Whitney's American West Weblog

Reading Response #2

I chose chapter sixteen Alaska and Hawaii written by Victoria Wyatt. I wanted to read about these two states because I wanted to know why Wyatt puts them in to the "American West" category. It turns out that even though the two states didn't become states until 1959, they had all of the development characteristics that the other western states had. They had the convergence of indigenous people, European newcomers, dispossession of native peoples, economic enterprises based on eastern U.S. or foreign capital, and dependence on natural resources for both industry and tourism.

Wyatt talks about how both of these states were originally settled and when the European's arrived. Hawaii was first settled by Polynesians, and the European's came in 1778. The first people to settle Alaska came from Siberia during the ice ages. Unlike Hawaii, Alaska had many different ethnic groups. This made it difficult for Americans to reorganize and unify because they had to go through many local political bands. Hawaii dealt with America as one “unified monarchy” under the leadership of their island’s chief. I also enjoyed reading about the two states’ whaling industry, and how much money it generated for them.

I chose my second chapter Selling the Popular Myth written by Anne M. Butler because I commented on a classmate who read it and it sounded interesting. I am particularly interested in women’s history, so I focused on the section No Place for a Women. It is believed that women were strong and helped their family through rough times in the west, but did not contribute economically. Historian Katherine Harris argues that women made economic decisions along with their family responsibility. Harris also shows us where minority women’s stereotypes came from. These women were known as “sensual,” “promiscuous,” “criminal,” and “filthy.” The “bad” women of the west were the prostitutes and outlaws.

Both chapters were very interesting. I learned a lot from the Alaska Hawaii chapter that I did not know about the two states.

Reading Response #1

I chose to read two chapters from the Expansion section of The Oxford History of the American West, "A Saga of Families" and "Violence."

"A Saga of Families" author, Kathleen Neils Conzen asks two questions in her essay. First, how did family auspices influence the process of Migration? And second, how did the particular values of nineteenth-century American family life shape western regional development?

Conzen writes about the major “push and pull factors” that drove families from the east coast to the west coast. Fevers, floods, and low crop prices were a few of the “push factors.” Virgin soils, prairies, and mines were a few of the “pull factors.” Conzen goes on to discuss the major change of family style in the West. The families have gone from being “traditional” “to modern,” “patriarchal” to “compassionate,” and from “household” to “domestic.”

The West was a place where individuals could go for freedom and profit, but that brought individuals who only cared about themselves and their money. I agree with Conzen’s statement that, “family settlement was the best and cheapest insurance that the West would be tied firmly to the national culture.” With out this settlement, the West would be a place with out structure and morals.

This brings me to my second chapter "Violence", written by Richard Maxwell Brown. Violence is perhaps the most popular term coined for the Western frontier. The decades 1850 to 1920 saw the most violence in the West.

Brown writes that there were six beliefs that drove westerners to violence. The first was the doctrine of no duty to retreat which got rid of the English law that required retreat in combat situations, and made it so that you could “violently resist an antagonist in an act of lawful self-defense.” The second belief was the imperative of personal self-redress. You should settle your cases yourself and never hurt someone unless they have hurt you first. The homestead ethic was the third belief. The doctrine states, “You have the right to have and hold a family farm; the right to enjoy a homestead unencumbered by onerous mortgage or oppressive taxes; and the right to peacefully occupy the homestead without fear of violence.” The fourth belief is the ethic of individual enterprise, which allows for the defense of industrial property using violence. The fifth and most popular of the beliefs was the Code of the West. The code called for “honesty, courage, sensitive pride, and indifference to pain, and a violent vengefulness against insult.” The final of the codes was the ideology of vigilantism. Vigilantes took the law in to their own hands for the sake of justice rather that legality and fairness.

I enjoyed both chapters, mainly because I am interested in both topics. I look forward to the next readings so that I can pick two topics that I am unfamiliar with.