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The Disadvantages of Hindsight a Re-Reading Ofthe Early American West

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The Disadvantages of Hindsight a Re-Reading Ofthe Early American West Anne F. Hyde The Disadvantages of Hindsight A Re-Reading ofthe Early American West he image of western expansion denoted by Ceorge Caleb Bing- twenty-first-century hindsight we miss the crucial differences. ham's famous painting, Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through Daniel Boone, or a generation later, Meriwether Lewis and William Tthe Cumberland Gap {1851-1852), predisposes us to a misunder- Clark, fully understood this political and social reality. They did not standing of western history. Boone forges through a forbidding land- enter an unknown, unpeopled world; they were eager contestants in scape, as if the region to the west were wild and unknown. This con- a familiar imperial game. The participation ofthe United States as a cept of a blank wilderness, long challenged by scholars but powerfully player would eventually change the rules, but the world of the trans- supported by popular culture and national ideology, allows for a telling Mississippi West in 1800 was anything but a tabula rasa. Consider the of western history that centers on the American nation as discoverer context when Thomas |efferson and his ministers negotiated the Loui- and developer. However appealing to nationalistic egos, the story is siana Purchase in 1803. Fur and Indians, which now have moved into wrong. And, even more deadly for teaching, it is boring and predict- the realm of quaint, were at the center of local, national, and interna- able, since we know who wins. A different reading would uncover not tional concern. The fur trade had dominated the global economy for a wilderness, but a set of linked communities filled with Indian and generations, and war and diplomacy with Indian nations presented the European people imbedded in colonial rivalries, imperial schemes, and gravest challenge (and the largest expenditure ofthe federal budget) to global trading networks. In fact, the United States joined as one ofthe the new American nation (i). When Jefferson "boughf Louisiana, he last entrants into this dynamic system. recognized that his purchase would be challenged and that he might And "dynamic" meant that no one present really knew how it would well lose it. France may have technically owned Louisiana in 1803, but turn out. Approaching the region and period as a moment in which Spain had controlled it for generations and still claimed the lands sur- any empire, nation, or people had the potential to win fundamentally rounding it: New Spain to the south and Alta Califarnia to the west. Ev- changes the way we look at it. It is crucial, and difficult, for us to re- eryone involved understood that no simple political claim or treaty gave member that the trans-Mississippi West for most ofthe period covered control over the region or its people and resources. Powerful Indian here did not belong to the United States. Huge chunks of those parts nations, along with a variety of pirates, squatters, and filibusters (in the that did officially belong to the United States, such as the lands covered nineteenth-century meaning of irregular military adventurers attempt- by the Louisiana Purchase, were officially designated as Indian Coun- ing to foment revolution or simply claim land), constantly challenged try, and thus operated under different rules. In hindsight, we in the grandiose imperial claims. Certainly in the first half of the nineteenth twenty-first century know about American conquest and the power its century, people living in the region saw American traders, entrepre- reverberations would have in forming the region. We read the narra- neurs, soldiers, and settlers as a challenging disturbance, but mostly as tive backward, looking for signs of our modern selves and the powerful new players who would have to be observed, perhaps accommodated, nation and state that characterize the region now (although the border or perhaps absorbed. and its permeability challenge that power regularly). If we allow the past the dignity of some contingency, however, we may be able to un- An Imperial Web of Communities derstand this time and place from the perspective of the people who Let us do a quick flyover ofthe region with this set of political re- lived there. In 1776, 1789, 1803, or even in 1848, the American nation alities in mind. If we look at the region and the period as something and its control over the trans-Mississippi West was not a sure thing. other than proto-American, we begin to observe a very different scene. Two issues make the moment distinctive: the delicate balance of impe- The trans-Mississippi West in the period between 1800 and 1848 held rial and local power, and the personal nature of trade that connected a wide variety of settlements. Perhaps most typical were small but in- the region and made it surprisingly small. These realities required the tensively settled communities like fur-trading forts, Indian villages, creation of a distinctive culture, but if we look at the West with our Spanish missions, or presidios. The region also had places that had de- OAH Magazine of History • November 200^ 7 veloped into towns like Santa Fe, San Antonio, Sonora, Independence, government granted generous amounts of land to American, British, Los Angeles, Cochiti, the Mandan villages on the Upper Missouri, or Cerman, and Danish emprcsarios whose task it was to attract colonists the Indian towns in the new Indian Territory. More loosely organized and establish agricultural communities. Stephen Austin and his colo- settlements, characterized by agriculture of various kinds or by sea- nies, inhabited by a surprising mix of people, provide an important sonal gathering and hunting, were another common arrangement. (and infamous) example. A mix of agriculture and trade with Indians Texas and New Mexico land grant colonies, the Hudson Bay Company and the interior of Mexico enabled these communities to survive and, farming communities, and the Missouri river settlements serve as ex- eventually, to rebel (4). amples of these. By the early nineteenth century, the region also had at A hybrid of these community forms appeared in what is now north- least one real city, St. Louis. Not only were these places different in size ern California. Sutter's Fort, owned and operated by the Swiss immi- and function, but people with diverse cultures and economies created grant John Sutter, and the surrounding agricultural communities, them, and, in the first half of the nineteenth century, different nations which included the great hacienda and commercial enterprise run by and empires claimed them. General Mariano Vallejo, blended rancho, farm, and trading fort. Using Despite this diversity, however, it is my central contention that Indian labor, Mexican land grants, Russian buildings, and the expertise these communities shared a of varied immigrants, Sutter, set of realities, behaviors, ad- Valiejo, and their neighbors aptations, and real physical produced food, wood prod- connections that gave the re- ucts, furs, hides, and leather gion coherence and perhaps goods, and experimented a distinctive culture that con- with woolen goods and wine. tinued to influence people's They depended on the in- lives until long after Ameri- tense local knowledge of Na- can conquest. Let us look at tive people at the same time some relatively well-known that they needed global net- places as examples. works to market their goods. Fort Vancouver, along the During a period when no Columbia River in the Oregon one knew which nation or territory, presented the rig- empire would finally impose idly hierarchical structure of control, effective trade was a classic post of the fur trade the sole source of power (5). behemoth, the Hudson's Bay Given this unstable situ- Company. Company orders ation, less familiar episodes from London and Winnipeg, Lieutenant James W. Abert kept .. .> • ,.; • ; ;., > n.urney through the Ae^t witln the U.S. become important and make Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, including this drawing of Bent's Fort as seen from carried by Company ships the recognition of contingen- across the Arkansas River. (Image from Through the Country ofthe Comanche \ndiar\s in the cy essential. A moment that from Glasgow, York, Canton, Fall ofthe Year 1S45: The Journal of a U. S. Army Expedition led by Lieutenant James W. Abert of and Montreal, were read and the Topographical Engineers, reprinted by John Howell Books, 1970.) rarely appears in the usual received by the Chief Factor. U.S.-centered narrative ofthe This was Dr. John McLoughlin, the White-Headed Eagle who ran the region—the invasion of California by France in 1818—takes on a differ- fort with equal parts of despotism and grace for more than 20 years, ent significance in the context of a serious vacuum of state power. producing millions of pounds of furs for the Company. McLoughlin's A central fact for everyone in the American West was the slow empire spread far beyond Fort Vancouver and included hundreds of crumbling of the Spanish empire. The Mexican revolution, officially employees and thousands of their dependents (2). complete by 1821, began decades earHer and took many years to con- A thousand miles away along the northern bank of the Arkansas solidate. Alta California, first claimed by the Spanish in 1769, felt the River—in what is now southeastern Colorado but was then the border brunt of this long revolutionary process. State support for missions of Mexico, southern Plains Indian country, and the United States— and presidios ended, so that soldiers were no longer paid and priests stood Benfs Fort. Unlike McLoughlin's Fort Vancouver, Bent's Fort no longer received instructions from the colonial government. Fven was an entirely independent enterprise. It operated at the center ofthe worse, only one official supply ship arrived on the coast of California Santa Fe trade for close to 30 years because of the world its builder between 1810 and 1821 (6).
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