New World Encounters: Exploring the Great Plains of North America

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1993 New World Encounters: Exploring The Great Plains of North America John L. Allen University of Connecticut Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Allen, John L., "New World Encounters: Exploring The Great Plains of North America" (1993). Great Plains Quarterly. 750. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/750 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS EXPLORING THE GREAT PLAINS OF NORTH AMERICA JOHN L. ALLEN Arising partly from the debates, scholarly and Neither discovery nor exploration can be otherwise, surrounding the commemoration of examined outside the context of the cultural the Columbian Quincentennial, the claim has and intellectual milieu of the discoverers and been made that the European discovery and explorers. Major discoveries-whether they be exploration of the New World was a process that geographical or not-are made by people who had "meaning only in terms of European igno recognize data that do not conform to their rance, not in terms of any contribution to preexisting world view. Thus Europeans did universal knowledge"! and that the study of "discover" (meaning to find out about, to real exploration and discovery is therefore ethno ize, to see) the New World because neither centric or (worse) racist. Such a claim, which North nor South America was previously a part denies the mechanisms of exploration and dis of their geographical conceptualizations. Had covery their important place in the broader Native Americans sailed eastward across the epistemological process of how we know and Atlantic and arrived on European shores that understand the world, is contentious. were not previously part of their world view, they too would have achieved "discovery." It will be argued in this paper that various groups, at different times, have "discovered" the Great Plains-not necessarily meaning that they were John Allen is professor of geography at the University of Connecticut, editor of the three-volume North the first to find out about, to realize, or to see American Exploration, and author of dozens of books the Plains but that they were the first repre and essays on exploration and landscape perception. His sentatives of their cultural milieu to do so and Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and that, therefore, their "discovery" had special the Image of the American Northwest (1975) is a meaning for them and for their culture group classic in its field. in terms of what we can call "non-conforming data." They had, in other words, encountered [GPQ 13 (Spring 1993): 69·80] New Worlds. 69 70 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993 MODELS OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE knowledge but of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view, covering (in his words) The essential failing of the arguments that "the geographical ideas, both true and false, of the s<:udy of discovery and exploration is "eth all manner of people-not only geographers, nocentric" or "racist" is that such arguments but farmers and fishermen, business executives ignore a substantial body of scholarship that is and poets, novelists and painters, Bedouins and neither. This literature views exploration as a Hottentots." For this reason, geographical knowl subjective process both dependent upon and edge, as Wright defined it, necessarily had "to creating geographical images or patterns of do in large degree with subjective conceptions." belief about the nature and content of the world Similarly, Bernard DeVoto, writing in 1952, or any of its regions; built into that view are proposed that those scholars studying North considerable analyses of indigenous peoples and American exploration should seek to examine the environments they occupied and modified. the ideas that explorers had about geography, Nearly a half century ago, John K. Wright, a the misconceptions and errors in those ideas, geographer, described a geographical approach the growth of geographical knowledge following to the study of exploration that, had it been exploration, and "the relationship to all these adopted as a basic paradigm of historical schol things of various Indian tribes that affected arship, would have led to the development of them." Like Wright, DeVoto stressed the sub scholarly literature on explorers and explora jective elements in exploration, particularly tion that would have been palatable to current with regard to the American West. 2 DeVoto critics. But a number of studies of exploration could also well have agreed with Wright that by geographers have followed Wright's non the process of North American discovery and antiquarian, systematic, and integrative ap exploration incorporated the "invention" of proach. There is little evidence in the critical geographical knowledge and regional images as evaluations of the literature of exploration that much as it did the accumulation and accretion either Wright's pioneering work or those studies of lore. based on it have even been read by the critics. There are three common elements in Wright's Similarly, the works of Bernard DeVoto-an and DeVoto's work: a belief in the importance essayist and popular historian who also dealt of geographical knowledge, particularly its sub with subjectivity in the exploratory process jective nature; a belief in the significance of the have not been given their proper due by the relationship between natural environment, in critics of the literature of exploration and dis digenous peoples, and European and Euro covery. American explorers; and a belief in the subjec In 1943 Wright suggested that the history of tive influence of the exploratory process upon exploration should involve an approach that later historical events. A model for a study of focused upon the role of geographical knowl the exploration and discovery of the Great edge in exploration. Wright argued, along with Plains based on Wright and DeVoto would the Mexican historian Edmundo O'Gorman, therefore include: first, investigation of Euro that America was not so much discovered or pean, Euro-American, and Native American explored as it was "invented," with the "inven geographical knowledge of the Plains and the tion" coming about as the result of the attempt importance of that knowledge for explorers and to reconcile the world view that preceded the exploration; second, examination of the contri events of 1492 with the expansion and change butions made to subsequent geographica110re of in geographical knowledge that followed the the Plains by those involved in the exploratory first landing of Columbus. It is important to process; and third, analysis of the impact of keep in mind that when Wright spoke of geo exploration of the Plains upon subsequent pro graphical knowledge, he was not just thinking cesses, including the subjective process whereby of European or Euro-American geographical the results of exploration are used to create NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 71 belief systems that become so dominant as to be This belief constitutes a tradition that is defined as "traditions." I submit that such a model would not only be dependent not upon the reality of the histori productive in terms of our understanding of the cal-geographical process but upon the inven Great Plains but would provide links between tion of it; that is, our shared view is of a past the exploration of the Great Plains and the as we believe it was or would like it to be broader process of exploration and the shaping rather than as it was .... These invented of geographical knowledge in general. Taking traditions have played an important role in what I view as essential in the viewpoints articu shaping our conceptions of who we were as lated by Wright and DeVoto and enlarging European migrants to a new continent and them somewhat, let me offer an example of a continue to govern our current understand study of Great Plains exploration that might ing of who we are as a people with traditions both satisfy the critics of exploratory studies and rooted in European-American thought pro place Great Plains exploration in conjunction cesses and experiences and largely ignorant with the Columbian Quincentennial by linking of Native American ones.4 the discovery 'of America with several "New World encounters" or "discoveries" of the Great Shortly after the first landfall of Columbus Plains and with the subsequent "invention of on an island off the North American continent, American tradition."3 the invention of American tradition began. Emerging from the first half century of explora GEOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATIONS AND tion in North America (between the first THE INVENTION OF AMERICAN TRADITION Columbian landfall and the early 1540s), there were four frequently contradictory interpreta "The invention of tradition" refers to that tions of North American geography and the process whereby a relatively limited body of North American environment (including its geographical knowledge becomes both shared native peoples) that became so fixed in the and taken for granted by a people and, ulti minds of European explorers and settlers that

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