9.2 GREAT PLAINS GRASSLANDS EXPLOITED

1850 - 1950

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2. Narratives of the Great Plains
  • Progressive story: Great American Desert to Garden of the World.
  • Declensionist narrative: natural garden to dust bowl desert.
  • Alternative stories: native Americans, women, blacks, other animals.
3. F. J. Turner's Hero Narrative
  • Land is absent of the hero
  • The hero is transferred across space
  • Combat between hero and villain
  • The hero's receipt of a gift
  • The victory of the hero
  • The frontier is the absence of settlement
  • Europeans are transferred across space in frontier lines
  • Frontiersman combats wilderness and Indian
  • The heroes receive gifts of free land
  • The hero transforms the wilderness
4. Boone's First View of Kentucky
  • William Rainey, 1849
5. Fur Traders Descending the Missouri
  • George Caleb Bingham, 1845. French trader and mixed-race son.
6. South Pass, Wyoming
  • Fur Trade of the Rockies.
  • John Jacob Astor.
  • Westward settlement.
7. South Pass Monument
  • The Parting of the Ways.
  • Oregon Trail north.
  • California Trail south.
8. Oregon Trail
  • Chimney Rock.
  • Kanesville Crossing.
9. Oregon Pass

10. Salt Lake Valley

11. James Beckwourth

  • James Beckwourth, black mountain man who explored great plains and western mountains.
  • Discovered Beckwourth Pass in California north of Reno; stopover for emigrants to California.
12. Walter Prescott Webb's Narrative
  • Progressive narrative.
  • Theory of environmental history: environment and technology.
  • Environment as actor: limits European expansion westward.
  • Arid; level; treeless land.
  • 20" rainfall line at 100th meridian.
  • Technological determinism.
13. Rancher's Frontier, 1866-1885 
  • Longhorn cattle drives.
  • Chisholm Trail.
  • Abilene, Kansas, 1866.
  • North-south cattle drives meet east-west railroad.
  • Drought, 1883; panic 1884; blizzards, 1885-6.
  • Decline; transformation by meat-packing; fences; stock-breeding.
14. Black Cowboys
  • 5000 black cowboys drove cattle on the Chisholm trail in post Civil War era.
  • Tended huge cattle herds; skilled hands.
  • Nat Love, 1869, in Kansas; dubbed "Deadwood Dick," 1876, Dakota rodeo.
15. Barbed Wire, 1874
  • Technologies that changed the plains.
16. Windmill, 1880s
  • Technologies that changed the plains.
  • Bonita Well.
  • Made homesteading possible.
  • Made fenced cattle and sheep ranching possible.
17. John Deere Plow, 1846
  • Technologies that changed the plains.
  • Steel plowshare scours heavy prairie soils.
18. Across the Continent
  • Technologies that changed the plains, 1869.
  • F.F. Palmer, "Across the Continent: Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way," 1869.
  • Transcontinental railroad; market; immigrants.
19. Combine
  • Technologies that changed the plains.
  • Mechanized harvesting equipment.
  • Monocultures of wheat and corn.
20. Farmer's Frontier
  • Prairie house.
  • Windmill makes gardens possible.
21. Black Homesteaders
  • Shore family, Custer County, Nebraska, 1880s.
  • Exodus of 1879: black migration into Kansas of 20,000 poor blacks via Chisholm trail.
22. Women's Work on the Plains
  • Women as reluctant pioneers versus women as self-reliant homesteaders.
23. Women as Homesteaders
  • Homesteader could be head of a family (e.g. widow or divorcee); twenty-one years of age (e.g. single woman).
24. Women's Work on the Plains
  • Gathering buffalo chips for fuel.
  • Building sod house.
  • Digging wells.
  • Herding cattle.
  • Cultivating fields.
  • Preserving Food (Mason Jar).
  • Teaching school.
  • Raising children.
25. Ecological Revolutions: Great Plains Indians
  • Non-human nature/ecology
  • Human production/ economy
  • Human reproduction biological
  • Human reproduction social
  • Consciousness
  • Nature as self-active; coyote/bison
  • Hunting culture: foot and horse-based
  • Steady state/impact of disease/warfare
  • Tribal villages/councils/festivals
  • Mimetic; animistic
26. Great Plains: Preindustrial Society, 1830s - 1860s
  • Non-human nature/ecology
  • Human production/economy
  • Human reproduction biological
  • Consciousness
  • Nature as active: droughts, storms
  • Mercantile extraction beaver, bison, cattle, homesteading
  • Population growth; immigration
  • Written word; Bible, fatalism re: nature
27. Great Plains: Industrial Capitalism, 1860s - 1990s
  • Non-human nature/ ecology
  • Human production/ economy
  • Human reproduction --biological, social, political
  • Consciousness
  • Nature as passive, controlled, watered
  • Capitalist ranching; agriculture
  • Demographic transition; urban; land speculation
  • Analytic,quantitative,managerial,dualistic
28. Questions for Discussion
  • What new narratives can be told about the Great Plains?
  • What is the future of the Great Plains?