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The Way We Were: Improvising History at Rocky Mountain Rendezvous

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The Way We Were: Improvising History at Rocky Mountain Rendezvous Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 The Way We Were Improvising History at Rocky Mountain Rendezvous Page Anderson Rozelle Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEATRE THE WAY WE WERE IMPROVISING HISTORY AT ROCKY MOUNTAIN RENDEZVOUS By Page Rozelle A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2004 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Page Rozelle defended on 1 October 2004. _____________________________ Mary Karen Dahl Professor Directing Dissertation _____________________________ Neil Jumonville Outside Committee Member _____________________________ Anita Gonzalez Committee Member _____________________________ Laura Edmondson Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract …………………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction …………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: To Enterprising Young Men: The Received Narrative……………30 Chapter 2: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Rendezvous as Improvisational Theatre……………………………………………….….51 Chapter 3: To Be Human Is To Remember: Memory and Identity at Rendezvous……………………………………………………………..….71 Chapter 4: Memory in Society: Historical Myth and National Identity……..89 Chapter 5: God Bless America in Buckskins: Making History………………106 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………123 Works Consulted………………………………………………………………….128 Biographical Sketch ………………………………………………………………129 iii ABSTRACT Participants at today’s Rocky Mountain rendezvous dress in pre-1840 clothing and gather to camp in period shelters and engage in an assortment of history-based activities. These encampments, which last several days, evoke the Rocky Mountain rendezvous of fur traders and beaver trappers that occurred between the years 1825 and 1840. Rendezvousers usually describe what they are doing as re-enactment of history. In this dissertation I argue that rendezvous are better described as theatre, as a special time and space in which actors impersonate characters while an audience watches. Through ethnographic study of four rendezvous and research of the popular journals surrounding the buckskinning culture, I examine how the playful improvisational theatre at rendezvous facilitates exploration of personal identity as part of a shared national American identity. This exploration may involve impersonating characters from pre-1840 American history, practicing traditional crafts such as blacksmithing or leather work, shooting period flintlock rifles, cooking meals over open fires, playing traditional music, and other activities. According to the rules of rendezvous, the theatrical “sets,” “costumes,” and “props” must be historically authentic, so the environment lends an aura of authenticity to its “plots,” even though these plots do not make any effort to reproduce specific historical events. The lived experience at rendezvous thus looks and feels like living in history, but is in fact improvisational theatrical play with historical symbols. This play can and does displace “factual” history and manufacture its own versions of the past. Because personal and national identities are closely linked to memory, and since a nation’s “memory” is its history, the improvisations at rendezvous quite literally change history. The degree to which such manufactured historical myths resemble verifiable academic history varies considerably among rendezvousers, depending on the quality of the historical research done and the ability or willingness of the researcher to critically evaluate the data. Since historical myths work actively within a culture, defining possible identities and informing political action in the present day, this examination of how the American myths evoked at rendezvous are created, challenged, and affirmed at rendezvous has broad implications for other cultures and their mythologies. iv INTRODUCTION Mem'ries light the corners of my mind Misty water-colored mem'ries of the way we were . Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet What's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget - - - Marilyn K. Bergman “Hear ye! hear ye!” the sign says. “You are entering the early 1800s.” The sign is hand written in chalk on a metal-framed blackboard. The “real” date is August 30, 2002. The scene is the Fort Bridger National Park in Fort Bridger, Wyoming. The town and the park are set in a river valley with mountains rising in the distance on all sides. A tiny brook runs through the park, with a few scraggly trees clinging to its edges. Along the brook, and along the winding walkways laid out throughout the park, are Plains Indian-style tipis, canvas box tents and marquee tents, simple lean-to shelters, and portable toilets. The people walking by are dressed in everything from buckskin shirts and legging to fringed leather dresses, loin cloths, calico dresses, Colonial-era weskits and breeches, and T shirts, shorts, and sports sandals. Posing beside a large bell festooned with American flags are people dressed like Ulysses S. Grant in Union uniform, Abraham Lincoln in beard and top hat, and George Armstrong Custer in red vest, string tie, and jacket. Beside them are a woman in a beaded Indian dress and a long-haired, bearded man dressed head to toe in leather and fur – the kind of fur with the animal’s head and legs still on. Several people ask and are granted permission to have their photographs taken with this odd assortment of personages. Some of the photographs, when they are printed, will show in the background some of the original buildings of the fort and also, in the far background, signage for gyro sandwiches, pita wraps, burgers, and Coca Cola. What year are we in, here? What kind of a world is this, with Coke and Custer, tipis and toilets, and Spandex and skunk fur? Welcome to twenty-first-century rendezvous – an improvised whirl of anachronisms and history. Despite what the sign says, what “you” are entering here is not the “early 1800s” but an environmental theatre where characters from a wide range of historical eras can meet and interact. Theoretically the rendezvous is set in the times before 1840, but the majority of the people at this Fort Bridger rendezvous are visitors from the twenty-first century. Still others, like the persons posing near the bell, were alive in 1840 but came to fame (and came to look like their impersonators) much later in the century. Lincoln, Custer, and Grant were all born in the early 1800s (1809, 1839, and 1822, respectively). Lincoln served as President of the United States and was assassinated in 1865, Custer died famously in 1 his “last stand” in 1876, and Grant served as the Union General in the Civil War and also as President before he died in 1885. The Indian woman is dressed much like an Indian in 1840, but her people today would be more likely to dress in contemporary clothing. The bearded “mountain man,” a fur trapper who lived and worked in the Rocky mountains, is the only one of the group who really “belongs” only in the early 1800s. The mountain man is also the character most closely associated with the historical rendezvous on which the gathering at Fort Bridger is based. The word “rendezvous” comes from the French rendez vous, meaning “present yourselves.” In English, according to Webster’s Ninth, the word means both “a place appointed for assembly or meeting” and the meeting itself (997). The Rocky Mountain fur trappers in the early 1800s worked in brigades of up to 20 or so men, who were sometimes part of larger groups associated with different fur companies. The brigades often broke up into pairs or trios who traveled and camped together as they laid their beaver traps and harvested the pelts. These groups would arrange to meet up with each other, to rendezvous, on a regular basis so they could compare notes on good places to trap, the location of the deer, buffalo, and other animals that served as their food, and the movements of the many Indian peoples who were also living in and traveling through the Rockies. A mountain man’s life was harsh and dangerous, and information about beaver, game, and friendly and hostile Indians was essential to his survival. So these rendezvous were important events. Fort Bridger is located in the heart of historical beaver trapping country, and the grand scale of the countryside makes one marvel that people moving through such territory could ever find each other to rendezvous in the first place. The huge mountains, wide or sometimes torrential rivers, and rugged terrain made travel on foot or horseback difficult even in the warm- weather months when there was no snow. The beaver trappers worked mostly in the cold months, when the fur was the thickest on their prey, and so they camped in the snow and waded into icy rivers to set their traps. Their journals and other accounts indicate that trappers would meet up with each other by chance fairly frequently. Often such chance meetings saved the lives of injured trappers or those who had been robbed of their guns and other tools for survival (knives, tomahawks, blankets). But the prearranged rendezvous served as a way for the trapper brigades to keep in touch with each other, compare notes, and make plans. The larger “general rendezvous” that serve as the models for the 2002 gathering at Fort Bridger occurred in the summertime, the off season for trapping and the easiest time for travel. The general rendezvous were set up as a place of trade between the trappers and representatives of fur companies based back east in the United States. The mountain men would load up horses with their pelts, gather their families (Indian wives and children and extended Indian families) if they had them, and head for a prearranged site chosen for its plentiful fodder for horses, game for people, and water for all.
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