Thinking About The Mythic American West

There isn't going to be anything original posted today. I need to work on getting images ready for my website gallery which was started but has sat dormant for several weeks. I hope to have it running this week. It won't be anywhere near final form but the main structural elements will be in place. However, I have some things written by others which may be pertinent to things that I have or will be posting about here. One cannot look into the vast historical literature of the Great Plains much less the American West and not encounter the Turner Hypothesis:

Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," presented in Chicago before the American Historical Association, is one of the most important pieces of nineteenth century writing about the west. Turner's "frontier hypothesis"--that American development could be explained by the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward--had widespread implications for historiography, sociology, literary criticism, and politics. Turner argued that the West--rather than the proslavery South or the antislavery North--was the most influential among American regions and that the frontier--rather than an imported European heritage--was responsible for the novelty of American attitudes and institutions. Significantly, his hypothesis emphasized geographical determinism, agricultural settlement, and the affirmation of democracy, all of which can be traced back to the myth of the garden of the world. Turner shared this myth's erroneous judgments about the economic forces that had come to dominate 19th-century life. His essay expressed the aspirations of a people rather than their actual situation. From Virgin Land  By Eric Gislason

John Steinbeck posited much the same idea, but in touching and lyrical way in the 1933 short story The Leader of the People.

"... I tell those old stories, but they're not what I want to tell. I only know how I want people to fell when I tell them. It wasn't the Indians that were important, nor adventures, nor even getting out here. It was a whole bunch of people made into one big crawling beast. And I was the head. It was westering and westering... When we saw the mountains at last, we cried-- all of us. But it wasn't getting here that mattered, it was movement and westering... The westering was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the movement pile up and piled up until the Continent was crossed. The we came down to the sea, and it was done..."
When Jody spoke, Grandfather stared and looked down at him. "Maybe I could lead the people some day," Jody said.
The old man smiled. "There's no place to go. There's the ocean to stop you. There's a line of old men along the shore hating the ocean because it stopped them."
"In boats I might, sir".
"No place to go, Jody. Every place is taken. But that's not the worst-- no, not the worst. Westering has died out of the people... It's all done. Your father is right. It is finished."

We'll come back to this poignant passage in subsequent posts. In the meantime I want to let you know about some of the books read as I've begun to try to understand what I have seen and experience on the Southern Great Plains.





I read Grassland by Richard Manning 10 or 12 years ago and remember it as being very informative about a subject I knew little about. I need to reread it.

Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town is shocking and, I think essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend little known changes occurring in small towns in the heartland. It is set in Olwein Iowa which is quite close to La Crosse.

Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America's Great Plains describes the activities and ideas of a Rutgers University couple who have been relentless proponents of The Buffalo Commons.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl.  Reads as smoothly as fiction. Essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand 20th century American History, environmental
movement, social trends, and this blog.













Byron