DAILY SCHEDULE: READINGS AND
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
W 28 Aug INTRODUCTION: A POINT OF
VIEW TOWARD AMERICA
TEXTS (to be read after class; RAS here and below refers to
"Readings in American Studies," a notebook of texts and
documents that supplements the book list):
Jay Sommer, "A Teacher's Point of View," 1983. RAS
Ronald Reagan, from "The State of the Union," 1984. RAS
Robert Kennedy, "The Gross National Product," 1968. RAS
Mark Twain, "The War Prayer," wr. 1905. RAS
Ralph Linton, "One Hundred Per Cent American,"1937. RAS
Harold Kolb, "What is the American Experience?" 1978.RAS
REFERENCE:
Bailyn, Bernard, et al. The Great Republic: A History of the
American People. 1977.
Meining, D. W. The Shaping of America: A Geographical
Perspective on 500 Years of History. 1986.
"Let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name
for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been
boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and
have manned themselves to face it."
R. W. Emerson, "Fate," 1851
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 2 Sept DEFINING AMERICA
TEXTS:
Benjamin Franklin, "Arriving in Philadelphia," from The
Autobiography, 1791. RAS
Thomas Jefferson, "The Unanimous Declaration of the
Thirteen United States of America," 4 July 1776. RAS
---, " A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," 1786. RAS
---, "First Inaugural Address," 4 March 1801. RAS
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Social Conditions of the Anglo-
Americans" (I, 3) and "Principle of Sovereignty" (I, 4). From
Democracy in America, 1835-40. RAS
Abraham Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address," 1863. RAS
Henry James, from "Hawthorne," 1879. RAS
T. S. Perry, from "An American on American Humour,"
1883. RAS
Franklin D. Roosevelt, "The Annual Message to the
Congress," 6 January 1941. RAS
REFERENCE:
Axtel, James, ed. America Perceived: A View from Abroad
in the 17th Century. 1974.
Evans, J. Martin. America: The View from Europe. 1976.
(See especially chapters 1 & 2.)
Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam. 1955.
Twain, Mark. Ch. 26 of The Innocents Abroad. 1869.
"There was nothing but land: not a country at
all, but the material out of which countries are made."
Willa Cather
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 4 Sept THE AMERICAN CHARACTER
TEXTS:
Speeches by President Clinton and Senator Dole accepting
the presidential nominations of their parties. See
http://www.politicsnow.com.
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, "What Is an
American," from Letters from an American Farmer, 1782.
RAS
David Potter, People of Plenty, 1954.
"Introduction," vii-xxvi;
Part I: "The Study of National Character," 3-72;
Part II: "Introduction," 75-77.
RECOMMENDED:
Matthew Arnold, "Civilisation in the United States," 1888.
RAS
REFERENCE:
Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth. 1888.
Commager, Henry Steele. The American Mind: An
Interpretation of American Thought and Character since the
1880s. 1950.
Emerson, R. W. "The American Scholar." 1837.
James, Henry. International tales and novels, e. g., "Daisy
Miller," The American, The Europeans, The Portrait of a
Lady.
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 1785. See
especially sections 4, 5, 14, 18, and 19.
Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wilderness. 1956.
"What then is the American, this new man?"
Crevecoeur
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 9 Sept WESTWARD THE COURSE OF
EMPIRE
TEXTS:
Christopher Columbus, "About the Islands Discovered in the
Indies"--Columbus' report to Ferdinand and Isabella on his
first voyage, 15 February 1493. RAS
Bishop George Berkeley, "Verses on the Prospect of Planting
Arts and Learning in America," ca. 1726. RAS
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, 1950. "Prologue," 3-12.
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ca. 1630. Ch. 9
("Arrival at Cape Cod"), RAS
John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," 1820. RAS
Potter, People of Plenty. 78-79.
REFERENCE:
Jones, Howard Mumford. O Strange New World. 1964. Chs.
1-2.
Judge, Joseph. "Where Columbus Found the New World
[i. e., Samana Cay]." National Geographic. Nov. 1986.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of
Christopher Columbus. 1942.
Wright, Louis B., ed. The Elizabethan's America: A
Collection of Early Reports by Englishmen on New World.
1965.
"The harbors of the sea here are such as you could not
believe in without seeing them, and so the rivers, many and
great, and good streams, the most of which bear gold."
Christopher Columbus
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 11 Sept MANIFEST DESTINY:
JAMESTOWN TO SAN JUAN HILL
TEXTS:
"Physical Map of the United States," National Geographic
Society map 20040.
Smith, Virgin Land. Chs. 1-4.
Ray A. Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860,
1956. Ch. 7 ("Manifest Destiny").
OPTIONAL:
Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860. Ch. 1
("The Mexican Borderlands"); ch. 2 ("The Road to Santa
Fe"); ch. 6 ("Texas: Revolution and Republic"); ch. 8 ("The
West in the Mexican War").
See President Polk's "Annual Message to Congress" for 1848
in RAS, assigned for 23 October.
REFERENCE:
Billington, Ray A. Western Expansion. 1949.
DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. 1943.
Jefferson, Thomas. "Report on Government for the Western
Territory." 1 March 1784.
Limerick, Patricia N. The Legacy of Conquest. 1987.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American
History, A Reinterpretation. 1963.
Morris, Richard B. Encyclopedia of American History. 1976:
Chronology of territorial expansion, transportation, and
communications, 586-619; land, natural resources, and the
environment, 632-643.
Quaiffe, Milo M., ed. 4 vols. 1910.
The Diary of James K. Polk, During his Presidency, 1845-
1849.
Whitman, Walt. "Passage to India." 1871.
". . . the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free development of
our yearly multiplying millions."
John L. O'Sullivan, in the United States
Magazine and Democratic Review 17 (1845)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 16 Sept ACROSS THE APPALACHIANS:
THE LONG HUNTER AND THE WILDERNESS
ROAD
TEXTS:
"Daniel Boone," Dictionary of American Biography, 1928.
RAS
James F. Cooper, The Pioneers, 1823. Chs. 22 & 41, RAS
George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, 1823. Canto 8, stanzas 61-
68. RAS
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 5 ("Daniel Boone").
John William Ward, "The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight,"
1958. RAS
RECOMMENDED:
James Thurber, "The Greatest Man in the World," 1935. RAS
REFERENCE:
Alvord, Clarence Walworth, and Lee Bidgood. The First
Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by the
Virginians, 1650-1674. 1912.
Bakeless, John E. Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness.
1939. Rpt. 1965.
Bogart, William H. Daniel Boone and the Hunters of
Kentucky. 1869.
Elliott, Lawrence. The Long Hunter: A New Life of Daniel
Boone. 1976.
Filson, John. "Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon" (possibly
dictated by Boone) in Discovery, Settlement, and Present
State of Kentucke. 1784.
Flint, Timothy. Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone. 1833.
Imlay, Gilbert. A Topographical Description of the Western
Territory of North America. 1792. 2nd ed., 1793, reprinted
Filson's Discovery.
When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.
Vachel Lindsay
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 18 Sept ACROSS THE GREAT AMERICAN
DESERT: EXPLORATIONS I
TEXTS:
John E. Bakeless, ed, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1964.
Read up to 7 April 1805, when the "corps of volunteers for
northwestern discovery" departed the Mandan village for the
Pacific.
Thomas Jefferson, "Confidential Message [to Congress] on
the Expedition to the Pacific," 18 January 1803. RAS.
---, "Instructions to Captain Lewis," 20 June 1803. RAS.
REFERENCE:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether
Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American
West. 1995.
Bakeless, John E. Eyes of Discovery: North America as Seen
by the First Explorers. 1950.
DeVoto, Bernard. The Course of Empire. 1952. (From the
Conquistadors to Lewis and Clark.)
Fremont, John C. Report of the Exploring Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains. 1843.
Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson and the Stony
Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. 1981.
Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the President, First Term, 1801-
1805. 1970. Ch. 14 ("Freedom's Empire").
Powell, John Wesley. Explorations of the Colorado River of
the West and its Tributaries. 1875.
See the entries in the Dictionary of American Biography for
John Charles Fremont (1813-90), Stephen H. Long (1784-
1865), Zebulon M. Pike (1779-1813), and John Wesley
Powell (1834-1902).
"April the 3rd Thursday 1805 [at Fort Mandan] we are all
day engaged packing up Sundery articles to be sent to the
President of the U. S. . . . [including] Cage No. 9 containing a
liveing hen of the Prairie a large par of Elks horns containing
by the frontal bone."
William Clark
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 23 Sept ACROSS THE GREAT AMERICAN
DESERT: EXPLORATIONS II
TEXT: Finish The Journals of Lewis and Clark.
REFERENCE:
Allen, John Logan. Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and
Clark and the Image of the American Northwest. 1975.
Bakeless. Lewis and Clark: Partners in Discovery, 1947.
Dillon, Richard. Meriwether Lewis: A Biography. 1965.
Jackson, Donald, ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854. 2nd ed.
1978.
--- Among the Sleeping Giants. 1987
Moulton, Gary E., ed. The Journals the Lewis and Clark
Expedition. 5 vols. to date. 1983- .
Steffen, Jerome O. William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the
Frontier. 1977.
Steward, George R. "Of Mr. Jefferson's Western Lands." Ch.
25 of Names on the Land. 1945.
Thwaites, Reuben G., ed. The Original Journals of the Lewis
and Clark Expedition. 8 vols. 1904-5.
Wheeler, Olin D. The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1904. 2
vols. 1904.
Great joy in camp. We are in view of the ocean, this great
Pacific Ocean which we have been so long anxious to see.
William Clark, 7 November 1805
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 25 Sept GEORGE CATLIN IN THE
MANDAN VILLAGE
TEXT: George Catlin, O-Kee-Pa: A Religious Ceremony;
and other Customs of the Mandans, 1867; 1967. RAS.
RECOMMENDED:
Review p. 115 of Bakeless' Journals of Lewis and Clark.
"The Romantic Horizon." Pt. 1 of The West of the
Imagination. Dir. William H Goetzmann. 1986. Clemons
videotape, VHS 1374.
REFERENCE:
Catlin, George. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs,
and Conditions of the North American Indians. 2 vols. 1841;
1973. See letters 10-22 on the Mandans; letter 22 on the O-
Kee-Pa.
Ewers, John C., et al. Early White Influence on Plains Indian
Painting. 1957.
Haberly, Lloyd. Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of George
Catlin. 1948.
Hassrick, Royal B. The George Catlin Book of American
Indians. 1977.
Maximilian, Prince of Wied. Travels in the Interior of North
America, 1832-34. 1839.
McCracken, Harold. George Catlin and the Old Frontier.
1959. Texts and prints. Lists all of Catlin's writings on pp. 212-
214. FAL.
Roehm, Marjorie C., ed. The Letters of George Catlin and his
Family: A Chronicle of the American West. 1966.
Schoolcraft, Henry R. History . . . of the Indian Tribes of the
United States. 6 vols. 1851-57. See vol. 3, p. 254; vol. 5, pp.
59-60, and vol. 6, p. 486 for Schoolcraft's attacks on Catlin.
Truettner, William H. The Natural Man Observed: A Study of
Catlin's Indian Gallery. 1979. Listing and illustrations of
paintings in Catlin's Gallery. Extensive bibliography. FAL.
FAL = Fine Arts Library, Campbell Hall.
I love a people who . . . are honest without laws, who
have no jails and no poor-house . . . who are free from
religious animosities . . . who have never raised a hand
against me, or stolen my property, where there was no law
to punish either . . . who never fought a battle with white
men except on their own ground.
George Catlin
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 30 Sept THE MOUNTAIN MEN I
TEXTS:
Billington, The Far Western Frontier. Ch. 3 ("The Era of the
Mountain Man").
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 7 ("The Innocence and Wilderness of
Nature") and ch. 8 ("The Mountain Man as Western Hero").
Review Crevecoeur's comments on hunters and back settlers
in "What is an American?"
REFERENCE:
Chittenden, Hiram M. The American Fur Trade of the Far
West. 3 vols. 1902, rev. 1935.
DeVoto, Bernard. Across the Wide Missouri. 1947.
Irving, Washington. Astoria, or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise
Beyond the Rocky Mountains. 1836.
Russell, Osborne. Journal of a Trapper, or Nine Years in the
Rocky Mountains, 1834-43. 1914.
Ruxton, George F. Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky
Mountains. 1847.
See the Dictionary of American Biography for brief
biographies of the most celebrated of the 3,000 to 4,000
mountain men who flourished during the height of the fur
trade:
William Henry Ashley (c. 1778-1838)
James P. Beckwourth (1798-c. 1867)
Charles Bent (1799-1847)
Jim Bridger (1804-81)
Kit Carson (1809-68)
John Colter (c. 1775-1813)
Thomas Fitzpatrick (c. 1799-1854)
Hugh Glass (fl. 1823-33)
Andrew Henry (c. 1775-1833)
Joe Meek (1810-75)
Jedediah Smith (1798-1831)
Joe Walker (1798-1876)
Two views of the mountain man:
"A man who enjoyed, above all things else, the communings
of his own spirit with the silence, the solitude, the grandeur,
with which God has invested illimitable wilderness."
John S. C. Abbott, Christopher Carson, 1873
"An instinctive fondness for the reckless savage life,
alternately indolent and laborious, full and fasting, occupied
in hunting, fighting, feasting, intriguing, and amours, inter-
dicted by no laws, or difficult morals, or any restraints. . . ."
Timothy Flint, The Shoshonee Valley, 1830
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 2 Oct ALFRED JACOB MILLER AND
THE RENDEZVOUS OF 1837
BACKGROUND:
In the spring of 1837, an eccentric Scottish nobleman--
Captain William Drummond Stewart--hired Miller to record
in sketches and paintings Stewart's second trip to the far
West. The party joined a supply caravan of the American
Fur Company at Independence, and accompanied the caravan
to the thirteenth rendezvous of fur traders on the Green
River, in present-day Wyoming. This expedition of six
months provided Miller with the subject matter for hundreds
of Western paintings that he completed over the following
quarter of a century.
TEXTS:
Fifty-three slides, to be shown in class, of watercolors from
the Miller collection at the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.
A. B. Guthrie, The Big Sky, 1947. Begin reading.
RECOMMENDED:
Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri, 1947. "A
Painter on the Trail," from ch. 12. RAS.
REFERENCE:
Bell, Michael, ed. Braves and Buffalo: Plains Indian Life in
1837. 1973. From the Brown Collection of Miller's work in
the Canadian Public Archives, in Ottawa.
Merritt, John I. Baronets and Buffalo: The British Sportsman
in the American West, 1833-81.
Porter, Mae Reed, and Odessa Davenport. Scotsman in
Buckskin. 1963.
Ross, Marvin C. The West of Alfred Jacob Miller, from the
Notes and Watercolors in the Walters Art Gallery
[Baltimore]. 1968.
Stewart, Sir William Drummond. Altowan, 1846; Edward
Warren, 1854.
Tyler, Ron C., ed. Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist on the Oregon
Trail. 1982. Essays about Miller and a catalogue raisonne
describing approximately 1,000 paintings.
"On this eventful morning our caravan, pursuing as usual
the even tenor of its way, descried one of our hunters
returning to the camp at full gallop. His speech was to the
purpose, `Injins all about--thar will be some raising of
h'ar--as sure as shootin.'"
A. J. Miller
~~~~~~~~~~~~
5- 8 Oct FALL BREAK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 9 Oct THE MOUNTAIN MEN II
TEXT: Guthrie, The Big Sky.
SEQUELS TO THE BIG SKY:
The Way West, 1949. (Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1950,
this novel describes the wagon trek to Oregon, with Dick
Summers as guide.)
These Thousand Hills, 1956. (A generation later, a grandson
of the Oregon settlers takes the back trail to Montana, first as
a hide hunter and then as a rancher, as cattle replace buffalo
in the big sky country.)
Fair Land, Fair Land, 1982. (Summers, now married to the
Blackfoot Teal-Eye, attempts to return to the mountains, but
is caught in the crossfire of cultures and the onrush of
economic exploitation.)
REFERENCE:
Fergusson, Harvey. Wolf Song. 1927.
Ford, Thomas W. A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 1981.
Manfred, Frederick. Lord Grizzly. 1954.
Ruxton, George F. Life in the Far West. 1848.
"There was beaver for us and free country and a big way of
livin', and everything we done it looks like we done against
ourselves and couldn't do different if we knowed. We went to
get away and enj'y ourselves free and easy, but folks was
bound to foller and beaver to get scarce and Injuns to be
killed or tamed, and all the time the country gettin' safer and
better known. We ain't seen the end of it yet."
Dick Summers in The Big Sky
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 14 Oct OVERLAND TRAILS I
TEXTS:
Billington, The Far Western Frontier. Ch. 4 ("The Coming of
the Pioneers") and ch. 5 ("The Overland Trails").
William Walker, "The Flathead Indians," 1 March 1933.
RAS.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey,
1982. Begin reading.
OPTIONAL:
Billington, The Far Western Frontier. Ch. 2 ("The Road to
Sante Fe").
REFERENCE:
Dana, Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast. 1840.
DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision, 1846. 1943.
Gregg, Josiah. Commerce of the Prairies. 1844, 1867. (The
early years of the Sante Fe trail.)
Hastings, Lansford W. The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and
California. 1845.
Irving, Washington. A Tour on the Prairies. 1835. (Irving's
three-month Western tour in the fall of 1832 also produced
Astoria, 1836, and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.
S. A., 1837. His Western Journals were edited by J. I.
McDermott in 1944.)
MacNeil, Robert. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" (The Impact of the
Frontier on American English). Pt. 6 of The Story of English.
Clemons videotape, VHS 1434.
Parkman, Francis. The Oregon Trail. 1849, 1892 .
"Go west, young man." This expression, made famous by
Horace Greeley's New York Tribune editorials, was first
used by John B. Soule in 1851 in the Terre Haute Express.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 16 Oct OVERLAND TRAILS II
TEXT: Finish reading Women's Diaries of the Westward
Journey.
SUGGESTED:
Billington, 195-200 (the Mormon trail).
REFERENCE:
Faragher, John M. Women and Men on the Overland Trail.
1979.
Ghent, William J. The Road to Oregon. 1929.
Hafen, LeRoy R. The Overland Mail, 1849-1869; Promoter
of Settlement, Precursor of Railroads. 1926.
Jeffrey, Julie R. Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi
West, 1840-1880. 1979.
Lavender, David. Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon
Trail. 1963.
Morgan, Dale L. Overland in 1846: Dairies and Letters of the
California-Oregon Trail. 1963.
Stegner, Wallace. The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the
Mormon Trail. 1964.
Stewart, George R., ed. The Opening of the California Trail.
1953; The California Trail. 1962.
Unruh, John D., Jr. The Plains Across: The Overland
Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West. 1979.
ADDITIONAL READINGS ON WOMEN IN THE
WEST
Armitage, Susan, and Elizabeth Jameson. The Women's
West. 1987.
Banes, Ruth A. "Autobiography and the Western Woman."
Turn-of-the-Century Women 1 (1984).
Bataille, Gretchen A., and Kathleen Mullen Sands. American
Indian Women Telling Their Lives. 1984.
Christiane Fischer, ed., Let Them Speak for Themselves:
Women in the American West, 1849-1900. 1977.
Hohmann, Margaret Muth, "The Daybrook of Anna Maria
Morris, 1850-1858," an edition of the Morris manuscript
contained in Alderman Library. American Studies honors
thesis, 1983.
Kirkland, Caroline. A New Home--Who'll Follow? 1839.
Luchetti, Cathy, and Carol Olwell. Women of the West.
1982.
Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier
Experience, 1805-1915. 1982.
Stewart, Elinore Pruitt. Letters of a Woman Homesteader.
1914. These letters were used as the basis of the 1989 film
Heartland. Selections from the journals of Mary Richardson
Walker, a missionary in Oregon, and Elinore Pruitt Steward,
a homesteader in Wyoming, are read on "Women's Diaries on
the Frontier." Audiotape 223, Clemons Library. 2 reels.
Caedmon SWC 2060, 1C & 2C. Walker's diary was
published in 1963 as vol. 2 of First White Women over the
Rockies.
Stratton, Joanna. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas
Frontier. 1981.
Zangrando, Joanna S. "Women's Studies in the United States:
New Sources." Sources for American Studies. Eds. Jefferson
B. Kellogg and Robert H. Walker. 1983.
"Wednesday, March 16, 1842. Rose about 5 o'clock, had an
early breakfast, got my house work done up about 9. Baked
six more loaves of bread. Made a kettle of mush & have made
out to put my clothes away & set my house in order. May the
mercy of the Merciful be with me through the expected scene.
Nine o'clock p.m. was delivered of a son."
from the Diary of Mary Richardson Walker
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 21 Oct INTO THE GARDEN OF THE
WORLD
TEXTS:
"An Act to secure Homesteads to actual Settlers on the
Public Domain," 20 May 1862. Statutes of the United States,
37th Congress, Session II. Repealed 21 Oct. 1976. RAS.
Smith, Virgin Land. Chs. 11-12, 14-16, and p. 251, first
paragraph.
Crevecoeur, "On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an
American Farmer." Letter 2 in Letters from an American
Farmer, 1782. RAS.
Jefferson, "Query xix. The present state of manufactures,
commerce, interior and exterior trade?" from Notes on the
State of Virginia, 1785. RAS.
Willa Cather, "Neighbor Rosicky," 1932. RAS.
RECOMMENDED:
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 13 ("The South and the Myth of the
Garden");
--- "Symbol and Idea in Virgin Land," RAS.
Alan Trachtenberg, "Myth, History, and Literature in Virgin
Land" in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies,
1977.
REFERENCE:
Bryant, William C. "The Prairies." 1833
Burns, Sara. Pastoral Inventions: Rural Life in Nineteenth
Century American Art and Culture. 1989.
Carstensen, Vernon, ed. The Public Lands: Studies in the
History of the Public Domain. 1963.
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! 1913; My Antonia, 1918. A Lost
Lady, 1923.
Dick, Everett. The Sod-House Frontier, 1845-1890. 1954.
Eisinger, Charles E. "Land and Loyalty: Literary Expressions
of Agrarian Nationalism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries." American Literature, May 1949.
Garland, Hamlin. "Among the Corn-Rows." From Main-
Travelled Roads. 1891.
Gates, Paul W. History of Public Land Development. 1968.
Potter. People of Plenty. Part II, "Abundance and the
Shaping of American Character."
Sandoz, Mari. Old Jules. 1935.
Whitman, "Pioneers! O Pioneers!"
"The instant I enter on my own land, the bright idea of
property, of exclusive right, of independence exalts my mind.
. . . This formerly rude soil has been converted by my father
into a pleasant farm, and in return it has established all our
rights. . . ."
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 23 Oct THE MINING FRONTIER I
TEXTS:
James K. Polk, "Fourth Annual Message" to Congress, 5
Dec. 1848. RAS.
Mark Twain, Roughing It, chapters 1-20.
---, "A Gallant Fireman," 1851; "The Dandy Frightening the
Squatter," 1852. RAS
RECOMMENDED:
Billington, The Far Western Frontier. Ch. 9 ("Mormons
Move Westward").
In relation to Mark Twain's tall tales, review ch. 24 of the
The Big Sky and see The Virginian ch.16.
REFERENCE:
Arrington, Leonard J., and Davis Bitton. The Mormon
Experience: A History of the Latter Day Saints. 1979.
Brooks, Juanita. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. 2nd ed.
1962.
Brooks, Van Wyck. The Ordeal of Mark Twain. 1920; 1933.
See esp. ch. 2 ("The Candidate for Life")and ch. 4 ("In the
Crucible").
Callaway, Lew L. Montana's Righteous Hangmen: The
Vigilantes in Action. 1982.
DeVoto, Bernard. Mark Twain's America. 1932. See esp. ch.
6 ("Washoe") and ch. 7 ("Washoe Tailings; and Jackass
Hill").
Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, vol I, 1955-1873; ed.
Frederick Anderson et.al., 1975.
Rogers, Franklin R., ed. The Pattern for Mark Twain's
Roughing It: Letters from Nevada by Samuel and Orion
Clemens, 1861-62. 1962.
Smith, Henry Nash. Mark Twain: The Development of a
Writer. 1962. Ch. 3 ("Transformation of a Tenderfoot.").
"Coach life began again, now . . . and it was a comfort in
those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the majestic
panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and
eat ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures
reveled alternately in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless
sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and
eggs, and after these a pipe--an old, rank, delicious pipe--ham
and eggs and scenery, a "down grade," a flying coach, a
fragrant pipe and a contented heart--these make happiness. It
is what all the ages have struggled for."
Mark Twain
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 28 Oct THE MINING FRONTIER II
TEXT: Twain, Roughing It, chs. 21-61.
RECOMMENDED:
Billington. The Far Western Frontier. Ch. 10 ("The
California Gold Rush") and ch. 11 ("The Miners' Frontier
Moves Eastward").
Louise Amelia Clapp, "A Trip into the Mines" and
"Residence in the Mines," Letters 11 & 15 from The Shirley
Letters, Being Letters Written in 1851-52 from the California
Mines, 1854-55, 1983. RAS.
The concluding chapters (62-79, concerning the Sandwich
Islands [Hawaii]) of Roughing It.
REFERENCE:
Benson, Ivan. Mark Twain's Western Years. 1938.
Branch, Edgar M. The Literary Apprenticeship of Mark
Twain. 1950.
Cleland, R. G., ed. A Letter from a Gold Miner. 1944.
DeQuille, Dan [William Wright]. History of the Big Bonanza.
1876, 1947.
Kolb, Harold. H. "Mark Twain and the Myth of the West." In
The Mythologizing of Mark Twain. Ed. Sara Davis and Philip
Beidler. 1984.
Mack, Effie M. Mark Twain in Nevada. 1947.
Paul, Rodman W. Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-
1880, 1963; California Gold, 1947.
Walker, Franklin. San Francisco's Literary Frontier. 1939.
Walker, Wyman, ed. California Emigrant Letters. 1952.
"It was known that mines of the precious metals existed to a
considerable extent in California at the time of its acquisition.
Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are
more extensive and valuable than was anticipated. The
accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such
an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief
were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of
officers in the public service. . . . Nearly the whole of the
male population of the country have gone to the gold
districts."
James K. Polk
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 30 Oct THE ART OF THE WEST I
(guest lecture)
TEXTS: Slides of sketches, paintings, and photographs by
Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Emanuel
Leutze, George C. Bingham, Mary Hallock Foote, Samuel
Colman, Samuel Seymour, William N. Jackson, Timothy
O'Sullivan, Thomas Moran, Frederick Remington, Charles M.
Russell, Henry F. Farny, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe,
Ansel Adams, and others.
RECOMMENDED:
William H. Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination, 6 parts.
Videotape, Clemons Library, VHS 1374, 1-6.
REFERENCE:
Adams, Celeste M., et al. America: Art & the West. 1986.
Ballinger, James K. Frederick Remington. 1989.
Broder, Patricia J. The American West: The Modern Vision.
1984.
Danly, Susan, and Leo Marx, eds. The Railroad in American
Art. 1988.
Glanz, Dawn. How the West Was Drawn: American Art and
the Settling of the Frontier. 1982.
Hassrick, Peter H. The Way West, 1977; Charles M. Russell,
1989.
Larkin, Oliver W. Art and Life in America. Rev. ed. 1960.
Naef, Weston J., and James N. Wood. Era of Exploration:
The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West,
1860-1885. 1975.
Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape
and Painting,1825-1875. 1980.
Sears, John F. Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in
the Nineteenth Century. 1989.
Taft, Robert. Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, 1850-
1900. 1953.
Trenton, Patricia, and Peter Hassrick. The Rocky Mountains.
1983.
Tyler, Ron. Visions of America: Pioneer Artists in a New
Land. 1983.
---, et al. American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and
Prints. 1987.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 4 Nov READING DAY
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 6 Nov THE ART OF THE WEST II
TEXT: Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose, 1971.
This novel, for which Stegner won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972, is
a (sometimes highly) fictional life of Mary Hallock Foote, a
nineteenth-century local color writer and novelist
who was also the first significant woman artist of the
American West. Angle of Repose is based on Mrs. Foote's
sketches, tales, novels, and illustrations; on her 500
unpublished letters to Helena and Richard Gilder (Augusta
and Thomas Hudson in the novel); and on her reminiscences,
written in the 1920s and edited for publication in 1972 by
Rodman W. Paul as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the
Far West. Paul's 40-page introduction is the best biography of
Foote currently available.
MARY HALLOCK FOOTE'S WESTERN WRITINGS,
arranged according to the chronology of her life, include the
following works:
New Almaden: "A California Mining Camp," Scribner's
Monthly, Feb. 1878; with 14 illustrations by Mrs. Foote.
Santa Cruz: "A Sea-Port on the Pacific," Scribner's
Monthly, Aug. 1878; 10 illustrations.
Leadville: "The Camp of the Carbonates" (text by Ernest
Ingersoll; 6 illustrations by Mrs. Foote), Scribner's Monthly,
Oct. 1879.
The Led-Horse Claim (illus. by Mrs. Foote), 1882-83. John
Bodewin's Testimony, 1885-86. The Last Assembly Ball,
1888-89. These three novels originally appeared in The
Century Magazine.
Michoacan: Sketches of Mexico, in The Century Magazine,
November 1881; January, March, 1882.
Boise: "Pictures of the Far West," eleven full-page
illustrations, accompanied by brief articles in The Century
Magazine, 1888-90, vols. 15-17.
The Chosen Valley, 1892. Coeur D'Alene, 1893-94. Both
novels first appeared in The Century Magazine.
REFERENCE:
Etulain, Richard W. "Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938)."
American Literary Realism, Spring 1972.
Gilder, Helena DeKay. "Mary Hallock Foote." Bookbuyer,
1894-95.
Maguire, James H. Mary Hallock Foote. 1972.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 11 Nov INTRUDERS IN THE GARDEN:
NATIVE AMERICANS I
TEXT: Black Elk Speaks, as told through John G. Neihardt.
1932; 1961.
SUPPLEMENTARY: William T. Hagan, American Indians,
rev. ed. 1979.
REFERENCE:
Brown, Joseph Epes. The Sacred Pipe. 1953. (Black Elk's
account, given to an anthropologist in 1947, of the nature and
meaning of the sacred rites of the Sioux.)
Brumble III, H. David. American Indian Autobiography.
1988.
Conron, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,
and the Ecology of New England. 1983. Ch. 4 ("Bounding
the Land").
Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians of the United States.
1954; 7th printing 1970.
Dodge, Richard I. Our Wild Indians. 1883.
Jefferson. "A Description of the Indians." Query 11 of Notes
on the State of Virginia. 1785.
Krupat, Arnold. For Those Who Come After: A Study of
Native American Autobiography. 1985. Ch. 5.
Mencken, H. L. The American Language. 4th ed. abr. Raven
McDavid. 1963. See ch. 3, "The Beginnings of American:
The First Loan Words."
Neihardt, John G. The Cycle of the West [1822-1890]. 2
vols.: The Mountain Men, and The Twilight of the Sioux.
1915-1941.
---. When the Tree Flowered: The Fictional Autobiography of
Eagle Voice, A Sioux Indian. 1951.
Pearce, Roy H. Savagism and Civilization. 1953.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. 1835-40.
Vol. 1, ch. 18, "The Present and Probable Future Condition
of the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the Territory Possessed by
the Union."
Twain, Mark. Huck and Tom among the Indians. Wr. 1884;
pub. 1969.
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West,
1846-1890. 1984
"Tosawi, good Indian."
Tosawi [Silver Chief], Comanche Chief,
upon surrendering his people to Sheridan
"The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."
General Philip Sheridan
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 13 Nov BURY MY HEART:
NATIVE AMERICANS II
TEXTS:
Bruce Rosenberg, "The Martyrdom of General George
Armstrong Custer, U. S. A," 1975. RAS.
Chief Joseph, "An Indian's Views of Indian Affairs," 1879.
RAS.
Review chs. 7-9 in Black Elk Speaks.
For an 1890 Harper's Weekly article on Chief Joseph
contained in our e-text collections, see
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed-
new?id=HarJose&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data
=/texts/english/modeng/parsed
REFERENCE:
Beal, Merrill D. I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph
and the Nez Perce War. 1963.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. 1970. Ch. 12
(Custer), ch. 13 (Chief Joseph), ch. 18 (Death of Sitting
Bull), ch. 19 (Wounded Knee).
Connell, Evan S. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the
Little Bighorn. 1984.
Custer, Elizabeth. Boots and Saddles, or Life in Dakota with
General Custer. 1885.
Custer, George A. My Life on the Plains. 1874.
Jackson, Helen Hunt. A Century of Dishonor. 1881; Ramona,
1884.
Utley, Robert M. Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong
and the Western Military Frontier.
Whitman, Walt. "From Far Dakota's Canons, 25 June 1876."
1882.
Custer's last known order, scribbled down by
his adjutant, Lt. W. W. Cooke:
"Benteen
Come on. Big
village. Be quick.
Bring packs [i. e., ammunition packs].
W. W. Cooke
P. S. Bring packs"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
ADDITIONAL READINGS ON NATIVE AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Allen, Paula Gunn, ed. Studies in American Indian Literature.
1983.
Deloria, Jr., Vine. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An
Indian Declaration of Independence. Rev. ed. 1985.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. 1984.
Hallowell, A. Irving. "The Impact of the American Indian on
American Culture." American Anthropologist 59 (1957).
Hymes, Dell. 'In Vain I Tried to Tell You': Essays in Native
American Ethnopoetics. 1981.
Jacobs, Melville. The Content and Style of an Oral Literature.
1959.
Krupat, Arnold. The Voice in the Margin: Native American
Literature and the Canon. 1989.
Momaday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain, 1967;
House Made of Dawn. 1968.
Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in Indian Mythology.
1956.
Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry
of the Zuni Indians. 1972.
---, and Barbara Tedlock. Teachings from the American
Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy. 1975.
Toelken, Barre. "Seeing with a Native Eye." In Seeing with a
Native Eye: Essays on Native American Religion. Ed. Walter
Holden Capps. 1976.
Turner, Frederick W. The Portable North American Indian
Reader. 1974.
"We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful
rolling hills, and winding streams as wild. Only to the white
men was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land
infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was
home. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the
blessings of the great mystery. Not until the white man from
the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon
us and the families we loved was it wild for us. When the very
animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it
was for us that the wild west began."
Standing Bear
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 18 Nov DEVASTATION IN THE GARDEN
TEXTS:
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 17-20; ch. 9, pp. 244-49.
William Jennings Bryan, acceptance speech at the Democratic
National Convention, 1896. RAS.
Stephen Crane, "Nebraska's Bitter Fight for Life," 1895.
RAS.
Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion's Paw." From Main-
Travelled Roads, 1891. RAS.
REFERENCE:
Garland, Hamlin. Rose of Dutcher's Coolly, 1895; Boy Life
on the Prairie, 1899; A Son of the Middle Border, 1917; A
Daughter of the Middle Border, 1921.
Howe, Edgar Watson. The Story of a Country Town. 1883.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the
Pastoral Ideal in America. 1964.
Norris, Frank. The Octopus. 1901.
Powell, John Wesley. Report on the Lands of the Arid
Region of the United States. 1878. Edited, with an excellent
introduction, by Wallace Stegner, 1962.
Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John
Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. 1954.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939
Toole, K. Ross. The Rape of the Great Plains. 1976.
Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. 1931.
"The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never
been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern
frozen country received them into its bosom. The homesteads
were few and far apart; here and there a windmill gaunt
against the sky, a sod house crouching in a hollow. But the
great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the
little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre
wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's
mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were
too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be
let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar,
savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness."
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 20 Nov THE LITERATURE OF THE
AMERICAN WEST I: BEGINNINGS
TEXTS:
James Kirke Paulding, The Lion of the West, 1830. Act II,
Scene 2. RAS.
Davy Crockett, "Crockett's Morning Hunt," ca. 1840. RAS.
T. B. Thorpe, "The Big Bear of Arkansas," 1841. RAS.
Review Mark Twain, "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter."
RAS.
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 9 ("The Western Hero in the Dime
Novel").
OPTIONAL:
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 10 ("The Dime Novel Heroine") and
ch. 21 ("The Agricultural West in Literature").
REFERENCE:
Bird, Robert Montgomery. Nick of the Woods. 1837.
Blair, Walter. Native American Humor. 1937, 1960. See
especially tales by A. B. Longstreet, J. J. Hooper, J. G.
Baldwin, and G. W. Harris.
Cohen, Hennig, and William Dillingham. Humor of the Old
Southwest. 2nd ed., 1975.
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. 1841. Ch. 7.
Ellis, Edward S. Seth Jones; or, The Captives of the Frontier.
1877.
Lofaro, Michael A. The Tall Tales of Davy Crockett; The
Second Nashville Series of Crockett Almanacs, 1839-41.
Facsimile ed., 1987.
Stephens, Ann S. Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White
Hunter. 1860. The first dime novel.
Wheeler, Edward L. Deadwood Dick on Deck; or
Calamity Jane, the Heroine of Whoop-up, A Story of Dakota.
1885.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 25 Nov THE LITERATURE OF THE
AMERICAN WEST II: MATURITY
TEXTS:
Bret Harte, "Tennessee's Partner," 1869; and "The Idyl of
Red Gulch," 1870. RAS.
Stephen Crane, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," 1898.
RAS.
Begin reading Wister's The Virginian.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove, 1985.
OPTIONAL:
Stephen Crane, "The Blue Hotel," 1899.
Garland, stories from Main-Travelled Roads, 1891.
Bret Harte, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," 1868; and "The
Outcasts of Poker Flat," 1869.
REFERENCE:
Brand, Max [Frederick Faust]. Destry Rides Again. 1930.
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg. The Ox-Bow Incident. 1940.
Crane, Stephen. The Western Writings of Stephen Crane. Ed.
Frank Bergon. 1979.
Cawelti, John G. "The Western." Ch. 8 of Adventure,
Mystery and Romance. 1976.
Grey, Zane. Riders of the Purple Sage. 1912.
L'Amour, Louis. How the West Was Won. 1962.
Milton, John R. The Novel of the American West. 1980.
Pilkington, William T., ed. Critical Essays on the Western
American Novel. 1980.
Sonnichsen, C. L. From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on
Western Fiction. 1978.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.
"Travellers tumbling over each other in their haste to trumpet
the radical differences between Eastern and Western life have
created a generally wrong opinion. No one has yet dared to
declare that if a man drew three treys in Syracuse, N. Y., in
many a Western city the man would be blessed with a full
house. . . . It is this fact which has kept the sweeping march
of the West from being chronicled in any particularly true
manner."
Stephen Crane, "Galveston, Texas in 1895"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
27 Nov-1 Dec THANKSGIVING BREAK
~~~~~~~~~~~~
M 2 Dec THE LITERATURE OF THE
AMERICAN WEST III: SURVIVALS
TEXT: Owen Wister, The Virginian, A Horseman of the
Plains, 1902.
THE VIRGINIAN AS PLAY AND FILM:
A play version of The Virginian was written by Wister and
producer Kirk La Shelle. Starring Dustin Farnum, it opened
at the Manhattan Theatre in New York on 5 January 1904,
ran for approximately four months, and went on the road for
a decade. The play script was the basis for subsequent film
versions:
1914, dir. Cecil B. de Mille. With Dustin Farnum. Silent.
1923, dir. Tom Forman. With Kenneth Harlan, Russell
Simpson, Pat O'Malley, and Florence Vidor. Silent; 74 min.
Clemons Library, VHS4583.
1929, dir. Victor Fleming. Howard Estebrook, screenwriter.
With Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Richard Arlen, and Mary
Brian. B & W; 90 min. Clemons Library, VHS3542.
1946, dir. Stuart Gilmore. With Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy,
Sonny Tufts, and Barbara Britton. Technicolor; 90 min.
REFERENCE:
Owen Wister published three collections of Western stories
prior to The Virginian: Red Men and White, 1896; Lin
McLean, 1898; and The Jimmyjohn Boss, 1900. His journals
and letters for the decade of summers he spent in Wyoming,
1885-95, are printed in Owen Wister Out West, ed. Fanny
Kemble Wister, 1958.
For an analogue to ch. 35 of The Virginian, review Crane's
"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." For ch. 30, cf. The Ox-
Bow Incident, ch.4; The Shirley Letters, ch.11; Caughey,
Their Majesties, The Mob, 1960.
White, Edward G. The Eastern Establishment and the
Western Experience: The West of Frederick Remington,
Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister. 1968; 1989.
Vorpahl, Ben M., ed. The Frederick Remington-Owen Wister
Letters. 1972.
"The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on
the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as
ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but
drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was
almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the
man Trampas:--
`When you call me that, smile.'"
The Virginian
CLASSIC WESTERN FILMS:
The Great Train Robbery, 1903. With Bronco Billy Anderson.
The first American film and the first Western film. For
footage, see "Play the Legend," pt. 5 of The West of the
Imagination. Dir. William H Goetzmann. 1986. Clemons
videotape, VHS 1374.
Stagecoach, 1939. Directed by John Ford; with John Wayne,
Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Andy
Devine.
High Noon, 1952. Directed by Fred Zinneman; with Gary
Cooper and Grace Kelly. Based on "The Tin Star," by John
W. Cunningham.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962. Directed by John
Ford; with John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, and Lee
Marvin. Based on the story by Dorothy M. Johnson which
first appeared in Cosmopolitan and was collected in Johnson's
Indian Country in 1953. Rpt. 1979.
Dances with Wolves, 1990. Directed by and starring Kevin
Costner. Novel and film script by Michael Blake.
Lonesome Dove, 1991. Six-hour teleplay version of Larry
McMurtry's 1985 Pulitzer Prize novel. With Robert Duvall,
Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Robert Urich,
Anjelica Huston.
WESTERN FILM BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique. 1971.
---. "The Western: A Look at the Evolution of a Formula."
Ch. 8 of Adventure, Mystery and Romance. 1976.
Nachbar, Jack, ed. Focus on the Western. 1974.
Pilkington, William T., and Don Graham, eds. Western
Movies. 1979.
Tuska, Jon. Filming the West, 1976; The American West in
Film, 1988.
"This is the West, Sir. When the legend becomes fact, print
the legend."
Maxwell Scott, editor of the Shinbone Star,
in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
~~~~~~~~~~~~
W 4 Dec INTERPRETATIONS:
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER AND
THE FRONTIER THESIS
TEXTS:
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier
in American History"(1893) and "Contributions of the West
to American Democracy" (1903), in The Turner Thesis, ed.
George Rogers Taylor, 1972.
Patricia Nelson Limerick, "Region and Reason" in All Over
the Map: Rethinking America's Regions, ed. E. L. Ayers and
P. S. Onuf, 1996. RAS
Smith, Virgin Land. Ch. 22 ("The Myth of the Garden and
Turner's Frontier Hypothesis").
Potter, People of Plenty. Ch. 7 ("Abundance and the Frontier
Hypothesis").
REFERENCE:
Articles in The Turner Thesis by critics Louis M. Hacker,
Benjamin F. Wright, Jr., George Wilson Pierson, and Carlton
Hayes; and defenders Avery Craven, Walter Prescott Webb,
Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, and Ray A. Billington.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History.
1920. Essays.
---. The Rise of the New West, 1819-29. 1906.
---. The Significance of Sections in American History. 1932.
Essays reprinted posthumously.
---. The United States, 1830-1850: The Nation and its
Sections. 1935. An unfinished, posthumous publication,
edited by Turner's students, which continues The Rise of the
New West.
Billington, Ray A. Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian,
Scholar, Teacher. 1973. See especially chs. 4, 5, 18, and 19.
Billington, Ray A. America's Frontier Heritage. 1966.
---. The American Frontier Thesis: Attack and Defense. 1971.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Progressive Historians: Turner,
Beard, and Parrington. 1968.
Limerick, Patricia N. The Legacy of Conquest: The
Unbroken Past of the American West. 1987.
See Michael Kidd's web site on Turner at
http://avery.med.virginia.edu/~mwk2c/turner/turner.html
(this site requires Netscape 2.0 or better).
"Frontier":
[Europe] "That part of a country which fronts or faces
another country . . . as, the German frontier of France."
[U. S.] "A region just beyond or at the edge of a settled
area; an undeveloped area . . . for discovery."
Webster's Second International Dictionary
and American Heritage Dictionary
"Up to our own day American history has been in a large
degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The
existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and
the advance of American settlement westward, explain
American development." F. J. Turner
"The frontier hypothesis presents the most attractive single
explanation of the distinctive trends of American history."
Frederic L. Paxson
"Turner and his followers were the fabricators of a tradition
which is not only fictitious but also to a very large extent
positively harmful." Louis M. Hacker
"How much of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier hypothesis
is reliable and useful today? . . .
How shall we account for the industrial revolution?"
George Wilson Pierson
"Though conviction now burns so low, it remains to be noted
that even the unkindest of Turner's critics have conceded, with
a kind of be-deviled monotony, that some relation most likely
does exist between our history and our frontier."
Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick
~~~~~~~~~~~~
9-16 Dec FINAL EXAMINATIONS