On a Claim in Custer County, Nebraska: Identity, Power, and History in the Solomon D
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‘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 By 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 Copyright by M. Melissa Wolfe 2005 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. ii 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. iii 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, iv 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 v 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. vi 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). vii 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 viii 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