On a Claim in Custer County, Nebraska: Identity, Power, and History in the Solomon D

Home , American pioneer, Carpenter (crater), Charles Mathews, Elbridge Ayer Burbank, George Barnes (priest), Herb Sargent

‘PROVING UP’ ON A CLAIM IN CUSTER COUNTY, NEBRASKA: IDENTITY, POWER, AND HISTORY IN THE SOLOMON D. BUTCHER PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE (1886-1892)

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

M. Melissa Wolfe, M.A.

* * * * *

The Ohio State University 2005

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Barbara Groseclose, Advisor

Professor Arline Meyer ______Professor Andrew Sheldon Advisor History of Art Graduate Program

ABSTRACT

Among the most important visual archives of the late 19th-century American West is the photographic archive created by Solomon Devoe Butcher (1856-1927), who began photographing settlers in Custer County, Nebraska, in 1886. Due to the depth of material—nearly 900 portraits from a single county over just six years—and to Butcher’s process of working on-site, the archive can reliably be approached as a very close and thick history, a “micro-history,” of the experience of Plains settlement.

This dissertation suggests that Butcher’s archive offers a mode to understand the ways in which power fills space, quite literally, on a specific western landscape by approaching it as a visual nexus, as a point within which various competing beliefs and activities converge. I conceptualize the relationship of the cultural agents that vie for voice, for power, in these portraits as that of a network, a web of paths through which each agent juggles for a dominant voice in the definition of the settlers’ lives. The paths of this network are fluid, multi-leveled, multi-directional, and frequently unstable, and thus their agents cannot all be defined or categorized by the same approach. Through a series of contextual essays I work to analyze each of the agents—such as agrarian and progressive ideologies, the identity of the pioneer and the westerner, the power of the

Plains landscape, the presence of failure, and the awareness of history—and the nature of their visual presence in the archive.

The archive and this approach reveals the specific experience of the Plains in the

1880s as a moment and location of profound transition when the colonializing agendas

and structures of industrialism, the long-term nature of the Plains, and a fledgling

regional identity all increasingly put pressure on the received beliefs and identities of the county’s settlers. This transition was experienced self-conscious of an audience. Created

to record the county’s participation in national history, the archive itself acted as a venue

for settlers to both conceal the agendas of their received identities to their perceived

audience, and yet also to reveal the nature of the systematic failings operative in their

experience.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my advisor, Babs Groseclose, for her unwavering belief in my

work throughout my graduate career, and for her enthusiasm for and support of the

academic environment that fostered the intellectual challenges, critical thinking, and camaraderie within which this dissertation was formulated and written. My committee members, Arline Meyer and Andy Sheldon, offered the balance of academic rigor, friendship, and collegiality that is rarely enjoyed by a graduate student. I am flattered and inspired by their example.

I have received generous support from my department, which has funded necessary research and travel monies. I thank the Graduate Committee and Department

Chair Mark Fullerton for their belief in the validity of my work. I have also received a

Presidential Fellowship from the Graduate School at Ohio State University, and an

American Art Dissertation Fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation, each of which funded my work for a year, and for which I am extremely grateful. The Nebraska State

Historical Foundation also awarded a research fellowship to support the work realized here, and I am thankful as well for their support.

I have had the great pleasure to have worked with institutions other than my university in the creation of this dissertation. John Carter, at the Nebraska State

Historical Society, has readily shared his knowledge of, and inevitable fascination with,

Solomon Butcher and I am dearly grateful for his assistance. The staff at the society’s archives and library, especially Teri Raburn and past-photographic curator, Jill Koelling, has gone extraordinarily out of their way to assist me with my work. Mary Landkamer, curator at the Custer County Historical Society, and her volunteer staff, especially Char and Tammy, were absolutely indispensable in the success of my scholarship. The basis of this dissertation rests on the information they so readily made available to me.

Working in Broken Bow was one of the most pleasurable aspects of my research. I was also assisted readily by the Special Collection staff at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and, as always, by Riva Feshbach, Coordinator of Exhibitions there.

Throughout my research and writing, I have been the privileged member of a dissertation seminar whose core members, Babs, Steve Hunt, Aida Stanish, Wendy

Koenig, and Nora Kilbane, never once made critical commentary feel anything short of invigorating. I am especially indebted to Nora, her unwavering friendship over the past decade has more than once provided the voice I most trusted. In my development as a scholar, I have been most encouraged, challenged, and inspired by a community of other scholars and friends who have without a doubt left their collective mark on this dissertation. I wish to thank Bill Bale, Jeff Ball, Rod Bouc, Anne Deffenbaugh, Martha

Evans, Ray Jahn, Samantha Kimple, Rick Livingston, Nannette V. Maciejunes, Steve

Melville, Tom Ramseyer, Frank and Kathy Richardson, Jennifer Seeds, Jill Stoelting,

Sam and David Sweetkind, Marie Watkins, and Doug Zullo.

While it is painfully predictable to end one’s expressions of gratitude with an acknowledgement of the unqualified support of family, in this case, my family has indeed

been indispensable. Far more knowledgeable of farming and the lives of farmers than I,

though having grown up in their midst, will ever be, my family has offered information

with an honesty and self-deprecating humor that permeates rural Plains community. I am

dearly indebted to them for bringing a human spark and a really good laugh now and then to my academic work. Thanks mom, Dawn, Adeana, Tom, Ramona, and Brent. I am

indeed a lucky “black-sheep.”

Finally, I with to thank my husband, Ashley Dunn, for being not only good to me

but good for me. He has inspired me to laugh and work harder all in the same breath.

VITA

October 1, 1963...... Born – Orleans, Nebraska

1986...... B.A. Humanities, Stephens College

1997...... M.A. Art History, The Ohio State University

1994-1999 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University

1996-1998 ...... Research Assistant, The Ohio State University

1991-1993; 1999-2000...... Adjunct Professor, Youngstown State University

PUBLICATIONS

1. “Rod Bouc…” (Springfield, OH: Springfield Museum of Art, 2003).

2. “The Challenge of Seeing,” Edmund Kuehn: Retrospective (Columbus, OH: Columbus Museum of Art, 2002).

3. “An Artist’s Life,” Laura Ziegler: A Columbus Sculptor Comes Home (Columbus, OH: Columbus Museum of Art, 2001).

4, American Indian Portraits: Elbridge Ayer Burbank in the West (1897-1910) (Youngstown, OH: The Butler Institute of American Art, 2000).

5. “The Death (and Rebirth) of Cleopatra,” Timeline: Journal of the Ohio Historical Society 18:2 (2001).

6. “Ernest L. Blumenschein” and “Elbridge Ayer Burbank,” American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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7. “William and Elizabeth Creighton: An Early Ohio Portrait by Charles Bird King,” Timeline: Journal of the Ohio Historical Society 15:3 (1998).

8. “Portraits and Preaching: Reverend David Bulle,” Timeline: Journal of the Ohio Historical Society 14:1 (1997).

9. with Nannette V. Maciejunes, “Like Going Home: Henry Farny’s American West,” Timeline: Journal of the Ohio Historical Society 12:1 (1995).

10. “Claude Hirst, Companions” and “Frederick Rondel, Picnic,” Master Paintings at The Butler Institute of American Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994).

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: History of Art

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv VITA...... vii LIST OF FIGURES ...... xi INTRODUCTION LOCATING A CLAIM ...... 1 1.1 The Archive...... 3 1.2 Visual analysis...... 17 1.3 Approach...... 23 CHAPTER 2 STAKING A CLAIM ...... 30 2.1 Recording the Disappearing Frontier...... 30 2.2 Custer County, 1886 ...... 44 CHAPTER 3 THE YEOMAN FARMER...... 65 3.1 Defining the Yeoman Farmer ...... 65 3.2 Acting like a Yeoman Farmer...... 75 CHAPTER 4 THE PIONEER...... 99 4.1 Defining the Pioneer ...... 99 4.2 Acting like a Pioneer...... 107 CHAPTER 5 THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER ...... 132 5.1 Defining the Progressive Farmer ...... 132 5.2 Acting like a Progressive Farmer...... 157 CHAPTER 6 THE GREAT PLAINS ...... 186 6.1 Defining the Great Plains...... 186 6.2 Acting like the Great Plains ...... 197 CHAPTER 7 FAILURE...... 219 7.1 Defining Failure...... 219 7.2 Acting like Failure...... 246

CHAPTER 8 THE WESTERNER...... 258 8.1 Defining a Westerner ...... 258 8.2 Acting like a Westerner ...... 271 CHAPTER 9 HISTORY ...... 290 9.1 Defining a Pioneer History ...... 290 9.2 Acting like a Pioneer History...... 299 9.3 Acting like a Pioneer Historian...... 317 CHAPTER 10 PROVING UP...... 328 10.1 Conclusion ...... 328 APPENDIX FIGURES ...... 349 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 430

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1 Map of Nebraska. Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), xxii...... 350 Fig. 2 S.D. Butcher, Bachelor house of Perry brothers, near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 350 Fig. 3 S.D. Butcher, Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 350 Fig. 4 S.D. Butcher, “Nebraska Gothic,” the John Curry sod house near West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 350 Fig. 5 Virginia Slims cigarette ad, 1979...... 351 Fig. 6 S.D. Butcher, C.H. Peters, West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 351 Fig. 7 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of Tom Smith, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 351 Fig. 8 S.D. Butcher, Ab Butcher on Solomon Butcher’s picture wagon on the Middle Loup River getting material for Custer County Book, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 351 Fig. 9 Alexander Gardner, President Lincoln on Battle-field of Antietam, 1862. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 23...... 352 Fig. 10 Alexander Gardner, Studying the Art of War, 1863. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 45...... 352 Fig. 11 Alexander Gardner, U.S. Military Telegraph Construction Corps, 1864. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 62...... 352 Fig. 12 Alexander Gardner, Battery No. 1, Near Yorktown, 1862. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 12...... 352 Fig. 13 Alexander Gardner, A Fancy Group, Front of Petersburg, 1864. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 76...... 353 Fig. 14 S.D. Butcher, Burlington and Missouri River Railroad graders at West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. ..353 Fig. 15 S.D. Butcher, Burlington engine number 120, the first train into Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 353

Fig. 16 S.D. Butcher, Old Mitchell sod house where Ketchem killed Olive in 1887 (or 1989), 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 353 Fig. 17 S.D. Butcher, The town of Walworth, Nebraska, moved from the north to the south side of the Middle Loup River, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 354 Fig. 18 S.D. Butcher, Surene Pike, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 354 Fig. 19 S.D. Butcher, Harvey Andrews and family herding their livestock in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek, near New Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 354 Fig. 20 S.D. Butcher, The Harvey Andrews family on their homestead two and one- half miles northwest of New Helena, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 354 Fig. 21 S.D. Butcher, Harvey Andrews in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek, near New Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 355 Fig. 22 S.D. Butcher, The Harvey Andrews family posed at the grave of son Willie Andrews, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 355 Fig. 23 S.D. Butcher, Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 355 Fig. 24 S.D. Butcher, Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 355 Fig. 25 S.D. Butcher, Threshing with horses in Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 356 Fig. 26 S.D. Butcher, John Delane Wagon Shop, Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 356 Fig. 27 S.D. Butcher, “Settlers taking the law in their own hands—cutting fence on old Brighton Ranch,” 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 356 Fig. 28 S.D. Butcher, Ephriam Swain Finch demonstrating how he attempted to kill grasshoppers in 1876, c. 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 356 Fig. 29 S.D. Butcher, James Milburn and family, Milburn, Custer county, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 357 Fig. 30 S.D. Butcher, Page Family sod house near Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 357 Fig. 31 S.D. Butcher, F.J. Halsey, east of the Jefferson Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 357 Fig. 32 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 357 Fig. 33 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 358 Fig. 34 S.D. Butcher, Near Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 358 Fig. 35 S.D. Butcher, Al Burger at Genet, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 358 Fig. 36 S.D. Butcher, The Henry Luther home in Ortello Valley, near Dale, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 358

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Fig. 37 S.D. Butcher, H.G. Shannon, near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 359 Fig. 38 S.D. Butcher, Family on a stock ranch in Custer county, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 359 Fig. 39 S.D. Butcher, The Peter M. Barnes homestead near Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 359 Fig. 40 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 359 Fig. 41 S.D. Butcher, George Paine, Sr. and Family, Westerville, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 360 Fig. 42 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 360 Fig. 43 S.D. Butcher, Rev. William McCaslin house, known as the “Preacher Home,” in Rose Valley near Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 360 Fig. 44 “Kansas Dugout,” nd. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 62...... 360 Fig. 45 “Threshing wheat in Dakota in the 1880s,” nd. Jennewein Western Library, Friends of the Middle Border, Mitchell, South Dakota. Reprinted in Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 99...... 361 Fig. 46 “Homesteader and Family on Claim,” c. 1889. Division of Manuscripts, Library, University of Oklahoma. Reprinted in Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 99...... 361 Fig. 47 Untitled, nd. Colorado Historical Society. Reprinted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 254...... 361 Fig. 48 “Sod house built by J.F. Bantam.” Reprinted from Ernie E. Kuhl and William J. Dunlay, 1872-1972 Orleans Centennial (no publisher, 1972), 144...... 361 Fig. 49 “Sod house of Joseph F. Delimont.” Reprinted from Ernie E. Kuhl and William J. Dunlay, 1872-1972 Orleans Centennial (no publisher, 1972), 18.362 Fig. 50 “Merna town plat,” 1885. Reprinted from Everts and Kirk. The Official State Atlas of Nebraska State Atlas. Philadelphia, 1885...... 362 Fig. 51 “T-town plan.” Reprinted from John C. Hudson, “The Plains Country Town,” The Great Plains: Environment and Culture, eds. Brian W. Blouet and Frederick C. Luebke (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 104...... 362 Fig. 52 “Third Merna.” Reprinted from Merna: Heritage Memories, 1880s-1980s (Callaway, NE: Merna Heritage History Committee, 1989), 13...... 362 Fig. 53 S.D. Butcher, Methodist Church of Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 363 Fig. 54 S.D. Butcher, House of J.C. Stevens, banker at Ansley, Custer County,

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Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 363 Fig. 55 S.D. Butcher, Family on the porch of residence in Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 363 Fig. 56 S.D. Butcher, Group on porch of Windsor Hotel at Sargent, Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 363 Fig. 57 S.D. Butcher, Two-story school building, Anselmo, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 364 Fig. 58 S.D. Butcher, The Pacific Hotel at Callaway, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 364 Fig. 59 S.D. Butcher, “William McKee, West Union, T.P., 1886”, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 364 Fig. 60 S.D. Butcher, Cole Farm, south of Mason City, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 364 Fig. 61 “Railroads and the Frontier, 1880.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 57...... 365 Fig. 62 “Railroads and the Frontier, 1885.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 58...... 365 Fig. 63 “Nebraska 1877.” Reprinted from Sylvia Nimmo, Maps Showing County Boundaries (Papillon, NE: Sylvia Nimmo, 1978)...... 365 Fig. 64 “Nebraska 1885.” Reprinted from Sylvia Nimmo, Maps Showing County Boundaries (Papillon, NE: Sylvia Nimmo, 1978)...... 365 Fig. 65 S.D. Butcher, R.G. Carr and Family, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 366 Fig. 66 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 366 Fig. 67 S.D. Butcher, John Hohman sod house, Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 366 Fig. 68 S.D. Butcher, Robert G. Farritor family, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 366 Fig. 69 S.D. Butcher, The Chrisman Sisters on a claim in Goheen settlement on Lieban (Lillian) Creek, Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 367 Fig. 70 S.D. Butcher, Rev. and Mrs. E.D. Eubank on Clear Creek west of Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 367 Fig. 71 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 367 Fig. 72 S.D. Butcher, Deep well on the Pollard homestead near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 367 Fig. 73 “Kansas Dugout,” nd. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 62...... 368 Fig. 74 S.D. Butcher, Ben Kile, near Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 368

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Fig. 75 S.D. Butcher, Northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 368 Fig. 76 S.D. Butcher, Lycurgus Amos and family, nd. Custer County Historical Society...... 368 Fig. 77 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 369 Fig. 78 S.D. Butcher, The David Hilton family near Weissert, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 369 Fig. 79 S.D. Butcher, Sod school house in Custer County, Nebraska. Mary E. Sutton, teacher, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 369 Fig. 80 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 369 Fig. 81 S.D. Butcher, John W. Barnes, Round Valley, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 370 Fig. 82 S.D. Butcher, West of Callaway, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 370 Fig. 83 S.D. Butcher, Bill Popejoy and Lon Rambo families, near Gates, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 370 Fig. 84 S.D. Butcher, Pfrehm Family Home, North part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 370 Fig. 85 S.D. Butcher, North Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 371 Fig. 86 S.D. Butcher, Sod house near Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 371 Fig. 87 S.D. Butcher, Grand Army of the Republic picnic at West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 371 Fig. 88 S.D. Butcher, Finn Morris, north Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 371 Fig. 89 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, near West Union, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 372 Fig. 90 John Karst, after Winslow Homer, “Summer in the County.” Appleton’s Journal, July 10, 1869, Reprinted from .Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. and Franklin Kelly, Winslow Homer (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1995), 62...... 372 Fig. 91 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 372 Fig. 92 S.D. Butcher, Sod house near Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 372 Fig. 93 S.D. Butcher, Near West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 373 Fig. 94 S.D. Butcher, “A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 373 Fig. 95 S.D. Butcher, Al Burger at Genet, Custer County, Nebarska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 373 Fig. 96 S.D. Butcher, Lanterman Family, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 373

Fig. 97 S.D. Butcher, Spring in East Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 374 Fig. 98 S.D. Butcher, Bidgood, northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 374 Fig. 99 S.D. Butcher, Bachelor Preparing Supper, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 374 Fig. 100 S.D. Butcher, Watson, north part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 374 Fig. 101 S.D. Butcher, G.R. Russom family in front of their sod house in Borken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 375 Fig. 102 S.D. Butcher, Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Gordon and Family, Merna, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 375 Fig. 103 S.D. Butcher, Small girl standing by vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 375 Fig. 104 S.D. Butcher, Northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 375 Fig. 105 S.D. Butcher, Albert M. and Nancy Merchant Allee on their homestead near Victoria Springs, Custer County, Nebraska, 1890. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 376 Fig. 106 S.D. Butcher, The Garniss family, Dry Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 376 Fig. 107 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 376 Fig. 108 S.D. Butcher, Vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 376 Fig. 109 S.D. Butcher, Exhibit of the Delano Bros., Oconto, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 377 Fig. 110 S.D. Butcher, Huckleberry sod house, Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 377 Fig. 111 S.D. Butcher, Family standing in cornfield on farm, Custer County, Nebraska, 1890. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 377 Fig. 112 S.D. Butcher, Couple and seven children in front of a sod house, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 377 Fig. 113 S.D. Butcher, David S. Copp, Near Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 378 Fig. 114 S.D. Butcher, Nelson Potter, Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 378 Fig. 115 S.D. Butcher, “In the Garden” Near Anselmo, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 378 Fig. 116 Henry Worrall, Drouthy Kansas. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted from Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 67...... 378 Fig. 117 “Quarter-section survey system.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska” A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 47...... 379 Fig. 118 “Location of site for S.D. Butcher, Burow family near Merna, Nebraska,

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1886.” Photograph collection of Nebraska State Historical Society...... 379 Fig. 119 “Map of Nebraska,” 1857. Reprinted from John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800-1860,” Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59...... 379 Fig. 120 “Map of Nebraska,” 1859. Reprinted from John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800-1860,” Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59...... 379 Fig. 121 “General Land Office map of Nebraska,” 1876. Reprinted from John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800-1860,” Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59...... 380 Fig. 122 “Silver Creek Stock Farm and Residence of N.B. Berggren, Wahoo, Saunders Co., Neb.,” Nebraska State Atlas, 1885. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 380 Fig. 123 “A. and Sophia Fitzpatrick homestead near Fort Scott, Kansas,” 1887 Kansas State Atlas. Kansas State Historical Society...... 380 Fig. 124 F.F. Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1868. Currier & Ives print...... 380 Fig. 125 Sallie Cover, The Homestead of Ellsworth Ball, c. 1880s. Nebraska State Museum...... 381 Fig. 126 S.D. Butcher, Farm scene, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 381 Fig. 127 S.D. Butcher, Frischkorn Family sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 381 Fig. 128 S.D. Butcher, Wallace Dye, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 381 Fig. 129 S.D. Butcher, Julius Kirk family on their ranch in Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 382 Fig. 130 “Aerial view of Frontier County.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 140...... 382 Fig. 131 S.D. Butcher, L.F. Pringle, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 382 Fig. 132 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 382 Fig. 133 S.D. Butcher, J.C. Cram sod house, Loup county, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 383 Fig. 134 “Burlington Railroad Czech brochure.” Nebraska State Historical Society....383 Fig. 135 S.D. Butcher, Damon Livestock, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 384 Fig. 136 S.D. Butcher, “The Old Sod House and the New.” The Jacob Graff house near West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 384

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Fig. 137 S.D. Butcher, Sod and frame house, . Nebraska State Historical Society...... 384 Fig. 138 S.D. Butcher, Coleman, west of Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 384 Fig. 139 S.D. Butcher, A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 385 Fig. 140 S.D. Butcher, A.J. Smith in front of their house near Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 385 Fig. 141 S.D. Butcher, J.D. Ream’s early day soddy northwest of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 385 Fig. 142 S.D. Butcher, The new house on the J.D. Ream farm northwest of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 385 Fig. 143 “Valley County, Neb.—Head of big Island in North Loup River,” B&M Railroad Land for Sale, Burlington Railroad brochure, 15. Newberry Library, Case Collection...... 386 Fig. 144 S.D. Butcher, Ex-judge Chas R. Mathews of New Helena, Nebraska, in front of a log building that was one of the first buildings in the county and served for a time as new Helena’s post office, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 386 Fig. 145 “Advertisement for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad,” 1881. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted from Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 30...... 386 Fig. 146 “Machinery exhibit at the Nebraska State Fair, 1888.” Nebraska State Historical Society. Reprinted from Everett Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 107...... 386 Fig. 147 “Section map with Chrisman and Richardson land holdings, 1904.”...... 387 Fig. 148 S.D. Butcher, South of the Middle Loup River, near Berwyn, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 387 Fig. 149 S.D. Butcher, Man mowing hay by use of horse power, CusterCounty, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 387 Fig. 150 S.D. Butcher, Family in a plowed field – corn planting in eastern part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 388 Fig. 151 S.D. Butcher, “The Latest and Greatest” North Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 388 Fig. 152 S.D. Butcher, Preparing for the wheat harvest, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 388 Fig. 153 S.D. Butcher, Farm in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 388 Fig. 154 S.D. Butcher, Family with horses in front of sod house, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 389 Fig. 155 S.D. Butcher, Group of men with horses building the Middle Loup irrigation ditch, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 389 Fig. 156 S.D. Butcher, Construction of bridge, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 389

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Fig. 157 S.D. Butcher, Sod house with cattle along railroad, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 389 Fig. 158 S.D. Butcher, Chrisman’s Ranch, Lillian Creek, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 390 Fig. 159 S.D. Butcher, Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 390 Fig. 160 S.D. Butcher, Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 390 Fig. 161 S.D. Butcher, Vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 390 Fig. 162 S.D. Butcher, Apple exhibit of Crete Nurseries at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 391 Fig. 163 Andrew Putnam Hill, George W. Hoag’s Record Wheat Harvest, 1876. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, The West As America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 231...... 391 Fig. 164 S.D. Butcher, Large threshing crew near Berwyn, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 391 Fig. 165 S.D. Butcher, Jim Gates threshing crew near Gates P.O., Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 391 Fig. 166 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 392 Fig. 167 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 392 Fig. 168 S.D. Butcher, Two women and a man standing in front of a sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 392 Fig. 169 S.D. Butcher, Helms, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 392 Fig. 170 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 393 Fig. 171 S.D. Butcher, West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 393 Fig. 172 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 393 Fig. 173 S.D. Butcher, E.E. Carson, Old Genet Post Office on the Middle Loup River, West of the old Jefferson Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 393 Fig. 174 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 394 Fig. 175 S.D. Butcher, Mr. Moyer digging a well in east Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 394 Fig. 176 S.D. Butcher, Art Pulliam hunting coyotes in West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 394 Fig. 177 S.D. Butcher, “Ever Vigilant South of West Union” Westerville, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 394

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Fig. 178 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod house with team of oxen in foreground, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 395 Fig. 179 S.D. Butcher, Southeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 395 Fig. 180 S.D. Butcher, W.S. Haines, five miles southwest of Mason City, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 395 Fig. 181 S.D. Butcher, A Farm Family in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 395 Fig. 182 S.D. Butcher, Ira Lundy near Cummings Park, West Union Township, Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 396 Fig. 183 S.D. Butcher, J. Petit sod house near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 396 Fig. 184 S.D. Butcher, West Brook, near Dry Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 396 Fig. 185 S.D. Butcher, William Sullivan, Sargent, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 396 Fig. 186 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod and frame house, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 397 Fig. 187 S.D. Butcher, Isadore Haumont two-story sod house on French Table north of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 397 Fig. 188 S.D. Butcher, Comstock, Custer County, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 397 Fig. 189 “Estate of John Bostwick,” Kansas State Atlas, 1887. Kansas State Historical Society...... 397 Fig. 190 S.D. Butcher, Dan Haskel, west of Milldale, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 398 Fig. 191 S.D. Butcher, Font Sharp on his ranch south of Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 398 Fig. 192 S.D. Butcher, “Almont,” a stallion on a ranch in southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 398 Fig. 193 S.D. Butcher, Wescott Residence near the old Comstock Post Office, Custer County, Douglas Grove, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 398 Fig. 194 “The Great Plains.” Reprinted from www.nebraskastudies.org...... 399 Fig. 195 S.D. Butcher, Howard Cooper on a table overlooking valley of Middle Loup Valley, west of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 399 Fig. 196 S.D. Butcher, George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 399 Fig. 197 S.D. Butcher, Ball Family, Woods Park, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 399 Fig. 198 S.D. Butcher, Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 400 Fig. 199 S.D. Butcher, Tom Teahan, bachelor, showing a granary overturned by

wind wouth of Anselmo near Ortello Valley, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 400 Fig. 200 S.D. Butcher, “A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 400 Fig. 201 S.D. Butcher, Ulric Uhlman, Round Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 400 Fig. 202 S.D. Butcher, J. Curphey, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 401 Fig. 203 S.D. Butcher, Mathon Family, Dry Valley, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 401 Fig. 204 S.D. Butcher, D. Jones, Ortello Valley, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 401 Fig. 205 A Prairie Home. Reprinted from Frederic Goddard, Where to Emigrate and Why (New York: F.B. Goddard, 1869), 253...... 401 Fig. 206 S.D. Butcher, George R. Carr, New Helena, one of the oldest settlers in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 402 Fig. 207 S.D. Butcher, Zimmerman ranch, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 402 Fig. 208 Timothy O’Sullivan, Green River Canon, Junction of Yampah at Green River. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, ed., The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 254...... 402 Fig. 209 S.D. Butcher, “Devil’s Backbone”, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 402 Fig. 210 S.D. Butcher, John Bridges of Oconto, Nebraska, owner of Devils Gap, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 403 Fig. 211 George Catlin, Nishnabottana Bluffs, Upper Missouri, 1832. Reprinted from Joni L. Kinsey, Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairie (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 32...... 403 Fig. 212 S.D. Butcher, Sandhills near Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 403 Fig. 213 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 403 Fig. 214 S.D. Butcher, John Saulsburys, Elk Creek Precinct, twelve miles southeast of Mason City, east Custer County, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 404 Fig. 215 S.D. Butcher, Sod house and William Coen family, four and one-half miles north of Berywn, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 404 Fig. 216 S.D. Butcher, W.R. Swan, near Genet Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 404 Fig. 217 S.D. Butcher, Northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 404 Fig. 218 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 405

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Fig. 219 S.D. Butcher, Near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 405 Fig. 220 “Topographical map of Custer County.” Nebraska State Historical Society. .405 Fig. 221 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer county, near Arnold (or Callaway), Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 405 Fig. 222 S.D. Butcher, Ranch in Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 406 Fig. 223 S.D. Butcher, Family members and cattle on a ranch in the Ortello Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 406 Fig. 224 S.D. Butcher, James Gates ranch at Gates, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 406 Fig. 225 S.D. Butcher, Herb Sargent, Sargent Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 406 Fig. 226 S.D. Butcher, “Pride in What We Have Done” Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 407 Fig. 227 S.D. Butcher, Reverend Peter Widvey on his homestead north of Round Valley, Custer county, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society....407 Fig. 228 S.D. Butcher, Mr. W.W. Parish and Family, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 407 Fig. 229 S.D. Butcher, Near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 407 Fig. 230 S.D. Butcher, Clark Sidwell, east Custer County or East Rosevale, Garfield County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 408 Fig. 231 S.D. Butcher, Andrew Rickerts, near Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 408 Fig. 232 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 408 Fig. 233 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod house dugout in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 408 Fig. 234 S.D. Butcher, Farm scene, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 409 Fig. 235 S.D. Butcher, “All Alone in the Hills” Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 409 Fig. 236 George Caleb Bingham, The Squatters, 1850. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 204...... 409 Fig. 237 S.D. Butcher, “New Settlers on the Prairie” East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 409 Fig. 238 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 410 Fig. 239 S.D. Butcher, J.W. Rodgers, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 410 Fig. 240 S.D. Butcher, Theodore and Mary Frischkorn in front of their sod home, which was built in 1878, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 410

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Fig. 241 S.D. Butcher, Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 410 Fig. 242 S.D. Butcher, A family of emigrants entering the South Loup Valley in Custer County, Nebraska, 1891. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 411 Fig. 243 S.D. Butcher, Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer county, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 411 Fig. 244 S.D. Butcher, Lanterman, south of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 411 Fig. 245 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 411 Fig. 246 S.D. Butcher, Cattle Scene, Custer County, Nebraska. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 412 Fig. 247 S.D. Butcher, Threshing crew shown using horse power to thresh wheat, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 412 Fig. 248 S.D. Butcher, “Three motherless children and a caved-in soddy,” 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 412 Fig. 249 S.D. Butcher, Mrs. Debusk, West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 412 Fig. 250 S.D. Butcher, W. Keys, north of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 413 Fig. 251 S.D. Butcher, Orson Cooley in northeast Custer County on the county line near Coolyton Post Office in Loup County, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 413 Fig. 252 S.D. Butcher, Joe Harris, West Union, T.P., Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 413 Fig. 253 S.D. Butcher, John Murphy, Walworth, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 413 Fig. 254 S.D. Butcher, “Just Managing” East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 414 Fig. 255 S.D. Butcher, Isaac Ware, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 414 Fig. 256 S.D. Butcher, Ernie Perrin, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 414 Fig. 257 S.D. Butcher, C. Brown, Sargent, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 414 Fig. 258 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 415 Fig. 259 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of teacher identified as Euroi Weiner, West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 415 Fig. 260 S.D. Butcher, Omer Madison Kem sod house Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 415 Fig. 261 S.D. Butcher, Frederic Schreyer and family, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 415 Fig. 262 S.D. Butcher, Jules Haumont’s sheep on French Table north of Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 416

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Fig. 263 S.D. Butcher, E. Haumont, French Table, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 416 Fig. 264 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of A.J. Smith, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 416 Fig. 265 S.D. Butcher, The Shores family near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 416 Fig. 266 S.D. Butcher, Moses Speese near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 417 Fig. 267 “The Buffalo Bill Combination,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center...... 417 Fig. 268 S.D. Butcher, Charley Meeks, Cowboy, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 417 Fig. 269 S.D. Butcher, Threshing crew on Mr. Golson’s farm, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 417 Fig. 270 S.D. Butcher, S.C. Troubtman camp, railroad graders west of Sargent, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 418 Fig. 271 “Cowboy Troupe, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center...... 418 Fig. 272 S.D. Butcher, Mat Swan, NW Old Jefferson, Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 418 Fig. 273 S.D. Butcher, Milton M. Whitney, northeast Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 418 Fig. 274 S.D. Butcher, Cutting a Melon, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 419 Fig. 275 “Buffalo Bill,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center...... 419 Fig. 276 “Buffalo Bill,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center...... 419 Fig. 277 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of a frame farmhouse in southeastern part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 419 Fig. 278 S.D. Butcher, C.N. Buck, north Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 420 Fig. 279 S.D. Butcher, Keyser, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 420 Fig. 280 “Hunter/Scout with Trophies.” Buffalo Bill Historical Center...... 420 Fig. 281 S.D. Butcher, People gathered in front of the City Hotel, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 420 Fig. 282 S.D. Butcher, I.N. Butler and his Granddaughters, near Gates, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 421 Fig. 283 S.D. Butcher, Miss Sadie Austin, a typical Nebraska cowgirl, Simeon, Cherry County, Nebraska, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 421 Fig. 284 “Theodore Roosevelt in Buckskins,” 1885. Reprinted from Barbara Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 166...... 421 Fig. 285 “Union Pacific Tourist Map of Connecting Lines.” Repinted from The Railroaders (New York: Time-Life Books, 1978), 140-141...... 422 Fig. 286 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 423

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Fig. 287 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 423 Fig. 288 S.D. Butcher, The log and sod house of Frank Cozad, 2 miles east of New Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 423 Fig. 289 S.D. Butcher, “Grand Pa” Dailey, Milburn, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 423 Fig. 290 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of Sarah Finch, wife of Ephriam Swain Finch, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 424 Fig. 291 S.D. Butcher, Lookout Point in Cherry County, Nebraska, near the Snake River, nd. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 424 Fig. 292 S.D. Butcher, “The hanging of Mitchell and Ketchum by the Olive gang”, nd. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 424 Fig. 293 S.D. Butcher, D. Dunn just landed on his claim in Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 424 Fig. 294 S.D. Butcher, A man behind team of horses with a walking lister and planter box, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 425 Fig. 295 S.D. Butcher, Leon Daily sod house near, Milburn, Custer County, Nebraska, 19043. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 425 Fig. 296 S.D. Butcher, James Wood, an old timer, and wife in front of their old sod house, Dale Valley, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 425 Fig. 297 S.D. Butcher, James Wood and family in front of their new house, Dale Valley, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 425 Fig. 298 S.D. Butcher, “Farmer ‘Corn Tassel’ whose cows always raised twin calves”, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 426 Fig. 299 S.D. Butcher, Charles Bowman farm near Gates, Custer County, Nebraska, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 426 Fig. 300 S.D. Butcher, Thomas Jefferson Butcher’s first house, West Union, township, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 426 Fig. 301 S.D. Butcher, George W. Butcher near Jefferson post office, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 426 Fig. 302 S.D. Butcher, “My first house in Nebraska, 1880. Built from ‘Nebraska brick’.”, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 427 Fig. 303 S.D. Butcher, Mat Freeman, West of the old Jefferson P.O., Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 427 Fig. 304 S.D. Butcher, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 427 Fig. 305 S.D. Butcher, “Our Interests on the Prairie.” A sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 427 Fig. 306 S.D. Butcher, Jeff Williams and family in front of log house, West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 428 Fig. 307 S.D. Butcher, William Marsh at his homestead near the Genet postoffice in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 428 Fig. 308 S.D. Butcher, William Laughlin, better known as “Uncle Bill,” Sargent,

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Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 428 Fig. 309 S.D. Butcher, Milton Parkhurst and family near Boggs Table, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 428 Fig. 310 S.D. Butcher, Three family members in front of farmhouse in northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 429 Fig. 311 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 429 Fig. 312 S.D. Butcher, George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 429 Fig. 313 S.D. Butcher, “In Front of Our Home,” Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society...... 429

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INTRODUCTION

LOCATING A CLAIM

Among some of the most important visual material of the late 19th-century

American West is the photographic archive of settlers who located in central Nebraska

created by Solomon Devoe Butcher (1856-1927). This collection comprises nearly 3,000

photographs taken between the years 1886 and 1910 from the Nebraska counties of

Custer, Dawson, Buffalo, and Cherry [Fig. 1]. Included in this archive are photographs

that have become ubiquitous as illustrations in studies of western American history, such as Bachelor house of Perry brothers, near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 2],

1886, where the Perry brothers eat watermelon and play poker; Sylvester Rawding family

sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 3], 1886, in which the family’s cow seems to graze atop their dugout; or “Nebraska Gothic,” the John Curry sod house near West Union, Nebraska [Fig. 4], 1886, where John Curry and his wife stand amidst the clutter of their dooryard in a pose often compared to that presented in

Grant Wood’s American Gothic.1

Though Butcher is frequently not identified as the author, his photographs have

been included in a wide array of publications, from some of the most important and

1 See, for instance, Wanda Corn, “The Paiting that Became a Symbol of a Nation’s Spirit,” 84-94. 1

influential scholarly publications on western history,2 to texts and programs intended for popular audiences, to popular culture material such as a Virginia Slims cigarette ad from

1979 [Fig. 5]. Though often used as primary sources for studies of related topics,3 the archive as a topic of critical inquiry itself is noticeably absent from both the historical and art historical arenas. Notable recent attention to the archive has included John Carter’s

1985 biographical publication, Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing the American

Dream; a 2004 Nebraska State Historical Society (NSHS) and Nebraska E-TV

documentary, Solomon D. Butcher: Frontier Photographer; and a 1998 Library of

Congress “American Memory Project” grant that has not only made the images available for study on-line, but has also allowed the NSHS to produce high-resolution digitized

images from the original glass plate negatives.4

2 See, for instance, Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); Elizabeth Johns, “Settlement and Development: Claiming the West,” in The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820- 1920, ed. William H. Truettner (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Everett Dick, The Sod-House Frontier (New York, NY: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1937); and, Joni Kinsey, Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairie (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996). 3 For instance, Roger Welsch, Sod Walls: The Story of the Nebraska Sod House (1967; Lincoln, NE: J&L Lee Co, 1991); and, Jane A. Funderburk, “How Fashionable were Women Settlers in Custer County, Nebraska?: Maternity Wear on the Nebraska Frontier, 1886-1892,” Nebraska History 81:2 (Summer 2000): 56-66. 4 A discussion of the results of this undertaking are reported by NSHS photography curator Jill Koelling in “Revealing History: Another Look at the Solomon D. Butcher Photographs,” Nebraska History 81:2 (Summer 2000): 50-55. The grant was funded by Ameritech and the Library of Congress National Digital Library Award Program. The database of the digitized results is available at: www.memory.loc.gov. 2

1.1 The Archive

Butcher stated that his desire in compiling his archive was to create “a truthful

history of pioneer life in Custer county.”5 His choice of the settlement of Custer County

as a topic for a history was not arbitrary, as his own history was closely tied to that of the

county’s. In the late 1870s, Butcher had been a traveling salesman for a patent medicine

firm in Ohio.6 However, in 1880, at the age of 24, he followed his father Thomas

Jefferson Butcher, his younger brother George, and his brother-in-law J.R. Wabel, from

their home in Winona, Illinois, to Custer County. Each of the men filed homestead

claims in the northeastern area of the county near the North Loup River, and soon sent

back for the rest of their families. However, after a six-month return to Illinois and only two weeks of actually living in his dugout, S.D. (as he was called) relinquished his claim

back to the government and enrolled in the Minnesota Medical College in Minneapolis.

There he married a young widow, Lillie Barber Hamilton, but he had, as he stated, “seen

enough of the wild west to unfit me for living contentedly in the East,” and by the end of

the school term he had returned again to Custer County.7

Not finding farming to his liking—as one scholar noted, “S.D. did try to farm, but his soul was not in tune with it,”8—Butcher fell back on brief photographic training he

had formerly received from a tintypist. With his salary from teaching a term in a local

5 Solomon Devoe Butcher, Pioneer History of Custer County, Nebraska (1901; Denver, CO: Sage Books, 1965), 3. 6 The most thorough and reliable biography of Butcher is Carter, Solomon D. Butcher, and unless otherwise noted, my biographical discussion of him relies heavily on this publication. 7 Butcher, Pioneer History, 150. Butcher’s extended family resided in Custer County for the remainder of their lives. Though Butcher later lived in Kearney, NE, and Greeley, CO, he is buried, along with his family, in the Gates Cemetery near West Union where they had homesteaded. 8 Jean Williams, “S.D. Butcher, Pioneer Cameraman,” NEBRASKAland Magazine (March 1969): 28-29, 51-52, 54. 3

school and some borrowed cash, he purchased photography equipment in the spring of

1883 and built an 18’ x 22’ lathe and adobe photographic gallery (which was also used as

a post office). He cobbled together a living through the post office, photography, and

working for his father. His new interest caught the attention of the local newspaper,

which noted, “S.D. Butcher has gone to Grand Island this week to get his stock of

photographing material, and will be prepared to do all kinds of work in his line in a week

or ten days,” though it also noted only one year later that, “No pictures taken except on

Saturday and Sundays, until further notice. S.D. Butcher, Jefferson, Neb.”9 This seems to suggest that there were times when his photographic interests were required to take a back seat to more lucrative work (particularly given that by this time his two children had been born). In late 1884, he joined in partnership with A.W. Darling and they opened a

photographic gallery in a frame building, at first in the town of Walworth, and then when

that town died out, in the nearby town of West Union. Here he plied his business for the

next five years, producing fairly typical studio portraits of local residents, such as C.H.

Peters, West Union, Nebraska [Fig. 6], 1886, and Portrait of Tom Smith [Fig. 7], 1886.

It was during this time that Butcher originated the idea of creating a history of

Custer County. From June 14, 1886, the date of his first “history” photograph, through the following seven years, Butcher lived a rather itinerate life, photographing not only homesteaders in Custer County, but also every site, event, or establishment he felt was historic or noteworthy. It appears, based on a record book he kept after 1899, that his

9 Custer County Republican, 5/3/1883; Custer County Republican, 3/8/1884. Butcher is also listed as an agent for this newspaper, and so was likely cobbling together an even more piecemeal existence than most settlers. See, “The following named persons are agents for the Republican, and authorized to receive subscriptions and advertisements and receipt for same: S.B. Butcher, Jefferson, J.R. Orvis, West Union” Custer County Republican 5/3/1883. 4

general working process was to make initial arrangements with farmers while they were in town, and then canvass their area during the time he was there.10 At first he would take a series of photos, return home for developing, then go back out again for delivery and payment.11 Later he had his own portable darkroom, seen in Ab Butcher on Solomon

Butcher's picture wagon on the Middle Loup River getting material for Custer County

Book [Fig. 8], 1886, and he would develop the works on-site.12 Along with the photographic portraits of settlers on their homesteads, Butcher also collected oral histories of the families.

The visual archive that Butcher amassed is complicated both materially and historically. This is a result primarily from what appear to be rather vague, or unsure, intentions on Butcher’s part as to what exactly would be the format and utility of his

10 This is based on an undated extant record book in the NSHS that covers not only areas in Custer County, but also in other surrounding counties of Buffalo and Dawson, and residents of Kearney. Near the back of the book, there are indications that the entry year was 1903, though entries near the beginning seem at least a year or more earlier (considering the passage of the months and dates included). While it is later than his Custer County work, it is reasonable to believe he kept the same system to which he had grown accustomed. This book rather consistently has such notations after a farmer’s name as: “Last of Oct or as soon after as possible,” or some written by his wife such as “”Mr. N. Smith wants picture of his place he will see us at the Fair. Lives 1 ½ mi. south of Daisy Sod House.” Butcher notebook, Butcher Papers, NSHS. Also, the Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886, noted that: “Messrs T.J. Butcher and son, S.D. of West Union, who were here at work last week on their album of Custer county….will return again in about 10 or 15 days to complete their work in this locality.” It seems, since the week they were in the Broken Bow vicinity was the day the first railroad train came into town, that Butcher was in the area to photograph this historic event, and made use of the time there getting farmstead images from the neighborhood. 11 “He [S.D.] drove all over the county those days, where ever they sent word they would like a picture and he would drive there whether it was east or north or west would be out two and three weeks sometimes, then come home and take a week or so to finish up the work he had done. Then go back over the same territory to deliver the pictures and collect the money.” Lynn J. Butcher [S.D.’s son] to Harry Chrisman, 11/17/1967, Solomon D. Butcher Papers, NSHS (Hereafter cited as Butcher Papers). 12 Robert Farritor, whose family photograph was taken in 1889, related that S.D. stayed with them “while he traveled to the neighboring ranches and homesteads taking and selling his pictures. His wagon was heavily loaded with glass plates in crates, plus chemicals and other tools of his trade….[in awaiting their own family photograph], the whole family, anxious for the unveiling, had gathered at the photography wagon. At last, after much thumping and moving about within the covered wagon he appeared at the rear flap, hopping down onto the grass with the, still wet, photograph in his hand.” Charles F. Farritor mss, Farritor surname file, CCHS. 5

history. While he did succeed in attaining his goal of producing a county history, this

book does not seem particularly reflective of his original conception due to the span of

time between when Butcher began photographing for it and its actual publication.

Butcher had to stop work entirely on his project in 1892 due to a devastating drought that

not only made it impossible for farmers to purchase photographs, but also made it

impossible for Butcher to garner the financial backing to realize a publication from the

photographs and histories he had collected to that date. Around 1896 he seems to have been able to return to photographing images, and by 1899 he had accumulated over 1,500

glass negatives and oral histories. Unfortunately, on May 12, 1899, his house and everything in it, including the oral histories, were destroyed in a fire. The negatives survived as they had been stored in a nearby granary. Butcher began collecting local histories again, though because of the lapse of time, the later ones cannot be used as direct corollaries to the earlier visual material.13

Finally, in 1901, fifteen years after his first history photograph had been taken,

Butcher published Pioneer History of Custer County, Nebraska. The 403-page book had

217 illustrations and was pre-paid by subscription, and even then was only realized after

a wealthy, locally known rancher, Swain Finch, guaranteed its publication.14 The venture

13 The likely format of the early histories, given his later ones, was a fairly concise statement of location of claim and size, extent of tillage and stock, where the settler came from, and marriage information. The histories take on the nature of notes jotted down while S.D. was visiting the settler, and quite likely didn’t contain a great amount of information that has not been included in later extensive county histories, such as W.L. Gaston and A.R. Humphrey’s 1,167-page History of Custer County, Nebraska: Narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county’s history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time (Lincoln, NE: Western Publishing and Engraving Co., 1919), which includes many of Butcher’s photographs. The first half of this publication includes general histories of various county settlements, followed in the second half by county family histories, usually a column in length each. 14 “To whom it may concern—I hereby agree to fill all bonafied orders for Butcher’s pioneer history that is given by May 1st, 1901, E.S. Finch.” Custer County Chief, 3/1/1901. 6

proved successful and the first run of 1,000 copies, at a price of $2.50 each, sold out by the end of the summer; a second edition of 1,000 was sold out by that Christmas.

Butcher himself used his photographs for only one other publication, Sod Houses, or the

Development of the Great American Plains: A Pictorial History of the Men and Means that have Conquered this Wonderful Country, which was a 39-page pamphlet with 51 photos. As a joint effort with a Kearney attorney, W.L. Hand, it proved an unsuccessful

attempt to promote sales for a land company in Nebraska at the 1904 St. Louis World’s

Fair.15

Due to the lag in time between conception and production, the book—the goal of

Butcher’s photographic survey—does not offer itself as a wholly reliable primary

resource in considering the archive, and in fact, it seems to have strayed from Butcher’s

initial ideas about what his photographs were to convey. For example, Butcher goes to

great lengths early in the project to suggest that his book would record the passing “sod

house days” of settlement in the county. Yet, out of 217 illustrations the book itself only

includes 18 images of sod houses compared to 82 bust-length studio portraits. Indeed, a

number of these studio portraits are subjects of whom Butcher had photographs with their

sod houses and yet clearly chose not to use. In addition, there are 35 historical “re-

enactment” scenes created for the book a year or two before its publication, and nearly 30

illustrations of towns, not from the “sod house era” of the 1880s, but rather from the late

1890s. Similarly, while Butcher took great pains to record specific information about the

settler portrayed in each photograph, such as the location of their farmstead, the extent to

15 I have never come across an extant copy of this pamphlet; however, the 1965 reprint of Butcher’s Pioneer History of Custer County includes a facsimile of the pamphlet. 7

which it was cultivated and the type of grains or livestock in which the farmer had invested, the book contains none of this kind of information and instead focuses on community histories told by various county leaders. When a history is told of a specific

settler, such as Swain Finch’s account of his move to the county and establishment there,

such particulars are not included.16

It seems quite probable, given the parameters of the photographs and Butcher’s

process, that the model for his history was originally one substantially different from the

format of his eventual publication. It seems most likely that Butcher’s initial concept for his project was drawn from photographic albums that had become popular among the country’s middle class following the Civil War. Butcher’s photographic wagon was painted on its side with the announcement “For T.J. & S.D. Butcher’s Picture Album of

Custer County.” Furthermore, one of the earliest notices of Butcher’s history in the

Custer County Republican states that, “Messrs T.J. Butcher and son, S.D. of West

Union…were here at work last week on their album of Custer county,” indicating both that Butcher and his subjects were familiar with such albums, and that their concept of the project was similar.17

These albums follow a popular and long-established format of the “gift book,” in

which lavish, full-page images of highly esteemed citizens or popular geographic sites

are accompanied on the facing page with a short text describing the subject and its

particular interest or historical importance. One of the most enjoyed early albums was

16 Of the 80 stories in Butcher’s history, 64 are of community, organization, or church histories; well- known events; or important developments such as irrigation or swine raising. Individual settlers stories account for 16 stories. 17 Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886. 8

Picturesque America, first published in 1872, in which a series of steel engravings of

famous sites and well-known tourist attractions are accompanied by descriptive text.18

Photography was also used early on in these picture albums. For instance, in 1845

Matthew Brady, owner of one of the most prestigious photography galleries in the

country, published Gallery of Illustrious Americans, which includes “twenty-four of the

most eminent citizens of the American republic since the death of Washington.”19 Each

portrait is accompanied, in typical picture album format, with a short text celebrating the

importance of the individual to the nation’s history.20

With the onset of the Civil War, photography, due to the public’s general

perception of it as able to record objective “truth,” was hailed as the method by which the

true circumstances of the War would be inarguably documented for future generations. It

was celebrated as the medium upon which a viewer could depend for historical truth. For

instance, a reviewer of Brady’s exhibition of photographs he had taken from the first

battle at Bull Run asserted:

The public is indebted to Brady, of Broadway, for numerous excellent views of ‘grim-visaged war’….His are the only reliable records at Bull’s Run. The correspondents of the Rebel newspapers are sheer falsifiers… Brady never misrepresents….His pictures will…immortalize those introduced in them.21

18 Picturesque America: or,The Land we live in.A delineation by pen and pencil of the mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, water-falls, shores, canons, valleys, cities and other picturesque features of our country, ed. William Cullen Bryant (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872). 19 Mathew Brady, Gallery of Illustrious Americans (New York: printed serially, 1851), frontispiece. Quoted in Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989). 20 For instance, the text accompanying John C. Calhoun reads in part, “The fame of Calhoun has interwoven itself with the history of the Nation, and is therefore immortal.” Quoted in Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, 51. 21 Humphrey’s Journal 13 (1861-1862): 133. Quoted in Robert Taft, Photography and the American Scene (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 228. 9

This perception shifted the importance of photography from the realm of art to the realm

of documentation; it was widely held among the American population that photography was a medium for history telling rather than artistic expression. The New-York

Historical Society’s Committee of the Fine Arts even declared that the importance of such documentary photography rested in the fact that it “would undoubtedly form the most valuable auxiliaries to historical inquiry that we could hand down to our successors.”22

“Documentary” photography also found a place in the format of the picture

album. A typical example of the history photographic album is the two-volume

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, published in 1866 by

photographer Alexander Gardner, who had gained his reputation working as a war

photographer for Mathew Brady.23 The album contains actual prints of a variety of

images that present a visual survey of this historical event. It includes images of

important participants, such as President Lincoln on the Battle-Fild of Antietam [Fig. 9],

1862, which records his visit to the field two weeks after the battle. Or, Studying the Art of War [Fig. 10], 1863, which depicts a group of self-consciously posed Union commanders, several of whom were well-known by the general public by the War’s end.24

22 “Report of the Committee of the Fine Arts,” 1/7/1862. Quoted in Helena Zinkham, “Pungent Salt: Mathew Brady’s 1866 Negotiations with the New-York Historical Society,” History of Photography (January-March, 1986): 5-6. 23 The two volumes were combined into one and re-published in 1959 under the same title by Dover Publications, Inc., of New York. 24 For instance, the photograph’s accompanying text states that, “Thoughtful and erect, the most prominent figure is Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, then a Captain on the Staff of General Meade. Handsome, chivalric, one of the bravest of the brave….So noble a man, that of all the heroes who have perished for the nation, his 10

The nature of modern warfare was also made understandable by photography, and

such important and memorable images were included in the album. For instance, U.S.

Military Telegraph Construction Corps [Fig. 11] clarifies to the viewer the use of

telegraphs during the war, and the text emphasizes their importance, noting that

“President Lincoln frequently visited [the Central Telegraph Office in the War Deprtment

building from which the wires eminated], and spent many an evening sitting at the

instruments reading the reports as they came in and were recorded by the operators.”25

The album also includes images taken from pivotal battlesites, intended to inform the viewer of the particular nature of the battle or important elements that influenced its course. For instance, Battery Number One, before Yorktown, Virginia [Fig. 12], 1862, depicts one of the batteries that operated as part of a line of works commanded by

General McClellan. The battery had six of the heaviest rifled guns ever mounted in a land battery and, as Gardner noted, “Experienced officers expressed the opinion that with this battery alone, the enemy could have been driven from their position in Yorktown.

No lives were ever lost on our side at this battery from the enemy’s fire upon it.”26

Gardner even attempted to convey the daily life of soldiers, including A Fancy Group,

Front of Petersburg [Fig. 13], 1864, in which is posed a group of soldiers relieving “the monotony of camp life” by watching a cock fight.27

Butcher’s process suggests the appropriateness of the “history” picture album as

his model. His decision to use photography for his history follows the belief in

loss is the hardest to realize. The story of his short but brilliant career has been written by abler hands, and is now a ‘household word.’” 25 Gardner, Photographic Album, Plate 62. 26 Gardner, Photographic Album, Plate 12. 27 Gardner, Photographic Album, Plage 76. 11

photography as the carrier of historical truth that underlies the authority of these

publications. As noted earlier, in the introduction to his book, Butcher stated his work

aims to present “a truthful history of pioneer life in Custer county.”28 That this truth is based on his use of photography is clear from the introduction to his later publication:

“Mr. Butcher…presents…his photographs, bright, clear, sparkling and with a fidelity to life that…these photographs constitute a mirror of the daily life scenes and incidents of these plainsmen.”29 Importantly, the album format allowed the use of photographic

portraiture, which was the only visual genre Butcher was especially familiar with, to act

as “auxiliaries to historical inquiry.” Butcher’s notes about each particular subject indicate his desire to be able to inform the future viewer of the activity of the sitter and the nature of his world. The volume of homesteader portraits he created also suggests that his expected use for them in his history was not as the small, occasional illustrations found in the final publication, but rather the large images that entail 50% of the picture

album format.

The content of Butcher’s photographs also suggests their close relationship to

those used in history albums. Butcher photographed important events and sites, similar to the variety found in Gardner’s history album, that would further explain the history of the county. Burlington and Missouri River Railroad graders at West Union, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 14], 1886, records the nature of building the railroad, and

Burlington engine number 120, the first train into Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 15], 1886, celebrates the much anticipated arrival of the first train into the county. Old Mitchell sod

28 Butcher, Pioneer History, preface. 29 Butcher, Sod Houses, introduction. 12

house where Ketchem killed Olive in 1887 (or 1878) [Fig. 16], 1888, records the site of a

famous murder in the county. The town of Walworth, Nebraska, moved from the north to

the south side of the Middle Loup River [Fig. 17], 1887, shows the movement of

Walworth across the river to a more propitious location. Even the nature of homesteading life is indicated in the archive. For instance, in Bachelor house of Perry

brothers, near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 2], 1886, the high-spirited

enjoyment of poker for the young, single men is celebrated, and in Surene Pke, Jefferson,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 18], 1886, the popularity of croquet among settlers is

indicated by the family’s self-conscious pose in the process of a game.

The format of the history picture album utilized a mixture of portraiture, “site”

photography, and fairly literal-minded “posed” scenes to convey the nature of the

county’s history that Butcher, a portrait photographer with a ready model upon which he

could base his new endeavor, could rather readily mimick. However, Butcher

complicated this already arguably confused conflation of visual genres with his

propensity (and quite likely as well the necessity) to seize upon any available business

opportunity that came his way. While a county history was certainly his ultimate goal,

Butcher also sold photographs singly and in groups in order to supplement his income.

The backs of a number of extant photos are printed with an advertisement that states:

“Views by the Hundred or thousand, to dealers, or singly by mail, securely packed, on

receipt of price, 50 cents each.”30 The titles given to the photographs in the sets, such as

“The Pioneer,” “Farmers at Home,” “The Old Lady and Her Pets,” or Rural Life in

30 There are no dates on these prints; however, the fact that orders were to be addressed to Butcher and his father (his first partner in his history project) at West Union, suggests a date in the 1880s. An example of this ad is on the back of the photographic print of the James Hiser family, located in the photographic file, CCHS. There is also no information that I have found on how successful these prints were. 13

Nebraska,” are not specific enough to function as either history documentation or as

portraiture. Rather, they suggest the images’ association with the content and tradition of genre images. Butcher would have certainly known of such subjects, as they could be found as illustrations in nearly every popular periodical of the day. However, by adding yet another focus to the images of his archive, Butcher further complicated an already vague, or at least conflated, understanding of the purpose and interpretation of his images.

Butcher also sold individual prints to the families themselves. His record book for Buffalo County shows that the families often ordered as many as four or five different views of their farmstead, even requesting multiple copies of some of the views (likely for extended family).31 While the Buffalo County portraits were made and ordered later, in a

more financially stable time for local farmers, there are also extant sets of multiple views

of Custer County farms from the first years Butcher was working. For instance, the

wealthy settler Harvey Andrews had a handful of images taken of his land and family—

Harvey Andrews and family herding their livestock in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek,

near New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 19], 1886; The Harvey Andrews family on their

homestead two and one-half miles northwest of New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 20], 1887;

Harvey Andrews in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek, near New Helena, Nebraska [Fig.

21], 1886; and The Harvey Andrews family posed at the grave of son Willie Andrews

[Fig. 22],1887. A good number of other settlers, such as John Morrison, had two views

taken of their properties, both titled, Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 23, Fig. 24], 1886.

31 Record Book, Butcher Papers, NSHS. 14

The documentation of the archive is also complicated. Understanding from the

beginning that his photographs were meant to be read as a “set,” Butcher began numbering his negatives with the very first one taken, and he continued this practice through number 1535. These numbers appear in black on the negatives. After the publication of Butcher’s history, he began to solicit the Nebraska State Historical Society to purchase the collection. After a great deal of negotiation, the Society did acquire it in

1911. In all, the archive consists of approximately 900 scenes of sod houses, 1,100 scenes of farms, 500 scenes of towns, and 200 miscellaneous scenes.32 Later caretakers of the collection added another set of numbers in India ink that appear as white numbers on the negatives.

The NSHS hired Butcher in 1916 to organize and compile an index for the collection. However, as his original records had been destroyed in the 1899 fire, he relied on his memory and on others in the local community to help him identify and date the subjects of the photographs. Not surprisingly, a number of these identifications and dates

have been proven to be incorrect. Other images have been identified over the years by

members of the families depicted, and also by community members in the 1930s as part

of a WPA oral history project.33 The titles (including punctuation and capitalization)

used in this dissertation are those published by the NSHS on the Library of Congress

database and in their own files. They have been determined by the accumulated

32 Solomon D. Butcher Papers, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska. (Hereafter cited as Butcher Papers.). The collection has been added to since its initial purchase, and now numbers over 3,000 glass plate negatives and photographic prints. In 1955, the archive was categorized, its images listed under the topics of: Sod Houses; Frame Houses; Farmsteads: Ranches; Livestock; Farm and Ranch Work and Activities; Town Scenes—Streets—Buildings—Residences; Social Life—Recreation—Sports; Schools— Churches; Farm Machinery—Windmills—Tools; Vehicles; Household Furnishings—Equipment; and, Railroad Construction. 33The project’s findings are typically notated on prints, or copies of prints, held at CCHS. 15

information from these various sources. Butcher also gave many of his photographs

captions, such as the ones he sold as sets. Some of these, such as the sets, were authored

contemporaneously with their creation. However, others were penned much later when

he was cataloguing and may not have any relationship to the visual or narrative effect he

was aiming for when he took the photograph. Other people besides Butcher also added

captions to the photographs, and it has not always been noted when the author was

someone other than Butcher. Thus, the textual information in the archive is often

unreliable in determining the narrative focus, purpose, or even subjects in many of the

photographs.

Given the enormous scope and complicated history of this archive, its entire set of

photographs and historical data won’t be utilized in this dissertation. The archive

photographs to be considered number just under 900, and they adhere to several

restrictions. They were all likely created during the first years of Butcher’s endeavor,

between 1886 and 1892, when the initial concept that generated the archive and the

conditions that existed to shape that concept were contemporaneous with each other.34

They all depict scenes from Custer County, with a few exceptions for homesteaders who lived just over the county line but identified with the communities in Custer County. In short, the photographs utilized to form the basis of this dissertation are those I believe best maintain the chronological and geographical integrity of the endeavor. While I do

34 I do, however, throughout this dissertation refer occasionally to images made after this general period if they relate in an important way to a process or subject that was active during this period. 16

rely in some instances on narratives in Butcher’s book, because the book does not offer itself as a wholly reliable primary resource, I do so only when it relates to conditions of the earlier period.

1.2 Visual analysis

While a more thorough contextual analysis of the images is conducted in the following chapters, an initial general survey of the compositions found in the archive is helpful. The images follow a wide variety of compositions, though they were almost uniformly taken on 6 ½ x 8 ½ inch glass plates. Business and farm activities, such as

Threshing with horses in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 25], 1888, and John Delane

Wagon Shop, Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska. [Fig. 26], 1889, are generally represented in long shot, frontally positioned, with the nature of the business or activity clearly described. The archive also contains a number of staged photographs that were made by Butcher in collaboration with local residents in which events associated with the early era of county settlement were re-enacted, often by the very people involved. For instance, in 1885 settlers in the county cut nearly 15 miles of barbed wire fence that had been put up around government land by the Brighton Ranch. The event was posed for inclusion in Butcher’s book in “Settlers taking the law in their own hands—cutting fence on old Brighton Ranch," [Fig. 27], 1900, with the “settlers” holding wooden props shaped like oversized clippers. There are other photographs in which Butcher incised on the actual plate certain historical elements that could not be re-enacted. In Ephriam Swain

Finch demonstrating how he attempted to kill grasshoppers in 1876 [Fig. 28], also made

around 1900, an elderly Swain Finch, who was among the first settlers in the county and who experienced the grasshopper infestation of 1876, re-enacted his attempt to brush the insects off his corn crop. Butcher has incised the missing grasshoppers into his composition.

The more typical photographs of homestead and ranch subjects are quite varied, especially those taken during 1886, Butcher’s first year of compiling images for his county history, when it seems he was experimenting with compositional formats. For instance, his use of an iris frame, as in James Milburn and family, Milburn, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 29], 1886, is much more prevalent among his early photographs, and suggests, I believe, his experimentation with a studio technique on-site. The apparent fact that he rather quickly discontinued this suggests its inconsistency with the more factual, documentary emphasis he desired for a photographic history. Butcher also used a vertically-oriented “portrait” format in this first year, as in Page Family sod house near

Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 30], 1886, which is not especially adept at conveying landscape images. There are also a number of photographs that show his experimentation, not always successful, with placement. For instance, in F.J. Halsey, east of the Jefferson Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 31], 1886, the odd placement of the subjects alongside the angled façade of the house, with the right side of the composition seeming to completely fall away into a vacant distance, doesn’t really work for any of Butcher’s purposes in photographing a pioneer history. It seems his first few months were, in essence, a transition period in which he adjusted to the demands of

on-site landscape photography from the more familiar context of a portrait studio.

However, by the end of those few months his compositions began to adhere to more

uniform formats.

Butcher utilized every compositional element at his disposal to convey what he thought would make a good pioneer portrait. Though he generally focused on the family unit in the middle ground, it is clear in several images that the entire image is meant to participate in the portrait, and thus we are invited to move throughout the composition in our analysis. In Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 32], 1888, and in Family with their sod

house in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 33], 1887, there are photographic portraits and

prints displayed at the houses’ windows. Though barely identifiable, they are positioned

to be present for the photograph. Butcher also utilized space to convey meaning. In Near

Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 34], 1888, the space between the hired

man and the family conveys their relationship. Similarly, in Al Burger at Genet, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 35], 1886, Mr. Burger stands separate from his family to indicate

his honored status as one of the county’s “old-timers,” and thus the main subject of the

photograph.

The majority of portraits that encompass farming or ranching scenes follow two

general composition types. The first can be seen in The Henry Luther home in Ortello

Valley, near Dale, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 36], 1887, and H.G. Shannon, near

Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 37], 1887. The subjects and objects are

generally arranged along regularly spaced planes, the figures typically in the middle

distance with the house a short distance behind. Butcher often extends the foreground,

sometimes to nearly 1/3 of the composition, in order to include the physical aspects of the homestead. Various farm implements, wagons, pets, and livestock are brought into the composition. Family members are usually dressed in their best, and they frequently display personal, domestic, or cultural objects that hold meaning for them, such as the photo of the Luther’s two oldest sons’ double wedding that Henry holds or the homemade fiddle held by the Shannon’s son. Frequently, as in the Shannon family’s portrait, the figures are positioned by gesture and stance in a tableau designed to convey a meaning that at times is quite explicit and at other times, as in this work, is not so easily readable by the viewer. The family, gathered around a table laden with produce, appears attentive to the father’s story though the viewer is unsure of the nature of this dialogue, while the boy at the end of the table raises his violin to play.

The second most frequent format for the farm and ranch scenes can be seen in

Family on a stock ranch in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 38], 1887, and The Peter M.

Barnes homestead near Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 39], 1887. In photographs such as these, the camera was positioned on a rise in order to encompass the extended working areas of the farm. This format, coupled with the articulate depth of field achieved by Butcher’s camera, allows the far distant fields and pastures to be quite closely examined. For instance, the freshly plowed strip in the Barnes’s field is distinguishable from the rest of the landscape. The compositions move back through space in a regular rhythm, often through multiple parallel or diagonally interlocking planes. The frequent awkwardness created by Butcher’s reliance on this compositional method suggests that it was not necessarily an aesthetic consideration as much as it was

adherence to his training. As John Carter has noted, “[Butcher’s] photographs often

zigzag in lines from the horizon to the foreground, with each diagonal line emphasizing a

major element within the image. This was a trick common to stereographers who used

the receding diagonal to heighten the sense of three dimensionality in their

photographs.”35

In Fig. 38, Butcher invites the viewer to move back through the specific areas of

the family’s stock ranch by his placement of figures and activity. Three family members

are positioned along the first plane of the composition; another figure sits astride a horse

just behind and to the left of the plane with the livestock; a fifth figure also on a horse sits

along the same elevation as the foreground figures, but on the opposite side of the slough;

and the same distance back yet again is another figure holding a prized stallion for

inclusion in the photograph. At times, Butcher’s facility with this movement is weak,

and undermines the intentions of this photograph. For instance, in East Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 40], 1888, the figures’ placement doesn’t move the viewer’s attention from one to the other. They are so small given the scale of the photograph, that they

seem to be scattered, and they get lost in the landscape.

If the subject matter of the Butcher archive is often compelling, the technical quality and originality of the compositions is fairly pedestrian, at best.36 The original

prints that Butcher took from his negatives are at times “mercilessly” cropped or

completely un-cropped, leaving a rather troubling visual result in which nearly a quarter

or more of the composition resides in a foreground composed entirely of rough dirt or

35 Carter, Solomon D. Butcher, 14. 36 In the words of John Carter, “Unquestionably he was not a prairie Stieglitz.” Carter, Butcher, 10. 21

stubble. His developing abilities often left areas overly dark or too light to articulate

forms. 37 Butcher’s placement of figures rarely conveys a sense of visual grace, fluidity,

or intuition. His works often reveal a rather odd linearity, clearly a result of his arrangement. For instance, in George Paine, Sr. and Family, Westerville, Nebraska [Fig.

41], 1887, and Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 42], 1892, the families align in a

regular rhythm across a single plane. They don’t express a familial affinity, but rather in

their formality appear almost alienated from each other. Often when Butcher posed his

subjects to tell a “story,” the positions work entirely against a sense of visual cohesion.

In Rev. William McCaslin house, known as the “Preacher Home,” in Rose Valley near

Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 43], 1886, the Reverend faces directly to the left, and his family to the right, creating a visual cleavage in the composition. Butcher’s shadow also intrudes into the composition, due to his position opposite the light source.

In fact, Butcher frequently positioned his camera without regard for the effect of the natural light, just as often directing it into the sun, or at clumsy angles to it, and thus throwing his subjects into shadow, in order to include important farming elements in the compositions.38

Butcher’s general compositional format was also rather common. Though his

earliest works suggest that working on-site in a landscape format was new for him, his

decision to do so was certainly not original. Similar images from the same era taken by

37 See Carter, Butcher, preface: “Very few of Butcher’s own prints exist….although the vintage Butcher prints that I have examined run the gamut of quality, and so it is difficult to say what the photographer or his assistants might have considered a good print. Moreover, Butcher mercilessly trimmed his prints to emphasize or exclude certain elements.” The Nebraska ETV documentary includes several un-cropped vintage prints. 38 This is noted in Charles E. Martin, “The Pioneer Photographs of Solomon Butcher,” Family Heritage (February 1979): 10. 22

other photographers, usually itinerant, are held in the collections of nearly every historical society of a plains state—for instance, the Kansas State Historical Society [Fig.

44], the Jennewein Western Library in South Dakota [Fig. 45], the Library, University of

Oklahoma [Fig. 46], the Colorado Historical Society [Fig. 47], and even others in the

NSHS [Fig. 48, Fig. 49]. In fact, there were two other photographers in Custer County—

Harvey Myers in Mason City, and F.E. Taylor in Broken Bow—who, at times, also took photographs on the settlers’ homesteads.39

1.3 Approach

The West (and its inhabitants) has been the subject of many competing historical narratives. Nationalistic ideologies that have shaped concepts of American exceptionalism, progress, and the frontier were central to histories of the West through much of the 20th century. In short, the traditional, received history narrative posited that

settlement was a process of civilizing a once uncivilized wilderness. This process was

divinely sanctioned, essential to a healthy democracy, and peaceful. However, in the past

twenty-five years this narrative has been challenged by revisionist western historians who

39 Examples of these photographers’ work is held in the photography file, Custer County Historical Society, Broken Bow, Nebraska (hereafter cited, CCHS). There were numerous other photographers in Custer County in the late 1880s, however, there are no extent examples by them of on-site photographs similar to Butcher’s. There were also other photographers whose works relate to Butcher, though there is no evidence that Butcher was knowledgeable of them. Charles R. Savage crossed the plains and photographed overland emigrants in Nebraska in 1866. He was generally disappointed in his experience, writing, “a more uninteresting road can hardly be found. Very few trees to be seen and, what with the swarms of green flies and mosquitoes, and the strong wind that blows regularly every day, your photographic enthusiasm gets cooled down so much that you see nothing worth taking under the circumstances of such a trip.” Quoted in John Carter, “Photographing Across the Plains: Charles R. Savage in 1866,” Nebraska History 71:2 (Summer 1990): 61. Also, Boston photographer, Charles Currier, an urban counterpart to Butcher, photographed the objects and environment of industrialism. See Robert Doty, American Photographers (exh. cata., The Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, 1972). 23

have demanded that the colonizing and imperialistic impulses of this history be re- examined.40 This revisionist narrative, which focused on the processes of conquering, colonizing, disempowerment, and corporate capitalism in the history of the West, offered another narrative, though in important ways as equally homogenizing as the one it worked to replace. If the settlement narrative offered a “mega-narrative, the

supernarrative of many names, one equally as good as another: the legend of national

fulfillment,”41 then much revisionist history, though without a doubt of profound importance in understanding the experience of the West, replaced this mega-narrative of national fulfillment with a mega-narrative of national conquest. As William Deverell has correctly observed of the limits of much revisionist history, “Catalogs of disappointment, genocidal conflict, and racial disharmony and hatred tell us little beyond the obviousness

40 The naturalized settlement and progressive narrative derived, essentially, from the construction of the frontier process laid out by Frederick Jackson Turner and made most accessible (and made into a more structured historical apparatus) by his student Ray Billington. See Ray Allen Billington and Martin Ridge, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (New York: Macmillan, 1982). The focus of early revisionist historians was to disassemble, so to speak, this historical apparatus in order to reveal the processes of imperialization that were naturalized by it. These historians also worked to construct a history of the West based on its identity as a region (as opposed to a process of frontier), and on its diversity of population (which had been reduced in the received narrative as well). See William Cronon, William. “Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner,” Western Historical Quarterly 18:2 (April 1987); Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past, eds. William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992); The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 1995, ed. James R. Grossman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987); Richard Slotkin, Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York: Atheneum Press, 1985); and White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”. It should be noted, here, however, that though the revisionists marked a concerted effort to dismantle the received historical narrative, several scholars before them had questioned its historical soundness. See Pual Wallace Gates, “The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System.” American Historical Review 16 (July 1936): 652-681; and Fred A. Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus.” The American Historical Review 41:4 (July 1936): 637-651.

41 Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 32. 24

of example. These finding will teach us more when they add analysis to descriptions of

‘who is doing what to whom’ and when they attack the power of the old narrative.”42

Building on the platform established by early revisionist writing, contemporary western scholarship has worked for a history that balances, or at least accommodates, the conflicting elements that were active in defining the experience of the 19th-century West.

A New Significance, edited by Clyde A. Milner, III, has been one of the most important publications to address the complicated experience of the West, and the equally complicated history it has engendered. In it, Susan Rhoades has summarized the position of contemporary western historians:

The great challenge for western historians is to find a new way of telling the story of the West, or ordering and signifying the facts, that is at once reflective of the new visions they have of and for America and yet as compelling in its “movement” as Turner’s frontier thesis.43

In one sense, this cry for a new mode of telling history is a result of the inherent

continued disempowerment present in revisionist history of those individuals who, though complicit in the processes of colonization, still demand of history a certain acknowledgement of the integrity of their actions and desires on an individual level. For instance, Donald Worster has noted, in response to much of early revisionist history in which victimization and reductive narratives continued to shape western history, that

“We need a new past, one with the struggle for adaptation as its main narrative, one that

42 Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 44. 43 Susan Rhoades Neel, “A Place of Extremes: Nature, History, and the American West,” in A New Significance 118. 25

regards successful adaptation as a kind of heroism too.”44 William Deverell, in

addressing the role of stereotypes in history has also acknowledged:

As is the case for most stereotypes, there may be some truth lying behind that caricature of the decent western lawman…some reality shadowing the memories we have of the independent farmer….It is important to acknowledge the truth in these stereotypes when we can, to display the individuals who give stereotypes shape and form as real people whose lives deserve to be rendered true stories.45

I believe that Butcher’s archive constitutes visual material, a primary document so

to speak, that can support the formulation of an art historical approach that not only offers

the more complex western history that these historians have called for, and the

participation of imagery in that history, but that equally reveals something of the complicated nature of western experience itself which has driven recent reconsiderations of “history telling.” Clearly Butcher’s archive is complicated in both its material and historical nature, as well as in its content, and this complicated nature often leads the archive to appear unwieldy and idiosyncratic. Yet, my theoretical approach has been specifically shaped by this somewhat baroque and eccentric nature that, at first consideration, suggests the archive’s inability to be reliable. I believe that the often conflicting and confusing elements found over and over in individual images create, upon

intense analysis of the entire body of photographs, visual patterns that emerge as unifying

threads throughout the archive. These patterns are grounded by the archive’s material

parameters. It records nearly 900 images of the residents of a single county over just six

44 Quoted in Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner, 237. 45 Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 38. 26

years, all taken on-site, suggesting that the visual patterns can be approached as manifestations of often competing and colluding agents of cultural processes and beliefs that were active in the lives of the subjects of the photographs.

Given this, I believe the archive can be approached as a very close and thick history, a “micro-history,” of the experience of Plains settlement.46 William Deverell has suggested that “better analytic tools help western historians re-envision the West. These include a more sophisticated understanding of power…and the ways in which power fills space on the western conceptual landscape.”47 I would suggest that, given its parameters and the patterns it contains, Butcher’s archive is a rare historical artifact that specifically offers a mode to understand the ways in which power fills space, quite literally, on a particular western landscape. By identifying and analyzing the agents of power resident

in it, I believe Butcher’s archive can be utilized to suggest a more sophisticated

understanding of how such power is visualized and, importantly, a more nuanced

understanding of what the experience of that power was during Plains settlement.

46 My use of the term “micro-history” comes from Gilbert C. Fite, “Agricultural Pioneering in Dakota: A Case Study,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:3 (Summer 1981): 169-180, in which a rare detailed farm account kept by Frederick A. Fleischman from 1879 to the early 1920s is used in order to ground an historical inquiry into the nature of farming during this period in the Dakotas. Fite notes in this article the rarity of primary sources that contain the specific and local information upon which such micro-histories are based, such as Butcher’s archive and Fleischman’s account book. My emphasis throughout this dissertation on the importance of contextualizing the archive within a rich local history in order to understand not only its conceptual and cultural underpinnings, but equally its participation and relevance to broader nationalistic political, social, and culture contexts, is a result of my interest and intellectual debt to the concepts of thick history developed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. See Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983); and “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” Contemporary Field Research: Perspective and Formulations, ed., Robert M. Emerson (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001). 47 William Deverell, “Fighting Words: The Significance of the American West in the History of the United States,” in A New Significance, 31. 27

I propose to approach Butcher’s archive as a visual nexus, as a point within which

various competing beliefs and activities converge.48 I would like to conceptualize the

relationship of the cultural agents that vie for voice, for power, in these portraits as that of a network, a web of paths through which each agent juggles for a dominant voice in the definition of the settlers’ lives. At times any one agent might have that dominance, but this position is never sustained throughout the archive. The paths of this network are fluid, multi-leveled, multi-directional, and frequently unstable, and thus their agents cannot all be defined or categorized by the same approach. Some assert the power of the settlement process, and thus are linear and dynamic, some assert a physical condition of the area, and thus are static and often intractable. Some assert a conceptual “border” between the East and the West, while others work to dissolve this differentiation. Some move directionally into the future, and some are backward-looking. Some work to conceal their nature and some work to expose. Conceptualizing the portraits as a nexus accommodates the conditions demanded by each agent without asking them to conform to the requirements or nature of any of the others. The heart of this approach entails,

48 My approach to cultural objects, such as Butcher’s archive, developed out of a study of post-colonial theory and its application to analyzing Indian portraits from the American West, which I explored in M. Melissa Wolfe, “Posed, Composed, and Imposed: Defining the Indian in the Portraits by E.A. Burbank,” in American Indian Portraits: Elbridge Ayer Burbank in the West (Youngstown, OH: The Butler Institute of American Art, 2000), 37-52. In my conceptualization of the structures of culture presented here, and the attendant constructions of power, objects, and identity, I have drawn on the work of various scholars: James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (); Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, 1908-1936,” Social Text 11 (Winter 1984-85): 20-64; Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York, NY: Routledge, 1994); Barbara Groseclose, British Sculpture and the Company Raj: Church Monuments and Public Statuary in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay to 1858 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1995); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983; New York, NY: Verso, 1991). 28

essentially, a shifting of intellectual position from utilizing a single narrative to deal with

a set of rather ungainly images, to utilizing a single image to deal with a set of rather

ungainly narratives.

This dissertation takes the form of a series of contextual essays in which I work to

explicate each of the agents and the nature of their visual presence from the content of the archive. I begin in the first chapter by setting out a deep cultural context in which

Butcher instigated his archive, in order to anchor it historically and conceptually to the activities, beliefs, and participants compiled in its images. In individual chapter essays I then work though the nature and visualization of each power—or each pattern—which I

believe is resident in the archive. I begin in chapter two with the long-established identity of the yeoman farmer. This identity was built upon in the popular characterization of the pioneer, which is explored in chapter three. In chapter four I

examine the dynamics of progressive ideology and its adoption by Plains farmers. The

power and presence of the landscape is analyzed in chapter five. The occurrence of failure, and the gradual realization of it, is discussed in chapter six. In chapter seven, I consider the development of the identity of the westerner, and in chapter eight the settlers’ awareness and concept of history is analyzed.

CHAPTER 2

STAKING A CLAIM

2.1 Recording the Disappearing Frontier

Butcher related his decision to create a photographic history of the county as a moment of sudden inspiration: In the spring of 1886 I conceived the scheme of getting up a history of Custer county. From the time I thought of the plan for seven days and nights it drove sleep from my eyes. I laid out plans and covered sheet after sheet of paper, only to tear them up and consign them to the waste basket. At last, Eureka! Eureka! I had found it…..Some called me a fool, others a crank, but I was too much interested in my work to pay any attention to such people.”49

Butcher is most frequently considered a kind of “genius” who saw what was happening

while others continued their daily lives, unaware of what would soon disappear in the

ever more pervasive establishment of civilization.50 However, there are a number of

49 Butcher, Pioneer History, 153. 50 For instance, “If the builder is of philosophical bent, he may reflect on the historical and social significance of what he is doing, but chances are he won’t. And so it was with the homesteaders who flocked into Nebraska in the 1880s. They built sod houses and worried not about such nebulae as history or heritage. Fortunately, an itinerant photographer, Dolomon DeVore (sic) Butcher, realized the significance of what the early homesteaders were doing and preserved Nebraska’s sod-house heritage through camera lens and written word.” Jean Williams, “S.D. Bucher, Pioneer Cameraman,” NEBRASKAland Magazine (March 1969): 28-29, 51-52, 54. 30

sources, including the archive itself, which suggest that his idea, both visually and

conceptually, was realized out of a local and national context ripe for such an

undertaking.

Nearly every statement Butcher made regarding the importance of his

photographs includes the idea that the pioneer era was fast disappearing and it would be

his photographic history that would allow this era to be remembered in national history.51

In fact, his continued assertion of this is the basis of establishing his “genius.” One such instance can be found on the ads he put on the back of his prints. They begin, “Secure a picture of life in the far west while you can. Sod houses will soon be a thing of the past,” and they end with the assertion that his photographs, “when finished will form one of the most remarkable collections of photographs and biographies ever made in any county in any state in the Union.”52 However, this sense of disappearing, and of the importance of recording what was disappearing, was without a doubt a national concern that was widely expressed at the time of the archive’s conception.53

The West had been imagined as the moving location where the wilderness and its inhabitants and characteristics were transformed or overcome by the developing

51 His assertion of the archive’s importance is especially dominant during the state’s consideration to purchase it from him. In an undated letter to Addison Sheldon, Butcher stated that the photographs “were considered by both of us [he and his wife] as something that should be preserved no difference how much inconvenience it made us in doing so.” Butcher Papers. And, again to Shelton in a letter of 2/3/1913, in which he states that “it seems to me that the record of Nebraska for the last 33 years should be as important to the state as the history of the Indians, and we have the history and pictures to show the growth and development a hundred fold more perfect then they can ever hope to get of the Indians.” Butcher Papers. 52 Photographic files, CCHS. 53 A wide variety of western inhabitants, such as the Indian, buffalo, and cowboy, were imagined to be disappearing (and some, like the buffalo, were). Many Americans, like Butcher, acted on this belief. See, for instance, William Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), for an excellent discussion on this artist’s work to visually record, in order to “save,” Indian culture. For views on the demise of the buffalo, and the work to conserve the few that remained, see the discussion of Theodore Roosevelt in Richard Slotkin, “Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt’s Myth of the Frontier.” American Quarterly 5:33 (1981): 608-637. 31

American nation.54 Inherent in this conceptualization, often referred to as the civilizing process, is that in time, the pre-civilized West—the West that stood in contrast to the

East—would no longer exist. The civilizing process had discrete chronological stages,

beginning with the era of the Indian and buffalo, which was replaced by the trapper and

scout, who, with the military, opened the process to the rancher and cowboy, who then

turned their time over to the pioneer, the last chronological stage of the civilizing process,

who completed the process by respectfully transforming both himself into a proper

middle-class farmer and the former frontier area into a mirror of the rural agricultural

East. When the 1890 census stated that it would not include an indication of the location

of a frontier line on a map due to the fact that there was no longer a contiguous line of

frontier conditions, the end of this epic process seemed to be completed. The frontier,

and the various elements that made it unique—the Indian, buffalo, cowboy, and free

unsettled land—were no longer.

The nation, armed with increased accessibility to an ever widening variety of

published material—from newspapers, to weekly and monthly periodicals, to dime novels

and other products of the inexpensive press—absorbed a multitude of information that

54 There is a very wide and rich history of scholarship on the concept of the West as defined as a moving location based on its definition as a frontier, and as well, its relationship to the rest of the nation. For excellent examples of the variety and issues involved in this concept, see Richard Slotkin, Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York, NY: Atheneum Press, 1985); John Mack Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and Other Essays (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1994); James R. Grossman, The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 1995 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1957); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967; and Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). For an excellent overview of the problems and historical approaches to western history in which this issue is central, see Kent Blaser, “Something New: Understanding the American West,” Nebraska History (Summer 1996): 67-77. 32

supported the belief in this imminent disappearance. The “farming frontier” had

followed with extreme speed on the heels of the equally short “military frontier” and

“cowboy frontier.” For instance, in 1876, Custer had met his end at the Battle of the

Little Bighorn, and Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane in Deadwood, Dakota Territory,

were national figures. In 1881, the nation read sensational accounts of the killing of Billy

the Kid and the shootout at the OK Corral.55 Yet in 1879, in the midst of such iconic and unfettered “wild West” events, historian Henry George was already predicting the end of the civilizing process, writing that, “[all] that have marked our people are…results…from unfenced land….But our advance has reached the Pacific. Further west we cannot go.”56

In 1883, only two years after Billy the Kid’s demise, Thomas Donaldson published

Public Domain, a monumental 1,343-page compilation of public land laws and corresponding data that by its very statistical approach suggested the summation that characterizes the end of an era.

In fact, land issues such as the nature of land grants, Indian land policies, alien landholding, and the repeal and amendments to the various land acts, became so prevalent in the 1880s that nearly every national publication consistently included articles regarding one or more of these issues.57 Even the widely read humorist Bill Nye

lamented in an 1884 article titled “No More Frontier,” that the once wild West, now

55 This single incident was recounted in eight newspapers in New York City alone. See, White, Misfortune, 625. 56 Henry George, from Progress and Poverty, 1879. Quoted in Allan G. Bogue, Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 104. These ideas are prevalent throughout more local publications. See, for instance, The Nebraska Farmer (September 1, 1883), 261: “how rapidly we are approaching the time when the existence of a domain free to all under the condition of actual settlement and cultivation will be a thing of the past….the exhaustion of the public domain is annually a nearer certainty.” 57 Lee Benson, “The Historical Background of Turner’s Frontier Essay,” Agricultural History 25 (1951): 64. 33

strewn with “rusty, neglected, and humiliated empty tin can[s],” was within a single day’s

ride to daily papers and electric lights. He concluded his article with the declaration that

“There ain’t no frontier any more.”58 Indeed, in the three decades after 1870 more land was settled by farmers than in all the rest of the nation’s history.59 By 1890 there were no

open, unorganized areas in the West; North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and

Washington all became states in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho did the same the following

year, and the four remaining states awaiting statehood had been organized into territories.

When Frederick Jackson Turner, relying heavily on the 1890 census and a collage of

statistical and geographic maps, announced the close of the American frontier at the

Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, he was merely synthesizing the varied responses to this

pervasive sense of loss brought on by such dramatic and accelerated developments.

Economic changes further accelerated the demise of the frontier West. The last quarter

of the 19th century was marked by profound technological developments, such as the

railroad, telegraph and telephone, and aggressive economic expansion, which signaled

the nation’s emergence into a new era of industrial strength that eclipsed its long-held

agrarian identity. Along with announcing the disappearance of a frontier line, the 1890

census also revealed that the value of U.S. industrial products exceeded the value of

agricultural products.60 American manufacturing production totaled more than that of

Great Britain, Germany, and France combined.

58 Quoted in David M. Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 23; and, Bogue, Turner, 106. 59 The best publication on the conditions of the “farming frontier” is Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966). 60 See Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 30. 34

That Custer County residents felt the effects of these transformations in American

culture and interpreted them within the rhetoric of the disappearing frontier is attested to

in their own writing. In describing the cattle industry in Custer County for Butcher’s

book, H. M. Sullivan stated that, “As the ranchman and the Texas steer in the ‘60s and early ‘70s had driven out the Indian and the buffalo, so now in the ‘80s the ranchman and the steer were compelled to give way to the farmer and the horse.”61 Likewise, J. J.

Douglas wrote in his contribution to Butcher’s book, that “[the cattlemen], like the Indian

were compelled to give it [the land] up to more advanced civilization….The country is

now dotted over with beautiful farms and the ground that was once used for bedding

down cattle…is now occupied by the village of Callaway.”62 Or, as settler Stillman

Gates expressed rather succinctly, “It was not long before all of the land in sight was

taken.”63

Such profound economic and cultural changes were coincident with equally far-

reaching developments in the arena of history. As Herbert Baxter Adams, at John

Hopkins University, expressed in 1883, history was “booming.”64 This was true both for

the academy and for the general population who were also responding to a surge in

sentiment for the importance of history. As David Lowenthal has noted, “Beginning in

the 1830s the historian Lyman Draper made it his lifetime mission to search out and

transcribe for posterity the records and recollections of aged western pioneers that would

61 H.M. Sullivan, “Cattle Industry in Ranch Days,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 29. 62 J. J. Douglas, “Organization of Custer County,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 15. 63 Stillman Gates surname file, CCHS. 64 Quoted in Allan G. Bogue, “The Course of Western History’s First Century,” in A New Significance: Re- envisioning the History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3. 35

perish with them if not quickly rescued….Hundreds of reminiscences published in the

second half of the 19th century attest to the eagerness of the immediate descendants of

pioneers themselves to save pioneer experiences from oblivion.”65 Even closer to

Butcher’s undertaking is Nebraska’s formation of a state-funded historical society in

1879, only twelve years after it received statehood. The urgency that marked these

endeavors to preserve history can be seen in a notice in the Nebraska Farmer for the

historical society’s annual meeting, in which the writer noted that “Very much important

historical matter can now be obtained from the lips and tongues of living men and women

who were here at the commencement. This means of preserving the history of our

territory and state ought to be utilized.”66

Such interests were manifested locally as well. The Custer County Republican

started in 1882, only five years after the organization of the county. In its second issue,

the editor noted: “the History of Custer County will be published, in chapters every other week. It will be complete in detail and well worth preserving. Persons wishing extra copies would do well to leave orders as only a limited number of copies will be

published.”67 In fact, such history articles continued in the paper for several years.

During the course of 1886 the paper published a serialized history of the pioneer

transformation of the Northwest (mostly Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois), titled

“Pioneer Life in the North-West.” That same year the paper also noted that Adams

County, in eastern Nebraska, had formed an Old Settlers Association in order to honor

65 David Lowenthal, “The Pioneer Landscape: An American Dream,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winter 1982): 17. 66 Nebraska Farmer (January 1879). 67 Custer County Republican, 7/6/1882. 36

those residents who had established the county—to honor those who, in essence, had

enacted the transformation from frontier to civilization in their locality.68 Not

surprisingly, Custer County began having their own Old Settlers picnics by 1889.69

Even the specific format that Butcher used to compile his historical information comes out of his local context, mirroring that used in a continuing column, called “’Lafe’ on the Wing: What he saw and heard for ‘Republican’ Readers,” in the Republican that began on July 23, 1885. The writer, using the pseudonym, Lafe, begins with a general history of the specific area of which he is writing, and then he relates his actual movement throughout the area as he visits household to household, giving the section location of the farmstead, the particular size and interests of the farming or ranching endeavor, its improvements, how long the owner had been there, and various family information. Butcher’s process of collection mirrors Lafe, as they both moved, physically, in the same manner from one farmstead to the next in a settlement area, often unannounced, gathering news, history, or photographs along their path. In his first column, Lafe set out his history of the settlement of Cliff Table.

The West Table is a little world by itself, standing out distinct from the surrounding county, from which it is naturally separated by huge precipices and monstrous canyons….three years ago this tract of land was a broad expanse of prairie uninhabited, except by the lowing kine, and bronco, the wolf, perchance the deer and the occasional tread of the cowboy, to-day witnesses a teaming population of peaceable, industrious settlers, noted for honesty, morality and religion….Cliff is near the center of the West Table. There is also organized here a Methodist church, with a goodly number of members….We have also two postoffices, one store, and at least three blacksmith shops, where the music of the anvil chimes

68 See Custer County Republican, 8/24/1886. 69 Organizations files, CCHS. There doesn’t seem to be a founding date for this group, though from the late 1880s on it is extremely active. 37

with that of the plowboy, in drawing out his “lays” and keeping them in trim to convert the green sward into fields of golden grain.70

Lafe then listed, in order of his visits, the settlers of Cliff Table.

G.A. NEWMAN, is located opposite Cliff, on section 9—17—23, and has turned over 50 acres sod this year, has 30 to corn and 8 to wheat; good house and stable, and is making a cistern by the house; will plant considerable fruit next year. We met W.S. TROW here, who has a claim on section 8—17—23; he is quite feeble from injuries received during the rebellion, but has got 23 acres broke out on his claim; has 25 acres to corn and half an acre to potatoes; keeps a cow and hog. We turn homeward and on our way stop at ELDER J.J. HUGHES…71

Although Butcher’s original notes from Custer County were lost in the 1899 fire, it is likely he utilized the same format as his later oral histories. Quite of a piece with Lafe’s notations, they read:

R.B. Deatherage formerly of Rappahanock Co Virginia came to Custer Co. Neb April 1884. Located 9 miles north of Broken Bow. Has 200 acres of land and rents about one section of land. Mr. Deatherage is a great lover of fine cattle and has at present about 100 head of cattle has 32 head of high grade Hereford cows which raised him 31 calves this season. Mr. D. thinks there are not many herds in Neb. that can show a better record for prolific breeding. We show in connection with this sketch the fine Bull Haverlip who stands at the head of his herd and is truly a fine animal. 6 of bull, 3.50; 5 of last view of cattle 2.50 1 of 2nd view, .50 = $6.5072

If such local manifestations of history writing and settlement concerns inspired

Butcher to conceive of a history of his own, he was not alone. While Butcher without a doubt is the author of his archive per se, the subjects—the residents of Custer County— were equally responsible for its creation. For several years they, too, had been reading in

70 Custer County Republican, 7/23/1885. 71 Ibid. 72 Butcher Record Book, Butcher Papers, NSHS. 38

the county and local papers the same histories of earlier pioneers whose experiences,

which were similar to their own, had been validated by the history profession to be

important. They, too, had been following Lafe’s perambulations throughout the county,

at times finding their own personal participation in the settlement process worthy of

printed notice. It is no surprise that within two weeks of Butcher’s announcement about his proposed history, seventy-five residents had signed up for their “homesteader” pictures.73 The settlers themselves also understood their actions as being of national

importance; they believed along with Butcher that the settlement of their own local area

was not only in danger of fading into history unrecorded, but also that it was a record of

national importance. Given this, they were willing to stand in front of Butcher’s camera,

not just for their family photo, but also in order to make a visual statement of their

participation in this important history.

Certainly Custer County’s population had a precedent for believing in the

importance of their actions to national history. Luckier than Kansas, whose early

moniker was “Droughty Kansas,” Nebraska’s earliest nickname was “The Veteran State,”

due to the great number of Civil War veterans that flocked into the area for government

land.74 Custer County was no exception.75 In 1886 there were 143 pensioners living in

73 Butcher, Pioneer History, 153. 74 Government claims were particularly enticing to veterans, or their widows and orphans, as their enlisted time could be taken off the occupancy requirement, thus they could receive patent to their claims in some cases after only a year or two. Ex-confederate veterans were excluded from this clause. 75 Though Nebraska was a favored settlement location for large number of veterans in the 1870s, by the 1880s, when Custer County was settled, the population resembled the general national population. Of nearly 400 named settlers I noted in my research, just over 12% of them indicated they were Union veterans. This is in comparison to the 10.7% of Union population who fought in the war. (13.1% of the South’s population fought.” See Table 2-23: “Principal Wars in which the US Participated: US Military Personnel Serving and Casualties” prepared by Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports. US Department of Defense Records, Washington, DC. These 39

Custer County.76 A local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic was organized in

1882, one of the first organizations formed in the county (second only to the Custer

County Agricultural Society formed in 1881). A Republican notice to residents is quite

telling in regard to how these veterans and their families felt their personal histories

played on the national stage.

As more and more the receding years consigns the period, covered by the civil war, to the past a greater more absorbing interest will be taken in its every detail….Among the soldiers readers of the Republican there are, we doubt not, many cognizance of facts that transpired on the march, in camp, or amid the turmoil of battle, that would prove of the greatest interest to your readers, could they be induced to furnish the same for publication. Let those then who moved amid scenes, participated in events, witnessed deeds of heroism, self-denial, courage and valor, unsurpassed in the worlds history, publish their reminiscences. It is not enough that handed down from father to son they become mere family traditions—they belong to the county inasmuch as through them the county was saved, its integrity preserved, the republic perpetuated, and we to-day are practically what we long were in theory—free and independent.77

It is not a far-reaching conjecture to suggest that it would have been quite easy for this

population to shift their already formed sense of personal importance and participation in

national concerns from the arena of war to the arena of frontier settlement.

No matter how aggressively the local and national papers heralded the end of an

era, they could not have demonstrated it better than actual events. One could quite

accurately state that within the span of the six short years Butcher had lived in Custer

County, the county—an area twice the size of Rhode Island and larger than Delaware—

had essentially gone from a verifiable frontier to a thriving agricultural area with a

veterans were extremely active in recognizing their participation in the war, and their leadership was frequently sought out in county affairs. 76 Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886. These pensioners received together $1,185.25 each month, an average yearly supplemental income to farming of $99.46 each. 77 Custer County Republican, 2/18/1886. 40

railroad busy transporting pioneers further West, well past the county into areas of

Wyoming and Colorado. Custer County’s brief history prior to the date that Butcher began his history project epitomized the nature of farming settlement in the Western frontier of the 1880s. Rather than the gradual accumulation over a generation or so of residents with their attendant towns, roads, plowed land, institutions and organizations that is the stereotypical image of frontier settlement, Custer County experienced the phenomenal rate of settlement that characterized specifically the Great Plains settlement of the 1880s.

The prairie states just east of Nebraska, as well as the eastern cusp of the state, were solidly settled by 1873. When the area of Custer County was surveyed for homesteading in 1872, the surveyor noted that there was not a single indication of farming settlement in the entire area. The first government claims were taken in 1874, though accounts of drought and grasshopper infestations, along with a depression in agricultural prices nationwide, generally discouraged emigration into the plains states.

With less than 800 residents, the county was organized in 1877, named to honor Gen.

George A. Custer, whose defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn had occurred less than a year earlier. While that year and the following the early settlers enjoyed bountiful rain and good crops, the next three years brought bad weather conditions, especially a devastating winter in 1881-82, thus continuing to suppress settlement in the area.

However, a three-year span (1882-1884) of plentiful rain and good weather throughout the central section of Nebraska, including Custer County, instigated a settlement boom that was capped off in 1886 with the completion of the Burlington

Railroad northwest through the county.78 The settlers, such as Butcher, who watched and experienced this boom were justifiably awed by the changes. Nearly every personal history written by county residents of the time mentions the incredible boom of towns and settlers in the years 1883 and 1884.79 The influx and confusion it wrought was so incredible that local residents requested that the Republican “print a copy of the repeal law of preemption and timber culture laws as many anxious eyes are watching this paper for that purpose; also the homestead law as amended.”80 With just two towns in 1882, the county boasted of 14 by the end of 1886, nearly all of which had over 100 residents.

Broken Bow, the county seat, which had less than 25 residents in 1882, had over 1,200 by

1886. The population of the county itself had increased by 905% between the time

Butcher arrived and the time he initiated his history—a short span of six years—from just over 2,200 residents to over 20,000. This translates to an increase from roughly one

78 After receiving a mean of only 15.70” of rain in 1876, the following eight years ranged between 21.40” and 28.10”. chrononlogy citation. See Frederick C. Luebke, “Time, Place, and Culture in Nebraska History,” Nebraska History 69:4 (Winter 1988): 159: “The rapid growth of Nebraska’s counties and towns was most pronounced in the 1880s….This profound increase, which was similarly experienced by other Great Plains states, was due to a confluence of temporal, environmental (ample rainfall), and technological forces. The settlement of the plains occurred at the same time that a) steam-powered trains and transatlantic ships were transforming spatial relationships around the world and b) agricultural expansion in the Midwest, stimulated by improvements in farm machinery, helped the US to capture a large share of the world grain market. This development, in turn, had the effect of disrupting agricultural economies in Europe, especially in Sweden, Denmark, and northern Germany, and causing hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers and agricultural day-laborers to emigrant to the US. Some of these persons found new homes and farms in Nebraska.” 79 See, for instance, Haskell surname file, CCHS: “from the spring of 1882 the country settled fast, and for several years the crops were good.” And the Chrisman surname file: “being a cattle man, father had chosen the hilly land to stake out his claim, believing the land around it would not be taken and that he would have all the range he wanted for his cattle. There he was wrong, for 1883 was CC’s “boom year” and it was not long before all the neighboring land was filed on.” In Callaway: Settling the Seven Valleys, ed. Mrs. Fred Smith (Callaway, NE: Loup Valley Queen, 1982), 10, local historian Francis B. Jenkins notes that “Peak of homestead entries in Nebraska was in 1885 with 11,293 entries…a sampling from the blocks in our region shows 1883 (usually) or 1884 to have been the peak year.” 80 Custer County Republican, 5/5/1884. Also see, for instance, an article titled, “Important Decisions,” in the Nebraska Farmer, 9/1/1883, which addressed issues such as power of attorney to sell land, alien heirs of deceased homesteaders, and method of payment for public lands. 42

person per square mile to nearly eight people per square mile; theoretically, one would

have to walk only a ¼ mile to visit a neighbor.81 Likewise, theoretically, 8 new residents

arrived every day of the six years, or, 57 new arrivals every week. The number of farms

in the county increased during the decade by 820%, from 435 listed in the 1880 census to

3,567 listed in that of 1890. In the words of one of the state’s most prominent historians:

In it [the 1880s] came the largest addition to our population; the greatest increase in our production; the furthest extension of railroad mileage; the greatest change in the physical aspects of our state. More land was taken by settlers in this period, more livestock added, larger increase in crops of all kinds, more new towns were founded more post offices were established, more schools were created, more churches built, more homes constructed than in any other decade of Nebraska history.”82

More akin to the actual experience of the boom, the Republican carried this note in 1886,

“A man who arrived in Gordon in 1883 is mentioned by the local press as an ‘old

citizen.’ It is true enough, but sounds queerly.”83

If the county was filling up with people, it was losing other populations, and this loss further accentuated the pervasive sense that an era was fast disappearing. While the

plains area of Nebraska is generally regarded as “treeless,” in fact, until the end of the

1883-84 boom, there were areas of Custer County known for their “thick growth” of cedars. However, by the end of 1884, they had been depleted by the Union Pacific cutting for railroad ties and the early settlers’ cutting in order to sell for cash at railroad

81 This is certainly proof of Gilbert Fite’s statement that, “the idea that frontier farmers were isolated and went for weeks without seeing a friend or neighbor is mostly imaginary. The speed of settlement was so great in most communities that strictly pioneer conditions did not last very long.” Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 220. 82 Addison E. Sheldon, Nebraska: The Land and the People I (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1931), 661-62. Sheldon had been the strongest voice promoting the purchase of Butcher’s photographs by the state in 1911. Once serving in the Nebraska House of Representatives, at the time of the purchase he was the head of the Legislative Reference Bureau, closely tied to the Historical Society. 83 Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886. 43

terminus such as Kearney or Grand Island. In 1883 alone, the newspapers reported

11,000 posts taken from the canyons, and over 40 teams taking posts out of the area.84

The first homesteaders in the Somerford Valley, William Ferris and James Pierce, noted

finding blue stem grass as high as their horses backs upon their arrival, though the native

grass disappeared under the plow.85 Older settlers told popular stories at gatherings about

seeing buffalo wallows and trails, and even the earliest settlers could boast, and they

often did, of seeing the actual animal.86 Newspapers up to about 1883 report rather regularly about plentiful game and wildlife—deer, “herd of antelope,” “large herd of elk,” wolves, wild horses, bobcats, as well as prairie chickens and geese. However, there is no more mention of elk after 1884, the same year wild horses disappeared, and bobcats and wolves disappeared even earlier. One county historian noted that “when the populations of areas reached 4/sqare mile, the deer disappeared.87

2.2 Custer County, 1886

But it was not just the sensational increase in population, and its attendant feelings of loss, that caused Butcher and the local community to which he belonged to feel the

84 Carl Smith, unpublished mss, CCHS. 85 Sargent file, CCHS. 86 A typical boast of Harve Andrews stated that, “Mr. Andrews killed deer and antelope by the hundreds and one buffalo and for ten years his family had no other meat.” Quoted in Carl Smith, “Wild Games,” unpublished mss, CCHS. 87 Ibid. This loss was seen at the time as a natural part of civilizing the area. For instance, an article on “Pioneering” in the Republican stated, “We are marching in the van of civilization; our weapons are the plowshare, perseverance and a determination to overcome all difficulties and build us homes and establish a community of which our own successors may be proud in the years to come….many of us will then have passed away to our long home, and a little mound marked perhaps by…a bunch of wild prairie flowers, the last of their specie…to be pointed out to the relic hunter or historian, as the grave of the first officials of Custer County, of the first editor of the first paper,” Custer County Republican, 8/31/1882. 44

need to record the fast-disappearing era of the farming frontier before it was lost to memory. Butcher’s realization of the end of an era was due even more deeply to fundamental and profound changes in the very fabric of the community that were happening precisely in 1886, the year he conceived of his history project, and even more precisely just months before his moment of inspiration. While brought on by rapid settlement, these fundamental changes were instigated almost single-handedly by the decision of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) to lay a feeder line

269 miles from Grand Island to Alliance, Nebraska (eventually connecting to Billings,

Montana). Its route ran northwesterly through the center of Custer County.88

What the railroad brought with it was a powerful town culture driven by investment and mercantile interests that greatly exceeded similar interests in the county just months previously. In late 1885 both the Union Pacific and the CB&Q railroad companies made exploratory line surveys along various routes through Custer County.

They kept their specific plans secret, however, in order to keep land prices from spiking before they purchased the land for towns along their route. In January of 1886 the official route of the CB&Q, which received the right-of-way across the county over the

Union Pacific, was made public. The CB&Q granted the Lincoln Land Company, a subsidiary owned by railroad board members, the commission to locate and plat towns along the proposed route. For instance, in Broken Bow the company bought 320 acres to the north and east of town and 33 town lots (over 100 blocks) for the then impressive sum

88 The actual route was constructed by the Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad, incorporated on October 15, 1885, for this purpose. The line was operated by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad Company, later the Burlington Railroad. General historical information regarding the railroad in Custer County has been taken from the railroad file, CCHS. 45

of $22,850.89 In return, the town donated right-of-way to over 2,000 feet, 300 feet wide,

for the route. As one resident remembered it,

The Lincoln Townsite Company…bought a half-section of land adjoining the town on the north, at big figures, and it resulted in corner lots going sky high. This was soon followed by the B & M surveyors up the Muddy Valley, who included Broken Bow in their line of survey. Not only townsite speculators and business men rushed in to secure desirable town property, but within a few months homesteaders had filed on all the desirable farming land in the vicinity.90

With official news of the railroad, Custer County had essentially entered into the second wide-spread boom of the 1880s farming frontier. This second boom, however, was found not in the actual farming sectors of settlement, but rather in the business sector. The number of residents whose interests were not farming, but associated businesses such as railroad construction, milling, merchandising, and professional fields increased dramatically. While specific numbers are not available for Custer County, the western third of Kansas was experiencing a nearly identical settlement boom as the locale around Custer County. In this area the population increased 370% from 1885 to 1887, though crop acreage only expanded about 265%.91 Millions of dollars of capital entered

the newly served railroad areas as wealthy easterners competed to make a quick profit in

western loans, particularly in mortgages.

Tableland in close proximity to the official route had been passed over by settlers

previously in lieu of valley land. However, nearly as important to a farmer’s success as

good land was the distance of their land to a railroad. Closer proximity to market centers

89 Custer County Republican, 12/31/1885. 90 D. M. Amsberry, “History of Broken Bow,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 201. 91 Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 123. As Everett Dick has noted, “The greatest land boom in the history of the state ensued from about 1884 to 1887, and Addison E. Sheldon estimated that 150,000 people settled in the western section between 1885 and 1890.” Everett Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 328. 46

meant less expense and labor and greater potential for profitability. Thus this tableland was now a hot commodity, and was quickly sold in advance of the railroad’s arrival to the area. Not to be overlooked, however, is that pioneer farmers saw themselves as investors as well, and their interest in this land was just as often for financial as for agricultural cultivation. With Broken Bow as their model, the areas that had the potential for a railroad town were prized claims. An advertisement in the Republican noted that:

the rush for government land this spring was immense. Most of the land hunters following up the rail road surveys….but west of us is still good land….Splendid claims near…Sargent, can still be bought at a bargain. In another year land will advance here 100 per cent. So those that want to strike it rich had better come now, ahead of the railroad.92

Land agents began advertising town lots “for speculation.” They also began to advertise more frequently farm lands that were available for cash sale, rather than for government claims.93

Promotion and land agents were nothing new; settlers in Custer County had always promoted their area. It was quite typical for the Republican to carry articles that described the county for prospective settlers.94 However, with the arrival of the railroad, the county was now advertised nationwide through the high-profile promotional networks of the railroad. The Republican carried reprints of articles describing the county from the

92 Colonel James in Custer County Republican, 6/2/1886. 93 “Custer County Lands. A Monthly Statement of Farm & City Property, for Sale by Lloyd Bros., the only exclusive Land and Loan Agents in the Southeast Quarter of Custer Co,” Custer County Republican, 8/4/1886. 94 Typical is the article titled, “Custer County As Seen Through Other Eyes Than Ours,” Custer County Republican, 4/24/1884, in which the “other eyes” belong to a traveler from Crete, Nebraska, in the eastern part of the state, and his audience seems to be other Nebraskans. 47

Omaha Bee, the Chicago Daily Times, and the Chicago Inter-Ocean.95 These accounts

are strikingly different from earlier, more local accounts that praised the area’s soil and

free land. For instance, an Inter-Ocean account boasts:

New towns are springing up as if at the command of an enchantress….we pass to notice more particularly the future metropolis of this portion of the state—Broken Bow, the capital of Custer County. This fast-growing little city is a surprise to all who visit it….excellent roads leading to it from any direction….Fine business houses, commodious hotels, beautiful residences, a fine brick opera house, and improvements unexpected in a new town….Add to these the large number of buildings in course of construction and contracted—more than one hundred in number—and one is convinced that Broken Bow is favored not only in location, but with the right kind of men—men whose presence here is a sure guarantee of the future of this little city. Business of every description is prosperous and the large amount of trade here is astonishing. New men and new capital are seeking this point for business openings and investments and find a promising field. Yet there are many fine openings here still for business enterprises and mechanics….Eastern capitalists will find that her city lots are as fine an investment as is offered in these days of small margins.96

As the county seat, Broken Bow was already the major trading and business

community in the county. It was a typical marketing strategy for the railroad to induce

even more business and trade investments into the town in order to bolster its own trade,

and thus profits. However, the railroad also needed to maintain depots and stations every

seven or eight miles along its route, and for this purpose it created the towns of Mason

City, Ansley, Berwyn, and Anselmo. Within days of being platted, the business sectors

of these towns were purchased, with a host of frame buildings underway. Ansley, for

instance, had built 20 buildings within a month of being platted.97 With enviable railroad

95 See, for instance, “The Broken Bow Country,” (Omaha, NE: published by Burlington Route., 1886), whose text is taken from the Chicago “Western Rural,” of July 24th, 1886; and from the Chicago Daily Times, July 1886.. 96 Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886. 97 Tom Wright, “Ansley” in Butcher Pioneer History, 294. 48

access, these towns immediately affected the structure of nearby established

communities. Algernon, founded by 1882, dissolved, its population and buildings moved

to Mason or Ansley. Westerville, the county’s oldest village founded in 1880, also

moved to Ansley. Merna, which had moved northwest by only a few miles of its original

site on just the rumor of a rail route, moved back to its original site, next to the now-

official route.98

To be sure, towns in Custer County previous to this had, as Butcher described,

“sprung up like mushrooms in the night,” only to move, disappear, or, if lucky, become

established.99 The little town of Walworth, where Butcher and Darling had opened their

first photographic gallery, disappeared within six months of being established, its buildings carted over the Middle Loup River to nearby West Union for a better chance at longevity (though unfortunately without luck, as West Union “bit the dust” as well when a railroad went through nearby Sargent in 1890). The little town of Merna had also moved in 1884 in hopes of locating in a better position for a rail route. While the desire to locate on a railroad route did, in fact, control the majority of town speculation through the period of settlement before the railroad’s actual arrival, this earlier speculation was

controlled, and contained, by the local residents. In fact, most towns were generally

developed by those settlers who arrived early enough to take government claims in the

most provident areas of the county, and they typically farmed their land as well.

98 Interestingly, the railroad’s legacy is still felt in the state. According to Frederick Luebke, “there are today no Nebraska town or villages exceeding 250 inhabitants that are not now nor formerly were located on a railroad.” Frederick C. Luebke, “Time, Place, and Culture in NE History,” Nebraska History 69:4 (Winter 1988): 156. 99 Butcher, Pioneer History, 153. 49

For instance, Gates was founded by Stillman Gates, who settled in 1878. As an

“early” resident, he was looked to for advice and his home was a point of departure for later settlers, especially since he operated a ferry across the Middle Loup River until the

first bridge was constructed. Even before 1880 he began hauling supplies from Grand

Island to accommodate the incoming settlers, and he opened a small trading store in his

home. He then built a school on his land in 1883. As the area was becoming a central

community location for settlers in the area, he capitalized on this and in 1884 added a post office and enlarged the store. Similarly, Major C.S. Elison’s homestead had been a natural location for travelers and freighters to stop on their trips to and from Grand

Island. Realizing the profit potential of this, Elison opened a small store in his home, which in 1880 he enlarged to a general store and added a post office. The trading center prospered into the town of Algernon, and by 1886 it had one store, a barber shop, post office, grist mill, livery, implement shop, hotel, and its own newspaper. However, when the local landowners refused the CB&Q’s purchase offer for adjoining land, the town died out.

Movement to and from the county’s communities was abruptly altered by the creation of these railroad towns as well. According to one settler’s history, few if any roads had been established by 1883.100 Travel was characterized by easy movement

across sections of property, generally along the most direct route, or along a route that

passed by the locations of homesites or wells. However, a dispersed town culture

required established roads to connect the towns to each other and to offer easy access into

100 Citation from chronology 50

them from the outer areas of the county. Not surprisingly, the local newspapers of 1886

are full of “Road Notices” submitted by the County Clerk to inform rural residents of

new road developments and improvements.101

With the arrival of the railroad in 1886, the natural developments of traffic and

trade centers that had been developed by local settlers were eclipsed by the demands of

the railroad. However, even the shape of the towns themselves became determined by

the railroad. Towns established by settlers had continued the spatial configuration familiar to the settlers from their origins in the East, in which a central town square was bordered by civic and cultural institutions as well as primary businesses. The plat for the second site of Merna [Fig. 50], included in an 1885 county atlas, is a typical example.

The public square is centrally located and the narrow business lots surround its perimeter.

With a general store, drugstore, clock and watch repair shop, hotel, a sod town hall and a croquet ground, the little green “truly was the social center for quite an area.”102

However, the towns created by the railroad subverted this more community

oriented plan to better suit their corporate needs. 103 The railroad almost uniformly

platted their new towns in a t-town plan [Fig. 51] that accommodated the linear nature of

the railroad. In this design businesses line a central, linear section of the town that

intersects a “t-bar” made by the railroad that traverses the edge of the town. All railroad

101 See Custer County Republican, 11/17/1886. 102 Merna (), 13. 103 The information used here is taken from three excellent discussions of rural town planning. See Bradley H. Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985, especially chapter seven, “Frams, Fields, and Communities: The Rural Landscape;” John C. Hudson, “The Plains Country Town,” in The Great Plains: Environment and Culture, eds. Brian W. Blouet and Frederick C. Luebke (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; and, Frederick C. Luebke, “Time, Place, and Culture in Nebraska History,” Nebraska History 69:4 (Winter 1988): 154.. 51

business, such as loading and unloading farm produce and stock, takes place outside of the business and civic areas of the town, on the opposite sides of the railroad. The civic institutions of the town were moved from their central location to the opposite margins of the town, as the railroad was more willing to donate these to the town due to their lesser market value. Thus, the intersecting point of the business and railroad sections became the central area of activity rather than the integrated center with business, travel, and civic concerns found in towns such as “second” Merna.104 “Third” Merna, created by the

CB&Q railroad, follows the t-town plan [Fig. 52]. In both, the railroad forms a t-bar with

Center Avenue, which has been platted along its first several blocks with narrow business lots. There is no central park or square, and the schools in both towns are located along the northern-most periphery of town.105

The nature of town culture had changed as well. The majority of post-railroad

businesses were opened not by current residents, but by newcomers. Quite frequently

properties were purchased, at times site unseen, by outside owners and investors, often

themselves associated with the railroad. For instance, J. H. Inman of Beatrice, Nebraska,

104 As Frederick Luebke has noted, “the depot…thus displaced the courthouse square as the center of activity. If grain elevators were on one side of the tracks, then stores, hotels, saloons, livery stables, and the like would line the other side of a street running parallel to the tracks….In this arrangement of urban space, the courthouse was usually located, not on a square in the middle of the business district, but at the edge of town on cheap land donated by the railroad for this purpose. The internal spatial relationships of towns in central and western Nebraska were thus influenced by technological culture as it existed in the late 19th century.” Luebke, “Time, Place, and Culture in Nebraska History,” 154. 105 A similar “reconfiguration” was enacted upon the entire Plains identity as well by the railroads. As Carl Kraenzel has noted, the geographic definition of the Great Plains emphasizes its north/south orientation, as the area is defined as a length of topography running north and south generally between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. However, the east/west orientation of the railroads disrupts this more natural definition to establish one that emphasizes its relationship to the economic needs and structure of corporate investments who export out materials from the Plains to eastern and far western markets, ports ,and refining/manufacturing locales. In other words, Americans more typically think of “crossing the Plains,” i.e. a concept of the area determined by the nature of the railroads more than one determined by the topographical unity of the region. Carl Frederick Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 128. 52

was an investor in the Lincoln Land Company who purchased 25 business lots in Broken

Bow which he then sold for profit. He also opened the Central Nebraska Bank with

$50,000 capital, pushing the older Custer National Bank out of business. Railroad

construction had been contracted to Kilpatrick Brothers, a family company from eastern

Nebraska who had substantial land and investment holdings throughout the Great Plains states.106 They erected an enormous frame general store, a “company store” in that they paid their crews in script good only at the store. Within a year the north side railroad addition to Broken Bow was “booming” and the business activity there rivaled the older, longer-established southside business section. Within five years the new area boasted several grocery stores, hotels, cafes, lumberyards, and bakeries, as well as a hardware store, bank, mill, grain elevator, plow works, blacksmith, livery barn, mortuary, and an opera house.107

In some ways the “golden” era of a farmer-oriented environment had come and

gone in the establishment of such bustling enterprises. Until 1882, county governance was in large part controlled by the earlier, and wealthier, ranchers. However, the winter of 1881–1882 brought devastating icy blizzards that, by most estimates, destroyed 60–

80% of livestock in the county. In 1882, the county records were transferred from the

Brighton Ranch to the new sod courthouse in Broken Bow. With a Republican convention held by farmers in 1883 and the settlement boom of that same year, farmers

had effectively taken political control of the county.108 Nearly every county office was

106 Kilpatrick Brothers file, CCHS. 107 Railroad file, CCHS. 108 As Edmond Haumont recalled, settlers had little to say about governing the county until 1883 when farmers began to take over control from the ranchers. See Haumont surname file, CCHS. 53

held by settlers. However, with the dominance of town culture after 1886, this control

subtly, if pervasively, was dissipated among town interests and farming interests, eroding

the solidarity of the country’s identification with the farmer.

Town culture fostered an increasingly distinct economic gap that only served to

assert a parallel cultural gap. As one history of the state has noted,

While city dwellers were beginning to enjoy modern conveniences and prosperous farmers in the eastern counties constructed comfortable frame houses in pleasant groves, most of the newer settlers, who occupied the central and western portions of the state, eked out a precarious existence under the most primitive conditions.109

This is certainly true of Custer County. While the majority of homesteaders still lived in

sod houses and dugouts, Ansley’s town residents received electricity along with the

railroad, and Broken Bow’s residents had sidewalks and gas street lights. Job Semler, an

early settler of the county, noted the difference in his own life, writing that,

About this time George Probert wanted to buy my farm, and as I owed almost every one I met, I sold it to him for $2,000 and after paying my doctor bill and for the horses that died during the five years that I was on the farm I only had enough money left to buy a small house and lot in town, but I was out of debt, and had a business in town that gave me a fair prospect to make a living for my family, so I learned to be a meat cutter…[he began to repair pumps, and]…got enough out of it to keep my family and that was more than the farmers were doing.110

In fact, the county newspapers often give voice to the feelings of disempowerment of

farmers by the onslaught of town culture. An 1886 article announced to the county that

the Broken Bow Merchants Protective Association had disbanded, stating that “The

109 James C. Olson and Ronald C. Naugle, History of Nebraska, 3rd ed. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 208. 110 Job Semler, unpublished memoir, Semler surname file, CCHS. 54

interest of the farmer and merchant are mutual, or should be made so, and when one

becomes antagonistic to the other it is detrimental to any business community and a definite understanding should be made to exist.”111

A short perusal of early images by Butcher of town residences and buildings

visualizes the differences farmers were experiencing. For instance, in Methodist Church

of Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 53], 1889, Ansley’s orderly sidewalks and a

collection of frame houses can be seen. The most imposing house in town, depicted in

House of J.C. Stevens, banker at Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 54], 1887, was

the banker’s, but even more common residences, such as that seen in Family on the porch

of residence in Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 55], 1889, were far more

impressive than the sodhouses and dugouts that marked the countryside. Other town

developments also exemplified this widening economic gap, as seen in Group on porch

of Windsor Hotel at Sargent, Custer County [Fig. 56], 1886, Two-story school building,

Anselmo, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 57], 1889, and The Pacific Hotel at Callaway,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 58], 1889. In “William McKee, West Union, T.P., 1886”

[Fig. 59], 1886, Butcher suggests within a family setting the social and economic status

displayed by such buildings. The spatial gap between the farming family and the

businessman to the left of them quite consciously reveals the settlers’ awareness of

difference. The mark that the increasing power of town culture made in the county is

111 “Disbanded,” Custer County Republican, 2/18/1886. Such indications of antagonism and feelings of differing agendas are not uncommon. For instance, in the 1/12/1887 issue of the newspaper, the “Grangers” noted that, “We wish to call the attention of the farmers of Custer County, to the fact that there has been a pool formed by the liverymen of Broken Bow advancing their prices 50 percent over prices charged anywhere within a radius of 100 miles…..many of us have so far to come that it is impossible to return the same day. At this season of the year we cannot permit our teams to stand out, nor can we afford to pay the exorpitant (sic) prices charged. Therefore we do hereby protest against the above named pool or combination, and do warn the farmers to come prepared to protect themselves.” 55

also given visual expression in Cole Farm, south of Mason City, Nebraska [Fig. 60],

1888, in which the Cole’s barn has been utilized by a business for advertisement.

The development of town culture, and its attendant social and political development, was a major indicator that the area’s identity had moved from “frontier” to

“rural.” However, concurrent with the establishment of a town culture—and equally

effective at supplanting Custer County’s frontier status—was a direct connection, due to

the railroad, that Custer County now had to parts further west. In essence, the railroad

ended the structure of the county as a “hinterland” connected to the rest of the country by

a “gateway” city. In the description of William Cronon, “Gateway cities were a peculiar

feature of North American frontier settlement….the gateway served as the entrance and

exit linking some large region with the rest of the world, and it therefore stood at one

end—usually the eastern end—of a large tributary hinterland that had no other means of

communication with the outside.”112 Until the railroad traversed the county in 1886,

Custer County residents had functioned within this spatial hinterland/gateway

relationship. Both Grand Island and Kearney were the closest terminus railroad points

for county settlers since the earliest of Custer County settlement, as well as for all settlers

northwest of the county.113 Grand Island was about an 80 mile ride from Broken Bow in

the center of the county, and Kearney was only 10 miles closer. Plum Creek (later

renamed Lexington) was located 45 miles directly south of Broken Bow and though it

had a Union Pacific depot that could accommodate some of the settlers’ needs, it didn’t

112 William Cronon, quoted in Wilbur R. Jacobs, On Turner’s Trail: 100 Years of Writing Western History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 225. 113 The Union Pacific route traversed the state, running east/west along the Platte River to the south of Custer County. The Burlington made connections with the Union Pacific at Kearney in 1872. See Plains:49, 37. 56

have the trading and market accommodations that were found at terminus points. Later,

in 1882, the Union Pacific completed a feeder line to North Loup, in Valley County.

This was about 40 miles from the northeastern parts of Custer County.

Settlers of Custer County were required to travel to terminus points, usually a five or six day trip, in order to conduct major cash trades, such as selling cedar posts, or purchasing major supplies. Many homesteaders supplemented their agricultural income by freighting goods to and from terminus points. In fact, Butcher’s father employed a handful of men and made a very good living freighting to and from Custer County. All

mail and outside news had to be delivered by stage or freight from these points, and telegraph communication terminated with the railroad line. The importance of these centers, and the feelings of dependence on such distant centers by the settlers, is apparent

in a notice in the Republican in 1882:

The trade of Custer County is now pretty evenly divided between Kearney and Grand Island, but cannot remain so long….Grand Island business men are working for this trade, while Kearney business men are seemingly indifferent. Kearney has the advantage if she would embrace it and could more than double it within ninety days by proper effort….Already we hear discussed the matter of having all freights shipped to Plum Creek and thus save two days on a trip. We favor and will work only for that point where our consumers can obtain the best goods at the lowest prices.114

With the construction of the railroad from Grand Island through Custer County

and beyond it 172 miles northwest to Alliance, Nebraska (eventually continuing to

Billings, Montana), the spatial relationship of trade and communications that residents

had with the rest of the country took on a distinctly different shape. As Jacob Cox,

secretary of the interior, aptly noted, “Every station upon the railway has become a

114 Custer County Republican, 6/29/1882. 57

nucleus for a civilized settlement, and a base from which lines of exploration for both

mineral and agricultural wealth are pushed in every direction.”115 Each little station

along the railroad line instantly became a center and settlers from all direction of each

center began to associate with that center rather than with the larger, more eastern trade

centers. Telegraph lines were built simultaneously with the railroad, giving county

“pioneers” instant communications not only to and from the rest of the state, but the rest

of the nation. The railroad conducted one passenger route per day and one to two freight

routes per day. Local farmers’ produce could be shipped to national markets, and the same variety of goods found in rural areas of Iowa and Indiana could be had locally.

Furniture, lumber, coal (a huge improvement in heating on the treeless plains), and the most modern farm implements and machinery were ordered and shipped directly.

Emigrants to the area could arrive into the county by a rail trip of only a few days, their crates and stock arriving with them as opposed to the seven week wagon trip Butcher

experienced. The Nebraska Farmer described this change in an 1887 issue:

We are in receipt almost daily of numerous inquiries, from the north, east and south about Nebraska….The gates are all open—the trains loaded down and extras following—the sidetracks and switches of western railroad towns are full of car loads of household goods, agricultural implements, horses, cows, hens, children, and all kinds of live stock the emigrant can bring with him.”116

From the station they were then only a short ride to their new home.117

115 Quoted in Mary Ellen Jones, Daily Life on the 19th-century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 235. 116 Nebraska Farmer, 4/1/1887. 117 Robert Furnas noted this change when he described the advance associated with the Union Pacific railroad line out of Omaha in a settlement pamphlet. “As late as 1858, our nearest railroad connection was Quincy, IL, east, and St. Louis, south, required from 5 to 10 days to reach. Now the trip is made in near as many hours. Then, 20 to 30 days by ox teams was required to reach “Pike’s Peak”…now 23 hours speed one from the Missouri river to Denver. Then, 365 days were required for a trip overland to the Pacific 58

Most important was the fact that the railroad continued on past Custer County, to

serve settlements even further west, or, more specifically, northwest.118 Settlements had

been pushing further and further west during the entire decade of the 1880s, especially

after the 1883-84 boom when the majority of good government land in the county had

been taken, and incoming emigrants could either chose to purchase land in the county or

continue further west for “free” government land. Custer County residents became

especially cognizant of the presence and number of these more western pioneers during

the completion of the feeder line. While residents of the county still thought of

themselves as pioneers, during railroad construction they were met with a large group of

settlers who viewed themselves as the pioneers and Custer County residents as easterners.

As one scholar has noted, “Between 1880 and 1890 the Burlington railroad moved from

central Nebraska through the northwest Panhandle into South Dakota. Homesteaders in

the Panhandle discovered that employment was available as railroad construction

workers. Their claims filed and residences established, they flocked to eastern Nebraska

in 1886 and 1887 to work on the Burlington.”119 “Eastern” Nebraska to Panhandle

settlers in 1886 would have been the Custer County area. With a railroad that could

easily transport settlers further west, residents of Custer County began to watch emigrants

coast. Now, seated in a Pullman palace car, as comfortable as by your parlor fireside, less that 100 hours transports you from Omaha to San Francisco. Then the overland fast pony mail line conveyed letters to Denver and Salt Lake at best in 5 to 10 days; today the simple click of a minute machine and your message is at either point.” Robert W. Furnas, “Nebraska. Her Resources, Advantages, Advancement and Promises,” (Lincoln, NE: Board of Education lands and Funds, 1885). 118 The Union Pacific railroad followed a western path along the Platte River to the south of Custer County. Thus settlement was established along this line much earlier than just north of it. Settlement patterns tended to run northwest through the land to the north of the Platte region settlements because of the northwesterly direction of the rivers in the area (the North, Middle, and South Loup rivers). This directional flow was further established by the northwesterly direction of the CB&Q’s route. 119 Harold D. Way, “Robert Ball Anderson, Ex-Slave, A Pioneer in Western Nebraska, 1884-1930,” Nebraska History 64:2 (Summer 1983): 167. 59

pass through the county, rather than settler there. Even more visible were settlers who traveled through the area in wagons. Albert Kleeb remembered as a youth herding cattle in the late 1880s that “there wasn’t much to do so I watched the covered wagons go by headed West. The Arnold community was just getting settled then so I suppose some of them stayed there. Usually in the spring there would be four, five or six wagons in a group—one behind the other.”120

The fact that the railroad continued northwest, through Custer County, reified in

the minds of county residents that there were communities further west significant

enough to warrant the railroad’s interest, and thus Custer County was no longer part of

the unsettled “West.” The frontier had moved past them and their time in the civilizing

process was over. In fact, this feeling was accurate according to maps (Custer County is

the largest centrally located county in the state) of the frontier’s location in 1880 in the

eastern part of the county [Fig. 61], and again in 1885 [Fig. 62], nearing the northeast

corner. With the railroad access further past the county, this conceptual line had finally

moved West beyond the county. An article in the Nebraska Farmer conveyed this

situation, “Uncle Sam’s domain in this state will soon be a thing of the past and the

frontier has passed our borders and is nearing the Rockies.”121 This fact was also

supported by articles in the local papers, such as one in the Republican titled “Northwest

Nebraska” that informed residents of the characteristics and benefits of that area in the same way that only four years earlier the paper was publishing similarly informative

120 Kleeb surname file, CCHS. 121 Nebraska Farmer, 4/1/1887. 60

articles such as “Climate, Soil, Water, Timber” of their own county.122 This suggests as well that a number of local residents were interested themselves in again moving further west, just as they had a few years earlier after reading in their local eastern Nebraska or

Iowa paper about Custer County. Additionally, geo-political developments in large part instigated by the creation of the railroad line would have hardly been lost on the county’s

population. From the time of its organization in 1877, until late 1885 with the

announcement of the railroad line, Custer County was identified as the northwestern most county in the state [Fig. 63]. The land adjoining its northwestern boundary was unorganized territory. Its geographical and political position mirrored exactly the

concept of the “frontier” process in that its eastern edge abutted an organized area

serviced by a railroad, and its western edge abutted open land. However, in late 1885,

with the organization of Blaine and Logan counties, Custer County was enclosed by

organized counties, and was no longer adjoined by the kind of unorganized land associated with the concept of the “frontier” [Fig. 64].123

The railroad and increased settlement brought an even more visual—and thus

possibly more impressive to Butcher—harbinger of the end of the county’s participation

in the frontier era. If anything, the increasing preference for the frame house over the sod

house visually marked the death knell for frontier status. Due to its specific location on

the eastern cusp of the Great Plains and its native growth of Buffalo Grass, Custer County was a prime environment for the construction of sod houses. Though there were other

122 Custer County Republican, 11/1/7/1886 and 6/29/1882. 123 During the 1880s, 26 counties were organized and railroad mileage increased in the state “from 1,868.4 miles in 1880 to 5,144.48 miles in 1890. The extension of the Burlington Railroad line through the Republican River Valley and the Sand Hills [Custer County] accounted for a major portion of that increase.” Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 199. 61

grasses that supported this architecture, Buffalo Grass created the best sod bricks due to

its incredibly dense and shallow root system that, when turned and dried, was nearly

indestructible. With ready and cheap materials found locally, the sod house was

ubiquitous in the county. Historians have considered Custer County the “sod house

capital,” and have estimated that over 1,500 sod houses were constructed in the county alone.124 The majority of these were associated with the 1880s settlement boom.

The sod house had become a kind of “icon” of the farming frontier for Butcher.

In my research, there are reliable accounts of only five frame houses in the county before

1884, and only three of these are in non-town locations. In 1883 a lumberyard was

opened in Broken Bow and slowly more and more frame houses were built, though

predominantly in the towns. In fact, in Broken Bow “lumber became more popular but

brick was the rage,” with four businesses and one house being constructed of brick before

1886.125 That such developments were seen as direct indications of progress can be noted

from an 1885 account of Broken Bow:

Broken Bow to-day must be seen to be understood; the buffalo grass is near or all gone from the streets. We cast our eyes around now and what do we see? Nice brick stores, a brick bank, a brick hotel, brick residences, a brick church, and a large frame church with its tall spire pointing heavenward. There are also many nice fame stores well filled with goods; there are also many fine frame residences to be seen dotting the landscape up and down the valley, on the hillsides and tops, in nearly or quite all directions, and now who knows but they will get the G.I. & W.C.R.R.”126

124 The best account of sod houses on the Nebraska plains is Welsch, Sod Walls. The origins of the sod house has received considerable attention. While there doesn’t seem to be a specific antecedent for the technology, many of the state’s immigrant groups, such as the Irish, Czechs, and German-Russians, were familiar with the method. See Welsch, Sod Walls, and Dowse surname file, CCHS. The Dowse family, descendents of some of the very first permanent settlers of the county, coming in 1873, reconstructed one of their family’s sod houses. Originally built in 1900 and occupied until the 1950s, the house is located on the family’s land just outside of Comstock and is open to visitors. 125 Broken Bow town file, CCHS. 126 S.O.E., “Who Knows,” Custer County Republican, 2/11/1886. 62

Butcher himself stated that these houses belonged to an era other than that of the sod houses in his pamphlet for the St. Louis World’s Fair. His caption for a photograph of the town of Comstock reads, “the frame buildings are typical of the latter-day plains villages that sprung up following the Sod House era.”127 The local population concurred.

The writer for the settlement of Cliff Table wrote for Butcher’s history book that, “Most of the sod buildings have given way to fine residences of wood and the commodious barns and outbuildings impart a most prosperous appearance to the table.”128 With the coming of the railroad, the lumber that would have necessitated several trips from railroad terminus points could now be shipped directly to a local station. Frame houses, though still predominantly in the towns, became more and more widespread after 1886.

The Republican noted that “Business houses and residences of brick and frame are going up every day on the Lincoln Land Company’s tract.”129 Certainly, the passing of the icon would have been personally felt by Butcher as both his parents and his sister and brother- in-law built frame houses in 1886, and they would likely have been planning their new construction during late 1885.

Such widespread and dramatic changes were quite likely especially evident in

Custer County, whose rolling, treeless topography encouraged spanning the wide and distant horizons. Acre after acre of native grasses plowed under to dark brown cultivated fields and ever increasing lines of barbed wire would have been an impressive visual transformation. Butcher also could not have missed the increase in townsites, the

127 Butcher, Sod Houses, n.p. 128 “Cliff Table,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 336. 129 Custer County Republican, 6/16/1886. 63

development of roads, or the increased occurrence of framed houses and barns; he could not have missed being affected by the changes wrought by the railroad surveyors and grading gangs as they trespassed across the collection of homestead claims, moving massive quantities of earth in their midst. These very visible changes were conjoined with the more implicit changes wrought by the advent of the railroad. In just a few short months, promotion of the area had shifted from agricultural land to investment property, township development shifted from natural settlement patterns to corporate decision- making, and a transportation mode of open accessibility was transformed into one directed by town needs. The prominence of the homesteader and the ways and means of his culture had been dramatically upstaged. Butcher felt this quite personally with the building of frame houses by his own family, as well as by the eclipsing of his father’s freighting business by the railroad. It was with the introduction of both the visual and experiential conditions of town and corporate culture into Custer County, that the changes around Butcher, and the other county settlers, coalesced into a palpable sense of loss that directed the creation of Butcher’s archive and encouraged other residents to participate.

CHAPTER 3

THE YEOMAN FARMER

3.1 Defining the Yeoman Farmer

One of the most prevalent agents active in Custer County settlers’ presentations of

themselves is the concept of the yeoman farmer. The importance of agrarian life, or the

life of the yeoman farmer, originated in America through the writings of Thomas

Jefferson, and its manifestation in the late 19th century is deeply indebted to his concepts.130 Based on Enlightenment thinking, Jefferson believed that ownership of land

was a fundamental right and that the small land-holder, the yeoman farmer, would form

the basis of a healthy democracy. According to Jeffersonian ideals, two specific

factors—close communion with nature and a propertied stake in society—elevated the

farmer to the ideal democratic citizen. Owning just the amount of land to support a

family placed the farmer respectfully in the middle class, while the spiritual and physical

130 As Deborah Fink has stated in her excellent study of Boone County, Nebraska, rural women, “Politicians and social reformers appropriated and manipulated Jeffersonian agrarianism for a variety of ends ranging from personal aggrandizement to Populist protest to social stabilization. The ideological context in which Boone County citizens existed in the period from 1880 to 1940 was that of agrarian values. Disputes arose over the application of agrarian principles, but no public voice, either locally or nationally, questioned the bedrock agrarian truths.” Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 28. 65

benefits of his association with nature elevated him above the urban middle class. His agricultural work was uniquely important to American society in that it sustained not just economic democracy in which every man had the conditions by which to support himself

and his family, but the religious and civic elements of a democracy in that the bulk of the

nation’s citizens would be elevated morally and physically by their work and opportunity to contemplate nature.131 As Jefferson wrote to James Madison,

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed….it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.132

The essential elements of Jeffersonian agrarianism—that there exists an inherent and elevated relationship in the United States between the independent family, their right

131 As Richard Hofstadter has so clearly and succinctly summarized this, “Like any complex of ideas, the agrarian myth cannot be defined in a phrase, but its component themes form a clear pattern. Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen. Unstinted praise of the special virtues of the farmer and the special values of rural life was coupled with the assertion that agriculture, as a calling uniquely productive and uniquely important to society, had a special right to the concern and protection of government. The yeoman, who owned a small farm and worked it with the aid of his family, was the incarnation of the simple, honest, independent, healthy, happy human being. Because he lived in close communion with beneficent nature, his life was believed to have a wholesomeness and integrity impossible for the depraved populations of the cities. His well-being was not merely physical, it was moral; it was not merely personal, it was the central source of civic virtue; it was not merely secular but religious, for God had made the land and called man to cultivate it. Since the yeoman was believed to be both happy and honest, and since he had a secure propertied stake in society in the form of his own land, he was held to be the best and most reliable sort of citizen.” Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Byran to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 24. 132 Quoted in Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, 13. Another prominent early writer of similar agrarian ideas was Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur . Jefferson’s ideas relating to the yeoman farmer are quite clearly summarized in this text; and also in Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). 66

to work the land, and citizenship—form the basis for later decisions and attitudes toward

land use and the frontier farmer.133 Most importantly, the various land acts created in

order to pass land from ownership by the government into the hands of the citizenry were

considered the system by which the country made manifest Jefferson’s agrarian ideas.

Thus, the recipients of this land, such as the settlers of Custer County, identified directly

with the nation’s celebrated concept of the farmer.

The Constitution deemed that land not included in the original thirteen states

would become public domain owned by the national government. The Land Ordinance

of 1785 provided for surveying and selling this public land through a rectangular system

of townships that were six miles square, divided further into sections that were a mile

square, or 640 acres, that were then further divided into quarter-sections of 160 acres.134

The size of 160 acres had been determined early on by the belief in the independent

family unit; 160 acres was the amount of land that could effectively be cultivated at that

time by a single family. In 1841 the Pre-Emption Act was passed in order to

accommodate pioneers, or “squatters,” who had moved onto land in the public domain

before it had been surveyed. Operating under the belief that the land was their right as

citizens willing to cultivate it and use it to support themselves, the act gave squatters first

133 Jefferson’s ideas are frequently referred to as “Agrarian Ideology,” though the ideas that comprise this term have also been characterized by various other terms, such as agrarian myth, myth of the yeoman farmer, agrarian democracy, Jeffersonian agrarianism, etc. Not to simplify, or ignore, the ever complicated cultural and political issues that are involved in myths, ideologies, etc., I use the terms generally to comprise the issues I explore in the following discussion. I use the term ideology to be defined as “a system of ideas…through which a society…elicits or enforces allegiance.” Forrest G. Robinson, “The New Historicism and the Old West,” in Old West—New West: Centennial Essays, ed. Barbara Howard Meldrum (Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1993), 90. 134 For further elaboration of the summary of land acts and issues here see especially Fite, Farmers’ Frontier. 67

right to purchase, at a price of $1.25/acre. True to the Jeffersonian ideal of the

independent family farmer, the applicant had to live on the land, make improvements,

and swear that it would be cultivated exclusively for his own use.

Many, however, felt that the significant cash requirement placed land ownership outside of the means of the middle-class farmer, the ideal democratic citizen, and thus

was impeding the nation’s development. For instance, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart

Benton asserted that,

tenantry is unfavorable to freedom. It lays the foundation for separate orders of society, annihilates the love of country, and weakens the spirit of independence. The farming tenant has in fact, no country, no hearth, no domestic altar, no household god. The freeholder, on the contrary, is the natural supporter of free government; and it should be the policy of republics to multiply their freeholders…pass the public lands cheaply and easily into the hands of the people; sell, for a reasonable price, to those who are able to pay; and give, without price, to those who are not able to pay.135

Consequently, in 1865 the Homestead Act was passed. Upon signing it, President

Andrew Johnson explained that “the lands in the hands of industrious settlers, whose

labor creates wealth and contributes to the public resources, are worth more to the U.S.

than if they had been reserved as a solitude for future purchasers.”136 Likewise reflecting

this pervasive and deeply ingrained commitment to Jefferson’s agrarian vision, one of the

most vocal advocates of western settlement, Horace Greeley, showed his approval by

stating: “We may congratulate the country on the consummation of one of the most

beneficent and vital reforms ever attempted in any age or clime—a reform calculated to

135 Quoted in Jeremy Atack, “Tenants and Yeomen in the 19th century,” Agricultural History 62:3 (Summer 1988): 14. 136 Quoted in Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 16. 68

diminish sensibly the number of paupers and idlers and increase the proportion of

working, independent, self-subsisting farmers in the land evermore.”137

Under the Homestead Law, a male or female citizen over 21 years old, a head of a household, or a person who had declared an intention to become a citizen, could claim a quarter-section of land. The claimant was required to live on the claim for five years, make improvements upon it, and swear it would be used for themselves and not for speculation or sale. After this, with two neighbors swearing to the claimant’s residency and improvements, paying a small filing fee usually under $20.00, the settler received the final proof, or title, to the land.138 Additionally, the Timber Culture Act was passed in

1873, which allowed settlers to claim a quarter-section in return for planting 40 acres of

trees (reduced to 10 acres in 1878). Each eligible settler could make official claims under

all three acts, thereby receiving up to 480 acres of government land by fulfilling the

stated requirements.

Though scholars have argued over the efficacy of the various land acts, it is

agreed that these acts were believed to represent the single most pervasive system by

which Jefferson’s ideal agrarian democracy, and thus America’s agrarian identity, would

be maintained. More to the point, those who obtained land through this system were

consistently identified as fulfilling the role of the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer—the

rightful recipient of American land. Nearly every description of the pioneer farmer

included some element of Jefferson’s ideal. For instance, Horace Gilpin clearly drew on

137 Quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 18. 138 There were variations on these requirements. For instance a claimant could gain title to the land through commutation, in which after six months residence they paid $1.25/acre. Also, as noted earlier, veterans and their widows and orphans could shorten the residency requirement equal to the length of service of the veteran in the Union Army. 69

Jefferson’s “nuclear familyism” in his description of the settler as the head of an independent family unit, “surrounded by his wife and children, equipped with wagon, ox- team and provisions, such as the chase does not furnish, accompanied by his rifle and slender outfit of worldly goods”139 The elevation of farming as an act of civic duty and even patriotism is asserted in a settlement promotion for Nebraska which assured its

readers that, “landless men want lands, and menless lands want men—to unite men and lands in a sacred loyalty to each other’s service of the state, is the worthy mission of our

great and successful immigration scheme.”140 The belief in this honor due farmers is equally asserted closer to Butcher’s home, in the Custer County Republican:

There are more farmers in the country than persons engaged in any other vocation—and the country rests on their shoulders. They supply the material for seven-eights of our foreign commerce, and a still larger proportion of our internal traffic; and when fighting is to be done they supply the bulk of soldiers to do it.141

In adherence to Jefferson’s ideal, the pioneer farmer was expected to exemplify

middle-class respectability in morals, education, and business sense. In his column in the

Republican, Lafe describes the farmers of West Table as a “thrifty, intelligent,

enterprising, morally disposed class of people…there are three school districts, at each of which there are religious services.”142 Another columnist, after boasting about the good

sense of two female settlers who had taken pre-emption claims, states that he, “cannot

help remarking that it is the sons and daughters of our best families, young people of

139 Gilpin…. “The individualism that Jefferson believed would emerge from a small-scale, household- based farming structure could more appropriately be called nuclear familyism.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 59. 140 Quoted in Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 25. 141 Custer County Republican, 1/12/1887. 142 Lafe, Custer County Republican, 9/3/1885. 70

refinement, education and culture, like those above mentioned, who are to-day settling up

our western borders.”143 Also in that year, settler John Bryan bragged about his

community’s refinements, submitting that, “The people of this neighborhood have a well organized Literary and Debating Society, which meets every Thursday night with a good attendance; also a class in vocal music at the same place, with upwards of twenty in attendance, meets every Tuesday and Saturday nights, when the weather permits.”144 In

1882, when the Gandy brothers platted the future town of Broken Bow on their quarter- sections, they designed a town square complete with a croquet court and organized a baseball team, two “respectable” activities enjoyed by the middle-class. Not surprisingly, they discouraged “disrespectable” activities. They offered lots for free to prospective businessmen, provided that no liquor be sold or billiard parlor be built on the perimeter of the town square. By 1884, the community had organized local chapters of the Grand

Army of the Republic and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and had a local coronet band.145

Also in line with Jeffersonian concepts, farming was presented as a life of vigor and healthfulness due to its interaction with and cultivation of nature. The Nebraska

Farmer described the benefits of farming in 1880: “Physically, the farmer has the opportunity of enjoying the best health, and the longest life, of any man in the world.

Having a varied pursuit which during the fine weather enables him to work out under the

143 Custer County Republican, 8/11/1886. 144 John W. Bryan, Custer County Republican, 2/28/1884 145 Broken Bow town file, CCHS. Essentially, the insistence by settlers on their decency and respectability can also be seen as their implicit assertion of the “rules” of their phase of the settlement process. While earlier frontier stages, such as the military or ranching stages were characterized by violence and rowdiness, the farming frontier was to be characterized by the establishment of civilization with its family oriented culture and democratic governance. 71

open sky amid the genial influence of nature, his physical form cannot help but be fully

developed, if he gives himself proper care.”146 Likewise, to Henry George, an historian

writing in 1884, the “virtue of new soil” was that it created “wholesome human growth.”147 Custer County settlers read in their own papers as well the benefits of their

chosen livelihood. In 1885 the Republican declared that “There is no industry more

honorable and few if any that are so well calculated to develop the true qualities of

manhood and womanhood as a well regulated farm life.148 A year later a more ebullient

assertion of the benefits of farming appeared.

Farming is more, far more, than digging, shoveling, hoeing, chopping, sawing, plowing, harrowing, planting and the myriad of mechanical operations which go to make up the routine of every-day work….Farming is brains put to use. Farming is the life with the most healthful, most beautiful, most ennobling surroundings. Farming is the highest phase of manufacturing, for it deals with life as the most potent factor in the processes of the art....to the farmer the best and greatest in life is possible.149

If the dominant characterization of the yeoman farmer (the ideal American) in the

late 19th century was as an independent, middle-class farmer who was the head of a

family, made thoroughly civic-minded and spiritually sensitive by an intimate connection

to the land, the land itself also had a specific characterization in agrarian ideology. The

American soil was believed to offer sure success due to its naturally receptive and

benevolent nature. Jefferson’s agrarian idealism rested on the assumption that anyone

146 “Does Farming Pay,” Nebraska Farmer, December 1880. This healthfulness was frequently asserted in contrast to the dangers of urban living. In response to the suggestion that the West was not healthful for women, one reader asserted that “To live in a healthy climate, isolated from slaughter houses and filthy sewers in generally considered, by sensible men, to produce long life, whilst to dwell in Brooklyn, or any other city not overly clean, is death.” Nebraska Farmer, March 1878. 147 Quoted in Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 19. 148 Quad, Custer County Republican, 9/10/1885. 149 “Farming a Nobel Occupation,” Custer County Republican, 8/4/1886. 72

could farm if they applied themselves to it. The outcome of the endeavor was never

questioned. Fertile garden imagery abounded in descriptions of frontier soil. A railroad

guidebook of 1883 began with the slogan, “buy a home of your own in Nebraska, the

garden state of the West.”150 The Nebraska Farmer promoted railroad land in the state in

the most fertile terms:

These railroad companies are offering…lands, rich beyond precedent, composed of garden mould four feet deep and more—land that will produce anything at a minimum cost—corn, for instance, at a cost of ten cents a bushel….Land that will do this is simply given away at five dollars per acre.151

Custer County residents drew on such pervasive imagery when they visualized

their new land. In describing the area of Victoria Springs, one contributor to the

Republican nearly outdid the railroads at their own heady enticements: “This part of

Custer county will in a few years be the garden, the orchard and the wealthiest section of

country in the county….In many places beautiful springs of water gush from the ground,

and the land is covered with a thick vegetation, high blue-joint grass in the valleys and

thick plum brush in the canons.”152 Some writers expanded the garden imagery in their belief in the spiritual nature of the land. The long-established trope of the Edenic garden

played heavily in the settlers’ understanding of the land they were being given. For

instance, Lafe (maybe due to his calling as a minister) described the land around the

150 Burlington Railroad advertisement taken from the Dairy Farm Journal, West Liberty, IA, January 1883, quoted in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 177. 151 Nebraska Farmer, January 1877. 152 Juvuna, “Good Homes,” Custer County Republican, 9/13/1883. 73

township of Delight in such terms: “With…a soil unsurpassed in richness, and a pure

health-giving atmosphere we believe we have the material to make this as we have

prophesied from the first, ‘The Eden of Custer county.’”153

Butcher’s subjects, the settlers of Custer County, understood their identity as

pioneers according to Jefferson’s agrarian democracy. Butcher likewise understood the

subject of his photographic endeavor to be the history and character of these pioneers.

The ideals of Jefferson’s agrarian democracy and the role of the pioneering farmer in this democracy are all found explicitly in Butcher’s introduction to his sod house pamphlet.

The pioneer in every new country is the man who has to devise the ways and means for taking the country as nature has left it and he finds it, and bring it into subjection to the will of man. Such a man finds himself and family alone in a vast expanse of country face to face with nature and the problem of how to subdue it…he is engaged in the task before him, that of treating mother earth so that she will respond to her functions relating to seed time and harvest….The opening up of a farm on the plains is a very simple one….in a short time a field has been plowed and planted, and the following year this field is in excellent condition after plowing for the raising of any grain crop desired, and the farmer is well along on the high road to prosperity. It was not always an easy problem…but here, as nearly everywhere in this grand and glorious America, success crowns the efforts of the sturdy, persistent and careful toiler, as will be seen from the illustrations that follow and which speak for themselves….these photographs constitute a mirror of the daily life scenes and incidents of these plainsmen from the time they became the sturdy pioneers in their vigorous younger days, to the present time of comfort and happiness that now surround these same people, bringing its reward for all their toil and sacrifice, producing that grand character in history—the typical American.154

153 Lafe, Custer County Republican, 7/23/1885. 154 Butcher, Sod Houses, np. 74

3.2 Acting like a Yeoman Farmer

Given the dominance of the ideals comprised in Jeffersonian agrarianism in both

the identities of the settlers and in the stated intentions of Butcher, it is no surprise that both Butcher and Custer County settlers went to great lengths quite consciously to

present themselves in adherence to these agrarian ideals. In the same way that the settlers

asserted middle-class respectability in their descriptions of their activities and character,

their portraits also assert their desire to be understood as respectable to a middle-class

sensibility. Given the rarity of having one’s photograph taken, it is only natural that the

subjects of Butcher’s settler portraits would want to present themselves in the same

manner they would for a studio photograph. Several of Butcher’s settlers did have studio

portraits taken, and an analysis of these portraits in terms of comportment and dress is

useful in understanding the consciously middle-class elements presented in the “pioneer”

portraits.

R.G. Carr and Family [Fig. 65] from 1887 presents the Carr family in their best

clothing. The men are in suits with their hair cut and faces cleanly shaven. Mr. Carr has

a handkerchief neatly tucked in his suit pocket, his legs are crossed with his hands placed

quietly in his lap. The women are in dresses with narrow-waisted bodices, snug-fitting

sleeves, and skirts with multiple and often gathered layers that were considered

fashionable in the 1880s.155 Each woman’s outfit has a decorative show of lace or velvet

trim. Their hair is carefully curled or neatly pinned back, and each wears a bit of jewelry.

The relationships between the family members are discretely shown, with the two sons

and daughter to the right each with a hand on their parents and the wife of the son who

155 See Funderburk, “Maternity Wear.” 75

stands behind his father with her hand resting on her husband’s shoulder. The photograph supports the assertion by scholar Jane Funderburk that “Woman on the

frontier…still felt bound by tradition to the feminine values they had learned before

moving west….fashion, rather than being of lesser significance on the frontier, actually

played an important social role.”156 In fact, by 1877 the Nebraska Farmer carried a

regular column that addressed women’s interests, often including fashion reports.157

Adhering to respectability was especially important for pioneers, as one of their

roles in nation building was to assert their membership in the middle class, and to show

their success as pioneers at establishing and maintaining the class standards set in the

East on the frontier.158 The desire to present oneself as a successful pioneer in terms of

maintaining middle-class comportment is pervasive in Butcher’s archive. For instance, in

Family with their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 66], 1887, each of the

women wears a well-fitted dress with velvet trim on the sleeves and bodice, with the

mother’s dress displaying a trim row of pleats and buttons across the front. Each of the

girls wears a piece of jewelry at their necks and their hair has been carefully arranged into

individual curls across their foreheads. The son and the father each wear suits and their

156 Funderburk, “Maternity Wear,” 60. This was true for farmers as well. A Nebraska Farmer article titled “Untidiness in Farmers” takes to task farmers who “do not recognize any difference between the barn-yard and parlor,” and present themselves in business and social environments in their farming gear. The writer urges farmers to “recognize the fact that a tidy personal appearance is an item in their favor.” Nebraska Farmer, 6/30/1883. 157 For instance, the July 1879, issue’s column was almost all dedicated to “Dressy Wraps for Spring” which reported on the fabric and cut of up-to date wraps, including some imported styles. 158 A telling expression of this is an article on the Black Hills that conveys the westerners’ dismay at a visiting newspaperman who wanted to see a “real original westerner—regular frontiersman.” The story relates that the resident replied, “Why, yes sir, a good many of us here have been west from ten to twenty years. There’s Judge C__, owns that block of brick buildings over there—made his money in the stock business, and there comes Captain O__, that well-dressed man, you see—he has fought Indians and built posts all over these plains, and if you will come down to the bank I’ll introduce you to,” at which point the visitor leaves disappointed in the lack of buckskin and long hair. See Strahorn, Wyoming, Black Hills Handbook (no publisher, 1877), 106. 76

hair is neatly trimmed. In John Hohman sod house, Woods Park, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 67], 1888, the girls are tidily dressed in crisp white outfits each adorned with lace, bows, and a necklace, and their hair pulled back in ribbons. Mr. Hohman’s suit sports a velvet collar and his wife’s dress is lined with trim.

These subjects clearly knew Butcher was coming and took the time and effort to prepare themselves for such an important presentation. This was not exceptional among

Butcher’s subjects. According to Butcher’s biographer, John Carter, there is one case where a family member was excluded from the photograph for lack of appropriate clothing.159 Likewise, Anne Farritor had worn a large apron to protect her “good” dress

until time for their family photograph later that day. Busy, she forgot to remove it and

when she realized her error she requested if the photograph could be retaken (Butcher

refused). She stands second from the right in Robert G. Farritor family, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 68], 1889.160 One scholar has noted that in The Chrisman Sisters on a

claim in Goheen settlement on Lieban (Lillian) Creek, Custer County [Fig. 69], 1886, the

horses are equipped with standard Texas stock rigs, which indicate the girls had ridden to

the photographic site astride rather than sidesaddle. “As their clothing seems out of

keeping with a canter on horseback, it would appear that they had changed into their ‘best

bib and tucker’ for the photographer.”161 Clearly, as with the urban middle-class, the

rural middle-class to which these farmers belonged was held to certain standards of

159 Carter, Solomon Butcher, 13. 160 Farritor surname file, CCHS. 161 John I. White, “the Zenith of Prairie Architecture—The Soddy,” American Heritage (August 1973), 33 – 35. 77

public presentation. The women’s interests in fashion reflected similar tastes among the

middle-class of the more eastern towns, and men were expected to present themselves in

a manner deemed acceptable by a middle-class public.

Comportment as well as dress was considered a part of proper presentation. In

Rev. and Mrs. E.D. Eubank on Clear Creek west of Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 70], 1888, the family is dressed and manicured in an appropriate manner.

Furthermore, they display their knowledge of social grace and etiquette. The married

daughter stands with her arm bent behind her waist, and her husband holds his hat, rather

than dropping it to the ground as was customary in less formal situations, and has a small boutonnière pinned to his suit coat. The Reverend sits with his legs slightly crossed and

holds his hat, crown up, in a formal male pose. Similarly, in Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 71], 1889, the mother and her two daughters fold their arm behind their waists

(though the father misses his cue and sits squarely in his chair, his hat, though a formal one, dropped to the ground at his side). That settlers, and Butcher, worked toward a

sense of formality that would mimic that created in the studio setting seems indicated by

the composition found in Deep well on the Pollard homestead near Merna, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 72], 1886. Here, the Pollard family stands on a rag rug brought

out for the occasion, delineating the figural area from the rest of the farmstead. The rug

and chair, coupled with the family’s polished attire (the father’s tear in his pants

notwithstanding), add a sense of parlor formality that, it seems, attempts to replicate the

formal effect conveyed in studio compositions.

As asserted in the descriptions Custer County pioneers wrote about themselves, to

present oneself as a successful pioneer also entailed cultural and social accoutrements.

Given the photographs’ instantaneous nature, the settlers were unable to indicate to their

assumed viewers the presence in their lives of less visible cultural elements in the way

that writing their memoirs, or columns in their papers, might convey. Not willing to

leave such an important element out of their portrait, however, the settlers chose to

convey this facet of their lives and communities through objects meant to be read as

emblems. In reading objects in this way, their physical presence is understood to signify

a larger conceptual assertion, and the objects take on a weighted meaning for their

owners.

This emblematic mode of reading was well established in the mindset of settlers.

Kansas settler Sarah Royce wrote of her experiences maintaining her standards for

respectable living in her one room cabin. In writing, “But the parlor—that was my

pride….the rocking chair, when not required near the stove for baby, was always set in

the parlor beside the table, suggesting leisure and ease,” Royce expressed her use of

objects as a settler to convey meaning, and to reassert identity, to both herself and her

perceived audience in an environment that challenged that identity.162 The fellow Kansan

family portrayed in an exterior view of their crude dugout home [Fig. 73] appear rough

and lacking typical late Victorian aesthetic aspirations. However, the interior of their

home, with its full set of delicate china, fancy mirrors, and clear attempts at a division of

“formal” and “private” spaces, belies this conclusion. In fact, one observer of traveling

162 Quoted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: Univ of NM Press, 1989), 63. The strength of received modes of respectability, and the adherence to them, reveals itself over and over in pioneer writings and remembrances. 79

pioneers who had stopped for camp along the Missouri River reported that they “hauled out furniture and set it ‘in a home-like way’ among trees, logs, and bushes that suggested the contours of a kitchen or sitting room” and that their tents “‘had to be fixed just so. It was just like stepping into a parlor.’”163 While this desire to adhere to established modes of respectability can be tied to the settlers’ need for familiarity in an unfamiliar, and often hostile, environment, it also suggests that settlers felt deeply the pressing expectations of their middle-class membership. This pressure appears quite explicit in Butcher’s photographs, compelling settlers to bring out specific objects for inclusion in their pioneer portraits. In so doing, the physical presence of these objects signifies a larger conceptual presence, and the objects take on a weighted emblematic meaning for their presenters.

Domestic objects were most frequently brought out to assure the subjects’ viewers

(or, maybe more precisely and reflexively, to assure the subjects that their viewers would be assured) that the pioneers were doing their work of bringing about respectable civilization. This could be achieved as simply, yet self-consciously, as the action seen in

Ben Kile, near Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 74], 1886. Here, the teapot has been positioned so as not to be missed; in visual balance with the family, yet sitting in a position of authority upon its own chair. Or, in Northwest Custer County, Nebraska.

[Fig. 75], 1889, the ornate baby carriage and dog lawn ornament are presented as signifiers of the family’s taste. Sometimes the presentation is quite heavy-handed, and surprising, as in the portrait of Lycurgus Amos and his family [Fig. 76], no date, in which

163 Quoted in West, Growing Up with the Country, 58. 80

the family has brought out their tufted and velvet upholstered chaise lounge and have

placed an equally impressive birdcage and photo albums atop the sewing machine (an

enviable possession at the time).

Clearly some subjects were much more adept at integrating social signifiers into

their presentation than others like the Kiles, whose teapot draws attention to itself due to

its overly obvious “presented” nature. It is this facility, or lack thereof, in fact, that

makes the inclusion of such self-conscious objects one of the most noticeable elements of

the compositions in Butcher’s archive. The presentation of objects is the primary

compositional component that conveys the subjects, and Butcher’s, desire that their

portraits assert far more to the viewer—that they are deeply multi-layered

presentations—than the typical studio portrait that was available to them. It suggests, in fact, that the archive represents not just Butcher’s desire to record an era of national history, but more complexly, the subjects’ perceived need to employ Butcher’s project as a venue to testify to their adherence—and fulfillment—of the expected roles and “work” of the pioneer farmer.

An equally frequent occurrence in settlers’ portraits was the inclusion of cultural objects such as musical instruments or artwork. As Elliot West has noted,

A guitar, violin, or banjo could be brought west without much trouble [but]…Bulky, expensive pieces of musical furniture were of no apparent help in surviving and prospering. To the contrary, they consumed a good bit of two precious resources—space and money…the open splurge of funds and space was part of the point, an announcement that a family had risen to some economic and social respectability….a plains tourist found in a dugout’s parlor organ irrefutable proof that ‘frontier settlers…[are] capable of extending a desirable civilization into the wilderness.’164

164West, Growing Up with the Country, 63. 81

Apropos to this observation is the presentation displayed in Southwest Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 77], 1892. The family’s three eldest children sit in a string trio with two violins and a bass admirably held by their young son nearly dwarfed by its size. In The

David Hilton family near Weissert, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 78], 1887, the family gathers about their new parlor organ. The organ signifies, appropriately, the mastery of music by the family, who had formed a quartet that frequently performed at community activities.165

Artwork was also often brought out for inclusion in the family’s portrait. In Sod

school house in Custer County, Nebraska. Mary E. Sutton, teacher [Fig. 79], 1886, the

family has hung on the rough exterior surface of their sod house what appears to be a still

life oil painting. Similarly, in East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 80], 1888, a framed

portrait print has been brought out and hung on the sod exterior, mimicking its placement

as decoration on the family’s parlor wall. Or, in John W. Barnes, Round Valley,

Nebraska [Fig. 81], 1887, the wife prominently holds a large framed photograph with elaborate floral decorations adorning the mat, a show as much of aesthetic appreciation as

of familial pride. In fact, we almost meet the print before the people arranged behind it.

Because of this, the print establishes a general cultural knowledge prior to our perusing

the rest of the scene to arrive at an estimation of the subjects personally or physically.

Other objects suggest the settlers’ need to convey the fullness of their compliance

with the dominant characterization of a farmer. Christian morality is conveyed through

165 “In 2001, David Hilton’s great grandson, Scott Kaelin wrote, ‘Why did they have such an ornate musical instrument when they still lived in a primitive dirt house? You see, David was born in Manchester, England and was educated in music before coming to America at the age of 25. He was a musician and music was very important to him….The Hiltons had a quartet: Emma played the organ and sang soprano; Lydia sang alto; Leonard sang tenor; and George had a deep bass voice. They sang at church, for funerals and for many other community activities.” Hilton surname file, CCHS. 82

the frequent inclusion of bibles, such as the large family bible held in West of Callaway,

Nebraska [Fig. 82], 1892. In Bill Popejoy and Lon Rambo families, near Gates, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 83], 1887, a baby dresse din a christening gown is aligned with a

well-dressed family, parlor chair, and tatted lace. Though the inclusion of studio photographs records familial relations, there are also instances when their inclusion seems to suggest a more complicated circumstance in which the family is testifying that they have participated in the taking of their portraits. In showing so, they prove that they know such an activity to be the proper thing to do when one understands the proper importance of family. For instance, in Pfrehm Family Home, North part of Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 84], 1887, two studio portraits highlight what can be read as a

“properly” arranged parlor vignette. The photographs appear to be images of the parents at a younger age, possibly at the time of their marriage. In North Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 85], 1888, the father holds prominently on his lap a newspaper, signifying not merely his literacy, but his participation in and connection with the concerns of the rest of the nation.

Pride in the farmer’s participation in national events or sentiments appears frequently in references to their Union veteran status. In Sod house near Sargent, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 86], 1886, an elderly gentleman has posed with a Union badge pinned on the hat he proudly and prominently rests atop his knee. Such assertions of

Union sentiments are not surprising, given the extremely high percentage of settlers who had fought in the Union forces. The strength of their patriotism is evident in the numerous GAR associations and picnics—nearly all of which, like Grand Army of the

Republic picnic at West Union, Nebraska [Fig. 87], 1886, Butcher was sure to record for history. He did so not only, it seems, out of local boosterism, but, given the sense of personal importance such service seemed to represent for these farmer/veterans, Butcher

carefully and proudly recorded the meetings as proof of farmers’ patriotism. Displaying

it visually or through their actions suggests their deeply felt civic duty that, like cultivating the land, was their responsibility, respectfully fulfilled, as American citizens who constituted the “backbone” of democracy. Even more explicit a statement of

patriotism is Finn Morris, north Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 88], 1886, where

the American flag is held aloft, front and center.

Settlers often use emblematic objects in order to demonstrate their understanding

or enjoyment of what the objects represent. For instance, as noted earlier, in H. G.

Shannon, near Woods Parks, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 37], 1887, the young son

doesn’t just hold his home-made fiddle, he lifts it to his chest as if playing it, indicating

his expertise in music, not just his appreciation of it. Books are frequently included, usually held. However, in Custer County, near West Union, Nebraska [Fig. 89]. 1887, the young girl has her schoolbook open and is looking down at it to indicate her ability to read and her parent’s enforcement of the importance of education. In Surene Pike,

Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 18], 1886, the women stand amidst a set of croquet wickets and hold mallets in their hands as if caught enjoying their quite proper middle-class leisure. The women’s actions, and Butcher’s composition, mimic explicitly

images of croquet players, such as “Summer in the County” [Fig. 90] by Winslow

Homer, that were widely reproduced in national periodicals and were read as images of

middle-class leisure.166

Such images support the assertion that dominant ideals defining the rural middle

class quite explicitly drove aspects of the settler’s visual presentation. They dressed in

their fashionable best in line with expectations associated with having a studio portrait

taken. They brought into view objects typically found inside their houses to signify their

adherence to and belief in middle-class respectability. However, because Butcher

insisted on the necessity of constructing a pioneer portrait on-site, the archive also

recorded the work settlers did to mold the exterior, or public, spaces of their lives to

expectations of proper farming life. Elements, such as ornamental trees and flowers, do

not stand self-consciously as emblems, like the teapots, chaise lounges, and parlor organs,

to testify that the family portrayed belonged to the proper class of farmers upon which the

health of the nation rested. Rather, they are elements viewed in their ordinary

environments along dooryards and paths, included for the viewer not artificially but “by

default,” so to speak, through Butcher’s chosen process, that nonetheless likewise

confirm the settlers’ deeply felt need, both culturally and personally, to continue and

adhere to received modes of establishing their values and social status.

The modes by which a farming family activated the exterior space immediately

surrounding the farmhouse, or the “dooryard” as it was commonly called, to announce

166 Homer created a number of paintings depicting middle-class subjects enjoying various leisure activities such as croquet. See …. 85

publicly their values were clearly laid out for the farmer family in various publications.

As horticultural historian Cheryl Lyon-Jenness has noted, by the mid-19th century:

Commentators in horticultural monographs, popular journals, and local newspapers repeatedly assured their readers that….Ornamental plants…were an inexpensive sign of good taste and the latest fashion….In the process of advocating shade trees and flowering shrubs, commentators often assigned a public meaning to ornamental plant culture….[An 1851 journal] observed that well-tended flower gardens communicated the ‘pure-mindedness’ and intelligence of a family. Others…pointed out that a neatly ornamented front yard reflected the elevated ‘moral and social qualities’ of the household, while disorder in the dooryard suggested moral lassitude or worse….Flourishing flower beds or stately shade trees, along with well-kept dooryards and neatly mown lawns, were quiet yet very public reminder of middle-class values and respectability.167

The Michigan Farmer noted that an ornamented dooryard conveyed, “marks of order,

neatness, and taste” and placed “a high estimate upon the moral and social qualities of the

favored occupants.”168 Dooryards as venues of taste and class prompted numerous

articles in the Nebraska Farmer, one of which, an 1883 article entitled “Picturesque

Gardening,” noted that “Garden scenes have wonderfully improved during the last half

century, partly under the influence of fashion, but more under the teachings of good

taste,” and suggested among other improvements, that “shrubbery, evergreens or even

annual vines, [be] allowed to grow without any (apparent) training or care on a quantity

of brush, the fence or wall, or indeed to ramble at will on any material or object at

hand.”169 A later article, “Hints on Planting Ornamental and Shade Trees,” from 1887,

suggests various groupings of trees for the farmer that “will harmonize with each other.

167 Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, “Bergamot Balm and Verbenas: The Public and Private Meaning of Ornamental Plants in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Midwest,” Agricultural History 73:2 (Spring 1999): 202. 168 Quoted in Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, “A Telling Tirade: What was the Controversy surrounding 19th Century Midwestern Tree Agents Really all About?,” Agricultural History 72:4 (Fall 1998): 705. 169 “Picturesque Gardening: Water Scenes and Rock Work,” Nebraska Farmer, 5/15/1883. The journal is replete with advertisements of nurseries and catalogues from which to order ornamental plants. 86

For instance angular trees with stiff branches ought not to be alternated with trees of

different habits; evergreens should be planted in groups or in back-grounds where their

color may relieve.”170 Even more specific is an 1880 Nebraska Farmer article titled

“Beautify Your Homes,” which advises:

How little mankind enjoys this life, compared with what they might enjoy, by simply expending a little labor and care, around and within their homes; they might become paradises as far as it is possible for anything on earth to become a paradise. One great incentive to making home pleasant, is the untold influence which it has in molding the character of the young, and they who have children cannot value their character too highly. Children and youth require pleasure and must have it, and if there is no pleasure at home they will seek it elsewhere…surround your home with neat and tasteful yards and gardens; plant evergreens, shrubs and flowers profusely by every walk, at every door, and arrange them in picturesque and beautiful groups over the entire yard; have a cage of sweet little canaries to claim a place on the veranda and a share of your love; decorate the walls of every room with portraits and landscapes; procure a library of choice and useful books.171

Trees and flowers were also imbued at the time with strong civic meanings, and

those who planted were often noted publicly for their civic-mindedness. In 1876,

Michigan governor John J. Bagley urged the state’s residents to show their patriotism by

planting trees in honor of the nation’s centennial, hoping that the trees would serve as a

reminder of the nation’s founding principles.172 Arbor Day was established in 1878 by J.

Sterling Morton, Nebraska settler, national Secretary of Agriculture, and president of the

American Forestry Association, as a national holiday in order to encourage the planting

170 “Hints on Planting Ornamental and Shade Trees,” Nebraska Farmer, 4/15/1887. 171 “Beautify Your Homes,” Nebraska Farmer, December 1880. Similarly, an earlier article admonished settlers that, “the improvements that do most to increase the ecomfort, and to render farm life attractive…are not of the most costly character, and are within reach of every enterprising farmer….every country mansion, or cottage, should be surrounded by shade trees….The roadways, too, could be lined with trees, with little or no disadvantage to the adjoining lands….No one can pass such property [lined by trees] without half wishing that he owned it.” “Make Farm Life Attractive,” Nebraska Farmer, March 1878. 172 Lyon-Jenness, “Bergamot Balm and Verbenas,” 209 87

of trees. When Custer County settlers met for important occasions, such as 4th of July

celebrations, or GAR reunions, they nearly always relate in newspaper or personal

accounts that they met in a “grove of trees.” Newly founded towns were required to plant

trees around their public squares. The Republican often noted those settlers who made

such conscious “improvements.” For instance, it applauded Jesse Gandy, who “had a

plow at work on the streets last Saturday, breaking furrows preparatory to setting out

shade trees. This is commendable; let every business house…be beautified with shade

trees.173

Trees, planted not in compliance with the Timber Culture Act but rather in neat

rows bordering the dooryard, are ubiquitous throughout the portraits that comprise

Butcher’s archive, and the obvious care shown them conveys even more explicitly the

civic and cultural ideals their cultivation represented to their planters. In fact, ornamental

plantings were some of the earliest concerns settlers showed upon their arrival. When

Dan Haskell brought his new wife to Custer County, he apologized for the house, “bare looking as the bones of wild animals,” and promised they would plant things around it in

the spring.174 Likewise, Uriah Oblinger wrote to his wife that she “must make up your mind to see a very naked looking home at first. [You will see] nothing but the land covered with grass and a sod house to live in. The prospect will no doubt look monotonous enough to you at first.”175 Typical of the majority of plantings settlers created, the farmer’s neat dooryard in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 91], 1889, is bordered by a double row of young shade trees. Likewise in Sod house near Sargent,

173 Custer County Republican, 7/13/1882. 174 Haskell surname file, CCHS. 175 Oblinger Papers, NSHS. 88

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 92], 1886, the trees have been planted to form, once

grown, an elegant alley to direct the passer-by’s attention through the length of the path

leading to the house. In Near West Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 93], 1889, the

family has carefully placed elevated blocks of sod between the rows of tender saplings in

order to protect them from the movements of livestock. Similar care has been shown in

“A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 94], 1887, where it is clear the

saplings have been watered regularly to ensure their continued growth. Such attention

brings to mind the notes of a California settler, whose “Balm-of-Gilead tree her husband

planted outside her window was ‘the first step in the way of refined cultivation,’ and she

‘watched it constantly during the day as I would a child.’”176

Cultivated flowers are also prominent in Butcher’s portraits. In George Paine, Sr.

and Family, Westerville, Nebraska [Fig. 41], 1887, and Al Burger at Genet, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 95], 1886, both families have constructed trellises adjoining their

homes’ windows and doorway to provide cooling shade in a form that also spoke of

aesthetic taste. In Lanterman Family, northeast Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 96],

1886, the dooryard is covered with meandering flowers and a shade tree flanks the path.

In Northwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 75], 1889, the standards of middle-class respectability signified by the parasol and baby carriage are complemented by the flower garden, artfully set aside from the rest of the farmyard by a stone border. A variety of potted flowers line the windows, and rough timbers protectingly surround the small planting between the two women. In Spring in East Custer County [Fig. 97], 1886, the

176 Quoted in West, Growing Up with the Country, 64. 89

family’s pose is bordered naturally by the small plot of flowers, imitating the floral borders often found in mats used to frame portraits found on parlor walls.

That flowers frequently manifested for others the moral qualities of their gardeners is demonstrated in a letter discussing the death of Nettie Frischkorn, a young

Custer County homesteader, written by her Aunt Sarah to her sister May. In the context of praising the demanding work that Nettie did without complaint in order to keep her family’s farm running, and her concern for others over herself, Sarah wrote that Nettie

“never murmured to anyone [of her hard work]. Had the nicest garden this year of anyone around. She beat mother and me with her nice garden and did it all herself.”

Furthermore, in turn, Sarah used flowers to express her respect for Nettie’s character.

“She had beautiful flowers this year, nicer than I had. I kept a boquet [sic] in her room all the time and we used her own flowers for the funeral….Miss Prandie Allen made a nice wreath and then she took a pie plate and got spurs and mint and wet it up and broke the stems short and wreathed it in blue and in the center she put N.F. in pale pink then filled in around with pale blue.”177 The plants settlers introduced into their personal environments are in some ways far richer in meaning—to both the owner and the assumed viewer—than the objects brought out to attest to class memberships. While a cherished teapot might signify the continuation of familial, social, and cultural norms into a new environment, the flowering and growth of the natural environment into one familiar and “proper” to the owner offered an even greater assurance of the success of the farmer’s role in civilizing their new world due to its permanence beyond that of the family’s life.

177 Aunt Sarah Jane Bookneau to May Lovelace, September 12, 1897. Frischkorn surname file, CCHS. 90

Besides their status as middle-class, and all the attendant signifiers of such status,

Butcher’s photographs also record another pervasive agent active in the settlers’ assertion of their yeoman farmer identity—their perceptions of farming as a family endeavor.

Unlike other earlier phases of the process of civilization, such as ranching or mining, farming was understood almost entirely as a domesticating endeavor, in terms of both domesticating the natural environment, and domesticating the cultural environment. The violence and male dominated culture of cowboy and mining areas were viewed as unfit for the family environment farming was construed to be. As Elliot West has noted of military and ranching areas:

the many army posts were occupied by men of dubious influence. The Kansas farmboy John Norton, fourteen, helped carry drunken soldiers to their barracks at Ft. Larned to keep them from freezing….one boy brought home a crowd of Texans in their cups….ranches seemed models of proper living, however, compared to the mining camps….Despairing parents agreed with an Idaho schoolteacher that a typical mining town ‘is the hardest place to live upon principle I ever saw, and the young are almost surely to be led away.’”178

While the numbers of males and females were about equal in the rural areas east of the

Missouri and children outnumbered men, women and children together accounted for

only 5% of the Gold Rush migrants, and in rush areas such as Shoshone County, Idaho,

there were 300 men to every women and 200 to every child.”179 The differences between

such areas, or earlier civilizing phases as it was thought, and the family culture of the

farming frontier were often noted. Charles Wesley Wells, a Nebraska railroad worker

and later clergyman, compared the 1860s with the later era, exclaiming that “with the

178 West, Growing Up With the County, 149-50. 179 White, It’s Your Misfortune, 192; West, Growing Up With the County, 14-15. West notes that “mining camps were the most unstable societies in American history, some losing 95% of their populations within a decade.” 91

Indians, the murderers, horse thieves, prostitutes, and drunkards, this country was a hell

to live in,” but now “the Red Man’s pony has yielded to the plow-horse and the

…cultured wives and daughters of white men.”180

Clearly the cornerstone of the farming frontier was the family. If bachelor life

was the norm in other western environments, in the farming culture, it was imagined to

be merely temporary status. A bachelor was generally considered to be farming his

homestead in order to gain the financial independence that would allow him to get

married. As Elliott West has noted,

One could instantly distinguish between bachelor quarters and those of families. Men on their own often could fit all their belongings into a chest or knapsack….Yet when such men told their wives what to bring west, they listed a variety of furniture, utensils, creature comforts, and many items of little practical value. Emigrant guides similarly told a solitary man to pack only what he needed to scrape by, then advised a family to take much more—not only cooking paraphernalia but also a chamber set and mirror, clock, shoe brushes, a portfolio, and a collection of ‘interesting books.’ The distinction was clear. A man on his own needed only the means of physical sustenance, while a family was the basis of a social order whose survival demanded artifacts of civilized life.181

Butcher’s archive readily conveys this distinction. Images of single male homesteaders seem to be taken in order to contrast their meager lifestyle with the richness of family farm life. For instance, in Bidgood, northwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

98], 1886, which has the caption, “A Lone Batch,” there is a paucity of accoutrements

normally included in Butcher’s pioneer portraits. No trees, no flowers, no path worn by

people coming and going, and the house is barely tended to. In Bachelor Preparing

Supper [Fig. 99], 1886, the point of Butcher’s composition seems not so much to

180 Fink, Agrarian Women, 138. 181 West, Growing Up With the Country, 60. 92

celebrate this bachelor’s life, but to note the cramped, utilitarian nature of it in comparison to the extended family groups with their parlor accoutrements brought out for display. This does seem to confirm the sentiments of various Custer County bachelors who, like Job Semler, bemoaned their lonely, austere lives in comparison to their familied neighbors. In his memoir, “Learning to be a Homesteader,” Semler relates how he stayed with the Orvis family during the winters rather then endure the bleakness alone. With yet another winter looming, Semler proposed to Orvis’s daughter. He recounts that he told her either she had to marry him or he was leaving, as “I was never going back to the farm again if I had to batch.”182 Only after his marriage did Semler make comfort or social

improvements to his home, ordering fruit trees, dishes, blankets, and a stove.183

When Butcher does attempt to celebrate bachelorhood, as in Bachelor house of

Perry brothers, near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 2], 1886, he does so using

emblems that are atypical in farming images. Three young men kneel at a rough table

eating watermelon with their hands. Two men sit to the right of them, one on a crate,

balancing their shotguns across their laps as they hold cards up for the viewer to admire

their skill. The remainder of the cards are kept on the board “table” with the aid of

several pocket knives. Interestingly, the two Perry bachelors, on the far left, were both

married within three years.184 While this photograph, clearly constructed for its sense of

182 Job Semler, “Learning to be a Homesteader,” unpublished manuscript, Semler surname file, CCHS. 183 Likewise, bachelor Dan Haskell, though considerably wealthier than Semler, built a frame house in preparation for the arrival of his bride. Letters between them show that she determined the color, shutters, and other decorations. He ordered for her a new kitchen table, and a new range and, while honeymooning in Chicago before their arrival in Custer County, they purchased extensive furnishings, such as a walnut sofa upholstered in blue horsehair. See Haskell surname file, CCHS. 184 The ages and resemblances of the men in this photograph suggest that they are, from left to right, Rufus Charles Perry (age 19), Robert W. Perry (age 23), George Hull (their nephew, age 15), possibly their two brothers-in-law Perry Martin and William Gibson, and their older married brother Elijah Perry (age 32). 93

youthful fun, offers strong contrasts to the familial nature of farming, a portrait that does

seem to have as its subject a bachelor who is portrayed using the visual vernacular

customary in Butcher’s archive still conveys a striking contrast.

In Watson, north part of Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 100], 1889, the

composition contains all the trappings of farming success. He is surrounded by a well, a

healthy brood of pigs, a fine looking horse, and modern implements. His house is newly

built and sound, and a bumper crop of corn spans the entire horizon. Yet his stance is

unassertive as he stares vacantly away from the viewer, disconnecting himself from his

achievements. There is no sense conveyed that his improvements will become more, that

they will create the rural culture that a nation can rest upon. In contrast, the composition

for a typical family image, such as G.R. Russom family in front of their sod house in

Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 101], 1886, works to convey a healthy

family. Flanked by their work teams and implements, the family arranges themselves in

front of a house adorned with a grouping of potted flowers in the window. The mother

holds her husband’s arm and smiles, and the five girls harmonize in shared lace. It seems

no surprise that Russom was known for his congeniality and wrote hundreds of poems

and set them to music, having a gifted tenor voice.185 The young girl to the right holds her doll, imitating the grandmother who likewise holds an infant, gracefully conveying in dynastic terms the establishment of the family, and thus the nation, for generations. All of these elements harmonize to offer a sense of comfort and stability that assures the viewer of the perceived rightful nature of agrarian ideology dominant at the time.

185 Russom surname file, CCHS. 94

If, as shown, the family was imagined to be the cornerstone of farming culture, in

the late 19th century the cornerstone of a healthy family life was the home, the locus in

which proper cultural and moral inspiration was created. Farm life was imagined to be

the healthiest environment for children. Many of Butcher’s images seem to assert that

the fertility of the soil promised abundance for both plants and family due to their

symbiotic and natural relationship. In Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Gordon and Family, Merna,

Nebraska [Fig. 102], 1886, the youth to the far right appears to sprout happily from a mammoth sized gourd, and in Small girl standing by vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 103], 1886, a young girl poses with perfect comfort among massive gourds, her beribboned crown in visual harmony with the fancy gourd balancing just next to her and the cabbage above.

The very roots of rural farm life were imagined to rest in the moral and physical welfare of the children. As Cass Barns, a Boone County doctor, related, “Maternity came often to those sod houses…and…nothing else did so much for the upbuilding of the state.

Without those troops of boys and girls the prairies of Nebraska would have been barren wastes and the sod house homes but dreams.”186 In 1879 the Nebraska Farmer began a

periodical item, “Farmer’s Boys” that celebrated the farm life for young boys. Mothers

were especially admonished to create a positive domestic setting that would shape their

youths appropriately. The same publications advising farmers on the aesthetic benefits of

ornamental plantings, were also advising them as to the moral benefits of trees and

flowers to the young. For instance, the Nebraska Farmer suggested that children be

given responsibility for a shade tree they helped to plant, thus developing “habits of

186 Quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 138. 95

thoughtful care in the minds of the children which will do more towards developing their

characters than the cost and trouble of setting them.”187 Nebraska homesteader, Luna

Kellie, wrote that trees offered children shade and a swing, and that “children ‘needed’ a

swing and shade in order to be children.”188

Children in Butcher’s photographs frequently enact these dominant characterizations quite consciously. In Northwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 104],

1888, a young boy in the center distance sits atop a binder fully hitched to a work team,

enacting for the camera’s audience his aspirations, and expected role, of continuing the

agrarian life established by his father. In Albert M. and Nancy Merchant Allee on their

homestead near Victoria Springs, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 105], 1890, the family’s

oldest daughter does not hold a doll as her younger sisters to the right do, but rather she

gingerly holds the tender trunk of a newly planted sapling, conveying her sense of nurturing their shared character and future. Again, in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 32],

1888, the family’s daughter holds a sapling in one hand and her doll in the other, both

emblems of fulfillment for her future, and thus fulfillment for the future life of the

country’s agrarian identity.

Butcher and Custer County settlers also felt the need to testify to the benevolent

nature of their soil, another element of adherence to dominant agrarian beliefs.

Frequently, this is achieved through the inclusion of produce; the objects presented as

emblems signifying, or proving, nature’s acknowledgement of her role in maintaining the

rightful character of the American nation. At times, the settlers’ presentations of Custer

187 “Hints on Planting Ornamental and Shade Trees,” Nebraska Farmer, 4/15/1887. 188 Fink, Agrarian Women, 31. 96

County’s productivity are as boastful, visually, as are their written accounts, as in The

Garniss family, Dry Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 106], 1887, where an

impressive watermelon pyramid takes its just place alongside the family members.

Watermelons were considered an especially bountiful produce of Nebraska, and were

thoroughly enjoyed by the settlers. In season, they were the staple for the settlers’ 10:00

am and 3:00 pm working lunches.189 In East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 107], 1887, the farm workers stand jubilantly atop monumental hay stacks. That such inclusions were meant to be read as emblems of impressive productivity is more clearly understood

when they are considered in context with images Butcher took of the exhibits at the

county fair, which were created—and often sent East—to physically attest to the

beneficence of Custer County soil. In Vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken

Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 108], 1886, an exhibit is replete with samples of local produce such

as melons, seed, potatoes, gourds, onions. In Exhibit of the Delano Bros., Oconto,

Nebraska [Fig. 109], 1886, the Delano brothers, quite well-known for their gardens,

display a plethora of grains as well as an impressive variety of truck including gourds,

melons, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, and others. Less self-conscious,

yet clearly meant for notice, are the onions gathered into the daughters small hand cart in

The Harvey Andrews family on their homestead two and one-half miles northwest of New

Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 20], 1887, or the rather cornucopia-esque larder arrangement against the house in Huckleberry sod house, Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

110], 1886.

189 Nebraska Studies website. 97

There are also images in which Butcher’s rather heavy-handed compositions

reveal his self-conscious desire to convey the deep and natural connection between the

farmer and the American soil physically. It is this moral, and certainly nationalistic,

connection from which, according to Jeffersonian agrarianism, the very democratic

character of the country is created and maintained. In Family standing in cornfield on

farm, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 111], 1890, the farmer family is posed in the midst

of a corn field, as if to suggest that the fruits of the soil and the fruits of the nation grow

symbiotically. In Couple and seven children in front of a sod house, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 112], 1889, the family again is placed amidst their corn crop, seated as if

planted like the squat but healthy stalks that surround them. Butcher and his subjects

make quite explicit the reference to Nebraska as the “garden state.” In David S. Copp,

near Ansley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 113], 1886, and Nelson Potter, Lee Park,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 114], 1888, the families pose in the tidy, cultivated rows

of their kitchen gardens. In fact, Butcher even strains to convey to the viewer the

spiritual, or Edenic, aspects often associated with the American cultivated landscape,

titling one of the portraits, “In the Garden” Near Anselmo, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 115], 1886, and thus referencing the well-known hymn of the same title. The title was most likely given to the image later in Butcher’s career (though it is almost assuredly his title), however, it indicates the rather pedestrian, though engaging, mode of transforming popular beliefs into visual form that characterizes Butcher’s intellectual as well as aesthetic process.

CHAPTER 4

THE PIONEER

4.1 Defining the Pioneer

The settlers of Custer County, like the wider agricultural population of the nation, understood themselves as farmers and the land as a beneficent, nurturing entity on the model posited by Jeffersonian agrarian ideology. However, equally active in the settlers’ understanding of themselves, and thus also active in their portrait presentation, was their

role specifically as pioneer farmers—as the first farmers in the area of their settlement. It

was this particular aspect of their identities that they perceived made farming in their local area important on a national stage. As the first farmers, their identities were defined most importantly by their role as a transformer.190 The pioneer moved into areas previously occupied by Indians, cowboys, the military and other “earlier” occupants

generally characterized by transience and violence, and replaced such asocial behavior

with those of stability and respectability. The pioneer claimed rough, uncultivated, and

190 In this belief they were drawing on long-established ideas about the development of the American nation, specifically the “farming frontier,” which entailed three distinct phases. The rough frontier region was the first to be found, which in time was developed into the middle phase of rural farming culture, followed by the development of city regions. Drawing on the writings of Jefferson and Crevecoeur, it was believed that the second stage, rural farming, was the most honorable and healthy. See Fink, Agrarian Women, 12. 99

unsettled land and transformed it into a productive environment. In doing so, the pioneer’s work, according to agrarian ideology, brought to realization the rural culture upon which the health of the nation depended, and his honor rested on this action. By transforming the land, the pioneer stabilized the nation. This work was not merely economic, but spiritual and civic as well. It was not merely for personal gain, but for national gain.

The pioneer farmer was given wilderness, and with transformative power, revealed the land’s inherent productiveness. As David Lowenthal has written about this concept, “to be a pioneer was above all to transform a barely touched if not wholly wild tract into a fruitful and productive countryside. It was the act of conversion itself that took the pioneer’s fancy,” and that “the feeling that the pioneer was the brand-new owner made the pioneer a creator, the land his Pygmalion.”191 Pioneers themselves understood this both as their role and as their celebrated status. A perusal of the county papers during the 1880s reveals an extensive number of articles contributed by Custer County residents in which they refer to themselves as pioneers, and to their work as transformative in this manner. For instance, in an 1882 issue of the Republican, an article titled “Pioneering” appeared in which the contributor applauds the paper’s county history column:

We have all cast our fortunes together it behooves us to have an interest in each others welfare….We are marching in the van of civilization; our weapons are the plowshare; perseverance and a determination to overcome all difficulties and build us homes and establish a community of which our own successors may be proud in the years to come; when Broken Bow and Westerville are thriving cities surrounded by villages and flourishing

191 David Lowenthal, “The Pioneer Landscape: An American Dream,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winter 1982): 10 and 14. 100

farms; when the little twigs just beginning to grow on our timber claims have developed into stately groves; when the cattle paths have changed to broad highways and railways; then will come our reward.192

Inherent in this characterization is a self-justifying determinism. Because the

nation’s health rested on the work of the pioneer farmer, and the nation’s existence was

held to be God-ordained and spiritually sanctified, it was believed that the pioneer

farmer’s work, and role in the nation’s development, was also assured of the same

sanctity. Its rightfulness assured its success. Like many, J.D. Strong, who lived in

Merna, naturalized this success as part of the exceptionalism of American democracy

compared to other nations. He wrote: “It is said that England’s people are divided into

two classes—royalty, and the rest of the people. American history is made up of two

classes—the pioneer and the rest of the people. The pioneer is in a class all by himself;

he is the advance guard in every great enterprise; he is on the ‘firing line’ in every

contest; a stranger to defeat and upon intimate terms with victory, no matter how long

deferred.”193

Belief in the transformative role of the pioneer was especially powerful for (and

weighed especially heavily upon) those who settled in the area of the Great Plains, due to

previous assertions that this specific area was not merely wilderness waiting for cultivation, but rather a wilderness that was un-cultivatable and thus unable to support agricultural endeavors. Major Stephen H. Long reported in 1820 that the area was

“almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending

192 Obscura, “Pioneering,” Custer County Republican, 8/31/1882. See also, for instance, “The writer claims the honor of owning the first homestead that was ever taken on this valley in this County: Taken Oct. 27, 1877, and at that time we did not expect to see the country as well settled in ten years as it is at the present time, but the hardy emigrant, by constant toil has converted the trackless plain into beautiful homes where there is peace and prosperity.” John W. Bryan, Custer County Republican, 2/28/1884. 193 J.D. Strong, “Blazing a Pathway and Personal Pioneer Experiences,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 63. 101

on agriculture for their subsistence.”194 He notated the area on his map as the “Great

American Desert,” and for the next fifty years the Great Plains area remained regarded as

such.195 In 1867 Congress had authorized a geological exploration in Nebraska under the

direction of Ferdinand V. Hayden. In a section titled “barrens” or “plain” lands, the

commissioner wrote that the area was an impediment to western settlement and that “any

considerable portion of this territory could be made productive only through

irrigation.”196 The 1872 annual report of the U.S. Geological Survey reported that a line

existed in the area between the western edge of Iowa and Michigan and the Rocky

Mountains beyond which the land became too arid for assured crop production. Again as

late as 1879 a report for the Department of the Interior by John Wesley Powell argued

that land west of the 100th meridian was unfit for agriculture and that much of the land

just east of that could not sustain assured production.197 The 100th meridian runs through

the western quarter of Custer County.

However, almost simultaneously with the beginning of commercial surveys

through the area, such as the surveys for the transatlantic rail route, an even more

aggressive voice about the productivity of the Great Plains was being asserted by

newspapermen, businessmen, and settlers themselves to counter the negative opinions of

194 Quoted in Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 3. 195 Excellent discussions of this are Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 1-4; Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 3-14; and, Everett Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 6-12. Dick also notes on page 12 that the identification of the area as a desert also stopped railroad construction into the area. “The management of the Burlington in 1866…was urged to extend his line across the Missouri into Nebraska, he looked over the prospects and turned down the idea on the basis that it would be unprofitable. Any road they built would have to live off the country, not on transcontinental traffic as did the Union Pacific, and he saw no possibility of enough local business to warrant building into Nebraska.” 196 Quoted in Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 8. 197 Fink, Agrarian Women, 37. 102

scientists and government institutions. As early as 1857 William Gilpin was writing that the misunderstanding about the plains was “as great as the general view of the Atlantic

Ocean at the time of Columbus.”198 The strength of agrarian idealism was too persuasive to allow dry government publications to deny its faith in the pliant nature of the

American soil. For instance, in 1889, the Nebraska Farmer noted that:

The year 1884 was the beginning of an epoch in the history of Nebraska. Previous to that time the idea was prevalent that agriculture was impracticable west of the 100th meridian. This idea had been fostered by the cattlemen for mercenary motives and by the agriculturalists in eastern Nebraska through a settled belief that the country was the great American desert….When in 1883 the railroad lands in Lincoln, Keith, and Cheyenne counties [further west than Custer County] were placed upon the market…home seekers began to realize that the great American desert was a myth. As a result the following year saw a resistless tide of emigration which swept the stockmen and their herds before it, and occupied every spot of arable government land in its path, and today is invading the foothills of the Rockies.199

Another writer from Dawson County derided the nay-sayers, writing in the Plum Creek

Pioneer,

Less than twenty years ago it was generally supposed that only those counties bordering on the Missouri in the eastern part of Nebraska, were fit for agricultural purposes, and those of the earlier settlers who took land and opened out farms west of these counties were regarded as foolhardy and unwise men. But still settlers continued to push farther west and engage in farming contrary to the gratuitous advice of those who thought they knew all about the capabilities of the state.200

One of the strongest arguments for the viability of agriculture on the Great Plains came in scientific guise. The boom of agricultural settlement in the early 1880s coincided with a natural periodic wet cycle. After receiving a mean rainfall of only

198 Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 9. 199Quoted in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 330. 200 Plum Creek Pioneer, reprinted in the Custer County Republican, 8/15/1883. 103

15.70” in the central portion of Nebraska in 1876, the area received rainfall that ranged

between 21.40” and 28.10” in the following eight years.201 The ideas that the land

desired to fulfill its ordained function of supporting an agrarian democracy merged with

observed fact and gave birth to scientific theory. It was asserted that the act of farming

itself was inducing the land to productivity. Samuel Aughey, a University of Nebraska

geography professor, published Sketches of the Physical Geography and Geology of

Nebraska in 1880 in which he advanced the theory that “rain follows the plow.” His

ideas, and catchy slogan, were enthusiastically disseminated by railroad and settlement

propaganda tracts, desirous for settlers to move into new areas served by railroad routes.

According to Aughey:

Anyone who examines a piece of raw prairie closely, must observe how compact it is…When rain falls on a primitive soil of this character, the greater part runs off into the canyons, creeks and rivers, and is soon through the Missouri on its way to the Gulf. Observe new the change which cultivation makes. After the soil is broken, the rain as it falls is absorbed by the soil like a huge sponge. The soil gives this absorbed moisture slowly back to the atmosphere by evaporation. Thus year by year as cultivation of the soil is extended, more of the rain that falls is absorbed and retained to be given off by evaporation, or to produce springs. This, of course, must give increasing moisture and rainfall.202

The Custer County Republican carried an article from the New York Times that stated:

A few years ago settlers on the 98th meridian in Nebraska supposed that they had reached the western limit of corn culture, but since those days corn has been shipped westward. These changes have been caused by an increase of rainfall, and this increase appears to have been caused by the

201 Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 405. 202 Quoted in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 167. Dick also cites on pages 15-17 the various scientists and their similar theories. See also Fink, Agrarian Women, 37 for addition discussion of this. One of the most widely read books circulated by the railroads that asserted this theory was C.D. Wilber, The Great Valleys and Prairies of Nebraska and the Northwest (Omaha, 1881). 104

cultivation of the soil. The concurrent testimony of settlers, not only in Kansas and Nebraska but also in more elevated regions in the far northwest, seems to prove this.203

Settlers and promotional pamphlets also did their best to offer viable evidence that the desert was in fact a garden. Henry Worrall was commissioned to create a painting that would counter the negative connotations of “Drouthy Kansas” [Fig. 116]. His work shows giant-sized watermelons, potatoes, and corn being harvested in front of a rain swept landscape. Even more effective was the railroad’s practice of collecting sample produce from farmers along their routes and shipping them to eastern fairs and farming centers to prove the Great Plains’s garden attributes.204 An 1877 issue of the Nebraska

Farmer carried an announcement that the Burlington and Missouri Railroad was collecting produce. It asserted, “Let us send them samples of our corn, the ears measuring eighteen inches in length, and three or four ears to the stalk; squashes as large as an elephant’s head, weighing 150 pounds; and samples of our wheat, rye, oats, barley and flax, the like of which they never dreamed of. There is nothing so convincing as optical illustrations.”205 If not so eloquent, the settlers of Round Valley displayed their

203 “Redemption of the So-Called ‘American Desert’,” Custer County Republican, 8/11/1886. 204 This was, in fact, quite effective at inducing eastern residents to emigrate west. One of Custer County’s earliest settlers was Judge Charles Mathews, who came to the area after viewing an impressive display of Nebraska produce at an 1874 horticultural and pomological fair in Richmond, VA. See Mathews surname file, CCHS. 205 Nebraska Farmer, September 1877. Similar, though even more aggressive, is a note in the September 1883 issues of the Nebraska Farmer that notes, “We wish to call the attention of those living in western counties to the importance of making a fruit display at the state and county fairs. It is a well established fact that the river counties are adapted to fruit growing but we often hear the remark that fruit is a failure west of the eastern tier of counties; hence the importance of a good showing from the western counties.” Farmers felt the need to be bigger, better, and refute the naysayer in other enterprises as well, almost as if the western areas could produce anything. The Nebraska Farmer issue of January 1881 noted that “Jacob Stalick, living ten miles southwest of Schuyler, in Butcler County, two years ago bought a swarm of bees. From this one swarm he now has seven swarms; this last fall sold $50 worth of honey, and he has been offered $12 apiece for the seven swarms. We would respectfully refer this item to the wiseacres who a few years ago proclaimed bees would not flourish in this climate.” 105

land’s fecundity in more direct terms, the Republican editor announcing that, “We

received from Nels Ottun of Round Valley 18 varieties of trees, corn, melons, and

squash. Among the trees, were boxelder trees two years old, 11 feet high, also

cottonwood, hackberry, plum, and black locust, which were all from seed a year ago:

from 4 to 7 feet high. A hubbard squash that weighed 45 lbs.”206

If the eastern pioneer farmer had been entrusted with the task of transforming

virgin soil into a productive garden, the Great Plains pioneer was entrusted with turning a

wasted desert into a garden paradise. In fact, considering Professor Aughey’s theory, the

plains pioneer was not merely entrusted with the task, but rather the task required him; the desert really was a desert and would remain so without his presence. His actions of turning over the sod changed the actual physical qualities of the natural environment.

This was indeed a mighty transformation, but one that Custer County settlers were quite conscious they could enact. The West Union Gazette reported that W.G. Carr was transforming “the sandy desert around his mill property into a veritable garden spot.”207

Settler J.D. Strong celebrated the pioneer farmer, exclaiming that “his feet first left a

white man’s trail upon the arid sands of the ‘Great American Desert,’ and his courage and

skill turned it into a ‘land of plenty.’”208 The writer in the Plum Creek Pioneer cited

earlier ended his column by announcing that “As the sturdy farmer takes possession of

and cultivates the soil, the Great American Desert moves still farther west, and soon we

may look for it to entirely disappear, and in its place…find the most fertile and

206 Custer County Republican, 9/8/1887. 207 West Union Gazette, 6/15/1884. 208 J.D. Strong, “Blazing a Pathway and Personal Pioneer Experiences,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 64. 106

productive grain fields in the country.”209 These Plains pioneers themselves believed in

the undeniable success of their transformative powers because of the perceived “right-

ness” of their cause. Uriah Oblinger, for example, showed his belief in Plains settlement

as divinely favored, telling his wife that “what was once known as the ‘Great American

Desert’ will blossom as the rose….surely the hand of Providence must be in this.”210

Butcher realized that if he was to present a portrait of a pioneer farmer and all that stood for in concept, the pioneer’s transformative power would have to be visualized.

This power could not be documented for history through the type of studio photographs that he had been making. Visualization (and thus historic documentation) of Custer

County pioneers would require the inclusion of the transformed land in the portrait. In essence, a portrait of a settler and their historical importance is not how they look physically, but how they look and act upon the land. This led Butcher to photograph his settlers on their homesteads, in situ so to speak, rather than in the studio.

4.2 Acting like a Pioneer

One of the clearest distinctions between the farming frontier and earlier civilizing stages, and thus a distinction whose articulation rested on the pioneer, was that the pioneer established a clear title to the land. The last step toward transforming wilderness into civilization was brought about by the pioneer through individual ownership. As

Mary Ellen Jones has noted:

209 Quoted from the Plum Creek Pioneer in the Nebraska Farmer, 8/15/1883. 210 Uriah to Mattie Oblinger, Oblinger papers, NSHS. 107

for the fur trappers, there was no sense of ownership of the land itself. Forts might be built; businesses established, licensed, and sold; the natural environment exploited; but both traders and trappers were essentially transients. Whereas nations might be concerned with political control of a region, for most individuals the issue of land ownership was simply irrelevant. And whereas on the frontier individual ranchers often sought control of water sources, the concept of land ownership was often very loosely interpreted, with cattlemen making use of more land than they owned. Moreover, because the public domain was government land (i.e., nobody’s land), it was everyone’s land. With the coming of the settler all this changed, and boundaries, whether they were simply plowed strips or barbed wire, defined attitudes as well as ownership.211

The nature of land ownership on the Plains farming frontier was indebted to the congressional survey system. Land that constituted the Public Domain was surveyed into a regular grid typically divided into counties of thirty-six square miles, further divided into townships six miles square each, even further divided into sections one mile square that were then divided into four 160-acre “quarter sections” that each constituted an individual government claim, whether it be through the homestead, pre-emption, or timber claim acts. Custer County contained 10,368 quarter sections of land available for settlement. In Nebraska, quarter-sections were identified according to their location on a grid [Fig. 117] whose east/west baseline was the 98th meridian, and whose north/south

baseline was the southern state line. Moving east or west of the 98th meridian, townships

were numbered as “ranges” and moving north/south as “townships.” (Township is both

the political term used for an area of land in a county, and the geographical term used to identify the grid divisions running north/south.) Sections within each township were numbered from 1 to 36. Thus each surveyed one-mile section had a unique township,

211 Mary Ellen Jones, Daily Life on the 19th-century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 182.

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range, and section number, and each quarter-section had a unique northeast, northwest,

southeast, or southwest location within each section. To illustrate, Custer County [Fig.

118] comprised the area from township 13 north to township 20 north (south to north),

and range 17 west to range 25 west (east to west). Butcher’s photographs (and his

subjects), then, such as the Burow family near Merna, Nebraska, 1886, in the illustration, can be precisely placed in the landscape. The Burows homesteaded on land identified as the northwest ¼ of section 30, township 18 north, range 21 west (usually abbreviated in documents to NW¼, S30 – T18N – R21W). This places their land about 2 ¼ miles

northeast of the town of Merna.

This system thus converted massive, nearly incomprehensible areas of open land

into rational, human-scaled areas of potential property understandable to an individual.

Moving across open land, the pioneer had been taught by emigrant guides, other earlier

settlers, or land agents, how to use the grid system to locate the surveyor’s corner

markers and mark them physically to signify to others that this particular area of land—a

quarter-section—had been “taken.” The system also allowed the pioneer to abstract that particular area of land into a series of numbers, such as NW¼, S30 – T18N – R21W, that communicated to others verbally or on paper which quarter-section of land had been claimed. It was this spatial grid, and its conversion into a rational system of identification, that enabled the pioneer to receive the correct claim papers at his land office. This system then assured the transfer of that small part of once open land into individual ownership, thus transforming the primary definition of that land from a physical/geographical description to a political/economic one. It had become property.

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This is best visualized through the changes in maps of Nebraska over the period in which the land was explored, surveyed, and transferred to individual ownership. For instance, in “Map of Nebraska” [Fig. 119], that accompanied the 1857 report from the

Warren Expedition, the area is defined predominately by the geographical formations— such as Rocky Mountains, Bad Lands, Sand Hills, and Loup River—that constitute the area. Human relationship to it, such as the various proposed routes through the area, is subservient to its natural characteristics. By 1859, the map of the Nebraska area that accompanied the annual report of the surveyor general focused in on the land close enough to determine the progress of the township divisions [Fig. 120]. Here, the grid system with its bold orienting lines and range and township numbers are superimposed

over the topographical elements, such as rivers or landmarks, which have clearly been relegated to secondary importance. The General Land Office map that was used for the state of Nebraska in 1876 [Fig. 121] reveals the continued conversion of the land’s definition from geographical to political with the further organization of sets of 36 townships into the customary counties as populations increased with the claims of government land. The “unsurveyed territory” in the state’s panhandle is almost completely empty, seeming a blank void without identity or access due to the absence of the surveyor’s grid to mark it as potential property. As John Allen has noted:

On these maps appear the tidy squares first envisaged by President Jefferson thre-quarters of a century earlier: the squares of the range- township-section system of survey; the squares that promised good farmland and a familiar landscape; the squares that an agricultural population permanently stamped on the plains after the Civil War.212

212 John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800-1860,” in Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography, eds. Frederick C. Luebke, Frances W. Kaye, and Gary E. Moulton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59. 110

The grid system was a vehicle, essentially, through which an ideological force—

that of agrarian ideology—was made manifest. It is not surprising that the nature of its

power was also deeply embedded in the relationship the pioneer established with the

land; that it compelled the pioneer to act upon the land in certain ways. The grid was the

form through which human control was asserted. For instance, the pioneer’s mode of

exerting his dominance over the landscape was through a continuation of the surveyor’s

process of sectioning the land, or, essentially, the continued assertion of defining the land

by its utilitarian capabilities, both economical and cultural. This mode is most visually

evident in Butcher’s archive in the photographs that employ the compositional format of

the “estate portrait.” This format is part of a long, well-established tradition in painting;

however the settlers and Butcher were likely most familiar with it from atlases, widely

produced and extremely popular among rural populations during the late 19th century.213

As Ogden Tanner has noted:

A fine outlet for the ranchers’ pride were the state and county atlases that began to appear about the middle of the century. These illustrated publications showcased the holdings of successful pioneers in lithographs with a sweeping aerial perspective that echoed a 17th and 18th century European painting technique. In keeping with the ranchers’ romantic view of their land, the results were a charming alliance of fact and fiction. The atlases showed in detail how a ranch functioned; they noted which buildings were used for what purposes, where cattle grazed and where crops were grown. In these pictures each ranch was a small world of almost pristine purity. Although inclusion in an atlas brought a family prestige, the requirements of entry were far from stringent. The ranch owner paid what amounted to a space fee of up to $60 to give subscribers to the atlas— usually well-to-do ranchers like himself—an armchair view of his home and grounds.214

213 For the European antecedents for this format, see….. Ogden Tanner, The Ranchers (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977), 43. 111

An analysis of an engraved “estate portrait” included in the Nebraska State Atlas of 1885 proves a useful comparison to Butcher’s compositions. In “Silver Creek Stock

Farm and Residence of N. B. Berggren, Wahoo, Saunders Co., Neb.,” [Fig. 122] the viewer is placed in an elevated position from which the settler’s estate spreads out into panoramic depth. The cultivated estate orients itself along a grid of straight roads, two of which intersect at a clean 90º angle in the middle foreground. The estate itself is neatly divided into rectangular sections that line up to the road, moving back into the distance in regular rhythm. These sections also delineate the land according to its productive or cultural utility. Two rectangular fields, possibly hay, can be seen along the horizon line, and in front of them is what appears to be an orchard. Several groves of trees grace the estate, the trees all planted in neat rows. The domestic space of the house has been sectioned off from the working areas of the estate by an attractive wood fence. The graceful circular drive is lined with shade trees. The kitchen garden is located in a corner of the domestic yard. Outside of this domestic space is the production area of the estate.

Each production concern of the farm is allowed its own space, the hogs and barn paddocks are sectioned with utilitarian wood fences, and the cattle pastures fenced off from the others with barbed wire. We are encouraged to appreciate the estate’s offerings properly by the groups depicted. The family leisurely strolls the yard as someone exits in a fine buggy; the barnyard is busy with wagons coming and going with the work of the day; and two men appraise the quality livestock in the foreground pasture. We are assisted in their appraisal by the two inserts that provide “close-ups” of Mr. Berggren’s

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fine breed stock. At the corner of the barnyard is a smaller house and outbuildings that

the engraver has labeled, “the first house,” indicating in a single image the successful

financial growth of this settler.

Another typical estate portrait is the engraving of A. and Sophia Fitzpatrick’s

homestead [Fig. 123] near Fort Scott, Kansas, that was included in the 1887 Kansas State

Atlas. Scattered along the horizon line are the farmsteads of neighbors. The estate has

been divided into regularly sectioned parcels of land that delineate depth; the furthest

sections are of hay, preceding that is a field currently being plowed, likely for corn, then

another field, likely of wheat, that is being harvested. Directly behind the house is the kitchen garden, and to the left of the house is a neatly planted orchard. The lawn, separated from the farm by a brick fence, is adorned with a grove of trees and a path lined with ornamental shrubbery. The estate’s sections align squarely with the road that runs in front of the house, separating it from the stock pastures. The barnyard area has tidy divisions of paddocks, with a barn area enclosed from the fields and the domestic space of the house. The owner’s portraits are inserted at the corners of the engraving, visually asserting that the quality of their estate is a direct reflection of their own personal characteristics in much the same manner the biographies, obituaries, and memoirs of settlers of the time did verbally. For instance, the obituary for John Amsberry, one of the earliest settlers in Custer County, asserts that “The valuable and finely approved (sic) farm which was his home for so many years stands out as a monument to his industry and business sagacity.”215

215 Amsberry surname file, CCHS. 113

In each of these estate portraits, the elevated view that is used encourages a sense

of control over the scene.216 What is emphasized is not the wide, seemingly unending

expanse of plains, but rather the control that has been exerted over the landscape and its

pliable response to this control. Attention is drawn to the human activity, the

improvements or transformations that the settler has made upon the landscape. This

seems to replicate in specific what the survey maps of Nebraska presented in general.

The land itself held meaning only through its use for human endeavor. This relationship

with the land underlies the compositions of many images of the time, such as the very

popular Currier & Ives print drawn by F. F. Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the

Course of Empire Takes Its Way [Fig. 124], 1868. The composition is activated only in

the bottom areas where settlement has occurred; the areas in the distance, yet to be

settled, have no real identifiable characteristics that arrest the viewer’s attention. Like the

un-surveyed area in the 1876 Nebraska map, they are visualized as a void, lacking

identity without human activity. Without the grid system that invested the landscape with

potential as property, writers and artists struggled to find a means by which they could

comprehend their experience of, or their relationship to, the unsettled landscape. The

venue through which the landscape was made comprehensible psychologically was the

venue through which it was made possess-able economically.

The elevated view of the estate portraits also conveys the manner in which settlers related to the land and the nature of their perceived transformations. The low undulating landscape, still apparent in the distant horizon, has been divided into rectangular sections,

216 For a wider discussion of the elevated gaze and the issues of power and control imbedded in it, see Albert Boime, The magisterial gaze : manifest destiny and the American landscape painting, c. 1830-1865 (Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution, 1991). 114

their shape directly reminiscent of the system used to define ownership. The fields and pastures conform to the nature of their conception, that of the surveyor’s grid, rather than the nature of their rolling environment. Mr. Berggren’s forest plantings give in to the curve of the meandering stream only when they must, unlike the fence line of the pasture, which remains straight rather than curving into the distance with the stream. The roads, created after the influx of population, do not trespass private property but follow the straight, 90º borders of property lines created by the surveyors. As Everett Dick has explained:

The rectangular surveying system used by the U.S. government and the settlers’ response to it, in a large measure dictated…the roads in the country [which were] laid out along the edges of these section boundaries. The traveler knew almost without fail that…he would strike a cross road every mile….Before fencing came in, settlers paid little attention to section lines but struck out across the country to the land office, county seat, or trading center, forming trails across the prairie at will. Even after barbed wire fencing came, it was customary in winter to lower the wires and drive across pastures in the same manner. Nevertheless, when the settler decided on his permanent home, he thought in terms of locating the house on the section line road.217

The grid’s system of divisionism continues within the individual property itself. The space of production is clearly delineated from the domestic space. Additionally, production space has been sectioned neatly into barnyard and cultivated fields or livestock pasture, and domestic space divided between the backyard kitchen production areas and the front public areas of dooryard or lawn. As John Carter has aptly noted:

With but little imagination we can see the process as one of bringing the horizons closer. From the collective level, that is what the legal division of land did, sectioning a continent into…quarter-mile squares. Inside these quarter-mile squares individuals begin to define inside from out, animal habitation from that of humans, working land from living space, and,

217 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 94. 115

finally, space inside the house itself. It seems a process of putting boxes in boxes, the ‘record of human strivings’ to which [Willa] Cather referred.218

A rare painting of Plains settlement in Nebraska idealizes the desire shared by

Butcher’s subjects to convey both their transformations in adherence to the estate format, and their activities and objects they believed displayed their yeoman farmer status.

During the 1880s, Garfield County homesteader, Sallie Cover, depicted the homestead of her neighbors in The Homestead of Ellsworth Ball [Fig. 125].219 The rolling terrain of the

sandhills is effectively controlled behind neat, rectangular fields of hay and corn; their

flat, rich green in distinct contrast to the more sere tone of the hills. Mr. Ball is driving a

team hitched to a plow, and his brother, Percy, stands next to the team and wagon,

situating them within the production areas of the farm. Mrs. Ball is seen coming to the

house from the chicken coop, placed in the backyard with the respectable start of an

orchard. Her daughter, Leila, plays among the flowers that ornament the dooryard where

shade trees and ornamental shrubs have also been planted in neat rows. Grandpa Ball sits

by the door with baby Ellsworth on his lap and Calvin playing nearby, suggesting respect

for lineage and family. The path to the front door meets the road from which the

homestead could be viewed.

While not so graphically delineated due to the idealized nature of the engravings,

the grid that underlies the structure of the improvements seen in the atlas estate portraits

is equally active in Butcher’s portraits that also use an estate format. At the most basic

218 Carter, Solomon D. Butcher, 13. 219 See Leila Ball Hallock, “Story of the Oil Painting of the Homestaed of E.L. Ball in Dry Cedar Valley, Garfield County, Nebraska,” manuscript in the painting’s object file, Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska, For information on Sallie Cover, see Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998), 58. 116

level, the grid established property lines and this visualized the concept not only of

individual ownership, but also of the land’s converted identity from geographical to

political.220 In Farm scene, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 126], 1887, two rectangular

shaped corn fields have been planted next to each other. Though they cover exactly the

same terrain, and follow the exact same path in their rows, they are separated from each

other, revealing this imposed political distinction. As a property line between the

portrait’s subject and his neighbor, it speaks to the transformation of land into equal

parcels of property that lay at the basis of the belief that agricultural economic equality

and independent ownership formed the backbone of American democracy.

Such “transforming’ lines are ubiquitous in Butcher’s archive, not just as a result of property lines, but also, as in the atlas portraits, as a result of the continuation of the grid system in turning the open landscape (an uncontrolled frontier) into a cultivated

landscape (a human-oriented environment). For instance, in Frischkorn Family sod

house in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 127], 1888, a field of corn spans the horizon, its

straight border adjoins two other rectangular fields, one plowed and one planted in hay.

Likewise in Wallace Dye, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 128], 1886, two

rectangular fields, corn and hay, mark the distant landscape, their righthand border

220 This distinction has been analyzed impressively in its literary form by Stephanie Sarver. In discussing Norris’s fictional representation of the landscape in The Octopus, she notes, “Indeed, as Presley gazes to the south, he observes not a biologically diverse nonhuman environment, or even a biologically cultured landscape, but human efforts at defining space through boundaries that suggest ownership: Derrick’s property is defined by ‘the line of wire fence that separated it from the third division; and to the north, seen faint and blue through the haze and shimmer of the noon sun, a long file of telegraph poles showed the line of the RR and marked Derrick’s northeast boundary.’ Presley reads the marks imposed by humans, seeing the land only as a text where these signs impart meaning about the relationships among the people who inhabit the land…..If there is a ‘natural’ dimension to this agricultural land, we are offered little visual evidence of it through Presley’s eyes. Instead, Norris emphasizes Presley’s perceptual framework for valuing the land and its elements.” See Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 85. 117

continuing its trajectory back through the entire distance of the low hills. Again, in Julius

Kirk family on their ranch in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 129], 1888, two fields mark

the distance. To the left of them is a small square grove of forest trees, planted in neat

rows, likely in compliance with a timber claim. Though such distant aspects of the

pioneer portraits as analyzed here are often difficult to ascertain without high resolution

digitized prints, and thus I have highlighted their presence, including them as part of the portrait was a major factor compelling Butcher to employ the estate format, and thus they are important to consider in analyzing the archive. The grid’s presence, and its effect, on the landscape being considered here is, however, highly visible from an aerial view such as a modern one taken of Frontier County [Fig. 130], just southwest of Custer County, in which the areas with agricultural potential are defined by the grid through which they

were made to conform to, or be controllable by, human culture.

Farmyards and domestic yards can also be distinguished as separate regularized

spaces in an assimilation of the grid into more interactive, or personal, space. This was

not merely due to convenience, but also due to cultural expectations. The degree to

which a pioneer family had spatially categorized, or identified, specific areas of their

homestead conveyed their success in establishing the healthy farming environment characterized by agricultural ideology. One of the most important divisions, not surprising given the central role of the family in the farming frontier, was the separation of domestic space from production space. As Deborah Fink has noted, “A precondition for the existence of family is private life, which presupposes spatial and emotional separation between a public world of business and government and a private world of

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caring and intimacy.”221 Publications of the era are full of articles asserting the nature of each section of a proper farm, and of who was held responsible for each area. Women were responsible for the care of the houseyard and men the barnyard and fields. For instance, The Nebraska Farmer stated that, while milking the cows was a woman’s chore, it was not proper for them to be in the wider barnyard areas.222 The “backyard” was asserted as the proper area for domestic chores, and the “frontyard” or “dooryard” was to be kept attractive for public presentation. In an article, “The Reason Why,” the

Nebraska Farmer conveys the expectations of the care that should be taken to keep this domestic space distinct from the rest of the farm.

The reasons why one farm is desirable to the farmer’s wife and another is not does not lie in the fact that one has a good black soil….but the one has a neat farm house, convenient out-buildings, a dry cellar, a good cistern, a pump in the well, and a yard and garden fenced with a neat paling; a barnyard into which she can find easy ingress or egress….the reason why she dislikes the other is, because the house is inconvenient…the wood pile is at the back door, the dooryard is full of chips…the yard serves for young pigs, poultry, or larger stock to forage in, for the old rail fence is a sorry excuse for an enclosure; and the barnyard is by no means a secure stockage….These are the things the wife looks at while the husband is comparing the soil.223

By imposing ideological concepts of domestic respectability onto specific areas of the land itself, pioneers established spatial areas in which the land was defined by its domestic utility. This space, generally rectangular, maintained conceptual unity with the larger grid. Not surprisingly, while clearly seen in the atlas portraits, such assertion of domestic space, and its separation from production space (and the additional “rational” division of production space), is also presented in Butcher’s archive. In as simple a

221 Fink, Agrarian Women, 6. 222 Nebraska Farmer, January 1879. 223 “The Reason Why,” Nebraska Farmer, October 1880. 119

farmstead as that seen in L.F. Pringle, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 131], 1888, the

fields stretch out in rectangular shape across the distant landscape. Barbed wire encloses

the cattle and horses in one pasture, and the pigs in another. The house has a close water

supply and is fenced off from the rest of the farming activity. Likewise in Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 132], 1889, fields of corn and hay can be seen in the distance, their boundaries aligned with the fencing that surrounds the houseyard. A row of trees separates the barnyard from the house area; and the pigs are contained in their own pen, as are the cattle and horses. In Nelson Potter, Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

114], 1888, the family poses in their kitchen garden, located just to the side of the house.

The rectangular dooryard space is filled with shade trees and newly planted ornamental bushes, carefully protected by lathe. The domestic space is protected from the production areas by fencing. The house has a convenient source of water reserved for domestic use and there is another source provided for the barnyard. The barnyard is also lined with a straight row of trees along is periphery, separating it from fields and extended pastures.

Even compositions that are not in the estate format suggest Butcher’s desire to convey that the pioneers have begun the necessary and proper delineation of domestic and work space to civilize the frontier. In J.C. Cram sod house, Loup County, Nebraska

[Fig. 133], 1886, Butcher’s composition emphasizes the fencing that the Cram’s have

erected to establish a domestic space.224 Within that protected rectangular space, Mrs.

Cram has located an array of elements that were believed to create a proper family

environment upon the plains frontier. Her windows are decorated with ruffled curtains

224 Though the Cram’s homesteaded in Loup County, it was located in an area that associated with settlements in Custer County, and in an area that Butcher was photographing during the same time as, and in the same mindset as, his early work for his history, and thus I have included them in my considerations. 120

and an impressive selection of potted plants, her door path and fence are beautified with

flowering plants, and her door is graced with cages of canaries. Conversely, at times

Butcher photographed multiple scenes from a settler’s estate, creating in aggregate a

portrait of their transformative accomplishments that in the atlas portraits could be done

by including inserted details, as in the portrait of Mr. Berggren’s breeding stock. For

instance, Harvey Andrews was considered one of the wealthiest settlers in Custer County.

His early arrival in 1874 enabled him to obtain land that contained extensive canyons

filled with cedar, one of the most desired commodities among later arrivals needing ridge

poles and other wood building material. In The Harvey Andrews family on their homestead two and one-half miles northwest of New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 20], 1887,

Andrews and his family pose in front of their newly built frame house, a sign of their

enviable wealth. In another photograph, The Harvey Andrews family posed at the grave

of son Willie Andrews [Fig. 22], 1887, the family stands at their deceased son’s grave,

testimony to their strong family sentiments. In two others, Harvey Andrews in Cedar

Canyon on Victoria Creek, near New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 21], 1886, and Harvey

Andrews and family herding their livestock in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek, near

New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 19], 1886, the setting is his land replete with cedars,

emblems to any Plains settlers of his fortune, and cattle, yet another emblem, as Mr.

Berggren would know, of wealth.

The particular nature of the pioneer’s role as a transformer was also asserted quite

aggressively by widely popular settlement propaganda aimed at those, such as Custer

County settlers, who identified themselves as pioneers. For instance, The Broken Bow

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Country, published in 1886 by the Burlington railroad, cites one early settler in Buffalo

County who came twelve years earlier and, “began planting timber at once and now he

has beautiful groves and his large orchard is thoroughly protected by a wind-break of

box-elders….there is not a settler in this country who has been here a year but has a grove

started about his home, even if it is only a sod house.”225 Another emigrant guide writer

asserted in a tellingly titled tract, Solitary Places Made Glad, that he himself “has seen,

with his own eye, the dreary and desolate plains of Nebraska transformed into gardens of

beauty and glory.”226

These emigrant guides regularly included illustrations that visualized the

transformation, further naturalizing the nature of its processes. One excellent example is

the illustration for a Czech-language settlement brochure published by the Burlington

Railroad to publicize their lands in Nebraska [Fig. 134].227 The image is sectioned into

six vignettes, each illustrating the progress pioneers could make—and thus felt the expectations to make—each year of their first six years on the Plains frontier. In the first year, the pioneer has only a dugout and his wagon, and he is busy turning a small area of

the open land that spreads out around him into a rectangular field. In the second year he

225 The Broken Bow Country (Omaha, NE: Burlington Route, 1886). This text was also reprinted in the Chicago Western Rural, 7/24/1886. Similar to this is the text for the Handbook of Fillmore County, Nebraska (1883), in which on page 6, the writer states that “What a marvelous transformation has this county undergone since 1876, the date of my first visit….when the people were living in sod houses and “dug-outs.” There were young groves then, but they were only well started and the orchards were mainly prospective. 226 Davis, Solitary Places Made Glad, 25. 227 This brochure is quite explicit, and thus an excellent example of the expectations of the pioneer experience, likely due to the fact that the publisher relied on the images more for a foreign audience for whom a translated text might not be accurately evocative. However, nearly every emigrant guide or settlement publication includes some type of “before and after” imagery, usually in two panels, such as the frontispiece for Frederick Goddard’s extremely popular, Where to Emigrate and Why (New York: F.B. Goddard, 1869). 122

has added a small grove of trees and plowed more fields; the third year his neighbors have moved closer, establishing a road, and he has gained enough financial stability to

move out of his rough dugout into a small frame house. By the fourth year his neighbors are many, with frame houses of their own, his and their fields cover the landscape, and he has constructed a barn to care properly for his growing agricultural concerns. In the fifth year he has built a stately county home to match the impressive barn, and the small village has grown in parallel respect. The sixth year the viewer would never know that only six years earlier this land had been open, uninhabited land, as the accoutrements of rural culture are so well established. The transformation from frontier to rural, the responsibility of the pioneer, was complete.228

The dugout remains in the foreground and unmoved throughout the six panels of the illustration, an emblem of the pioneer on the Great Plains. However, the dugout was only the emblem of a pioneer’s work if it was in some way shown to be followed by a change from it. It was, in effect, the emblem of the start of the pioneer’s transformation; the reciprocal emblem of the end of this transformation was the frame house.229 A frame

228 The illustration visualizes a statement in the 1889 Nebraska Farmer, quoted in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 330, that “[1884] saw a resistless tide of emigration which…[in] five years has changed an uninhabited stock range into a country dotted with homes, school houses, churches and growing towns.” 229 This succession of houses and the development that it represented is conveyed over and over again in settler histories. For instance, John Amsberry’s biographical entry in Nebraska states in a typical manner, “The first residence on this farm was a dugout 12 x 16 feet and this dwelling in the cold winter of 1880 and 1881 had accommodated two boarders….Following the dugout a sodhouse was the residence of the family until 1889….In 1889 he erected a commodious residence, one of the first frame houses in his neighborhood….He also has several large barns and good farm buildings.” Nebraska (Chicago: Alden Publishing Co., 1912), 716. The appropriateness, and expectation of, this development is noted by Brian Blouet, in discussing log cabins: “Log houses were ‘symbols of the frontier, of backwardness, deprivation,’ writes Terry Jordan; shameful reminders of failure to get ahead, they were to be discarded as soon a possible for frame, brick, or stone houses. Jacksonian democracy made it desireable for a presidential candidate to have been born in a log cabin, but ‘it was definitely not fitting for the candidate to continue living in one’; the log cabin was a symbol of how low you could start and still succeed, not a mark 123

house was a sign to all of accomplishment, both cultural and financial. Tellingly,

scattered throughout county newspapers of the era are images of newly completed frame

houses, though I have yet to find a single illustration of a sod house.230 The preference

for a frame house underlies the statement by the author of The Broken Bow County, when

he notes about sod houses that they are “often a very comfortable dwelling….they can be

built much cheaper than a frame house, at least until lumber comes within easy hauling

distance by rail.”231 That a house held meaning for the settlers beyond utility is clearly

conveyed in their actions. Though a sod house was cool in summer, warm in winter and

inexpensive, most settlers built frame houses as soon as it was financially feasible for

them regardless of the fact that they were more susceptible to extremes of Plains weather,

such as high winds and prairie fires.232 In other words, the frame house was perceived

preferable to the sod house, regardless of the sod house’s greater appropriateness to the

climate, due to its public announcement of successful transformation..

Butcher’s archive consistently asserts a statement of change conveyed by the

move from the lowly Plains dugout to a more proper house (though before the arrival in

the county of the railroad it is more typically only a move from the dugout to the sod

house). In Peter M. Barnes dugout, near Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

39], 1887, and Damon Livestock, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 135], 1886, sod

of environmental virtue.” Brian W. Blouet, “American Pioneer Landscapes: An Introduction,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winte 1982): 4. 230 A typical one is of A.W. Gandy’s new frame house illustrated in the Daily Republican, 5/4/1889. 231 The Broken Bow County, 7. Or, as Mary Ellen Jones notes, “In most areas of the Plains frontier a frame or brick house was seen as a status symbol, indicating that the farmer had achieved a degree of success. Daily Life on the 19th-century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 197. 232 Dick notes this in Conquering the Great American Desert, 209: “Yet the sod house was fairly cool in summer and warm in winter, and thus it frequently was more satisfactory than the poorly insulated frame house with which settlers replaced it as soon as they could afford to make the transition.” 124

houses are accompanied nearby by their dugout precursors, typically then used for

livestock. In “The Old Sod House and the New.” The Jacob Graff house near West

Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 136], 1887, the construction of the new home is

actually illustrated and, with the title, emphasizes the upward development it signifies.

With the arrival of the railroad in 1886, the frame house became a reality for a greater

number of pioneers, though still not the majority. In Sod and frame house [Fig. 137], the

family has added a frame addition to the front of their dugout.233 Or, as in Coleman, west

of Merna, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 138], 1886, a newly built frame house has been located on the other side of a row of trees, beginning the separation of farmyard and houseyard that the sod house, now part of the stable, did not maintain.

In fact, Butcher often returned to a pioneer’s home if a new frame house had been built, quite consciously, it seems, creating a set of before and after portraits in the same vein as the panels of immigrant illustrations. In 1886 Butcher’s sister, Miranda, and her husband built a frame house. This would have taken considerable time and decision- making, and Butcher would have known about it. Just before they moved into the house, however, Butcher photographed their pioneer portrait in front of their sod house [Fig.

139], and then again, that same year, in front of their new frame house [Fig. 140].234 It is predictable that the family would want to record their financial improvement, but given that they also had a photograph taken in front of an environment they were soon to

233 This photographed has been dated 1880, which is obviously incorrect. 234 Illustration 31 is A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886, and illustration 32 is A.J. Smith in front of their house near Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. 125

improve upon, it would seem that they, or Butcher, or both of them, wanted to record not just the new circumstances, but the change of circumstances and the particular nature of that change.

This desire for a pioneer portrait to record transformation is perhaps most impressively, and directly, conveyed in two portraits of the J.D. Ream family.235 In J.D.

Ream's early day soddy northwest of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 141],

1886, the family sits along the drive to their sod house, the impressive improvements to their frontyard clearly displayed. (Ream had a local nursery.) However, when their new house was built in 1904, the family again posed for Butcher in The new house on the J.D.

Ream farm northwest of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 142], 1904. By quite consciously mimicking the earlier composition, the second work compels the viewer to draw a comparison between the two, and thus makes an explicit statement about the impressive improvements in the Plains environment that the Ream pioneers had made. Their house, yard, and trees could easily grace any home in the east and not look any more civilized.

Essentially, these portraits that suggest Butcher’s and his subjects’ desire to show the nature of their civilizing transformations also convey what, exactly, as pioneers the conclusion of their transformative work was expected to be. As Gilbert Fite summarized, “Their purpose was…to build in the West a patent-office model of the society they had known in the East.236 The work of the pioneer was deeply conservative in that the environment and culture it created in the West was a replica of the society,

235 A similar comparison can be found for the families of Old Johnson, John J. Downey, and James Pierce. 236 Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, v. 126

culture, and landscape established in the areas in the East they had migrated from. Of the

members of Custer County’s Old Settlers Association who recorded what state they had

come from, the majority, 41%, came from Iowa, followed by 27% from Illinois and 12%

from Indiana. Essentially 80% of the pioneers came from prairie states.237 Nearly every

practice they instigated, whether it was of domestic, cultural, or agricultural nature, can

be seen as conservative or imitative. For instance, the frame house was standard by this

time in the rural Midwest, and was considered the final proper farmhouse on the Plains, and the spatial establishment of control on the Plains was imitative of the grid system.

However, other elements in Butcher’s archive convey the wider scope of the

imitative or conservative nature of the pioneer’s endeavor. As Bradley Baltensperger has

noted, “agricultural background…is of considerable importance in their behavior as

farmers in Nebraska, especially in the first years after settlement. The Americans had

gained most of their farming experience in the Midwest, where the dominant farming

system included raising corn to be fed to cattle and hogs.”238 Unlike the few pioneers who came directly to Custer County from foreign countries who focused on sheep production, American pioneers, who were the great majority, focused on hog and beef production. Even more influential, in replicating what pioneers knew, the first crop on the Plains frontier was typically corn, rather than wheat which, if the local climate was considered objectively, would have been the first choice. In fact, in 1879, pioneers in

Dawson, Gosper, and Phelps counties, just to the south of Custer County, grew four times

237 See Carl Smith mss, Old Settler Association, CCHS. There were 667 members, 434 of whom gave the state they moved from. Missouri was 4th with 8%, Ohio 5th with 6%, 4% came directly from a foreign nation, and the last 2% from various other U.S. states. 238 Bradley H. Baltensperger, “Agricultural Change among Nebraska Immigrants, 1880-1900” in Frederick C. Luebke, ed. Ethnicity on the Great Plains (University of Nebraska Press for the Center for Great Plains Studies: Lincoln and London, 1980), 173. 127

as much corn as wheat, and, by 1889, Nebraska was producing 10.2% of the nation’s

corn crop.239 Certainly the great majority of Butcher’s images, as exemplified by illustrations 13, 15, 16, 20 show this continuation of corn, hog, and cattle production.

Additionally, while trees certainly fulfilled needs of the settlers on a multitude of

levels, in many ways their greatest impact culturally and psychologically was in their ability to seemingly transform the Plains into the prairies the settlers had known in the

East. Only 3% of Nebraska was naturally forested, and this was primarily along the waterways in the eastern section of the state. Certainly part of the impetus to plant the

Plains to trees was based on scientific hypothesis. Rain not only was believed to follow

the plow, it followed the tree as well. As Robert Furnas assured readers in 1885, “the

yearly extension of the rain belt westward has been very apparent during the past few years….the most reasonable solution (that once dry land is now productive) is, that rain

follows the plow…groves and forest trees exert the same influence.”240

However, the mania for trees was indebted even more to psychological needs.

The barren, rolling expanse of endless grass in the central and western sections unnerved many pioneers who had come from the wooded areas of the rural Midwest. As Everett

Dick has wryly noted, “the absence of trees in Nebraska was like a family scandal.”241

Settler I.D. Graham of Topeka, Kansas, noted that “To the prairie pioneer, whose horizon

239 Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 50; and, Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 200. In fact, Dick notes that there was intense pressure on Nebraska farmers to continue or comply with the corn-hog production that characterized farming in the Midwest. J. Sterling Morton called the combination “mortgage lifters.”. 240 Robert W. Furnas, Nebraska. Her Reseources, Advantages, Advancement and Promises (Lincoln, NE: Board of Education Lands and Funds, 1885), 24. The perception that a humid climate was the result of ample supply of moisture above the area that would then fall as rain, and, since trees transpire water, they aided in filling the local area with moisture, is also noted by Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 120. In fact, “Wheat found little favor among Nebraska farmers until about the turn of the century. James C. Olson and Ronald C. Naugle, History of Nebraska (Lincoln: University of NE Press, 1997), 202. 241 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 116. 128

was bounded only by his power of vision; a tree among the billowing waves of green

became as a sail on a sea, a harbinger of hope and contact with the infinite spaces.”242

Deborah Fink has noted that “Nebraska settler Luna Kellie wrote that her eyes ‘hungered’ for trees in Nebraska.…and South Dakota settler Faye Lewis, wrote that the ‘vast unshelteredness’ troubled her mother, because there was nothing to make a shadow.”243

Clearly acting on this, various settlement ephemera for Nebraska regularly reprinted a series of engravings, a typical example of which is “Valley County, Neb.—Head of big

Island in North Loup River” [Fig. 143], that emphasized the presence of mature trees in the state, and, rightfully or not, assured those coming of the fertility of the environment in visual terms they understood and trusted.

Trees became for these settlers mediators between the seemingly unnatural environment and themselves. Trees introduced a human-scaled element into an environment naturally scaled to overwhelm humans in vast expanses of low rolling hills.

Trees offered a mode of control of the area. In emotional terms, trees became the

“humans” of the natural world and settlers expressed a closeness, an affinity, toward them that they didn’t for other elements of the landscape. For instance, Deborah Fink noted that settler Luna Kellie “described trees as she would people.”244 The areas in

which Custer County settlers had successfully introduced groves of trees, such as on the

homesteads of Fabius Mills or Charles Mathews, became prized by the population,

sought out for their comforting familiarity and thus locations the settlers felt most proper

in which to celebrate holiday or honorary events.

242 Quoted in David F. Van Haverbeke, “Man and Trees on the Great Plains,” unpublished mss, CCHS. 243 Fink, Agrarian Women, 31. 244 Fink, Agrarian Women, 31. 129

This desire for trees was so widely held throughout the state that, according to one

account, by 1885 there had been 244,356 trees planted in Nebraska.245 Crete Nurseries

reported that during the 1888-1889 season they, with two other nurseries, sold over 30

million trees.246 Custer County settlers shared in sentiments so deeply and pervasively

felt that, in fact, they even instigated a barrage of legal actions aimed at instigating the

planting of trees as well as their protection. A state law gave residents a $100 tax exemption for each acre of fruit trees they owned and $50 for each acre of forest trees.

The law also required that villages plant shade trees along their streets.247 An 1873 state

law fined a person up to $35.00 for injuring or destroying any fruit, ornamental, shade or

other trees that belonged to another. The injuring party could even be imprisoned and

kept at hard labor for up to 10 years, and they would be liable for double the amount

damaged.248 The objective of foresting Nebraska lay at the very heart of the Timber

Claim Acts which gave settlers a quarter-section if they planted 10 acres of it to timber.

Interestingly, the law required that the trees be planted not more than 12 feet apart, which

yet again marked the transformation of the landscape in terms compliant with the angular nature of the grid. Portraits, such as shown in illustration 16, with their linear plantings of forest trees, are ubiquitous in Butcher’s archive. They show clearly that Custer County pioneers quite consciously went to great lengths to effect a physical transformation of the frontier landscape into a visual environment consistent with the environments they had known previously through the filter of the surveyor’s grid. As Robert Furnas answered

245 Furnas, Nebraska, 13. 246 Cited in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 126. 247 Furnas, Nebraska, 16. 248 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 120. 130

his rhetorical question, “What is the future of Nebraska?...The success in growing forests and orchards ensures great tracts of timber which will change the once treeless plains into a beautiful region of combined prairie and forest.”249

When the West looked and functioned like the rural Midwest east of the Missouri

where the pioneers had come from, then their work of transformation was perceived to be

successful, and the frontier was no longer, as the farming frontier was the last stage of its

existence. Visuality played a major role in judging the success of the pioneers’ changes

upon the land. The major elements that the pioneers understood to signify the work of

their transformative power—a cultivated landscape clearly defined as property, a proper

house, defined spatial arrangements, and a familiar forested landscape—all produced a

visual replica of an eastern rural environment. In essence, the pioneers’ transformative

work was “non-othering.” A landscape and living environment that was perceived to be

lacking, abnormal, or unnatural, and offered only difference, was changed into a

landscape and living environment that conformed to expectations and roles that had been

naturalized in the eastern Midwestern areas from where the pioneers had migrated.

249 Furnas, Nebraska, 26. 131

CHAPTER 5

THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER

5.1 Defining the Progressive Farmer

The yeoman farmer, and the pioneer considered to be the first yeoman farmer, offered deeply absorbed cultural models by which Custer County settlers understood success in terms of middle-class moral and cultural status, egalitarian economic status, respect for the superiority of the independent family unit, and, for the pioneer, the role of transforming a space in which these characteristics flourished. However, these traditional agrarian-based models were countered in the late 19th century by an equally persuasive model that proscribed success in terms of progress, specifically shaped by the country’s increasing dependence on industrialism. Early 19th century American economy had comprised individual merchant and agrarian enterprises that participated in a loose network of local, or indirectly national, markets. However, throughout the remainder of the century this economic structure was increasingly imposed upon by the transformation of the nation into an international political and economic power through the development of an industrial economy.

132

The era between the Civil War and the end of the century saw especially profound

technological developments and aggressive economic expansion, both of which required

heavily capitalized industrial production, and finance and business specialization. In

1860 the value of farm lands and associated manufacture still comprised seven times the

capital in industrial manufacturing, and merchant and land activities provided the primary

venues for Americans to accumulate wealth.250 However, between 1870 and 1890,

manufacturing labor more than doubled while the total engaged in agriculture grew only

45%,251 and by 1890 the value of U.S. industrial products exceeded the value of

agricultural products.252 As John Dewey wrote, “One can hardly believe there has been a revolution in history so rapid, so extensive, so complete.”253

America’s new industrial involvement profoundly altered the modes by which

farmers conducted their lives. In 1873, J.F. Glidden invented barbed wire, which was

bettered when the Bessemer-Kelly steel process was developed, and perfected when the

Haish Company learned to enamel and galvanize it. By 1883 the Washburn Company’s

Dekalb plant was manufacturing 600 miles of barbed wire each day. Steel windmills became available in the Great Plains in the mid-1870s; and the twine binder for wheat harvesting was patented in 1874. Railroads not only spanned the continent in 1867, they tripled in mileage, bringing with them a massive network of telegraph and telephone communications. Stock tickers were installed in Wall Street in 1867, consolidating

250 Edward G. White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 11-12. 251 See Fred A. Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” The American Historical Review 41:4 (July 1936):, 648. 252 See Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 30. 253 Quoted in Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998), ?. 133

national and international business markets. Mass-production techniques were

introduced by Armour in Chicago, enabling large scale processing of cattle and hogs at

one location, and connecting the stock-raising business of the Plains to national industrial

and transportation centers. Refrigerator cars appeared in 1868, allowing all parts of the

nation to share in produce that was once only locally known and marketed. The Suez

Canal was opened in 1869 making international trade accessible, and pertinent, to the

Plains farmer. Additionally, near instantaneous intercontinental communications were

made possible when Europe was connected by submarine cable with the U.S. in 1866,

and with South America in 1874.

By the late century, success, both nationally and individually, was defined by

progress; and progress was defined in terms taken from this new and dominant industrial

segment. Andrew Carnegie expressed the new terms of progress, which is to say the new

terms of success, in 1886, in Triumphant Democracy, explaining:

The old nations of the earth creep on at a snail’s pace, the Republic thunders past with the rush of the express. The U.S., the growth of a single century, has already reached the foremost rank among nations, and it is destined soon to out-distance all others in the race. In population, in wealth, in annual savings, and in public credit; in freedom from debt, in agriculture, and in manufactures, America already leads the civilized world.254

The country’s international ascendancy was presented as a competition in which the best

mastery of machine speed and acquired wealth wins—and winning was the point. In contrast to the exceptionalism posited in the agrarian, egalitarian, community- and

family-oriented terms of Jeffersonian agrarianism, the U.S. was characterized as

254 Andrew Carnegie, Triumphant Democracy, 1886, quoted in John G. Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 167. 134

thundering, rushing, an express, and outdistancing; such vocabulary bring to mind the

locomotive, an icon of machine power. Freedom was imagined in terms of wealth and

finance. The nation’s exceptionalism was perceived in progressive ideology to reside in

its ability to recognize and embrace progress. As Henry Nash Smith noted, “The idea of

progress as the controlling force in history, with America at the forefront of advance

toward a millennial fulfillment, was the true secular theology of this country in the 19th

century.”255

The definition of success for the farmer became shaped by concepts and terms of

industrial progress. One of the most pervasive elements of industrial rhetoric that was absorbed into the identity of pioneer farmers, such as Butcher’s Custer County settlers, is the intense, almost larger-than-human, drive to bring the natural world around them into production; to convert resources into wealth through extraction. By absorbing into his individual world the drive of the larger economic world around him, the value of the settler became measured by the value of the material gain he could extract from the raw materials at his disposal. The settler observed a nation of massive corporations and powerful industrial tycoons intent on converting iron into rails, timber into board lumber, coal into heat, steel into machines of technological marvel, the inner depths of mountains into copper, silver, and gold, and cattle and wheat into commercial exports. Early Custer

County settlers watched as the corporation of the Powell brothers cut the cedars from the county’s canyons, sometimes at a rate of forty wagonloads a day, in order to meet their contract to supply the Union Pacific Railroad with ties, telegraph poles, and bridge

255 Popular Culture and Industrialism, 1865-1890, ed. Henry Nash Smith (Garden City, NY: 1967), xi. 135

timber.256 Settler Charles Mathews reported counting at least 800 wagons from the east

taking out cedars from the canyon.257 The settlers became well acquainted with the

Kilpatrick Brothers corporation due to its construction contract with the Burlington

railroad. The Kilpatrick’s served locally as the model of industrial force, as they operated

on the scale typical for the new industrial corporations. They hired an extensive

workforce, often up to 1,000 men, that besides locals, included mainly Chinese, Irish and

Italians. They operated a company store in Broken Bow, invested heavily in land and

resources as they passed through areas, and even participated in the Golden Spike

ceremony at the joining of the transcontinental railroad. When the firm dissolved it had

constructed over 5,000 miles of railroad across the nation, and it owned over 40,000 acres

in Nebraska alone, with similar holdings in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, as well as

numerous coal fields including the substantial Cambria mine.258

Pioneers took their cue from these corporate entities in developing a relationship

to the land around them. They were on the watch for signs of coal, the presence of which

was frequently hinted at in emigrant guides and local newspapers. The Nebraska Farmer

announced that “the first load of coal from the mines of John Henderson, near Pawnee

City, was taken into that city a few days since and pronounced good. That there is plenty

of coal in Nebraska is now generally believed, and there is little doubt the day is near at

hand when plenty of coal will be found.”259 This suggests the nation—and the settlers—

256 Haskell surname file, CCHS. 257 Mathews surname file, CCHS. 258 Kilpatrick file, CCHS. 259 Nebraska Farmer, 12/15/1883. In fact, Nebraska has few mineral resources of the like settlers were hoping for, such as coal, iron, or precious minerals. Mineral resources that were present—stone, sand, 136

expected the West to be an area fraught with potential for massive wealth. Charles

Mathews claimed land with natural mineral springs and, at the peak of the nation’s

mineral water fad, was elated when the chemical testing done on them revealed their

healthful content. To much local fanfare and expectation, the Victoria Mineral Springs

Company was incorporated in 1888, the bottles of which are included in Mathews

portrait, Ex-judge Chas R. Mathews of New Helena, Nebraska, in front of a log building

that was one of the first buildings in the county and served for a time as New Helena's

post office [Fig. 144], 1886. Another early Custer County settler, and former buffalo

hunter, A.S. Burgher, noted in his memoirs that, “had we foreseen how rapidly the

buffalo would be exterminated and how valuable their hides would soon become, we

might have made our fortunes. The carcasses that were left rotting on the plains by the

millions might also have been utilized. There were a few meat-drying concerns, but they

did not appear to be a success.”260 In Burgher’s estimation, the tragedy of the near demise of the great buffalo herds was not their extinction, but rather their extinction without fulfilling their economic potential.

Even farming was imaged in the terms developed from the extractive processes of

industrial interests that defined national progress. An article titled “Nebraska Dirt,” in

the Custer County Republican, asserts that, “The rush to Nebraska is as enthusiastic as it

ever was to the gold fields of California and on a far greater and grander scale. In the

gold craze it was a lottery, and most people drew blank, in this scheme all drew

prizes….all rush pell-mell for Nebraska to secure a quarter section of Nebraska dirt, the

gravel, clay, oil, and gas—were not developed until later. See James C. Olson and Ronald C. Naugle, History of Nebraska, 3rd ed. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraksa Press, 1997), 5. 260 Burgher surname file, CCHS. 137

sure foundation of a fortune....several hundred thousand dollars have been made last year

out of investments in Nebraska lands.”261 In fact, the writer was closer to Nebraska’s

potential for claiming national recognition than those looking for mineral wealth, as

Nebraska’s Chernozem and Chestnut soils are among the most productive in the world;

Custer County is nearly 3/4ths covered with Chernozem. Dan Haskell conveyed the early

settlers’ progressive view of their actions when writing about the settlement of the

county. He stated that “the early homesteader and ranchman did not then think they were

showing the way to the thousands who followed and settled this county as we see it

today. They saw in the native grasses and good soil the possibility to develop an industry

out of a small start in farming and raising of cattle.”262

Robert Furnas declared in 1885 that “The whole of Nebraska is a country of

unsurpassed fertility. The soil is from three to ten feet deep, the surface gently rolling,

and the whole region intended by nature for the great production of cereals, which can be raised with less labor than in the old settled states, all the work being done by labor saving machinery.”263 To Furnas, the soil wasn’t important because it could assure the

small farming family sustenance, nor because it would maintain the rural community at

the base of democracy, but rather it was important because it assured the “great

production” that characterized factory outputs and that would contribute to the nation’s

economic supremacy. With the introduction of the railroad into Custer County, the

261 Custer County Republican, 5/3/1883. 262 Haskell surname file, CCHS. 263 Robert W. Furnas, Nebraska. Her Resources, Advantages, Advancement and Promises (Lincoln, NE: Board of Education Lands and Funds, 1885), 1. 138

attendant businesses of “great production” appeared, creating large depots with

stockyards and grain elevators unnecessary for the individual family, but required to

convert the natural bounty into exportable commodities.

If farming had been characterized as “cultivation” in agrarian ideology, in the

progressive milieu it was “extraction”—and extraction of the kind that adopted the

characterizations of conquest that better fit the competitive nature of industrial production. As David Lowenthal has noted, “Pioneers and historians of westward

expansion alike employed military metaphors. The wilderness was an ‘enemy’ to be

‘conquered,’ ‘subdued,’ or ‘vanquished’ and ‘subjugated’ by a ‘pioneer army.’”264

Certainly Ernst von Hess-Wartegg, in his account of crossing Nebraska, adopted the expressions of power and force to describe his experience of the West and his understanding of its “cultivation.”

Built through a dry, treeless, unpeopled desert, the railroad now crosses an agricultural paradise. Civilization sweeps like a storm across the plains and smashes what will not bow down or give way before it. Buffalo, panther, Indian—all fell north to the wastes of Dakota and Wyoming, while Nebraska becomes a farmer’s dream, the New World’s breadbasket. We are about to embark on the green ocean of prairie, in a palace car of the Union Pacific. These cars are to the West what great passenger liners are to the Atlantic—big, fast, beautiful, and luxuriously appointed….[as we] race through the American breadbasket.265

If industrialism offered a trope of power through which settlers construed their

activities, it also provided the tools that enabled the western pioneer to convert the plains

into commodity. The thick matted root system of plains grasses had been impervious to

264 David Lowenthal, “The Pioneer Landscape: An American Dream,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winter 1982), 11. One of the best examinations of the modes of conquest, and its relationship to property, employed in western development is Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987). 265 Frederic Trautmann, “Across Nebraska by Train in 1877: The Travels of Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg,” Nebraska History 65:3 (Fall 1984): 412. 139

cultivating implements until the introduction of the steel plow, with a polished steel share

sharp enough and strong enough to cut through the roots to reveal the rich soil beneath.

Having breached the surface root system, however, the plains, in the words of Walter

Prescott Webb, “invited the farm machinery revolution in America.”266 The forestation

and hills of the eastern farming lands had compelled the farmer to use a one-horse plow,

sickle, and scythe in order to work among dead trees and stumps. The timbered areas

also required years to clear in order to bring them into cultivation, making the field sizes

smaller. One of the most notable features of the Plains emphasized by emigrant

publications was that its flat, treeless nature enabled the settler to bring under cultivation

in one season, and thus into profitability, what had taken years to achieve in the East.

Farming in the West was imaged to offer a speedy return on the farmer’s invested labor, a

quality much praised in industrial rhetoric. For instance, in a brochure for the Atchinson,

Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad [Fig. 145], the settler “in the woods” is thrown from the handles of his simple plow to the great dismay of his wife, while his co-worker hops in agony from a stubbed toe. However, the settler “out of the woods into Kansas” merrily shades himself from the sun while he rests atop his riding plow that quickly and easily brings the neat square field into cultivation.

Settlers on the Great Plains benefited from their migration into an environment at a time concurrent with developments in industrial technology that were fitted for the

“conquering” of the Plains. The number and variety of farming implements and machinery introduced in the decades between 1870 and 1900 is astounding.267 The

266 Quoted in Everett Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 295. 267 For a survey of farming technology see Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 202. 140

grasshopper plow cut down into the earth four to six inches and across twelve to sixteen

inches, turning over a ribbon of continuous sod from which the settlers could make

affordable houses.268 One acre of sod turned over with the grasshopper plow would

enable a settler to construct an average-sized house. In the 1880s the sulky plow was

introduced, as was the spike-toothed harrow. The sowing sack was replaced by the end-

gate seeder, and corn production was greatly enhanced when hand planters were replaced

by single-row and then two-row planters. When the cultivator was improved in the 1870s

so that the shovels straddled the rows, allowing the farmer to ride on top, even farmers

felt ahead of their time, and were not sure that sitting while working still could be

considered honest work. Twine binders replaced the need to manually bundle grain.

Threshers were introduced in the 1870s, and soon they were equipped with separators and winnowing devices, at first requiring power from up to five teams of horses, though later

they were steam-powered.

It is no surprise that farmers felt themselves, isolated geographically as they might

be, thorough participants in the heady world of industrial revolution. Newspapers and

farm journals are filled with advice to farmers about the purchase, use, and care of newly

developed equipment, such as the Nebraska Farmer, article, “Farm Implements and

Machinery,” which advises that

A number of machines and instruments is a necessity to any well furnished farm. The wants of the farmer have been well supplied by the manufacturer in the matter of machines for his work. All farmers cannot have all the needed implements….Every farmer can not own a thresher and but a few in a neighborhood can be the owners of reapers and mowers,

268 For extended reference to the construction of sod houses, see Roger Welsch, Sod Walls: The Story of the Nebraska Sod House (1967; Lincoln, NE: J&L Lee Co, 1991); and, John I. White, “the Zenith of Prairie Architecture—The Soddy,” American Heritage (August 1973), 33-35. 141

but all should be the owner of the smaller implements required, and it should be their aim to always get the best….The model farmer should…have sufficient knowledge of mechanics to enable him to construct and repair his own machinery, and to be able to apply all the necessary power for the use of machines to the greatest possible advantage.269

That the “best shipment of freight,” according to settlers, on the first train into Custer

County was a brand new Case horse-powered threshing machine, was a local

manifestation of the county’s involvement in national developments. By 1900 more

money was invested in harvesters than in any other machine in the world except the

steam engine. In fact, in the era between the Civil War and the end of the century, the annual value of American manufactures of agricultural implements rose from

$21,000,000 to $101,000,000, an increase of nearly 500%.270 Likely responding to wide-

spread worry that the increasing dependence of factories on mechanization would rob the

worker of his income, the Nebraska Farmer came solidly down on the side of the

machine, asserting that such worries were “entirely unfounded.” Bragging on the Plains

states’ lead in such matters, the article noted that “in no part of the world has the

introduction of such machinery been more general or more rapid than in the grain

growing states of the west.”271

The machinery and technology that marked the country’s industrial progress made

an equally forceful impression on the Plains settler through its application in the control

269 “Farm Implements and Machinery,” Nebraska Farmer, 10/15/1881. Such articles are too numerous to cite specifically. See also the Nebraska Farmer, June 1878, for advice to newcomers regarding what equipment they should purchase, and the 4/15/1883 issue with suggestions to the farmer that April was the time to have their equipment overhauled, etc., and offering the advice that “the best is the cheapest. There is no economy in attempting to make a crop with any other than the best that can be had.” 270 Fred A. Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” The American Historical Review 41:4 (July 1936): 139. The first thresher in Custer County was jointly purchased by Pat Sperry, his brother-in- law Joe Gibbings, and Henry Maxon. They hired out across the county, usually working for a trade. 271 See “Does Machinery Rob the Laborer?,” Nebraska Farmer, January 1879. 142

of water. Following the practice of the railroads, which dug wells equipped with

windmills along their routes to supply their locomotives with the necessary frequent

refilling of water, settlers realized that their homestead was only as good as their water

supply, and deep wells and windmills became ubiquitous in Custer County. Settlers, such

as Butcher’s own father, dug to ascertain the distance to water even before they made

their claims at the land office in order to assure that their land and livestock could have

water without great expense. However, the most prized land for farming, the flat table

lands, also typically had the deepest water sources, thus many settlers went to great

expense to put down wells. Peter Forney was the first settler on Cliff Table to put down a well with an iron casing, getting water at 444 feet at a cost of $600. After years of paying on the mortgage he used to finance the well, its final cost was $1,050.272 It was not

infrequent that Custer County table lands required wells up to 300 feet deep. To

overcome such handicap, settler Rendall Sargent developed a hydraulic system, putting the first one down for Joseph Chrisman in 1884. Over the course of his work, Sargent estimated that he had put down over 300 wells in the area.273

Most settlers followed the railroad’s path and installed windmills to pump water

from the wells. The success of the settler in gaining control of the frontier environment,

the signs of his progress, was soon signified by the technological and industrial elements

he used to extract water from the landscape. Irrigation ditches (or even just the talk of

them), windmills, and deep wells all signified the participation of the settler in extracting

commodities from land in an industrial mode. The windmill especially, probably because

272 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 109. 273 Sargent surname file, CCHS. 143

of its highly visible nature, became an icon of technological advancement, or progress, on

the Great Plains. Windmills were one of the major attractions at the 1888 Nebraska State

Fair, and settlers flocked to consider their variety and availability [Illus. 3]. Custer

County settlers celebrated, “Windmills are seen by the score and the water problem no

longer troubles the people of that community.”274 Associating the presence of the

windmill with the settler’s ability to gain their commodity with efficiency akin to factory processes, the Nebraska Farmer asserted that

Right here we wish to say on behalf of windmills, that no man can afford to give the land that is wasted by a stream of water. Either one of the above mentioned mills are worth more than any stream of water. But a few years since, the first questions asked by a man buying land, was: ‘Is there a stream of water on the farm?’ But that time is fast passing away, and those that have the stream of water pay very little attention to it, more than to build bridges across it, or wishing it was on some other man’s farm.275

Underlying such claims is the understanding that success in terms of

technological progress was merited by forcing the land to produce according to the rate

and design determined by humans. Industrial-style success was gained through the

subjugation of the power of the natural environment. As clearly expressed by Henry

Ward Beecher following the Civil War,

So the crushing power, the organized physical force, that men now form into armies, and by which they sweep fellow nations, is to be directed against nature—against the soil, against the rock, against metal. We are to pierce mountains; we are to tunnel hills; we are to cut ways for industry; we are to rear up fleets; and we are to battle storms. We are to be warriors still, but warriors for peace; warriors against the forces of nature that resist us, until we subdue the nations to the blessed condition of industry, as well as social and civil conquest. And the ratio of civilization will be found to

274 “Settlement of Cliff Table,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 336. 275 Nebraska Farmer, October 1879. 144

be just in proportion to the difference that exists between the use of physical force for managing men, and the use of physical force for controlling nature.276

In this industrial ideology, success for the settler was wrested in competition against the environment, won only through the settler’s mastery of a technology that offered greater physical force than nature; it was a clash of wills between human invention or ingenuity and nature. As Webb described, “the windmill was like a flag marking the spot where a small victory had been won in the fight for water in an arid land.”277

It was technology, created through industrial power, that enabled the settler to

create a rural world in which the land was shaped according to the settlers’ desires and

assumptions rather than the settler accommodating his desires to the forces and nature of

the landscape upon which he settled. As Stephanie Sarver has aptly noted, “adaptation

[for the 19th century American] means that humans use ‘scientific knowledge’

to…transform arid land into arable land…. Human adaptation means not a scaling-down

of agricultural expectations but a scaling-up of human effort.”278 When Furnas, quoted

earlier, conveyed the “great production” potential of Nebraska soil, he immediately

followed his assertion with the mode of its extraction, “all the work being done by labor saving machinery. The farmer rides on his plow, corn planter, cultivator, mower and reaper, threshes his grain by steam, and can shell his corn and grind feed for his stock by

276 Quoted in Plains2:9. 277 Notes3:10, 402. Quoted in? 278 Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 124. 145

wind power.”279 That the use and beneficence of such technology was never significantly questioned is a result of the pervasive faith in the capability of the settler, as a progressive

American, to win this competition.

Another major element of industrial culture incorporated into the setter’s concept of success was the rapid accumulation of wealth. The Americans who prospered after the

Civil War did so in ways that differed significantly from those prior to the industrial era.

Post-war Americans prospered from industrialism with astounding speed, subverting the dominant agrarian mode in which “age, wealth, status and power went together,” one rarely achieving the latter three before the age of 40 or 45.280 The end of the 19th century witnessed an unprecedented restructuring of this mode of acquiring wealth. By 1890, the richest 1% of the population saw the same income as the entire bottom 50% together.281

Much of this income came from the discovery and processing of raw materials in the

West, making the West a locus of especially strong expectations of sudden rather than gradual wealth.282 And, in fact, such expectations were not unfounded. As Richard

White has shown regarding those involved in western mining:

The hope of rising from rags to riches that drew men to the mines was not entirely illusory. When owners or operators of western mines are compared to industrial leaders in the East, the rags-to-riches ideal of western mining obviously has some truth. The so-called bonanza kings—

279 Furnas, “Nebraska.” 280 Robert P. Swierenga, “The New Rural History: Defining the Parameters,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:4 (Fall 1981): 215. 281 Foner, The Story of American Freedom, 117. 282 As Edward White has noted regarding the nature of the change in wealth, out of 26 economic “elites” from before 1860, 18 made their fortunes through landholding or merchant shipping, only 3 through railroads, and only one through finance. Of the 43 “elites” from post-1860, 9 gained their wealth through railroads, 18 from heavy industry or utilities, 10 through finance, and 3 were professional men. None were strictly landholders, and only one was a merchant. See White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, 15. 146

the men who grew rich in mining—had a decidedly less privileged background than the eastern business elite. One sample of western mine owners found them more likely to be foreign-born (30% in the West to less than 10% in the East), less educated, and more likely to have experienced poverty in their youth than eastern business leaders.283

The yeoman ideal of middle-class family independence was profoundly challenged by

new visions of sudden and massive wealth. E.L. Godkin addressed this change when he

wrote that “so many great fortunes are now made, every year, by lucky strokes, or

by…enterprise and speculation…that the old mode of…slowly ‘working one’s way

up,’…may be said to have fallen into disrepute.”284

In fact, land speculation lay at the very heart of settlers’ actions, and, not

surprisingly, took its shape from the capitalism that characterized industrial culture.

Broken Bow itself was imaged in just such terms. In 1886, with the arrival of the

railroad, the Chicago Times, ran an article promoting the new town in which it stated that

There has never intervened a score of years since the memorable first grand rush to California, half a century ago, when the wide West, yet in the youth of its development and empire, has failed to present the world with some new spectacle, either of a city springing suddenly into life like a blossom of the prairies or the mountains or of some center of settlement and investment suddenly invested with wide and unusual interest and drawing the tide of capital and emigration in a manner typical of the early days. This time it is Broken Bow, the booming young county seat of Custer County.285

While early settlers took advantage of the various settlement acts to receive land they

intended to farm, the majority of them were equally interested in the land for its

283 Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of OK Press, 1991), 263. 284 E.L. Godkin, North American Review (July 1868), quoted in Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man, 125. Cawelti makes an especially interesting note on page 116 that the character of Horatio Alger’s young protagonists follow this format in that “sudden and unaccountable prosperity frequently comes to the deserving like manna from heaven.” 285 Quoted in “The Broken Bow Country,” (Omaha, NE: published by Burlington Route., 1886). 147

investment profitability. Clearly many of the pioneers weren’t even able to farm, such as

Charles Mathews, a wealthy college-educated southerner whose lameness didn’t stop him

from claiming government land, renting it, and investing in town lots and other speculative interests in the area. Likewise, Jesse and Amos Gandy, founders of Broken

Bow, thought of their land as an added investment to their healthy livestock interests in

the eastern part of the state. Almost immediately as it seemed profitable, they platted the

town of Broken Bow, enticed the county seat to it, and began selling lots.286

Farmers likewise understood their work to be toward the goal of profit, one

promotional pamphlet noting that “It is the profit, the clear money that can be made that

constitutes the propelling power to effort, energy, and enterprise in these days, and the

farmer who toils…should possess the information…to receive the largest commensurate

reward for his labor.”287 While the homestead act originated as a venue through which

the government would encourage the creation of equal, independent family landowners

who would support the democratic ideals of the nation, many settlers saw in it the

potential for the accumulation of wealth that would allow them to rise in economic status

above those around them, thus using the homestead act as a vehicle that encouraged

social and economic fluidity and reinforced rather than reduced economic stratification

among rural residents.288 As historian John Opie has shown, “Unlike the National

Reformers, westerners did not treat the Homestead Act piously; they saw it as a golden

286 See Gandy and Mathews surname files, CCHS. 287 “The Broken Bow Country.” 288 While this drive for profits counters Jefferson’s vision of agrarian life, even in his own time farmers viewed their endeavors with profits in mind. As Richard Hofstadter has noted one farmer of Jefferson’s time expressed that “My farm gave me and my family a good living on the produce of it; and left me, one year with another, one hundred and fifty silver dollars….With this saving, I put money to interest, bought cattle, fatted and sold them, and made great profit.” Quoted in Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 36. 148

opportunity to make a series of quick killings.”289 While Opie refers to the rampant speculation that marked earlier land settlement, Custer County experienced its own form

of land manipulation for economic gain.

Several early settlers of the county, such as the Chrisman family, offer excellent

examples of the modes of profit-making that reflected the desire for economic and social

gain that, at times, dominated the perceived intent of the government land acts. Lured by

stories of better grazing land, the Chrisman’s had come to Nebraska from Lafayette

County, Missouri, where Joseph fed and shipped cattle. Moving to eastern Nebraska for

a few years, he decided to make homestead claims in Custer County, and shipped several

hundred head of purebred Durham cattle to Kearney from Texas to start his claim. As

each of the older of his seven children came of age, they entered claims on nearby land

through each of the homestead, timber and pre-emption acts. This process made it

possible for one family to legally acquire 3,360 acres of land, or 21 quarter-sections, if

not inhibited by the availability of the land.290 According to one sister, the eventual area claimed took in several thousand acres, and thus the family could support their growing investments in livestock on land received for, theoretically, less than $300. The extent of

289 Quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 19. 290 Their actual land holdings were less due to much of the land around them being taken up before the family could make their claims. In fact, by the time the youngest daughter was old enough to make her claims, all the land nearby their previous claims had been taken. See Chrisman and Richardson surname files, CCHS. Joseph Chrisman’s grandson, Harry Chrisman, became an historian, and his papers, books, and accounts of the family can be found in the NSHS. 149

their family holdings can be seen in a section map of the county from 1904 [Illus.4].291

The Richardson’s land is also noted, as the Richardsons and Chrismans were related and came to the county together.

Having the progressive “get up and go” to get there first was indeed the best mode of increasing one’s wealth, and one looked upon with great respect among settlers.

Nearly all of the settlers considered “the wealthiest” by their peers, such as John Orvis,

Harvey Andrews, Jesse Gandy, Richard Allen, Dan Haskell, Isaac Merchant, George

Carr, and Swain Finch came in the earliest years of settlement, with enough financial backing to carry them over the early drought and harsh conditions. Coming early meant they could find the land that would best support their economic endeavors, whether they be farming, ranching, or establishing trade and commercial centers.292

A third major influence on the settler’s identity from the industrial world came from the creation of the modern business structures necessary for the marketing, investment, and transportation of industrial production. The image of the self-sufficient, independent yeoman was challenged by that of the small business entrepreneur, whose

291 The Haumont family is also a typical example of yet another mode of increasing the land available to a family that appears to have been utilized with some regularity. The Haumonts and Severyns came to Custer County together. Mary Severyns was single when she arrived, and thus was eligible to secure a timber claim (married women were not eligible). The next season she and Edmond Haumont were married. Many women put off a pending marriage so that they could claim land, thus increasing the couple’s holdings in a way that could not be done after marriage. 292 For instance, Harvey Andrews, as has been mentioned earlier, claimed land with the major source of cedars in the county, and with his profits purchased more land and built a substantial herd of cattle. John Orvis and Rufus G. Carr laid out West Union in 1879. Orvis set up a hotel, blacksmith shop and a store, having had experience in the mercantile business in Iowa. Carr also built a store, a flour mill, and operated a ferry on the Middle Loup River until a bridge was built. Stillman Gates came in 1879 and opened a store, created a trade center, then added a post office, church, school, all on his property. He purchased “choice” land with his profits, which supported his investments in livestock. 150

attention to and facility in the commercial world determined his success.293 And, without

a doubt, the settlers’ world of the 1880s was thoroughly a commercial world. Richard

Hofstadter succinctly described the shift from self-sufficient yeoman farming to

commercial farming:

The independent yeoman, outside of exceptional or isolated areas, almost disappeared before the relentless advance of commercial agriculture. The rise of native industry created a home market for agriculture, while at the same time demands arose abroad, at first for American cotton and then for American foodstuffs….As the farmer moved out onto the flat, rich prairies, he found possibilities for the use of machinery that did not exist in the forest. Before long he was cultivating the prairies with horse-drawn mechanical reapers, steel plows, wheat and corn drills, and threshers. The cash crop converted the yeoman into a small entrepreneur, and the development of horse-drawn machinery made obsolete the simple old agrarian symbol of the plow….no longer did they grow or manufacture what they needed: they concentrated on the cash crop and began to buy more and more of their supplies from the country store. To take full advantage of mechanization, they engrossed as much land as they could. To mechanize fully, they borrowed cash.294

Farmers took on mortgages to pay for machinery, fencing, livestock, and seed in

order to ensure the speedy production of their farms, and easterners, well versed in

western investments from extractive industries such as mining and lumbering, rushed to

293 The farmer’s desire for profit has been widely noted. As Richard Hofstadter has written, “The farmer himself, in most cases, was in fact inspired to make money, and such self-sufficiency as he actually had was usually forced upon him by a lack of transportation or markets, or by the necessity to save cash to expand his operations.” Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, 23. Also, “Most Anglo Americans in the West showed no interest in subsistence production; sulf-sufficiency held as little attraction for them as did isolation. These were things to be endured, if necessary, for a few years and then transcended. When they encountered Indian or Hispanic villagers concerned largely with producing only what they themselves could use, Anglo American settlers scorned those economies as relics of backwardness and barbarism. Indians and Hispanics, they believed, used western resources inefficiently and so deserved to lose them.” White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”, 236. 294 Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 38. Additionally, an excellent study of the nature of farming on an individual level is Gilbert C. Fite, “Agricultural Pioneering in Dakota: A Case Study,” Great Palins Quarterly 1:3 (Summer 1981): 169-180. 151

flood the farming West with capital for those mortgages. 295 Nebraska’s periodicals

consistently ran advertisements for available mortgages. For instance, the Custer County

Republican carried notices such as, “N. King, traveling agent for R. E. Moore, negotiator

of farm loans for eastern capitalists, of Lincoln, visited Broken Bow last week and was

shown over the country by Banker Jewett.”296 Or, even more to the point, the Ansley

Banking Company ran an announcement that, “We have $12,000 for immediate

investment in choice farm loans. This money is in our bank and must be loaned at ONCE

and in order to do so, WE WILL offer very favorable terms to farmers who have well improved farms.”297 The cash economy also shaped the settlers use of the government

land acts, as over 1/3 of claimants between 1882 and 1890 employed the commutation

amendment, which allowed claimants to pay in cash $1.25/acre after only 8 months of

residence to receive the title to the land.298

In such a cash economy, the prices that settlers received for their produce became of utmost importance to their success. Rather than supporting their independence, agricultural production in a commercial world created a cash crop intended to generate cash profits which were obtained through the settlers’ participation in national and international markets. The late 19th century agricultural world was integrally connected

295 As Richard White has written, “But 160 acres of raw plains land did not constitute a farm. To work it and live on it, a farm family needed work animals, a wagon, plows, harness, seeders, a house, and a well. A farmer needed barbed wire fencing, barns, and outbuildings. To break the first 40 acres of a 160-acre homestead and put it into production cost about $1,000.” Richard White, “It Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 262. Both White and Fink, Agrarian Women, discuss the influx of eastern capital into western farming areas. 296 Custer County Republican, 1/31/1884. 297 Custer County Republican, 3/2/1888. 298 Fred A. Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” The American Historical Review 41:4 (July 1936): 647. 152

to the rest of the world through modern communications and transportation. Lands near the railroads were the most prized lands and sold for the greatest amount due to the convenience they provided in shipping livestock and crops to market centers, sometimes as close as Kearney, but more typically to St. Louis or Chicago. Settlers’ income depended on the prices and flucuations of these markets, and thus they watched the various reports regularly, using them to determine what they would plant or raise.299 As the Nebraska Farmer noted,

The wonderful development of transportation facilities has thrown each grain or stock grower into direct competition with those engaged in the same business all over this country and in Europe and Asia as well. The prices of the crops grown by Western farmers are much more influenced by the good or bad harvest in Great Britain, then by the good or bad harvest in a dozen neighboring counties.300

Newspapers and periodicals were filled with various articles and reports on markets from across the world, not to mention the reports that came across the telegraph wires. Topics such as South America as a new source for stock; the Washington, Chicago, St. Louis,

299 For instance, in years when the grain prices were down in Kearney, settlers fed the grain to livestock and they sold the livestock, then switched when the grain market improved. See Strahorn, Wyoming, Black Hills Handbook, 109. 300 “Competition among Farmers,” Nebraska Farmer, 10/15/1881. This is a pervasive observation throughout farm journals. For instance, the Country Gentleman from 1883 stated: “in the present age of steam and telegraphs crop producers in forecasting probable prices and demand, must now take as much account of crops and yields on the other side of the globe, as they formerly did of those a few hundred miles distant.” Quoted in Adam Ward Rome, “American Farmers as Entrepreneurs, 1870-1900,” Agricultural History 56:1 (January 1982): 42. Or, “Fruit growers are encouraged, and are planting largely of all varieties, believing that with the largely increased consumption of fresh fruits, the great growth of canning establishments, the new impetus given to drying by recent inventions, and the reputation our fruit has gained abroad, the demand for good fruit in the future will be beyond the supply.” Quoted in Rome, “American Farmers as Entrepreneurs,” 46. 153

New York, Omaha, Kansas City, Boston, London and German markets; changes in the

import and export laws of Great Britain and Germany; and tariff issues all appear

numerous times in papers to which settlers subscribed.301

Settlers perceived that their respect as progressive farmers was garnered by their

participation in the international world of commerce. For instance, Robert Furnas

asserted that settlers were wanted in Nebraska “to furnish the products demanded by the

markets of the world. The bacon, flour, cornmeal, butter, and cheese of Nebraska is

called for across the ocean…and the demand is in great excess of the possible supply.”302

In fact, according to Furnas, the production abilities of the settlers had instigated the

buildings of railroads—the very icon of industrial might—due to their “[procuring] a

wealth of those essential things the world wants, and this is causing the continual

building of branch railroads, who are seeking to carry these products to markets of which

from the central standpoint of the continent, he has a choice east or west.”303 As a

progressive American, the settler’s power was elevated to a level on par with railroads

and factory production, as he felt he controlled the center of production, parceling out

foodstuffs to a desirous and needy world.

The perception of farming as an economic investment also introduced the role of

the businessman into the identity of the progressive farmer. As the editors of the

301 In fact, the massive output of agricultural products from the United States had a significant impact internationally, and farmers read about it. Great Britain imported two-thirds of the county’s breadstuffs, meat, dairy, and cotton exports, forming three-fifths of the total exports of the U.S. This, along with other issues, created a crisis for British farmers and, with the U.S. sending examples of produce to British agricultural fairs, enticed many Britons to emigrate to where it seemed the market was operating to the farmer’s advantage—the Great Plains. See Ian MacPherson, “Better Britons for the Burlington: A Study of the Selective Approach of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy in Great Britain, 1871-1875,” Nebraska History 50:4 (Winter 1969): 373-407. 302 Furnas, “Nebraska,” 25. 303 Furnas, “Nebraska,” 36. 154

Northwestern Agriculturist expressed, “Although no vocation is all pleasure or profit, the

men who conduct the business of farming with the same energy and skill as the

successful merchant or professional man, will reap the same and, as a rule, a greater and

more certain…reward.”304 Without a doubt, operating on the scale of settlers on the

Plains with mortgages, cash crops, modern machinery, price fluctuations, and distant

market worries, farming required far more than it had only 50 years before. Settlers were

encouraged again and again to think of themselves, and to act, as businessmen. While

they did educate themselves in traditional ways, such as forming societies that promoted their work or through which they shared issues of community concern, increasingly a more “scientific” or business approach was encouraged as a more progressive and profitable mode.

In the same way that men of commerce and business looked to training and educational institutions to professionalize their activities, farmers looked to their work as a form of commerce requiring similar preparation. As an article in the Custer County

Republican asserted, “Farming is commerce, and the good buyer and seller is the most successful farmer, who must watch the markets of the world, the course of supply and demand, and shape his operations accordingly.”305 In important ways, journals such as

the Nebraska Farmer acted as a modern educational tool, offering advice and information

to educate their readers. The Farmers Institute, formed in Nebraska in 1878, published

their papers monthly in the Nebraska Farmer, offering information on issues as varied as

treatment for hog cholera, correct planting of trees, new methods of breeding, and results

304 Quoted in Rome, “American Farmers as Entrepreneurs,” 45. 305 “Farming a Noble Occupation,” Custer County Republican, 8/4/1886. 155

of experimental crops. In step with schools such as the University of Michigan, which

formed a department of horticultural in 1885, and Cornell University, which established

one in 1888, the University of Nebraska formed its College of Agriculture in 1882. In

1884 it began a statewide program of scientific experiments, and in 1886 it established an

Agricultural Experiment Station.306 In 1887, the University announced that “It is

desirable that many young men of Nebraska should be thoroughly educated in the

branches of learning which are related to Agriculture. The State University endeavors to

meet this want by placing before the young men of the State a four-years college course.”307 The Custer County settlers who followed such developments were often

noted with respect by their peers for their progressive approach. For instance, Nels Ottun

was considered a “progressive farmer,” planting an orchard, maintaining the largest garden in the area, and experimenting widely with crops.308

Living in an acknowledged site, even the “mother lode,” of the nation’s extractive

resources, settlers in the West experienced pressure to reflect in their identities the new

industrial and corporate cultures that had gained dominance through the manipulation of

these resources. In their attempt to address the increasing importance of non-local

markets, wealth, technological developments, and the commercial nature of farming in the late 19th century, settlers absorbed the characteristics that defined industrial progress.

306 See Sarver, Uneven Land, 132; and Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 204. 307 “A Good Education,” Nebraska Farmer, 8/1/1887. 308 This is not to say Nels was too “serious” to lose his good nature. Mary Landkamer has noted his frequent wry editorials in the local papers. For instance, when his son called him a “white collar farmer” for his progressive ways and penchant for hired hands, Nels got the last word, publishing in the local paper that his son weighed 254 pounds, and, as any “good” farmer would recognize from this, “Hogs here are sold when they get that big.” Mary Landkamer and Grace Varney, Norwegian Pioneers of Round Valley, Nebraska (Broken Bow, NE: Custer County Historical Society, 1992), 67-68. 156

Mechanical speed and power, mass-produced quantities, incredible wealth, technological supremacy, managerial acumen, professionalization, and capitalistic competition all became important elements of their identities as progressive Americans. Success in the terms of the progressive American was to be signified by a rapid increase in wealth obtained through a mastery of the business world and the technological world. Respect as a progressive American was likewise garnered through one’s ability to harness the machinery and technological power on an individual level that was done by massive factories and workforces on an industrial level.

5.2 Acting like a Progressive Farmer

One of the most self-conscious manners in which the progressive identity of the settlers was visually conveyed in Butcher’s archive was through inclusion of new agricultural technology. Often the inclusion in Butcher’s compositions of modern farming implements, symbols of industrial power in the rural landscape, is visually compatible with the concurrent assertion of the independent, family-oriented nature of cultivation posited in agrarian ideology. For instance, in South of the Middle Loup River, near Berwyn, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 148], 1888, the reaper has clearly been brought into the composition intentionally to attest to Mr. Crea’s status as a settler adept with modern technology, as well as to attest to his financial status that has enabled him to employ such technology. The reaper is manned by a hired hand and is positioned parallel to, but outside of, the frame of the house. The family is positioned in front of the house,

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visually belonging to it. Thus the composition places the signifier of industrial technology or power in an area read to belong to economic production, and the family in an area read to belong to a domestic sphere.

Even when the family has positioned themselves into the production areas of the homestead in order to highlight their mastery of technological machinery, Butcher is often able to convey a harmony between his competing visual themes. In Man mowing hay by use of horse power, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 149], 1886, the man holds his son’s hand, suggesting the permanence of the family’s claim to the land around them.

The worker on the mower appears to have momentarily stopped his labor in order to be recorded for history, the technological aspects of the machine he controls are mediated by the overall pastoral nature of the landscape, with its stacked hay and homesteads dotting the valley behind. This harmonizing of industrial power and family domesticity is again seen in Family in a plowed field - corn planting in eastern part of Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 150], 1888, in which the settler’s family gathers around him in the field he appears to be planting. The inclusion of a single implement, integrated into the landscape and visualized as a tool conveying the family’s industry and well-being, is secondary to the family, with the mother and her baby the central aspect of the composition. Technology is controlled not only by the farmer, who sits atop the planter, but also by the domesticating influence of the family. However, even in images such as these, the inclusion of modern farming technology is quite intentional. That they signify the settler’s participation in the industrial world, in the world defined by progress, and his

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mastery or control of this world is made explicit in “The Latest and Greatest” North

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 151], 1887, in which the title clearly refers to the modern binder and its status as a modern marvel.

There are also compositions in which the signs of industrial progress dominates the settler’s portrait and impinges on the agency of the yeoman farmer identity. For instance, in Preparing for the wheat harvest [Fig. 152], 1886, the binder overwhelms the women who stand in front of it, and seems to force them uncomfortably close to the edge of the picture plane. Or, in Farm in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 153],

1892, the binder is positioned so that its white surface catches the viewer’s eye first. The space between the machinery and three women to the right fails in its usual function as a visual means of separating disparate identities, and instead acts as a visual gap—a cleavage in the composition—that makes it difficult to shift attention from the binder to

the rest of the scene. The implement’s identity, an Empire Light Steel Binder, can be

clearly read, giving the sense that the portrait itself, as well as those who have composed

it, have become co-opted into a commercial endorsement, their identities and Butcher’s

intentions only supporting roles for the industrial product. Similarly, in Family with

horses in front of sod house [Fig. 154], 1886, the intricacy of the gears and other parts of

the binder are so engrossing and maze-like that, coupled with the seemingly arbitrary

placement of the horses and ambiguous visual depth, the actual family members get

completely lost in the composition.

While these modern implements are imaged in portraits of individual family

homesteads, the archive as a whole contextualizes the employment of industrialization by

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the farmer into the larger frame of industrial power that defined the progress of the nation. Butcher included in his history a variety of local endeavors that employed industrial power and technology to control the environment, for instance, Group of men with horses building the Middle Loup irrigation ditch [Fig. 155], 1886, and Construction of bridge [Fig. 156], 1888. However, the railroad was the icon of modern technological power in the West and this was not lost on Butcher. In Burlington and Missouri River

Railroad graders at West Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 14], 1886, the massive imposition upon the landscape conveys the power that large-scale workforces (and financing) were able to expend. The enormity of the imposition, stripping bare and displacing miles of the landscape’s scrubby surface, dwarfs the small areas converted into fields so proudly included in the settlers’ portraits. In Sod house with cattle along railroad, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 157], 1888, Butcher has positioned the camera to include the iron tracks that from a distance would merge into the landscape. The sharp lines of the rails and the insistent repetitive rhythm of the ties, without a counterpart in the natural landscape, convey the regularity and non-organic tempo of the mechanized world to which farming increasingly adhered.

If the settler reified his identity as a progressive American through the visualization of his control of modern mechanized technology, the industrial objects themselves signify the mode by which the nation’s natural environment was transferred into commodity. They are extractive machines, and their presence makes tangible the pervasive drive (for which the settlers themselves were merely implements) to force the land into the more efficient and profitable production celebrated in the rhetoric of

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progress. Custer County settlers consistently expressed the goal of farming as one of

competition, of besting the record of other productions in numbers meant to dwarf the

simple production of a subsistence endeavor. In a pamphlet, “The Broken Bow Country”

of 1886, the writer boasts that “Over 1,000 million bushels of corn was raised in the year

1885 in the six corn-raising states….Nebraska takes the lead with 165 bushels for each inhabitant of the state…this corn yield in wagons would stretch continuously six times

around the world, or would make four continuous freight trains from New York to San

Francisco.”309 Or, as a poem by Custer County resident Daniel Sage boasts, “half a

million sheep, last year, within the state were shorn, We grew one-hundred million

bushels of the finest kind of corn; seventeen-million, too of wheat with which to make

our bread; Two millions and a half of hogs, to make our pork, were fed….We’re

marching on, toward the front, with a sure and steady tread.” 310 These numbers and

terms clearly equate farming with conquering. Statistics and numbers, the tools of commerce and scientists, convey the work of the settlers in the ideology of progress. As

James Russell Lowell wrote in 1886, “We mostly put faith in our statisticians.”311

The participation by the settler in the drive to force the land to produce underlies many of the images in Butcher’s archive. For instance, in Chrisman's Ranch, Lillian

Creek, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 158], 1887, the solitary focus on the cattle, with very little other visual elements in the composition, suggests that the animals themselves,

309 “The Broken Bow Country,” (Omaha, NE: Burlington Route, 1886.) 310Daniel Sage, “Great Nebraska,” Custer County Republican, 1/13/1888. Sage was well-known for his poetry, the byline of his poem does not identify him specifically, but rather as “from our special poet, of Springfield.” 311 James Russell Lowell, “The Progress of the World,” in Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, Prose Works, quoted in Jay Martin, Harvests of Change: American Literature 1865-1914 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967), 23. 161

and not the more comprehensive subject of most estate format portraits, are the subject of

the photograph. This is found quite frequently throughout Butcher’s archive, as in Robert

Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 159], 1892. Just

exactly how these cattle are to be understood in terms of presenting a portrait of their

owners is suggested by a caption, “A Farmer’s Gold Mine in Neb,” lightly inscribed on

Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 160], 1887,

which makes explicit the parallel settlers drew between the more famous extractive

activity found in the West, and the local extractive activity of stock raising. In fact, the

lights and darks of the Chrisman’s cattle in Fig. 158 catch the viewer’s attention against

the mid-tones of the ground, sparkling in the landscape like minerals in common stone,

and, in effect, visually signifying the owner’s impressive power to extract wealth from

the land.

Similarly, images from the county fair, such as Vegetable exhibit at Custer

County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 161], 1887, and Apple exhibit of Crete

Nurseries at Custer county fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 162], 1886, are filled to

capacity with produce, crowded on displays nearly extending from ground to ceiling.

The effect is not that of a cornucopia of plenty and fertility, but rather of specimens, of

the counting, measuring, and judging that lies at the heart of commodification.312 Even when placed in a family environment, such as the melons in The Garniss family, Dry

Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 106], 1887, their placement in front of the thresher

312 That greater production was also a result of scientific progress is attested to in the Nebraska Farmer, 3/1/1883, which noted that “We live in an age of progress. Nothing is now done as it was in our grandfather’s days, and in no department is this more noticeable than in agriculture. Varieties of grains, potatoes and seeds that were formerly planted, have now been superceded by others and more desirable sorts.” 162

and their obviously excessive numbers speaks as much to the underlying competitive

push to extract impressive production as it does to the fertility of the land. This

competition was at times quite explicit in the settlers’ environment. For instance, the

Republican informed its readers that

As soon as the grain will permit, there will be a machine contest between the different binders on the farm of Zock Thostensen on the S.E. ¼ of sec. 12 tp17 r24. The Buckeye, Deering and Esterdy, will enter the contest and as many more as can be secured. Farmers and machine men are requested to be present. Timely notice of the day of contest will be published in all the county papers. Be sure and attend.313

Scenes of threshing are also ubiquitous in Butcher’s archive. Their compositions suggest that Butcher, and assuredly his subjects, were quite aware of the harvest images of the 1870s from bonanza farms in the far West, and, in fact, Butcher used the term

“bonanza farming” to describe the production of C.B. Reynolds, a farmer in Buffalo

County.314 Certainly images of industrial-scaled farming endeavors were popular

throughout the country. For instance, Andrew Putnam Hill was commissioned by George

Hoag to paint George Hoag’s Steam Threshing Outfit and Crew Setting New One-day

World’s Record [Fig. 163], 1878, in celebration of Hoag’s operation sacking 5,779

bushels of wheat in twelve hours. The work was also reproduced as a lithograph.315 Mr.

Hoag, at the front of the activity in his carriage, invites us to view his invention, the

Monitor, which comprised three threshers bolted together with a feeder attached, and was

313 “Notice to Farmers,” Custer County Republican, 6/24/1887. 314 Butcher’s caption for an image of six teams with mowers that string back into the distance is: “Showing the mower outfit of Charles B. Reynolds, near Kearney, Nebraska, on the Platt Valley. He is what is known as a ‘bonanza farmer.’” Butcher, “Sod Houses,” np. 315 For an excellent discussion of this work, and other images of western agricultural development, see Elizabeth Johns, “Settlement and Development: Claiming the West,” in The West as America: Reinterpreting images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, ed. William H. Truettner (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 191-235. 163

attended to by 56 men and 96 mules and horses. Wagons thread back continuously out of the composition, mimicking the production lines of urban factories. The image presents

“an impressive union of mechanization, entrepreneurship, and ambition,” and conveys a model of extractive production in which agriculture is conceived of as a technological triumph.316

Indeed harvesting offered settlers the most tangible experience of farming as a large-scale industrialized endeavor characterized by the efficiency and regularity of a production-line system. For instance, in Large threshing crew near Berwyn, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 164], 1887, the all-male work force has stopped in their positions among the different processes of threshing, each manning a specific element of the multi- step process. The men, animals, and equipment spread out across the entire mid-ground, their combined physical force, or exertion, upon the landscape made tangible in the colossal mound of hay that grows behind them. Likewise in Jim Gates threshing crew near Gates P.O., Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 165], 1886, the threshing team proudly displays their use (or mastery) of steam power to transfer the fields around them into a commodity that will generate profit. The machine’s angularity, its gears and belts, and glinting metallic wheels create a sharp contrast to the gradual roll of the landscape behind. There is a tension in the balance of the technological and the pastoral that belies the belief in the land as a naturalized commodity.

Threshing was matched in its extractive relationship to the land with that of the windmill. In a very profound way, it was the windmill, and the well it signified, that enabled the settlers to persist in farming in the often resistant and harsh environment of

316 Johns, “Settlement and Development,” 229. 164

the Great Plains. While their perceptions of their success rested on various notions—

their moral superiority as farmers, the beneficence of the land, or their sophistication with

markets and business decisions—it was their ability to harness the natural elements of the

Plains, such as the wind, and force it to work for them in pumping water in quantities and

speeds a single person could not achieve, that in fact produced their success in gaining a

profit from farming in the area. Once built, a windmill manipulated the natural forces to

work for it, to divert water from its natural path deep below the earth’s surface in order to

enable the settler to undertake yet another extraction of natural resources; it turned the

natural forces against themselves and diverted them to work for the benefit the settler

instead.

Butcher’s compositions are often shaped by the presence of a windmill. For

instance, in Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 166], 1892, the family doesn’t

appear to have a well, as their water is stored in the cisterns to the left of the house.

Butcher has drawn back just far enough to frame the house and the mule team, creating the sense that they have not extended their presence on the landscape any further than their dwelling, diminishing the sense of their success. However, in L.F. Pringle, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 131], 1888, Butcher has drawn back a considerable distance from the house in order not to crop the vertical extension of the windmill, thus creating a more panoramic composition that conveys a more expansive sense of the settler’s presence on the land. Butcher’s attention to the windmill, whether conscious or not, often determines his composition. For instance, in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 167], 1888, he has gotten enough distance to include the windmill, even emphasizing its verticality

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throughout the rest of the composition by the alignment of subjects from the mother, to

the son in the wagon, to the cow, to the team, to the unsaddled horse at the base of the

windmill, and then up the windmill itself into the sky. The alignment is so strong that it

nearly eclipses notice of the house entirely. One wonders, given Butcher’s desire to

compile a history of the success of the pioneer, and given the fact that this success lies quite literally with the windmill, if subconsciously Butcher made the windmill dominate the images because of his implicit understanding that a portrait of success should in fact

be a portrait of technology.

While the articulation of depth in these portraits is difficult due to the insistent

horizontality and the prevalence of mid-tones in the landscape, windmills delineate depth,

forcing the photograph to resist visual conflation of space. For instance, in Nelson

Potter, Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 114], 1888, the line of trees behind the

yard actually runs back into space, yet the articulation of depth is ambiguous, and thus

they appear to run parallel to the picture plane. However, the windmills effectively resist

this conflation due to their strong vertical lines and diminished sizes. In Robert G.

Farritor family, Custer County, Nebraska. [Fig. 68], 1889, Damon Livestock, Sargent,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 135], 1886, and East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 107],

1887, Butcher has gotten enough distance so that the windmill is in the midground,

creating a strong visual division between the family arranged in front, and the farmstead

located behind. The windmill is a visual vortex in Butcher’s compositions in a way that

conveys its function as a vortex in actuality for the settlers’ lives. The windmill was best

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utilized if it was located at the corners of multiple pastures, allowing water to be used in

all, and yet close enough to the domestic space to allow the family to utilize it as well.

All parts of the settler’s activities emanated from the source of water.

This dependence on the windmill, on the implicit fact that it was the windmill’s

(and thus the wind’s) power and not the direct power of the settler that effected his transformation of raw material into commodity, is also active in Butcher’s archive. The windmill is frequently the most powerful element of the composition, to the effect that it often appears to undermine the rest of the composition. For instance, in Two women and a man standing in front of a sod house in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 168], 1887, the

size of the windmill dwarfs the house and people who are the intended subjects of the

portrait. The man who has climbed onto its frame in an attempt to display his bravado, a

subconscious desire to show dominance, only appears unstable, his position precarious

against the strong lines of the structure. In Helms, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 169],

1887, the size again diminishes the other visual elements, making the image unstable, as

none of the other elements are able to balance its placement to the side of the

composition. Similarly, in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 170], 1888, the windmill

pierces the sky while the house, family, and all the livestock crowd down into the space

below the horizon line.

In West Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 171], 1888, the people, livestock,

and house are again effectively sunken low, down into the land, as a result of Butcher’s

desire to not crop the windmill. While, as noted earlier, settler Luna Kellie’s mother was

unnerved by the lack of shadow, the shadow cast by the windmill here, as well as in

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Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 172], 1888, is not the shady respite offered by trees, but rather a long, spidery apparition that stretches unnaturally across the flatness of the land.

While such images celebrate the power of the windmill, and thus indirectly the power of the settlers to use them to force the water to be extracted from the ground, their over- scaled size and unnatural angularity often seems to subvert the presentation of the settler’s control. In E.E. Carson, Old Genet Post Office on the Middle Loup River, West of the old Jefferson Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 173], 1886, the family poses at the windmill, decorated with elk antlers as if a parlor object, while their house, the icon of their domestication of the frontier, merges, nearly indistinguishable, into the landscape, visually suggesting that the introduction of such power threatens the coherence of the family. Or, in Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 174], 1892, in which the family is posed in the domestic sphere and the house is every bit respectable, the windmill aggressively looms over the roof, asserting its presence, and suggesting the success presented by the family is one of dependence upon it rather than mastery over it.

There is an undercurrent of violence in many of the images in which the extractive nature of commercial farming is emphasized. Settlers revealed the violent nature of bringing an uncultivated landscape into production in their language—in their use of such descriptive terms as conquer, subdue, vanquish, or subjugate. This character is again revealed in their actions, and frequently appears visually in Butcher’s archive.

Deborah Fink has noted this undercurrent of violence:

A ‘subculture of violence’…pervaded the Great Plains in the period from 1863 to 1890. Contributing to a culture based on physical aggression were the violent removal of the native population, armed conflict between farmers and ranchers, and the outlaw gangs generated out of the bloody guerrilla bands that fought over the slavery issue in Kansas and Missouri.

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In the absence of an effective legal system, the rules of the game were defined by the most powerful person in the area. [Werner] Einstadter concludes that plains culture not only condoned but at times required violence. Commenting on crime in Boone County in the 1880s, Cass Barns wrote that murders were epidemic. In a county whose total population numbered about 5,000, a group of five men charged with murder at the same time once overcrowded the four-man county jail.317

While Fink is referring to the presence of social violence that was more active in non- farming sectors of the West—though such violence was, without a doubt, quite present in

Custer County in the 1880s—a “subculture of violence” was pervasively active in the farming settlement as a result of the commercial extraction that characterized the relationship of the settlers to the land they brought under cultivation. To paraphrase Fink, the “most powerful” force in the farming environment on the Plains was industrial technology, and it did, indeed, define “the rules of the game.” That it was rarely made explicit was due to the strength of the ideal of farming as cultivation, as nurturing, and as a domesticating force rather than as a force of violation.

It is predictable to find such violence manifested in images of extractive technology. For instance, in Mr. Moyer digging a well in east Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 175], 1886, Butcher has recorded the digging of a deep well. Digging wells was an incredibly dangerous, though necessary, business. The violation of the land in plumbing and manipulating its deepest (200 to 300 foot deep) “secret,” held in turn the potential for the violation of the settler’s life (their accidental death) in the process. The harnessing of machine power to dig was a great improvement on the process, but in so doing, the machine replaced the man’s physical power, and in a sense, emasculated him by doing it better. The need to “aright” this usurping of power is visualized in this portrait. A

317 Fink, Agrarian Women, 77. 169

worker sits on top of the apparatus in a show of fearlessness and visual control over it.

The man in the foreground lowers his chin and stares squarely out at the viewer, his

gloved hands loosely clenched at his sides and his feet in a position that would enable

easy movement. It is a pose of physical challenge. He not only backs down the viewer

with his potential aggression, but, posed within and at the base of the visual space of the

machinery, he appears to defy the implication that he might be less powerful, less

threatening, than the machine that has, in fact, out-powered him through its technology.

The West was constructed as a locus of manhood, and the subconscious threat to that

manhood by the products of industry compel the settler to find visual modes such as

presented in Butcher’s archive by which he could re-assert masculinity.318

It is also not surprising to find violence active in the presentation of other

extraction activities of the settlers. As has been noted, the wildlife of the county was

viewed as a source of additional bounty for the settler, and their extraction of it was so

widespread that within the decade of the county’s settlement most of the native wildlife

that was plentiful or at least present in the 1870s, such as wolves, wild horses, deer,

antelope, elk, coyotes, and buffalo, had been entirely hunted out by 1890. In Art Pulliam

hunting coyotes in West Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 176], 1889, the focus of

the portrait is not Pulliam himself, as he and his gun stand rather passively to the side of

the composition, but rather the horse and the two dead coyotes strung on its back.

318 While much as been written about the West as a locus for asserting manhood in the context of military engagements and in the “era” of the cowboy and frontiersman, such concepts were also prevalent in the farming frontier. For instance, in the emigrant guide, “Choice Farming Lands in Iowa and Nebraska,” (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1871), the writer admonishes the reader to not be “content…with the idea of being a clerk, and measuring ribbon and tape all your days. Leave woman’s business alone. Give her a fair field. Make a man of yourself. You can be a great deal more of a man, and just as much of a gentleman, seated on a reaper, driving four first-rate horses, in a three hundred and twenty acre’s wheat field, as you can behind a counter in a city store.” 170

Clearly Butcher had encountered Pulliam fresh from the chase, as the horse’s veins are

enlarged, his flanks taut, and his hair is still slick and wet from his exertion.

However, rather than softening the effect of the dead game, Butcher’s

composition emphasizes the mode of their death, reveling in the success of Pulliam in

subjugating the natural environment through his hunting skill. The thick mass of blood

below the lifeless head of the front coyote reflects the light of the sun, bringing visual

attention to its still sticky surface. The lines of coyote blood trickle down the haunches

of the horse and the legs stiffen over the seat of the saddle. The violence here is graphic

and nearly overwhelming with no other visual element to mediate its nature.319 While

guns and the indications of hunting are ubiquitous in Butcher’s archive due to their

obvious necessity, they are typically integrated into the presentation of domestication and

cultivation. However, the inherently violent nature of their use at times impinges on the

necessity of their presence. For instance, in “Ever Vigilant South of West Union”

Westerville, Nebraska [Fig. 177], 1887, three men with guns pose behind the family grouped in the foreground. While they also don game bags, thus indicating the use of the

guns for the more focused violence against the environment (the wildlife), the men’s

aggressive posture and the dominance of the guns caused even Butcher to misread the intent of their inclusion. His title, added later, implies a more pervasive and more general element of violence present in the settlers’ environment.320

319 That native elements of the environment were viewed primarily through the lens of extraction is also evident in numerous stories of the area. For instance, Josephine Lee, the wife of settler Seivert Lee, recounted how, early after their arrival and lonely (as she was the only woman in their group), she had tamed a deer which she fed from her door. When the family ran out of flour, the men killed the deer, regardless of her crying, in order to trade it for food. Lee surname file, CCHS. 320 Many publications have focused on the violence that permeated the West, one of the most notable being Richard Slotkin, Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 171

The violence of extraction against the land is also revealed in Butcher’s archive.

For instance, in Family in front of sod house with team of oxen in foreground, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 178], 1886, Southeast Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 179], 1887,

and W.S. Haines, five miles southwest of Mason City, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

180], 1889, the foreground is given a significant percentage of the composition due to

Butcher’s need to move away from the subject in order to include various elements of the homestead in the portrait. However, in so doing, the foregrounds in all three are composed of tilled soil, appearing rough and cumbersome in illustration 42, washed out

in 43, and scrubby and sere in 44. While the actual color and texture of Custer County

soil is in fact quite rich and worthy of such visual attention, the dominant mid-tones of its

color, and the flattening out of modulations contrives instead to suggest its exposed state.

(New York, NY: Atheneum, 1985). There have been some very interesting examinations of domestic violence on the Plains as an absorption by families of this pervaisive “sub-culture” of violence that most agree marked the experience of the frontier. One of the most interesting is Betsy Downey, “Battered Pioneers: The Problem of Male Violence against Women as Seen through Mari Sandoz’s Old Jules,” in Old West—new West: Centennial Essays, ed. Barbara Howard Meldrum (Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1993), 97-114. Dehorah Fink also noted that “in the absence of other evidence….evidence from works such as Mari Sandoz’s Old Jules, Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth, Meridel LeSueur’s The Girl, and Tillie Olsen’s Yonnodio is at all indicative of actual social attitudes, then such violence was socially condoned, and thus conceivably unreported, in the West.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 332. While Butcher’s archive does not contain a visual presence of this violence directly, family and community histories do indicate its presence in Custer County. For instance, John Boli was known in the community for his quick temper and for abusing his wife and children. The Boli’s struggled at their farming endeavor, “hiring out” their sons and daughters, until they eventually left the area. See Landkamer, “Round Valley.” Butcher’s annotation for the portrait of the Hiriam York family suggests that such abuse was, in part, accommodated, or at least absorbed, by the community. He noted that “Mr. York, one of the early settlers south of West Union in a debate on women's suffrage one time he said he did not believe in ladies voting. He thought the dear ladies should not have to bother their brain about pollitics (sic). But sit in their parlor in an easy chair and direct their house work. It is said he would bring his wife home from the neighbors at the end of a black snake whip and whip her home when she stayed longer than he thought proper.” Given the presence of violence in extractive rhetoric, and thus the violence resultant in the settlers’ adoption of this rhetoric, it seems at least plausible that one manifestation of this violence within the family was not only the use of family members as extractive tools, but also domestic violence. Given this, one cause of its subtle acceptance into the community noted by scholars could be due to a communal, or cultural, adoption of extractive rhetoric. 172

The sharp line that marks the edge of a plowed field in the background of 43 further accentuates the slicing and exposing nature of farming.

Butcher’s archive also records the settler’s absorption of progress rhetoric into other elements of their farming. The farmer was to run his farm as a business, and the definition of a successful businessman had become one who “demand[ed] industrial discipline and engender[ed] a managerial and bureaucratic outlook.”321 While farming was commercialized, and thoroughly participated in the world of industry, it was still a family-run endeavor. The “workers” that a farmer was encouraged to “manage” were the members of his family, and to be successful he was to manage them so that his farm produced in the most efficient manner. As Fink has succinctly stated, “In no other sector of U.S. industry could the labor of women and children be so fully utilized.”322 In fact, remembrances of settlers are full of accounts of the work children did in order to establish and maintain the productiveness of the farm. That such work was an understood, if unacknowledged, element of the settlers’ acceptance of progress ideology is made quite clear in a notice in the Custer County Republican. In the “Eudell Items,” the writer noted that:

I think we have he smallest herder to be found in the county, he is only 5 years old, his name is Alfred Gibson, son of Robert Gibson, he is herding for Mr. Chrisman, I doubt if there ever was a wall street millionaire felt more important than he did the other evening when his employer handed him his changes, he put it into his pocket with the remark that if Charley (his brother 7 years old) wanted any money he could strike out and work for it the same as he did, and off he went on his pony a bigger man in his own estimation than General Grant.323

321 Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 10. 322 Fink, Agrarian Women, 133. 323 “Eudell Items,” Custer County Republican, 9/6/1883. 173

Indeed, while children’s labor was decreasing in other parts of the country, on the

farming frontier it was expanding. A demographic study of a farming community in

Kansas from 1885 to 1905 showed that the success of a farm was positively correlated to

the number of children on it. The successful farm had an average of 6.3 surviving

children, and the farms that disappeared had 4.7 surviving children.324 This was

acknowledged in the contemporary press. The Cambridge Independent Press stated that

“The earlier a man goes and the larger his family the better,” and Cass Barnes, a doctor in

Boone County, Nebraska, wrote that “large families were common….Nothing else did so much for the upbuilding of the state. Without those troops of boys and girls the prairies of Nebraska would have been barren wastes and the sod house homes but dreams.”325

The need for cash in the market economy of Plains farming, and the use of every

family member to achieve economic success represented an incorporation into the family

structure of the extractive mode of commercial farming. Family members were tools for

extraction, and this “use” ultimately undermined the cultural success that the family was

expected to represent. For instance, one of the most frequent modes of income for

families was to “hire out” their sons, often as early as age 10, to work for other wealthier neighbors.326 As settler John Kleeb recounted,

my first cattle herding job was for Bert Englejerd, I think I was 9 or 10 years old….then I went to work for Charlie Grabert at Merna….Mr. Grabert had 160 acres of grain on the West Table so we had to get up about 4 in the morning to get to the grain field to work….I didn’t herd cattle very long around Weissert because I was 12 years old or a little better so I though I was too old for that kind of work. I got a job working

324 Fink, Agrarian Women, 148. 325 Quoted in Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 178; and, quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 138. 326 Fink, Agrarian Women, 149, discusses this practice as well. 174

for Jack Govier….the entire summer…the next summer I went to work for Joe Haumont. I stayed home during the next winter and went to school some…While I worked there [Haumont’s] I slept upstairs in the two-story sod house. The next summer I stayed home and farmed for my folks. The other boys, Fred and John were working out so someone had to stay home and farm the home place”327

Women’s work also provided a steady cash income that the family required to provide for

their domestic needs. Butter, milk, chickens, and eggs were sold in the towns in order to

pay in cash for items such as coffee, cloth and clothing.328 Furthermore, most women,

particularly in the early years of settlement, did a significant amount of field work,

leaving the more traditional chores of the wife to their young daughters.329

Butcher’s archive is replete with images that convey the role the family held in

progress ideology. For instance, in A Farm Family in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

181], 1887, Ira Lundy near Cummings Park, West Union, Township, Custer County [Fig.

182], 1886, and J. Petit sod house near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 183],

1886, all the boys exhibit a familiarity with the horses or mules that belies their age.

There is no sense that their positions are presented to convey their enjoyment of riding as

pleasure or a part of the innocence of childhood, though indeed the freedom and mobility

it provided to many of them surely gave a great sense of satisfaction. However, there is a

dominant feeling of independence, of utility, presented in their postures. Especially in

illustration 46, where the youngest boy holds his hand cart, typically used by children his

age to gather vegetables, fruits, or “cow chips” to supply the family, and where the older

327 Kleeb surname file, CCHS. 328 See Fink, Agrarian Women, 43. 329 See Fink, Agrarian Women, 60-70. 175

boy holds at bay a span of mules, the stance and relationship to the other family members presents the children in “work” mode, conveying their dominant, if somewhat conflicted, role in the portrait of the pioneer family.

As has been examined earlier, objects such as parlor tables, chairs, books, and prints were able to signify the family’s cultural status due to the objects’

commodification by a capitalistic system. In a similar fashion, family members seem

also to be absorbed into this capitalistic system, their worth defined through their visual

connection to objects—herding horses, mule teams, hand carts—that ensured economic

success. They are defined by the work they provide. In West Brook, near Dry Valley,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 184], 1886, the young boy prominently holds a rifle that

matches his own size. His game bag is slung over his other shoulder as he stands with

apparent pride in his role of hunter for the family, revealing that his definition or identity

for a “pioneer portrait” is his utility in providing game for the family.330 The young Petit

daughter, on the very righthand side of Fig. 183, is not depicted with a doll or similar

object that would signify her identity in domestic terms, but rather stands with one hand

resting knowledgably on the neck of a milk cow and her other holding a wooden milk

bucket.331 Likewise, in William Sullivan, Sargent, Nebraska [Fig. 185], 1888,

330 This use of children for their economic benefit, in fact, underlies one of Butcher’s most famous portraits, The Chrisman Sisters on a claim in Goheen settlement on Lieban (Lillian) Creek, Custer County, 1886. While the Chrisman family was wealthy enough to hire other children in the area to bring their operation into productivity, three of the four daughters pictured here were required to live on government claims made in their names in compliance with their father’s desire to claim the most land as possible, and thus best ensure his economic success. While the women didn’t actually work the land themselves, they did each have a sod house that they, as a group, rotated among in order to comply with the residency requirement of such claims. See Chrisman surname file, CCHS. 331 Butcher defines his own family similarly. He commented that Alice Butcher milking a cow on the T.J. Butcher place on Middle Loup, West Union, Nebraska, no date, was “not a picture gotten up for the occasion, but one we could not resist taking of our little 8-year-old niece, Miss Alice Butcher, milking her 176

implements surround the family, conveying their ability to force production from the

land. Mirroring this, the mother poses with her hand on a butter churn, presenting herself

as a producer in an economic sense; butter was one of women’s “cash crop” in the rural

economy. In fact, the churn separates her from her two oldest children, impinging on the

presentation of her domestic, nurturing role.

The demands of progressive ideology intrudes upon the coherence of the family

as a domestic unit in Family in front of sod and frame house, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 186], 1889. There is an unspoken, though pervasive, presence of violence that

effectively evokes a threat to the family’s domestic health. The family poses aligned in

regular distances with no apparent familial bond connecting them. Production

implements strewn behind them lead the viewer’s attention past the house and instead up

to rest with the binder on the horizon. There is no assertion of order on the homestead,

implements and pigs haphazardly invade the domestic space ideally protected from the

production work of the homestead. The father sits at the end of the line of family

members, his gun held out prominently to punctuate one boundary of the family, and the

blades of the disk articulate the other. The young boys’ tattered clothing suggests not

only their tenuous economic position, but also visually evokes the stress of the pervasive

pressure of extraction, production, and utilization. The family has clearly placed all their

emotional and economic energy into the tools of production rather than into the nurturing

of themselves.

favorite cow.” While the cow may, indeed, be her favorite, in not planning the pose, Butcher has captured Alice’s tired expression, her dirty face, and her ill-fitting boots. Butcher, “Sod Houses.” 177

The presence of the labor-defined roles of the family recorded in Butcher’s

archive is perhaps most strikingly realized when compared to the ideal success of

progress rhetoric. The settlers’ belief in the appropriateness of accumulated wealth and

the assertion of class structures are also pervasive visual elements in Butcher’s archive.

If Jefferson imagined Custer County pioneers to be happy as middle-class yeoman

farmers, they in turn imagined themselves to be happy in the position of Jefferson. While

the rural environment, based on the equalizing expectations of the government land acts,

was presented in rhetoric as a classless society, “few believed that there were rigid

classes in the small town; to point them out was un-American….Yet the same man who

would vehemently denounce social or economic division could readily identify the better

sort, the average workingman, and lower elements.”332

Without a doubt, there were significant disparities in wealth among residents of

Custer County, and settlers were quite conscious of them. Ranchers were typically the

“barons” of the county. While the estates of most settlers seem to average around $1,000

before their mortgages were paid off, the Young Ranch was probated in 1892 at $40,000,

the Tierney Ranch at $170,000, and in 1882 the Rankin Livestock Company’s land and

livestock sold for $23,000. In 1883 the Brighton Stock Company reported having 13,000 cattle on their range. Bankers and town investors were also noted by settlers for their wealth. For instance, Job Semler dryly noted that, “J.W. Thomas had started a

332 White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, ?. 178

bank…and his people were English and the grandees of the town, which they could

afford to be as he loaned money at 3% a month and compounded every sixty days, I

know, I was a borrower.”333

The sense of class awareness and economic position is present in Butcher’s

compositions, frequently through the positioning of the subjects. For instance, in Near

Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 34], 1888, the family of Ira Foster is

grouped around Ira as a unit, dressed in their best. In the same plane, but separated by distance, stands their hired hand posing with an implement to appropriately indicate his relationship with the family. In the distance stands a young boy who, given his work clothes and proximity to the team suggests that he, as well, is a young neighbor “hired out” to the family depicted here. The inclusion of the two workers and their separation from the family is a conscious mode of visually indicating the family’s elevated economic position. Similarly, given that the three boys found in Chrisman's Ranch,

Lillian Creek, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 158], 1887, are much younger that Mr.

Chrisman’s sons, they are also likely neighbor boys hired to herd Chrisman’s extensive herd of cattle, and thus in a similar mode suggest the Chrisman’s economic standing.334

Houses frequently signify more than the transformative success of a pioneer, but

rather the accumulated wealth of an owner aspiring out of the middle class. As Edward

333 Semler surname file, CCHS. 334 Women also participated in the establishment of economic distinctions. Many farming women were compelled to participate in men’s labor, weakening accepted gender definitions. However, as Deborah Fink has shown, one indication of wealth, and the appearance of gentility attendant to financial stability, “was a nonworking wife. John Turner, an early Boone County farmer, depicted his wife as a sheltered woman who was ‘so often unable to do anything.’ In Turner’s mind, his wife was morally superior to other people, but in coping with farm life she was timid, frail, and dependent on him….It seems to have been fashionable for wives to be frail and helpless, and the books written by early male settlers (presumably among the educational, if not economic, elite) either omitted descriptions of wives’ work or described such work in patronizing tones.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 68. 179

White has noted, in the industrial world “one was expected to assert his wealth.

Businessmen built large and sumptuous houses, and many reveled in the power their

millions gave them.”335 In House of J.C. Stevens, banker at Ansley, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 54], 1887, the house stands alone, with no family to domesticate it. Given that in 1886 even the few other frame houses in the county were extremely simple and yet considered worth bragging about, it is clear that this house is the site of the banker’s

public declaration of economic power and class superiority.

Isadore Haumont’s house seen in Isadore Haumont two-story sod house on

French Table north of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 187], 1886, likewise

announced more than merely middle-class status.336 Isadore’s grandfather and father had

been surgeons in Belgium, and his uncle a philosopher and writer. Isadore’s father was

also a considerable landowner, but his fortunes reversed when U.S. grain and cheap pork

flooded the European markets.337 Isadore, at the age of 63, and a number of members of

his extended family immigrated to Nebraska, where it seemed to them the markets would

be in their favor, in order to regain their economic standing. The design of his house,

built for him over two years by his nephews, with its hipped roof, height, brick chimney,

split front door, and rounded corner buttresses of a Flemish-style chateau, was, in fact,

copied from a mansion in Belgium, and thus the house asserts Isadore’s identity as an

aristocratic land-owner.

335 White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, 18. 336 Information used in these two paragraphs is from the Haumont, Frischkorn, Severyns, and Francois surname files, CCHS. 337 The wider context of this global event is discussed in Frederick C. Luebke, “Time, Place, and Culture in Nebraska History,” Nebraska History 69:4 (Winter 1988): 159. 180

Isadore himself constructed the interior appointments, including doors carved and inlaid with wood, walk-in closets (papered with French and Belgian newspapers), hand- hewn wood stairways to the cellar (a spiral design) and second floor, and hand-made metal hinges and window hardware. The attic was tall enough to stand up in, and the window wells, typically three feet deep due to the thickness of the sod, were beveled back nearly 45º to flood the interior with the maximum available light. “Not being much of a stockherder,” the educated Haumont cultivated a formal European-style vegetable, fruit, and flower garden complete with its own irrigation system and a 5’ sod wall and elk-horn gate to protect it. His “walled garden” was, according to settlers accounts, “the pride and wonder of the countryside…to step from the hot, treeless prairie, through the artistic elkhorn gate, in to that garden with its bright flower-beds, little curving walks, flowering shrubs, lilacs, and cedars, was to enter another world.”

Haumont’s actions show his desire to continue on the Plains his social position in

Europe, in opposition to the equalizing force of the government land act. Similarly,

Joseph Chrisman also desired to re-establish his elevated position in his former environment. He named his estate “Edom” after the area in Rockingham County,

Virginia, where his family’s plantation had been, and to where his family roots extended back before the Revolutionary War. In fact, Chrisman had brought some of his former slaves with him to Nebraska, but they seem to have not followed him from eastern

Nebraska to Custer County. It is not surprising that residents like Chrisman and

Haumont would desire to replicate their old environments; the residents from middle- class rural environments on the prairies did the same thing. However, that a new

181

environment, originating out of the democratic rhetoric of agrarian ideology and even physically shaped by equalizing structures, would be so accommodating and prideful of such displays of wealth and social hierarchy—of the pretentions of landed gentry that were so un-“proper” for the yeoman farmer—suggests the deeply absorbed acceptance of wealth associated with progressive ideology.

There were also clearly pioneers whose roles as founders or cattle investors placed them into this elite status that was not only acknowledged, but respected among the community as models of appropriate progressive behavior. For instance, early settler

Jesse Gandy also adopted the trappings of the very wealthy. Besides profiting from founding Broken Bow, and gaining the social respect given to “founders,” in the early

1890s he retired to his newly built large frame house on an “estate” he named Union

Valley. With 10 acres of fine timber, and 40 acres fenced with the top wire smooth so as to not injure his fine trotting horses, and purebred stock, “Mr. Gandy is taking pains and going to no little expense in putting in a large orchard, digging ponds, experimenting in sowing blue grass and alfalfa, and making a home in appearance and reality second to none in the country.”338 His experiments, a sure sign of a modern progressive farmer,

weren’t limited to crops, as in 1908 he also published a text, How to Control the Sex in

the Breeding of Domestic Animals.

Often Butcher positioned “founders” such as Gandy in front of their creation, mimicking on a grander, progressive scale his placement of settlers in front of their homesteads to record just what it was that made them pioneers. For instance in

Comstock, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 188], 1904, Butcher has placed Mr. Comstock

338 Gandy surname file, CCHS. 182

in front of the town that bears his name. Mr. Comstock is, on one hand, thus visualized as a transformer in the mode of the pioneer; the testament to his foresight and

transformative power spreads out across the landscape behind him. However, the work

of town-building was most admired for its progressive characteristics. Mr. Comstock

arrived first, organized the business arrangements, marketed his invention, and saw a

much greater return on his investments than the single pioneer saw on his simple

homestead. A town, and the commerce, business, and investments it entailed, was an

industrially-sized operation, and the respect garnered by the founder, through financial

control, philanthropy, and the longer-than-life legacy of naming streets, parks and even

the town itself, made him the local equivalent of industrial magnates such as Andrew

Carnegie.

One of the most popular modes by which these Custer County elites asserted their elevated economic and social status was in the breeding of fine race horses. That such connoisseurship and leisure activity was not a “proper” farmer enjoyment, like croquet or debating matches, is attested to in an article in Butcher’s own history book.

No man can afford to breed trotting and running horses except a man of large means and unbounded leisure. Few farmers have either….As it requires years of hard study and close application to specialize upon any subject none but the rich can indulge their taste for breeding and developing fancy driving horses.339

The time and attention given to race horses was clearly in conflict with the time that was

to be given to activities that would attest to the settler’s business and profit-minded

characteristics. However, the desire for wealth, and the desire to emulate the activities of

the very wealthy was an equally strong element of the progressive ethos. That many of

339 Scott, “Raising Horses for Profit,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 397. 183

these elite settlers did play the “gentleman’s” game is clear in their own accounts. Jesse

Gandy “especially enjoyed horse-racing and fancy horses.” He had his own racing

stallion, by the name of Jesse Jewett.340 Dan Haskell, who turned his homestead into a

notable ranch, raised Belmonts and hired his own jockey for races. Richard Allen,

founder of the town of Arnold, raced horses with his brother-in-law, who even had a

private race track. Owners of these horses made their most visible public display of

status each year at the county fair, which sported a “splendid ½ mile fast racing track and enclosed quarter-stretch.”341

The representation of fine horses in Butcher’s archive draws on a well-established

European tradition of purebred stock portraits that, like the estate portrait, was most

likely familiar to the settler through the insets in atlas estate portraits and in popular

periodicals. For instance, in Silver Creek Stock Farm and Residence of N. B. Berggren

[Fig. 122] from the 1885 Nebraska State Atlas, or in the portrait of the estate of John

Bostwick [Fig. 189] in the 1887 Kansas State Atlas, insets highlight, in profile to get the best view of the animal’s breed lines, the owner’s prized purebred stock. While the extent of the estate conveys the owner’s propriety, industriousness, and business acumen, the insets show the owner’s additional rise in the social and economic world into the realm of connoisseur and gentry. Similarly, in portraits such as Dan Haskel, west of

Milldale, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 190], 1886, Font Sharp on his ranch south of

Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 191], 1888, or “Almont,” a stallion on a ranch in southwest

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 192], 1892, the horses are clearly presented as the focus of

340 Gandy surname file, CCHS. 341 Broken Bow file, CCHS. Other fine horse owners noted include E.C. Gibbons, F.C. Embree, E.B. Harper, Daniel Sweeney, W. Speer, J.O. Russell, Frank Doty, G. W. Pulliam, and J. N. Auble. 184

the composition. They have been brushed and oiled to perfection to show their breeding

and structural lines to the best advantage. Font Sharp has even saddled his horse to

convey their leisure use. When family is included in portraits such as this, as in Wescott

Residence near the old Comstock Post Office, Custer County, Douglas Grove, Nebraska

[Fig. 193], 1888, they are relegated to the distance in order to not distract from the significance of the animal.

Agrarian ideology was met on the Plains with an equally powerful ideology of progress that also vied for dominance in determining the mode by which settlers presented themselves as successful pioneers. Custer County settlers adopted the rhetoric

of progress, adjusting their concept of identity to the new industrial and corporate

cultures that increasingly defined American exceptionalism. Farming was understood to

be a local participation in extractive power, farmers’ identity was defined by commercial

and market-derived models of the businessman, and wealth was celebrated over the

establishment of mere independent subsistence. These factors all contrive to give visual

voice to the activity of progressive ideology present in the lives of Custer County settlers.

185

CHAPTER 6

THE GREAT PLAINS

6.1 Defining the Great Plains

Butcher was compelled to photograph his pioneer portraits on the land, in situ, in

order most fully to convey the cultural, transformative, or extractive elements that

identities such as the yeoman farmer, the pioneer, or the progressive American

comprised. To Butcher and his subjects, a pioneer history, given the social context of the

times, required proof of the subject’s actions upon the land. Consequently, inherent in

the settlers’ portraits is the presentation of their concept of the nature of the land itself. In both agrarian and progressive ideology nature is constructed as passive.

Agrarian ideology primarily perceived of the land as a stage upon which the drama of settlement unfolded. The land was abstracted, a space without identity, and vacant until entered and acted upon by settlers.342 Uriah Oblinger voiced this concept in

342The construction of the land as a stage, and the broad cultural context of the land as passive and human- dependent for its identity, is examined in Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). For instance, in writing about the works of Norris and Smythe, she notes on page 19 that they, like Butcher and his subjects, “engage in literary acts that abstract the land into a symbolic entity on which the dramatic activities of humans are played out.” I am indebted to her excellent discussion of the literary construction of landscape in the late 19th century in formulating my own interpretation of Butcher’s photographs. 186

a letter to his wife upon his arrival in Nebraska, writing, “Ma, you must make up your mind to see a very naked looking home at first. [You will see] nothing but the land covered with grass.”343 Uncultivated land had no defining characteristics other than

“naked” and “nothing.” Because the narrative motivation of Butcher’s history, and thus

his images, was predicated on agrarian ideas, the landscape in his photographs was

predictably constructed as a stage. Landscape is a backdrop against which the settler

performed the transformation of “nothing” into neat, cultivated fields that would support

the nation’s democracy.344 In progressive ideology the environment was constructed as a storehouse of extractive materials. It was a larder, a “mother lode,” that offered no resistance to its plunder, and in fact seemed to desire it. As settler Paul Pry wrote, “the

rich soil opens up her treasures almost at the bidding of the hardy settler.”345 The

landscape became activated only in its response to the settlers’ actions. It was

disassociated from any initiative or generative power of its own, and it was completely

dependent on the actions of the cultivator/extractor (the settler), to fulfill its purpose.

343 Oblinger papers, NSHS. Similarly, in “Otoe Lands,” Nebraska Farmer, 5/1/1883, a writer complained that the Indian lands were being held too long from the homesteader. To him, as uncultivated lands, they were “laying there doing no one any good.” Their value and identity was completely determined by the actions of settlers. 344 Butcher does suggest that nature might not be so transparent and conceptually pliable—that it might be resistive or evasive—when he, like many settlers, wrote that obtaining the “high road to prosperity,” “was not always an easy problem, however, for there were seasons of drought, grasshoppers, wind-storms and other difficulties to contend with.” However, such conflict was only presented as a venue of retrospect that conveyed the settler’s superior characteristics, their persistence and moral fortitude, that ensured their success. Nature was denied the agency to threaten the divinely sanctioned development of the nation; its agency was never constructed to be independent of humans, but rather its power was manifested solely to bring out the latent superiority of the American settler. For instance, Butcher immediately followed his statement in which he reveals nature’s potency with the greater potency of the settler, “but here, as nearly everywhere in this grand and glorious America, success crowns the efforts of the sturdy, persistent and careful toiler.” Butcher, “Sod Houses,” np. 345 Paul Pry, “South Loup, in Vicinity of Arnold,” Custer County Republican, 1/31/1884. Similarly, Uriah Oblinger enthused to his wife about the complete and easy availability of the land for cultivation, writing that “you can see just as far as you please here and almost every foot in sight can be plowed.” Oblinger papers, NSHS. 187

Constructions of landscape upon which progressive and agrarian ideologies were based, such as Butcher’s, denied the land a presence outside of human actions and desires. In so doing, these constructions disempowered the independent identity of the environment through a colonizing mode in which the landscape was naturalized as a provider for the settler.346 Furthermore, in such constructions, not only is the natural landscape bereft of identity without human action, but it is also denied a present existence. The landscape is defined as potential, as what the actions of humans will make it become. As Joni Kinsey has remarked, “In its original condition the land lacks identity and seems so formless as to be unintelligible. Thus it can be defined only by what it may

become.”347 An oft-quoted passage from Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, conveys this

approach to the plains landscape:

There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.348

Moreover, in Butcher’s narrative the agency of the landscape was reduced to a supporting role in fulfillment of the intentions of the settlers. Butcher’s photographs

346 In fact, this colonizing mode was merely a singular manifestation of the larger process of nationalistic colonization, in which the settlers themselves were co-opted as tools to perform the extraction and production of raw materials necessary for the industrial and economic manipulation of the West by a colonizing East. An excellent examination of the variety and depth of the process of colonization in the West, and its visualization, is The West as American: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, ed. William H. Truettner (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, is one of the most encompassing and insightful general histories of the West in which the presence and consequences of colonization is examined. 347 Joni Kinsey, Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairie (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.), 5. Or, as traveler, Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, bemoaned, “Everything between here and Cheyenne is so desolate, so absolutely without life, that a traveler unwillingly calls upon imagination to fill the emptiness with all sorts of wildly exciting shapes and populate it with people, animals, and Indians.” Frederic Trautmann, “Across Nebraska by Train in 1877: The Travels of Ernst von Hess-Wartegg,” Nebraska History 65:3 (Fall 1984): 417. 348 Willa Cather, My Antonia (1918; Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1988), 7-8. 188

were constructed on the premise that the compositions were given coherence through the

human narratives enacted within them, instead of reading the human elements, as one

does in a traditional landscape composition, as a secondary visual interest. However, in

photographing in situ, Butcher created an archive that in actuality allows the landscape to

assert a visual presence much more complicated and much less determined by human

intentions. This complicated visual presence is defined by the natural characteristics of

the Plains environment, rather than the characteristics constructed in nationalistic

ideologies.

Custer County is located within the borders of the Great Plains. This

environmental area stretches latitudinally from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian

border and longitudinally is generally centered on the 100th meridian [Illus. 1]. As many

geographers note, there is no definable border between the prairies and the eastern edge

of the Plains, “there is only a transition zone, an area from 100 to 150 miles wide, the

exact location of which shifts with climatic cycles but which is centered roughly on the

98º30′ line of longitude.”349 Custer County, located along the 99th and 100th meridians, is

squarely in this zone. The area is marked by the change from tall grasses to short, or

“bunch,” grasses that comprise the primary vegetation. In fact, during the era recorded

by Butcher, Professor Aughey (of “rain follows the plow” fame) collected 149 species of grass native to the state and 150 species of sedges. These grasses are not characterized

by the rich verdant green of the eastern meadows, but rather vary from greens to gold to

browns. One of the most difficult tasks for the county’s early settlers was breaking

349 Quoted in White, ‘Its Your Misfortune’, 227. Other observers, such as John Wesley Powell, have placed the center of this transition zone at the 100th meridian. 189

through their thick root system. Merely turning the unbroken sod of the plains with a

plow required a yoke of six oxen.350 As Uriah Oblinger noted to his wife, even while

being plowed, this tangle of thick sod “will hang together for a half mile without

breaking.”351

The soil in Custer County is primarily Chernozom, one of the most fertile in the

world. The northwest corner of the county breaks into the Sandhills, where sand is the

dominate soil characteristic.352 As was noted earlier, only 3% of the state was forested,

and this was predominantly in the eastern section, still considered prairie, and along the

rivers.353 Trees in Custer County were mainly cottonwoods that grew along the river, as

well as ash, cedar, and elm. Only .02% of the county is covered by water, essentially ½

square mile in an area of 2,575 square miles. The landscape of the Great Plains, marked

by low hills of uninterrupted grass cover that waved like roiling waters in the unceasing

wind, often unnerved the settlers by its scale. Joni Kinsey has noted, “the terrain offers

neither the pastoral tranquility of eastern American landscapes not the drama of far

western ones.”354 In Custer County, it is not unusual to find vistas that extend over 20

miles into the distance. Birds and other fauna that settlers were accustomed to seeing and

350 Mary Ellen Jones, Daily Life on the 19th-century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 190. 351 Oblinger papers, NSHS. 352 The sandhills, comprising about 20,000 square miles, are the largest area of sand dunes in North America. They have been recorded the deepest in the vicinity of Arnold, in Custer County, measuring 160 feet deep. Custer County Chief, 8/1/2004. 353 There are several conjectures as to the lack of trees in the state. As Joni Kinsey has noted, “The reasons and ways that prairie ecosystems prevent trees from growing are complex geologically and botanically, but generally two essential factors are at work: the thick grassland root system that resists penetration by and nurturing of tree seeds, and fires that periodically kill off the woody growth that does get started….The real question, not sufficiently understood even now, is how grass got such an advantage in the first place….Zebulon Pike…attributed the lack of trees to aridity.” Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 221. 354 Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 3. 190

hearing were not typically native to the area. Mrs. J. A. Pike often related how she “used

to stand at the door of their house listening for some sound to break the stillness that

brooded over the solitude through the long summer days.”355 Settler Milt Whitney noted

that he had lived in the county for 14 years before he saw his second robin.356

Grasshoppers, however, were frequent visitors, descending in swarms upon settlers in

such magnitude that they brought Biblical plagues to mind. One cloud of grasshoppers that passed over the state in 1875 was estimated to be one mile thick.357

Custer County settlers most frequently noted aridity in their descriptions of the

area. In one sense, they were correct in their perceptions. The average annual

precipitation is generally consistent from the Atlantic coast to mid-Iowa, a distance of

over 1200 miles in which it varies only from 38 to 48 inches. Precipitation decreases

significantly westward across the Plains from the Missouri River to the Rocky

Mountains. Nebraska receives an annual precipitation of 36 inches in its southwest, while only 500 miles away, along its western border, it receives as little as 14 inches, a difference of 22 inches. Theoretically, precipitation decreases east of the Missouri 1 inch per 120 miles; westward across the Plains it decreases 1inch per 22 miles. Custer

County, in the central section, receives an average of 22 inches.358 Yet, the very concept

of aridity misconstrues the actual nature of the environment on two fronts. First, the term

“aridity” itself implies that the amount of rainfall natural to the area is abnormal, and thus

suggests that the Great Plains is somehow lacking in character. As Susan Neel has noted:

355 Pike surname file, CCHS. 356 Whitney surname file, CCHS. 357 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 194. 358 Baltensperger, Nebraska, 2-5. 191

Aridity is a concept burdened with ethnocentric connotations. Implicit in the ideas of a region that lacks enough water for things to grow and that is dry, barren, lifeless, and dull is a binary vision of a place that is lush, fecund, and productive. An arid region, in this sense, is an aberrant one, a deviation from the environment of adequacy, specifically one suited for European-derived, nonirrigaged agriculture. The ‘arid’ West has meaning only in relation to the ‘normal’ East….Which environment is called normal and which aberrant depends entirely on who is doing the labeling. It would be just as accurate to point out the abundance of rainfall in the East, but that condition is rarely remarked on by scholars because they assume it as the norm.359

Settlers, trying to recreate the cultural and agricultural environments from their

earlier, more eastern homes, felt the pressure that the lesser amount of rainfall placed on

their endeavor. However, it is not the low precipitation that characterizes the Great

Plains, but rather its extreme variability. As Carl Kraenzel has explained, “The Plains are

a semiarid land. They are not semiarid in that the climate is halfway between humid and

arid. They are not half dry and half wet; rather, some years they are dry and even arid;

other years they are very wet….It is this undefinable aspect of semiaridity that gives the

Plains their distinctiveness.”360 “Normal” rainfall means very little in such an area; precipitation varies from the average by up to 50% in any given year.361 While during

the boom settlement years of the 1880s central Nebraska received 25 inches, it received

only 16 inches in 1890 and 9 inches in 1894 (severe drought years). During 1915 it

received 35 inches; and in 1934 it received, again, only 16 inches.362

359 Susan Rhoades Neel, “A Place of Extremes: Nature, History, and the American West,” in A New Significance, 112. 360 Carl Frederick Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 12. 361 Fink, Agrarian Women, 33. 362 Baltensperger, Nebraska, 8. 192

This “extreme variability” marks not only annual cycles but the nature of the

environment within these cycles. The Plains are “characterized by environmental extremes—strong winds, limited precipitation, abrupt temperature changes, blizzards, and recurring cycles of drought.”363 Agricultural failure is due as much to irregularities in

precipitation within the growing season as to general aridity. Rainfall in the Great Plains

requires the collision of two of the three air masses that cross the area. These collisions

produce violent rainstorms and heavy precipitation marked by significant variability in

their force and direction, as there are no mountains or large bodies of water to direct the

air masses in a predictable route.364 The routes are frequently narrow and focused,

causing the area in its path to experience heavy rain, while areas only a few miles away

receive no precipitation, and indeed, often experience drought. These highly erratic

rainfall patterns often cause agricultural stress. As Deborah Fink has noted, “Even when

total yearly precipitation should have been adequate, poor timing and excess evaporation

might kill the crops; then again, even when the total precipitation was less than average, one or two timely rains might save everything.”365 For instance, the worst year in

agricultural history for central Nebraska was 1894 when, on July 25, temperatures

363 David F. Van Haverbeke, “Man and Trees on the Great Plains,” unpublished manuscript, CCHS. 364 Kreanzel, The Great Plains in Transition, 13. 365 Fink, Agrarian Women, 35. Fink merely reiterates what is often noted, though not so often realized, about the aridity of the Plains. For instance, as early as 1903, writers were noting, “The season of failure over the dryer sections of the State are universally due to periods of drouth during the growing season, an irregular distribution of the rainfall, more than lack of moisture sufficient to produce a crop.” A Condensed History of Nebraska for Fifty Years to Date, ed. George W. Hervey (Omaha, NE: Nebraska Farmer, 1903). 193

exceeding 100º mixed with hot winds over 50 mph. At a critical time for corn, just when

it needs water to tassel, the weather withered the crops within hours. Farmers harvested

less than 6% of their expected yields.366

Erratic rainfall was joined by other environmental extremes. The Great Plains are

hotter and drier in the summer, colder in the winter, and constantly windier than any area

east of the Missouri. For instance, in 1893 in Glendive, MT, there was a 164º variance in

temperatures, from a high 117º to a low of -47º.367 Settler James Eastman recounted that

he had “seen frost in Nebraska in July. Seen the leaves freeze off and all of our corn

would be ruined….[On the other hand] in 1903, 1906, and 1907 we plowed twelve

months of the year and in these three years there wasn’t any snow at all.”368 On

Christmas Day of 1881, Custer County settlers recorded “snow 27 inches deep on

level.”369 In the winter of 1888, after a clear and sunny morning, temperatures suddenly

dropped over 20º, initiating a blizzard in which 30 people, caught unprepared, died and numerous others had to have amputations.

When Luna Kellie first moved to the Plains, she never wanted to go outside because of the oppressive wind.370 Indeed, it is unceasing. The average wind speed in

Custer County is 11 mph, and it rarely drops below 9.5 mph. Even so, during some

366 This one year presents the power of the environment even over the colonizing power of the railroads. While an estimated 8,000 residents left Custer County that summer, and the Burlington railroad cut 1,200 positions and benched their entire building plans until later in the decade. See Everett Dick, Conquering the Great Amrican Desert, 346. 367 White, “Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own”, 229. Nebraska state temperature variance has ranged from 118º in 1934 and 1936, to -47º in 1899 and 1889. 368 Quoted in www.nebraskastudies.org. 369 Haskell surname file, CCHS. 370 Fink, Agrarian Women, 35. 194

seasons, winds “were not infrequently measured at from 40 to 50 miles/hour.”371 Wind storms destroyed the opera house in Broken Bow in 1885. The next year they destroyed several buildings in Callaway, and the year after that blew down the brick walls of the new opera house. The wind was its most terrifying when it was combined with a prairie fire. Such fires were natural events that occurred annually and worked to restore and maintain the native grasses. However, they posed serious danger to settlers moving into the area. Nearly every county settler who recounted their pioneer experiences mentions the danger of these fires; many people, such as Isidore Haumont’s wife, were severely burned by them, and others frequently suffered significant financial losses. One settler described a fire in 1884:

One day we all thought we could smell smoke. The next day the west end of the valley looked smoky and the odor became more pronounced than ever…on the third morning the valley was so full of smoke you could see only a little ways off….we could feel the heat of a fire…the sod house and stable and corrals finally tumbled to the ground although it took several seeks for the sod walls to burn completely through…there was probably a 40 mile wind, sometimes starting a fire 100 to 200 yards beyond the head fire….Mr. Lacheur and his son went out to try to plow a fireguard around his house and barn…he and his team got surrounded by fire and he burned to death but his son escaped….that fire grew to be perhaps 50 miles wide.372

Because of the grassy, low rolling topography, weather events and even entire

weather systems can be observed for great distances on the Plains, magnifying their

371 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 218. 372 Weather file, CCHS. This file notes extensive damages by the fires. For instance, the damage from one fire in 1884 was listed as: 17 colts for Williams and Haskell and large amount of hay; burned Burles’s stable and hay, 300 bushels of corn and 150 shocks of fodder; Ransier’s stable, hay, and grain; Tubbs’s straw stack; Kilner’s stable and 400 bushel of wheat; other Kilner lost stable, hay and a team and harness; Robert lost stable, hay, and harness, several bushel of corn; Tarbox of Logan lost 8 head of horses.” Job Semler recounted the speed of the fires, which typically could not be outrun even by a horse. He noted that “Just after dark I saw the fire coming over the hill, and I started to run to the barn…I did not get to the barn before the fire went past me. I had run 20 rods and the fire had run more than a mile in the same length of time.” See Semler surname file, CCHS. 195

extremity to the eye of the viewer. When Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg traveled across the area in the 1870s, he observed:

Natural wonders appear with the greatest intensity—sunrise and sunset, clouds and rain, thunderstorm and downpour. What amazed us most was electricity, not only huge thunderbolts that illuminated the skies, but also the voltage that sprang from our bodies….Even more magnificent are hailstorms and cloudbursts. Last summer, our engineer told us, a hailstorm overtook a train, broke every window, and pockmarked the sheet iron of the boiler.373

Other settlers also noted such extremes. When John Gibson traveled through the area on the Oregon Trail in 1859 he recorded, “the father of all the thunderstorms,” and compared it to ones in the East: “Talk about your eastern rainstorms. They sink into utter insignificance when compared with what can be got up on short notice along the Platte.

The lightening flashed almost simultaneous with the clashing, deafening, reverberating reports of heaven’s artillery. The wind howled a perfect tornado, leveling one tent in company.”374 Custer County settlers experienced hailstorms with stones 11 inches across, and one storm even accumulated stones over 3 feet deep along a county road.375

In the same way that there is nothing “wrong” with the natural semi-aridity of the

Great Plains, there is also nothing intrinsically “wrong” with the extremes of the weather.

These natural extremes are only “bad,” or abnormal, when human-centered needs have been normalized. Because the construction of the portraits in Butcher’s archive was determined by human-centered narratives, both the settlers and Butcher worked to present a natural environment that conformed to the narrative—that was supportive and submissive to the perceived rightful cultivation by the American farmer. The

373 Frederic Trautmann, “Across Nebraska by Train in 1877,” 421. 374 Quoted in www.nebraskastudies.org. 375 Weather file, CCHS; Kem surname file, CCHS. 196

characteristics of the environment were presented as controlled and passive. However,

there are various modes through which the power or the presence of the natural

environment of the Great Plains can be read to undermine or to usurp the visual strategy

of control utilized by human-centered narratives. These modes are most apparent when,

rather than foregrounding the presence of the settlers and their actions, the landscape is

foregrounded. In so doing, the landscape is given the agency of a positive, active space

rather than a vacant, negative ground; it is generative rather than disempowered, and its identity is based on the nature of its presence rather than the nature of its potential.

6.2 Acting like the Great Plains

In some ways the tension created by the effort to control the visual agency of the environment, and the presence of its natural characteristics was most effectively visualized through Butcher’s process. Butcher typically would canvass an area, and whatever environmental conditions were present were frequently included by default, as he rarely had the luxury of time and expense to wait around for the “perfect day.” The result of this situation was that the landscape was frequently not the “blank stage” that was acquiescent to the activity of the settlers, but rather it often quite actively presented the extremes of its real nature. For instance, in Howard Cooper on a table overlooking valley of Middle Loup Valley, west of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 195],

1886, Butcher has drawn away from the family in order to include evidence of their cultivation and harnessing of the environment’s power signified by their windmill.

However, the white of the sky radiates the intensity of the day, enveloping the

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background in a haze of heat as the family appears to seek refuge under the short eaves of

their home. The ends of the grass on top the roof and the blades of the windmill seem to

dissolve in the blanching heat. The harsh whites that highlight the crop in the foreground

blur the focus on them. The photograph appears to visualize the lament of author and homesteader, Hamlin Garland, that the Plains were “frightful…bare of trees as a desert.

The eyes found no place to rest from the hot brazen glare….there was absolutely no fresh green thing to be seen, no cool glint of water, no pleasant shade—only a radiant, mocking, sinister sky.”376

On the other hand, in George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 196], 1886, the family has gathered in front of their house, bringing out

their parlor table and fancy tablecloth to attest to their respectability. Yet they sit stiffly

in their chairs, the men crouching and crossing their arms from the chill. The bare

vegetation and blur of the table cloth give evidence of a stiff early winter wind that has

affected their portrait. In Ball Family, Woods Park, Nebraska [Fig. 197], 1886, Butcher

photographed into the sunlight in order to place the Ball family atop the only available

patch of dry ground. They huddle together surrounded by standing water and thick mud.

In Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

198], 1886, one of Butcher’s most famous portraits, the presentation of middle-class

respectability is undercut by the thick clumps of mud that cling to Sylvester’s boots and

smear the feet and ankles of the boys and their dog. It is clear that the ability to maintain

376 Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 62. 198

femininity, conveyed in the neat, clean white dress of the daughter, has been asserted

only through artifice, as her clean bare feet reveal she has been carried out for the

photograph.

The settlers fought a constant battle to maintain their composure against the

unceasing wind. At times its power is intentionally incorporated into the photograph, as in Tom Teahan, bachelor, showing a granary overturned by wind south of Anselmo near

Ortello Valley, Nebraska [Fig. 199], 1886. However, wind more frequently makes its presence known despite, and indeed as an imposition upon, the efforts of Butcher and his subjects. In “A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 200], 1887, the

foreground is clear and undisturbed, but the background landscape is shrouded in dust kicked up by a pervasive wind. Likewise, in Ulric Uhlman, Round Valley, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 201], 1886, the day appears quiet, though the blur of the windmill’s blades reveals the presence of a strong wind. Furthermore, the thin line of trees along the horizon is likely a windbreak. Windbreaks, and their more substantial cousins, shelterbelts, were meant to, in the words of settler Milt Whitney, “protect against the ever-blowing, burying, blinding sand.”377 These trees were not planted for moral or

cultural edification, but rather, quite literally, as protection against the power of the

environment.378 Their presence suggests the settlers’ defensive position in the

environment rather than the offensive position naturalized in nationalistic ideologies.

This defensive position, and its implicit assertion of not only the presence of, but the

377 Whitney surname file, CCHS. 378 Shelterbelts were introduced to Nebraska in 1875 by Edwin A. Curley. They were to be planted on the border of a farm, perpendicular to the prevailing summer winds, and along an east/west axis to break the frigid northern winds in winter. Eventually the state passed a law that paid settlers $3.88 for every acre (not to exceed five years and three acres) protected by a shelterbelt consisting of six rows of trees, 8 feet apart with the trees 4 feet apart within the rows. See Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 118. 199

great power of, the environment, is further visualized in J. Curphey, East Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 202], 1888, in which the family aligns themselves with the edge of a fire guard. Fire guards were one of the settlers’ only defenses against the frequent prairie fires that swept across the county. As one settler noted, “every homestead had a fire guard around it and every homesteader around expected to fight fire for if one got started it would burn everything in its path for miles.”379

There are images in which the presence of wind quite forcefully imposes upon the composition. At first glance, the composition in Mathon Family, Dry Valley, Nebraska

[Fig. 203], 1887, appears quite typical of others in the archive. However, in fact, Butcher has placed the family perpendicular to their house rather than in front of it in order to face them into a substantial wind. While he has placed them between two saplings, in his common mode to convey the settler’s propriety and transformative actions, the small saplings are so blurred to be almost unrecognizable. The wind has nearly erased their emblematic presence with its own force. Similarly, in D. Jones, Ortello Valley, Nebraska

[Fig. 204], 1886, the family stands close to the house in order to obtain the only available protection from the onslaught of a wind that, nevertheless, flattens the women’s aprons against their bodies. The wind’s effect on Butcher’s ability to even record his subjects— to create his archive—is also quite evident. The focus of the camera itself is blurred due to Butcher’s inability to stabilize it against the force of the gale.

Conditions of environmental extremes are certainly not exclusive to the Plains; however, their presence in Butcher’s photographs suggests the very physical volatility of the settler’s environment, and in so doing undermines the assertion of control at the basis

379 Sargent surname file, CCHS. 200

of progressive and agrarian ideologies, and thus at the basis of the narrative Butcher

desired to tell. As Stephanie Sarver has noted about such conditions and their effect on

the homesteading characters in the novels of Hamlin Garland, “Haskins…has no power

over the pestilence that drives him to rent a farm, nor does Jason Edwards have control

over the hail storm that destroys his wheat crop. Their capacity to exercise their will is

limited by forces over which they have no control.”380 There is a visual conflict resultant

in the unacknowledged presence of the natural forces of the Great Plains environment

that is exemplified in Mathon Family, Dry Valley, Nebraska. The wind’s power blurs the

saplings, and thus renders visually ambiguous both the establishment of an environment that mirrored the “naturalized” environment of the east and the transformative power of the settler to establish it. Thus its presence asserts the conflict present in the settlement of

Custer County between the actions of the settlers upon the land due to their perceptions

of it as a passive stage, and the presence of the land as a force anything but passive.

The active presence of the environment is also asserted through the nature of the

landscape itself. As noted earlier, “the terrain offers neither the pastoral tranquility of

eastern American landscapes not the drama of far western ones.”381 There was no visual convention, or tradition, for depicting the Plains topography, and it is clear Butcher

struggled to shape the landscape to conventions he, and others, understood. The majority

of his pioneer portraits strain to adhere to more pastoral conventions of eastern

landscapes; in this, they act in concert with the work of the subjects themselves to “re-

make” the local landscape into a form familiar from the East. Such landscapes

380 Sarver, Uneven Land, 73. 381 Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 3. 201

dominated the literature of settlement. For instance, A Prairie Home [Fig. 205], an

engraving illustrating Frederic Goddard’s 1869 emigrant guide, Where to Emigrate and

Why, conveys a lush landscape with a sparkling stream, billowing clouds, and a farmstead all gracefully framed by mature trees. The foreground, midground, and background are clearly delineated, and each contain their own activities. Butcher’s and his subjects’ attempts to mirror this image pervade the archive. One of the most successful examples is Dan Haskel, west of Milldale, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 190], 1886 (and its success is most likely due to the early settlement date, 1876, of Mr. Haskell). The pond glistens in the sun, gently reflecting the small shed along its shore, and the dark tones of the trees behind create a pleasing visual contrast that conveys a sense of shade. The foreground, midground, and background are clearly anchored through activity and tonal contrasts.

However, this image is unusual in its success. The tension typically created by the effort to make the Plains landscape conform to a pastoral convention is most clear in the portraits in which Butcher felt compelled to alter the resultant image. For instance, in

George R. Carr, New Helena, one of the oldest settlers in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

206], 1886, Butcher has scratched into the negative the water in the stream, a few ducks, and a rounded plum of smoke from the dugout’s chimney in an effort to make the image conform more successfully to the image of pastoral rural comfort. While the etched water does follow the path of an actual stream, without the “aid” of Butcher the dominance of brown midtones blends the water with the brittle grass of the landscape, making the stream’s presence, and its cooling associations, vague at best. Similarly, the

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near obliteration of the dugout into the terrain doesn’t speak to the comfort and

domesticity signified by a frame farmhouse. The addition of smoke from the chimney,

and its association of a familial hearth, helps the flailing emblem bespeak the proper

effect of coziness expected of a moral and domestic center. Likewise, in Zimmerman

ranch, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 207], 1888, Butcher has etched in a small grouping of ducks that appear to enjoy their swim in the water. In doing so, he reveals his comprehension that the unaltered image doesn’t present the desired bucolic environment believed to be enjoyed by yeoman, where ducks wile away the hours in pastoral harmony.

He is aware that without aid, the image presents the appearance of a stagnant pool with its water thick and muddy from the continual trespass of livestock. While the note of whimsy (or perhaps irony) in these works is characteristic of Butcher, more importantly here, what such additions imply is Butcher’s anxiety that the environment doesn’t

embody the idyllic harmony at the basis of the pastoral convention he felt best conveyed

his history. Furthermore, by resorting to altering the glass plates themselves, Butcher

reveals his subconscious understanding that the construction of the landscape as a stage that could be “re-made” to fit the drama enacted within it does not, in fact, truly define the nature, and the power, of the landscape he is working with. The Plains landscape was

not necessarily so readily available to be “re-made” into another East.

Butcher also at times relied on the other available landscape convention—that of

the dramatic “western” landscape. A typical example of this is Timothy O’Sullivan’s

1872 photograph, Green River Canon, Junction of Yampah at Green River [Fig. 208], in

which the sublime scale of the drop to the river and the continued expanse of the high

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plateaus into the far distance overwhelm the viewer. Butcher utilizes this convention in

photographs such as “Devil’s Backbone” [Fig. 209], 1886, and John Bridges of Oconto,

Nebraska, owner of Devils Gap [Fig. 210], 1892, in which the towering bluffs drop sharply into a canyon bed. While O’Sullivan allows the landscape’s visual force full reign in his composition, Butcher’s photographs embody, in contrast, a deeply felt ambivalence about the county’s landscape. On one hand, Butcher has included figures to convey the oversized scale of the formations in adherence to the drama presented in

O’Sullivan’s photograph. Yet this also reveals Butcher’s anxiety that without some visual proof (which O’Sullivan did not feel the need for) the viewer would not believe the

“drama,” and thus the landscape’s veracity as “western” would be questioned. There also seems to be another source of ambivalence in that the inclusion of figures manifests

Butcher’s insecurity in giving such unfettered environmental power visual expression.

While dwarfed, the figures assert a person’s ability to scale the bluffs, in essence, to “top” nature itself. In John Bridges of Oconto, Nebraska, owner of Devils Gap, the figure of

Mr. Bridges “presents” the landscape to the viewer, acting as a commander of the view and thus in control of it. This ambivalence stems, at least likely in part, from Butcher’s intentions for his photographic endeavor. An image that celebrates the power of the natural environment unmitigated by the concurrent assertion of human control undermines the very narrative of human transformation at the heart of his project—and

even at the heart of his understanding of his local world.

The pastoral tradition of eastern landscapes worked to re-shape the Great Plains

into “another,” which is to say it worked as a conservative force to erase the Plains

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characteristics different from its own. The drama of the western landscape convention

worked to assert the “other”-ness of the western landscape from those in the East.

However, neither convention truly allowed visualization of the basic characteristics of the

Plains topography. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, there was still no “Plains

landscape” convention readily available for Butcher to employ. One of the most striking

19th-century images that does attempt to convey the nature of the Plains without the

mediation of human action is George Catlin’s Nishnabottana Bluffs, Upper Missouri

[Fig. 211], 1832. Catlin abandoned the conventions he had used in earlier landscapes,

creating one of the most abstract images of his time—one half a canvas of broad swipes

of green under a top half of pale blue, the entire composition controlled by a single

horizon line.382 The only image from Butcher’s first years of photography that depicts a

view so dominated by the natural Plains landscape is Sandhills near Sargent, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 212], 1887. Here, the scrubby dunes of the Sandhills in the

northwest corner of the county roll across the entire bottom ¾ of the composition. Their

movement is held in check by a strong, unbroken horizon line. However, here again,

Butcher cannot relinquish his desire for control, and a figure in the center foreground, conveying the enormity of the scene in his sharply diminutive size, also inserts the presence of human activity.

Butcher’s landscape compositions reveal an inability, or even a refusal, to visualize an environment not already made conventional, not already given a visual language easily categorized by the viewer (and the photographer). This is due in part to

382 The wider context of early Plains images, including Catlin’s, has a thorough and considered discussion in Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 33-78. 205

the negative connotations the Plains and similar landscapes held in popular thought.

Nevada was described in the 1880s as “the very nakedness of bleak desolation [which] stretches its cursed length through a distance of 600 miles;” and even Pikes Peak was

described in the 1870s as “The dreariness of the desolate peak itself scarcely dissipates

the dismal spell, for you stand in a hopeless confusion of dull stones piled upon each

other in odious ugliness, without one softening influence, as if nature, irritated with her labor, had slung her confusion here in utter desperation.”383 George Catlin himself,

though he attempted to convey the nature of the Plains, noted its ability to dishearten the

viewer by refusing to succumb to human codification, describing it as a “discouraging sea

of green, without a landmark before or behind him; without a beacon to lead him on, or

define his progress.”384 If the Plains were constructed in conformity to the pastoral

landscape of the east, they were “anothered”; if constructed in adherence to the drama of

the western landscape, they were “othered”; however, unable to find a convention to

convincingly (acknowledged or not) convey the Plains landscape, it was conceived of as

a “void,” and as thus shunned visually.

Butcher’s refusal to allow the Plains landscape to establish a convention, and thus

a role, in his archive (which is to say in his history), also reveals a fear of visualizing, and

thus making active, the latent power of the Plains landscape. In this he participates in a

widely felt, though typically implicitly expressed, fear of the Plains landscape. Typical

383 Quoted in White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, 49.

384 Quoted in Robert Thacker, “The Plains Landscape and Descriptive Technique,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:3 (Summer 1982): 154. As Thacker has also noted on page 153 about the Plains, “Faced with a landscape that satiates the eye with immensity, novelists adapted for the purposes of fiction the same means used by the explorers and travelers who preceded them….they were unable to impose a conventional form on the prairie-plains. Instead, their descriptive and dramatic technique was modified by the landscape itself—a landscape which presents…‘a view so vast that endless space seems for once to find embodiment.’” 206

of booster rhetoric, J. Sterling Morton, father of Arbor Day, gave an address in which he

espoused the landscape most desired for the Plains (and thus a landscape that defined the

work of the pioneer):

There is comfort in a good orchard, in that it makes the new home more like the old home in the east….Orchards are the missionaries of culture and refinement. They make the people among whom they grow a better and more thoughtful people. If every farmer in Nebraska will plant out and cultivate an orchard and a flower garden, together with a few forest trees, this will become mentally and morally the best agricultural state.385

Implied in this, is that “an empty landscape…is a potentially hazardous place, at least

culturally and socially, and only through its transformation can it be made supportive of

positive human development.”386 The need to control the Plains landscape underlies

Sally Cover’s 1880s painting, the Homestead of Ellsworth Ball [Fig. 125], in which the

loose rolling and formless (to those of Butcher’s era) natural topography of the Plains has

been aggressively, and defensively, pushed to the far background in order not to disrupt

the civility asserted by the pastoral order of the homestead.

One of the most pervasive modes in the archive by which the topography asserts

visual power, and thus subverts the visualization of human control, is through the

apparent conflation of space. The rolling, mono-tonal terrain, with no natural vertical

elements challenges the articulation of space required to convey the presence of settlers’

and their culture on the landscape; the “foreground, middle, and background refuse to

385 Quoted in Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 88. 386 Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 88. Or, even more direct, is the comment of Per Hansa’s wife, in Giants of the Earth by Ole Rölvaag, that “We’d better take care or we will all be turned into beasts and savage out here!” As Dick Harrison notes, “man, removed from the security and constraints of civilization and exposed to the savage wilderness [here, the Plains], is in danger of having his primitive nature respond.” See Dick Harrison, “Rölvaag, Grove and Pioneering on the American and Canadian Plains,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:4 (Fall 1981): 255. 207

keep their assigned places.”387 This is realized in Southwest Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 213], 1892, in which the rise in landscape behind the house at first appears as a hill,

but upon closer examination, the presence of a tiny figure near the top of the swell

instead indicates that the rise moves back considerably in space, quietly challenging the

sense of intimacy presented by the family in the foreground. Likewise, in Sylvester

Rawding family sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 198], 1886,

the hillock behind the Rawding’s dugout appears to rise vertically directly behind the

house, pushing the location of the cow forward, on top the house. This conflation of

space (the cow is in fact on the hillock) works in conjunction with the mud noted earlier to impose upon the presentation of the family’s domestic respectability.

This apparent conflation of space imposes on the assertion of settlers’ control in

other ways as well. For instance, in John Saulsburys, Elk Creek Precinct, twelve miles

southeast of Mason City, east Custer County [Fig. 214], 1889, a landscape formation can

be seen in the distance just above the roofline. Their alignment, in conjunction with their

shared tonal value, causes a visual passage that makes ambiguous the separation of the house structure from the landscape. This is a frequent occurrence in the archive. It can be seen again in Sod house and William I. Coen family, four and one-half miles north of

Berywn, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 215], 1886, where the roof aligns almost perfectly with the horizon line of corn on the left and shares the tonal value and texture of the distant landscape behind it to the right, so that the house merges into the righthand distance. Likewise, in W.R. Swan, near Genet Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 216], 1886, and Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 166], 1892, the brush and

387 Kinsey, Plain Pictures, xvi. 208

flowers growing on the rooftop almost perfectly mimics the textures of the landscape

behind them. In fact, in the portrait of the Swan family, it is not clear that the tall, darker

foliage on the right end of the house isn’t, in fact, the top of a treeline, as it aligns

perfectly with the topographical line of a distant hill, nor is it clear where the light tone of

the wheat behind the smaller sod structure is wheat and where it is a similar colored brush

on top of the roof. This conflation presents an almost Cubist-like spatial tension in

Northeast Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 217], 1887, in which the three-quarter view of

the house pushes the corner toward the viewer, but the alignment of the roof and horizon alternately force the assertion of flatness.

The majority of settlers’ houses were made from sod due to the lack of trees in the

natural environment. Thus, because of the dominance (or demands) of the environment,

they were created out of the same material that covers the distance landscape, making it

only natural that they would share the same texture and tonal value. In some sense, then,

the conflation of human structure into the landscape seen in this portrait is partially a

result of the settlers themselves giving in to the natural character of the landscape, and the

landscape’s assertion of control over the character of the settler. The power of the

landscape to force itself on the settlers in this way has been aptly characterized by Joni

Kinsey as, “Burrowing underground because of the land’s lack of building materials

might seem an indignity, but like their neighbors—the prairie dogs, burrowing owls, and

other subterranean creatures—hardy human settlers found their sustenance by becoming

part of the land.”388 The natural landscape is given even more visual control by the

presence of flowers on the roofs of sod houses. This was intentional, as many settlers

388 Kinsey, Plain Pictures, 83. 209

threw seed there to encourage it.389 Rather than the cultivated flowers that denoted the

sphere of the domestic yard, and thus the submission of the natural landscape to the

demands of human culture, the wild flowers growing on the roofs indicate the settler’s acquiecence to the natural generative elements of the terrain.

Even without the effect of passage, the ability of the landscape to impinge upon the control asserted by the settlers is given visual presence. In portraits such as Southwest

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 218], 1892, and Near Woods Park, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 219], 1886, the undulating terrain seems to nearly swallow the settlers and their homes into its folds. In Near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, the edge of the roof aligns with the slope of the ground, effectively pushing the family standing beneath it down into the ground. The force of this is further emphasized by the low placement of both the house dug down into the ground itself and of the human elements of the composition. Likewise in Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, though the lines of the landscape aren’t as oppressive, the elevated horizon line and the angle of the terrain at each side of the composition create a “bowl” effect, and make it difficult to imagine the subjects gaining dominance over the environment that surrounds them. It is hard to believe in their ability to transform, to subdue, the landscape when they are so effectively

contained below the horizon line. In fact, the uninterrupted horizon line can be

considered one of the predominate defining features of the Plains landscape, as it is the

element most able to assert the environment’s pervasive control over a composition.

389 See, for instance, Welsch, Sod Walls, 88: “One woman recalled that her mother was ‘always throwing flower seed up on our roof; they would bloom out in damp weather.’” 210

If the landscape subsumed the settler into its identity through its ubiquitous tonal and textural characteristics and its regulating horizon line, these shared characteristics also, ironically, create a visual harmony. The settler may not appear to have taken control of or subdued the environment as was desired, but they certainly effectively belonged to the environment. Two portraits of Butcher’s sister and her family are illustrative of this. In A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 139],

1886, the roofline unobtrusively follows the horizon line, its brush and flowers mirroring the landscape around it. The family and their livestock are positioned into the space of the ground, allowing the sky an uninterrupted expanse. Conversely, in A.J. Smith in front

of their house near Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 140], 1886, while the new

frame house speaks visually of the family’s advanced financial condition, and thus to

their growing success in transforming the environment, it also presents an object

incongruous with its surroundings. The straight, clean lines of the boards and stark white

color, whose material and verticality have an organic counterpart in the wooded areas of

the East, have no complement on the Plains. The house appears to have been arbitrarily

deposited in the middle of grass, breaking the horizon line, whereas the sod house

appears to have organically grown out of its surroundings. In fact, one wonders if

Butcher comes in so close to the latter scene in an instinctual attempt to mediate its alienation from its surroundings.

This contrast can also be seen in estate views in the archive. In Robert Hunter

ranch six miles northwest of Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 160], 1887, Mr. Hunter’s house

sits down into the surrounding topography, not breaking the integrity of the horizon. Its

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sloping roofline mimics the gentle slope of the hills behind, and the light brown matches the dirt of the terrain just to the left of it. However, in Font Sharp on his ranch south of

Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 191], 1888, Butcher has composed the scene so that the frame house breaks into the sky, the straight lines of its structure finding coherence only with the barn and the windmill. The crisp white of its sides matches the white of the apron worn by Font’s daughter in the foreground. Typical of Butcher’s odd linear sensibility, these elements are in alignment, visually suggesting their shared relationship.

Because of this, the close visual relationship of the emblems of human control— domesticity, financial success, and technological control—implicitly eclipses the power of the landscape to define the composition.

While the Plains landscape did not fit the eastern pastoral or the western dramatic visual traditions, it was not merely a void. It possessed its own dramatic narrative shaped by the conflict between its intrinsic characteristics and the characteristics of the settlement narrative. As was examined in chapter three, the settlement narrative was projected onto the landscape through the surveyor’s grid. The grid defined the landscape through its utility as property, thus asserting its subjugation to a human-centered narrative. It was the equalizing, rational ordering of the grid that disintegrated the sublime scale of the Great Plains and brought it under the control of settlement.

However, the landscape is not completely defined by this process. By “seeing around” the presence of the grid in this photograph (or “reading between the lines”), what is equally present is the rolling, undulating nature of the topography and its coherence as an independent topographical system despite the ordered squares of cultivation. The

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concurrent presence of these two systems can also be seen in a topographical map of a

section of Custer County [Fig. 220], in which the curvilinear lines of elevation and the

rectilinear lines of quarter-sections create a graphic pattern that struggles, sometimes

unsuccessfully, to maintain a taut equilibrium. There is clearly an uneasy visual balance

between two forces here, the imposed power of the grid and the resident power of the

natural topography. The struggle for dominance is, in essence, the drama of the Plains

landscape, and it is played out visually in Butcher’s archive. It can be seen on an

individual level in the distant landscape of Southwest Custer County, near Arnold (or

Callaway), Nebraska [Fig. 221], 1892, in which the straight lines that enact the force of

the grid that define the cultivation of the landscape collide with the curvilinear lines that

assert the force of the natural topography. Each system is infringed upon by the other,

resulting in the heightened presence of visual discord. While the images that best

bespeak the ideals of the settlement narrative are those in which the modes of

environmental control gain the upper hand in this perpetual conflict, there are images throughout the archive that bespeak the dominance of this competing power—that allow the dominance of a narrative based on Plains topography.

There are two defining elements of Great Plains topography that resist the attempted control of the grid, which is the control of the settlers. The first is the immense scale of the topographical features. The undulations of the Plains are expansive, often

stretching for miles from crest to trough. On the plateaus, the repetitions of undulations

could be viewed for over 20 miles, confounding a human sense of scale and time.390

390 This experience for new settlers is beautifully captured by Willa Cather in My Antonia, 8. “There was nothing but land—slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left 213

Their epic scale undermines the rational, human-scale of the grid sections. Butcher

struggled to maintain this precarious balance in his portraits by showing enough of the

landscape to prove the settlers’ transformation, but not so much as to dwarf this

transformation in the surrounding sweep of landscape. When Butcher included too much,

the portraits convey a sense of “placelessness,” or, as Dick Harrison explains this, the

images inadvertently communicate “utter tracklessness where tiny man’s hope to make

any mark on the immensity is even more futile than at sea….[it has a] quality of formless,

undifferentiated space and of a placelessness that dissolves human meaning.”391

For instance, in Ranch in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 222], 1889, the square

section of cultivation is dwarfed by the expanse of landscape that continues for miles

behind it. Even more disconcerting, in Family members and cattle on a ranch in the

Ortello Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 223], 1888, and James Gates ranch at

Gates, Nebraska [Fig. 224], 1888, the impressive herds of livestock are diminished by the

vast expanse of rolling landscape seen behind them. The human activity appears isolated

and disconnected from any human network or communication. Likewise, in Comstock,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 188], 1904, the town appears to have sprung up out of nowhere, with no clear reason for its being. There are no roads or indications of its participation in a larger network of communities. Such images bring to mind a passage from Willa Cather’s novel, O Pioneers!, in which she describes this ability of the scale of the Plains to dwarf human culture:

behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it….Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out.” 391 Dick Harrison, “Rölvaag, Grove and Pioneering on the American and Canadian Plains,” 254. 214

The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie….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 somber wastes.392

In Herb Sargent, Sargent Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 225], 1887, and

“Pride in What We Have Done” Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 226], 1887, the tidy

fenced enclosures that speak so clearly of control are made oddly irrelevant by their

seeming arbitrary placement on the landscape. They seem to float, visually unanchored,

on the low rolling “waves” of the terrain.393 Their transformation of the landscape

appears insignificant, and even visually troubling in its suggestion of the settler’s naïve

denial of the land’s power. In Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 132], 1889, and Reverend

Peter Widvey on his homestead north of Round Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

227], 1892, the landscape’s ability even to alienate the subjects from one another, to

impose upon the very embodiment of the settlement narrative, is asserted. The expanse

of terrain in front of the figures separates them from the viewer. Butcher has positioned

them and their accoutrements, as usual, across the composition. However, due to the

expanse they cover, they seem disconnected from each other, stranded from the elements

of culture and domesticity to which they belong. The immensity of the landscape that

pervades every section of the composition fragments its visual cohesion, and thus also the

cohesion of the settlement narrative to which it conforms. Even when the ideal of

392Quoted in Carter, Solomon Butcher, 110. 393 One thinks here of a passage from Fruits. “He had looked down at his feet; had seen nothing but the furrow; had considered the prairie only as a page to write the story of his life upon. His vision had been bounded by the lines of his farm; his farm had been floated on that prairie as the shipwright floats a vessel on the sea, looking not so much at the waves which are to batter it as at the fittings which secure the comfort of those within. But such a vessel may be engulfed by such a sea.” Page 138. Quoted in Harrison, “Rölvaag, Grove and Pioneering on the American and Canadian Plains,” 256. 215

settlement is maintained, as in the healthy family and homestead in Mr. W. W. Parish and

Family, northeast Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 228], 1887, the over-sized landscape appears to loom over the intimacy contained in the foreground. Its elongated swell, in comparison to the busy collection of objects and people in the front, suggests a presence that adheres to a motion epic in nature.

The second predominant characteristic of the Great Plains that asserts its agency in Butcher’s archive is its rolling topography. Though often derided for its “flatness,” the

Plains, in fact, rarely provide a consistently even surface upon which to stand. This unevenness frequently undermined the assertion of stability that the settlers desired. For instance, in Near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 229], 1887, and Clark

Sidwell, east Custer County or East Rosevale, Garfield County, Nebraska [Fig. 230],

1888, the ground available in front of the families’ homes slopes to the right, causing the families to seem to bunch together in their struggle to maintain their equilibrium. In

Andrew Rickerts, near Gates Post Office, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 231], 1887, and

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 232], 1888, Butcher has found a surface that allows the camera and the subjects to align with each other; however, this only emphasizes the uneven groundline to which the homes must conform. While the subjects appear stable, the Rickerts’s house appears to be sliding away from us, and in Custer County, Nebraska some larger-than-life force seems to have wedged the house into the ground. In Family in front of sod house dugout in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 233], 1892,

216

the family appears to press themselves up against the façade of their house to keep themselves and their possessions from tumbling down the incline. The house itself seems to hang on rather precariously by its back to the ground swell.

A similar sense of instability is created by the rolling Plains topography in the portraits that follow an estate format. In Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of

Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 159], 1892, the terrain presents no less than three horizontal planes to which the establishment of the settler’s homestead must conform. While this is certainly not unusual, given the ability on the Plains to include wide, open spaces in a single image, the visual effect undermines the apparent stability of the settler’s control over the landscape. Butcher has aligned the camera with the plane upon which the cattle stand. However, this causes the house in the distance to list to the right. The barn also appears to slope to the right, but along yet another groundline. In Farm scene, northeast

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 234], 1889, and “All Alone in the Hills” Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 235], 1886, Butcher has positioned the families and their homesteading accoutrements in the bottom ground between swells, affording a panoramic view of their property. However, this compositional device also conveys a sense of subjugation of the homesteaders by the shape of the land. They appear effectively corralled in the bowl of the landscape. In fact, in “All Alone in the Hills” Custer County, Nebraska, the scattered objects and figures parallel the observation of the visitor-turned-critic to Pike’s Peak, quoted earlier, who derided nature for “piling” her accoutrements “upon each other in odious ugliness,” and “irritated with her labor…slung her confusion…in utter desperation.”394 However, here, nature, irritated with her inhabitants, has slung them,

394 Quoted in White, The Eastern Establishment and Western Experience, 49. 217

seemingly to tumble in disarray, down into her troughs to be folded, unseen and overwhelmed, into the wide expanse of her undulation. Nature has clearly appropriated the once human role of the critic here.

Butcher composed his portraits in accordance with his naturalization of the Plains environment as a stage that could be “re-made,” in fact, that desired to be “re-made,” to accommodate the settlement narrative enacted within it. He allowed the landscape power, but only on his terms within the perceived greater power of the settlement narrative. However, by “looking around” the figures and their activities in the portraits and the narrative they embody, an environmental narrative based on a forceful physical presence can be seen to be active as well. What becomes evident from this re-focusing is the unacknowledged, though ever-present, drama of the Plains. Due to his insistence on working on-site, Butcher’s archive gives visual agency to the tension created by the conflict of power between these two narratives.

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CHAPTER 7

FAILURE

7.1 Defining Failure

The settlers’ failure to make manifest the ideals naturalized in agrarian and

progressive rhetoric is also present in Butcher’s archive. As many historians have shown,

this failure was, in large part, set up by the very venue—the various governmental

settlement acts—through which success for the settler was not only espoused, but

supposedly guaranteed.395 From the colonial era to the beginning of the 19th century, the

ideal of the yeoman farmer at the heart of agrarian ideology did, in fact, closely relate to

the actual culture and character of the American farmer. During this era, agricultural

production was the basis of the nation’s prosperity. Based in the middle Atlantic region, farmers’ methods of cultivation and the products they grew were well suited to the nature

395 Nearly every contemporary history of the west concerns itself with the land acts and their efficacy or lack thereof. Some of the classic examinations of this upon which most scholarship relies are Gilbert Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 1865-1900 (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); Fred A. Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” The American Historical Review 41:4 (July 1936): 637-651; and, Paul Wallace Gates, “The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System,” 652-681. 219

of the environment. Existing technology and the forested terrain limited the acreage that

a farmer was able to bring under cultivation to the 160 acres that formed the basis of the

individual allotment of land through the government acts.

This environmental and economic balance was still in operation through the

1860s when settlers began moving onto the Midwestern Prairies (northwestern Iowa,

southwestern Minnesota, southeastern Dakotas, and eastern Kansas and Nebraska) and

bringing them under cultivation. Though lacking in trees, the prairies had extremely rich

soil, with an annual precipitation within 10 – 12 inches of that found in the more eastern

farming areas. Settlers could still employ the same production techniques, and cultivate

the same crops as they had previously. A strong regional domestic market and an

emergent European market ensured a profitable demand for their produce. However, the

lack of large-scale transportation limited the effect of these commercial markets on the

overall nature of farming.396 As Deborah Fink has noted of agrarian culture of this era,

“No apparent contradiction existed between individual economic expansion and

economic democracy.” 397 Thus, in these areas the parameters of the various government

settlement acts were most appropriate in assuring success both for the individual settler

and for the nation at large in creating a profitable, yet equalized, democratic rural

population.398

396 See Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of OK Press, 1991); Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier; and, Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Byran to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961). 397 Fink, Agrarian Women, 15. 398 Much has been written about the increase of large landholders in these Prairie areas who depended on the work of tenant farmers, thus not only increasing the rate of tenancy, but in so doing undermining the very purpose of the land acts—to give individual farmers an equal portion of the nation’s arable land as well. See Paul Wallace Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States,” Journal of Economic History, vol 1 (1941): 60-83. However, what is important to my discussion is that regardless of this 220

The government land acts were premised on the belief that free land ensured success, based in part on the experience in these humid, essentially non-commercial

farming environments. However, none of these characteristics were present on the Great

Plains. Settlers, encouraged by emigrant propaganda, pushed past the 98th meridian into semi-arid lands, convinced that the environment could be re-shaped to mirror the humid regions of the East. And, for the first half of the 1880s, the Plains experienced a wet cycle that appeared to support this belief.399 The historian Walter Prescott Webb’s famous observation that settlement stood on three legs—land, water, and timber—seemed to have been successfully accounted for on the Plains.400 Spurred on by the presence of some of the richest soil they had ever plowed, settlers substituted the native sod for timber, and dug wells equipped with windmills for their water. However, the erratic weather and climatic cycles of the Plains, as discussed in the preceding chapter, could not be so easily adapted. Long-term drought, pestilence, and extreme weather such as hail

manipulation of the land acts, their parameters and the nature of the environment in which they were being enacted were still in coherence with each other on the Midwestern prairies. 399 “Such false hope should have been quickly disappointed, but these farmers were also, it turned out, the victims of coincidence. Their movement out onto the plains during the 1880s happened to coincide with the beginning of one of the periodic wet cycles of the plains. Farmers proceeded west seemingly surrounded by evidence that rain was indeed following the plow. White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” 228. 400 “As one contrasts the civilization of the Great Plains with that of the eastern timberland, one sees what may be called an institutional fault (comparable to a geological fault) running from middle Texas to Illinois or Dakota, roughly following the 98th meridian. At this fault the ways of life and of living changed. Practically every institution that was carried across it was either broken and remade or else greatly altered….In the new region—level, timberless ,and semi-arid—they were thrown by mother necessity into the clutch of new circumstances….East of the Mississippi civilization stood on three legs—land, water, and timber; west of the Mississippi not one but two of these legs were withdrawn,--water and timber,--and civilization was left on one leg—land.” Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, MA: Ginn and Company, 1931), 8-9. 221

and windstorms routinely destroyed crops, and the farmer’s expected profit. In fact,

production on the Great Plains since its beginning until today has rarely enjoyed

uninterrupted prosperity for more than a decade.401

A primary reason for this persistent but unpredictable crop failure was not only

the erratic climate, but also the conservative nature of farming. As has been examined in

earlier sections, the goal of agrarian ideology was to form the Great Plains into another

East. However, the Great Plains were ill suited, at best, for conventional, humid-region

farming. Nevertheless, relying on what they were accustomed to, farmers continued to

plant water-needy crops, such as corn, that had limited ability to withstand extended

cycles of drought (without irrigation) over more appropriate grains such as wheat.402 In the words of one resident, the early settlers “corned [the county] to death.”403

Furthermore, the extensive practice of stock farming, in which limited crop production is

mixed with grazing livestock for markets and which eventually proved the most

successful production method for the area, had only a handful of practitioners, and they

were mostly the more wealthy settlers who were already better prepared to weather the

401 While settlers listened to the promises of settlement propaganda, others were also writing against such optimistic belief. For instance, the 1872 annual report of the U.S. Geological Survey through Minnesota, Dakotas, and Nebraska, reported that rainfall in the Great Plains was too low for assured crop production and “the individual who has gone beyond this line and opened a farm upon the broad prairie, depending upon the rail-fall alone to supply his crops has learned by sad experience that knowledge which ought to be supplied to the public.” Quoted in Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 8. See also Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 12. 402 As Gilbert Fite has summarized this, “Success in western farming was closely associated with adjustment to the geography and climate….until the true nature of the Great Plains was understood by practical farmers…settlement in that region went through a period of transition and adjustment, which by the 1890s had eliminated most of those who could not adapt their operations to the geography of the area. Thus the farmer who persisted in raising corn in western Kansas soon lost money, while the settler who made the proper adjustment usually succeeded.” Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 222. 403 Africa-American file, CCHS. 222

financial fluctuations brought on by the Plains environment.404 Cattle were a

considerable expense, and generally beyond the resources of the typical early settler.

Yet, even when settlers did adjust to the parameters of production in a semi-arid

environment failure was prevalent, as the allotment of 160 acres upon which the promise

of success had been based could not support a family on the Plains. As one history of

Callaway noted:

It was difficult to make a living farming a quarter section in western Nebraska, impossible to ranch on one and impractical to farm some of the canyon bottoms and side hills with which the less fortunate homesteaders ended up in Custer County. The farmers in the northeast of the county came closer to making a go of it than those in our section. More of the land remained in individual quarter-section farms longer, but from the time the first patents were received, many of the claims began to change hands….The ranchers bought out the homesteaders back in the canyons and the farmers enlarged by purchasing additional farm ground or by buying adjoining rough land and turning some of their units into stock farms.405

Settlers struggled in their attempts to balance the cultural and economic expectations of

the government acts and the demands of the environment in which they had settled. They

expressed their growing awareness of the inherent inappropriateness of the parameters

and requirements of the government acts. For instance, an article in the Nebraska

404 For an excellent discussion of the adjustment of both conventional farming and longhorn ranching to purebred shorthorn stock farming, see Scott Kleeb, “‘Kickin’ Prairie Air’: Custer County, Nebraska and the Internal Cattle Ranching Frontiers of the Late-Nineteenth Century American West” (Yale University, unpublished manuscript, 2001), held in Ranching file, CCHS. 405 Muddy Creek Meanderings (Callaway, NE: The Loup Valley Queen, 1979), 9. Or, “The assumptions underlying the Homestead Act were spurious or, at best, more optimistic than realistic. A ‘free farm’ in itself by no means assured the success of the farmer. A successful farm operation required both capital and experience. Although many who homesteaded were experienced farmers, they generally had very little capital, and much of their farming experience had been in Europe or in the more humid regions of the U.S. and was of little use on the Plains. Moreover, the Homestead Act lured many settlers into areas where a quarter section could not support a family.” Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 163. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 21-22, also notes that “160 acres was not enough land on which to make a living in much of the West still available for settlement after 1862….the law was not suited to the geography of the Great West….Congress did not make a mistake in passing the Homestead law, but it did fail miserably in not enacting new legislation about 1880 that more accurately fitted the remaining public domain.” 223

Farmer complained about the unfair expectations of the Timber Act, noting, “Any man who enters land in good faith and for five years really attempts to grow timber on it will more than earn his land….The interior department seems to be run upon the plan that as many barriers as possible should be put in the way of the frontiersman.”406 Finally

admitting to the disparity between expectations and conditions, the law was amended in

1893 to allow the land to be transferred to the applicant for merely showing that the

required trees had been planted, even if they hadn’t lived. Such disparity was

experienced by settler Job Semler. Given the continual insistence that orchards could

grow on the Plains just as readily as in the humid regions, it would seem every homestead

had one, or at least the start of one. Yet, when Semler’s family returned to the East for a

few years during the drought, he wrote, revealingly, that his children “had not been where

fruit grew, when in the eastern part of the state we came along the road where an apple

tree was growing…the children went wild.”407

The parameters of the land acts increased pressure on the settler in other ways as

well. Though the equalizing nature of the government acts worked to give poorer settlers an even chance east of the Missouri, it provided little benefit, and in fact compounded problems, on the Great Plains.408 There was a great disparity in the arability of the land

406 Quoted in Everett Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 128. Of course, Dick also correctly notes that “the editor overlooked the fact that Nebraska had implored Congress for the Timber Culture Act and that the department was merely attempting to administer that law.” 407 Semler surname file, CCHS. This clearly counters success rhetoric such as that found in the Nebraska Farmer, 9/1/1883: “We wish to call the attention of those living in western counties to the importance of making a fruit display at the state and county fairs….we often hear fruit is a failure west of the eastern tier of counties; hence the importance of a good showing from the western counties.” 408 “The ideology of agrarianism underlay an undifferentiated farm policy that did not address the reality of…class inequalities. In redistributing resources without sensitivity to these inequalities, the government compounded them.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 10. Such equalizing structures rarely, in fact, created their desired results. Failure marked as well the Dawes Act, intended to equalize Indian land ownership, and the 224

in Custer County; one person’s 160 acres could support their economic investment, while

another section was completely unfit for conventional cultivation. Thus, as each settler’s

production increased or decreased according to their land’s capability, the classless ideal

at the heart of the land acts and agrarian rhetoric was increasingly less tenable, and the area experienced a widening economic and cultural gap. Furthermore, the severity and unreliability of the Plains environment required capital in ways not experienced in more eastern farming areas. Most settlers had little or no cash reserves that would have enabled them to withstand the unpredictable outcome of production, and thus over the period of early settlement the area became marked by debt and transience. In fact,

“shortage of capital was one of the greatest obstacles to successful farm-making after

1865.”409 Debt, and its consequent transience, was also a result of the demands of

commercialized production that, regardless of agrarian rhetoric, increasingly defined

Plains agriculture. Technology, such as deep wells, planters, harvesters, reapers, and

binders, was required to cultivate the amount of land necessary to make the seemingly

resistant Plains landscape profitable. This technology required capital and, as was the

case for most settlers without cash reserves, “Each time the farmer substituted a machine

for a hand tool he usually went further into debt.”410 As Gilbert Fite has noted, “Diaries

“forty-acres-and-a-mule” scheme of Reconstruction in the post-war South. See William Deverell, “Fighting Words: The Significance of the American West in the History of the United States,” in A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 42. 409 Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 42. 410 Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 169. 225

of farmers show almost constant need for credit, and the phrase, ‘did not pay for it,’

occurs again and again.”411 Indeed, in Custer County “default in payment of notes was

the most common case to come before the court.”412

The free-market system of commercial agriculture also played havoc with settlers’

financial stability. Prices that farmers received for their produce were determined by markets outside of their locales, and outside of their control. In fact, agricultural markets

in the 1880s rarely coincided with production conditions in Custer County. In the early

years of the decade, when the hard work of farmers resulted in the greatest production,

they merely joined a world-wide boom in production and, because they relied on

international markets, their prices remained low.413 The lack of crop diversification,

created out of farmers’ need to produce the most cash-potential crop, left settlers even

more susceptible to price fluctuations of the market. Yet the decision to obtain credit was

not always one of economic desperation. Early in the decade, in the flush of the

settlement boom, loans were readily available, and even encouraged, by eastern investors

seeing sure profit in the development of western areas. Farmers, confident of their future

based on rhetoric and the productivity of the environment, borrowed in what was by all

accounts a wise decision to bring their investment into production more quickly or to

increase their land holdings in order to assure increased profits. However, when

production levels and markets ceased to fulfill the farmer’s expectations, the heavy debt

411 Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 216. 412 Sargent Nebraska, the Key to the Middle Loup Valley, Diamond Anniversary Celebration (Sargent, NE: unknown, 1959), 17. 413 An excellent discussion of the local experience of the market economy is Gilbert C. Fite, “Agricultural Pioneering in Dakota: A Case Study,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:3 (Summer 1981): 169-180. 226

load of the region began to take its toll. As the situation over the course of the 1880s has been succinctly summarized, “the wolf, in the form of a mortgage or bond holder, seemed

always to be lurking just outside the door. 414

These discrepancies in the land acts and markets were often coupled with

inadequacies on the part of the settlers’ preparation to undertaking homesteading. The

lure of free land, and the opportunity to establish one’s social and financial position that it

offered, enticed many settlers into an endeavor they were poorly prepared to manage.

While the majority of settlers were from rural areas just to the east of the Plains, a

significant number of them were not from farming backgrounds. Butcher himself was a

prime example of this. Having never plowed a field, or even rising out of bed before

5:00 am, Butcher came to Custer County with his family with every intention of making

his fortune farming. While his intentions lasted only two weeks, considerably shorter

than most, his decision to give up and try another line of work to support himself was one

he shared with many. Local accounts are replete with notices of settlers no better fitted to

farm. For instance, the Dutton family’s father was helpless from typhoid fever and the

mother was blind, so the two sons hired out to neighbors, and the family traded livestock

for work.415 The Griffith family, which had fled Cincinnati due to the financial panic

caused by the crash of railroad stock, was similarly ill-prepared. The father, a lawyer, was lame, the mother “frail,” and the daughter “simple minded.” Only an 18 year-old son

414 Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 217. In fact, Richard White notes that Western states led the union in public dept per capita by the 1880s. For instance, Kansas had the 5th highest public debt per capita of the nation, and its private debt was four times the national average. White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 263. 415 Dutton surname file, CCHS. 227

and a 16 year-old daughter were able to work. The daughter taught at a local school

while the son began alone to undertake the backbreaking work required of

homesteading.416

That many settlers were unfamiliar with farming is also indicated by numerous articles in the Nebraska Farmer and other local papers, such as a re-occurring one titled

“Hints for the Work of the Month,” that were clearly intended to help train such settlers.

While it seems rather unbelievable that people completely ignorant of farming would

begin such a daunting venture so easily, they had been assured success in the endeavor

not only in settlement propaganda, but in the national imagination as well.417 Because of this, new settlers’ were, unfortunately, concerned as much with failure due to the lack of initiative as they were with failure due to their inexperience. The wife of Carlyle Hunter wrote regularly back to her family in Pennsylvania, and her worries reveal the precarious situations in which such conditions (and expectations) placed settlers.

I wish Lyle had been content to stay at the cheese factory or found work in some eastern city. This idea of free land intrigues all men I guess, as there were three families on the train going to Omaha to outfit and go on to take land. They must have funds to draw on. If Lyle had only been willing to wait another year, we would have been in better financial condition. He said all the good land would be gone—he might be right. So many people leaving their homes and taking everything to new county….It means lots of hard work and sacrifice, and I wouldn’t mind that, but I am awesome of Lyle’s inexperience in farming and his lack of funds.418

416 Griffith surname file, CCHS. 417 The journalist Nellie Bly lamented the results of this situation, writing in 1895, “It is the desire to own a home to which is due the untold misery of the settlers in Nebraska. They were poor people who saw no chance of owning a home, and they read the flowery tales that emanate from the Western land boomer, and railroad’s employee….It is a horrible and ghastly delusion.” T.D. Nostwich, “Nellie Bly’s Account of Her 1895 Visit to Drouth-Stricken Nebraska and South Dakota,” Nebraska History 67:1 (Spring 1986): 61. 418 Hunter surname file, CCHS. 228

As one farmer observed, “The settlement of new lands, the ‘improvements in farm

implements and machines,’ the advent of the world market—all had ‘contributed to

ruinous competition.’”419

This “ruinous competition” became manifest when a systematic failure of the

Great Plains to support the form of agriculture introduced to it began in the late 1880s,

just as Butcher began creating his photographic archive. The cycle of rain that coincided

with the settlers’ movement onto the Great Plains in the early 1880s was followed in

1887 by a cycle of aridity. Its sporadic nature during the first few years toyed with the

hopes of the settlers. 1890 was a season of such severe drought that many settlers

received aid from the county and from societies in the East.420 As one settler explained,

“Over the county in July in ‘one fell swoop,’ mortgage companies foreclosed on 280

farms.”421 But then in 1891, after worrying early in the season over what appeared to be yet another drought in which even the wheat wasn’t sprouting, settlers produced a good crop as it started raining once every week. In 1892 settlers harvested a light crop, but not so lean that significantly more settlers felt compelled to quit than had in the several preceding years. The drought increased in 1893, pushing farmers into extreme straits as they struggled under its oppressive conditions.

In 1894 the drought reached its apex. Even though settlers had, like good businessmen, listened to the experts from the agricultural experiment stations and

419 Quoted in Adam Ward Rome, “American Farmers as Entrepreneurs, 1870-1900,” Agricultural History 56:1 (Jan 1982): 47. 420 In fact, the drought was so devastating to farmers already in debt that the state provided a total of $200,250 for relief. Fite, Farmers’ Frontier, 28. 421 Quoted in Annabel L. Beal, The Populist Party in Custer County, Nebraska: Its Role in Local, State, and National Politics, 1889-1906 (PhD Diss, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1965), . 229

cultivated to make a “dust blanket,” on July 25th strong, hot winds destroyed 96% of the

crops, and in some areas along the 100th meridian, which bisects Custer County, there

was 100% crop loss.422 Although typically low production is matched by increased

prices, due to the international nature of the markets the farmers participated in, the price

for what very little corn they produced was so low most settlers didn’t even sell it, using

it instead for fuel in the place of more expensive coal. Having strained their resources

during the preceding four or five years of increasingly harsh conditions and low prices,

settlers were unable to weather such losses. Early residents estimated that over 8,000

people abandoned their land in Custer County alone. In a single issue of the North Platte

newspaper there were 52 notices of sheriff’s auctions.423 The population in 27 counties

of Nebraska west of the 100th meridian dropped by 15,284 between 1890 and 1900, there

were 6,018 fewer farms, and many of the small, fledgling towns simply ceased to exist.424

Custer County settlers’ reminiscences are full of accounts of the continual, and

eventually complete, failure of crops, and the distress and instability such occurrences

caused. Milt Whitney, who arrived in 1887, recalled that he failed to realize a crop for

four of the first seven years he attempted to farm due to hail or drought. His wife noted

that he was “the most disappointed man living for the first three years” of his residence in

422 “In 1893 it was still dry and we raised a very poor crop. The sun looked like a ball of fire a great way off. Spring of 1894 looked bad, farmers could not quit, they planted and some prayed. They cultivated to make a dust blanket which was recommended by the experiment station, but you have got to have water to get a crop and that we did not have.” Semler surname file, CCHS. 423 Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 346. The conditions of this drought were significantly more extreme than those of the drought of the Great Depression of the late 1920 and 1930s. In addition, settlers from the 1890s had far fewer resources upon which to mediate the effects of drought. 424 Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 129. 230

the county. When asked why he came to a place so forlorn to him, he replied that he had

come out to investigate and just kept looking for the evidence of wealth and grand farming he had been told of. In his early years he,

Planted hundreds of almost any kinds of seedlings and cuttings, every year, hand carrying buckets of fertilizer and water to them, tenderly caring for and coaxing them to grow….He set strawberry and sweet potato plants by thousands….Years when his vegetable gardens did not fall victim to the elements or varied garden pests, the produce could rarely be surpassed….He remembered well, December 1894, when in desperation, they had packed up, and traveled, in two wagons, in the dead of winter, deep into Missouri, hoping for a new place they could settle. They followed many ‘leads’ only to find the place already taken….they even met people who had left Custer County earlier. This trek ended in disappointment and they returned to their sandhills home in Nebraska, early in April 1895.425

The account of Mary Jane Parish, who came to the county in 1884 with her husband,

similarly relates the strain such conditions put on her life:

There was a drouth in 90, everything burned up. We did not have a bushel of corn. Husband traded his land for horses and cattle. Two of the horses had to be shot (they had the Glanders) and we lost one calf and one cow broke her neck on the picket rope. He traded the horses and cattle that were left for a timber claim, three miles from Callaway, and in March 1891, we moved up there in a little sod house that was on Frankie Bond’s claim. Husband broke prairie on his claim and raised a crop of corn too but we were hailed out on the 1st of July and there was a freeze the 18th of September and it killed the corn, part of it was soft and froze….In October 1891, we moved down near Comstock, on the Ackerman place. From there we moved to Broken Bow. We had another drouth in 1893, and husband traded his timber claim for a span of mules, a team of horses, two wagons and harness. We put all our goods in the two wagons…and started east.426

Settlers had committed their entire resources of energy, hope, and money only to have it

lost in the discrepancy between the promise of settlement rhetoric and actual experience.

425 Whitney surname file, CCHS. 426 Mary Jane Parish, “Biography of Mary Jane Parish,” unpublished manuscript, Parish surname file, CCHS. 231

The painful disillusionment they experienced was most succinctly expressed in the favored slogan, deceptively humorous, chalked on the wagons headed out of Kansas, “In

God we trusted, in Kansas we busted.”427

While 1894 saw what can quite best be described as a mass exodus out of the

Plains, in fact, the area had been characterized from the very start of settlement by transience, in opposition to the insistent assertions of middle-class stability. As has been shown, much of this was due to the conflict between the requirements of the government acts, the settlers’ knowledge, and the environmental conditions. Only 52% of the homestead entries in Nebraska between 1863 and 1895 were carried through to the final patent.428 During the 1880s, when Butcher’s archive was created, only one in three homesteaders actually received the patent to their land.429 Or, better put, during the era

Butcher recorded, the government land acts had a paltry 30% success rate. Furthermore, a large number of final claims were made through commutation, in which, after 8 months of residence on the land, the settler paid $1.25/acre, rather than fulfilling the five year

427 David M. Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 23. Probably one of the most tangible effects of the failure of Plains settlement to live up to expectations is the organization of Custer County itself. The conventional size for counties in areas such as Nebraska, where surveying preceded settlement, was 36 townships of six miles square each. However, typically larger areas were first incorporated in a single county at the beginning of settlement, and then when the population increased with settlement, the county was divided into four smaller, conventional-sized counties. Following this system, Custer County was organized at the very beginning of its settlement into a county four times the size of the typical county. However, its location along the 100th meridian made it one of the first counties to fail to gain in population enough to divide it further. Its current “over-sized” existence embodies the failure experienced by its settlers to populate it in accordance with the expectations that led to its organization. 428 There were 131,561 entries on 18,393,541 acres of land, out of which 62,862 entries of 9,609,922 acres were given the final patent. Olson and Naugle, History of Nebraska, 160. 429Carter, Solomon Butcher, 13, See also Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” 645. 232

requirement to receive the land free.430 This suggests that those actually receiving their

land were settlers who had the cash to pay for it, thus further undermining the equalizing

purpose of the acts.

Residents of Custer County indicated their own awareness of this transience.

When introducing his chronicle of Callaway in Butcher’s history, settler George B. Mair noted that, “I find, upon investigation, that most of those who were here in the beginning and who took an active part in the organization of the town have removed to other parts.”431 Likewise, H.J. Shinn wrote about the settlement of West Union, that “many

other settlements were made in this precinct during the ‘80s, among them a floating population which has given way to subsequent permanent settlers.”432 Butcher himself

converted the stress of the transience of his life into humor when he wrote of his own

experience as a homesteader: “I was so unsettled that my chickens almost knew, when

they saw me coming, that they were expected to lie down on their backs and have their

feet tied.”433

While these accounts, written later, acknowledge the fluidity of settlement

culture, more contemporaneous accounts seem unable, or unwilling, to be so specific

about the psychological effects such instability created. The writer for the Custer County

Republican, quoted earlier, who noted that, “A man who arrived in Gordon in 1883 is

mentioned by the local press as an ‘old citizen.’ It is true enough, but sounds queerly,”

430 “Between 1882 and 1904 nearly 139,000 settlers commuted homesteads comprising 20,000,000 acres. In some years nearly 2/3 of the deeds were secured by commutation.” Shannon, “The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus,” 647. 431 George B. Mair, “Callaway,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 271. 432 H.J. Shinn, “West Union Precinct,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 247-248. 433 Butcher, Pioneer History, 153. 233

reveals not just the disconcerting experience of rapid settlement. More importantly, he

also reveals the disconcerting experience of a fluid community in which, while the population was increasing dramatically due to the influx of people, there was an equally consistent if lower rate of the removal of population.434 The stress of such fluidity

appears to find expression in feelings of loneliness often voiced by pioneer women.

Deborah Fink has considered the source of this loneliness “misunderstood.” “It is true,”

she states, “that sometimes pioneer families were quite isolated and did not see neighbors

very often. But this was the exception rather than the rule. Most settlers in the West

were not lonesome because they were beyond easy traveling distance to neighbors, but

because they desperately missed families, loved ones, and friends.”435 Indeed, there was

a very short time during which settlements in Custer County would have been remote

enough to have compelled wide-spread feelings of isolation. What seems more likely is

that the fluid nature of settlement, with few neighbors remaining long enough to establish

long-term localized communities engendered feelings of disconnection.

Because the work of the pioneer was not just environmental transformation, but

also social, transformation, settlers’ failure was considered in both economic and cultural

terms. Cultural failure to middle-class settlers was often determined by the presence of a

type of pioneer considerably less laudable than the healthy, middle-class yeoman farmer

celebrated in agrarian rhetoric. In fact, David Lowenthal convincingly argues that in the

late 19th century the “in built snobbery was still too potent to ennoble the 19th century

434 Custer County Republican, 8/25/1886. Fink notes this as well in Boone County, Nebraska: “Farmers deserted Boone County continuously from the first years of settlement, and the outflow increased in the 1890s. But succeeding waves of newcomers ensured population growth for the first 40 years of white settlement.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 44. 435 Fink, Agrarian Women, 216. 234

pioneer…up to the 1920s, pioneer heroes in fiction had to be aristocrats…only later did plain, middle-class folk become full-blooded exemplars of pioneer virtues.”436 Indeed, the typical 19th-century literary characterization of the pioneer built upon an alternate, and older, model of the pioneer as a squatter. The squatter, a western “cousin” to the country bumpkin found frequently in American genre images, is an infrequent figure in

American art, though George Caleb Bingham’s The Squatters [Fig. 236], 1850, is a well- known example.437 While the father and oldest son address the viewer rather ambiguously, seeming to waver between wariness and candid directness, the mother reveals her lack of etiquette in her failure to acknowledge her visitors, and instead continues washing clothes. The family clearly has no stove, as a pot cooks over an open fire in the distance. Their house is neat but very simple, with no domestic order or adornment in the dooryard to suggest an adherence to middle-class ideals. In fact, their clothes hang drying in public view. The father leans on a simple handmade walking stick in a weary posture. His ill-fitting jacket and patched trousers convey the family’s low economic status.

Theoretically, the various government land acts should have ended the existence of the squatter. By giving people whose existence had been relegated to the position of the squatter enough land to ensure their success, the acts should have effectively raised them out of their lowly position. Furthermore, based on Jeffersonian ideals, the spiritual benefits of owning and working the land would re-make them into the respectable rural

436 David Lowenthal, “The Pioneer Landscape: An American Dream,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winter 1982):, 9. 437 See Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); and in Elizabeth Johns, “Settlement and Development: Claiming the West,” in The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, ed. William H. Truettner (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 191-235. 235

middle class upon which the health of the country could depend. The cultural and

economic failure of the land acts to do this is embodied in the presence in Custer County

of pioneers who better fit the characterization of the squatter instead of the middle-class settler. Settlers’ lack of understanding of middle-class expectations crops up throughout the historical archive of the county; however, one in particular reveals the stress that the presence of squatter-type pioneers placed on the assertion of propriety by middle-class settlers. Settler Ed Bishop, a college-educated engineer, was one of the most refined men in the area, and his wife, also educated, taught in a small school south of Ansley. She stayed with a Brown family, and, with a certain amount of class anxiety coded in humorous condescension, family history records:

[Mrs. Brown] was a very kind, unselfish, affectionate and totally ignorant woman, who annoyed Mrs. Bishop by her use of “hit for the word “it” and “dur-gone.” She learned to adore Mrs. Bishop, “But I was never able to meet her on her level. Although I’m ashamed to say it.” Mrs. Brown was as homely as her sod house; but she was immaculately clean and did her best to please Mrs. Bishop, even though she had no understanding of the niceties of life. When Mrs. Bishop first arrived, Mrs. Brown, desiring to impress the teacher with things they had in common, told her that Mr. Brown was “always readin’ too dur-gone much. And hit ain’t so good,” she announced with mingled pride and disgust, “to have a dur-gone man like that when ya got kids ta feed and plantin’ to do.” Mrs. Bishop glanced around to discover this fabulous library, because she too was an inveterate reader. “Why,” beamed Mrs. Brown, “He’s read the ‘Life of P.T. Barnum’ clean, plumb through twic’t.” Mrs. Brown seemed encouraged by the pleasant look on Mrs. Bishop’s face. “Nowadays, ef there’s a baseball game within five miles,” she confided triumphantly, “they always want Harve to come and be emperor.”438

Even those from the rural middle class worried about the stress the conditions of

the Great Plains put on their own adherence to proper middle-class expectations. For

438 Bishop surname file, CCHS. 236

instance, Mattie Oblinger wrote back to her family, “I expect you think we live miserable

because we are in a sod house,” and likewise, John Runyon’s wife insisted that her

husband “put in a board floor. I remember my mother saying she never had to live in a house with a dirt floor.”439 Mary Severyns Haumont desperately struggled to save

enough money to buy a wedding band for herself before the family returned to Belgium

for a visit “because she could not bear to face her relatives and tell them that they had

been so hard up they were not yet able to afford so much as a simple wedding ring.”440

All too often, the stress of brining an uncooperative land into cultivation brought even the middle-class into conditions mirroring the poverty, ill-health, and lack of domestic propriety of the squatter.441 Poverty was, in fact, the most common

characteristic commented upon by eastern visitors (as opposed to the writers of

ideological rhetoric) who noted the actual presence of settlers. For instance, one traveler

wrote that:

Beyond Fort Kearny….Poverty was exhibited in all its rags and filth on the plains, and it was distressing to notice the many that were suffering from the want of clothing and a sufficiency to eat….many had no suitable clothing for their feet, their sad remnants of shoes being braced up and held together by strips of cotton cloth. Their blankets had been pawned for bread.442

439 Oblinger papers, NSHS; Runyan surname file, CCHS. 440 Severyns and Haumont surname files, CCHS. 441 For instance, Stephanie Sarver has noted that in “Up the Coulee,” “the image of the idyllic farm is undone with our first view of the McLane farm which is dominated by a muddy barnyard populated by cows,” and in “A Branch Road,” the female protagonist is found “living in frank poverty, amidst broken furniture in dreary unpainted rooms that swarm with flies, while surviving on scant food of poor quality.” Additionally, In Garland’s short story “A Day’s Pleasure,” the mother gives in to brutality due only to her sheer physical exhaustion, and her children, responding to the same stresses, act like animals who “snarl and snap like cats and dogs.” Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 58-59. 442 Clark, “Trip to Pike’s Peak,” (late 1870s), manuscript in History file, CCHS. 237

As Deborah Fink has noted, “Many mothers living in farm households simply could not meet the cultural standards for mothering….Agrarian ideology failed mothers except as a sentimental sop.”443 Many homesteads lacked outdoor toilets, clean wells, and the houses

were poorly heated or ventilated. Compounded by a poor diet, many families were

stricken by diseases and accidents. Fink recounts that one Nebraska doctor, “who tended

a family in which ten children all had typhoid fever insisted that the family drain its well.

They found corncobs, corn husks, dead rats, and mice, and a dead rabbit in the well.”444

Such desperate conditions left children inordinately vulnerable to the harsh climate; one

study has shown that over half the accidental child deaths on western farms and ranches

was due to exposure to environmental conditions.445

The settler’s success in establishing cultural and domestic respectability was

further impinged upon by their struggle to achieve a profit working in the extractive

modes of commercial farming that they had absorbed from progressive rhetoric. The

sanctity of the domestic sphere of the family as the moral and spiritual center of their

civilizing endeavor was increasingly worn down by the demands put on the entire family

as an extractive work team. If Butcher’s archive records the definition of family

members in terms of work, as was examined in chapter four, it also reveals the more

insidious, and subtle, results when this “work team” was pushed to its limits in order to

produce a profit. The result was, in effect, the transferal of the violence used against the

443 Fink, Agrarian Women, 156. 444 Fink, Agrarian Women, 152. 445 See West, Growing Up with the Country, 223. The deaths were due to drowning, snakebite, lightning, freezing, and tornado. 238

land into a mode of “self-violence” inflicted by the settlers against their own psychic and

physical beings. The assault on childhood is the most frequently expressed manifestation

of this violence.

A Kansas farmer wrote that his two year, three-month old son could “run all over,

fetch up cows out of the stock fields, or oxen, carry in stove wood and climb in the corn

crib and feed the hogs and go on errands down to his grand ma’s.”446 Hannah Johnson

recorded that her three-year-old daughter dampened clothes for ironing, picked feathers

from butchered chickens, dried dishes, and laid fires.447 At the age of 11, Oklahoma

settler Fannie Eisele and her brother plowed their family’s quarter section in six weeks.448

Eleven-year-old Marie Gebbhart and her 13 year-old brother drove a springboard wagon from Broken Bow to Kearney to buy groceries and a 16-foot timber to use as a hay sweep.449 Harold Grint remembered that when he was eight he “was given a team of

horses and had to harrow down the listed corn rows. I and my brother, Sydney, had to

herd the cattle up in the hills and with no hats or shoes. Mother always reminded us to

watch for cactus and rattlesnakes….then as I grew big enough to reach the handles, I got

to use the cultivator.”450

While such remembrances are usually offered in a positive light, the destruction

of the sanctity and health of the domestic world, is also conveyed. For instance, Harold

Grint’s mother’s concern about his exposure to rattlesnakes, due to the economic

446 Quoted in West, Growing Up with the County, 74. 447 Fink, Agrarian Women, 144. 448 West, Growing Up with the Country, 74. 449 Freighting file, CCHS. 450 Harold Grint, “Farming – as I remember it,” Sargent, Nebraska, Centennial, 1885-1983, 62. 239

necessity of his working and the inability to clothe him adequately for that work, was not unfounded, as the most common cause of accidental death among farming and ranching children was, in fact, snake bites.451 Nebraska author Marie Sandoz wrote that:

All of us knew children who put in 12, 14-hour days from March to November. We knew 7, 8 year old boys who drove four-horse teams to the harrow, who shocked grain behind the binder all day in heat and dust and rattlesnakes, who cultivated, hoed and weeded corn, and finally husked it out before they could go to school in November. And even then there were the chores morning and evening, the stock to feed, the cows to milk by lantern light…the daughter…perhaps baking up a 49-pound sack of flour every week by the time she was 10.452

One young Boone County settler, who worked in the fields as soon as she was big

enough to handle the horses and machinery, expressed her fear of the tasks, recounting

that:

The hay rake was the most dangerous thing I rode on because you had to trot the horses to get it to dump right….If you’d have fallen off you’d have fallen right down into that rake thing….It was kind of scary….I think that was the job I hated the worst, except driving a stacker team. That was what we always started with, because it wasn’t supposed to be a very difficult job….It was kind of hard….You just had to do it because Dad couldn’t afford to hire help. I was the oldest and of course the younger girls did it too after I got a little older.453

Writer Hamlin Garland, also raised on a homestead on the Plains, wrote of his own experiences that, at age 10 he “had been taught to handle bundles of thoroughly dried

barley shocks; at age 14 he was one of five men on a crew binding straw after the reaper

had passed” and that, “he and his brother harrowed and cross-harrowed the fields until

451 West, Growing Up with the County, 223. 452 Quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 143. 453 Quoted in Fink, Agrarian Women, 143. 240

‘tears of rebellious rage’ creased the dust on their faces.”454 In youth, Mari Sandoz

herself became blind in one eye from being required to herd cattle all day over a snow-

covered terrain.

Settlers on the Plains were pinched between the rhetoric of success, the parameters of the lands acts, and the environment of the Plains. Their actions can best be understood as their use—sometimes desperate—of the most viable recourses or accessible tools they felt could help them exist in a world defined by the disparity of these forces. Sometime the only available “tools” were family members. However, the settlers’ frequent failure to establish domestic or economic stability in the face of such forces was not perceived of as a consequence of their situation, but rather as a result of a problem with their personal characters. Farmers on the Plains fought an uphill battle with the deeply established success ideology naturalized in statements that, for instance, blithely asserted, “Very few farmers ever ‘fail in business,’ while in mercantile pursuits ninety-five out of every hundred fail.”455 This is due, in part, to the fact that national

identity, even the very health of democracy, had been invested in settlers’ success.

Therefore their failure suggested a similar failure in the nation’s very character.456 The nation was not willing to admit a systematic breakdown of its ideals and its self-image, so the failure was projected onto the character of the settler. Additionally, the attribution of settlers’ failure to their personal characters was due to the popular acceptance of Social

454 Mary Ellen Jones, Daily Life on the 19th-century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 194. 455 “Flocking to the Cities,” Nebraska Farmer, 11/15/1883. 456 As Deborah Fink explained, settlers “were given the land, military protection, and economic support needed to build their homes and establish control. Government investments in this group of people were supposed to succeed; the settlers would return their wealth and strength to the country that supported them. They were the people who would realize the destiny of the U.S.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 8. 241

Darwinism. Adherence to such beliefs was so strong that, “even the severe depressions

of the 1870s and 1890s, each of which lasted half a decade and threw millions of

Americans out of work, did not shake the general middle-class view that the poor were

essentially responsible for their own dire conditions.”457

Newspapers and periodicals geared to the farmer were full of articles that

attributed agrarian failure to various negative personal qualities in the farmer. For

instance, a Nebraska Farmer article titled, “Successful Farming in Nebraska,” blames

crop failure on the farmer’s lack of knowledge rather than on the in-appropriateness of

the environment for the crop he had been encouraged to plant:

Observations and personal experience have established the fact to an actual demonstration, that the farmer who properly prepares his ground, plants the right kind of seed correctly…at an early season…cultivates his crops well, will not only have a seed time, but will rejoice in an abundant harvest. Whoever saw a failure of a piece of small grain or corn in Nebraska when sown or planted early?....Some farmers (and you may tell how many, and what class of farmers they are) do not plow deep enough for corn; plant it too thick, and too many acres of it, for the force they have to properly cultivate it.458

Laziness was another frequently cited cause for agrarian failure. The article, “Fruit Tree

Planting,” in the Custer County Republican, attributes the inability of settlers to plant

trees successfully in Nebraska not to the climate, but rather to the indolence of the settler:

“During the coming season many farmers and land owners will plant—not set out, fruit

trees; with a little dirt thrown around them they will be left until next fall, when they will

be found dead or dried up, and the nurseryman, soil, climate, or anything convenient, but

457 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998), 120. Such beliefs were given further credence in the popular self-help rhetoric of the day in which “a man could make of himself what he would, and…the individual who failed had only himself to blame.” John G. Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-made Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.), 44. 458 “Successful Farming in Nebraska,” Nebraska Farmer, November 1877. 242

the planter, are subjects of unlogical abuse.”459 A similar article presents a meeting between two potato farmers, one with a good crop and one with a “poor scabby” crop.

The poor crop farmer remarks, “‘You are a lucky man.’ ‘No,’ replied the other, ‘there is no luck about it; it is all hard work and good management.’ This is always the truth, and it applies to every kind of work.”460

The perceived lack of initiative and business acumen, central to a farmer’s identity as a progressive American, was also attacked. One article states, “Ignorance, bad management, and laziness are the principal faults in farmers failing to make money,” and another attributes failure to the farmer’s lack of “judgment or industry.”461 A Nebraska

Farmer article titled, “Failure Among Farmers,” cited failure due to poor business sense in not keeping track of accounts and debts and credits.462 Another article warned:

As a rule, you don’t want to rent a farm to a man who has been over two years in Nebraska without owning a farm for himself. A man who fails to get a piece of land—a home of his own—within that time, is not a fit man to farm your land. A professional land renter is worse, if possible, than that average tin peddler.463

Even the settlers’ transience and inability to allocate the psychological and physical energy necessary to establish a protected domestic or cultural sphere were read as signs of a dubious and unstable character rather than as signs of exhaustion and poverty. In “Make Farm Life Attractive,” the writer knowingly declares that “The

459 “Fruit Tree Planting,” Custer County Republican, 1/18/1883. 460 “Good farm Work Pays,” Custer County Republican, 9/3/1885. 461 Both quoted in Adam Ward Rome, “American Farmers as Entrepreneurs, 1870-1900,” Agricultural History 56:1 (Jan 1982): 45. 462 “Failure Among Farmers,” Nebraska Farmer, February 1879. 463 Nebraska Farmer, April 1879. 243

improvements that do most to…render farm life attractive…are within reach of every

enterprising farmer….Most of the drudgery and monotony of farm life results from mere

stupidity.”464 Likewise, another article relates the writer’s encounter with a family on

their way from Nebraska to Texas:

They had come to Lancaster County about three years ago when, all at once the notion struck them to migrate to a milder clime, and in order to gratify their whim, the last pig was sold to pay railroad fare. No complaint of poor health, in fact they were about as healthy looking family as we often see, but the natural desire to change from one place to another, was keeping them ragged and dirty. As we looked at them, we were reminded of the saying: ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss.’465

What largely determined success or failure, in fact, was the particular concurrent

alignment, or misalignment, of arrival date; additional available income in the form of

cash reserves, family support, or other valuable skills (such as blacksmithing or well-

drilling); and the presence of an extended communal network of family or friends.466 As

nearly every historian of western settlement has noted, “the ultimate success of thousands

of pioneer farmers depended upon whether crop conditions were favorable during the first two or three years of settlement while they were getting established and building up their meager supply of capital.”467 This was certainly played out in the successes and

failures of Custer County settlers.

464 “Make Farm Life Attractive,” Nebraska Farmer, March 1878. 465 Nebraska Farmer, 4/1/1883. 466 As Elliot West has noted, “Despite appearances, the western migration was never an atomized scattering….there could be quite a pool of related pioneers….Oregon’s rural frontier estimated that 40% of its families were linked to at least one other in the area, though turned around, this shows that six out of ten families were apparently on their own.” West, Growing Up with the Country, 19. Interestingly, the percentages closely match those of homesteaders receiving final patents to their land. 467 Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 221. In his introduction, page ix, Fite also acknowledges, “Two or three years of proper luck and proper climate allowed a newcomer to master his environment and launch himself 244

Settlers who mainly farmed and came slightly earlier than the peak in 1883-84

had an exceptional corn crop in 1880 and 1881 and an excellent market that gave them the ability to purchase implements in cash rather than on time, enabling them to better and more quickly bring their land into stable production. Widely acknowledged successful settlers who focused on livestock interests, such as Swain Finch, survived the bad 1881 winter that killed most of the county’s livestock because he was supported by his extensive Iowa holdings.468 Nels Lee identified himself as a homesteader, but he was

also a carpenter and well-driller and “the extra money was used for equipment and

supplies for his farm.”469 Probably the most insightful account of projecting the elements

that determined success, such as chance and outside factors, onto personal qualities is in a biographical essay of Charles Chrisman, whose success was certainly due in part to his acumen, but also equally the presence of his extended family (his brother was Joseph

Chrisman), his timely arrival (before the drought of 1887 and after the devastating winter of 1881), and possession of a healthy cash reserve.

Charles Chrisman…came in 1883…and turned his attention to the raising of cattle, hogs and horses, in which field of enterprise he made rapid and satisfactory progress. Mr. Chrisman was so determined and persevering that he permitted no discouragements to affect him, and he was aggressive enough to overcome the obstacles which appeared in his path. While many of his neighbors were bewailing the lack of timber and the necessity of living in makeshift homes, mostly of sod, while they sheltered their

on the path to success.” Also, an insightful presentation of this on an individual’s level is Fite’s, “Agricultural Pioneering in Dakota.” 468 One Hundred Years on the South Loup: A History of the Arnold Community from 1883-1983, compiled by Norene Hall Mills (Callaway, NE: Loup Valley Queen, 1983), 12. 469 Lee surname file, CCHS. Nels also increased his income as a mortgagee to other settlers. Often men would work away from the farm, leaving the overseeing and maintenance to the wife and children, and send back their additional income, returning to help harvest. See Joni L. Kinsey, Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairie (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 105. In Custer County, many men worked in railroad construction. Robert Farritor worked back East in the mines. See Farritor surname file, CCHS. 245

stock, grain and machinery as best they could—Mr. Chrisman hitched up his team and made numerous trips to Kearney, whence he hauled lumber to his homestead, where he erected a comfortable house and also built good structures for the protection of his livestock and farm products, implements, etc. As his finances permitted, he added to his land holdings from time to time, and he is today the owner of 800 acres of valuable Custer County land—all accumulated through his own efforts.470

7.2 Acting like Failure

The presence of failure is able to be denied by Butcher and his subjects because,

during the period up to the 1890s, it was suppressed by the acceptance of the rhetoric of

success by the community. Still flush from the preceding “boom years,” the community

as a whole continued to appear successful, and individuals typically judged their own

situations based on their identification with that community. Deborah Fink found this

sense of identification active as well with women in Boone County whose lives did not fit

the image of success they believed in:

That her own life experience was not consistent with the rural ideal did not lead her to question the ideal but rather to suppress her words [she had been an abused wife of an alcoholic]. She suggested that ‘nobody’s’ life quite matched the ideal, but the image of a close nuclear family and a comfortable social environment remained [for her] a true representation of rural culture.471

470 Chrisman surname file, CCHS. 471 Fink, Agrarian Women, xviii. In discussing the farm crisis of the 1980s, Fink touches on an issue at the heart of my own attempts to give visual agency back to elements in Butcher’s archive that were silenced by the narrative of agrarian settlement Butcher and his subjects wished to tell. For instance, Fink writes, “Agrarian ideology—the celebration of farming and farmers as the heart of American society—permeated the Hansen household, particularly in the context of farm crisis politics of the 1980s. Yet it meshed poorly with the lives of many rural women we knew. It left much of rural women’s experience unexplored and seemed to prohibit the questions we needed to ask. Its intensity engulfed and silenced women’s voices,” page xv. 246

This mode of denial was maintained through the settlers’ assertions of prosperity and success to the disregard of elements that might contradict their beliefs, or through the settlers’ participation in a successful community to the disregard of the difference of their own condition to that.

Nonetheless, failure is allowed a visual voice in the archive due to Butcher’s own need for success. While a pioneer history was always his main goal, Butcher was dependent on the small fees he received from the individual prints sold to the settlers to sustain him until its intended publication. Therefore, Butcher pushed to photograph any and all settlers from whom he could make a sale, regardless of their apparent appropriateness for the history he wished to tell. It seems likely he had no intention of including every portrait he photographed, even had his book been published in a timely fashion. However, by photographing these settlers, their experience and the elements active in their experience have become part of the complicated content of the archive.

Sometimes, failure speaks the most strongly in the archive through absence.

Since success is visually reified through the emblematic nature of certain objects—such as fine furniture, china, clothing, or books—the viewer becomes conditioned to read the archive in this emblematic mode. The objects are not merely adornments, but rather the necessary tools by which the meaning of the image is conveyed. When such objects are missing, their absence is quite noticeable. The portrait becomes resistant to the kind of emblematic interpretation clearly desired overall by the archive. For instance, in “New

Settlers on the Prairie” East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 237], 1887, there are no implements or tools of extraction to convey action; there is no windmill to suggest “a

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battle won,” only a cistern. The cropped landscape in the distance on each side of the house shows no indications of cultivation or fencing to suggest its conversion from unending topography to property. The family holds no objects to suggest their connection to a lineage or their adherence to cultural standards. Their house has only one small opening for light or ventilation, and that has only a screen to keep the elements out.

In comparison to more “successful” images, the family here seems somehow emotionally adrift. Left with simply the people to convey meaning, their vulnerability becomes the most effectively communicated message of the portrait. Likewise in Southwest Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 238], 1892, the family’s only window to their long house shows makeshift repairs and there in no indication of the figures’ ability to transform the land.

Though they convey a sense of coherence and familial bond, they line up in front of the house with no indication of refinement. The children wear dirty, ragged clothing, and they are all barefoot. These two family portraits present tangible evidence of the disparity between the agrarian rhetoric they had trusted and the reality they experienced.

Even when settlers did present appropriate emblems to signify their success in establishing middle-class culture, their effectiveness was often diminished by the stress homesteading placed on the family. The result is an underlying visual tension that aptly communicates the difficult balance settlers attempted to maintain in order to keep a sense of respectability; the images, like the settlers’ lives, are ambiguous at best in conveying cultural success or failure. For instance, in West of Callaway, Nebraska [Fig. 82], 1892, an impressive family bible rests on the father’s knee. However, as the male head of his family, his lack of shoes undermines the authority and propriety the book attempts to

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communicate. In J.W. Rodgers, northeast Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 239], 1886, the

couple are posed close to the house in their scrubbed and pressed finest. However, with

the lack of anything to mediate between the dirt of the sod walls and its sagging eaves

and the crisp whites of the couple’s outfits, the portrait is visually disconcerting.

Likewise, in Theodore and Mary Frischkorn in front of their sod home, which was built

in 1878 [Fig. 240], 1886, the family sits in the dooryard of their house. The yard is

unembellished and the baby sits on the ground in equal proximity to her family and the

swine that have free reign in the space. Again, in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 232],

1888, the family has failed to create a domestic sphere, and in fact debris and a

miscellany of objects—old pots and pans, worn out boots, broken handles, and old pieces of burlap—have been tossed about the dooryard, effectively countering any assertions of

everyday middle-class tidiness. If “Domestic reformers…viewed a properly embellished

home as a stable moral center in a society wracked by constant and often worrisome change,” 472 then the homes presented here speak more effectively to the instability of

change than as an antidote to it.

Butcher’s archive contains direct evidence of the widespread and continual

change experience by settlers in Custer County. In Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer

County [Fig. 241], 1886, A family of emigrants entering the South Loup Valley in Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 242], 1891, and Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 243], 1886, Butcher photographed emigrants as they passed through the area (in the first two images) or after they just arrived (the last image). The various levels

472 Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, “A Telling Tirade: What was the Controversy Surrounding 19th Century Midwestern Tree Agents Really All About?,” Agricultural History 72:4 (Fall 1998): 679. 249

of preparedness also speak to the variety of settlers who migrated to the Plains. The first

family, identified as the Pitts family, has brought several teams of horses, milk cows, and chickens to start their claim. The second portrait, the Tucks, presents a family with no additional livestock but with indications of middle-class status as they pose in front of a well equipped wagon with good harnesses and team. The group in the last portrait has only oxen and a dangerously thin team of horses in makeshift harnesses. The older man in the front seems to eye Butcher’s camera suspiciously, and the male on the back wagon sits unprotected except for a patched blanket. While the transience of the area is explicit in these images, it is evident as well in others, such as Chrisman's Ranch, Lillian Creek,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 158], 1887, in which the ruins of two abandoned sod houses can be seen in the righthand side of the scene.

Often the presentation of success was undermined inadvertently by Butcher himself. For instance, in Lanterman, south of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 244], 1886, Butcher frames the family with the livestock they have brought into the photograph to indicate their wealth. While the family presents themselves as every bit respectable in terms of dress and comportment, the proximity of the bull’s head, with his curved and pointed horns, to the diminutive baby in its delicately laced Christening gown creates a troubling visual tension. The brute form of the bull conceptually, if not physically, seems to threaten the most vulnerable embodiment of moral and domestic hopes. Likewise, in Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 245], 1892, Butcher has posed the family inside a fence they have erected to establish a protected domestic

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sphere. However, the composition transforms the very action of bringing the

environment under their control into a visually defensive position. They appear to be

hiding behind the fence from the forces outside it.

Not only did Butcher’s unfortunate sense of composition frequently reveal the

tenuous hold settlers had on success, and thus the increasing experience of failure during

the period from 1886 to the early 1890s, but his process did as well. Frequently settlers

appear in less than their best because Butcher showed up unannounced to offer their

portrait, leaving them without time to prepare. In so doing, the portraits reveal the

demands that the daily work of homesteading put on the families’ lives. For instance, in

Cattle Scene, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 246], 1889, the large herd of shorthorn

cattle, healthy horses, two-story frame house and large barns, carriage and children’s

toys, as well as the display of the purebred Hereford bull as an emblem of the farmer’s

fine breeding program, all suggest quite effectively the family’s success.473 However,

this is countered by the ragged appearance of the work clothes worn by the settler himself. His jacket and trousers are dirty and terribly torn, his shoes are ill-fitting, and his hat has several holes in it. His presentation gives voice, amidst every element of well- being, to the physical toll on homesteaders that establishing success took, and thus casts doubt on the assurance of easy success naturalized by agrarian ideology. That this is likely a result of Butcher’s process of “just showing up” and catching the family in the middle of work (with little time to spare to “clean up”) is indicated by the same

473 Throughout this dissertation, my identification of farming implements, practices, and livestock (such as the Hereford bull) has been aided by the knowledge of my brother-in-law, Tom Rubenthaler (who farms his family’s homestead land just southwest of Custer County), brother-in-law, Brent Coffey (who also farms his family’s land), and his father Bob Coffey (who returned from World War II to farm still using only horse power). 251

appearance of this man and his family in the left side of a harvesting scene in Threshing

crew shown using horse power to thresh wheat, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 247],

1887.

Similar signs of stress are apparent in Huckleburry or Hucklebury sod house,

Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 110], 1886, in which the healthy larder against the house and the velvet and lace outfit on the boy who enjoys his rocking horse are countered by the signs of work in the dirty and worn sleeves of the mother’s dress, and the extremely tattered and ripped condition of the father’s sweater. Even more telling of the demands of everyday homesteading is “Three motherless children and a caved-in soddy” [Fig. 248], 1887, in which Butcher arrived the day Mr. Barnes’s roof

had caved in due to a driving rain during the night. His wife had passed away the year before and, with no indications of domestic or economic transformation other than three horses and a wagon, the white towel caught in the rafters over his door seems to suggest an ominous portent of his little family’s future. The futile situation suggested by the towel is even more poignant given the inscrutable expression of Mr. Barnes and the solidarity of comfort in the linked arms of his three barefoot children.474

While Mr. Barnes had been left barely equipped to wrest success from the Plains,

others arrived (due to the irresistible enticement of free land) in a position unsuited to

establishing control over the landscape. For instance, with no other venues for economic

advancement, or even economic stability, many widows brought their families to the

474 The failure of homesteaders due to the climate of the Great Plains was frequently a theme in Hamlin Garland’s writing. As Stephanie Sarver has noted, “Haskins in ‘Under the Lion’s Paw’ has no power over the pestilence that drives him to rent a farm, nor does Jason Edwards have control over the hail storm that destroys his wheat crop. Their capacity to exercise their will is limited by forces over which they have no control.” Sarver, Uneven Land, 73. 252

Plains to homestead. Typical of these widows is Mrs. Debusk, portrayed in Mrs. Debusk,

West Union, Nebraska [Fig. 249], 1886. She was already in her late 50s when she

brought her family to Custer County, and the vulnerability created by this decision is displayed in her family’s portrait. Mrs. Debusk stands holding one of two milk cows that, with the wagon to the left, are the only indications of economic support, though at

least one of her daughters had also taken a claim to help support the family. Often

income made by widows was through selling milk and butter, though it was a meager amount upon which to live. The family’s privations are conveyed through the bare feet

of both Mrs. Debusk and her crippled son. Two of her children had died the year before,

and her son would die only months after their portrait was taken.475 Butcher’s decision to

photograph on the homestead, and his process of photographing as he came through

regardless, often, of the state of the homestead at the time, frequently captured such

burdens in a way that the family could have disguised if they had come into a studio for

their portrait. Given the poor health conditions of significant numbers of homesteads, it

is no surprise that one study has shown the most common cause of death for teenagers on

homesteads to be typhoid fever.476 Frequently when females contracted the fever, their

hair was cut off.477 This seems to be the likely cause of the daughter’s unusually cropped

hair in Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 198], 1886, as well as her apparently having been carried outside for the photograph

(her feet are perfectly clean in the midst of mud).

475 Debusk surname file, CCHS. 476 West, Growing Up with the Country, 221. 477 This was a common action, but see, for instance, Sarah Jane Booknau to May Lovelace, 9/12/1897, when discussing the death of her niece from typhoid fever, that “Mrs. Luch cut her hair all off only left it about 4 inches long when she first got sick.” Frischkorn surname file, CCHS. 253

The pressure to force the land into production in the quantity and quality required to make ends meet compelled many families to rely on the work of their children.

However, in so doing, families allowed the physical and psychological burden of fighting against this impending failure increasing fall on the shoulders of children. Butcher’s

archive records the failure of the family to protect and nurture their children. For

instance, in Ira Lundy near Cummings Park, West Union, Township, Custer County [Fig.

182], 1886, and J. Petit sod house near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 183],

1886, the boys, down to the very youngest all wear long pants, disintegrating the

protected status of childhood that short pants represented. Hamlin Garland recounted that

“even my eight year old brother looked like a miniature man with his full-length overalls,

high-topped boots and real suspenders.”478 Indeed, these young boys embody the

“miniature men” Garland saw in his own young brother. Yet, this intrusion on childhood

is mediated by the general health of the family as a whole. Defining the children through

their modes of work is conveyed in still positive light. However, as poverty and failure

have a greater voice in the content of a portrait, this generally positive note disappears.

For instance, in W. Keys, north of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska. [Fig. 250],

1886, the family poses without a mother present to give even the most basic suggestion of domestic warmth. Their precarious economic situation is evident in the lack of implements or even a well (the boy stands next to their cistern). The father has only oxen for his work. The milk cows have the run of the dooryard, and it is clear the pigs do as well, as they have dug into the side of the house, thus causing the wall to require the

478 Quoted in Jones, Daily Life, 198. Eliot West has also noted that “young girls moved into the realm of men—herding, harvesting, and hunting,” similarly weakening the division of gender upon which female domestic propriety was based. West, Growing Up with the County, 74. 254

additional support of a brace. However, the effects of poverty are most evident in the children. The boy stands, gaunt, in his long pants, and the young daughter lowers her head as she addresses the camera, her posture and shoulders slumped forward in a stance that already conveys the strain of overwork.

The settlers’ visual assertions of success in establishing middle-class society on the Plains was, in many ways, so aggressive due to their battle to define the pioneer in the celebrated terms of agrarian rhetoric rather than in the demeaning terms of the squatter.

However, Butcher’s archive recorded the presence of the squatter type. For instance, in

Orson Cooley in northeast Custer County on the county line near Coolyton Post Office in

Loup County [Fig. 251], 1887, Mr. Cooley poses proudly with the barefoot widow he married through a newspaper ad in total disregard for Victorian propriety. Likewise, in

Joe Harris, West Union, T.P., Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 252], 1886, the widow

Harris stands proudly next to her son, her pipe clenched firmly between her teeth, displaying her complete irreverence for the expectations of her middle-class neighbors.

Though these images suggest what had to have been for the community of Custer

County, if objectively observed, a humorous convergence of cultural and social expectations—certainly it seems more than one local baseball game likely had an

“emperor”—the numbing effects of failure, both cultural and economic, are most apparent in the lives of the rural poor recorded by Butcher’s camera.

In John Murphy, Walworth, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 253], 1886, Mr.

Murphy’s posture and his guarded glance mirror those of the father in Bingham’s painting, The Squatters. The family’s chickens peck around the scrap wood, saddle, and

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other debris that has been left to litter the dooryard. The young son, in patched trousers and bare feet, has brought the horse into the portrait to show the family’s holdings, as the father has the oxen, yet in so doing, what the family has included instead is what they don’t have. The horse is frighteningly thin, its rib, pelvic and backbones noticeably protruding under its skin. The young daughter stands smiling at the camera while she, according to Butcher “catches a flea,” unaware of the etiquette standards she breaks in alleviating her discomfort. Likewise, in “Just Managing” East Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 254], 1887, the family’s struggle is even too pressing for Butcher to ignore in his title. The father’s hands appear oddly out of proportion due to his extreme gauntness. It seems clear the family has dressed in their best, though the simple cotton fabric shows the wear of many washings. The house is in desperate need of repair, and the window, with its broken panes, only covers half the opening. In what appears to be an attempt to meet cultural expectations, the son has a small flower pinned to his shirt, and the two daughters each hold one in their hands. However, their clear discomfort reveals their unfamiliarity with such cultural demonstrations. The flower pulls at the thin fabric of the boy’s shirt, and the two girls seem unsure of how, exactly, they are to present their emblems of femininity. The oldest holds hers out stiffly at her chest and the younger one anchors herself to the elk antlers for reassurance.

In images such as these, the pioneer is revealed to be degraded physically and mentally rather than ennobled as was promised. While the settlers’ attempts to bring

Custer County under cultural and economic cultivation was met with various elements of failure, and this failure is given voice in Butcher’s archive, the more pervasive and

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insidious breakdown recorded in his archive is the failure of nationalistic rhetoric to accommodate the experiences of settlers, who, trusting this rhetoric, pushed onto the

Great Plains. As William Deverell has succinctly stated:

Failure and the description of failure, particularly when the failure can be ascribed to victimization, tell us more than succeeding and accomplishing and making it work. Why? Because success is so casually expected, tossed off as a given in the discourse between state and individual, between government and governed. Surely this was the suggestion in the codified conversation between the nation and the citizen, a dialogue replete with obligatory nods toward democratic ideals and meritocratic ideals, open access, and free exchange. Take up the yoke of Manifest Destiny, the state exhorts the people. Go West, own land, shed dependence, succeed. But when that equation breaks down, it signals one of two things. If it fails in isolated instances, we can marginalize failure as anecdotal, an easily dismissed outlier, unimportant. But when the arrangement breaks down in a systematic fashion, or looks unnervingly like a systematic pattern, there may be something else going on. Then the entire experiment—democracy, egalitarianism, the American Dream—is brought into question.479

Given the systematic failure within which Custer County settlers worked to meet even

their most elemental needs, the judgments made about these settlers that suggested their

poverty and failure resulted from inadequacies of their character had to have been

especially biting. That not more images in Butcher’s archive are so disturbingly

overwhelmed by failure when, in fact, one in three endeavors he photographed would end

so, not only attests to the profound determination and industry of the settlers, but to the

mockery and blindness that increasingly characterized the rhetoric in which they

believed.

479 William Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 43. 257

CHAPTER 8

THE WESTERNER

8.1 Defining a Westerner

Settlers on the Great Plains failed to realize the success promised them, both

economically and culturally, by the government land acts. The agrarian ideal of

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer was incompatible with the commercialized nature of

agriculture in the late 19th century. And, bringing the Plains landscape into cultivation

incurred greater debt than most settlers, given the extremes of the environment, were able

to manage. The examination of these conditions, and their visualization in Butcher’s

archive, suggests that part of the “problem” the settlers experienced with this entire venture was the larger condition of colonization that shaped the relationship of the area in which the settlers worked, and the endeavor they undertook, with the rest of the nation.480

As Carl Kraenzel has noted, “A colonial status implies several things. One is that the area involved has its economic activity restricted to that of producing the raw materials for others to refine,” and “It is a well-established economic fact that the

480 An excellent examination of western history in which the process of colonization is integrated into the experience and process of settlement is White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’. One of the most thorough investigations in the role of imagery in the process of colonization in the West is still Truettner, The West as America. 258

suppliers of raw materials are in a less advantageous bargaining position and receive less

income for their efforts than do the refiners and processors of raw materials.”481 Indeed,

the West was the supplier of raw materials for the national economy, and its association with the rest of the nation was determined by this role. The area’s ability to supply

materials such as cattle, grains, minerals, and timber fueled the nation’s economy.

However, the West was only the extractive element in this economy. It was dependent

on outside markets to determine the price settlers received for their grains. Outside

capital was required to obtain the money to build roads, bridges, and other investments

such as irrigation canals and railroad branch lines that made the area’s extractive work

more efficient.482 Settlers purchased at retail the finished products, such as implements

and windmills, manufactured in the East that they required to produce enough to realize a

profit from their work. Their produce was then shipped out of the area and processed in

the East, giving the final profit to the locale and investor who controlled the processing.

As Richard White has succinctly stated, “Outsiders controlled their economic fate.”483

This capitalistic system was in direct conflict with the image of settlement asserted by agrarian ideals, and absorbed by the settlers into their self-identities as self- sufficient, independent, family-oriented farmers. According to one scholar:

The post-Civil War trans-Mississippi West was, according to the received wisdom, the arena for individual enterprise…though usually profited by the big business, eastern person….The role of corporate enterprise in the

481Carl Frederick Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 220 and 212. 482 Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 56. 483 Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of OK Press, 1991), 267. 259

West stands uneasily with the proclaimed virtue of self-reliant individualism.484

The disparity between perceived and actual agency in settling the Great Plains was mediated by the processes of capitalism in which the industrial power compels the individual to identify with its endeavor. Settlers were manipulated through their identification with agrarian and progressive rhetoric to be partners with the very capitalistic systems that eventually caused their own failure.

For instance, by identifying with the role of the pioneer of agrarian ideology, settlers moved onto the Great Plains, defying environmental conditions in their belief in their transformative powers. They celebrated the presence of the railroad as an aid to the fulfillment of their divine national role of establishing a culture that could assure the health of the nation’s democracy. The railroad, in fact, was one of the most prolific promulgators of the tenets of this ideology. Yet it was not the settlers who realized the greatest gain from their endeavors, but the railroads and other outside corporate investors that promoted the area to the settlers (and consequently secured their profits through the work of the settlers).485 Likewise, settlers absorbed the extractive practices of industrial

484 White, G. Edward. The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), ?. 485 Carlyle Hunter’s wife inadvertently revealed the railroad’s true interest in the settler. The individualized settlement presented by their propaganda was belied, according to Mrs. Hunter, by their desire for “colonies of people rather than single settlers.” Large groups of people assured them more immediate profit. Hunter surname file, CCHS. The settlers were encouraged to be complicit with the railroads for the railroads’ profit and were often encouraged to entice other settlers to the Plains themselves, thus taking on yet again the “ground work” of establishing a profit-making base. See, for instance, “We take it for granted that every man in both Kansas and Nebraska is interested in inducing emigrants to locate with us; interested in having the lands broken up, cultivated and made to produce taxable property, that our taxes may be lessened. There are many ways that you can influence your friends in Illinois, Ohio, New England, and the old countries to follow your example and come west. You can write them letters….[you can] add another subscription to your local paper…and mail a copy to this friend.” Nebraska Farmer, October 1877; and “Great effort should be made this year to settle the vacant lands and increase the population of the town in the South Platte counties….Believing that the people are fully alive to the importance of the matter, the Passenger Department of the B.&M.R.R. has appointed me Immigration Agent…The work will consist 260

power, believing that by doing so they became participants in that power. They forced

the Plains to produce in modes and quantities that mirrored industrial outputs and

rhetoric, and they employed technological and industrial innovations to maintain control.

However, though settlers understood themselves to be the agents in control of their

endeavors, they were in fact only another extractive vehicle operating for the profit of

corporate and industrial powers.486 By buying into the thetoric of individualism, settlers

had been made complicit in their own disempowerment; their work only enabled the

agency of a larger capitalistic entity. In this process, as Donald Worster has stated,

western history “best exemplifies the modern capitalistic state at work.”487

Even the settlers’ perceived relationship to the national government as the ideal,

independent citizen on whose character and actions the health of the nation rested, was in

practice a relationship defined by dependency rather than independence. Richard White

has characterized the West as a “ward” and has argued that “more than any other region

[it]…has been historically a dependency of the federal government….The federal

government administered much of the American West as a colony of the U.S.”488 Custer

County history supports this observation. Dependent, of course, on the government for

largely of efforts to bring to the state, the friends and relatives of those who are already settled here….Let everyone, therefore, send me as soon as possible, the name and address of any eastern friend who would be interested in Nebraska…I will send you circulars, which you can send to your friends, and thus induce them to open a correspondence with me…..The settlement of these lands will greatly increase the wealth of the state, and be of direct profit and advantage to every resident.” R.R. Randall, B&MRR Immigration Agt, “To the People of Nebraska,” The Nebraska Farmer, 2/15/1883. Indeed, such suggestions worked, as Nels and Seivert Lee wrote just such information, as settlers, to the Scandavan, an American-Scandinavian paper in Chicago, and enticed an entire settlement of Norwegians to settle in Custer County, See Lee surname file, CCHS. 486 One of the best examinations of this capitalistic process in the West is Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest. 487 Quoted in John Mack Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and Other Essays (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994), 235. 488 Quoted in Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner, 234. And, in fact, West notes that 47% of the land of the 11 western-most states still remains controlled by the federal government. 261

the largest “welfare” act in the nation’s history—the essentially free dispersal of the

public domain into individual ownership—settlers were continually dependent on

governmental assistance throughout their settlement, and in fact, they naturalized this dependence as their right due to their elevated role in maintaining the exceptionalism of

American democracy.489 Settler William Comstock rather tellingly recalled his ability to

survive through the devastation by grasshoppers in 1874:

The settlers were left entirely destitute, not having produced a thing for the support of themselves and families during the winter. The government at this time had troops stationed at…Valley County, and it had been decided to erect more commodious quarters for the soldiers….The settlers flocked in from all directions and all were given employment by the government….Allen got a job working in the mill, while Caswell and I hauled gravel from the pit and assisted on the walls of the building490

In asserting their right to have lands irrigated, settlers again voiced, implicitly, the belief

in their entitled, though dependent, position:

The people here have great confidence in this land as a fruit country….But one thing is lacking to make this little country next to perfect—water— and that we propose to have. Now this people have found out that they have a uncle by the name of Samuel who is abundantly able to give them water, hence they conclude to ask him.491

Led into a semi-arid area by nationalistic rhetoric, settlers could not support themselves

as they had been told, and thus were dependant on the government for subsidy.

This dependence on governmental and corporate entities, and the lack of localized

power it signaled, was felt throughout the history of the county’s settlement. Concurrent

489 Robert N. Manley, “A Note on Government and Agriculture: A 19th Century Nebraska View,” Nebraska History 45:3 (September 1964): 238: “Frontier ‘individualism’ as defined by Turner had never existed in Nebraska. From the formation of the Territory in 1854 until the end of the 19th century, prominent Nebraskans purporting to speak for the agricultural segment of the state’s population consistently demanded government assistance and government regulation of various facets of the economy.” 490 W.H. Comstock, “Incident of Douglass Grove,” in Butcher, Pioneer History, 239 491 Custer County Republican, 9/3/1885. 262

with local celebrations of agrarian and progressive ideology is, not surprisingly, a

pervasive discontent with the lack of actual power those ideologies offered settlers. As

Richard Hofstadter explained, “For the farmer it was bewildering, and irritating too, to

think of the great contrast between the verbal deference paid him by almost everyone and

the real status, the real economic position, in which he found himself.”492 It is out of their

growing discontent with, and increasing awareness of, the colonializing structure within

which and, more importantly, for which they operated that settlers’ perceptions of

outsiders, such as corporations and investors, began to take on an adversarial tone.

This adversarial mode can be found throughout the 1880s. One of the most frequent subjects of suspicion was the railroads. In reporting on the Assessment Law of

1880, which lessened tax requirements for the railroads, the Nebraska Farmer asserted that “If any class is to be favored in the assessment of property, that class should be the pioneer farmers of the state—the men who suffer the hardships of opening up the resources of the state and making it accessible to railroads and to capitalists.”493 Dan

Haskell’s remembrances similarly reveal his animosity toward corporate presence.

The Powell Bros contracted with Union Pacific Railroad to furnish ties and telegraph poles and bridge timber…it was against the law to cut timber off government land ….a U.S. marshal would drive through this country in a top buggy…we could spot him and we expected he would jump on the few logs or poles we had used for improvements….It looked as though he just wanted to be mean and show his authority. Why jump on the settlers’ homestead improvements and shut his eyes to Powell Bros. robbing the country of timber that should have been left here which would have been a great help to the early settlers in making improvements on their new claims.494

492 Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Byran to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 35. 493 “The Assessment Law,” Nebraska Farmer, December 1880. 494 Haskell surname file, CCHS. 263

Animosity almost exclusively anti-British in tone was also focused on alien land

ownership and investment. British investors controlled over 100,000 acres of ranchland and $3.4 million in farm mortgages in Nebraska alone, and settlers, feeling harassed by hardships created by increased interest rates and decreased profitability, voiced their feelings of maltreatment. In 1887 the state legislature passed the Alien Land Law in which all lands belonging to nonresident aliens be forfeited. A later bill in 1889, introduced by L.H. Jewett, a banker from Broken Bow, barred nonresident aliens and foreign corporations from acquiring or inheriting land in the state.495

There are numerous accounts that suggest the British settlers in the county were

viewed as being “the rich.” For instance, in relating a story about her youth, Hope Gates

wrote that “It happened to be a good hat, I think a Stetson, so the young man was lately

from England and of an aristocratic family.”496 Job Semler revealed the same stereotype

when he wrote that a local banker was “English and the grandees of the town.”497 Even

Butcher may have shown his prejudices. His rather judgmental caption for the portrait of a British family, often reproduced, for The David Hilton family near Weissert, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 78], 1887, is “He did not want to show the old sod house to friends back east, but the young lady and mother wanted to prove they owned an organ.”

Butcher tells having to move the organ to its position, and suggests the Hiltons were too

495The newspaper and local periodicals are filled with articles regarding this matter, such as “Right of Aliens Issue,” Custer County Republican, 11/5/1887. For several very good reviews of the alien land law and attitudes, see Edward P. Crapol, America for Americans: Economic Nationalism and Anglophobia in the Late Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); and, Larry A. McFarlane, “Opposition to British Agricultural Investment in the Northern Plains States, 1884-1900,” Nebraska History 67:2 (Summer 1986): 115-133. 496 Gates surname file, CCHS. The young boy was Bird Ash, and county records don’t suggest that the Ash family was, in fact, aristocracy; however, what is important here is her assumption that as British, he had money. 497 Semler surname file, CCHS. 264

proud to admit they lived in a sod house like the majority of their neighbors. However, family history states that their dugout had fallen in due to rain, and Mr. Hilton had just returned from buying lumber, and an organ as a present for his wife, in order to build a new frame house. The organ was already outside of the house, and the house was not in the best condition to be included in a photograph.498

Though often focused on specific issues such as markets or railroad activity, the

hostility toward corporate activity in the West—a manifestation of the frustration of

disempowerment—became overwhelmingly expressed in a generalized animosity toward

the East. Local newspapers were constantly reporting on dubious actions of all kinds of

easterners. For instance, one reader of the Nebraska Farmer wrote that:

I will expose to the readers of the Farmer one of the meanest swindles of the day…I bought hogs from a farmer in Ohio….He sends them a thousand miles away and the express charges are so high, it’s a double dose—the pig is not what is represented and the rates are of the highest figure. I very well know he has some fine hogs but us farmers here in the west never get them no matter what we pay or send for they are kept at home until some man comes and takes his choice.499

Or:

A Nebraska man takes New England butter makers to task in the Country Gentleman for making so much poor butter. He even claims that they are responsible for oleomargarine and has considerable to say about the ‘three cent butter,’ which he says is made at the East.500

Nebraska settlers accused eastern journals of unfairly dissuading immigration:

The great anxiety on the part of leading journals of the east to stay the wonderful immigration west, is becoming so plain that, to a western mind,

498 Hilton surname file, CCHS. 499 “Sending Off After Stock,” Nebraska Farmer, January 1881. 500 “Western Advice to Eastern Butter Makers,” Nebraska Farmer, 5/15/1881. 265

it looks ridiculous. Why should they worry? There is no danger of the eastern states being left uncultivated.501

Western journals frequently carried articles encouraging westerners to engage with

western businesses and interests rather than eastern ones. One typical exhortation asserts:

Western enterprises in which large amounts of exclusive western money is engaged are rare institutions, and when one is honestly and firmly organized with a solid foundation, it is certainly worthy of more than a passing mention.502

Such protectionist sentiments were also expressed politically through labor

associations. One of the first issues to unite the Farmers Alliance, formed in 1881, was

what was characterized as the “Eastern Nebraska conspiracy.”503 Such political activity

gained support as the drought cycle continued to play havoc with farmers’ investments.

Following a national convention in 1886, more than 200 local chapters of the Farmers

Alliance were chartered in Nebraska alone, and Custer County’s involvement led with 57 charters—one in every township in the county.504 A newspaper, the Alliance

Independent, was established in the state. The Farmers Alliance consistently argued for governmental control of railroad rates, the control of large-scale land holdings by non- citizens, and the protection of farmers against the political clout of the “commercial

501 Nebraska Farmer, 9/15/1883. 502 “A Western Agency,” Nebraska Farmer, 4/1/1883. Even immigrant newspapers encouraged their readers to frequent western enterprises. For instance, an 1891 issue of the Grand Island Anzeiger urged “its readers to stimulate the economy of Nebraska by supporting local merchants and not to waste money by sending it East.” Paul Schach, “German-Language Newspapers in Nebraska, 1860-1890,” Nebraska History 65:1 (Spring 1984): 101. 503 Kem surname file, CCHS. 504 See Annabel L. Beal, The Populist Party in Custer County, Nebraska: Its Role in Local, State, and National Politics, 1889-1906 (PhD Dissertation, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1965); Robert W. Cherny, “Lawrence Goodwyn and Nebraska Populism: A Review Essay,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:3 (Summer 1981): 181-194; and, James C. Olson and Ronald C. Naugle, History of Nebraska, 3rd ed. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 222. It is not surprising that Custer County would be so active in such a movement. Its location along the 100th meridian made it one of the first areas settled especially susceptible to economic fluctuations, and its size gave it a strong population-based voice. 266

classes” such as insurance companies, money lenders, and grain buyers. The topic of

discussion for one meeting of the Alliance in Custer County was “What dangers threaten

the producer?”505 One article, “A Black Eye for Monopoly,” exhorted settlers to join the

Alliance, beginning, “The following communication to the Pioneer Press shows a bit of western grit, and just what all monopolies may look for sooner or later. Western people are slow to act, but when action can be delayed no longer they go at it with a will and never look back.”506

Plains settlers felt disenfranchised of the power that they believed was rightfully

theirs as yeoman farmers. Their attempts to regain this power took two forms. One was

a renewed and aggressive attempt to reinstate the elevated status of the yeoman farmer.

They attempted to achieve this through political means. Thius effort was at the heart of

labor organizations, such as the Farmers Alliance and ultimately the Populist Party. A

perfect example of the asserted validity of re-instating farmers’ power because of their

position as the citizen upon which the nation’s health rested, and thus justified the

empowerment aims of labor organizations, can be found in a rather long, though

revealing, report from the national Farmers Alliance convention in 1887:

Secretary Milton Scorf…expressed his conviction that the republic is in the trough of the sea. “In organized conditions…we have been and still are the prey of all other classes. Rings plunder us when we sell, and rings plunder us when we buy. The railroad monopoly has fed and grown upon our throats, and we are finding it exceedingly difficult to break its relentless grasp….On the fences of our farms sit the agents of every kind of combination…watching every hill of corn and blade of grass, and every hoof for the purpose of absorbing them. We are constantly under the surveillance of a well-trained and conscientious army of leeches, and never, until the farmers of this country are thoroughly organized, will that

505 “Minutes of the Farmers Alliance No. 1 of Custer County, Neb.,” Custer County Republican, 7/14/1886 506 “A Black Eye for Monopoly,” Nebraska Farmer, 9/15/1881. 267

crowd get off that fence and that army fall back at a respectful distance. From one corner is coming a great wave of monopoly…which seems to confiscate the property of others, and from another corner is coming a great wave of ragged socialism and murderous anarchy which not only seeks to confiscate our property but to destroy our lives, and the republic must ever rest its sure hope for protection on the sun-browned hands of farmers.”507

Foreigners and monopolies were presented as threats to the health of the nation’s political structure and it was only by giving the farmer back the power he once had that the nation’s health as a republic could be maintained.

In one sense, the ponderous presentations of middle-class respectability and successful transformative power found in Butcher’s archive can be read as attempts by

Custer County settlers to reify, through visualization, their perceived rightful status as

yeoman farmers, and thus to better insist upon the re-establishment of the power that they

believed belonged to them. Though not typically overtly political, there are several

portraits that do explicitly present not only the cultural and transformative elements that

attest to the settlers’ yeoman status, but that also visually assert the political venue

through which they felt they could return the power that rightfully belonged to them. For

instance, in Isaac Ware, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 255], 1892, the family

stands in front of the sod house, with their plow and gun brought into view to indicate their self-sufficiency. The father stands with the Alliance Independent, the “voice” of the

Farmers Alliance, prominently, and quite consciously, visible for the viewer to see.

Similarly, in West Brook, near Dry Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 184], 1886, the family sits in front of their sod house with a work crew busily unloading hay in the background. The oldest boy poses with his gun and game bag to show his utility and

507 “Farmers Alliance,” Nebraska Farmer, 10/14/1887. 268

self-sufficiency and the young girl holds her doll indicating the family’s healthy domesticity. At the front of the house stands a man holding a banner that reads “Hurrah for Kem,” which was used at a Farmers Union picnic in Merna in support of local candidate, Omer Madison Kem.508

This political mode of re-establishing a sense of power to the Plains settler

functioned, however, wholly within the conservative nature of agrarian ideology. The

identity of the settler was asserted to be a continuation of the image of the yeoman

farmer, and the nature of his world continued to be transformed into the eastern areas

from which the settlers had originally come. The settlers did not question the

disempowerment inherent in their acceptance of the agrarian expectation of “anothering”

the Plains into a western mirror of the East. Rather, they chose to adhere to this

traditional agrarian mode even more strongly in order to better assert their belief that their

rightful elevation above the industrial forces threatening them. They based this

rightfulness on the received “fact” that by threatening the yeoman farmer (which they

increasingly asserted they were), industry was in fact threatening the health of the

nation.509

508 Butcher’s archive also includes a portrait of Kem and his family, as well as two images of Populist Party conventions in Custer County. This is not surprising given Butcher’s association with the party, and the similarity in sentiments between the various farmers’ unions and the celebration of settlers as pioneer yeoman farmers at the heart of the historical narrative Butcher desired his book to tell. 509Their political mode of re-appropriating power as well reveals again the farmers’ conservative approach, in that it mirrors established labor methods, such as unions, lobbyists, and protectionist activities, used by other labor groups at the time to demand power. This is seen especially in the preamble of the Farmers Alliance constitution, “Whereas, We find that the bankers, manufacturers, millers, transporters, lawyers, doctors, speculators, capitalists, commercial dealers and office speakers, had organized themselves into associations and combinations for the purpose of furthering their own interests and obtaining legislation more favorable to their special calling. Therefore, be it resolved that we as farmers and laborers of Custer County, Neb., do organize an association that we may more successfully maintain our rights and privileges as American citizens.” “Farmers Alliance,” Custer County Republican, 7/14/1886. Such positions also reinforced the farmer’s sense of victimization, and suggested their identification with urban laborers, whose 269

However, there is another venue given visual voice in Butcher’s archive through

which Custer County settlers attempted to empower themselves within the colonizing agency of industrial capitalism. If insisting on a yeoman status in compliance with agrarian ideology was an approach that offered potential power through political activity, it nonetheless continued the settlers’ cultural disempowerment. As has been shown in earlier sections of this dissertation, the Plains settler’s presentation as a respectable middle-class yeoman farmer is shot through with gaps that allow the viewer to realize the actual inability of the settler to fully comply with its expectations. As a result of the mixture of the commercialization of the late 19th century and the specific nature of the

Plains environment, such an assertion was assured, if not obvious failure, then at best a

strained and tenuous presentation of success. Furthermore, when western farmers

adhered to agrarian cultural expectations, the power to give or withhold the determination

of “success” was held by, indeed was given over by them to non-westerners. The fact

that their desired acceptance was all too often withheld suggests that in some ways, the

economic resentment western farmers expressed in their journals and newspapers was

also an expression of their resentment at their cultural denigration. The 1880s were

marked by an increasing rejection of this agrarian mode of identity, and the adoption by the settlers of an identity that offered a sense of power defined by the culture and environmental conditions native (by the time of Custer County settlers’ arrival) to the

Plains—that of the “westerner.”

struggle for empowerment against the force of industrialized might was well covered in farmer’s journals. The Lincoln Freie Presse was empathetic to workers. A front-page article on the strikes in Carnegie’s Homestead steal mill contrasted “the bloody fool Carnegie’s $7,000,000 annual income” with the “starvation wages paid his workers.” Schach, “German-Language newspapers in Nebraska,” 99. 270

The identity of the westerner marked, in effect, a claim by Plains settlers to determine their own identities based on their differences from the conservative expectations of agrarian rhetoric rather than on their conformity to them. The

“westerner” identity defined the settlers and the Plains as an “other,” and thus transferred the determining agent of success from an outside entity to a local one. It can be seen as a move to self-legitimize settlers’ conformity to local experiences and environment in opposition to the pressures active in agrarian rhetoric to conform to outsider’s expectations. In very importance ways, it also marked the settlers’ acceptance of the constraints and demands of their particular environment, and, even more importantly, it marked their acceptance (and even celebration) of the changes in their own actions and beliefs that the environment had engendered. It is, in the end, the Plains settlers’ attempts to claim the success that they, consciously or not, realized was ultimately denied them in both agrarian and progressive ideologies.

8.2 Acting like a Westerner

In many of the portraits in Butcher’s archive, the assertion of a western identity is signified simply by the inclusion of elements specifically emblematic of the Plains. Such inclusions suggest that at least in part, settlers’ work to transform the environment into a mirror of the eastern rural world was countered by their celebration, and thus acceptance,

of elements native to the Plains. Some of the most ubiquitous western objects in these

photographs are elk antlers and bison skulls.510 For instance, in Ernie Perrin, Sargent,

510 Nearly every settler account recalls finding such bones. As one manuscript states, “Sam Hawthorn who homesteaded where Arcadia is, said the ground was covered with buffalo bones and he piled them up at 271

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 256], 1886, three bison skulls are placed next to the door

of the family’s sod house along with a pile of elk and deer antlers. Such domestic

adornments were widely popular among Custer County homesteaders. They were often

stacked in the yard, an impressive one of which is seen in J.C. Cram sod house, Loup

County, Nebraska [Fig. 133], 1886, or placed on the roof or over the door, as in C.

Brown, Sargent, Nebraska [Fig. 257], 1886, or placed at the entrance to the homestead, as

is the magnificent elk rack in Family with their sod house in northwest Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 258], 1889. Frequently Butcher himself used antlers to arrange his compositions. In Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 23], 1886, the family lines up next to their “sculpture” of antlers. In

Portrait of teacher identified as Euroi Weiner, West Union, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 259], 1887, Butcher included antlers in a studio photograph of a local teacher, quite consciously it would seem, to convey her location specifically in the West.

Other indigenous inhabitants of the Plains were included in portraits, implicitly

asserting the settlers’ assimilation of the native environment into their cultural world. In

Family in front of sod house with team of oxen in foreground, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 178], 1886, the family has tamed a coyote (quite a feat), which is held in the father’s

lap and a rabbit (held by a daughter). In Robert G. Farritor family, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 68], 1889, the Farritor’s daughter Jennie proudly holds the reigns to a

grey horse she tamed as a yearling from a wild herd that roamed in the nearby canyons.511

each corner of his homestead to mark the corners. Many of the first settlers in Custer County mention buffalo bones lying everywhere, buffalo wallows, and buffalo trails everywhere.” See Buffalo file, CCHS. 511 Farritor surname file, CCHS. According to Dan Haskell, there were numerous herds of wild horses in the general vicinity: “While Horse Creek…got its name from a beautiful white horse, which led a band of 272

At times, even the sod house was seemingly included to stand as an icon of Plains

identity, as in Omer Madison Kem sod house Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 260], 1886.

Kem was a Custer County settler who had been a leader in various farmers’ political

unions throughout the 1880s, eventually winning election on the Populist ticket to the

U.S. Congress in 1890 (serving from 1891 until 1897). He celebrated his embodiment of

the Plains settler by widely publicizing his $1,500 mortgage and his status as the only

member of Congress to live in a sod house while serving.512 The family also eats handfuls of watermelon, which responded heartily to the Plains soil and environment, and was often cause for boasting to easterners. In agrarian rhetoric, the sod house was a symbol of pioneer status only as part of the expected transformation—the end result was

to be a frame house. Kem’s celebration of the sod house asserts both his acceptance of the demands and requirements of the Plains, and his elevation of an element looked down upon by non-westerners to an iconic emblem of local pride and identity.513

What such “western” emblems convey in Butcher’s archive is the development in

Plains settler culture of a locally determined identity. The great majority of Plains population had just moved into the area within a decade. The settlers’ absorption of native elements into their identity created a link to the local area that had been felt by them in the East through long-established and extensive familial or social networks.

wild horses that ranged there. Wild horses entirely disappeared in 1894 from the Nebraska prairie.” Haskell surname file, CCHS. 512 Kem surname file, CCHS. 513 This is a clear assertion of “difference” from eastern expectations, cited earlier, in which “log houses [which would be like sod houses] were ‘symbols of the frontier, of backwardness, deprivation’….Jacksonian democracy made it desirable for a presidential candidate to have been born in a log cabin, but ‘it was definitely not fitting for the candidate to continue living in one.’; the log cabin was as symbol of how low you could start and still succeed, not a mark of environmental virtue.” Blouet, “American Pioneer Landscapes,” 6. 273

These newly extablished links to the Plains began to override the connections settlers

may have felt to their past lives in the East. Thus, in celebrating their local environment, settlers turned from straining to transform the Plains into “another” East, and began instead to use native elements that distinctly “othered” the Plains in order to claim the power to determine the parameters by which their new culture and identities were to be judged.514

Certainly an element that influenced the eventual acceptance of cultural models

not so controlled by middle-class agrarian ideals was the remote location of the Plains.

While connected economically to the rest of the county, the cultural connections between

the Plains and the East were far less immediate. As Richard White has noted:

The late nineteenth century western economy was a study in contrasts. On the one hand it was very much a creature of the world economy: its sources of capital, the markets for western production, and most of the products that westerners consumed all lay outside the West itself. On the other hand, western communities and western producers lived and worked far from the centers of this larger economy in remote, isolated, and rugged areas. Often living in rude shacks and dugouts, western workers and farmers lacked many of the basic refinements of life in the East….Yet when the farmer stepped outside his sod shanty, he often used the most modern farm machinery.515

514 This development of an identity not mirroring or dependent on patterns in the East is discussed in White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience. He quotes William Goetzmann’s argument that “the Western experience in the main…has offered a theater in which American patterns of culture could be endlessly mirrored.” However, White asserts that this view “of the relation between the West and American culture appears essentially accurate for the half-century ending about 1885, when eastern conception of the West essentially mirrored culture patterns in the East, but certain development toward the opening of the 20th century seem to suggest that the West had by that time established an identity of its own.” White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, 77. This is not to say that the identity of the westerner was also utilized by colonializing powers to define the west as a location of the past (this will be discussed in the following chapter), however, I do believe that during the 1880s, as a period of adjustment to the demands of the environment and the demands of received beliefs, the image of the westerner offered Plains settlers a mode to empower themselves in determining their own identity. 515 White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 270. 274

In fact, though not as dominant as the agrarian model of identity, a number of alternate

cultural models thrived within the borders of Custer County, and they colluded to weaken the adherence of its residents to more nationalistic agrarian models.

For instance, the county was settled by a number of Southerners who established family cultures that could be described like that of early settler Charles Mathews. “The family from which the judge descended had…been very closely allied to the fine aristocracy of the Virginian planter. Consequently the blood of the Cavalier flows in the veins of our distinguished citizen and finds expression in his open-hearted hospitality and courtly manners.”516 The judge’s home, in Ex-judge Chas R. Mathews of New Helena,

Nebraska [Fig. 144], 1886, embodied his southern culture in that “two cedar cabins…stand close together with doors facing each other in genuine southern style.517

Many southerners came onto the Plains due to their connections with Texans who had earlier trailed cattle up to winter, and many of whom still had operations going in the

1880s. For instance, when Robert Farley was discharged from the Confederate Army, he drove cattle for the Texan Smith and Tee Cattle outfit. After working in Custer County for several years, he took a homestead, as did other ranch hands like him.518 The

Chrismans, as noted in chapter four, were an extended southern family whose

connections to the South continued long after they established residency in Custer

County. That they identified themselves as “southern” is revealed frequently in the daughters’ reminiscences, such as Ruth’s comment that “My parents were from

516 Mathews surname file, CCHS. 517 Mathews surname file, CCHS. 518 Farley surname file, CCHS. 275

Virginia—had that southern hospitality.”519 Joseph Chrisman named his ranch after his family home in Virginia, suggesting his desire to replicate his traditional cultural identity rather than adopt that of the middle-class ideal. In fact, after his first wife died, Chrisman returned to his hometown in Virginia to marry a woman from a family long-connected to his.520

Numerous immigrant groups offered alternative models of cultural identity as well. The Haumont family’s house and gardens, Isadore Haumont two-story sod house on French Table north of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 187], 1886, asserted the family’s identification with European landed gentry rather than with the

American yeoman. There are frequently other portraits in the archive that attest to a variety of Old World traditions of domestic architecture, such as in Frederic Schreyer and family [Fig. 261], 1886. The Haumont’s adherence to sheep raising, traditional in their homeland, also offered an alternative to the regimen of hogs and corn adhered to by

American midwestern farmers. Butcher’s archive records this presence in Jules

Haumont's sheep on French Table north of Broken Bow, Nebraska [Fig. 262], 1887, in which the family’s sheep herds are proudly displayed, or in E. Haumont, French Table,

519 Chrisman surname file, CCHS. 520 Chrisman and Richardson surname files, CCHS. The Chrismans and other southern families retained close ties to the South, and often had shown clear southern loyalties during the Civil War. Chrismans brother-in-law, Charles Richardson, who also homesteaded in Custer County, had acted as a currier to Stonewall Jackson, served under General Stewart, participated in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, and was with General Lee at his surrender. A number of scholars have noted that “another reason trail hands often had trouble with the law in cowtowns” was that “most of the Texas cowboys had served in the Confederate army, and most of the marshals were northerners. Though ‘down home one Texas ranger could arrest the lot of them…up north you’d have to kill them first.’” Quoted in Jones, Daily Life on the 19th Century Frontier, 181. There were obviously similarly conflicting sentiments among homesteaders: the GAR was the second organization to be formed in the county, and was one of the strongest; Custer County was home to one of the three largest settlements of ex-slaves in the state; and several of the southern families, such as the Chrismans, left the South with a handful of slaves still with them (though they seem to have gone elsewhere by the time the family reached the county). Yet interestingly, the archival record doesn’t indicate similar conflicts among the settlers as those found among cowboys. 276

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 263], 1887, where the young daughter holds to her chest a

baby lamb. While the inclusion of a painting in Sod school house in Custer County,

Nebraska. Mary E. Sutton, teacher [Fig. 79], 1886,521 might initially suggest the family’s

assertion of their middle-class culture, the men’s heavy boots and coats, with fur lining

the sleeves and collars, were clear indications of their continued attachment to Old World

customs. In one of Butcher’s “staged” images, Portrait of A.J. Smith, Jefferson, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 264], 1886, the subject wears just such an outfit to indicate his

Old World identity. And, in describing immigrants, Carlyle Hunter’s wife recounted

seeing just such clothing: “If you ever saw a motley crew, it was at the Emigrant House

by the depot….Men wore big boots and coats that looked as though they had been made

out of rugs.”522 Thus, given the men’s clothing and the rarity of actual oil paintings

among the American rural middle class, these elements can be seen as signifiers that

asserted the family’s decision to retain Old World cultural identities rather than adopt so

readily the identity expected by agrarian ideology.523

The lesser cultural and social rigidity found in loosely settled areas of the Plains

such as Custer County also allowed the settlement of communities of ex-slaves, frequently characterized as “exodusters,” who were attracted by the opportunity of free

521 This portrait is, apparently, incorrectly titled in Butcher’s index, and in the NSHS index as, Sod school house in Custer County, Nebraska. Mary E. Sutton, teacher. 522 Hunter surname file, CCHS. 523 The only significant group of immigrants whose numbers enabled them to retain a sense of cultural identity were the Norwegian settlers (though few were directly from Norway, but rather mostly from the Midwestern prairies) who took up land in Round Valley, which was “more or less known as a little Norway.” The community was initiated when early settlers Nels and Seivert Lee wrote to the Skandinaven, a Chicago newspaper circulated to Norwegian-American communities, encouraging others to join them. Hilda Helgerson said that the community did not truly welcome “outsiders” into it, especially Germans, and the Norwegian Lutheran Church only married Norwegians. For an excellent social history of this settlement see Mary Landkamer and Grace Varney, “Norwegian Pioneers of Round Valley, Nebraska” (Broken Bow, NE: Custer County Historical Society, 1992). 277

land. Nebraska was known to be not only tolerant of African-American farmers, but had a reputation as a safe haven for them. The original group, organized by Charles Meehan,

a white Canadian married to a black woman, came because “They heard mixed racial

marriages were accepted fairly well in Nebraska, so they sold their land in Canada and

went…to Overton in 1885.”524 An 1884 notice in the Custer County Republican seems to

support this:

The eastern, as well as a great many western papers are in trouble growling and grumbling, because Fred Douglas married a white woman. We don’t understand that it is any one’s business who he, she or it, marries, if they wish to when in doing so they do not trample upon the individual right of others. There is, undoubtedly, many topics of more interest to the public than this snobbery.525

Butcher’s archive records two ex-slave families in The Shores family near Westerville,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 265], 1887, and Moses Speese near Westerville, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 266], 1888. In their portraits, the Speece and Shores families

assert their desire to adhere to the agrarian culture they have joined by including the same

signifiers of middle-class rural culture found throughout the archive. However, more

importantly, their acceptance in that identity by the communities in Custer County, and

524 Speece surname file, African-American file, CCHS. Overton is a small town located in Dawson County just south of Custer County. The three significant black settlements were in Dawson, Custer, and Harlan counties. In 1860 there were fewer than 30 African-Americans in the state, by 1870 there were 789, and by 1890 there were 8,900. Custer County had approximately 100-150 African-American residents during the 1880s. Nebraska’s State Constitution of 1875 prohibited slavery, banned discrimination of citizens in ownership of property, and secured open education (including the University), regardless of age, sex, color, or nationality. The Civil Rights Law of 1893 offered all persons within the state full and equal enjoyment of accommodations, advantages, facilities and privilege of inns, restaurants, public conveyances, barber shops, theatres, and other places. An excellent study of the treatment of black settlers in the state is Darold D. Way, “Robert Ball Anderson, Ex-Slave, A Pioneer in Western Nebraska, 1884-1930,” Nebraska History 64:2 (Summer 1983): 162-192. 525 Custer County Republican, 2/21/1884. 278

Butcher’s willingness to record their acceptance by photographing them for his history,

was voiced in terms that indicated the local settlers’ pride that this social “openness” was

a mark of their difference from communities in the East.

Custer County’s remote location and loose network of diverse cultural models

lessened the dominance of agrarian expectations of culture. Similarly, the gradual

adaptation of settlers in the county to modes of agricultural production more defined by

Plain environment and expectations than eastern expectations also weakened the local

hold of eastern cultural models on the settlers. As Gilbert Fite has noted:

Many people now began to take a more realistic view of the Great Plains as an agricultural region and sensibly concluded that farming practices and organization must be adjusted to meet conditions of a semiarid climate….wheat grew over corn in popularity, grain sorghums grew in popularity, cattle numbers advanced markedly….In other words…farmers adjusted and organized their crop farming more closely around a livestock economy.526

Plains farmers became stock farmers. Their crops were grown for the support of their

small herds of shorthorn cattle. Ranchers as well adjusted their production to better fit the Plains, and they too moved from their traditional Texas longhorns to the production of purebred shorthorns. Other than the size of their financial investments, ranchers and farmers in Custer County began to operate more and more similarly, creating a greater sense of identification between the settlers and ranchers. It is, then, not surprising that, as farmers sought to find means of empowerment in the face of the dominant presence of yeoman and the inherent disempowerment in that identity, ranchers, or more specifically

526 Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier, 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 131. 279

their cowboys, offered settlers a mode of cultural identity that celebrated native elements

of the Plains and more effectively countered the oppression inherent in agrarian

expectations.

By the 1880s the generalized identity of the “westerner” embodied by Plains

cowboys was well established and readily available to settlers on the Plains in the figure

of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. A western “icon” since 1869 when Ned Buntline

published Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, Cody ranched in North Platte,

Nebraska, just southwest of Custer County. In fact, he wintered cattle in the early 1880s

in the sandhills in the northwest section of the county.527 A tree which had Cody’s

initials carved into it was celebrated by the settlers for the connection to the western

“star” it represented. When Jesse Gandy, founder of Broken Bow, published a text on

livestock breeding, his credentials listed in the introduction cited that “He became an expert marksman and killed many deer, elk, and buffalo....He was a close friend of ‘Wild

Bill’ and was acquainted with ‘Buffalo Bill.’”528 Besides establishing a connection to the

natural environment, Gandy also established his connection to Cody in order to legitimize

his claims to authority as a westerner.

To be a westerner—to be like Cody—was to own not only the power to determine

one’s identity outside of the expectations of agrarian rhetoric, but also to claim through a

visual difference from the East a cultural power that might equal the status of the yeoman. Cody, as one of the most photographed figures in 19th century America, offered

527 An excellent account of Cody’s life is Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960). 528 Jesse Gandy, How to Control the Sex in the Breeding of Domestic Animals (no copyright information, 1908), introduction, held in the collection of CCHS. 280

a variety of visual examples upon which settlers established their perception of the visual

presentation of the “the westerner.” For instance, in a publicity pose for his 1873 stage

show, “The Buffalo Bill Combination” [Fig. 267], the members of the group present

themselves in overtly “relaxed” poses; their rifles held prominently, though casually, in

front of them; pistols or bowie knife tucked at their waists; and wide-brimmed hats

rakishly angled or pinned at the sides.529 Cody’s stylish facial hair and his long, loose

locks, combined with the feather in his hat, contrive to present him as an embodiment of

the cavalier, aristocratic culture that Americans, by the end of the 19th century, believed

cowboy culture to be.

Butcher’s archive comprises a significant number of portraits that appear to embrace this ideal of the westerner. This is not terribly surprising in images of single males, whose culture closely mirrored that of the cowboy. In Charley Meeks, Cowboy

[Fig. 268], 1886, and Art Pulliam hunting coyotes in West Union, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 176], 1889, the single male subject is posed with his horse, his rifle

prominently held in front, with Pulliam showing evidence of his skill as a marksman

(coyotes were extremely difficult to hit, and thus to have hit two in a row was something

notable), and Meeks astride a short, compact “cow pony” with his pistol tucked for ready

use at his belt. In other works, young single men self-consciously present emblematic

activities of “high jinks” that were perceived to characterize the social freedom in the

West. For instance, in Threshing crew on Mr. Golson's farm, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 269], 1886, two men to the left stage a fist fight; in S.C. Troubtman camp, railroad

529 Photo taken in Rochester, NY, in the mid-1870s. Print from the archives of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The members of the troupe, all having had actually worked as scouts or cowboys in the West, were Eugene Overton, Wild Bill Hickcock, Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack Omohundro, and R.H. Furman. 281

graders west of Sargent, Nebraska [Fig. 270], 1886, two men pose playing cards; and in

Bachelor house of Perry brothers, near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 2], 1886, a group of “bachelors” pose, armed to the teeth, holding aloft their poker hands.

Likewise, in Portrait of Tom Smith [Fig. 7], 1886, a studio portrait, the young man, with his manicured moustache, poses proudly in his chaps and brimmed slouch hat, his pistol and rifle placed within ready reach. He could easily be a member of the troupe of cowboys posed in a publicity shot for Cody’s Wild West [Fig. 271], with their hats, moustaches, pistols, and chaps. Even just the relaxed pose is enough to suggest the adoption of the westerner identity. For instance, in Mat Swan, NW Old Jefferson, Custer

County [Fig. 272], 1886, and Milton M. Whitney, northeast Custer County [Fig. 273],

1886, the two men, with soft slouched hats, present themselves in relaxed poses, with bent and crossed legs, that evokes that poses seen in Buffalo Bill’s publicity shots.

As mentioned, that a western model of identity would be found in essentially male images is not surprising. However, Butcher’s archive also contains portraits in which the western model is presented in the context of the settler family. For instance, in Cutting a

Melon [Fig. 274], 1886, the two young men (one of whom is Mat Swan from Illustration

30) sit leaning back into their chairs, their legs crossed. One young man wears his hat stylishly angled. The relaxed pose is often even more evident in images of Cody and his troupe. For instance, in two studio portraits, [Fig. 275] and [Fig. 276] Cody himself lounges on the ground or against a rock with an elegant ease that suggests his freedom from the constraints of middle-class domesticity and etiquette. Likewise, in Illustration

29, a group shot of Cody’s cowboy troupe, Johnny Baker (his prize “crackshot” cowboy,

282

on the left) and a companion recline on the ground, conveying an air of effortless comportment that stands in sharp contrast to the formal comportment, seen earlier in chapter two, that settlers adopted to comply with middle-class standards of respectability.

In Family in front of a frame farmhouse in southeastern part of Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 277], 1888, and C.N. Buck, north Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 278],

1886, while the rest of the family gathers in a familial group, the young gentlemen clearly emulate Johnny’s leisured pose, their hats and guns adhering to this cultural model.530

Guns were a prominent part of western identity, exemplifying both self- sufficiency and self-defense (self-empowerment) in a conflict. Importantly, both of these aspects can be understood, in the context of western colonialization, to offer localized

modes of independence that were assured though not guaranteed settlers through their

adherence to the yeoman farmer identity. While certainly guns were a required tool for

19th-century rural residents, western or eastern, the manner in which they are presented in

Butcher’s archive suggests that their inclusion often signifies the owner’s adherence to a

western identity. For instance, in Keyser, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

279], 1888, the family poses in front of their dugout. The man in the front casually

stands with his shotgun in front of him and his pistol tucked into his belt. Likewise, the

man on the roof reclines, his hat pinned up, in adherence to the presentation of a

westerner. The elk antlers on the roof sport a muzzle-loading rifle and game horn in a

manner that mimics widely-disseminated images of popular scouts and hunting guides in

530 Of course, the ultimate model for this pose is from 18th century portraits of aristocrats on the campaigna. The cavalier and aristocratic airs of the westerner further enforce this cultural connection. However, Butcher’s subjects would have most likely taken the pose from the cowboys and scouts participating in the extremely popular western shows (Buffalo Bill’s being only the most popular of a wide variety of ones) present in the 1880s rather than from their knowledge of 18th century visual culture. 283

the 1870s [Fig. 280]. Furthermore, Butcher’s notation on the image, “Ranchman and

cattle feeder,” suggests the family’s economic adoption (stock farming) as well as

cultural adoption of the local Plains environment.

Several images in Butcher’s archive indicate the growing adherence to, and thus

identification with, the westerner through the emulations of children. The McCrea’s

young grandson in South of the Middle Loup River, near Berwyn, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 148], 1888, stands with his toy gun tucked along his waistline within

ready reacc, and the young boy in People gathered in front of the City Hotel, Sargent,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 281], 1888, stands, hat stylishly cocked on his head, in a

casual pose with his feet planted wide and his hands tucked into his pockets. Both clearly

emulate the cowboys in popular publicity shots, as well as the cowboys they often saw

around them. Their identification with the westerner suggests the county’s celebration of

this cultural identity, not just among young males, but as a model of community identification that offered a greater sense of power than the models offered in agrarian

ideologies.531

The independence and self-sufficiency associated with the identity of the

westerner was also available, and absorbed, by women settlers. Though social constraints were consistently more inflexible for women, even on the Plains, the cultural remoteness of the area lessened the rigidity of these constraints. Much of this was also due to the demands of production made on the entire settler family. Children were

531 Butcher himself is an excellent example of the cultural acceptance of the independence offered by this model. When explaining his return to Custer County after a short stint in medical school in Minnesota, Butcher stated that “I had seen just enough wild western life to make me discontented to remain in the East.” Yet he was not returning as a single male, but as a newly wedded husband. Butcher, “Old Settler’s Story,” np, Butcher Papers, NSHS. 284

frequently placed in positions that pushed the typical boundaries of childhood, and as

they grew into adolescence tackled more complex work, they gained a greater

confidence, and thus grew more independent and self-sufficient. Young girls,

furthermore, were placed in positions that also pushed the boundaries of their gender.

They worked in the fields and pastures alongside men, eroding the claims that domestic respectability (and even “frailty”) held over the shape of their lives, and enforcing a sense of pride in their “work” abilities. Eliott West relates:

Susie Crockett helped her brothers break and plant their Oklahoma farm, and come harvest time, she ran the thresher and binder; she also learned to trap and to tan the hides that paid for what the family could not provide for themselves. Once she found a wolf in her trap, and when her brothers taunted her, saying she would need them to help kill it, she answered, ‘I won’t,’ then beat the animal to death with a tent pole. ‘I can see that wolf run and snarl after all these years,’ she remembered, ‘but I got the job done and skinned the carcass myself.’532

Several stories Hope Gates, daughter of settler Stillman Gates, told about her youth

reveal a similar sense of independence and respect she received from her abilities in

traditional male venues:

Bert [her brother] and others were shooting at a mark when I heard, as I came riding along, ‘Hope can’t beat that.’ ‘Oh, she can’t hit my hat,’ was the response. There was some bantering, when Bert wanted me to show Bird Ash that I could hit his hat. He put the hat on the deer-horns, Bert handed me his rifle, and I put a bullet through the rim and then on the crown….Years later a bunch of prairie-chickens lightened in a grove of trees at the lower end of the garden…[the] boys all a short distance from the house, I got the gun and thought I would try my luck. When they heard the gun the boys looked my way in time to see me jump the fence to get the chicken I had brought down before it could get away….In those early days, the task of looking after the cattle was given to us girls and we

532 West, Growing Up with the County, 142. 285

were given an Indian pony to ride….Lydia learned to stand up on the pony and ride, but although I often tried, I must have been too much afraid of falling, for I never succeeded very well.533

. Butcher’s archive reveals this adoption of western male identity by young females. For instance, in I.N. Butler and his Granddaughters, near Gates, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 282], 1889, the two young girls ride their ponies astride and bareback, sitting with an ease that suggests their skill. In The Chrisman Sisters on a claim in Goheen settlement on Lieban (Lillian) Creek, Custer County [Fig. 69], 1886, the women stand in front of one of their claims instead of with their family at their familial home, celebrating their ability to live independently and “hold down their own” claims.

Furthermore, their Texas stock saddles reveal their accustomed mode of riding astride rather than sidesaddle as would have been more respectable.534 In Miss Sadie Austin, a

typical Nebraska cowgirl, Simeon, Cherry County, Nebraska [Fig. 283], 1900, Sadie

poses as a female counterpart to the male westerner. She stands, clothed in a cowboy hat,

bandana, riding gloves, and boots, next to her compact herding horse equipped with a

fine, hand-made working saddle. Her pump rifle is held prominently in front of her, and

a pistol is tucked in her belt. She was known to don a divided skirt in order to help her

father, a rancher near Sargent, “ride the range.”535

Such celebrations of independence and self-sufficiency were not completely

available to women, however, and Butcher’s archive records the tension for females that

fulfilling the increased work expectations placed on their lives. Butcher’s extended

caption for Sadie’s portrait mediates the “otherness” of the image by noting that she was

533 Gates surname file, CCHS. 534 Chrisman surname file, CCHS. 535 Austin surname file, CCHS. 286

“the most fearless cowgirl in Cherry County, Nebraska…and she is one of the most

accomplished performers on the piano in western Nebraska.”536 Furthermore, though she is “armed to the teeth,” her pistol is a .22, less lethal, certainly, than pistols held by her male colleagues, even “lady-like” to some standards (but respectable nonetheless). The same mediation can be seen in the Chrisman sisters’ portrait, as the girls clearly, given the incongruence between their western saddles and their proper dress, did not ride to the sod house in the dresses, but changed into them once there in order not completely to push the expectations of female respectability.537 Elliott West has also noted this tension

inherent in the westerner identity for women, stating that “daughters….grew up

identifying more with one area of work—the outdoor labors associated mostly with

men….Then, as they passed into their teens, they were expected to devote most of the

rest of their lives to their mothers’ tasks of homemaking.”538 He quotes young

homesteader Mary Ellen Todd’s feeling after her father taught her to drive the wagon:

How my heart bounded a few days later, when I chanced to hear my father say to mother, ‘Do you know that Mary Ellen is beginning to crack the whip?’ And how it fell again, when mother replied, ‘I’m afraid it isn’t a very lady-like thing for a girl to do,’ After this, while I felt a secret joy in being able to have the power that set things going, there also was a sense of shame over this new accomplishment.539

It is true (and has been a topic of much recent western scholarship) that the violence and independence associated with the single, western male presented to eastern

536 Butcher, “Sod Houses,” np.. 537 The tenuousness of females’ identification with the westerner identity is also found in the remembrance by Estelle (third from left) that Ruth, on the right end, “always disliked this picture very much, because of her hair hanging down over her forehead. In her words she said, ‘I looked like a horse thief.’” Estelle Chrisman Laughlin to NHSH, 3/11/1959, in Chrisman surname file.

538 West, Growing Up with the County, 142 539 Quoted in West, Growing Up with the Country, 142. 287

males an outlet for the constraints of increasingly domesticated civility and mechanized

structure of industry. However, it does not necessarily follow that this identity offered

precisely the same enticement to the western settlers.540 If adopting the identity of the

westerner, most infamously presented in a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt taken after his

sojourn west [Fig. 284], 1885, offered an outlet to the industrial and urban life of the

easterner in its scintillating suggestion of “manliness” and violence, it also provided an

outlet to the westerner, but I would suggest that it was one that posed the possibility of a

different power. It provided, for the settler, not an escape from urbanization, but rather

an escape from colonialization. By finding and adopting an acceptable model of cultural

identity in their own environment, settlers could claim legitimacy as westerners, and

through that process find an identity that had power outside of the capitalistic

disempowerment inherent in agrarian-based identities. If, “Americans significantly associated freedom and independence with the borders of their own society, and they attached these values most fully to single males,”541 then it is not surprising that settlers

absorbed the identity of the “borderland, single male”—the cowboy—into their own

identities as a means by which they could also assert the freedom and independence

required to claim cultural power on their own terms. In asserting a shared community

with other western laborers, such as cowboys, the settlers also asserted a shared

independence. What had been shunned in agrarian ideology—the natural Plains

540 There are numerous publications that explore the West, and the persona of the westerner as an outlet for eastern males. As Edward White has explained, “As eastern society became more complex, rigid, and urbanized in the last years of the 19th century, this image [the west as an alternative to the social order] was to reassert itself in a cult of westernizing which profoundly influenced the American imagination.” White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience, 50. For another excellent discussion of the relationship of the West to the easterner’s imagination in the late 19th century, see the chapter “The Imagined West” in White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 613-631. 541 White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”, 16. 288

environment, the changes it necessitated in the lives of its settlers, and the independent male culture resident therein—was instead celebrated in the identity of the westerner.

In the words of Donald Worster, “Legitimation involves the transforming of what might be regarded with skepticism or hostility into something acceptable, even honorific.”542 Stephanie Sarver suggests that this legitimation involves the oft-referred to

“paradigm shift” in which “the concepts, values, perceptions, and practices shared by a community, which form a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way the community organizes itself…is transformed.”543 Indeed the adoption by Custer County settlers of the cultural identity of the westerner marked a shift during the 1880s in which they sought a mode of self-empowerment not available to them in their adherence to colonialist agrarian rhetoric.

542 Quoted in Sarver, Uneven Land, 127. 543 Quoted in Sarver, Uneven Land, 127. 289

CHAPTER 9

HISTORY

9.1 Defining a Pioneer History

The idea driving the formulation of Butcher’s photographic archive was to create a history of the pioneering era of Custer County. He clearly voiced his ideas about what subject and narrative constituted such a history, as well as the processes he believed

would best convey them. Butcher’s subject was “the pioneer.” “The pioneer in every

new country is the man who has to devise the ways and means of taking the country as

nature has left it and he finds it, and bring it into subjection to the will of man.” Butcher

asserted the result of which was the creation of “that grand character in history—the

typical American.”544 The pioneer had a discrete position and role in a historical

narrative. He was the last in a chronological progression of stages through which the

American frontier was brought into civilization: the era of the Indian and buffalo, the

trapper and scout, the rancher and cowboy, and then the pioneer. As the main actor in

last era, it was the pioneer’s role in this civilizing narrative to transform both the

economic and cultural environment of the frontier into the respectable, middle-class rural

544 Butcher, “Sod Houses,” introduction. 290

environment of the yeoman farmer. Thus, the narrative that the pioneer belonged to, or

was active in, was enacted on a national stage, and his role was imperative to the health

of the nation.

However, one of the problems for Butcher in creating a history that attended to

such expectations was the complicated nature of Plains settlement. As was noted in

chapter one, areas such as Custer County were settled in a breathtakingly short period of time. The county was considered “settled” in less than a decade after the first settlers began moving into the area. This speed was not merely notable, but changed the very nature of settlement. As William Cronon has noted, “the hierarchy of the city, town, and country that appeared too quickly in the great West during the second half of the 19th century represented a new phase of frontier expansion.”545 Butcher and his subjects

struggled to shape their history to fit the received model of the civilizing process in which

each era was discrete from the others. However, the true nature of settlement was

something much more fluid.

Though violence was a primary component of the earlier eras—the Indians,

military, and cowboys’ world—the celebrated characteristic of the pioneer was

domestication and cultivation. However, due to the speed of settlement, these eras, or at least their perceived characteristics, overlapped and blurred desired boundaries. In his history, Butcher places stories of violence and “high jinks” with local cowboy characters

and early events in county history (and even places later events that are of this kind early in the text of his history). For instance, settler J.J. Douglas recounted in Butcher’s book

545 Quoted in Wilbur R. Jacobs, On Turner’s Trail: 100 Years of Writing Western History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994)., 224. 291

that, “The early history of the county is a record of bloodshed and murder—so much so,

in fact, that the term, ‘dark and bloody ground,’ applied to the state of Kentucky, would

not be less appropriate for Custer county.”546 Indeed, the most notorious murder in the

county occurred early in settlement, in 1878, when a dispute between two homesteaders

and a rancher resulted in the death of a rancher and a vigilante hanging and burning of the

settlers.547 Butcher created “staged” photographs of the event and recounted it in his

history, as it seemed to epitomize the stereotyped tension between ranchers and settlers

during the transition from one era to the next. However, as historian and Custer County

native Scott Kleeb has noted, very few actual murders occurred as a result of such

acrimony. In contrast, the county did experience enough violence, during the later era

when Butcher was actually photographing the civilizing process of the pioneer, to compel

the brakeman on the railroad to reintroduce an infamous local warning from the 1870s,

that “You have now crossed the Custer county line; prepare to meet your God.”548 A local county newspaper, in responding to the frequency of murders in the county in 1889,

546 J.J. Douglas, “Organization of Custer County,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 7. 547 This incident, between settlers Luther Mitchell and Ami Ketchum and the Olive family, who were ranchers, was widely publicized and discussed throughout the county’s history. See Mitchell and Ketchum surname files, CCHS; as well as other general history files in the CCHS. The event is also recounted in “The Mitchell and Ketchum Tragedy,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 43-62. 548 Scott Kleeb, “‘Kickin’ Prairie Air’: Custer County, Nebraska and the Internal Cattle Ranching Frontiers of the Late-Nineteenth Century American West,” unpublished manuscript, Yale University, 2001, CCHS. The reuse of the original phrase is also quoted in “We now Cross the Custer County Line,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 208. Early history of the area, before it was organized into Custer County, states that cowboys had erected a sign on the border of the proposed county “Kountz” (now part of Custer County) that announced in red letters, “Enter Kountz Territory, make peace with your God.” Farritor surname file, CCHS. 292

opined that “We expect another murder in the county as it is now about the right time of

the moon….This kind of work is getting altogether too common in Custer County and

something should be done to stop it.”549

The speed of settlement not only affected the clear distinction of eras in the

civilizing narrative, but also the nature of the pioneering era itself. Butcher’s concept of

settlement was that it developed as a coherent movement in which, after the massive

population influx of 1883-84, the work of the pioneers uniformly transformed the area

from frontier into a rural farming area. With this unified transformation came the change

from instability to stability, and the pioneer era was complete. Butcher expressed this in

the advertisement for his photographs, “Secure a picture of life in the far west while you

can. Sod houses will soon be a thing of the past.”550 Though there was, indeed, a boom

of immigration, movement of settlers in and out of the county continued throughout the

decade of the 1880s. Not all the settlers stayed and moved from dugout, to sod house, to

frame house in accordance with agrarian rhetoric. Rather, land was in a continual process

of changing hands, and many settlers were living in their first dugouts in 1890, while

others had become well established and, by Butcher’s definition, had completed the

transformative work of a pioneer and had moved on to be considered farmers. While the

nature of the county as a whole did change, the nature of individual lives continued to

operate in an extremely fluid state.

549 The Merna Record, 1/17/1889. Quoted in Kleeb, ‘Kickin’ Prairie Air’, 26. Butcher coded violence, which was very present in the area in the 1880s, as a characteristic of the “western” nature of the environment, and not part of the “civilizing” nature. Yet, his fascination with the violence of the county’s history coupled with his insistence on celebrating its civilization, suggests that the conflation of pioneering and farming that resulted from the speed of settlement omitted a narrative space for the process of conquest. Butcher struggled to find the appropriate conceptual, and consequent historical, “location” for the violence, and thus it seems to hover uneasily at the edges of his narrative. 550 Advertisement found on the backs of original individual prints, photograph file, CCHS. 293

This fluidity was suppressed by Butcher’s subjects. Butcher’s history was compiled in large part from actual submissions and transcribed stories of the county’s settlers. The book is full of histories of areas and towns written by “old-timers” and town fathers, such as Ephraim Swain Finch, J.D. Strong, Jesse Gandy, Charles Mathews, D.M.

Amsberry, Dan Haskell, and William Comstock, for whose lives the received narrative of the pioneer seems to match closely.551 While communities such as Custer County construct a shared identity defined by a general agreement of ideals typified by the lives of its most esteemed settlers, in actuality the specific lives of individuals in that community rarely mirror so closely the ideals of this identity.552 Most settlers’

experience of the 1880s was defined by the profound fluidity of settlement and the

disparate social, cultural, and economic positions this created. As explored in chapter

six, significant numbers of the local population were continually moving to and from

locations causing a sense of dislocation and alienation that frequently elicited expressions of loneliness and amazement at how few original settlers remained.553 Yet, through the

absorption of the collective history, as told by the community leaders and continually re-

551 These settlers’ stories, all in Butcher, Pioneer History, are (in order): “Old Settler’s Story,” 31-43; J.D.Strong, “Blazing a Pathway and Personal Pioneer Experiences,” 63-81; “Jess Gandy’s Reminiscences of Early Days in Custer County, Neb.” 81-93; C.R. Mathews, “Settlement of New Helena,” 113-119; D.M. Amsberry, “History of Broken Bow,” 189-207; Dan Haskell, “Hunting Wild Horses,” 218-221; W.H. Comstock, “Incidents of Douglas Grove,” 238-241. 552 Though dealing with issues of nationalism, one of the best examinations of how, exactly, individuals and individual communities identify with the ideals and historical constructions of a broader community such as a nation is Benedict Anderson’s revised edition of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York, NY: Verso, 1991). 553 For instance, George Mair began his history of Callaway by stating that “I have been asked to write a history of Callaway….I find, upon investigation, that most of those who were here in the beginning and who took an active part in the organization of the town have removed to other parts, and that the birth of Callaway, in the minds of the citizens of to-day, is apparently in the dim distant past, a dust-covered tradition.” George B. Mair, “Callaway,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 271. While Mair was writing later than the 1880s, still, Callaway, which had organized in 1885, had only existed for 15 years. 294

established at community events and interactions, the residents of the community

absorbed into their individual experience this collective idea of stability.

Probably even more influential on the settlers’ presentation of their history than the speed of settlement and the unacknowledged fluidity and instability it created, was their self-conscious awareness of their perceived role in national history. Settlers understood that their lives and the transformative activity they engaged in operated on a national stage. That they were aware of their actions as “history in the making” seems clear by the fact that they called themselves “pioneers” from the very start of their residency in the county. As was noted in chapter one, in 1882, only five years after the organization of the county, the Republican began a serial history of the county. The state, having just formed its historical society, was urged to get its history “from the lips and tongues of living men and women who were here at the commencement.”554 Quite

interestingly, John Opie has argued that “possibly the American experience involves an

unusual ‘compression’ of history. Perhaps history moves at a variable pace.”555 In

Custer County “history” had happened so fast that the very participants were still active

and able to “retell” it only a few years later. Its presence oddly overlapped its memory.

Settlers also frequently made self-referential comments that indicated their

perceptions of themselves as historical agents. For instance, one of Stillman Gates’s

daughters recalled how a local bachelor asked them to launder and starch his “fine shirts.” When he returned from his trip to Chicago with a bride, the daughters joked about how the “boys didn’t sing ‘The Little Old Shanty on the Claim’ to him so often

554 Nebraska Farmer, January 1879. 555 John Opie, “Learning to Read the Pioneer Landscape: Braudel, Eliade, Turner, and Benton,” Great Plains Quarterly 2:1 (Winter 1982): 22. 295

after that.”556 This song was popular on the Plains as well as in the East, its lyrics

recalling a bachelor’s simple homemaking environment on a homestead. The fact that

the settlers enjoyed this song, not in looking back on their lives, but while they actually

lived in their “little old sod shanty on the claim” suggests that they understood their

present experiences to be generating the historical past. Or, more directly, “The West of

Anglo American pioneers…began re-imagining itself before the conquest of the area was

fully complete.”557 Certainly Butcher’s pioneer history, begun out of a fear that the era

was ending within the decade of its initiation, participated in this phenomenon.

The settlers of Custer County were not only aware of their activities as creating

history, they were also well aware that they had an audience for their history-making

activity. The settlement of Custer County occurred concurrently with major

communication developments in the country. As Richard White has noted, “Anglo

American settlement of the West happened to take place simultaneously with the rise of penny newspapers, dime novels, and sensationalist journals….mass media, a mass audience, and mass western migration all bumped into each other, as it were, at a given historical moment.”558 Not only were easterners reading about events in the West

immediately as they happened, but westerners were reading about themselves as they

556 Gates surname file, CCHS. This song was also reproduced by request in the Custer County Republican, 9/30/1887. 557 Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of OK Press, 1991), 613. 558 White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 620. Henry Nash Smith has summarized this communications development: “The significant event [for popular culture of the post-Civil War period] was the development of mass media of communication on something like a modern scale…cost of producing printed matter was lowered by introduction of steam-powered presses; the spread of free public schools conferred a kind of half-literacy on large segments of the population…trunkline railroads connecting the principal cities facilitated the nationwide distribution of books and magazines. A national market for such commodities came into being, and a new large-scale industry was created to supply the demand.” Popular Culture and Industrialism 1865-1890, ed. Henry Nash Smith (Garden City, NY: 1967), vii. 296

were engaged in the very events being published. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was touring

the country to enthusiastic audiences—in both the West and the East—with the main

narrative of his show including settlers, at the very same time Butcher was photographing settlers.559 The Plains area was also included on tourist maps produced for railroad

passengers. For instance, on the “Union Pacific Tourist Map of Connecting Lines” [Fig.

285], 1893, scenes of corn fields, harvesting, and plowing suggest for the tourist what

historic or iconic activities to watch for as they passed through Kansas and Nebraska in

the same way that scenes of miners illustrate Utah and Wyoming and the Big Trees,

Great Shoshone Falls, and Crater Lake illustrate the far West.560 Given the dominant belief in the civilizing narrative, the West was perceived by the nation’s public as the arena, the location, in which national history was playing itself out. The West was, in concept, an exhibition space in which an audience could watch, in real time, a kind of

“virtual history.”561

559 Buffalo Bill began his touring troupe in 1883, based on a 4th of July celebration he sponsored the previous year in North Platte (just south of Custer County). In 1884 Annie Oakley joined the show, in 1885 and 1886 Sitting Bull toured with them, and in 1887 the show was part of the American exhibition at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in London. 560 Seeing one’s self as a notable feature for tourism, either on the train or in an arena, worked in the same manner that Patricia Limerick recounts the experience, though earlier, of Kit Carson. “In 1849, Kit Carson set out to rescue a white woman, providentially named Mrs. White, who had been taken captive by the Jicarilla Apaches. When the search party caught up with the Indians, it was too late; Mrs. White had just been killed, but Kit Carson came upon a surprising souvenir: ‘We found a book in the camp,’ he reported, ‘the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was represented as a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds.’” In quoting this account, Richard White also noted that, as an epitome of the self-awareness that westerners had of being watched, of their lives being played to an audience, “the connection between the two goes beyond this, for the story of the incident comes to us in a book, written by the actual Carson, to capitalize on the market the mythic Carson had created for him.” White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 616-617. 561 An excellent discussion that presents an example ( of a location that functioned as an arena of spectacle, and the dynamics of this situation (though it deals with the early 20th century city as an arena of spectacle and commodification of women) is: Deborah Fairman, “The Landscape of Display: The Ashcan School, Spectacle, and the Staging of Everyday Life,” ?, 205-235. 297

Plains settlement differed from earlier settlement in that it was so accelerated and pre-conceived that history was conflated with experience, the result of which was that experience was never without the self-awareness of having an audience, and of the expectations of that audience. Settlers understood their role for this national audience

was to present themselves as “the pioneer.” They were living, specific examples of a

national icon, not unlike the buffalo, Indian, or even, by the end of the century, the

plow.562 Settlers felt, and responded to, the pressure to be “the pioneer” rather than “a

pioneer.” Thus, in shaping their lives and, consequently, their own identities by this pre-

conceived role, they allowed public definitions of identity to override private ones.563

Because of this iconic identity, Butcher’s history, and thus his archive, is emblematic to the core. Settlers in Butcher’s history stand in their portraits as emblematic representations of a national type—the pioneer. Their importance to history is not their individual experience or identity, but rather their iconic identity in nationalistic ideology.

Butcher likewise understood the settlers’ identity to be iconic rather than specific. For instance, he included a portrait of the Henry Barnes family in his book. However, the caption for their portrait, “A Typical Dugout,” doesn’t identify the specific family, even though Butcher knew who they were, but rather suggests that their image presents something universal in Plains settlement.564

562 Though the plow was considered symbolic even in the late 1880s, as Mary Ellen Jones has noted, “By the time of the 1918 publication of Willa Cather’s My Antonia, the plow…had itself become a symbol.” Mary Ellen Jones, Daily Life on the 19th-Century American Frontier (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 164. 563 This dual performance of identity has been the topic of much feminist theory. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of identity (1990). 564 Butcher, Pioneer History, 309. 298

Butcher’s archive reveals his and his subjects’ desire to reify national

mythmaking, to reify an element of national identity. Yet, because Butcher chose to

validate this ambitious history undertaking through the use of actual local events and

personalities, verifying its “truthfulness” through the perceived documentary aspects of

photography, the archive presents the precarious position resultant from, essentially, his

use of a visual model that was incongruent with his narrative intentions. In so doing,

Butcher’s portraits, to paraphrase Stephanie Sarver, “find themselves on an uneven

conceptual ground, shifting between literal and metaphorical treatments of the

subject.”565 This “uneven ground” of historical narrative is not an imposition on the

content of the archive, however, but is one of the primary agents through which the

archive sustains its coherence. History was not something that was merely happening as

Custer County was settled; rather, history was an active presence, acknowledged by the

settlers, that played a determinative role in (rather than a result of) the county’s

settlement.

9.2 Acting like a Pioneer History

The manner in which Butcher and his subjects proceeded to assert their role in a

history of national importance—to assert their role as “the pioneer”—creates the

fundamental visual interest of the portraits. One of the most active visual elements conveyed by the archive as a whole is the desire of the families to belong to a larger,

565 Sarver, Uneven Ground, 75. Sarver is discussing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s treatment of agriculture and nature in his essay, “Farming,” though her realization of the reoccurring shift in literary treatments of agricultural landscapes between philosophical and factual treatments is quite apropos to my discussion of Butcher’s visual treatment of the agricultural landscape. 299

more epic narrative of history. For instance, in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 71], 1889,

the viewer’s concentration is sustained by the desire to inspect the objects—the opened book, elaborate photo album, pet and canary cages, and even livestock—that the family

proffers as signifiers of who, within the larger narrative of settlement, they are. The

portrait is explicitly performative, and we enter a self-conscious visual dialogue with the

subjects. This is similarly the case with The Garniss family, Dry Valley, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 106], 1887, in which our curiosity is piqued by the unexpected hoard of

melons, the intricate machinery, and even the gestures that tie the family together. The

subjects, in collaboration with Butcher, have presented not just an historical world for our

consideration, but their desired relationship to that world as well.

Perhaps this is best realized when the performative elements that typically

dominate the archive are absent. In Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 286], 1892, the figures seem to have no emotional relationship to one another, the house, yard, and clothing are all non-descript and invite little extended inspection. There is no indication

of economic or domestic activity. The image falls short of the realization that a certain

mode of self-conscious performance is expected as part of a portrait of “the pioneer.”

The portrait fails to connect to a larger narrative; it fails conceptually to extend itself into an ideological sphere.

The aim of performative activity was to encapsulate in a single image the temporal process of change enacted by the settlers. Because the pioneer narrative had

been naturalized as national history, implicit in a statement about the present conditions of pioneers was the understanding of what the environment had been changed from. A

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frontier had been transformed into a middle-class agricultural environment. By including

objects in their portraits that signified the success of this transformation, settlers claimed

ownership of that process in history, they claimed ownership of a pioneer identity. In one

sense, the use of objects as signifiers of change is required due to the nature of the

medium and subject. History, and the transformation through time it represents, is a temporal phenomenon. Yet, photography is a static medium, at the very heart of its nature is its ability to arrest time, and thus it erases the very temporality at the heart of history that Butcher desired to convey. However, by investing a temporal experience into a physical object—such as teapots or implements—Butcher and his subjects used photography to make an ephemeral process tangible.

Another method that Butcher utilized to indicate the history of Custer County settlement was the inclusion of “old-timers,” or those community members who settled early enough to have experienced first-hand early events in the county’s history, and who could recount the nature of the changes wrought by settlement. Old-timers offered

Butcher a connection to an earlier era that created the historical chronology he desired.

Of the portraits in Butcher’s archive taken before 1890 whose subjects are identified and who indicated the date of their arrival, 28% had arrived in Custer County in the 1870s, and nearly 56% arrived before the boom years of 1883-84.566 This data coupled with

566 The numbers, specifically, are: 272 total; 77 from 1870s; 31 from 1880; 13 from 1881; 30 from 1882; 34 from 1883; 42 from 1884; 20 from 1885; 6 from 1886; 6 from 1887; 8 from 1888; 4 from 1889; 1 from 1890. The data is compiled from the surname and obituary files, CCHS. These numbers reflect nearly the opposite nature of the actual influx of population the county experienced after 1883, and then again after 1886. The concentration of early settlers could reflect a number of factors, the prominent one being that the earlier the settler arrived and stabilized his operations before the drought, the more able he was to withstand the hardship it produced. The settler who arrived after 1886 (who, in essence, came with the railroad) had a much more difficult time enduring the drought. These later arrivals moved on, making it difficult later on to identity their portraits. Even when they were identified, they were residents for such a short period of time that often their settlement stories are not found in the county records. 301

Butcher’s frequent indications of a subject’s “old-timer” status and the frequent notations

he made regarding their experiences or memories of early history, suggest that the

predominance of early settlers in the archive reflects Butcher’s conscious decision to

include them. In an era and location in which none of the residents had sustained

connections to the area, old-timers embodied, through the earlier experiences of their

lives, the transformation of the area from frontier to civilization. In order to establish a

discrete chronology that adhered to the received narrative of settlement, Butcher felt

compelled to concentrate his activity on these residents.

In Al. Burger at Genet, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 35], 1886, Butcher noted that Mr. Burger was “An old time trapper and buffalo hunter. Was known among the trappers as ‘Bloody Dick.’”567 In Butcher’s history, another old-timer who he calls

“Colonel,” contributed a story about an Indian encounter in the 1860s that explained the

find by settlers in the 1880s of a peace medal given to Indians by the government (and

thus connected the residents of the 1880s to the earlier history of the area). In telling his

story, he says, “Al Burger, alias Dick Seymour, or Bloody Dick, as he was sometimes

called, and his brother….were buffalo hunters and trappers and were on their way to

North Platte with furs. I met Bloody Dick a few days ago and he tells me that he has

married and has been living on the Middle Loup since 1882.”568 While Butcher’s portrait

includes the Burger family, it is clear that Mr. Burger stands front and center, to be

scrutinized not merely as the head of the family, but as an emblem in and of himself. In

567 Butcher notations, indexed in “Solomon D. Butcher Photograph Collection Guide to the Microfiche,” NSHS; and in the additional comments available in the photograph’s record on the American Memory database website. 568 “The Colonel’s Story,” Butcher Pioneer History, 137; see also Burger surname file, CCHS. 302

the same manner that the teapots, books, and melons in other portraits verify

emblematically the family’s participation in the civilizing narrative, Mr. Burger embodies the connection between the past and the present, and thus stands in his portrait to verify the chronology of this narrative.

Harvey Andrews, pictured with his family in The Harvey Andrews family on their homestead two and one-half miles northwest of New Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 20], 1887, was respected for his personal connection to the earlier era of western development.

Andrews came to Custer County in 1874. When looking for claims, he and his party came across an Indian teepee that had only recently been deserted. He “shot deer, antelope both by the hundreds and also a buffalo,” in “1877 he drove the stagecoach in the Black Hills…and was chased by Indians. The driver the day before he started was killed by Indians and one day he came upon mutilated bodies of 2 men and a woman massacred.” 569 Andrews began working cattle for Thomas Laughran, a prominent

rancher who also came to the county in 1874, and soon married his 16-year-old daughter,

Jennie, settling down to complete the area’s pioneer transformation. Gordon Housel, the

patriarch in East Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 287], 1888, was celebrated for his

experiences hunting in the main buffalo herd (northern Plains) in 1873. Turned into a

good pioneer, he erected the first frame house in his area in 1882.570 Frank Cozad,

standing with his family in The log and sod house of Frank Cozad, 2 miles east of New

Helena, Nebraska [Fig. 288], 1886, often was called upon to make speeches as an “old-

timer” at celebrations. After serving in the Civil War, he spent 8 years in the western

569 See Andrews and Laughran surname files, CCHS. 570 Housel surname file, CCHS. 303

army, developing the “crack-shot” skills he was admired for and serving under the

government survey of Yellowstone. After his marriage he came to Cozad, Nebraska,

founded by his uncle, John, working in his hotel and for the Rankin ranch before

beginning to homestead in Custer County in 1876.571

There are “old-timers” whose local nicknames indicate their cultural status due to

their esteemed length of residency in the area. For instance, in “Grand Pa” Dailey,

Milburn, Nebraska [Fig. 289], 1886, “grandpa” stands alone outside of his house. That the moniker “grandpa” denotes a cultural, rather than a familial status seems supported by the fact that his grandson, who certainly would have been included in the portrait if the term was to indicate dynastic lineage, can barely be seen though the window, his curiosity obviously prevailing over his exclusion by those constructing the portrait and its

meaning. Similarly, in Portrait of Sarah Finch, wife of Ephriam Swain Finch [Fig. 290],

1900, Sarah was widely known as “Aunt Sarah” and her husband, “Uncle Swain.” Swain

first came west with his brother seeking gold in Montana. He and his wife then moved to

Custer County in 1873 with 80 head of cattle. Until 1878, Sarah was the only female for

40 miles. Swain’s nephew, John, who lived with them and worked on many of the

importance ranches in the West, was asked by Buffalo Bill to perform in his Wild West

(though he turned the offer down to get married). In 1905 the Finch estate, the first to be

subjected to inheritance tax, was valued at $42,000, with nearly 2,500 acres of land. The

couple was highly respected for their experiences, as they embodied the received

571 Cozad surname files, CCHS. The town of Cozad is located just south of the Custer County line. Interesting to art historians, Frank’s cousin (John’s son) was artist Robert Henri. Cozad’s experiences also belie the stereotyped antagonism between ranchers and homesteaders, as his history notes that the Rankin ranch hands were extremely good to him and his wife, even helping them get settled in their homestead. However, Frank’s uncle John ended up seriously wounding a rancher in an argument over land use. 304

experiences and success promised pioneers in agrarian rhetoric. They in turn acted in

ways expected of “founders”; Sarah gave money in her will to establish the Arnold library, and Swain underwrote Butcher’s history publication.572 In her portrait, Sarah sits

in proper attire, looking directly into the camera, her propriety augmented by her

connection to the “frontier” era by the buffalo robe hung behind her, establishing her old-

timer status.

Butcher frequently approached landscape in the same mode that he approached

old-timers, asking it to represent its involvement in experiences of the past. For instance,

in John Bridges of Oconto, Nebraska, owner of Devils Gap [Fig. 210], 1892, John

Bridges is shown “presenting” Devil’s Gap, the site where the Olive ranch cowboys

hanged and burned the two homesteaders, Mitchell and Ketchum. While the infamous

event eluded Butcher due to its location in the past, he contrived to evoke the story

through the specific site of its occurrence. The landscape’s epic size, deep and

treacherous canyons, and “western” composition, work to suggest the iconic nature of the

conflict, its danger, and “western” violence. Not all “historic sites,” however, evoked the

nature of their history as well. For instance, in Old Mitchell sod house where Ketchem

killed Olive in 1887 (or 1878) [Fig. 16], 1888, the photograph itself fails completely to

initiate much visual interest. It is imbued with importance, and visual interest, only by

the history it participated in—that of the Mitchell and Ketchum incident. It is activated

only in the context of Butcher’s historical narrative. Such images make clear the role of

history as the organizing element of the archive. The landscape, or house, in and of itself

has no interest, and has no intrinsic connection to the rest of the images in Butcher’s

572 Finch surname file, CCHS. See also “Old Setter’s Story,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 31-43. 305

archive except through its experience of the changes wrought by settlement. It is no different, to Butcher’s historical intentions, than a teapot or a gourd. Their connection is established (and thus the coherence of the archive is established) due to their utilization as emblematic objects that embodied the narrative of settlement.

At times Butcher altered the photograph to enable the landscape to suggest the history that had occurred within its expanse. For instance, in Lookout Point in Cherry

County, Nebraska, near the Snake River [Fig. 291], nd, Butcher wanted to convey the cedars that had covered the area before the influx of settlement, which is to say he wanted to convey settlement history by showing the transformation of the landscape. Maybe sensing the tenuous claim to history, based on their visual merits alone, that images such as Mitchell’s house had, Butcher felt compelled to etch in the missing cedars. In doing so, he clearly indicated his understanding that the photographs were tools to convey a particular history, and thus altering them was merely another mode to communicate the story better. These images all attempt through emblematic modes to express the specific nature of the historic transformation of the area, whether by establishing the present state

(i.e. the present state of middle-class culture on the once frontier) or by establishing the past state of the Plains (i.e. the presence of Indian, buffalo, and lawlessness in the past).

However, there are also images in the archive that reveal Butcher’s doubt that such a visual mode could reliably convey this history. The pressure to reify the civilizing narrative seems to have been felt so strongly that an emblem often could not be fully trusted to reliably assert the presence of this narrative. For instance, Swain Finch’s embodiment of the county’s early history doesn’t really convey his experiences in

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particular. So, in Ephriam Swain Finch demonstrating how he attempted to kill

grasshoppers in 1876 [Fig. 28], 1900, Butcher posed him, as the emblematic authority

who would make the scene truthful, re-enacting his attempt to fight off the grasshoppers

that destroyed his crops in 1876. To even better assure the image’s ability to tell the

story, Butcher incised the grasshoppers into the plate, fully directing the viewer’s

interpretation of the photograph. Likewise, “The hanging of Mitchell and Ketchum by

the Olive gang” [Fig. 292], nd, is part of a series of images Butcher staged at the actual site to retell visually the Mitchell and Ketchum incident. Again, in “Settlers taking the law in their own hands—cutting fence on old Brighton Ranch.” [Fig. 27], 1900, Butcher staged a past conflict between settlers and ranchers.573 Interestingly, in order to better

control the interpretation of his “documentary” images, Butcher staged his history.

However, in staging such past events, Butcher undermined the primary claim to the veracity of his history, which was that by relying on photography his history would be truthful and not “wild tales” of fiction.

The doubt and insecurity that pressured Butcher to seek greater control over the interpretation of his photographs reveals the inherent instability of his project. As was noted earlier, the actual fluid nature of the county’s settlement pattern didn’t fit perfectly with the concept of settlement history Butcher wished to tell. The actual settlement followed neither the discrete patterns of eras, nor even the assumed steady nature of the specific era of pioneer transformation. Given such constraints and desires, the history

573 “Secretary of the Interior H. M. Teller brought suit to compel removal of the fence and authorized settlers to cut the wires. Where the settlers were numerically strong, they were delighted to cooperate with the secretary. One night in 1885 settlers in Custer County cut fifteen miles of barbed wire fence around the big pasture of the Brighton Ranch (by 1883 it had enclosed 125,000 acres in the Loup Valley)…with only 6,000 cattle, they were simply excluding homesteaders from settling on government land within the enclosure.” Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert, 89. 307

Butcher’s archive conveys is conflicted. For instance, in D. Dunn just landed on his claim in Custer County [Fig. 293], 1886, Butcher depicts a family who has just arrived, and thus the image works to convey the process of settlement that Butcher placed early in the decade. However, the image is from late in the decade, and the family has taken over someone else’s relinquishment. The transience implicit in this situation, as well as the

presence in the background of a paddock and sizable windmill, make the narrative of

“transformation” and coherent historical chronology ambiguous. This is evident as well

in the juxtaposition of Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer County [Fig. 241], 1886, and

Sod house with cattle along railroad, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 157], 1888, in which

the presence of the railroad, and the modern communications it signified, is in sharp

contrast with the simple wagons and immigrant identity of the group. The 1880s offered

no clear narrative of history, especially not one that adhered as closely to the received

settlement narrative that Butcher and his subjects wished his history to tell. There is an

odd conflation of time present in the archive that resists conformity to a narrative, and thus leaves the actual and the desired experience of the decade unresolved.

Furthermore, Butcher began his project too late to record what he felt was the settlement characteristics of the early part of the decade. In A man behind team of horses with a walking lister and planter box, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 294], 1889, Butcher depicts a settler behind a team of horses with a walking lister and planter. Though at first glance the settler appears to have stopped in his work to present himself in the act of transformation, in fact, he doesn’t stand in a field, but rather in the middle of a pasture with the closest ribbon of turned sod far in the distance. Furthermore, the implement he

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presents was not modern for the time, but rather was commonly used earlier in the

decade. It appears that Butcher and his subject constructed the image to convey the mode

of working experienced in the early days of the county’s settlement. The implement is

not an emblem of progress, but rather an icon of the past. Similarly, in Family in front of

sod house dugout in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 233], 1892, the

Brumbaugh family poses in front of a dugout, seeming to present themselves at the start

of their pioneer narrative. However, the dugout has lathe across the broken panels of the

windows, the machinery is old and broken, and a cow carcass can be seen on the roof.

The Brumbaugh’s were part of a large and well-established family that came to the

county in 1880, and it would have been unlikely that they would still be living in such a

manner in 1892.574 What is more likely is that Butcher wanted to convey the “early”

stage of their settlement, and so they pose in front of their old home, no longer inhabited,

with slates across the window to keep out animals.

That these images are “re-enactments” of a sort is reinforced by several images

Butcher took later in his career. In Leon Daily sod house near, Milburn, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 295], 1904, Mr. and Mrs. Daily sit in front of their sod house,

accompanied by an unused separator. The house is inhabited, but by Mrs. Daily’s

chickens. She sits in a “Mother Hubbard” dress, well outdated by 1904, but very popular

in the 1880s, and in fact, frequently found in early photographs by Butcher.575 Ironically, the shingled roof of their frame house seen just along the top of the sod house (as well as the mature state of the tress behind) asserts the temporal fiction that the image desires to

574 Brumbaugh surname file, CCHS. 575 See Jane A. Funderburk, “Maternity Wear on the Nebraska Frontier, 1886-1892,” Nebraska History 81:2 (Summer 2000), 56-66. 309

conceal. Similarly, in James Wood, an old timer, and wife in front of their old sod house,

Dale Valley, Nebraska [Fig. 296], 1904, the Woods dress in clothes from the 1880s as they sit in front of a sod house boarded up and bordered by wood to keep livestock from rubbing against the walls. The true nature of the Woods’s life can be seen in James

Wood and family in front of their new house, Dale Valley, Nebraska [Fig. 297], 1904, taken at the same visit, with the old sod house just visible in the barnyard behind the new frame house.

Such fictions of time as all these images represent, reveal the instability created by the disparity between received narrative and actual experience. There is a vague separation here of past and present. “Newcomers” late in the decade represent the experiences of old-timers early in the decade, though, of course, they can’t fully do this, and the transience of the late decade lurks behind the fiction. Old-timers are compelled to re-enact their pasts, though these re-enactments, such as Swain Finch and the grasshoppers, reveal a history that also resides in an odd fluxus of past and present.

History was an unsteady ground upon which to establish cultural identity in Custer

County. Swain, as an elderly man clearly belonged to the present, the grasshoppers are clearly fiction, and though the event was real, it belonged to the past. The image speaks to the collision of the past, present, and fiction, that continually, though subtly, imposes upon the ability of the viewer (and arguably those creating the image as well) to reliably depend on the presence of any of them. Because of this, Butcher’s history resides in a vague, and constantly shifting historical location. Yet, in so doing, it seems to reflect the vague historical location of the settler’s themselves. If, as suggested earlier in this

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chapter, settlers were quite aware of their activities as “history in the making,” then the

rather undependable and even ineffable location of their activities in this history, played a

profound role in contributing to the area’s pervasive sense of instability. Without a

definable history, or with a history that refused to adhere to the tenets by which it was

defined, settlers existed, in essence, devoid of a chronological location. Furthermore,

because their identities were based on this history, the identities of the settlers themselves

were never securely realized.

In a fundamentally important way, then, sitting for a portrait for Butcher was a

very tangible mode by which settlers could obtain historical agency. By establishing an

image of visual control, an image that clearly asserted an order and structure to history,

settlers manifested, or brought into being, that order. What was achieved in the act of

sitting for a portrait that constructed a pioneer identity was that the time and narrative

implicit in that identity was conceptually created. History, as a very present and active

agent in the lives of westerners, offered a mode by which settlers could assert a structure that enabled them to reify their desired identity as pioneers, and, in fact, reify the control

inherent in the narrative that was not operative in their actual lives. In essence, the act of

creating one’s “pioneer portrait” created a visual “location” for a history that enabled

settlers to reify their place in time that they themselves seemed unable to fully establish,

or at least fully believe in, in their actual lives. If history was unsteady in their lives, they

could work to stabilize it through the fiction of photography.

Yet adopting the received iconic identity of “the pioneer” had profound

consequences for settlers. As discussed in the previous chapter, Custer County was an

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area colonized by the corporate East. Railroads, which were believed to support the

establishment of the yeoman farmer, in reality used the settler as a tool for corporate

profit. As Carlyle Hunter’s wife noted, “It seems that the Union Pacific wants colonies of people rather than single settlers.”576 The post-railroad development of Custer County,

experienced while Butcher was photographing pioneers, was controlled not by local

settlers, but by large corporations, such as the Lincoln Land Company and the Kilpatrick

Brothers family corporation. In identifying themselves as “the pioneer” within a

colonizing relationship, settlers defined themselves based on an identity that would never

be allowed to change. The pioneer’s identity was tied to a particular era in time, and that

era was conceptualized to exist before, and thus outside of, the modern world of

industrialism, progress, and, continued change. As the rest of the nation continued to

develop, the West remained defined by the past. This was especially true for Plains

westerners because of the late date of their settlement. While “the West” was in concept a moving entity defined by the location of a frontier, the last major area to experience the frontier (in popular perceptions) was the Plains. So, while Indiana could at one time be

“the West,” because the frontier moved further west from it, Indiana moved into the modern world with the rest of the nation. However, with no other “West” waiting in the wings, the Plains area, and the particular frontier culture associated with it, remained perpetually defined as “the West,” which placed it in history, and thus it (and its inhabitants) were denied both entry into the modern world and the power consequent to that entry.

576 Hunter surname file, CCHS. 312

This colonized position withheld economic and cultural power from the Plains settlers, essentially leaving them mute on a national level. However, it also increased their national visibility. Being in the last location of an era perceived to be seminal to national identity, the settlers on the Plains compelled a national audience. Settlers were well aware that their audience was riveted to the West not only because of its abilities to produce the raw materials that provided industrial power, but more importantly because it was the location, the “exhibition space” as phrased earlier, of national history. Because of the attentions of this audience, history became a commodified material from the

West—a cultural counterpart to industrial material such as gold, silver, and grain. In

fulfilling the role of “the pioneer,” settlers, already having absorbed extractive modes into

their labors, turned this extractive mode onto themselves, as a raw material of history, in

order to profit, culturally, from history’s commodification. While on the one hand this

offered the settler a sense of power obtainable without having to challenge the structure

of colonialism, it came at a cost not explicitly realized

Symptomatic of the process of extraction is violation, and for settlers this

violation was enacted against their personal identities. In order to profit from cultural

commodification, settlers had to present themselves as the lead character in settlement history, as “the pioneer.” They shaped specific characteristics of themselves to conform to iconic characteristics. They massaged the actual experiences of settlement to adhere to the pre-conceived narrative of settlement history. Their work to represent the actuality of their lives as embodiments of “the pioneer” is revealed in the theatricality of their

portraits. For instance, in Andrew Rickerts, near Gates Post Office, Custer County,

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Nebraska [Fig. 231], 1887, the fastidious and obviously premeditated reconstruction of a parlor setting and Mrs. Rickerts’s overt care in the precise angling of her hat reveal through their self-consciousness the desire (and thus the “work”) of the couple to perfectly adhere to pre-conceived expectations of identity. Likewise, in Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 32], 1888, the girl’s gesture that draws attention to the young sapling is quite self-conscious, and is clearly not done out of natural inclination but rather as a response to a very explicit directive. In Southwest Custer County, Nebraska [Illus. 27],

1892, the family proudly reveals their participation in musical culture, yet the incongruity of the exaggerated presentation with the setting suggests the family’s “work” to present this participation in a narrative, or context, not familial or personal, but iconic and epic.

These are not pioneers who have a love of music, they are “the pioneer who established culture on the frontier.” The same rather epic-minded exaggeration can be seen in the presentation of produce and implements in The Garniss family, Dry Valley, Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 106], 1887. These presentations reveal their artificiality despite the subject’s desire to naturalize them. While they are certainly familial portraiture, they don’t rest easily in this context due to the work of the family to elevate the portrait into a more comprehensive and encompassing mode of cultural portraiture. They work to establish a simple family as “the pioneer.

If “a pioneer” must work to be “the pioneer,” then this work, visually revealed in

Butcher’s archive, suggests that there is a gap between personal identity and cultural commodity. Yet, this gap was denied by the settlers, who had naturalized the identity of

“the pioneer” as their own personal identity. In essence the loss, or violation, of cultural

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extraction was psychological, and it manifest itself in the incongruity between the

actuality of the subjects, the theatricality of their presentation, and the ambivalence of

their setting. Nothing belongs to each other. The objects, which are frequently prized or dearly cherished personal possessions, are disengaged from this personal connection and

redefined in order to act as signifiers in an ideological narrative. History, as a

commodified agent in Plains culture, compelled settlers to define themselves by an identity impossible to perfectly absorb, and in so doing, produced a pervasive experience of personal and cultural disassociation.

In contrast to this “work” to be included in a narrative, there is also present in

Butcher’s archive the work of exclusion. In the same way that settlers adopted the identity of the westerner as an alternative identity to those asserted in agrarian rhetoric, they used that identity in order to claim a history that could not be commodified by an audience other than those who participated in that history. For instance, while Butcher asserted in his history’s introduction that it was a “truthful” one, he also informed the reader that, “We have in some cases used fictitious names, where we thought proper to do so, as it would not distract materially from the interest of the history. The old pioneers will have no difficulty in following the career of noted characters as well under one name as another.”577 In doing this, Butcher created an “in” crowd and an “excluded” crowd.

The story, which is about a horse thief celebrated by the local population, could still

affirm the transformation at the heart of the settlement narrative and yet, by changing the

577 Butcher, Pioneer History, preface. 315

names, Butcher activated his history as a specifically local one. By doing so, Butcher and

his subjects employed history to empower the presence of local history by excluding the

pervasive intrusion, and consequent pressure, of a national audience.

Many of Butcher’s images are similarly elusive. For instance, the title for

“Farmer ‘Corn Tassel’ whose cows always raised twin calves” [Fig. 298], 1904, is

indirect and would exclude an audience from the joke who did not already understand that “twins” conveyed in the West the presence of a stolen calf—and thus what was being depicted is not a farmer known for his breeding skills, but rather a farmer who was known for his appropriation skills. Likewise, the article “Clear Creek” in Butcher’s history, submitted, rather appropriately, by Puck, tells that, “Mr. and Mrs. Potts….on

coming to old man Mitchell’s place they found him eating dinner and were invited to

dine with him. Mr. Mitchell asked Mr. Potts if he had ever eaten elk meat. Upon being

answered in the negative he said: ‘You are eating elk meat now.’”578 This story speaks

strictly to a local audience on two levels. It uses the local euphemism “elk meat” for the

butchered meat of a stolen cow, and it reveals the suspicions of the local old-timers that

Mitchell (as in Mitchell and Ketchum) was not entirely innocent in his altercations, and

ultimate demise, with the Olive boys.

Clearly history was an agent used to various ends by Custer County settlers. In

fact, it is the understood presence of the historical audience that organizes the various

agents of ideology, desire, experience, and environment that seemingly collide in

Butcher’s archive. History is not merely the purpose, or the intention, of the archive, it

comprises the defining element of its disparate content.

578 Puck, “Clear Creek,” Butcher, Pioneer History, 188-189. 316

9.3 Acting like a Pioneer Historian

The settler who best understood the extractive value of history was Butcher

himself. Over the course of his life, Butcher proved himself to be ever cognizant of the

possibilities of wealth from western investment. At given times in his life, he was an

agent for western land investment companies such as the International Land and

Investment Company, the Pioneer land Company, and the Standard Land Company. In

fact, his second publication, Sod Houses, or the Development of the Great American

Plains, was produced to promote land sales for an agency in Nebraska at the Louisiana

Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. He sold oil leases in southern Nebraska and Colorado,

and even devised and marketed the Radio Magnetic Oil Finder, and “Butcher’s Wonder

of the Age” patent medicine, touted to “drive pain, and disease from the human body…as

if by magic.”579 While he didn’t fit the yeoman model of agrarian rhetoric, Butcher most

certainly fit the model of investment, profit, and entrepreneurship active in progressive rhetoric. When his first publication of Custer County history sold out before delivery during the summer of 1901, and the second edition was completely ordered by that

Christmas, Butcher believed he had found the investment that would make him rich, and at that point he quickly planned other histories of Buffalo and Dawson counties.

Butcher’s involvement in history has a much greater association with this interest in wealth through investment than it does with his interest in either photography or history as a subject in and of itself. This is not to say he was not dedicated to the historical importance of the endeavor. On the contrary, his belief in its importance kept

579 See Carter, Solomon Butcher, 7-9; Solomon D. Butcher, “Butcher’s Wonder of the Age” promotional flyer, NSHS. Many of Butcher’s letters held in the NSHS were typed on stationary with letterhead from the various land and investment interests he worked for. 317

him active compiling portraits even when the intended publication seemed shaky. As he

wrote to Addison Sheldon:

Here is where my wife had her patience tried many times, as these boxes of negatives took up the greatest part of one room and they had to be shifted from one place to another many times, and we moved them from the farm near Gates, Nebraska, to Broken Bow and had to hire an extra team to move them, the 23 miles, then we hired an extra team and moved them to Kearney 65 miles, 12 years ago and they have always been considered by both of us as something that should be preserved no difference how much inconvenience it made us in doing so.580

However, at a point in Butcher’s life when farming didn’t offer any interest, his

photography studio barely supported itself, and his family was growing, Butcher’s plan to

make money derived from his ability to intuit the value of a commodity, rather than from his commitment to the importance of history. In fact, his commitment to history seems to have grown as a direct result of his commitment to making a profit from it.581 That he viewed his work as something to be profited by is clear in his later correspondences. For instance, he wrote that, “I have many interesting sketches of early days…reserved for magazine stories….You understand I will not take a sub position and let any other salesman take an account on my work,” and “I hope that you will be generous enough to…give me credit for all the pictures of mine….I think that was stipulated in my contract, in selling my pictures to the state, was that whenever they were used I should have the credit of making them.”582

580 Butcher to Addison E. Sheldon, undated. Butcher papers, NSHS. 581 As ? has noted, “Once the entrepreneur risked an investment, he thereafter identified the community’s well-being with his own.” 582 Butcher to Addison E Sheldon, 1/26/1926; and Butcher to Addison Sheldon, 2/2/1926, Butcher papers, NSHS. Ironically, the majority of publications that have reproduced Butcher’s photographs fail to credit him. As John Carter has aptly recognized this slight, “It is curious that S.D. Butcher has crept, almost anonymously, into the fundamental fabric of American thinking about the West.” Carter, Solomon Butcher, 10. 318

Although Butcher’s desire to profit economically from history’s commodification perfectly countered his subject’s desire to profit culturally from it, as the creator of this history, which is to say, as the creator of a successful investment, Butcher understood his activities to be elevated above those of his subjects. He was in the position of the

extractor, in the position held, in extractive processes, by the titans of industry. His subjects were the raw material. According to local accounts he was considered something of a “celebrity,” and settlers were clearly excited to be a part of his endeavor—75 of them signed up for portraits within his first few weeks of his endeavor.583 Butcher was not merely another photographer like the other few in the area, his history idea made him a celebrity. In this sense, Butcher separated himself from the pioneers he photographed. This relationship is seen best in a story of the Farritor family,

portrayed in Robert G. Farritor family, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 68], 1889. As

Charles Farritor, a family historian recounts:

There was much talk of the book he was planning to do on the settlers in Custer County. When he came into the valley…he put up at Bob’s place [Farritor’s] for a week…while he traveled to the neighboring ranches and homesteads taking and selling his pictures….Mr. Butcher had held off taking Bob’s homestead picture until he had pretty well covered the area….He was very particular as to just how he wanted everything and everyone placed. At last everything seemed to suit him….Early the next morning Mr. Butcher was all packed and ready to leave, Anne had prepared a basket-lunch for him….the whole family, anxious for the unveiling, had gathered at the photography wagon. At last, after much thumping and moving about within the covered wagon he appeared…with the still wet photograph in his hand. The family loved the picture! Bob, however, was feeling a bit put upon, considering he’d been feeding a team of horses and a celebrity for more than a week, and he couldn’t see any credit showing on the bill that Mr. Butcher had handed him…..He said, ‘Mr. Butcher…could it be you’ve plum forgot that I sell stock feed like you sell pictures. I’d like you to show me some credit for the hay and oats

583 Farritor surname file, CCHS. 319

your horses et off me.’ Having had no previous experience with the temperament of an ‘artist,’ what happened next took the family totally by surprise. Mr. Butcher grabbed the picture out of Anne’s hand and ripped it in two, throwing the pieces down in the grass at Bob’s feet…and quickly jumped onto the spring seat of his wagon….shouting back over his shoulder, ‘Bob Farritor, no one’ll ‘er see y’r damn picture’—I’m go’na break the plate.’….The next time [Bob] went to Grand Island he had a shop there fit the pieces together as best they could.584

Clearly the Farritor family responded enthusiastically to the ability of the photograph, and the project it was part of, to include them in a history that implied their cultural importance, and as well to the image’s ability to reify their existence in a fluid environment. Equally clear from this account is that Butcher saw the importance of his endeavor to be elevated above the cultural practices, such as bartering, of the area. Even more important is the fact that he didn’t, as promised, destroy the plate, but kept it in his archive unidentified. This deception reveals not only that he understood its value to belong to him—it was his object more than it was the Farritor’s—but also that the importance of the project rested more on its nature as a compilation of “types,” with him

as the creator of this compilation, than as individual portraits of the actual subjects that

the project comprised.

Yet, at the same time, in order to claim authenticity for his history, Butcher felt

compelled to present himself as an “insider,” as a Plains settler-historian. Certainly,

Butcher was a settler in that he attempted, if for only two weeks, to homestead, and he

owned, and lost, land throughout his time in Custer County. Most importantly, having

arrived in 1881, he was considered an old-timer of sorts (his short farming stint not

withstanding), who had experienced the profound changes the county had experienced as

584 Note by Charles F. Farritor to John Carter, 1/25/1991, recounting the family’s oral history of the event. Butcher papers, NSHS. 320

it was transformed from frontier to civilization. Indeed, he understood himself to be a

westerner, stating that, “I had seen just enough wild western life to make me discontented

to remain in the East,” and viewing his entrepreneurial drive as “western push and

energy.”585 His family history was quite similar to the majority of other settlers. He came from the Midwest with an extended family, and his grandfather and two uncles died fighting for the Union in the Civil War.586 Even Butcher’s practice of traveling to

homesteads “selling” objects, such as pictures, was common. Other settlers, such as

Charles Melham, combined farming with peddling, and even the wagon of one such peddler (though the nature of his wares is obscured) is recorded in the distant farmyard of

Charles Bowman farm near Gates, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 299], 1900.587

Butcher asserted the authenticity of his history based on his status as one of the esteemed pioneers, and thus he claimed a position best able to be trusted to know his subject, in several key instances. In his own book he included “An Old Settler’s Story,” which is his account of his own settlement in which presents himself as a pioneer, stating:

This pioneer history is made up largely of the personal experiences of those who blazed the way into the wilderness and endured the trials and hardships incident of a pioneer settlement. Being one of these pioneers,

585 Butcher, “Old Settler’s Story,” np, Butcher papers, NSHS; quoted in David Vestal, “S.D. Butcher of Nebraska,” U.S. Camera Annual (1971): 59. 586 Lynn Butcher to Harry Chrisman, 11/30/1969, Butcher papers, NSHS. Butcher’s great grandfather was also in the Revolution and crossed the Delaware with Washington. His discharge papers were signed by Gen. George Washington. In an area where military participation was highly regarded, and the recognition of which was extremely active, Butcher could be considered an “insider.” 587 “Charles Melham combined farming with peddling for the J.R. Watkins Company.” See Reynold surname file, CCHS. Butcher also peddled other wares at various times in his life. His career before coming to Custer County was as a traveling salesman for a company in Clyde, Ohio; he was a subscription agent for the Custer County Republican; and later he worked as a traveling salesman for a grain and flour mill. 321

although less prominent than many others who have recounted their experiences in this work, I feel that it is my duty to contribute my mite to the general store of facts of which this work is composed.588

Furthermore, in the introduction to his later publication, he similarly states, “The author of this booklet, Mr. S.D. Butcher, of Kearney, Nebraska, was himself a pioneer of the plains country…where he still owns a farm, and it is to his experiences at that time and down through the years which have followed that the public are indebted for his wonderfully interesting ‘Pioneer History of Custer County’.”589

Butcher integrates his own history with that of this history of “the pioneer.” A number of portraits are of his own family, posed in the very same format at his other pioneer images, sharing the county’s assertion of participation in a national narrative.

That he saw these images, and thus his family, as part of the settler narrative of history is clear from the fact that the negatives of his family portraits were part of the archive he sold to the NSHS, rather than retained as family history by him. For instance, his father and mother are portrayed in Thomas Jefferson Butcher's first house, West Union, township, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 300], 1886; his brother’s homestead and family is portrayed in George W. Butcher near Jefferson post office, Custer County, Nebraska

[Fig. 301], 1888; his sister and brother-in-law are portrayed to convey their success at transformation, comparing A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

139], 1886, with their portrait only a few months later, A.J. Smith in front of their house near Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 140], 1886. Even more visually assertive,

588 Butcher, “An Old Settler’s Story,” Butcher Pioneer History, 143. 589 “Introduction,” Sod Houses or the Development of the Great American Plains, np, published with the 1965 reprint of Butcher’s Pioneer History. 322

Butcher portrays himself in front of his old dugout, “My first house in Nebraska, 1880.

Built from 'Nebraska brick’.” [Fig. 302], 1886, abandoned at the time of the photograph, to verify, visually, his status as a pioneer.

To be valid, Butcher’s history required the narrative of an insider, and Butcher worked to present himself in that role. In so doing, however, his own history was shaped to conform to the pioneer history he told, and in fact, more than mirroring each other, they became fused in interesting ways. Butcher absorbed the perceived rightful success of the pioneer into his project, seeing its success, due to its important connection to the pioneer, as also “rightful.” He believed it was a transformation that required the same hard work, independence, and entrepreneurship required of the pioneer. For instance, in describing the moment of his conception of the idea to create a history, Butcher stated:

I told my scheme to every one I met. I talked it constantly. I have talked it nearly fifteen years, and if God spares me I intend to keep talking it until Custer county is full of books. And as hundreds are already sold, I think I see in the future a partial realization of my dreams. After fifteen years of such a checkered career as few men have experienced, I have still been able to wrench success from defeat….Some called me a fool, others a crank, but I was too much interested in my work to pay any attention to such people.590

One element that compelled Butcher to associate his work with that of the pioneer was the frequent criticisms by his own family, and likely by many settlers who daily undertook the back-breaking labor of farming, who often chided him for “playing” and not really “working” like the rest of them. According to his niece, “Uncle George and

Uncle Abe [S.D.’s brothers]…would have gotten a chuckle over the ‘work brittle’

590 Butcher, Pioneer History, 153. In this same article, he described his success, writing, “How glad it made our heart when Uncle Swain Finch said: “Butch, you have worked faithfully and deserve success.” 323

remark. Since each of them were hard working farmers they spoke of S.D.’s physical activity in stronger language.”591 Even Butcher admitted this judgment, though he defended his work:

‘My friends advised me,’ Butcher later wrote with tongue in cheek, ‘to go on my farm and go to work. This was an insinuation that rather nettled me. It seemed to suggest that they thought I was afraid [of] work. This is a mistake. On the contrary I could lie down and go to sleep along side of it at any time.’592

By merging the nature of his own work with that of the settler, Butcher gained validity with his own subjects. But, also, in so doing, Butcher’s archive is in very intrinsic ways, a history of himself, and interestingly, a history of itself as well.

For instance, Butcher’s photography wagon is frequently included in images of other pioneer’s portraits. It can be quite clearly seen in Mat Freeman, West of the old

Jefferson P.O., Custer County [Fig. 303], 1886, but also, more inconspicuously in the distance in images such as Ulric Uhlman, Round Valley, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

201], 1886, and Zimmerman ranch, Custer County, Nebraska. [Fig. 207], 1888. In the same way that settlers brought farming implements into the composition as emblems of their participation in progressive technology, Butcher’s photography studio seems to suggest his own ability to extract produce from the area through his adeptness with technology. Such images assert a layered statement about their subjects and their maker as technologically progressive, and themselves, then, as objects, as commodities, that can both reify the progressive nature of their creation, and self-reference themselves as the

591 Ruby Blanford to John Carter, 7/19/1981, Butcher papers, NSHS. 592 Quoted in Carter, Solomon Butcher, 5. Harry Chrisman, a historian of the West who was a descendent of the Chrisman family from Custer County, also similarly defended Butcher’s work, suggesting, rightfully, that “No lazy man ever worked that hard and produced so much!” Harry Chrisman to John Carter, 11/22/1978. 324

progressive product. There are also images in the archive in which the studio clearly

plays a leading role in such statements. For instance, in Westerville, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 304], 1887, Butcher’s father poses in the studio wagon in front of the town of Westerville, the composition similar to that of Comstock, Custer County,

Nebraska [Fig. 188], 1904, in which Captain Comstock, founder of the town behind him, poses in a format in which he claims ownership, by “presenting,” of the transformation that spreads out behind him. Butcher similarly seems to suggest his ability, through his photographic technology, to be a founder—of an archive that is able to transform experience into verifiable history.

Butcher’s own experience of the Plains also reveals itself in the archive’s inclusion of images of failure, or images that don’t adhere so completely to the received nature of settlement history, and thus are responsible for the richness, the historical thickness, of the archive. With the increasing financial pressure of the drought in the late

1880s and early 1890s, Butcher depended more and more on the individual fees he received from his portraits. In essence, the archive is not comprised necessarily of portraits of only those settlers who were interested in the historical aspects of Butcher’s project, but rather, of portraits of those settlers who Butcher could compel to pay him a fee for a print of their portrait. The poverty, disarray, and absent family members are often a result of his need for a fee, and his desire to make as great a profit from individual fees as possible. He rarely returned for the perfect portrait, but rather took what he could

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get while he was there. Thus Butcher’s own failure to adhere to his intellectual

intentions, due to the pressures of the actual environment on him, are manifest in the archive in its ability to reveal the effect of the same pressures on its subjects.

The presence of history, and the specific nature of history on the Plains, is also

revealed in the inclusion of the presence of Butcher as the history maker. In many

images, Butcher’s shadow creeps into the frame of the composition. One of the most

striking of these many compositions is “Our Interests on the Prairie.” A sod house in

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 305], 1887, in which the form of the shadow conveys

Butcher’s camera and his hand held up, precisely in a pose to take a photograph.593 The

title suggests that settlers on the Plains defined themselves by their attainment of cultural

pursuits, as signified by the young man who holds a fiddle to his chin, and by their ability

to be self-sufficient, signified by the man on the right who prominently holds a shotgun.

Yet through the inclusion of Butcher in the act of recording this portrait, the title also

conveys the fact that another activity on the Plains that defined the settler was history.

The settlers are just as conscious of themselves as “history in the making” as they are as

musicians or hunters.

By including himself, Butcher also makes explicit the spectatorial position of the

viewer. His own activity of watching calls to our attention our own act of watching, and

we then realize that the subjects also acknowledge, indeed expect, as they acknowledge

the presence of Butcher recording them as “history.” We are invited by their awareness

of us as spectators, as a later audience, to examine their world that they present for us.

593 This same photograph is also identified in the archive as Charles W. and Lucy Ann Brownell Gibbs, six miles west of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. 326

Butcher’s presence manifests their invitation for us to look. Yet, at the same time it

refuses to allow us a completely unobstructed voyeuristic position. Butcher’s presence reminds us that the image is created, that it is technical and material, and not completely penetrable but an object that presents a world and not the world itself. In essence, it reifies the photograph as a commodity, and thus makes explicit our position in that commodification.

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CHAPTER 10

PROVING UP

10.1 Conclusion

In the past seven chapters I have attempted to disentangle each of the competing agents of ideology and environment I believe are present in Butcher’s photographs, returning again and again to the archive to tease out the specific modes through which each made its presence visualized.. While isolating each of these agencies of visual power seems to push the already tenuous coherence of the archive’s portraits into further disarray, this analysis has also served to better situate the experience they portray.

Butcher’s archive is a visual micro-history that reveals the Plains culture of the 1880s to be a very specific geographical and historical location undergoing an equally specific, and profound, transition. Custer County had experienced a settlement boom and a wet climatic cycle that bolstered the expectations asserted in agrarian rhetoric. Almost precisely concurrent with the instigation of Butcher’s archive, this provident situation began to deteriorate. There is a transitional period beginning around 1886, when Butcher also began his project, and continuing into the early 1890s when the agendas of

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progressive and agrarian ideology, the long-term nature of the Plains, and the fledging

appearance of a definable regional identity all increasingly put pressure on the received

beliefs and identities of the county’s settlers.

Adjustment was marked by disillusionment, and only slowly was the nature and

shape of the requirements of semi-arid farming in an industrial and market economy

realized.594 A cultural anxiety became more and more pervasive as the gap between

expectation and experience increased. While a gap, by definition, always exists between

ideology and experience, the Plains was the first area to force exposure of the covert,

systemic failings of the prevailing nationalistic ideologies. Those few years when

farmers began to repeatedly fail to experience what they believed but continued to

profess faith in their received beliefs, mark the very years Butcher was photographing.

The historian Frederick Jackson Turner identified the growing sense of crisis during this

transitional era as a crisis of history.595 As was noted in chapter one, Turner located the

cause with the “closing” of the frontier (i.e. the end of frontier settlement) announced in

the 1890 census, and presented by him in his now famous “frontier thesis” at the World’s

Exposition in Chicago in 1893.596 To him, the end of an existing frontier marked the

closing of an era of national history, indeed, of national identity.

594 Sam S. Kepfield, has noted, “The climate of the Great Plains was a puzzle that settlers did not decipher until the mid-1890s.” See, “El Dorado on the Platte: The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraska, 1860-1895,” Nebraska History 75:3 (Fall 1994), 232. 595 An excellent examinations of this anxiety, though it concentrations on its later manifestations, is David M. Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993). Wrobel states on page three that “I suggest that Turner’s writings were symptomatic of a wider frontier anxiety that emerged in embryonic form in the 1870s and became more pronounced in the succeeding decades.” 596 Turner’s thesis, which essentially defines the West as a process, rather than a distinct region, has been the object of much of western revisionist scholarship in the past several decades. The scholarship on Turner is extensive, and for the most part outside of the specific interests of this dissertation. Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” was presented at the 1893 American 329

However, though Butcher and his subjects personally felt the changes that the nadir of settlement caused, my examination of the archive suggests that this crisis was more accurately brought about by a major shift in cultural values and social structures due to the transition from a pre-industrial economy to one defined by industrialism. As

Jeffrey Wallmann has noted the effects of industrialism: “The last quarter of the 19th century was a time of rapid transition, in which the West, like the nation as a whole, moved swiftly from the age of merchant capitalism into an era of industrial and finance capitalism and business specialization.”597 This shift consequently marked an end not to an historical era, but rather an end to the way history had been told.598 By 1894, with its nearly Biblical drought, Plains settlers could no longer sustain their ambivalent approach to the gap between belief and experience, and the transition era begun in the mid-1880s resoundingly came to a halt. This experience, more than any particular condition of

“frontier” status, ended the validity of nationalistic rhetoric that had driven settler’s identity throughout the preceding years.599 Undeniably, what the close examination of

Historical Association meeting. It is reprinted in numerous publications, one of the more recent that contextualizes it within a history of ecological thought is Environmental Discourse and Practice :A Reader, eds. Lisa M. Benton and John Rennie Short (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publ., 2000), 75-77; and another which contextualizes it within the history of the West is John Mack Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ and Other Essays (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1994). I take from Patricia Nelson Limerick my own approach to Turner, which is that Turner’s construction of frontier and the process it comprised “is an unsubtle concept in a subtle world,” particularly, for me, in that it “corrals” the experience and history of the West into one narrative. But yet, as Limerick has also noted “the idea of the frontier is obviously worth studying as a historical artifact.” Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 25. 597 Jeffrey Wallmann, The Western: Parables of the American Drean (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1999., 83. 598 “Turner may have misidentified the wrenching changes of the 1890s as a final closing of the frontier, but he was surely correct in identifying the period as one of major transition in the relationship of the West to the nation.” Farragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner, 233. 599 Obviously, the prevailing settlement narrative regained its national adherence as Turner’s frontier thesis became the model by which western history was understood. However, I believe that Butcher’s archive suggests that the transitional era of the 1880s, and its end in the 1890s mark a moment when the reductive 330

the agents of power resident in Butcher’s archive reveals is that one of its most important

contributions is that it visualizes not just a generalized experience of settlement, but

rather the very complicated experience of this transitional period in specific.600 The

increasing anxiety, the ambivalent response to reveal the cause of the anxiety, and the

desire to even more assertively deny it, are visually resident in Butcher’s archive in the

exposure of the “work” that the settlers did in order to present success.

If Butcher’s archive is important for the explicit visualization it gives to the complex experience of Plains settlers in the transition of the late 1880s, it is equally

important for the visualization it gives to the relationship of that experience to a national

audience. The West had been perceived of or utilized by easterners earlier in the century

for its contrast of wilderness to civilization, and again at the very end of the century for

its contrast of individualism and masculinity to urbanization and Victorian domesticity.601

However, for the period of the 1880s, Butcher’s archive suggests that the “farming

frontier” of the West was utilized by the East not as a contrast, but as a mirror of its own increasingly unstable conditions. As the “exhibition space” of national history, the West provided an arena for the nation to gauge the nature and effects of the profound

failings and shortcomings of this narrative to account for the nature of western settlement was effectively, if momentarily, revealed. 600 In other words, my analysis is a framework that allows an exploration of the complicated situation of a very specific time, place, and circumstance. See Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 46: “Frameworks abound for exploring and commenting on diversity and the dramas that diversity produces. Relationships between power and dependence, ward and guardian, insider and outsider, and nature and humankind invite exploration in western time, place, and circumstance.” 601 As Jeffrey Wallmann notes of the concept of wilderness vs. civilization, “This focus on the duality of civilization and wilderness became increasingly irrelevant for a 19th century society preoccupied with issues of progress, industrialization, urbanization, and balancing individual and communal interest.” Wallmann, The Western, 91. And, as Richard White notes regarding the utilization of the West at the very end of the century, “With the country as a whole urbanizing, industrializing…there developed a widespread dissatisfaction with modern culture itself….to many middle-class Americans—particularly men—life had become overcivilized, sterile, and unreal.” White, ‘Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own’, 620. 331

impositions that the shift to an industrial society placed on the established structures of

class and power.602 As Patricia Nelson Limerick has observed, “A belief in progress has

been a driving force in the modern world; as a depository of enormous hopes for

progress, the American West may well be the best place in which to observe the complex

and contradictory outcome of that faith.”603 What the nation’s population saw in the

pioneers’ West was a complicated mirror of their own experiences, and in watching that

mirror what they saw was an image that reified—that gave a shape to and thus helped to

define—the fluid and conflicting nature of their own conditions.

Yet I would suggest that my analysis has revealed that this process was more than

simply a confirmation of these conditions, but rather a complicated projection that

enabled the simultaneous confirmation and denial of them. The process of “watching”

the West involved both an affirmation of the nature of shared conditions and stresses, and

also the simultaneous denial of the existence of those conditions in the East. For

instance, much is made in the periodicals of the times of the transience of the western

population. One of the most pointed, out of many, is from the travel accounts of Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg:

Repeatedly we hear: “There was a city of 5,000—there, one of 10,000.” “Where?” we ask. “There!” And the speaker points into the blue. “Is no trace left? No house, no ruins, no hut, no tree? When was it founded?” “Hmmm,hmm—about ten years ago.” “What happened to it? Fire? Earthquake? “No. Disappeared. About ten years ago. Dismantled. Moved on.” The story is the same all over Nebraska: on the map, large

602 Certainly the sensational events and figures of the West during this transitional period, such as the Battle of Little Big Horn, the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the escapades of western personalities such as Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickcock, Calamity Jane, and especially Buffalo Bill, brought the activities of the area to a national audience for their contrast to culture of the East. However, it seems that the farming frontier, because it was appointed to create “another” East, also shared this national spotlight, but to different expectations. 603 Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 28. 332

circles and high-sounding names….In reality, not a house anywhere nor the remains of one….We studied the horizon through binoculars. “Looking for Sedgwick?” “Yes.” “Doesn’t exist anymore. Taken down.”604

Although westerners, in adherence to agrarian ideology, denied the quite dominant

presence of transience, it continuously, if covertly, asserted itself. Butcher’s history

moved it’s occurrence to early in settlement; or, he belittled it, as did many others,

through humor in his self-deprecating joke about his chickens lying down to have their

feet tied whenever they saw him coming. There is a precarious balance enacted here of

revealing conditions to give expression, and thus release, to the stress they cause, and yet

denying them in order to conform to cultural expectations. This play allowed the West’s

audience to do a similar balancing act.

While pointing a rather judgmental finger at the West for its struggle to meet

cultural expectations, the East denied those same conditions in its very midst. As one

scholar has pointed out, “One third of the population of Boston in 1890 had moved there

since 1880….Historians have found the same high turnover rates in virtually every

American population yet studied—eastern as well as western, urban as well as frontier,

countryside and town.”605 So, the effect of mobility on a community was a wide-spread

effect, not just in the newly settled areas of the West such as Custer County. Likewise,

statistics on tenancy began to be included in the 1880 census, and they show that the

West, far from the promised land of private ownership, was experiencing the same

increase in tenancy as was the rural East. In 1880, Kansas and Nebraska, only very

604 Frederic Trautmann, “Across Nebraska by Train in 1877: The Travels of Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg,” Nebraska History 65:3 (Fall 1984): 415. 605 Harrison, “Rolvaag, Grove and Poineering on the American and Canadian Plains,” 260. 333

recently opened to settlement, recorded 16% and 18% tenancy, beginning to mimic the

24% recorded for Indiana and Iowa, and the record 31% in Illinois.606 Likewise, the East increasingly looked to “external guideposts for determining identity and position” to establish stability in the onslaught of massive upheavals due to the development of industrial culture.607 Class adherence was one such guidepost, and the overwhelming number of articles reviewed in this dissertation that address the modes by which the middle-class was expected to assert their class status attest to the power this assertion had in establishing class stability. The extremely self-conscious and careful visual assertions of Custer County settlers to their adherence to middle-class expectations, and thus their explicit externalization of what those standards were and to what extent they were achieved or compromised, is clearly part of this externalizing process.

In essence, the pioneers’ West was not a place to escape, to find contrast to the

East, but rather a place to reify elements of life that Americans didn’t want to

acknowledge in themselves, but nevertheless wanted confirmation of their presence and

606 Paul Wallace Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States,” Journal of Economic History, 1 (1941): 81. There are also frequent allusions in contemporary periodicals, some of which I have cited earlier in this dissertation, of the parallel position of farmers and urban laborers. Both groups bore the brunt of production in their labors, both groups were identified as laborers, and both also increasingly felt the weight that the demands of industrial production put on their lives. As John Cawalti has noted, “The political and economic weakness of farmers and wage earners as compared to the organized power of capital made the gulf between rich and poor wider than it had been before….Nobody could be more diligent than the steel worker with his exhausting ten- to twelve-hour day or the farmer with his backbreaking round of labor from sunup to sundown. Yet, if the ordinary farmer or industrial worker managed to feed and clothe his family and achieve a minimal economic security he could consider himself lucky. Farmers and workers may have exaggerated the extent to which their situation had declined since the halcyon days of the early Republic, but it was still perfectly evident that these groups had not profited from the industrial transformation of America as much as businessmen.” Cawalti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man, 171. 607 White, G. Edward. The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 28. White notes that the upper class also worked to find external guideposts that would define class stability, “Members of the eastern upper class attempted to preserve their status and prestige by forming self-perpetuating, stabilizing, elitist institutions,” 185. 334

their power. Yeoman farmers were the reassuring image of the 1880s; they were the image that reassured the health of democracy. Americans watched this figure as a barometer of the ability of democracy to exist, and the nature of that existence, in a world newly defined by industrialism. Americans wanted to see someone else—“the typical

American”608—struggling with the changes demanded by industrialism in order to affirm

that their own struggle was not the result of a failing in them personally. However, on

the other hand, they also wanted to see a statement of success in order to affirm their faith

in the exceptionalism of the county, and in that, the exceptionalism of themselves as

Americans.609

Butcher’s archive is deeply implicated in this desire to simultaneously deny the systemic failure of received beliefs to define identity for Americans in an industrial society, and yet to have a confirmation of its presence in order to account for the increasing sense of anxiety. I take my understanding of this activity of concealing what

is also revealed from the work of literary scholar Forrest Robinson, who suggests that the

compelling element of much classic American literature is the presence of an:

608 As the introduction to Butcher’s second publication states, “these photographs constitute a mirror of the daily life scenes and incident of these plainsmen from the time they became the sturdy pioneers…to the present time of comfort and happiness that now surround these same people, bringing its reward for all their toil and sacrifice, producing that grand character in history—the typical American.” Butcher, “Sod Houses,” introduction. 609 As Richard Hofstadter has noted, “Most Americans…wanted economic success to continue to be related to personal character, wanted the economic system not merely to be a system for the production of sufficient goods and services but to be an effectual system of incentives and rewards.” Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Byran to F.D.R. (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 10. The character of the yeoman farmer, epitomized by the pioneers, was that character understood to represent the “typical American” because their success rested on the elevated nature of their characters. They were assured success because they embodied the character of exceptional Americans. On the surface, the activities of the government and private interests, such as the railroads, worked to ensure this “typical American’s” success. However, as Deborah Fink has also noted, “The development of the plains was framed in terms of the interests of the common citizen rather than of the political and economic elite, and this representation translated itself imperfectly into the settlers’ reflections on their own lives.” Fink, Agrarian Women, 3. 335

ultimately superficial ‘surface’ narrative, and a submerged counternarrative that works to undermine the ostensible, and widely acknowledged, thrust of the book….If these books [Westerns] reinforce our sense of the heroic, they also challenge it. If they dramatize the triumph of traditional American values, they also explore the dark side of a dominant self-image. If they dwell on the exploits of white men, they are also attentive in less obvious ways to the grave injustices of the social order they portray….the contrary impulses to see and not see, to address painful issues and to turn away from them, are always delicately poised in these texts, and never fully ‘contained’ or resolved. Indeed, it is the very essence of the appeal of books like Shane and Huckleberry Finn that they are the records of an unfinished cultural negotiation with failures in the moral order of America. The author and the novel contrive to have things both ways—to see and not see—in matters where we have fallen far short of our ideals….the reader, in turn, is initially drawn to the novel, and subsequently returns to it, because it forms the occasion for a similarly mingled experience….It is the repression of what we have glimpsed that keeps us coming back.610

I believe that the specific mode by which Butcher and his subjects—and, in fact, the

archive as well—work to realize their desire to reveal and conceal, their need to “address painful issues and to turn away from them,” operates through the visualization of the

presence of multiple agencies of power in both the Plains landscape presented in

Butcher’s archive and in the structure of the archive itself.

The narrative that compelled Butcher and his subjects to create his archive, the

“surface narrative” as phrased by Robinson, is the received settlement narrative that

comprises the various agencies, such as agrarian and progressive ideologies, that worked

to naturalize the settlers’ success. This composite narrative shaped the pioneer as the

person who, ensured success by the benevolent and fecund nature of the American

610 Forrest G. Robinson, “The New Historicism and the Old West,” in Old West—New West: Centennial Essays, ed. Barbara Howard Meldrum (Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1993), 78-84. Robinson also explores this agency to reveal and conceal in several publications: Forrest G. Robinson, In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of Deception in Mark Twain’s America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); and, Having It Both Ways: Self-Subversion in Western Popular Classics (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). 336

landscape and by the divinely sanctioned rightfulness of his cause, transformed the frontier into civilization, consequently creating the community upon which the health of the nation rested. This narrative was one that asserted a very specific shape to the settlement process. The seemingly formless landscape was transformed into identifiable, regularized sections of property. Pioneers were identified as successful, progressive- minded, independent, middle-class families whose actions were defined as civilizing and cultivating. Yet, while this narrative was naturalized as a process of agrarian democracy, it was in fact a narrative that worked to conceal the colonizing powers that drove it.

Because settlers so strongly believed in the “surface narrative”—that power, and its benefits, resided with their actions—they readily initiated the structures that in fact gave profit, and ultimate power, to corporate interests. The concealment of this colonizing structure is achieved in the world of the settlers through the very shape of settlement enacted by them and by the identity they asserted. Therefore, this concealment is naturally an active part of a “portrait” of their world. However, the concealment of the colonizing agency of the settlement narrative is also enacted, and absorbed into, the very structures and content of Butcher’s archive itself.

The settlement narrative shaped the presentation of the settlers through the absorption into their individual identities of the iconic identity of “the pioneer.” Settlers understood themselves to be important to national history because of their participation in the settlement narrative, and, in order to adhere to the shape of the narrative, they presented themselves as types, as “the pioneer.” This very act, however, perpetuated their disempowerment. As William Deverell has noted, “Fond stereotypes of western

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meaning and history…do the labor of dehumanization. One-dimensional, quaint portraits

exist because they take the edge off truth and invariably render history a neat, if not pretty, moral package.”611 Butcher’s archive works to reinforce this mode by which the

settlement narrative maintains control, which is to say it reinforces the colonized

disempowerment of the settlers through their reduction to homogenous “types.” After the

repeated viewings an archive encourages, the pervasive mid-tones of the landscape, the

ubiquitous statement of the horizon line, the rather uniform layout of the farmsteads, the

overall consistent structure of the compositions in which families line up outside their

homesteads, placed nearly always in the mid-distance, dressed in similar clothing and

presenting similar objects and livestock, all work to homogenize the content of the

individual portraits, and thus the people they are intended to portray. The images

contained in the archive begin to appear uniform and one-dimensional, and they lack a

voice that invites our attention to focus on any disparate elements present. This is, in

fact, rather predictable given that the consistent presentation, format, and even homestead

layout were all contrived to convey or to realize an identical goal.

The particular shape of settlement that the settlement narrative compelled also

worked to conceal its colonizing nature. The settlement narrative made itself present on the landscape through the creation of property. This transformation was enacted through

the rectilinear system of a grid. Essentially, this grid system was the physical

manifestation of the colonizing power. The grid enacted a particular “vision of human

611 Deverell, “Fighting Words,” 38. 338

order” characterized by a rational, systematic, and equalized nature.612 The grid defined

the conceptual relationship of settlers to the landscape as one that was characterized by

equality, success, and individual ownership. It also compelled them to act in specific

ways upon the land. The spatial order within their homestead manifests their absorption,

their naturalization, of the grid’s “vision of human order.” In the same way, Butcher’s

archive suggests its absorption of this colonizing “order,” and specific images in the

archive work to compel us, as the audience, to respond in specific ways.

This control is made the most explicit to the viewer in works such as “Our

Interests on the Prairie,” A sod house in Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 305], 1887, in

which Butcher’s shadow insists upon the acknowledgement of the picture plane of the

photograph. By giving visual expression to Butcher’s position behind the camera, the

photograph makes explicit our own position behind it as well. The image forces the

viewer to adhere to the control of this plane, separating the viewer’s space from the space

of the photograph’s composition.613 In essence, the photograph controls and limits our

interaction with its contents. We are dissuaded to impose upon the boundary of the

picture plane, and thus denied immediate access to the interior of the photograph. In

being controlled in our interaction with the photograph’s contents in this way, the most

dominant agent in our interaction becomes that of the settlement narrative. It resides on

the surface of the image, so to speak, self-consciously projected to the forefront of the

scene as the most dramatic rhetorical agent of the composition. If the landscape was the

612 Dick Harrison, “Rolvaag, Grove and Pioneering on the American and Canadian Plains,” Great Plains Quarterly 1:4 (Fall 1981): 260. 613 Though I only cite one example here, in fact, Butcher’s shadow is a rather common element in his photographs. Similarly, as noted earlier, his photography studio is also frequently present in the portraits, implying as well, if not as directly, the presence of the photographer behind the picture plane, our presence behind him, and thus the separate nature of the images as a photograph. 339

stage and the settler the actor in the settlement narrative, Butcher’s photographs present yet another stage in which this drama and its concealing agency is re-played, is represented, again and again for an historical audience. As that audience, made ever conscious of the picture plane of the image, we are directed to “stay in our seats,” never to break our spectatorship mode of viewing.

The archive also manifests a parallel “vision of human order” of settlement to that enacted through the grid in its rational, systematic, and equalizing nature, as well as in its regularized rectilinear structure. If the forced awareness of the picture plane works to separate the portraits’ contents from their audience, it also asserts the physicality of the photographs themselves. The picture plane is, in essence, the physical surface of the photograph, and in asserting an awareness of its physical surface, it also asserts an awareness of its physical frame, and thus its separation from the viewer’s world by its containment in an object. Each photograph is a specimen, regularized and consistent in size, shape, and content, that acts to form a set of like objects. By stressing the physicality of itself as photographs, and the nature of its contents as that of history, the archive also continues the commodification of history, and thus the commodification of the contents it holds. The archive’s importance is as an object that contains, that embodies, history. The archive again dissuades our inclination to explore, keeping us instead outside its world by constantly asserting its “object-ness.”

Yet, by allowing all the agents present in the portraits a voice, the archive can also be understood to work against this narrative control and its consequent assertion of separateness from our experience. The archive is deeply self-subversive, and concurrent

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with its work to conceal the colonizing effects of its surface narrative, it works to reveal the rather insidious effects of this narrative. It does so through the disruption of the

performative and rhetorical structures that maintain the position of the viewer as a spectator. This disruption is enacted through the insistence on the “real” by Butcher.

Butcher insisted on photographing his pioneers on-site not only in order to encapsulate in one image the transformative power of their identities as pioneers, but also to validate the authenticity, the accuracy, of his work due to the perceived documentary nature of photography. By introducing the “real” into his history, Butcher left open the opportunity for multiple elements resident in the actual lives of settlers to be given visual presence. The multiple and often conflicting pressures their activity put on the settlers frequently opened a “gap,” for lack of a better word, in visual control through which appeared the idiosyncrasies of individuals and situations.

Such disruptions are minor in most images, though they work to break the surface narrative that asserts the subject’s dehumanized homogenous identity. For instance, some disruptions merely catch us by surprise, as viewers of image after image of similar presentations of “the pioneer,” because of a simple element out of order with this homogenous identity.614 In Jeff Williams and family in front of log house, West Union,

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 306], 1887, Mr. Williams looks back directly at us

through his sunglasses. In William Marsh at his homestead near the Genet postoffice in

Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 307], 1886, Mr. Marsh has added sod pinnacles to his

614 It is, of course, ironic that the power to absorb and control our attention, the power to disrupt the limitations of the very material out of which it is made, is in great part due to the technical process of digitization. However, I don’t believe that the ability to see the content of Butcher’s archive, to be able, now, to find intimate details that have not been available before, introduces an element of interpretation alien to the portraits’ creation. Rather, I believe, it has allowed the portraits to fully voice the elements that have always been a part of their compositions. 341

otherwise indistinct dwelling. In William Laughlin, better known as “Uncle Bill,”

Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 308], 1886, someone has carved out in the snow

on the roof “C O Brown.” Since family records show the Laughlin’s had long-time

friendships with the Brown family, someone, knowing such large lettering would be

visible in the portrait, decided to usurp the historical function of the portrait for a family

function.615 Or, in A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 139],

1886, we are rather surprisingly acknowledged by the group of cattle in the right

foreground. We are taken aback, and in fact made somewhat self-conscious of our act of

looking, by the obvious inquisitiveness of an element typically present only as a passive

compositional component of bucolic staffage.

Sometimes the intrusion of human individuality and the immediate world of the

subject is enabled through a simple expression. In Milton Parkhurst and family near

Boggs Table, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 309], 1887, Milton’s son impulsively

embraces his dog, both covered in mud from the wet conditions in which they pose. We

are absorbed by the power of a genuine human expression which suspends, if just for a

moment, the rhetorical “surface” activity of the archive. In Three family members in

front of farmhouse in northwest Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 310], 1889, someone has

revealed their appreciation for the whimsical, and placed a ribbon around the neck of the

cast iron dog, appropriately dressing him in his best for the portrait. In East Custer

County, Nebraska [Fig. 311], 1889, the young boy, though his name and actual identity

have been lost in the vagaries of history, stands in a pose immediately recognizable as the

615 “Fannie and her husband went 2 weeks ago, they are in Sargent Custer County near Wm. Laughlin. Laughlin and Hall visited us last fall, seem to like their western home very much.” Clarissa Brown Kimberk to Kathryn Brown, March 27, 1883. Laughlin surname file, CCHS. 342

exaggerated appropriation of adulthood that often marks the expressions of youth.

Equally endearing is the youthful appropriation of the cowboy persona by the McCrea’s

grandson in South of the Middle Loup River, near Berwyn, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig.

148], 1888. Sometimes the expression conveys a much more profound human presence.

An ineffable, and yet immediately recognizable, human condition is present in Watson, north part of Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 100], 1889. The homesteader’s attention is focused to the left of us, just excluding us from a dialogue with him. Yet, he stands in front of his home, his body language fully open and inviting to our gaze. We are

compelled to enter his world, though it is marked by an interiority, a lack of drama, that

reveals only through our absorption.

Butcher’s process, controlled by his desire for the “real,” consequently also

allowed the presence, and visual power, of conflicting or momentary conditions. In

responding to these conditions, the individual experience of each subject, and the wide

variety of such experiences, is allowed to intrude on the control of the surface narrative.

The immediacy of their experiences, and recognizably shared conditions and expressions,

draws our attention away from the image as a whole and focuses it upon a very specific

area of the portrait as a record of a moment very specific and human in its content. For

instance, in George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 312],

1886, Mr. Copsey’s son’s obvious discomfort due to the weather speaks clearly to his actual physical existence in a very specific place and time. Its directness and honesty compels our empathy. In “In Front of Our Home,” Custer County, Nebraska [Fig. 313],

1887, the family poses themselves in the foreground, having brought the livestock into

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the yard to adhere to the demands of the portrait’s subject. However, the action has encouraged, and also caught, the young colt’s surreptitious enjoyment in the distance of the wife’s impressive display of flowers. George Barnes’s expression in “Three motherless children and a caved-in soddy” [Fig. 248], 1887, as he stands with his small children in front of his ruined home, is inscrutable. It is Mr. Barnes’s unwillingness, conscious or not, to reduce his life to the presence of a single agency, his unwillingness to be so simply described as Butcher’s title suggests, that draws us into his world. He stands neither heroic nor pathetic, and the subtle complexity of the powers active in his world is conveyed by this position.

The essential mode by which such works disrupt various agencies of power is through their ability to compel their audience to move from the mode of a spectator, who simply watches the drama unfold in front of them, to the mode of a voyeur, who is compelled to transgress the boundaries of material and history to enter the reality of the world presented. This is a mode of fixation, absorption, and fascination that disrupts both the reductive and dehumanizing identity of “the pioneer” and the assertion of pre- determined success upon which the surface narrative maintains its control. If the “vision of human order” constructed by the surface narrative compels the archive to present a rational, systematic, and equalized subject, this “fixated vision” operates in a mode that is emotional and selective. As James Clifford has explained this mode in an ethnographic context,

At a more intimate level, rather than grasping objects only as cultural signs and artistic icons, we can return to them their lost status as fetishes, our own fetishes. This tactic, necessarily personal, would accord to things in collections the power to fixate rather than simply the capacity to edify

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or inform….Seen in their resistance to classification they could remind us of our lack of self-possession, of the artifices we employ to gather a world around us.616

I would argue that these disruptions are not merely an incidental result of

Butcher’s chosen process, but rather that they are, in fact, the self-subversive intention of

his project. The desire to utilize photography on-site is, in essence, the desire to reveal

actuality. It is through the presence of actuality that the disparate threads of power active

at the moment and site of the photograph—all part of the settlers’ experience of the

“farming frontier”—have been given agency in establishing a pioneer portrait. The

disjuncture created by such competing powers is what allows the assertion of a human

presence, and thus also allows something of the experience of settlement. The presence

of these threads of power, then, manifests the archive’s desire to convey a more subtle

and complicated story about the settlers’ experiences. Essentially, the archive doesn’t

just present the complicated and often disjunctive nature of western experience, rather it

posed the occasion for settlers to express this nature and the occasion for its historical

audience (us) to experience it as well.

616 James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture,” Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 229. My interest in the process by which a collection subverts into fixation or fascination the more aesthetic or scientific approaches to its contents is a result of my interest in ethnographic description. It is examined more fully by Clifford earlier in this chapter in a section titled, “Collecting Ourselves,” in which he quotes James Fenton’s poem, “The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.” Clifford states, “James Fenton’s poem…rediscovers a place of fascination in the ethnographic collection. For this visitor even the museum’s descriptive labels seem to increase the wonder….Fenton is an adult- child exploring territories of danger and desire, for to be a child in this collection…is to ignore the serious admonitions about human evolution and cultural diversity posted in the entrance hall. It is to be interested instead by the claw of a condor, the jaw of a dolphin, the hair of a witch, or ‘a jay’s feather worn as a charm / in Buckinghamshire,.’ Fenton’s ethnographic museum is a world of intimate encounters with inexplicably fascinating objects….Here collecting is inescapably tied to obsession, to recollection….Fenton’s journey into otherness leads to a forbidden area of the self. His intimate way of engaging the exotic collection finds an area of desire,” 216-217. While certainly the exotic nature of the ethnographic museum seems more apt to evoke forbidden desire, I do believe that the absorption of fascination or fixation in some ways does act upon, and attempt to fulfill, the desire of an audience to conflate the chronological and material separation of experience inherent in any photograph whose contents present a past world. 345

Butcher’s archive was created out of the desire to assert the participation, and thus

the importance, of Custer County settlers in the national narrative of settlement. Because of this intention, the archive clearly desires to celebrate and, in fact, to provide the actual occasion for settlers to reify their embodiment of “the pioneer,” which in essence is to reify the naturalization—and thus control—of the settlement narrative. It presented an opportunity to yet again conceal, through the settlers’ own desires and action, their

colonized status. In this action, Butcher’s archive and the settlers themselves are

implicated in their continued disempowerment. They continue to conceal the systemic

failings of the very mode by which they define the nature of their world, and thus

continue to deny the increasing disparity, and its consequent anxiety, between belief and

experience. Yet, if the archive’s intention was to reify a surface narrative that concealed

disempowerment, its process—that of working with photography on-site—worked

against the hegemonic control of this narrative by giving visual presence to competing

powers in the settlers’ lives. In so doing, the archive presents, and is again the occasion

for, the disruption of this narrative through both the visualization of the costs of its

continuation as well as the nature of its failure to define the experience of Plains

settlement. Neither of these impulses is less authentic than the other, and they do not

exist in a dialectical relationship of ‘constructed” and “real,” but rather are impulses

drawn from the presence of a complicated set of unresolved power relationships unique

to Plains settlement. The ability of Butcher’s archive to draw us in and yet to deny this

very entry, to “have it both ways” to quote Forrest Robinson, is a result of the multiple

and unresolved agents vying for visual power resident in the portraits.

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One important result of the analysis presented in this dissertation is that it allows an acknowledgement of both the complicity and disempowerment of settlers, and the honesty and humanity of their endeavors. It does not allow the dominance of an agent to silence the presence of others. In one sense, it does not “attack the power” of the traditional western historical narrative as later revisionists have called for, but rather it attempts to accommodate an environment within which multiple narratives, voices, or powers are equally put in their places. Importantly, I believe, this approach gives a rarely heard voice to the settlers by dissolving the homogenizing demands of a single narrative, any narrative whether it be traditional or revisionist, and instead suggests that experience is always multitudinous in nature. In fact, the conflicting and seemingly idiosyncratic impulses of Butcher’s archive reflect with exceptional acuity this very element of experience.

The success that Butcher and his subjects worked to reify was rarely met on the

Plains in the terms promised. Butcher’s archive can be utilized, however, as a repository in which success can be reconfigured to be determined by the adaptive abilities of the settlers in the face of such disparate, and overwhelmingly powerful, agents. In a sense, presenting themselves as pioneers, making a visually authenticating statement of existence, with all the disparate elements active in this presentation, was in itself a successful adaptation to the demands present in their experience of Plains settlement.

The approach presented in this dissertation allows settlers to retain the complexity of their experience and not be reduced to simple models of victims, heroes, or foes.617

617 I have made many references to the literary works of Hamlin Garland because of what I see as his shared position and content with Butcher. Stephanie Sarver notes this same conflicted and confusing response to Garland as well. “The tensions and sometimes contradictory messages inherent in Garland’s 347

early stories reflect this understanding that farming figures within the complex of human activities but yet is highly dependent upon an uncontrollable, nonhuman nature. What many literary scholars regard as textual inconsistencies—and as a failure to describe a unified vision—may actually represent Garland’s attempt to acknowledge complexity. He suggests that many conditions can exist simultaneously in any given place or moment. His stories are populated with characters who are the victims both of an uncooperative nature (for instance, drought and pestilence) and of a larger economic system that places farmers at an economic disadvantage. These farmers, despite their hardships, derive a certain personal comfort from the natural beauty found in rural lands.” Stephanie L. Sarver, Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999)., 53. 348

APPENDIX

FIGURES

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Fig. 1 Map of Nebraska. Reprinted from Bradley H. Baltensperger, Fig. 3 S.D. Butcher, Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State xxii. Historical Society.

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Fig. 2 S.D. Butcher, Bachelor house of Perry brothers, near Merna, Fig. 4 S.D. Butcher, “Nebraska Gothic,” the John Curry sod house Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical near West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 5 Virginia Slims cigarette ad, 1979. Fig. 7 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of Tom Smith, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 8 S.D. Butcher, Ab Butcher on Solomon Butcher’s picture Fig. 6 S.D. Butcher, C.H. Peters, West Union, Nebraska, 1886. wagon on the Middle Loup River getting material for Custer Nebraska State Historical Society. County Book, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 9 Alexander Gardner, President Lincoln on Battle-field of Fig. 11 Alexander Gardner, U.S. Military Telegraph Construction Antietam, 1862. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Corps, 1864. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate 23. Publications, 1959), Plate 62.

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Fig. 10 Alexander Gardner, Studying the Art of War, 1863. From Fig. 12 Alexander Gardner, Battery No. 1, Near Yorktown, 1862. Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Plate Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), 45. Plate 12.

Fig. 13 Alexander Gardner, A Fancy Group, Front of Petersburg, Fig. 15 S.D. Butcher, Burlington engine number 120, the first train 1864. From Alexander Gardner, Gardner’s Photographic into Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Sketch Book of the Civil War (New York: Dover Publications, Society. 1959), Plate 76.

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Fig. 14 S.D. Butcher, Burlington and Missouri River Railroad graders Fig. 16 S.D. Butcher, Old Mitchell sod house where Ketchem killed at West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska Olive in 1887 (or 1989), 1888. Nebraska State Historical State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 17 S.D. Butcher, The town of Walworth, Nebraska, moved from Fig. 19 S.D. Butcher, Harvey Andrews and family herding their the north to the south side of the Middle Loup River, 1887. livestock in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Creek, near New Nebraska State Historical Society. Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 18 S.D. Butcher, Surene Pike, Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 20 S.D. Butcher, The Harvey Andrews family on their homestead two and one-half miles northwest of New Helena, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 21 S.D. Butcher, Harvey Andrews in Cedar Canyon on Victoria Fig. 23 S.D. Butcher, Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Creek, near New Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

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Fig. 24 S.D. Butcher, Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Fig. 22 S.D. Butcher, The Harvey Andrews family posed at the grave Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State of son Willie Andrews, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 27 S.D. Butcher, “Settlers taking the law in their own hands— Fig. 25 S.D. Butcher, Threshing with horses in Custer County, cutting fence on old Brighton Ranch,” 1900. Nebraska State Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

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Fig. 28 S.D. Butcher, Ephriam Swain Finch demonstrating how he Fig. 26 S.D. Butcher, John Delane Wagon Shop, Broken Bow, Custer attempted to kill grasshoppers in 1876, c. 1900. Nebraska County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 31 S.D. Butcher, F.J. Halsey, east of the Jefferson Post Office, Fig. 29 S.D. Butcher, James Milburn and family, Milburn, Custer Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical county, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

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Fig. 32 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Fig. 30 S.D. Butcher, Page Family sod house near Gates Post Office, Historical Society. Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 33 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in Custer County, Fig. 35 S.D. Butcher, Al Burger at Genet, Custer County, Nebraska, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 36 S.D. Butcher, The Henry Luther home in Ortello Valley, near Fig. 34 S.D. Butcher, Near Gates Post Office, Custer County, Dale, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 37 S.D. Butcher, H.G. Shannon, near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 39 S.D. Butcher, The Peter M. Barnes homestead near Clear Creek, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 38 S.D. Butcher, Family on a stock ranch in Custer county, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 40 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 43 S.D. Butcher, Rev. William McCaslin house, known as the Fig. 41 S.D. Butcher, George Paine, Sr. and Family, Westerville, “Preacher Home,” in Rose Valley near Clear Creek, Custer Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 44 “Kansas Dugout,” nd. Kansas State Historical Society. Fig. 42 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Reprinted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Nebraska State Historical Society. Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 62.

Fig. 45 “Threshing wheat in Dakota in the 1880s,” nd. Jennewein Western Library, Friends of the Middle Border, Mitchell, South Dakota. Reprinted in Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Fig. 47 Untitled, nd. Colorado Historical Society. Reprinted in Elliott Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far 1966), 99. Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 254.

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Fig. 46 “Homesteader and Family on Claim,” c. 1889. Division of Manuscripts, Library, University of Oklahoma. Reprinted in Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New Fig. 48 “Sod house built by J.F. Bantam.” Reprinted from Ernie E. York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 99. Kuhl and William J. Dunlay, 1872-1972 Orleans Centennial (no publisher, 1972), 144.

Fig. 51 “T-town plan.” Reprinted from John C. Hudson, “The Plains Fig. 49 “Sod house of Joseph F. Delimont.” Reprinted from Ernie E. Country Town,” The Great Plains: Environment and Culture, Kuhl and William J. Dunlay, 1872-1972 Orleans Centennial eds. Brian W. Blouet and Frederick C. Luebke (Lincoln: (no publisher, 1972), 18. University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 104.

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Fig. 50 “Merna town plat,” 1885. Reprinted from Everts and Kirk. Fig. 52 “Third Merna.” Reprinted from Merna: Heritage Memories, The Official State Atlas of Nebraska State Atlas. Philadelphia, 1880s-1980s (Callaway, NE: Merna Heritage History 1885. Committee, 1989), 13.

Fig. 53 S.D. Butcher, Methodist Church of Ansley, Custer County, Fig. 55 S.D. Butcher, Family on the porch of residence in Ansley, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 54 S.D. Butcher, House of J.C. Stevens, banker at Ansley, Custer Fig. 56 S.D. Butcher, Group on porch of Windsor Hotel at Sargent, County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 59 S.D. Butcher, “William McKee, West Union, T.P., 1886”, Fig. 57 S.D. Butcher, Two-story school building, Anselmo, Custer 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 58 S.D. Butcher, The Pacific Hotel at Callaway, Custer County, Fig. 60 S.D. Butcher, Cole Farm, south of Mason City, Nebraska, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 63 “Nebraska 1877.” Reprinted from Sylvia Nimmo, Maps Fig. 61 “Railroads and the Frontier, 1880.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Showing County Boundaries (Papillon, NE: Sylvia Nimmo, Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview 1978). Press, 1985), 57.

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Fig. 62 “Railroads and the Frontier, 1885.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Fig. 64 “Nebraska 1885.” Reprinted from Sylvia Nimmo, Maps Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Showing County Boundaries (Papillon, NE: Sylvia Nimmo, Press, 1985), 58. 1978).

Fig. 65 S.D. Butcher, R.G. Carr and Family, 1887. Nebraska State Fig. 67 S.D. Butcher, John Hohman sod house, Woods Park, Custer Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 68 S.D. Butcher, Robert G. Farritor family, Custer County, Fig. 66 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 69 S.D. Butcher, The Chrisman Sisters on a claim in Goheen Fig. 71 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State settlement on Lieban (Lillian) Creek, Custer County, 1886. Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 70 S.D. Butcher, Rev. and Mrs. E.D. Eubank on Clear Creek west Fig. 72 S.D. Butcher, Deep well on the Pollard homestead near of Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Merna, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 73 “Kansas Dugout,” nd. Kansas State Historical Society. Fig. 75 S.D. Butcher, Northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Reprinted in Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Nebraska State Historical Society. Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 62.

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Fig. 76 S.D. Butcher, Lycurgus Amos and family, nd. Custer County Fig. 74 S.D. Butcher, Ben Kile, near Ansley, Custer County, Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 79 S.D. Butcher, Sod school house in Custer County, Nebraska. Fig. 77 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Mary E. Sutton, teacher, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

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Fig. 78 S.D. Butcher, The David Hilton family near Weissert, Custer Fig. 80 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 81 S.D. Butcher, John W. Barnes, Round Valley, Nebraska, 1887. Fig. 83 S.D. Butcher, Bill Popejoy and Lon Rambo families, near Nebraska State Historical Society. Gates, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 82 S.D. Butcher, West of Callaway, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska Fig. 84 S.D. Butcher, Pfrehm Family Home, North part of Custer State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 85 S.D. Butcher, North Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 87 S.D. Butcher, Grand Army of the Republic picnic at West Union, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 86 S.D. Butcher, Sod house near Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 88 S.D. Butcher, Finn Morris, north Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 91 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Fig. 89 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, near West Union, Nebraska, Historical Society. 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 90 John Karst, after Winslow Homer, “Summer in the County.” Appleton’s Journal, July 10, 1869, Reprinted from .Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. and Franklin Kelly, Winslow Homer Fig. 92 S.D. Butcher, Sod house near Sargent, Custer County, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1995), 62. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 95 S.D. Butcher, Al Burger at Genet, Custer County, Nebarska, Fig. 93 S.D. Butcher, Near West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 94 S.D. Butcher, “A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Fig. 96 S.D. Butcher, Lanterman Family, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 97 S.D. Butcher, Spring in East Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 99 S.D. Butcher, Bachelor Preparing Supper, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 98 S.D. Butcher, Bidgood, northwest Custer County, Nebraska, Fig. 100 S.D. Butcher, Watson, north part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 101 S.D. Butcher, G.R. Russom family in front of their sod house Fig. 103 S.D. Butcher, Small girl standing by vegetable exhibit at in Borken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

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Fig. 104 S.D. Butcher, Northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Fig. 102 S.D. Butcher, Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Gordon and Family, Nebraska State Historical Society. Merna, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 105 S.D. Butcher, Albert M. and Nancy Merchant Allee on their Fig. 107 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska homestead near Victoria Springs, Custer County, Nebraska, State Historical Society. 1890. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 106 S.D. Butcher, The Garniss family, Dry Valley, Custer County, Fig. 108 S.D. Butcher, Vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 109 S.D. Butcher, Exhibit of the Delano Bros., Oconto, Nebraska, Fig. 111 S.D. Butcher, Family standing in cornfield on farm, Custer 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1890. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 112 S.D. Butcher, Couple and seven children in front of a sod Fig. 110 S.D. Butcher, Huckleberry sod house, Broken Bow, Custer house, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 113 S.D. Butcher, David S. Copp, Near Ansley, Custer County, Fig. 115 S.D. Butcher, “In the Garden” Near Anselmo, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 116 Henry Worrall, Drouthy Kansas. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted from Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 67. Fig. 114 S.D. Butcher, Nelson Potter, Lee Park, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 119 “Map of Nebraska,” 1857. Reprinted from John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800- Fig. 117 “Quarter-section survey system.” Reprinted from Bradley H. 1860,” Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the Baltensperger, Nebraska” A Geography (Boulder: Westview History of Cartography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 47. Press, 1987), 59.

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Fig. 120 “Map of Nebraska,” 1859. Reprinted from John L. Allen, Fig. 118 “Location of site for S.D. Butcher, Burow family near Merna, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800- Nebraska, 1886.” Photograph collection of Nebraska State 1860,” Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the Historical Society. History of Cartography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59.

Fig. 121 “General Land Office map of Nebraska,” 1876. Reprinted from John L. Allen, “Patterns of Promise: Mapping the Plains and Prairies, 1800-1860,” Mapping the North American Fig. 123 “A. and Sophia Fitzpatrick homestead near Fort Scott, Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography (Norman: Kansas,” 1887 Kansas State Atlas. Kansas State Historical University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 59. Society.

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Fig. 124 F.F. Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1868. Currier & Ives print. Fig. 122 “Silver Creek Stock Farm and Residence of N.B. Berggren, Wahoo, Saunders Co., Neb.,” Nebraska State Atlas, 1885. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 125 Sallie Cover, The Homestead of Ellsworth Ball, c. 1880s. Fig. 127 S.D. Butcher, Frischkorn Family sod house in Custer County, Nebraska State Museum. Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 126 S.D. Butcher, Farm scene, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Fig. 128 S.D. Butcher, Wallace Dye, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 129 S.D. Butcher, Julius Kirk family on their ranch in Custer Fig. 131 S.D. Butcher, L.F. Pringle, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 130 “Aerial view of Frontier County.” Reprinted from Bradley H. Fig. 132 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Baltensperger, Nebraska: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Historical Society. Press, 1985), 140.

Fig. 133 S.D. Butcher, J.C. Cram sod house, Loup county, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. 383

Fig. 134 “Burlington Railroad Czech brochure.” Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 135 S.D. Butcher, Damon Livestock, Sargent, Custer County, Fig. 137 S.D. Butcher, Sod and frame house, . Nebraska State Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

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Fig. 136 S.D. Butcher, “The Old Sod House and the New.” The Jacob Fig. 138 S.D. Butcher, Coleman, west of Merna, Custer County, Graff house near West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 139 S.D. Butcher, A.J. Smith family, Jefferson, Custer County, Fig. 141 S.D. Butcher, J.D. Ream’s early day soddy northwest of Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 140 S.D. Butcher, A.J. Smith in front of their house near Jefferson, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Fig. 142 S.D. Butcher, The new house on the J.D. Ream farm northwest Society. of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 143 “Valley County, Neb.—Head of big Island in North Loup Fig. 145 “Advertisement for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe River,” B&M Railroad Land for Sale, Burlington Railroad Railroad,” 1881. Kansas State Historical Society. Reprinted brochure, 15. Newberry Library, Case Collection. from Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers’ Frontier: 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 30.

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Fig. 144 S.D. Butcher, Ex-judge Chas R. Mathews of New Helena, Fig. 146 “Machinery exhibit at the Nebraska State Fair, 1888.” Nebraska, in front of a log building that was one of the first Nebraska State Historical Society. Reprinted from Everett buildings in the county and served for a time as new Helena’s Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska post office, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975), 107.

Fig. 148 S.D. Butcher, South of the Middle Loup River, near Berwyn, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 149 S.D. Butcher, Man mowing hay by use of horse power, Fig. 147 “Section map with Chrisman and Richardson land holdings, CusterCounty, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical 1904.” Society.

Fig. 150 S.D. Butcher, Family in a plowed field – corn planting in eastern part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska Fig. 152 S.D. Butcher, Preparing for the wheat harvest, 1886. State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 151 S.D. Butcher, “The Latest and Greatest” North Custer Fig. 153 S.D. Butcher, Farm in southwestern Custer County, Nebraska, County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 156 S.D. Butcher, Construction of bridge, 1888. Nebraska State Fig. 154 S.D. Butcher, Family with horses in front of sod house, 1886. Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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Fig. 157 S.D. Butcher, Sod house with cattle along railroad, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 155 S.D. Butcher, Group of men with horses building the Middle Loup irrigation ditch, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 160 S.D. Butcher, Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Fig. 158 S.D. Butcher, Chrisman’s Ranch, Lillian Creek, Custer Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

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Fig. 159 S.D. Butcher, Robert Hunter ranch six miles northwest of Fig. 161 S.D. Butcher, Vegetable exhibit at Custer County fair, Broken Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 162 S.D. Butcher, Apple exhibit of Crete Nurseries at Custer County fair, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Fig. 164 S.D. Butcher, Large threshing crew near Berwyn, Custer Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

391

Fig. 163 Andrew Putnam Hill, George W. Hoag’s Record Wheat Harvest, 1876. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, The Fig. 165 S.D. Butcher, Jim Gates threshing crew near Gates P.O., West As America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), Society. 231.

Fig. 166 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Fig. 168 S.D. Butcher, Two women and a man standing in front of a Nebraska State Historical Society. sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

392

Fig. 167 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 169 S.D. Butcher, Helms, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 170 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Fig. 172 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

393

Fig. 173 S.D. Butcher, E.E. Carson, Old Genet Post Office on the Fig. 171 S.D. Butcher, West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Middle Loup River, West of the old Jefferson Post Office, Nebraska State Historical Society. Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 174 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Fig. 176 S.D. Butcher, Art Pulliam hunting coyotes in West Union, Nebraska State Historical Society. Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

394

Fig. 175 S.D. Butcher, Mr. Moyer digging a well in east Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 177 S.D. Butcher, “Ever Vigilant South of West Union” Westerville, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 178 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod house with team of oxen Fig. 180 S.D. Butcher, W.S. Haines, five miles southwest of Mason in foreground, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State City, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

395

Fig. 179 S.D. Butcher, Southeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 181 S.D. Butcher, A Farm Family in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 182 S.D. Butcher, Ira Lundy near Cummings Park, West Union Township, Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Fig. 184 S.D. Butcher, West Brook, near Dry Valley, Custer County, Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

396

Fig. 185 S.D. Butcher, William Sullivan, Sargent, Nebraska, 1888. Fig. 183 S.D. Butcher, J. Petit sod house near Woods Park, Custer Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 188 S.D. Butcher, Comstock, Custer County, Nebraska, 1904. Fig. 186 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod and frame house, Custer Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

397

Fig. 187 S.D. Butcher, Isadore Haumont two-story sod house on French Table north of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, Fig. 189 “Estate of John Bostwick,” Kansas State Atlas, 1887. Kansas 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 192 S.D. Butcher, “Almont,” a stallion on a ranch in southwest Fig. 190 S.D. Butcher, Dan Haskel, west of Milldale, Custer County, Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

398

Fig. 193 S.D. Butcher, Wescott Residence near the old Comstock Post Fig. 191 S.D. Butcher, Font Sharp on his ranch south of Broken Bow, Office, Custer County, Douglas Grove, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 196 S.D. Butcher, George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer Fig. 194 “The Great Plains.” Reprinted from www.nebraskastudies.org. County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

399

Fig. 195 S.D. Butcher, Howard Cooper on a table overlooking valley of Fig. 197 S.D. Butcher, Ball Family, Woods Park, Nebraska, 1886. Middle Loup Valley, west of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 198 S.D. Butcher, Sylvester Rawding family sod house, north of Fig. 200 S.D. Butcher, “A Day on the Farm” East Custer County, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

400

Fig. 199 S.D. Butcher, Tom Teahan, bachelor, showing a granary Fig. 201 S.D. Butcher, Ulric Uhlman, Round Valley, Custer County, overturned by wind wouth of Anselmo near Ortello Valley, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 202 S.D. Butcher, J. Curphey, East Custer County, Nebraska, Fig. 204 S.D. Butcher, D. Jones, Ortello Valley, Nebraska, 1886. 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

401

Fig. 203 S.D. Butcher, Mathon Family, Dry Valley, Nebraska, 1887. Fig. 205 A Prairie Home. Reprinted from Frederic Goddard, Where to Nebraska State Historical Society. Emigrate and Why (New York: F.B. Goddard, 1869), 253.

Fig. 208 Timothy O’Sullivan, Green River Canon, Junction of Yampah at Green River. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, ed., The Fig. 206 S.D. Butcher, George R. Carr, New Helena, one of the oldest West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, settlers in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), Historical Society. 254.

402

Fig. 209 S.D. Butcher, “Devil’s Backbone”, 1886. Nebraska State Fig. 207 S.D. Butcher, Zimmerman ranch, Custer County, Nebraska, Historical Society. 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 212 S.D. Butcher, Sandhills near Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 210 S.D. Butcher, John Bridges of Oconto, Nebraska, owner of Devils Gap, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society.

403

Fig. 211 George Catlin, Nishnabottana Bluffs, Upper Missouri, 1832. Reprinted from Joni L. Kinsey, Plain Pictures: Images of the Fig. 213 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. American Prairie (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, Nebraska State Historical Society. 1996), 32.

Fig. 214 S.D. Butcher, John Saulsburys, Elk Creek Precinct, twelve Fig. 216 S.D. Butcher, W.R. Swan, near Genet Post Office, Custer miles southeast of Mason City, east Custer County, 1889. County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

404

Fig. 215 S.D. Butcher, Sod house and William Coen family, four and Fig. 217 S.D. Butcher, Northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. one-half miles north of Berywn, Custer County, Nebraska, Nebraska State Historical Society. 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 220 “Topographical map of Custer County.” Nebraska State Fig. 218 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

405

Fig. 221 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer county, near Arnold (or Fig. 219 S.D. Butcher, Near Woods Park, Custer County, Nebraska, Callaway), Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 222 S.D. Butcher, Ranch in Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Fig. 224 S.D. Butcher, James Gates ranch at Gates, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

406

Fig. 223 S.D. Butcher, Family members and cattle on a ranch in the Fig. 225 S.D. Butcher, Herb Sargent, Sargent Valley, Custer County, Ortello Valley, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 226 S.D. Butcher, “Pride in What We Have Done” Custer County, Fig. 228 S.D. Butcher, Mr. W.W. Parish and Family, northeast Custer Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. County, Nebraska, 1887.. Nebraska State Historical Society.

407

Fig. 227 S.D. Butcher, Reverend Peter Widvey on his homestead north Fig. 229 S.D. Butcher, Near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, of Round Valley, Custer county, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 230 S.D. Butcher, Clark Sidwell, east Custer County or East Fig. 232 S.D. Butcher, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Rosevale, Garfield County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

408

Fig. 233 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of sod house dugout in Fig. 231 S.D. Butcher, Andrew Rickerts, near Gates Post Office, Custer southwestern Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 236 George Caleb Bingham, The Squatters, 1850. Museum of Fine Fig. 234 S.D. Butcher, Farm scene, northeast Custer County, Arts, Boston. Reprinted from William H. Truettner, The West Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 204.

409

Fig. 235 S.D. Butcher, “All Alone in the Hills” Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 237 S.D. Butcher, “New Settlers on the Prairie” East Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 238 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Fig. 240 S.D. Butcher, Theodore and Mary Frischkorn in front of their Nebraska State Historical Society. sod home, which was built in 1878, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

410

Fig. 239 S.D. Butcher, J.W. Rodgers, northeast Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 241 S.D. Butcher, Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 242 S.D. Butcher, A family of emigrants entering the South Loup Fig. 244 S.D. Butcher, Lanterman, south of Broken Bow, Custer Valley in Custer County, Nebraska, 1891. Nebraska State County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

411

Fig. 245 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Fig. 243 S.D. Butcher, Emigrants at the Gates P.O., Custer county, Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 246 S.D. Butcher, Cattle Scene, Custer County, Nebraska. Fig. 248 S.D. Butcher, “Three motherless children and a caved-in Nebraska State Historical Society. soddy,” 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

412

Fig. 247 S.D. Butcher, Threshing crew shown using horse power to Fig. 249 S.D. Butcher, Mrs. Debusk, West Union, Nebraska, 1886. thresh wheat, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 250 S.D. Butcher, W. Keys, north of West Union, Custer County, Fig. 252 S.D. Butcher, Joe Harris, West Union, T.P., Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

413

Fig. 251 S.D. Butcher, Orson Cooley in northeast Custer County on the Fig. 253 S.D. Butcher, John Murphy, Walworth, Custer County, county line near Coolyton Post Office in Loup County, 1887. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 254 S.D. Butcher, “Just Managing” East Custer County, Fig. 256 S.D. Butcher, Ernie Perrin, Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

414

Fig. 255 S.D. Butcher, Isaac Ware, Southwest Custer County, Fig. 257 S.D. Butcher, C. Brown, Sargent, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska Nebraska, 1892. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

Fig. 258 S.D. Butcher, Family with their sod house in northwest Custer Fig. 260 S.D. Butcher, Omer Madison Kem sod house Broken Bow, County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

415

Fig. 259 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of teacher identified as Euroi Weiner, Fig. 261 S.D. Butcher, Frederic Schreyer and family, 1886. Nebraska West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State State Historical Society. Historical Society.

Fig. 262 S.D. Butcher, Jules Haumont’s sheep on French Table north Fig. 264 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of A.J. Smith, Jefferson, Custer County, of Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

416

Fig. 265 S.D. Butcher, The Shores family near Westerville, Custer Fig. 263 S.D. Butcher, E. Haumont, French Table, Custer County, County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 266 S.D. Butcher, Moses Speese near Westerville, Custer County, Fig. 268 S.D. Butcher, Charley Meeks, Cowboy, 1886. Nebraska State Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Society.

417

Fig. 267 “The Buffalo Bill Combination,” Promotional Photograph. Fig. 269 S.D. Butcher, Threshing crew on Mr. Golson’s farm, Custer Buffalo Bill Historical Center. County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 270 S.D. Butcher, S.C. Troubtman camp, railroad graders west of Fig. 272 S.D. Butcher, Mat Swan, NW Old Jefferson, Custer County, Sargent, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

418

Fig. 271 “Cowboy Troupe, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” Promotional Fig. 273 S.D. Butcher, Milton M. Whitney, northeast Custer County, Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center. 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 276 “Buffalo Bill,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Fig. 274 S.D. Butcher, Cutting a Melon, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

419

Fig. 277 S.D. Butcher, Family in front of a frame farmhouse in southeastern part of Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Fig. 275 “Buffalo Bill,” Promotional Photograph. Buffalo Bill Nebraska State Historical Society. Historical Center.

Fig. 278 S.D. Butcher, C.N. Buck, north Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 280 “Hunter/Scout with Trophies.” Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

420

Fig. 279 S.D. Butcher, Keyser, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, Fig. 281 S.D. Butcher, People gathered in front of the City Hotel, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 282 S.D. Butcher, I.N. Butler and his Granddaughters, near Gates, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

421

Fig. 284 “Theodore Roosevelt in Buckskins,” 1885. Reprinted from Barbara Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 166. Fig. 283 S.D. Butcher, Miss Sadie Austin, a typical Nebraska cowgirl, Simeon, Cherry County, Nebraska, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society.

422

Fig. 285 “Union Pacific Tourist Map of Connecting Lines.” Repinted from The Railroaders (New York: Time-Life Books, 1978), 140-141.

Fig. 286 S.D. Butcher, Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892. Fig. 288 S.D. Butcher, The log and sod house of Frank Cozad, 2 miles Nebraska State Historical Society. east of New Helena, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

423

Fig. 287 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 289 S.D. Butcher, “Grand Pa” Dailey, Milburn, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 290 S.D. Butcher, Portrait of Sarah Finch, wife of Ephriam Swain Fig. 292 S.D. Butcher, “The hanging of Mitchell and Ketchum by the Finch, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society. Olive gang”, nd. Nebraska State Historical Society.

424

Fig. 291 S.D. Butcher, Lookout Point in Cherry County, Nebraska, Fig. 293 S.D. Butcher, D. Dunn just landed on his claim in Custer near the Snake River, nd. Nebraska State Historical Society. County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 296 S.D. Butcher, James Wood, an old timer, and wife in front of Fig. 294 S.D. Butcher, A man behind team of horses with a walking their old sod house, Dale Valley, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska lister and planter box, Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

425

Fig. 297 S.D. Butcher, James Wood and family in front of their new Fig. 295 S.D. Butcher, Leon Daily sod house near, Milburn, Custer house, Dale Valley, Nebraska, 1904. Nebraska State Historical County, Nebraska, 19043. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 300 S.D. Butcher, Thomas Jefferson Butcher’s first house, West Fig. 298 S.D. Butcher, “Farmer ‘Corn Tassel’ whose cows always Union, township, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska raised twin calves”, 1904. Nebraska State Historical Society. State Historical Society.

426

Fig. 299 S.D. Butcher, Charles Bowman farm near Gates, Custer Fig. 301 S.D. Butcher, George W. Butcher near Jefferson post office, County, Nebraska, 1900. Nebraska State Historical Society. Custer County, Nebraska, 1888. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Fig. 302 S.D. Butcher, “My first house in Nebraska, 1880. Built from Fig. 304 S.D. Butcher, Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. ‘Nebraska brick’.”, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Nebraska State Historical Society.

427

Fig. 305 S.D. Butcher, “Our Interests on the Prairie.” A sod house in Fig. 303 S.D. Butcher, Mat Freeman, West of the old Jefferson P.O., Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Custer County, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 308 S.D. Butcher, William Laughlin, better known as “Uncle Fig. 306 S.D. Butcher, Jeff Williams and family in front of log house, Bill,” Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State State Historical Society. Historical Society.

428

Fig. 307 S.D. Butcher, William Marsh at his homestead near the Genet Fig. 309 S.D. Butcher, Milton Parkhurst and family near Boggs Table, postoffice in Custer County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Historical Society. Society.

Fig. 312 S.D. Butcher, George Copsey sod house, Westerville, Custer Fig. 310 S.D. Butcher, Three family members in front of farmhouse in County, Nebraska, 1886. Nebraska State Historical Society. northwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

429

Fig. 313 S.D. Butcher, “In Front of Our Home,” Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 311 S.D. Butcher, East Custer County, Nebraska, 1889. Nebraska State Historical Society.

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