In “The Contested Plains,” Elliott West
offers his perspective on the transformation of the American West. He focuses on two competing visions of the
Great Plains: one of the Native Americans who had already staked a claim to the
area, the other belonging to the white settlers and goldseekers who swarmed
west in pursuit of their dreams. The
story is a familiar one. A thousand
movies and books and television shows in popular culture have dealt with the
conflict and dangers and triumphs. But
West tells a more nuanced tale. There
are no “good guys” and “bad guys.” He
doesn’t separate the players into sides and avoids stereotypes. The Native Americans, for example, are
neither the wild savage nor the helpless victim. West does a masterful job of finding the real
people behind the dime store novel caricatures.
The book is divided into three
parts. The first section, entitled
“Visions,” traces the history of the Plains and the people who lived there
before the arrival of Europeans. The
second section, “Gold Rush,” is about the migration of settlers and goldseekers
that altered the nature of the Plains and the balance of power. The third section, “Power,” addresses the
forces that were at work following the gold strike: political, economic, social
forces that were at the center of a great upheaval.
In West’s view, the two competing views
of the Plains were irreconcilable and could not co-exist. “They conceived of and used power in
conflicting ways, yet each drew its power from the same sources….Something has
to give. What in fact would give was the basic question behind
the famous conflicts between Indians and whites in the 1860s and their
appalling consequences” (p. xxiv). This
power struggle is at the centerpiece of West’s explanation for the conflict
that arose between whites and Indians.
The “power” West discusses is not our
traditional sense of political or even military power. West is referring to actual physical
energy. For example, “The crucial gift
of the horse concerned not power itself but where that power came from” (p.
50). The horse grazed on grass which, in
turn, derived its power from sun and water.
The horse was able to transform the grass into physical power that
benefitted the Native Americans.
According to West, “The horse rearranged the basic alignment among
people and the possibilities that flowed through the plains” (Ibid.). While many items introduced by Europeans,
such as metal cooking pots, altered the lives of the Native Americans, West
points to firearms and horses as the two that did the most to transform life on
the plains. Of course, the
Euro-Americans brought the negative (diseases such as smallpox) as well as the positive,
and their intrusion on the Plains would alter the traditional way of life in
ways both good and bad.
West veers away from a generally
accepted and idealized view of the Indian as a natural conservationist and
environmentalist, living in total harmony with the land. He explores the means by which they exploited
the environment, particularly after the arrival of the horse and firearms. The horse was a source of power. The Indians increased the level of their
hunting at the same time their ponies were overgrazing on the Plains. This overuse of the environment occurred
before the arrival of large numbers of whites, but when those immigrants did
arrive, it resulted in an even greater environmental strain. Whites naturally gravitated to the areas where
Indians wintered, areas that provided shelter, wood, and forage. Their livestock grazed there and they cut
down the wood. Two groups were competing
for the same resources. The Native
Americans had no recourse if those resources were wiped out. Whites, on the other hand, could ship in
goods that they needed if those things did not exist on the Plains. Thus, the centerpiece of West’s argument is
energy, and the struggle over increasingly scarce resources.
Prior to the Colorado Gold Rush, West argues
that the American view of the area was the Great American Desert, a region to
cross in order to get to the other side.
After gold was discovered, a national vision arose of gold and
agriculture. This new vision naturally
conflicted with the vision held by the Cheyenne, Comanche, and other tribes as
new immigrants swarmed to the new Promised Land. Those tribes were overwhelmed by the massive
numbers of immigrants, backed by the strength of the United States Army.
The question comes to mind: is all this
history important? West assures us it
is. Those new immigrants who arrived in
the area with such hope and promise “Pulled more than anyone ever had from its
reservoir of energy,” but they also pushed the area to its limits. The result, says West, “was stunning human
and environmental calamities. Looking at
the region today, the lessons are clear enough” (p. 337). And while it is an exercise in futility to
imagine how the world would be different if natives and newcomers had been able
to peacefully coexist, West believes we
might find in that cautionary tale some lessons that might help us reshape our
lives in a fuller and more inclusive manner.
West argues that it is vital to
understand the competing visions in order to understand what happened during
the Colorado Gold Rush. He utilizes
primary sources including government documents, diaries, journals, and
newspapers in his examination of an important but often overlooked event. He makes the story relevant to our modern
lives. “The best we can hope is to learn
a little from the speaking dead, to find in our deep past some help in acting
wisely in the teeth of life” (p. 337).
