The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West PDF
Preview The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West
T heL egacyof Conquest T heL egacyof Conquest The Unbroken Past ofthe American West Patricia Nelson Limerick W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • NEW YORK • LONDON Copyright © 1987 by Patricia Nelson Limerick. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario L3R 1B4. Printed in the United States of America. The text and the display type of this book are composed in Baskerville. Com position and manufacturing are by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group. Book design is by Marjorie J. Flock. First published as a Norton paperback 1988. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Limerick, Patricia Nelson, 1951- The legacy of conquest. Bibliography: p Includes index. 1. West(U.S.)—History. 2. West (U.S.)—Historiography. I. Title. F591.L56 1987 978 86-23883 ISBN 0-3T3-304T7-3 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 37 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3NU 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 To Jeff Limerick, and to our utterly Western nephews and niece, Jay, Michael, and Franane Contents Acknowledgments 9 Introduction: Closing the Frontier and Opening Western History 17 Part One • THE CONQUERORS One Empire of Innocence 35 Two Property Values 55 Three Denial and Dependence 78 Four Uncertain Enterprises 97 Five The Meeting Ground of Past and Present /74 Part Two • THE CONQUERORS MEET THEIR MATCH Six The Persistence of Natives 179 Seven America the Borderland 222 Eight Racialism on the Run 259 Nine Mankind the Manager 293 Ten The Burdens of Western American History 322 Notes 35/ Further Reading 369 Index 38y Acknowledgments I g o t th e idea fo r this book on June 30, 1981, at a conference in Idaho called “The American West: Colonies in Revolt.” During that first day of the conference, government and business officials complained about the current problems of the West, and the prevalent presumption seemed to be that these problems were quite recent in origin and bore little relation to the distant frontier West. I am grateful to Jeanette Germain for initiating the process that brought me to Idaho and to William K. Everson, William Goetzmann, Peter Hassrick, Bruce John son, Bud Johns, Annick Smith, and, especially, Alvin Josephy, Richard Harte, and Bob Waite for organizing the event. Those Sun Valley conferences were one of the best things going in Western affairs; I deeply regret their disappearance. At that conference, after listening to the first day’s speakers, I said in my own speech that the West needed someone compa rable to C. Vann Woodward to write The Burden of Western History. The fact is that there is no one comparable to C. Vann Woodward. But Woodward’s example and his encouragement early in the project made the difference between a vision that might have vanished and one that stayed and brought forth at least limited results. My adviser, Howard Roberts Lamar, not only read the man- Acknowledgments IO uscript but made it possible. When I left California for graduate school at Yale, I had no particular interest in the history of my home region. It was about the luckiest thing that ever happened to me: to have Howard Lamar show me what I had missed in my first twenty-one years in the West. As an adviser, Lamar is nearly unrivaled in academic circles for his kindness, good humor, and enthusiasm for widely varying approaches to history. The sound parts of this book are a tribute to his guidance; any tenuous sec tions are a credit to his tolerance. Harvard University and the Charles Warren Center gave me a full year of leave in 1983—84. That year gave me not only essential working time but working and thinking conditions as close to heaven as I expect to get. Any time I wanted to test an idea, I had only to step outside my office to see who was around. With Bernard Bailyn, Barbara DeWolfe, Pat Denault, Jon Rob erts, Drew McCoy, Don Bellomy, Alan Brinkley, and Helena Wall at hand, the intellectual equivalent of a brisk physical workout was always available. That none of these people found enor mous significance in the American West only added to the value of their company, reminding me of what I most hope for in the way of reader response: not agreement, but spirited discussion. In 1981, James Thomson, Jr., introduced me to his Nieman program at Harvard and transformed a minor interest in jour nalism and current events into a passion. I am grateful as well to John Seigenthaler and Sid Hurlburt of USA Today for allowing me to move from consumer to occasional producer in journalis tic matters, for reacquainting me with brevity, and for providing the income supplement that allowed me to stay a jump ahead of library acquisitions. From the start of this project, Ed Barber and Steve Forman of Norton have been committed and responsive editors. Ed Barber’s significance escalated in July of 1984, when I moved to Boulder and we agreed it was time for him to put the pres sure on, if this book was to be finished in our lifetimes. He is, the next two years proved, unrelentingly a man of his word. Relieved of the obligation to remind me of deadlines, Steve Forman was an ideal coach, kind and critical without contradiction. I am
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