Representing Wilderness in the Shaping of America's National Parks
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Bucknell University Bucknell Digital Commons Master’s Theses Student Theses Spring 2018 Representing Wilderness in the Shaping of America's National Parks: Aesthetics, Boundaries, and Cultures in the Works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their Artistic Contemporaries Alana Jajko Bucknell University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/masters_theses Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, Cultural History Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Other Environmental Sciences Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Sustainability Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Jajko, Alana, "Representing Wilderness in the Shaping of America's National Parks: Aesthetics, Boundaries, and Cultures in the Works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their Artistic Contemporaries" (2018). Master’s Theses. 203. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/masters_theses/203 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses at Bucknell Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master’s Theses by an authorized administrator of Bucknell Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I, Alana J. Jajko, do grant permission for my thesis to be copied. ii Acknowledgments I would first and foremost like to thank my adviser, Alfred K. Siewers, not only for his guidance and consultation on this project, but also on all ventures leading up to it. From my first year of undergrad and attending the Conference for Medieval and Early Modern Studies to this pursuit of a Master of Arts in English Literary Studies, you have truly been the Gandalf to my academic journey at Bucknell. I would also like to thank my committee members, Rochelle Johnson and Andrew Stuhl, who have both provided valuable feedback and thoughtful questions over the course of my research. Thank you for your thorough responses, suggested readings, and overall helpful conversation on the road to the culmination of this project. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the director of graduate studies, Saundra Morris, as well as my fellow graduate students, for their care and diligence in providing edits and suggestions during the thesis workshop. And finally, thank you to my professors, friends, family, and loved ones who have all provided encouragement, interest, and support in this project and my endeavors beyond. iii Table of Contents ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………...………….iv ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………………….iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...vi INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1 James Fenimore Cooper and the Quest for American Identity: Setting a Precursor for the National Parks……………………………………………….16 Cooper’s Aesthetic Representations: The Consequences of An American “Wilderness”………….……………….20 Cooper’s Tools for Coexistence: Reconciling Human-Nature Boundaries……………………………………..38 Native Culture in Cooper and its Role in Environmental Preservation: The Ethical Experience in the Face of a Combined Other………...………...59 CHAPTER 2 John Muir and an Evolving Conception of Wilderness: Shaping the National Parks during their Formative Years………………………………91 Muir’s Spiritual-Scientific Aesthetic: An Alternative Twofold Experience of Sublime Wilderness…………………94 Muir’s Acceptance of Boundaries and a Resistance from the Human-Nature Coexistence……………………118 The Culture that Could Have Shaped the National Parks: Muir’s Wavering Boundaries of Prejudice…………………...…………….139 EPILOGUE Moving Forward: Aesthetics, Boundaries, & Cultures As we Experience them in the National Parks Today…………………………………..170 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..184 iv Abbreviations: ABI America’s Best Idea, Ken Burns EY James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, Wayne Franklin LL John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings, John Muir, Terry Gifford, ed. LN Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians: Written during Eight Years' Travel (1832-1839) Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, George Catlin LY James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years, Wayne Franklin MP Modern Painters, John Ruskin OED Oxford English Dictionary Illustrations: Looking Up the Yosemite Valley (1865-67) by Albert Bierstadt…………………….......vii Leatherstocking’s Rescue (1832) by John Quidor……………………………………….26 Leatherstocking Kills the Panther (1834) by George Loving Brown……………………26 Landscape Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans” (1827) by Thomas Cole…………..31 Cooperstown from Three Mile Point (1850) by Louis Remy Mignot…………………...46 The Course of Empire (1833-36) by Thomas Cole The Savage State…………………………………………………………………48 The Arcadian or Pastoral State………………………………………………….49 The Consummation of Empire…………………………………………………...49 Destruction………………………………………………………………….49, 146 Desolation…………………………………………………………………..50, 146 Map Showing the Setting for The Pioneers, for Volume XVIII, Gosselin’s edition of Cooper’s ɶuvres Complètes. The inset is Cooper’s sketch correcting an earlier version of the map (1828) by A.M. Perrot………………...54 Chalk Pastel Drawing of the Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, (2014) by Alana Jajko………………………………….…..55 Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon's Egg Head (The Light) Going To and Returning From Washington (1837-39) by George Catlin………………………………………….82 v Catlin painting Plate 64, a portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa, frontispiece to Catlin’s Letters and Notes vol. 1 (1841) by George Catlin…………………………...85 Yosemite Valley (1875) by William Keith……………………………………………….99 Pencil Sketch of Oak Grove in Savannah, Georgia (2014) by Alana Jajko……………109 Journal Page on the Wildlife of Yellowstone National Park (2014) by Alana Jajko…..120 Photograph of Yosemite Valley (2014) by Alana Jajko………………………………...126 “Proposed Boundary” of Yosemite National Park (1890) by John Muir……………...128 Pencil Sketch of the Yosemite Valley (2014) by Alana Jajko…………………………...133 Photographs from Yellowstone National Park: Yellowstone River and Upper Yellowstone Falls (2014) by Alana Jajko………………………………..…157 Photograph of a Forest Fire in Yosemite National Park (2014) by Alana Jajko………161 vi ABSTRACT This project studies the works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their artistic contemporaries in relation to the shaping of America’s national parks and what it means for the parks and their attending wilderness to be symbolic of the nation. It seeks to reveal the national parks as artistic representations of a constructed wilderness, while also emphasizing the physical experience of the natural world as a means of supplementing our subjective views. Through the lenses of aesthetics, boundaries, and cultures, I narrow my study to focus on three distinct perspectives by which we can understand the national parks and wilderness. The first chapter follows Cooper’s personal and fictional narratives, placing him in conversation with early conservation, nineteenth-century artists, and the disappearance of Native cultures—in effect, foreshadowing representations and policies that would eventually come to define America’s national parks. The second chapter traces Muir’s history alongside the formative years of the national parks, emphasizing how he bolsters and develops the ideas that Cooper introduces, providing a basis for how we experience wilderness in the parks today. This includes his personal experiences with nature, his political activism regarding the parks, and his encounters with the Natives of California and Alaska—which in their own ways all demonstrate integrated environments of humans alongside nature. The epilogue reflects on the engagement of communities with the national parks today, how Cooper and Muir have shaped those experiences, and how the technology of an advancing world becomes another factor to consider within the human-nature relationship. I pose the national parks as shared places where we as individuals can reflect on our personal encounters with nature, while also recognizing the deeper collective history that attends these preserved wilderness areas. Wilderness has been a defining aspect of America for centuries, but the wilderness of the national parks represents an authentically more complicated past. Understanding this past allows for deeper reflection not only of national identity, but of self-discovery, as we decide what values to bring to our own experiences in the national parks, and how we might individually contribute to the ever- evolving concept of wilderness. vii Albert Bierstadt, Looking Up the Yosemite Valley , 1865-67 “What do we wish? — To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” –Terry Tempest Williams, Statement regarding the Utah Public Lands Management Act of 1995 1 INTRODUCTION Place is something that is always changing, influenced by people and cultures and the forces of nature, shaped by life itself as it grows and develops. Some people feel a comfort in calling one place home, while others exhibit a need to travel from place to place, sometimes returning to places to find landscapes completely changed. A place is something alive. It is not just a space to be occupied, but something that interacts with the world at large—from the tiniest microscopic miracles to the tumultuous events that move masses of earth. Humans have studied place for