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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 2011 FROM "NO PLACE" TO HOME THE QUEST FOR A WESTERN HOME IN BREWSTER HIGLEY'S "HOME ON THE RANGE" C. M. Cooper Concordia University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Cooper, C. M., "FROM "NO PLACE" TO HOME THE QUEST FOR A WESTERN HOME IN BREWSTER HIGLEY'S "HOME ON THE RANGE"" (2011). Great Plains Quarterly. 2735. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2735 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. FROM "NO PLACE" TO HOME THE QUEST FOR A WESTERN HOME IN BREWSTER HIGLEY'S "HOME ON·THE RANGE" C. M. COOPER In the spring of 1934, New York attorney Moanfeldt's investigation ended in Smith Samuel Moanfeldt set out on a trip that would County, Kansas, where he found proof that the take him through most of the states west of song had originated in the form of a poem writ­ the Mississippi in search of the origins of the ten in 1872 by a pioneer doctor named Brewster popular American folk song "Home on the Higley.l The case was closed, but Moanfeldt's Range." The reason for his trip was a $500,000 report of his investigation revealed much about lawsuit filed by William and Mary Goodwin of the song's controversial history. For this, we are Tempe, Arizona, who claimed that they had indebted to the Goodwins, without whose false written the song-which was then the most claims of authorship this story might have been popular tune on the American airwaves-and lost. However, the Goodwins were not unique were owed royalties in arrears for its broadcast in claiming that they were the authors of one on public radio. of America's favorite songs, a song that by the middle of the twentieth century was, as author Carl Biemiller comments, "as well known as daybreak."2 By the time the Goodwins filed Key Words: buffalo, cowboy, folk song, Kansas, their suit, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and nostalgia, pioneer Colorado had all claimed "Home on the Range" as their own, and it had even been made offi­ C. M. Cooper is a recent graduate of Concordia cial in the Congressional Record that the song University's MA Creative Writing Program, where she had originated in Colorado.3 As word spread completed a collection of historical fiction short stories about the folk song "Home on The Range." She was about the song's contested origins, the claims of recently a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story authorship multiplied. In 1946, when American Award for New Writers, and her work has appeared in author Homer Croy went looking for more the Headlight Anthology, the Soliloquies Anthology information on the song and its author, he dis­ and New Fables. covered that despite the fact that Moanfeldt had authenticated the song's authorship to the sat­ [GPQ 31 (Fall 2011): 267-901 isfaction of both the courts and the authorities 267 268 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2011 on American folk music, many Americans still dreams of Americans from the late nineteenth claimed that they or someone they knew had century until today. "The land has sung its written it.4 "One claimant even showed up from history," writes Biemiller,9 and in the case of the state of Washington," writes Croy, "where, "Home on the Range," with its many incarna­ so far as I know, no buffalo ever roamed."s Croy tions and variations, the constantly returned­ published a letter in the paper asking for infor­ to refrain is that of a quest for home. mation, and he was amazed by the response: In this article, I examine the forces that "Many of the authors said their father had writ­ contributed to the origin, transmission, and ten the famous song, for he had sung it to them revision of "Home on the Range" as I explore when they were children and had told them he how the text reflects shifts both in dominant had written it; and in this way they were sincere ideological conceptions of nature and the and earnest; many sent ancient clippings and material realities of a changing American land­ copies of diaries."6 scape. By examining the idealization involved The sense of ownership that so many in its genesis and the implications of its various Americans have felt for this song is a testament messages and emphases, I portray the story of to its ability to express an ideal that has had a "Home on the Range" as a historical record of deep and enduring grip on the American imag­ the changing relationship between Americans ination-the garden of the West-that mythic and the American West from 1872, when the space beyond the frontier where Frederick poem was written, until 1947, when it returned Jackson Turner claimed that the American to its original home and became the official character was forged. Henry Nash Smith argues state song of Kansas. In the process, I illustrate that the character of America has been deter­ how a song that perfectly captured the spirit of mined above all by the relationship between a particular time and place was able to tran­ human beings and nature, or more specifically, scend its origins to become an international by the relationship between "American man anthem of the American West. and the American West."7 Because "Home on the Range" was originally a pastoral poem, its No PLACE adaptation over time reflects profound changes in the American environment and dominant Brewster Higley VI was born on November themes in the relationship of the American 23, 1823, in Rutland, Ohio. His father died people to the natural world. Because it emerged before he was born and his mother died when from the pioneer agrarian society at the edge of he was a child, after which he lived with his the frontier and was written in the twilight of grandfather and then his sister.!O He studied an era that continues to haunt the American medicine in Indiana, where between 1849 and imagination, the story of the song is also the 1864 he married three different women, all story of changing ideological interactions with of whom died.!! Little is known of his early the idea of "the West" in American history. life, but testimonials of individuals connected In his essay "The Land Sings Its History," to Higley, collected by historian Russell K. Biemiller argues that folk music can tell us Hickman in 1949, paint a portrait of a lonely, as much about American history as any text­ troubled man who struggled with poverty book.8 "Home on the Range" is emblematic and alcoholism. Margaret Carpenter, who of this tradition. As is typical of folk music, knew Higley when she was a child in Indiana, it arose from obscure origins, was passed on remembered him as a local oddity whose family orally, and has been revised and rearranged was "as poor as Job's turkey."!2 as it has moved through time and across the A Mrs. Smith, the niece of Higley's third American landscape. As a result, the evolution wife, Catherine Livingstone, had mixed impres­ of the song provides a record of the tension sions of Higley. "Dr. Higley was considered a between the lived realities and most cherished very fine doctor and was a brilliant man," she FROM "NO PLACE" TO HOME 269 ON HOME. 5 ~USIC BY f'irsW.M.GOODWIN PUBL.ISHED BY BALMER & WEBER~8~~i CO. ST. LOUIS. FIG. 1. An Arizona Home, copyrighted on February 27, 1905, by William and Mary Goodwin of Tempe, Arizona. Courtesy of the u.s. Library of Congress, Music Division. 270 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2011 his destination a secret. Hickman speculates that Higley might have left for the West to escape the "poverty and misfortune" that he had suffered in Indiana. However, Higley took great pains to ensure that his whereabouts were unknown for years after he left Indiana, lead­ ing some to conclude that he left to escape his marriage and evade any financial obligations that he might have had to his wife.I9 Margaret Carpenter remembered his departure: He took a revolver from father, and said he was going to Rockford .... I can remember father saying that he did not know where Higley had gone after he left this vicinity. Although no one knew his whereabouts, Dr. Higley had often said he wanted to go to Kansas, then a new country, and grow up with it.20 Thus, Higley joined the upsurge of westward emigration that followed the passage of the FIG. 2. Dr. Brewster Higley VI (1823-1911). Homestead Act in 1862, which saw 718,930 Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society. homesteads established on 96,495,414 acres of land in just forty years. Thanks to the act, land was cheap, and there was a constant call remembered,u Smith recalled Higley traveling for settlers to come and reap what seemed to on horseback to care for the families in the be an endless supply of resources, to "fulfill area and often accepting vegetables in lieu of the promise of America."21 The January 7, payment. "But," she continued, "he let liquor 1876, issue of the Smith County Pioneer calls get the better of him."14 Smith recalled being for "500,000 more men and women-strong­ told by her father that her aunt-Higley's minded, big-hearted, enterprising, persevering wife Catherine, who is listed in his biographi­ and muscular people, afraid of nothing but cal sketch in The Higleys and Their Ancestry, wrong, to develop and build up all the interests as having died of "an injury,,15_might have and institutions of this growing State."22 As survived if she had received adequate medical was typical of emigration propaganda of the attention, a statement that reflects very badly period, pioneers were enticed with reference to on Higley, a physician.

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