thank you all for putting this

together. i'm grateful to have been and katrina and all of you for this wonderful most really full program and worthy of the david stockman tradition. anyway, when i was growing up on small town montana, pretty rural and a community picnic, one time, the sole timer who was a homesteader. we back when was reminiscing about the family farm in wisconsin, and i asked how come he moved out to montana? and he said, well, there was free land out here and land was $20 an acre back in wisconsin. so he said he came out here for free land, which was the most

expensive land he ever bought. so this panel was a dream of mine. amy lauter is going to talk about the free land, so-called free land and i i've been looking for years and my search of 19th century illustrated stereotypes or stereotype ups of --. and we have a panelist today who has figured out how to get a handle on that, which i never did. and so i'm excited about that as well. he's our second presenter. the john coward our third presenter is the foremost authority on images of indigenous people in the united states and we have that all tied up by somebody who's bringing the mythology to current films, by someone who is not only written and research movies, he's interviewed dozens of

directors and so i'm really excited about this panel. thank you all for being here. and amy is going to talk about freeland and she's an authority on the 19th century and foreign periodicals and women. and she has two books on the subject, at least. and take it away, amy. thank you. i everybody. thanks for having me on the panel, though. when you approached me about this particular idea, i immediately thought of rose wilder lane, one of my books is about her and her book, free land. it's titled free land and it was about how homesteading really wasn't what it was framed to be. so that led me to consider for this research how newspapers may have covered the homestead act in 1862 and how they may have covered homesteaders and homestead. so let me go ahead and share my screen. everybody tell me if this is working properly.

everybody see it? okay, great. and i'll go ahead up here and start the show. so the paper is called the price for free land. this course about homesteading in the homestead act in 19th century newspapers. and as i said, i started out by kind of considering the work of roosevelt lane and actually the work of her mother, laura ingalls wilder, and how they talked about what it was like to be a homesteader and what it was like to to work a homestead and in roswell darling's 1938 novel free land, which was based on the story of her grandparents, caroline and charles ingalls. but for an adult audience, it actually appeared in the same decade as all the little house books, which were geared towards children. her work was was as an adult. work much more focused on the

hardship part of being a homestead or in the end the thesis that she she ended up with the theme of the entire work is that the free land wasn't free. and this is a statement we hear now. i've heard a couple of different places besides bill's anecdotes, too, but the idea that even though the land was supposedly free, there was there was a higher cost than just cash that went with it. so a little bit of background. the 1862 homestead act was passed and may of 1862, and it was it was a proposal to allow united states citizens 160 acres of government land for five years. and all they had to do to claim the deed after five years was to work on it, to develop it, to improve it in some way. the idea was to provide people with a working farm. it had been debated for a number of years, but it didn't actually

pass congress until after the south seceded. and i imagine there were a lot of questions and debate some of what i uncovered seems to suggest that part of the reason it didn't pass before then was struggles over. well, which states would claim what land and whether they'd be slaves or whether they'd be free, and whether should be such a land give away. not to mention, not sure about people who weren't sure about clear title the land that the government was giving away. but it did pass in may of 1862, and these were the terms of the deal. any u.s. citizen could claim 160 acres of freely. and if they were over 21, settled on the land for five years and improved it and were willing and able to file the paperwork after five years with the payment of a $10 fee. so it sounds like a really good deal, right? five years of living on the land. ten bucks. and it's yours. it's 160 acres. there are a lot of other provisions within the act that accounted for lands held in

trust for railroad tracks and tree claims came into play and citizenship came into play later. but this was the original terms of the act that any settler could pay for the land in full before the end of the five year period. for 100 or one dollars and $0.25 an acre. pretty, pretty good bargain. one of the things that i uncovered when i was looking, digging into to the the. the secondary research about this was the concept of squatters. and i was familiar with this concept before, but it ended up it came up a lot in the in the first decade of coverage that i looked at. so it's important to define it now in a squatter is anyone who has settled on land in the west to which they did not have legal title. and one of the things that the homestead act did was attempt put a put some sort of legality to those folks who went west without permission and were settling on land. there was a lot of legal dispute

and it varied by state, but it comes into play as part of coverage. so i wanted to make sure that i defined that here. okay. was back. so this is a big topic. and one of the things i decided to do was look at it as a national topic rather than focusing only on local newspapers or only on east coast newspapers or urban newspapers, i decided to take a much broader view, and i looked at newspapers dot com, which is a digital digitized archive of thousands of newspapers globally. and the first thing that i tried to do to, to get a handle on the scope of this is i put in a search for the homestead act. from 1861 to 1899, just to see what popped up. and in the united states, there were more than a million matches and hits, 1 million, 705,000

matches. and and i and i realized suddenly that the scope of this was much larger than i expected it to be. but just that that sheer volume of mentions of the homestead act in that 40 year period made me realize, okay, this really was dominant discourse of the late 19th century, which is not a surprise. but it was nice to see some numbers to back it up. so in order to get a handle on this and the sheer volume of things that were out there, i decided to look more closely at the top 20 articles in the top three states identified by decade for things. and so i did this for each decade. so from for the decade of 1861 to 1870, 71 to 79, 81 to 89, or 81 to 290 and 91 to 99. and in each of those decades, i asked, you know, how do newspapers discuss the homestead act of 1862? how did newspaper discuss

homesteading? and how did newspapers discuss homesteaders? and so that was quite the volume there, but it was much more manageable in reading 1 million articles and so here's what emerged. 1861 to 1869. most mentions of the phrase the homestead act popped up in california, pennsylvania and new york. and the articles at the time were largely informational. this act has been passed this is how it works. this is to whom it applies. there was an awful lot of boosterism and many of these articles. in fact, there was a what there was a there was an article written by the speaker of the house agro at the time that was highly in favor of this homestead act, urging people to take advantage of it. in fact, the phrase he used in his article was the long struggle for the land of the landless is at last consummated. and in this decade, as was

passed and people were trying to figure out what it was, the term homesteader was rarely used. rarely used, in fact, it didn't start to really show up until the next decade, which was 1872, 1879, when the talks states with the most coverage were kansas califor and pennsylvania. and what i found really interesting immediately was that the kansas newspaper sort of exploded by 1870. the coverage in kansas was more than twice what it was in the other top three states, and that kind of shows where things were moving. i'll get to that in a second. but again, there's a lot of informational pieces and some of it is still about how to claim your lands that you want to have, but some of it is also numbers of claims being being filed. that's a title pardon acres of land that are held also the top 20 questions.

your ask at the land claims office when you need to prove that you've developed your claim, these kinds of helpful informational things were in there and there is an uptick in the term in the times. this term homesteader and homesteading are used, especially in the midwest. and we see a lot of articles, especially in the mid seventies, about hardships for homesteaders. in fact in iowa, which is one of the papers that had a lot of form studying articles in it with. others, a particular article that was a regular feature that was reprinted in kansas and california, in pennsylvania, donations for homesteaders. homesteaders are having a tough time. donations for clothing donation drives and in context, in the 1870s, there was there were a number of prairie fires and locust plagues. i kid you not spreading through the midwest.

and those who were were trying to work that land were running into challenges that farmers in the east probably never even considered, that there was there was a lot of going on there in the 1880s. again, we've got kansas, california and nebraska. there's more informational things, debates in congress. but there's also now some international press coverage, particularly preprint reprints of articles from ireland and new zealand where they were and where in new zealand they were in talks to figure out how they could do their own land giveaway. and in ireland it was from a labor perspective, how this this equity, the sharing of was maybe a first step for the working man towards some sort of upward mobility, but only the first step. there was more that needed to be done. oh, the boosterism here centered a great deal on the international labor press coverage, which was positive on land ownership. and i thought it was

interesting. and it was it's something i'd like to tease out a little bit more how often these articles equated land ownership with wealth and upward mobility. i'm wondering if that's one of those things that is sort of an american take it for granted hegemonic thing, but it's sort of just underscore as all of this, this coverage and when it comes to the terms almost better and homesteading suddenly these terms are everywhere. i mean, they were already increasing in number in the in the 1870s, but in the 18th eighties, these terms are everywhere. and there's big debates about whether the homestead should be repealed, whether they given up, the government had given away land there were some who said there was no need to help the homesteaders because they should be grateful for the free land. they've got. there were articles clapping back, saying homesteading was harder than it appears. was it? it's clearly a really tumultuous time to be someone who was

homesteading or to be a homesteader. and this is just one of the phrases that was reprinted in a couple of places. it takes grit and background, backbone and plenty of that to make homesteading a success. it is a safe and certain, but not royal road to fortune. in other words. okay, yeah. the land is free, but it doesn't mean wealth. you know, it's we're not to get wealthy off of this land, essentially. and by the 1890s, again, top three, kansas, pennsylvania and nebraska california bowed out. finally. the informational theme continues and now it's most early debates in congress over over whether this this act should be repealed, whether provisions should be made for the act. there's a side of historical context now, because we're at we're 30 years removed from the original acts passing. so there's always someone saying, and this is how it came about. there's there's these kinds of articles, this is how it came about.

generally. the coverage is still largely supportive of the act, even in the debates over whether homesteading is is hard or whether land is free. everybody generally agrees. just giving away the land is a great plan still. and of course, the the the act was official through 1934. so to it was still in effect here. but now when we see mentions of homesteaders and homesteading, it's homesteaders organizing by this point homesteaders are organizing politically and they're sharing their stories about how working a homestead was challenging, noting that it takes more than just a single man or woman to be successful and proving up a claim and turning it into a farm that it's really a an endeavor that requires a lot of people to make it work and just sort of starting to to highlight those

stories in a way that positions homesteaders in a capacity to organize for their own political good and for their own social good. and i feel like i'm sort of touching on all of this and outline a little bit because in a way that database did give me some of that really broad outline of things, and i kind of want to tease out some more work from here. but here are some of the limitations is that i recognize, just as i was going through, first of all, search terms, the first search term i tried out was just homestead act and that yielded a ton of information and informational themes. i needed to dig in deeper if i wanted to get at what happened with homesteaders and homesteading. the other thing that i noted as i went through regional variances khalif, you kept popping up in that top with mentions of the homestead act. but california is issues vary quite dramatically from those of

the folks in kansas and other places. yes, they were covering the same kinds of information, but california was also digging into some legal cases about land grants versus the homestead act and who actually held title and how would land be divvied up in a divorce and could have mortgages and what would happen if you had a mortgage on land you didn't have title to lots of court cases that we didn't see. i didn't see repeated in coverage in the other states. so california was really focused in on some things that that that while certainly informational and falling into theme were uniquely california which made me think it might be beneficial to do the same kind of thing focusing tightly in on a region. but again, it's not something i would have noticed if i hadn't done the broad search first. so broad and then narrow. i guess we go here. things that i found that i wasn't expecting to see that i'm kind of fascinated by.

one is the spread of coverage from initial publication. i found this particularly fascinating at the start with the notice of the homestead act that was prepared by the secretary or speaker of the house, jim crow, published in the east coast papers and how it spread fast. i mean, i found it in several different papers. it kept coming up. and how what those dates and labels it became really interesting to watch that go across the country with this database. i also found it fascinating to see how homesteader became a term in the cultural landscape. it didn't exist in 1862. it began to exist in 1871 or so, and then it became an identifier. it became an identity, it became a label with which homesteaders could work to organize politically. and i found that fascinating. and just to bring it back around from that original point of view

here. i was starting out from this place where i was thinking about ingalls wilder and rose wilder lane and how they wrote about homesteading in their books and how they illustrated the challenge of homestead. and there is a character in little town on the prairie by laura ingalls wilder named mrs. mckay, who is a seamstress. and she and her husband had taken a claim outside of desmet, south dakota, because they wanted the free land. but they didn't have the money for the tools and the implements and the livestock and everything that people needed in to work that land. and so they had to figure out a balance between working in town and, staying on a homestead, and their story is not unusual. this happened a lot and in the case of mrs. mckay, she and her daughter stayed out on the

claimed six months of the year just to tend the garden and listen to the wind blow in order to meet the the requirement that someone stays on the land for five years and tries to prove it up. and she's complaining in the book about how this was a stupid rule because don't they know, that those who can work a farm can buy a farm and they have the money already. and that kind of underscores that final thought, that the free land wasn't free, that there was a lot of effort that went into actually working that land, developing it and turning it into a successful business, something that was made even more challenging during an era of grasshopper plagues and prairie fires. thank you. so we move on to jonathan next and then come back for questions. kinsey had the questions that the conclusion of all the presentations we'll have time.

well, the next one, i'm very envious of jonathan for figuring all this out. and go ahead, take it away. okay. i'm going to share my oz powerpoint as well. bear with me here. okay. hope you can see that. all right. yep. all right. so thank you so much for inviting me to present. this has, as you mentioned, been kind of a recurring theme in some of my research over the last few years. that is vaudeville and its reflection or as a reflection on broader trends and happenings in the u.s. in the late 19th and early century. so my present edition is titled

urban peddlers in the rural west a jewish cowboy myths the bonneville stage shalom your ark. so the question really that i've been teasing out or trying to figure out is how we get from the image on the left, sort of the standard, even stereotypical jewish peddler and the image on the right, which is kind of a farcical look at the rodeo clown, as it were, who of course, is dressed up as a cowboy. so peddling the selling of items, house to house and place to place was really the dominant for -- in europe and the americas during the 19th century, virtually no -- during this period was without a peddler in their immediate or extended family, and non--- viewed the occupation as

distinctly jewish, even though there were, of course, other peddlers as well. but despite the familiar ity of peddling in the jewish experience, european -- from eastern europe who immigrated to new york city in the beginning in the late 19th century had difficulty imagining their peddlers, their brethren, as it were, doing any of the rugged stuff that they would have to do on american frontier, jewish vaudeville, performers whose concept of the west primarily came from wild shows played on the idea of urban peddlers roughing it as pretend cowboys and indians projecting exaggerated images of themselves onto the western lands. they were evidently unaware that, in fact, real jewish peddlers of pioneer period had come earlier to the area, to the

region, mainly from german speaking lands, and were by and large quick to acclimate to the west social and geographical realities. so this paper examines the roots of these mythmaking, looking specifically at conversion influences of wild west and newspaper reports of jewish peddlers being robbed, beaten and sometimes murdered for their cash and wares for the jewish audiences, the presumed absurdity of the peddler turned cowboy. i think a warning that acculturation was a practical and dishonorable aspiration. but the purportedly violent, hypermasculine, lawless frontier was not a place for them. so again, how do we get from the image on the left to the image on the right, and then my answer is vaudeville from the mid 1870s

to the early 1930s, vaudeville theaters presented something for everyone. variety shows for america's rapidly diversifying population, primarily in crowded urban centers, coinciding with the arrival of more than 20 million immigrants to the u.s. between 1880 and 1920, among them over 2 million, mostly eastern european --. theaters attracted performers and audiences from the same crowded, polyglot neighborhoods. and of course, vaudeville. while it offered a variety of short act skits and performances as things like magicians and acrobats and jugglers and comedians, animal trainers, bird call imitators, singers, dancers, trapeze artists, short silent films, you name it. it was also performed at a time

of great immigrant and immigration alarmism, which spilled into both popular entertainment and government policies. so these shows were replete with racial stereotypes. it wasn't just an acrobat shtick act. it was a perhaps a german acrobatic act or a chinese acrobatic act. and all of these came with their unique stereotypes, as it were. so not only were there the ubiquitous blackface and exoticized impersonator of native americans and japanese and people, but also caricatures, caricatures of the so-called european and races as delineated by the u.s. government's dictionary of or peoples from 1911. so here we have it. this image, four types of on the left, we have the dutch, german type next to him, the irish, followed by the southern black

and then next to him the hebrew on the right. so what really distinguished the jewish caricature, what is known as a stage -- or -- faced was that they were primarily performers formed by eastern european, jewish immigrants themselves, as opposed to others sort of taking on the character and they were marketed by jewish agents, jewish theater managers, jewish music publishers, really, for jewish audiences, of course, like other racial and ethnic stereotypes of vaudeville, these original heated with xenophobic whites who otherize these newcomers in kind of farcical but jewish performers quickly took over the types themselves, basically saying, we can do it. and sometimes filling their acts with so much yiddish and

culturally specific references to holidays and other things that no one else would know about, they're really. it was a kind of inside running joke that they were performing on stage. give you a sense of what this looked like. i found a short film from 1903, just a few seconds really, of a gesture fight on hester street and you'll see a couple of peddlers just duking it out in a comical way. and then a police officer intervenes from the library of congress in washington, dc.

that's about as close as we're going to get to seeing what the vaudeville stage you look like in action. believe me, i've looked far and wide, but anyway, that that gives you a sense. and then somehow and that's what i'll be talking about, that image of the peddler or, you know, fighting on the crowded new york city streets, it will evolve into. this other character kind of a or a subtype of the stage --, which is the jewish cowboy. and of course, his companion or nemesis, the jewish indian as well. so eastern european immigrants apparently couldn't really imagine that they're peddlers, ones that we just saw, who pushed carts down city blocks, skokie were distinctive clothing and were harassed by policemen.

i couldn't imagine these people being cowboys, the prairie populating the american west. so songs and sketches humanized this incongruity, portraying ill equipped urban -- trying and failing at being cowboys and indians songs of the genre included. i'm a yiddish cowboy. tough guy. levi from 1908 about a greenhorn horn turned cowboy protagonist who marries a blue blood indian maiden and big chief dynamite for a 1909 about a jewish peddler who becomes an indian revolution. arie and sworn enemy of the yiddish cowboy. so the humor of these songs really relied on the presumed oxymoron of a character who is hopelessly cast against type. in some of these songs, the wannabe cowboy, sort of a with head hanging low, returns back

to the city and sort of forgets that any of this ever happened. so it's important to note that, as i mentioned earlier, jewish cowboys were also among the first rodeo clowns. and this phenomenon is immortalized in this 1931 crazy cat cartoon, rough dough, which has crazy cat and impersonating a jewish cowboy clown singing i'm a yiddish cowboy, tough guy, levi. and in fact, tellingly, this cartoon was written, directed, animated and produced by --, by the way, you can see in the corner, amusing --. that's my youtube channel. this is one of the restorations that we did, if you want to see there. we added the bouncing ball and kind of cleaned up the cartoon very kind of rare and glad that we were able to find this enjoy.

oh guy levi that my name. bye bye. bye, cowboy. see, i don't care for tom. oh. i did this. oh, your your your your regular. i am busy. got it, sam. till they die. oh, oh, no, i off my god, we there you go. sorry. i don't need to watch it again. okay so the thing about it is that there were in fact, plenty of jewish peddlers who traveled

long and arduous circuits and entered their customers homes and really lived that lifestyle. while that is mocked in these vaudeville and cartoon performances and it did, they were exceptionally tough people. they carried heavy packs, braved severe weather conditions and suffered bouts of loneliness and isolation realities, really, that were inconsistent with the era's prevailing jewish male stereotypes of physical weakness. so according to a diner, this book, roads taken from night sight from 2015, rather peddlers in america tended to prefer, in fact, less developed rural areas. far from the competition of the crowded cities where underdeveloped transportation a shortage of settled merchants, and the distance between the settlement and the next one were sort of conducive to making

their services quite valuable and necessary in these areas. so it was also kind of a stepping stone for most of those who succeeded. and of course not everyone did, but those who did use pedaling as a way to kind of find a hospitable environment, to maybe settle, start a shop, grow from there into warehousing and so forth. and some of those who were successful actually developed up in the cattle business itself. so they were really, truly cowboys, as it were, on the left, robert lazar miller of denver, who came to denver in areas in a 1932 photograph. he was known as the dean of denver cattle buyers, and on the nathan carlson, who developed the ranch in san antonio, texas, was a there's still a callison

cowboy there and kind of a local fixture developed a ranch that supplied the area's ranchers and, cowboys and so forth and so on on. so why did you base. that's a question. i have an asked or answered quite yet so. there's a couple of prevailing theories in terms of not only why do face emerged as a popular form of entertainment sort of made by -- for --. and then also why the cowboy perhaps came as a an offshoot of that, according to jody rosen, a journalist and chronicler who put together this album actually on the it's a cd on the left of number of songs that are preserved from this era. and he said that the stage you phenomenon was a way for jewish

performers and audiences to kind of embrace self-mockery as a means of acclimating to american social norms and distancing themselves from their old world past, basically to smile at these songs and skits that ridiculed greenhorns meant that you were no longer them. so as a way to kind of distance themselves from the old world, according to music historian aram manila, the foolish jewish cowboy, on the other hand, was a cautionary tale, a limit on how american, so to speak, the immigrant. you can attempt to be before getting lynched. so the message beneath the laughter, according to manila, is that a -- cannot function as a real cowboy. so the question that i asked is why of all the possible stage -- subtypes, did the cowboy -- in particular or catch on? why not a satirical jewish

policeman or jewish or jewish soldier? and i think the real underexplored factor in the development of these peddler goes west comedy routines is the prevalence of newspaper accounts of peddlers being and murdered on the open road. and these stories, combined with the popularity at that time of wild west shows that again attracted urban audiences. i think inspired these cautionary images of how hapless and helpless cowboy wannabes who should have stayed back in the big city. so like our previous presenter, i also did a lot of digging around newspapers. com it's become probably the most important resource tool at my disposal, but jewish peddlers were mainstays of u.s. newspapers. my research at newspapers dot

com revealed over 21,000 stories mentioning jewish peddlers. between 1840 to 1920. this was more than italian or irish, polish, russian and german peddlers combined, which kind of fed into this idea that peddling was a jewish phenomenon. and of course, some of the polish, russian, german peddlers were probably jewish. also, just not identified as such in those papers. but many of these stories as i mentioned, dealt with robbery, harassment, assault, murder, reports of peddlers in peril were likewise visible in the jewish press. that's both anglo jewish and even more so in the yiddish newspaper, which i didn't get a chance to look at for this particular paper. but you know, just my gist, looking at some of those examples is that they were pretty similar. that indeed, of course, they commented on sort of tragedies

being. lived out by these peddlers and also portraying, though the west as wild as it were. so my discovery is that also and this is where the of aha moment came in my that stories on jewish peddlers and stories on wild west shows were regularly printed on the same or adjacent columns of the newspaper page suggesting that the same eyes would have read these stories and naturally conflated some of these elements together. so i you probably can't see all of the words here, but basically this example here from the river daily evening from massachusetts, october 18, 1887, reports on the murder of a jewish peddler who had left this city yesterday morning with several hundred bets on the left

and then the other column next to it talks about the quartering of performers from a wild west medicine show at a local skating rink. again, just sort of indicating the ubiquity of both things. and you summed it up pretty soon. yeah, i'm just going to this is it, really. i just have a couple of more slides of newspapers just to show some of the evidence here. again, the arapahoe pioneer is nebraska news section from july ten, 19 or so, 1896, noted the death of a jewish peddler from omaha who was crushed, crushed under his wagon, and then also that a buffalo belonging to buck wild bill and the buffalo bill's wild west show was being brought to area. and again, other examples, a death of a peddler mention of wild west shows, etc.

so i just have a dozens upon dozens of those. in conclusion again that the phenomenon of the -- face or the stage -- has been well documented. the growing understanding is that despite kind of anti-semitic imagery that we would see today, that in fact those performances, those images were made by for -- as a way to, again, distance these performers and audiences who laughed at them from their immigrant acts. and it was a way for them to acclimate to the environment in america in sort of assimilate, as it were. and then on the other hand, the the cowboy -- was kind of the opposite showing that there were, in fact, limitations to this acclimation process or this acculturation project and that

-- probably shouldn't go west, even though many did. and made wonderful lives for themselves. so that's pretty much it. again, both factors were swirling around in the culture that is the wild west show and the stories of, you know, tragedies befalling these peddlers. and they got together in the cowboy -- of vaudeville. thank. and next, we have john coward. john.

okay. okay. okay. can we get to the big screen remind you that everyone has 15 minutes for their presentation so can we get rid of the. oh yeah i would do that. i'm sorry about that on my mark. sorry about that. i thought we had 20 minutes so the 20 minutes are the individual panelists. 315 but anyway enjoy. thank you very much. i'm doing native americans, the native american press takes on manifest destiny and you can see i put the word the right to our country. native newspapers confront, confront really assumes that there is a confrontation which turns out to be only partially true. it's sometimes true, sometimes not the other. the phenix here. this is from the front page. the nameplate of the cherokee

phenix, the first native american paper from 1828 and thereafter it has the word protection on it, which begs the question there, what what they want protection from that would be their rights and one of those rights presumably is land. so which is where manifest destiny would come in. so i worked out what it was they're trying to do. my first question there is really too broad. there are a lot of native papers and and manifest destiny two kind of a big sticky topic that was too broad. so more specifically, i looked at the indian territory press. i happen to live in tulsa, indian territory. there, and that's relevant to me. so what did what issues did the indian territory tary press? how did they respond to threats to tribal land when that came around and what how do they deal with it or how do they talk about land? what do they ignore in their coverage of the land? what political and social

forces? so these are the questions i started out to answer. i'm not sure i got them all answered, but i wanted to back up a little bit to where did manifest destiny come from and and think native people losing their land, you know, this comes up in the literature. so secondary sources here. this doctrine of discovery the idea that promoted by the church and other western european you know crown and various european countries. if it's an unknown land, we discover it. therefore we're bringing christ and to the heathens. it's therefore land we can take it. this these latin terms here nobody's land. yeah, trace back and at least in some cases to the roman times, the land is nobody owns it anyway. and then this vacuum thomas aiello the empty dwelling notion sometimes tied to john locke,

that the land is underutilized, or again, kind of vacant. and so i have the this stereotype of kind of drawing columbus approaching the the natives in the caribbean with his staff and cross there to indicate we're taking charge and the united states a manifest destiny is it's this is a oversimplified of course manifest destiny wasn't was universally believed by every american in the 19th century every american political. but there was plenty of it around and it's there's this notion divine right or duty to especially after the civil war to go west and and civilize the land the land being either empty or uncivilized, available for the taking. and that included in larger sense, mexico, canada and

discussion of canada. those canadians may need to be tamed for native people. this there's a political and moral justification here. so we're doing a good thing as americans. and this illustrates in a famous career novels by fanny palmer. across the continent, 1868. and it's a little hard to tell, but they're building a school here, civilizing. we have some miners, i think, out here, but the indians are on the margins literally in this case and being enveloped in the smoke of the train so not very subtle here pretty blatant marginalization of native people. they don't really have a place in the future here. so to sum up here, that's all my kind of background. the land was empty or nearly so the people, non christians, therefore we can we could take their land they have the wrong religion or no religion at all.

they're uncivilized. we're bringing them to give to civilization there anyway. in any case, they're nomadic. this is never true. think of the pueblo indians. what does it? taos is then occupied for hundreds of hundreds of years in new mexico, so many of the tribes were not nomadic. but this was the justification. so and i did find a and doing a word search on newspaper is dot com our favorite websiteays of james gordon bennett a famous 19th century newspaper editor. this quote from 1872 a great nation has duties. it's our duty and i boldface there we have to do something with this responsibility. we have and this is a great quote from the same column byy bennett the world is better civilization is riper because. you know the yankee has done this work and it went on talk about mexico at the time.

we really need to get into mexico and civilize those people. this is the thing that's that i mentioned before the first night paper and it's gotta be the eagle there and in 1828 but not first editor said we want to benefit the cherokee people of course true and i the paper to to fight removal and i fail at that but in 1830 you can see here i applied for their land this is before manifest s and they really takes hold after the civil war because it's 1830. but this perfect original to the land of our fathers so there is a feeling early on at least among some cherokee that we shouldn't be removed. not only that, we want we want have this right to our land. the the phenix square is goes

out of business. i mean, the trees are removed, the phenix ends. it's i think it's 1834 here. and but the cherokees reestablish a paper in tahlequah, oklahoma and it's the successor and this is its motto our rights are country. so you can see some in 1844. we're in a new place now, but we want our we want our country built. the land itself. one of the ways i found they talked about land was agricole and the indian territory. so here's three kind of booster quotes from 1847 when the the advocate is saying we have fruitful and it should be toil and we have got it's there's a recognition there is a cherokee.

you know land that's well borders in indian territory this time and and they're recognizing that although there's no there's nohreat to the land at this time. d and so you don't hear a manifest destiny or any of that discussion this early here. you know, we can know the command ghts polls and, u know, do these do these things increase the land? interestingly, it it says cherokee farmers, but there e white farmers in the territory and i mentioned. here it's a switch papers tha was a cherokee paper. tahlequah here's a ort little the choctaw telegraph which does something quite different 1848 it's you can see this is a prospectus for the paper the paper only lasts a couple of years but it's is more interested in mora improvement there's a lot of that going on and among the five civilized

tribes in indian territory we want to we want our people to be moral and to live, you know, have a high literary character and education. so you see the family newspaper, iginal tale sketches, literary and moral. so they don't mention they do mention agriculture. here's a the actual word that so it's a booster paper and at this point in its short life it is about those topics and not any threat to the choctaw land. this is paper published in indian territory, but by the methodists we're talking about john wesley earlier here. so on behalf native people moved up to 18 area in muskogee you can see is the methodists are interested in saving the souls of their their native brethren and i like this quote i just put

it on here because it's fun dances, so horrible. buas the play for our brother in red but there's no as far as i can tell or cherokee i mean our brother in red was not interested much in and secular matters such as either ship of land a threats to cherokee territory so yeah christmas the young people they too much we can't have that but here's what does happen as in the 1870s and 80 there are threats to actual indian territory by by by boomers and also several state comes in key is a notion of breaking up tribal land and assigning it to individual indians. kind of like the homestead act. we talk about. and this paper started last move not stay. i see boudinot who's the son of the original phenix editor, but

he called the progress and this is a quote from him how to read their. but yeah, what he says cherokees are interested in several things they to break up tribal land not not keep this the rest of the big reservation as it were and so he's he's on both sides here at least verbally says we're going to defend property rights here 1875 and there's no paper. but then when it comes down here to this notion of several say he's against title in common that's tribal land and wants individual indians and makes the statement there so he says one thing but in retrospect he's he's against tribal and this plays into indian are native losing their land here is the another development this notion of several things is this bo

or a movement that comes into you know parts of all of what's w lahoma are assigned to indidual tribes five civilized tribes and others but they're unassigned lands. and people move into these. the homesteaders, they're called boomers and they this is from th cherokee advocate, but it's about chickasaw chief governor. they call him who he says, who defends native people, says, we're not barbarians and savages and we want our representative in congress is what this message isbout to to to fight the land grabrs and the railroad magnates so you can see a rising conscis this in the 1840s it's out boosterism about agriculte about 1870 he's the threats are appear appearing and you have this movement against land grabbers.

here's more from the cherokee chief bush he had he has a cherokee i'm pretty common actually and there were some boomers that moved and right south of the kansas line, just about five miles from kansas, and establish a little colony they called rock falls. and here ia report on chief bush. he had goes out there and says, we got here in exchange for is actually cherokee land but boomers see it as unsigned and we're going to we're going to take it here. so here they're called free voters. we have to have the free voters removed. and here's other paper, an intertribal paper published in 1884 and eufaula this guy, payne, was the leader of the boomers and he he's ridiculed here. and you follow paper as being a draw and poor deluded squire. so the squatters are are pple

who've been w they're paying money to paint to get this land on kind of on spelation and they're actually removed by authorities. so as you can see, the indian press reporng on this. and then the last thing that really happens is the dollars sevel of act dollars was the senator from massachusetts had this good, he thought, a good idea of the several states. tha's a sign the land to individual indians they could become citizens and will be with the world in indian territory but here is t advocate making fun of the leading the blind and pushing the indians into the ditch and they're editorializing they're frightening, trying to fghten frighten us natives, o cherokee people, other tribes and to giving up their. i make this claim the u.s. government is powerless to do, but it turns out not to be true.

so some tentative conclusions here i say tentative because just sort of made a first passurvey of this in the early from the early days of indian territory press the forties to the seventies. if you ask tribal land. but as and a lot of boosterism a lot of moral and educational concerns and then as we saw some sometimes calling out racial stertype. we're not savages defending themselves and the boomers and others ala grabbers, freeloaders, squatters. one thing i did notice that today, native people do say, but, you know, this land is our traditional land. we, for spiritual purposes, that doesn't really come up in the 19th century. i at least saw a civilized, hyper civilized tribe pipers. i looked at pa probably beuse that wasn't ancestral land.

i fear they'd only been there in the 1830s after 12 tiers, so i didn't see. i was sort of surprised. i didn't see anything, but i looked everywher so finally what happened to manifest destiny is. bill'original question for the panel. the boomer movement. it was the became manifest destiny turned into the boomer movement in di territory and the papers resisted to some degree. and the allotment act native papers resisted mt labor, not entirely. some supported it that that would not. in the end, the cherokee progress that paper i forgot to mention there when he establishethpaper in muskogee and it so angered the creek muskogee people are the leadership of the tribe. they threatened to close ts press down and they seized it.

so they had tmove it to the --, which is in cherokee part of the indian territory because it was so offended somebody so, many native people i wld say this is a paradox is the bounce from littlefield and parents to to scholars did most of the work on. the native press and their three volume book and i say this this is true and i cite the example i haven't looked at this one that ends for the cheyenne paper campaigning against boomers. weon't want those people coming in and taking ourand but then when it came to a lot and they said, oh well, that might be okay. so if padox they end up defending a tribal holdings here but not here. iust say in the end and nothing could stop the onslaught of white people taking native land. so i'll quit with that. thank you very much and thank you very much, john. my impression of the boomers comes from movies, large land

rush scenes. so we're going to talk about the movies next. gordon. hello. for 50 years i've been writing film histories and biographies and inevitably one is confronted with the western, especially when interviewing actors such as joel mccrea or john wayne or directors raoul walsh, william wellman, george stevens and many others associated with westerns

considered classics by fans and scholars of the genre. all my dozen or so biographical subjects directed at least one western. even the german master, fritz lang, in america became enamored of western lore and visited american reservations. dressed up in cowboy boots and ten gallon hats, attended rodeos, and took two step dance classes, i confess i align with julius j. epstein, the screenwriter of casablanca in 50 other high gloss studio productions from the golden age of hollywood, who told me there were two genres he never cared to write for because he could not believe in their fantasies. one was science fiction, which he posited detested. the other, equally hated was westerns. i'm an easterner, epstein told me. i think all stories about the west probably full of --. cowboys were probably uneducated

and very dull. i share his skepticism as more of a bookworm than a movie. i think of westerns as a problem genre, and for me, part of their problem is their uneasy relationship with history or what is often their indifference to history. you can look for a motion picture based on an actual history book and you would spend a lot of time looking. hollywood producers and directors do not read history books. maybe a few screenwriters do. the recent death on the set of alec baldwin's production rust during filming reminds us that historical author is the province of property and gun handlers who supply historically replicated weaponry and teach their uses actors. but there are also costumers set designers and makeup artist artists performing much the same trick. i'm certainly screened artists carefully, research their specialties, striving for a patina of.

or what i prefer to call the illusion of authenticity. many of the props cost sets embellishments are drawn from the pages of history. even if those books are often reference books, albums, art photographs, document or memorabilia, memoirs are another form history if not always truthful. you can look for an american film based on a western memoir, and again, you would probably spend a long time looking in vain if. you're very lucky. you might count up a dubious handful. i say dubious because i'm thinking of the example of wyatt earp, which you can extend on anecdotal evidence to the memoirs of most illustrious westerners. wyatt earp spent his final years in hollywood befriending charlie chaplin and, douglas fairbanks visiting the sets of john ford and raoul while films everyone hearing earp's stories about

cleaning up tombstone and other acts of claimed heroism. perfectly, with the help of stewart and lake, a former wrestling promoter and press to write his official biography, which was crafted in the as told to fashion partly to be sold as a movie. lake had the historians dream advantage of many with and his surviving contemporaries among earp's pallbearers when he in 1929 with silent pictures just then giving way to talkies where tom mix and william hart, two of the big western stars of the silent period, each acclaimed for their authentic portrayal of western cowboy. lake's book filmed or borrowed from numerous times, has long since been disregarded as highly fictional, in the words of. with one instance being earp supposedly adept deployment of a colt butler line a weapon. in fact, he never owned or used like incidentally was later

instrumentally involved in the creation of the westerner starring gary cooper and winchester, 73, with jimmy stewart. two seminal films of the genre that are entertaining but also fairy tales. william hart was a good pal of earp and bat masterson's after his heyday of several hundred westerns, usually praise as rugged or gritty. in the 19 tens and 1920s, hart turned to writing numerous books, often or co-written sometimes with his sister as his collaborator. his main autobiography was a saccharine read, according to ronald davis. in his book, william s hart projecting the american west and not an altogether reliable source. the historicity, his films. those that survived, has likewise been debunked by historians and film scholars. the vast bulk of silent westerns were built on the confabulation, a legacy of novels. wild west shows, and

nickelodeon's. both hart and tom mix were alumni of wild west shows, among other things, in their long, checkered careers again and again, research and scholarship has shown that the westerns people have been groomed to love were fraudulent. history. i asked alan burrough, the author of inventing wyatt earp, his life and legend why prefers to fictionalize the earps and other famous figures in westerns. what did with wyatt earp is really no different than what they've done with any other historical figure from custer to napoleon to jesus christ, barrow told. like the reporter says, james stewart and the man who shot liberty valance. when the legend becomes fact, the reason hollywood keeps coming back to wyatt earp, burrough continued, is that his story contains just about every element of what interests us about our frontier past. from cow towns to a mining camp to the perils of law enforcement

to family blood feuds like the oak corral and its aftermath. and the earp story is so applicable to any time, any era that it's used as a framework for every clash between the law and organized. director brian de palma's and writer david mamet's 1987 film the untouchables instance. that movie had very little to do with the real story ness and capone, but everything to do with the story of wyatt earp and the clintons, the glorious chicago show in the 1920s is like the wide open tombstone. in 1880, barr said. instead of stolen cattle across the mexican border, we illicit booze across the canadian border. instead of mexican federales, we have mounties. the untouchables are like the four earp brothers and doc holliday with connery as the older virgil and andy garcia as the sharpshooting doc holliday figure. we even have a movie. wyatt, from the 1994 film wyatt

earp, kevin costner as ness. and there's an okay corral type shootout at the train station. i wrote a biography of the pioneering black filmmaker oscar micheaux, and his first book, a marvel version of his early life story called conquest the story of a -- homesteader, published in 1930, is generally accepted as a remarkably accurate history of the homesteading era, carved out in part in parts of the rosebud reservation. even today, i wrote in my book, historians consider it one of the best eyewitness accounts of the early 20th century land boom in south dakota, with its feuds among gregory county and county towns over train routes, county governments and, other commercial bragging rights micheaux sketched in local from notorious outlaws to town drugs, names usually disguised, but sometimes micheaux rewrote the conquest into his third novel,

the homesteader in 1917, and used the sales of the book to launch his first motion picture as writer director, sometimes actor. in 1990, that first oscar micheaux film was lost, but not the novel that inspired it. so we know the rewrites stripped away much of the historical context to focus on the personal drama. micheaux spent the rest his career revisiting his origin story, revising his fictionalized memoir and other novels and movies right down to his final film, the betrayal shot in 1949, which the same story now highly fabricated in history, be --. arguably, most early western literature is more historically diligent than hollywood films, perhaps because it was written to the actual era of the frontier, but also because so much of it was penned. former newspaper reporters turned novelist who valued documentation. a french producer, publisher,

actor, sued under the stewardship of the filmmaker and critic bertrand tavernier, who died in 2020, has reissued a french language series of american novels from the thirties forties and fifties by w.r. burnett, ernest hay cox, nevin busch, alan lemay, luke short, abbie guthrie, walter van tilburg clark. harry browne and tom lee. all these although these books inspired many of the classic hollywood westerns, this did not begin as original screenplays. you can be found in american bookstores or new print editions in the u.s. the french series called the love ray, or the true west, has attracted an enthusiastic audience. i think such a series would be frowned upon by us publishers, partly because american culture now privileges western films about western novels in many interviews and in with native owner tavernier said he admired

the novels he chose for the series because, in his words the literature is in the literature of the west as quote an immense genre that addresses everything. the conquest of america. the founding of la racism and racism. it strays into film noir and is steeped in neurosis. look at films, he said, like 310 to yuma. the tree. she wore a yellow ribbon or my darling clementine and you'll who are the heroes and who are the villains? and in john ford's film of the searchers, the hero is one of the darkest characters in the history of the american cinema, played no less by john wayne. for the record, the films cites are based on published western fiction by elmore leonard, dorothy johnson, james horner, béla el alamein for, the searchers. and in the case of my darling clementine, one of several adaptation of stuart lake's biography of wyatt or much of the best western literature of yesteryear.

tried to try to fall back on actual historic coal accounts. i disagree, with the burning and general excitement about, american westerns. and we enjoyed arguing about them. but he also insisted there was a tricky relationship between the best western novels and the many lesser ones that fall below the radar and were also made into films. and that the relationship between the original fiction and the celluloid is often one of betrayal. more than a faithful transliteration. like today's producers and directors famously don't read books. many directors of the postwar preferred go shooting the film to a careful reading of the novels and adapting faithfully to the screen. it was left to the writers who worked under them to follow the books or not what they were usually following was their own muses and studio star and censorship. tavernier's reading of roy roland's bugles in the afternoon, the 1952 western

about the little bighorn showdown. for example, showed that the director and screenwriters departed freely from the writing of ernest haycock, the prolific author of the book who supplied the storyline for the film, and also the story called staged to lordsburg, which which was adapted into a film called stagecoach. shot john ford in 1939, hickox's novel does what roland's film does not wish to do, according to tavernier. quote, the tone is broad and epic. daily life at the outpost is told in minute detail. and then we witness one of the greatest disasters in the history of the american cavalry. usually this disastrous magnified while here the approach is much darker and far more complex. it brings forward a multitude of contradicting, contradictory viewpoints. many hollywood westerns and directors similar, similar. early betrayed the literature. there were a few outstanding

contrarians, according to tavernier, including director henry king, whose of taut westerns jesse james, the gunfighter and. the overlooked bravado is so rare attention to their fictional sources. what do you often got? the finest western literature? what's the description of life on the frontier? whether it was the guns and their handling or the outfits the men and women wore. the routines. ranching or the buffalo hunt. how native americans carried on their daily existence. what people ate, drank. we're talking about novelists who did their homework prided themselves on such details of frontier life, which were inevitably obscured on the screen. the claims about historical authenticity have always romanticized hollywood westerns. for the most part, john wayne and the generation of screen cowboys that inherited it believe that the silent era didn't attempt or boast historicity. they were embodying masculinity, heroism, nationalism and other

patriotic virtues and stories that fed hollywood fantasies about the west. clint eastwood, the premier cowboy star of our time, never pretends any historical accuracy on westerns except the craft departments of wardrobe, etc. he always promotes his persona more in of mythmaking on television and rawhide and in the man with no name italian spaghetti, he honed his enigma attack persona by trimming his dialog. the more the leading character talked, the less mystique he had. he told me his westerns stand on the shoulders. decades of mythical cowboys who are strong, silent types. when i interviewed eastwood 1975, as he was preparing the outlaw josey wales, he's spoken theatrically about the little known novel he had bought to turn into a film which had been written under unique circumstances, as in eastwood's words, by a guy who had never written a book before. a half cherokee indian with

formal education. we came famous as an indian poet and, teller of stories and counsel to the nations. that author was forest carter, whose novel gone to texas was adapted by eastwood into the film outlaw josey wales. but here was an instance the author himself proving a myth creation on strength of the announced clint eastwood. carter authorized his supposed memoir called the education of little tree, which won an american booksellers book of the year award. it was not until the outlaw josey wales was released in 1976 that forrest, revealed by journalist and historian to be a half cherokee. not a half cherokee, but the white southerner, asa earl carter, a one time prominent, virulent racist and white supremacist anti-semite and supporter of the ku klux klan. his memoir was swiftly moved from nonfiction aisles to the

fiction. the author's authenticity of westerns is the illusion historicity. their historical reality is no greater than that of most film music. but unlike musicals, westerns sprang from american history. and history always invites an argument. political sides disagreeing over the interpretations. by and large, american westerns have taken one side of the historical argument siding with fiction and myths and whitewashing the ugly, ugly realities of frontier history. personally, i gravitate to westerns that at least run counter to prevailing hollywood themes. for example, the handful that adopted native american perspectives such as stances wolves, which drew controversy, was denigrated by many critics. little big man or robert, buffalo bill and the indians. many of the better. golden age westerns such as shane avoid. any mention of native americans because leaving them out of the story entirely one strategy of

liberal writers and back then when they couldn't figure out how to tiptoe around the issue. richard slotkin wrote book you probably know about called gunfighter nation the myth of the frontier and 20th century america published in 1992, which has an eight page single spaced list, westerns and tv series in the back pages. about 300 titles he watched and analyze. the list features many eastwood vehicles, which can critiqued intelligently, but he did not include my all time favorite western in his list of 300. that is blazing saddles. i read an interview with slotkin once that quoted him saying he didn't like the mel brooks comedy or see it as a western. maybe he has changed his mind or was misquoted. i know from working on a biography about mel brooks that he was a huge fan of westerns growing as a boy and knew them backwards and forwards. blazing saddles is for me, the apotheosis of the evolution of the american western.

brooks aided greatly richard pryor as one of his writing, takes a wrecking ball to the classic western and never wants to see try to evoke any semblance of authenticity. instead, he flaunts inauthenticity with a brechtian ending, where the two cowboy heroes go to the movie theater to eat popcorn and watch defeat the bad guys. he doesn't make his cowboy heroes the way another easterner j. epstein, might have seen them. he makes them dapper and witty hip to cole porter music and stoned when warranted. his sheriff is black, is villains say the n-word. i notice whenever i show blazing saddles to young students, they still find it hilarious, not always knowing why they are laughing at the sign. howard johnson. one flavor, for example, or the indian chief's speaking yiddish. or madeline kahn singing in german. most of them don't recognize yiddish and have never heard of malina or dietrich, but they

know they are laughing at clichés from all the television and films that have been drilled into them and us. for me, blazing saddles is the ultimate western, a pastiche, mocking all other westerns, which are themselves pastiches of fiction tropes, myths and hooey, but rarely much history. thank you. space, we are told the final frontier. and you know those lines. and by the way, i'd love to have been a mouse in the corner when slotkin and patrick were discussing whether blazing fireballs was a western or not. anyway, space is the final frontier. that's what we're told repeatedly at the opening of every star trek episode in the

1960s. the short only three season show later became a phenomenon, but the gene roddenberry who created it was a veteran of television. westerns like have will travel and we know that paladin roamed from town to town. all solving problems in people's. he were he was like the american hero. this depicted in jordan lawrence's american monolith. you have a lone hero, comes into town and solves problems and then rides back into the sunset for paladin. however, the sunset upscale sam francisco. but anyway, he is the outsider. he solves problems and returns very opposite of the prime of star trek, which gene roddenberry created. westerns on television were so pervasive they became a cover in time magazine.

in march 1959, when a lot of movies, television shows were just getting started and including have gun, will travel and gunsmoke, which became the longest running television scripted in history until. the latest version of law and order, the ralph brauer, who i in graduate school had seen an a-list television. the lessons became so pervasive that have an analysis of our television culture and his view of the western world. so that came in three stages that followed the growth of my generation, the baby boomers who were phenomenons and developing and consuming culture, the first version of the western was the horse western, where the hero might not. he might have a sidekick, but he didn't have a girlfriend and he

had a horse. when you have a horse, you don't need a girlfriend. the girl would get in trouble and a horse would get him out. but in my generation, you do the name of the horse. anybody know the name of lone ranger's horse? at the end of every show he said, hi, hio silver away and my generation probably tell you the name of the horse roy rogers or gene autry gene roy rogers. unlike the other cowboys had a wife and many of the in the regular television show. in the movies, he often not. but anyway, anybody know roy rogers horse's name. in a way, trigger any other second generation of westerns was as we're to get to be adolescence. my there's adult westerns and

instead the horse we have the gun and have gun will travel is an archetypical gun and the third phase was the piece of property and the small group. so we have the bonanza even begins with a map which burns and the male hero ride into the camera. and so bonanza is the family coming to terms with this? you and i were only here. is that the orange virginian started the whole idea of western fiction with a lone hero becomes one of the property westerns and the small group is the focus of the story. and the shiloh ranch trappers, who was a villain, the original western by own worcester of 1902, is one of the family in the virginia converging.

in this case is the foreman on the ranch. from the right, we see the big which has a matriarch in charge of the family. but the first western of course as you probably know, was in 1903. it was the great train robbery. it's 11 minutes so you can watch it for free on youtube. and this these two posters probably say summarize the whole thing in our archetypical movies. of course, this is patrick just mentioned or shane, which is the classic western, the outsider coming into town and well, not into town in this case, coming into the community and saving it from the villain who is running off of their ranches and homesteads and high noon shows. the western can be adapted to political purposes. it's widely thought of as a metaphor for where the individual gets no help at all in trying to hunt down the bad

boss. my favorite analyst is the one that patrick just cited and that's richard slotkin with three. these are not books. you can read in an evening. these are in depth, in some cases, very repetitive. dozens of examples of sort of popular culture. those this theory and they go back to the beginning of american history and the origins of the frontier were the settlers confront native peoples indigenous communities and that goes through 19th century the failed environment has much on the little bighorn and gunfighter is are getting into the 20th century with the same mythology. i think one of the classic abuses of the western is when a george w bush called the run up to the war in iraq tell saddam

hussein to get out of dodge. i mean who the hell in iraq knows what dodge is and who nobody but us boomers would know that that's matt dillon's creation to get people out of dodge city, to get out of dodge. that's probably biggest punishment you get is when matt tells you to get out of dodge. you probably never heard of our valhalla. maybe patrick has anyway him by now. he hears he hears the ultimate trainer. he taught all of many of our western stars how to shoot and draw fast, including of all people. marilyn monroe. but you've seen him. if you watch gunsmoke. this was the opening scene of the gunsmoke. that's him back in the corner in the i mean that in the corner in the distance and matt shoots him down at the opening credits of every black and white gunsmoke. and this is matt shot the bad

guy at the beginning. and so we have a we have a family in this group. so the gunsmoke develops from the individual western to small group and it's you could argue that the ensemble cast is part of what gave gunsmoke its longevity and it does not follow the formula. exactly. sometimes matt closes front street from all indications are that the class had a good time. what they did. but it was a western and of course television is commercial the gunsmoke was popular its entire run of 20 years it was still in the ratings when cbs canceled cbs, the tiffany network was worried about losing its tiffany status because it had so many hit shows. so a gunsmoke with the dust the same time as beverly hillbillies. i think key hall had already to syndication by then, but they were worried about their

demographic affect, you know, older rural people don't spend as much money as the people watching. well, let's say star trek and star wars, star was arguably the first three movies are basically the stages, the western. you have the hero at the beginning. you have the avenge revenge theme in the the empire strikes back. and then you have the community at the third of star wars, but the true the original final frontier here started of all places in chicago in 1893 at the colombian exposition. and we all know that right that's where in decadent city celebrate american history technology architecture science supposedly the future that's where frederick jackson turner presented his paper on the

significance of the frontier in american history. at the same time also, ironically, the people who set the exposition celebrating america did not allow buffalo bill to set up as wild west the show in the program for the world's fair. he had to go outside of the fair and set up his own show. and it often drew more people than the white city celebrating the columbian exposition. anyway buffalo bill's show by the way, was not a wild west show. it the wild west. buffalo bill did not call it a show. he considered it the real thing. he befriended sitting bull, who was considered by many people in popular culture, although he wasn't as the man who killed custer, but he befriended him. and and sitting bull rode with the wild west show for part of a

year for a few months anyway. and he claimed to be friends with sitting bull and the theory of the american history. history in general, generally in this we see a follow jeffersonian view of the west and settlement. he and this is from thomas, who was one of the hudson school hudson river school painters in the 1830. this is in the transition from jefferson to jackson. we have these paintings that to me summarize american culture. it starts with the savage state. these are huge landscapes and cole had to organize to get funding for these paintings. the first is the savage state. then you have some native

peoples there and cole had just studied in europe, so these native peoples looked more like stereotypical savage than indigenous people in the united. but you can see a few of them in the distance there. but the emphasis is uncluttered nature. next we have the pastoral state and this is jefferson the ideal place where you have the yeoman farmer who is man of god, who is a product of nature, very small scale. and then development after that, we have the growth of cities. now we're to where cities, as jefferson said, are so much add so much to the body politic as soul due, to the human body and starting to see that. so it gets stuck in and then it's subject to so, you know, just looks like something of one of the post-nuclear movies and desolation. so that's the history of

civilization by thomas cole. and i think that's pretty, well, the theme of most westerns and the development of the west, and it's given an ideology, a religion and if you want to call it that by calling it manifest destiny, which was coined by a magazine, john lewis or sullivan in 45. but the ideas were in the in the culture all along, as we can see. and you probably seen these pictures before one not this one. you just. by john coward, but this is a lithograph showing how the west was won. this is progress. in 1872, indians and buffalo are being driven away. stagecoaches trains and whatever this woman represents string a telegraph wire are taking their place in.

the 1980s. we have the new western history and patricia limerick and her book, the legacy of conquest. we shot down the western mythology, said the frontier. it hasn't come to an end at all. we're still export exploiting native peoples. the natural environment and the mythology continues writ large and this new western history attacked turner for his neglect of. native peoples and all the other sins of consensus history. and now we have on the right an example people creating their own history from native american perspect deals. and this very much recommend this small book the spaced on a exhibit at the newberry library in chicago has essays by a tour of the western historians.

richard light, patricia nelson, limerick, talking about all of this and put this together with posters from wild west show. and of course, people who are biting the dust, the dust and now are people like this former mascot from the university of north dakota, which looks a little more respectable to them than the chicago hockey team. but anyway, that's where we're starting to come. full circle of any of the panelists have any questions, the comments for one another. thanks, bill. appreciate your presentation. and yes, we have time for a couple of questions to wrap up this afternoon session. take a look here in the audience and also in the webinar.

not seeing anything right off the bat. yes, hold on, paulette. i don't have a question so much as a comment and i just would like to bill for all the work he's done to us, understand the last and to show us popular culture and damages and the intersection between like go to land grants and art we've really been lucky bill thank you so much. well, thank you. i don't see you on screen, paulette. anyway, thank you for the comment. i have a question for amy or maybe to you talked about people taking out mortgages on land they don't own. yeah, i a friend who was japanese who's lived in california and when the japanese

were relocated they had to pack up everything they had and go to a relocation camp and their family lawyer owned their property. they japanese weren't allowed to own land in california. there's any discussion of that during the homestead era. any references to the chinese or the japanese or that you could find so? i know of. not in any great detail. i mean, course the scope of what i was looking at was incredibly broad. so finding that would be like a needle in a haystack without right search terms. california had its own unique issues. the the the the court cases that were going through that were also reported on in kansas were more about folks who were attempting to take out mortgages on their homestead land before they finished kind of getting the deed, the court decided they couldn't do that, but they could do it once they had a deed. well, this friend, her family,

she was a child, of course, when they were relocated, their family owned a well, they didn't own it turns out, an orchard or fruit or truck and all they had to give just walk away from all sound like something from indian removal in 19 century or there's another question i have for you also about the new york tribune part of what horace greeley, who promoted homestead act, of course, part of what he did with the weekly is encourage people to find the local newspaper is encouraging you to stay on the land, saying things that are supportive and how important the land is to, your health and all that, you know, i didn't see a lot of that either, although i did in the eastern newspapers. a lot of go and get your land, go and your land. and once they're on the homestead in the 1870s in particular, were so challenging

to farm that i don't think that there was a lot of you raw rawness happening with go get your land. it was more about, okay, you're here now, you need clothes and you need medicine and you need food and nobody has any because all of the crops got eaten. so there was not so much of an emphasis on how wonderful the land was except in the case where got folks who are coming west to take the prairie cure which is to treat consumption that prairie air was meant to be dry and lovely and there's several stories of that kind of thing happening. not so much in california, but in some of those high plains places, there was there were some stories about that, jonathan and any of those peddler what was the ethnicity of that cop? i couldn't tell. was he an average policeman or

was he a joe also? yeah i think i didn't look that carefully. but typically the cops were irish mean. that was sort of the standard trope. and one of the irish characters were used on vaudeville and those kinds of comedic were either jewish heroes or police sort of although i was looking into that a little bit. soldiers like the unlikely hero who you know, the great white hope happens to be jewish, that kind of thing. and always for kind of comedic effect because these weren't the roles that stereotypically they were supposed to have. so there was sort of the immediate of seeing the wrong person in the heroic role sometimes in the films, the silent films, the jewish peddler would end up being a hero. he would save the cowboy from harm and that kind of thing, but

usually not as a cowboy rather as a peddler who's kindhearted and able to be in the right place at the right time and that kind of thing well, i really, really appreciate your