away their livelihood. You know, they were hunting using these weapons to hunt everything. But it is a really depressing moment because it's so it's, it's a really, it's one of those moments where you go, wow, that was, you know, just undeniably screwed up thing that happened. Right. And there's, to me, it's like, there's no defense of it. There's no defense. Oh, if a shot went off, like a shot went off. And so you massacred everyone sitting there Speaker 0 00:56:13 Add insult to injury, 18 us soldiers get the medal of honor. Speaker 1 00:56:21 I wouldn't want that medal of honor. I'd so embarrassed. I was embarrassed. I mean, that's you read about things like this happening during the second world war, right. Where there are just innocent people lined up and shot, right? Like the iron set screw been going around and just murdering innocent people. And like, it's horrifying. It's horrifying when you read stuff like this. But again, I ask you to go back and think 1875 to 1900. What did you know about this? Did you realize that it was such an egregious act on behalf of our military? Do we realize that it was non-combatants? Do we realize that the people who were massacred were unarmed? I don't think so. I mean, we gloss over this kind of stuff. Speaker 0 00:57:14 Well, I think it's an uncomfortable period for what the government is doing in general, because Speaker 1 00:57:20 Every period is an uncomfortable period. Speaker 0 00:57:25 But I think it's more uncomfortable here because the actions are directed against civilians. The actions are directed against that. You know, you also get kind of us soldiers firing on labor protesters during the same period. Speaker 1 00:57:42 Yeah. Oh yeah. You start to see the, and this is, we can talk so much about this. And this is like bleeds into my work was like militarization. And, um, you were saying like these Constable forces, right. Where you have people going in who were like law enforcement of types, where they're federal, state, local, whatever, you see the mass buildup of these forces of people who have been given authority and in the West where things are like lawless. And I mean, I'm thinking, you know, like tombstone or something, you have people coming in or just like, I'm in charge. Now I have the gun and you start seeing a huge buildup of police forces, law enforcement forces, who are, who kind of crop up out of their own lawlessness. And you do see that there's no proof, there's no professionalism involvement. Really. It's more like who has more guns. Speaker 1 00:58:44 And then who's going to be deemed as the person who is in charge, who is going to be granted the authority to take charge of a situation. And it's very uncomfortable when you look at it this moment and you see, you see the, um, uh, people who were hired to put down labor strikes, they were going into the jails to the local jails and deputizing people in local jails to go put down the coal strikes. Yeah. So I've always said, and like, I don't know, I'm giving away, like, I guess my second book idea, but just like, there's a really fine line between cop and criminal really fine line. And we see that now, of course, it's true. My parents, our parents are criminals were like, this is just something you can see going back really, really far where there's something psychological going on, where there's like this really fine line that people Teeter on. Speaker 1 00:59:39 And it's uncomfortable in the late 19th century. Cause we really start seeing it come into fruition. When all of these little law enforcement agency kind of things start cropping up at this moment. And it's to put down unrest it's to stop native people from having their land it's to stop laborers from striking over unfair or, you know, bad working conditions and all that. And of course we move into the progressive era. We try to kind of correct some of that, but the police forces continue to grow and continue to become more powerful. And that's a super exciting topic for me, but Speaker 0 01:00:16 I think it's a great, it's a great way to end the episode today. Cause I think it, it points us in some interesting directions Speaker 1 01:00:22 Are really sound and talk about Mormons. Again, Jeff, Speaker 0 01:00:26 No much. We didn't talk about, um, we might have to have a religion and America, couple of episodes. Speaker 1 01:00:33 I always get, I always have like, I have like three pages right here on Mormons. I think anyway, I'm always very excited talking about Mormons and, and the West, right. Because like there's so much space that Mormon people occupy in these regions still that's kind of like uncharted territory anyway. That's a good place to end. Speaker 0 01:00:57 Yeah. Well, fantastic. Great conversation about the American West. Um, yeah. Thanks Hillary. Please join us next time on an incomplete history. Speaker 2 01:01:06 <inaudible>.