The American West: The Reader

by Nugent, Walter T. K.; Ridge, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780253335302
• ISBN10: 0253335302
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"Those who appreciate the impact of history will be impressed with the selection of articles." -- Nebraska HistoryDesigned for survey courses -- yet in-depth enough to support intensive discussion -- these seventeen classic essays traverse the history of the American West, from women's property rights in Spanish-Mexican California to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, from homesteading and mining to the Great Depression and World War II. Provocative and illuminating.

Author Biography

Walter Nugent has been Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame since 1984. His earlier books include The Tolerant Populist: Kansas Populism and Nativism, Money and American Society 1865-1880, Structures of American Social History, and Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914. Forthcoming is a history of the people of the American West.

Martin Ridge, former president of the Western History Association and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, is Senior Research Associate in the Huntington Library. He is former editor of The Journal of American History and co-author with Ray Allen Billington of Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier and America's Frontier Story: A Documentary History of Westward Expansion.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Timeline	p. xiii
General Introduction	p. I
Defining the West
Are We Talking About a Place? What is it? Where is it?
Where Is the American West? Report on a Survey	p. II
The American West: From Frontier to Region	p. 24
Frontiers and Empires in the Late Nineteenth Century	p. 39
The Eighteenth Century
California Women, 1769-1848
Rancheras and the Land: Women and Property Rights in Hispanic California	p. 59
The Nineteenth Century
Exploration, the Fur Trade, and National Identity, 1807-1845
Mountain Man as Jacksonian Man	p. 83
Indians, Animals, and the Great Plains, 1800-1850
Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850	p. 97
The Mexican-American War, 1846-1848
Mexican Opinion, American Racism, and the War of 1846	p. 120
The Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1890
Mormon "Deliverance" and the Closing of the Frontier	p. 133
Indians, the Army, and Settlers, 1864
Sand Creek	p. 147
Cowboys as Wage Workers, 1880s
Cowboy Strikes and Unions	p. 164
Homesteading, 1880S-1930s
"Everything I Want Is Here!": The Dakota Farmer's Rural Ideal, 1884-1934	p. 179
The Twentieth Century
Mexican, "Anglo," and European Miners and Capital, 1900-1915
"The Men Have Become Organizers": Labor Conflict and Unionization in the Mexican Mining Communities of Arizona, 1900-1915	p. 203
The Great Depression in the Northwest, 1929-1941
Idaho and the Great Depression	p. 225
World War II and the Metropolis, 1941-1945
The Impact of the Second World War on Los Angeles	p. 234
Japanese-American Women and the Internment of 1942-1945
Japanese-American Women during World War II	p. 255
African Americans in the West, 1541-1993
From Esteban to Rodney King: Five Centuries of African American History in the West	p. 274
The Pacific Northwest Since 1945
Regional City and Network City: Portland and Seattle in the Twentieth Century	p. 295
Index	p. 325
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