The legend of the frontier West has been affected by the motion-picture industry in a way that no other aspect of American history has been. A viewing of one or more of the films and a discussion of the subject and its mythic quality will help students gain insight. Consider the following five suggestions. There are many other possibilities. Instructors may wish to read some fascinating movie reviews in the multivolume compilation by John Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph Ross, The Motion Picture Guide (1986). In 1939 John Ford's great epic, Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, set a standard rarely reached. Its theme is an examination of eight western characters on a dangerous journey. John Ford also directed Cheyenne Autumn in 1964, starring Richard Widmark. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, it treats the theme of conflict between the Cheyennes and the U.S. cavalry. Two films that stress humor, integrity, and individualism are Shane, made in 1953 by George Stevens, based on a novel by Jack Schaefer, and High Noon, directed in 1952 by Fred Zimmermann. In the former, Alan Ladd as a gunfighter is the mysterious stranger who defends the settlers against the land baron. In the latter, Gary Cooper is the sheriff who will not flee from a gang of outlaws. Most More recently, an effort to recognize the Native American point of view achieved some success in Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990). The encroachment of whites into Sioux territory is treated with feeling, and some of the dialogue is in Lakota with English subtitles. The film falls short, however, of explaining Lakota social organization, religious views, or other deeper aspects of society. In 1993 director Walter Hill released Geronimo: An American Legend as a celebration of that great leader.

PBS Video offers two epic productions dealing with the West. The Way West, six hours organized into four ninety-minute segments, tells the story to about 1869 and the coming of the transcontinental railroad. It is a dramatic account with greatest attention to the northern plains and the Sioux, based on still photos, film, and interviews with scholars. The West is a nine-part series, the first seven parts at eighty-four minutes each and the last two at sixty minutes each. Also offering many primary sources, including autobiographical accounts and archival footage, it offers a great sweep beginning with the arrival of the first Europeans and extending into the twentieth century.

The American History Slide Collection of the Instructional Resources Corporation offers a group of one hundred slides entitled The West and another of ninety-four slides entitled The Indians, both of considerable value. Oliver LaFarge, A Pictorial History of the American Indian (1956), is also useful. Other pictorial resources include Alfred E. Bush and Lee Clark Mitchell, The Photograph and the American Indian (1994); Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (1996); John W. Ravage, Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier (1997); and Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (1998).

The National Park Service has a twenty-three-minute film, The Nez Perce: Portrait of a People. PBS Video offers Geronimo and the Apache Resistance, sixty minutes drawn from memoirs, letters, photographs, and statements by contemporaries. The same source offers a video concerning the Indian boarding schools at the end of the nineteenth century. In the White Man's Image (fifty-eight minutes) details the collaborative efforts of government officials, missionaries, and educators to eradicate Indian culture. Treatments of the Sioux wars include Last Stand at the Little Big Horn (fifty-five minutes) and The Spirit of Crazy Horse (sixty minutes) from PBS Video and Secrets of the Little Bighorn (twenty-three minutes) and The Dance to Souls Departed: Return to Wounded Knee (fifty-three minutes) from Films for the Humanities and Sciences. This last chronicles the journey of a group of modern-day Sioux to Wounded Knee as they reflect on the events that led to the massacre. Turner Home Entertainment (P.O. Box 2284, Burlington, Vt. 05407) offers a six-hour treatment of The Native Americans. One hour each is devoted to the Northeast, the Southeast, the Far West, and the Southwest, with Plains Indians receiving two hours. A small group of Indians from each geographical section relates its own peoples' history. The story is carried into the twentieth century and considers the impact of history on the present day. And The Buffalo Soldiers (forty-seven minutes) tells the story with historic photos, diary excerpts, and dramatizations on location. It is available from Zenger Media, P.O. Box 802, Culver City, Calif. 90232.

Elements in the creation of the legendary West can be seen in The West of the Imagination, offered by Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Images of Glory deals with the mythical Eden painted by Albert Bierstadt and others in midcentury. The Wild Riders reveals the West as portrayed by Frederic Remington. Play the Legend treats the West of popular culture, from dime novels to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. All are fifty-two minutes.

A number of novels enhance our understanding of frontier life. The story of Norwegian immigrants on the wild Dakota frontier is told by Ole E. Rölvaag in Giants in the Earth (translation; 1927). There is a superb trilogy of novels by Vilhelm Moberg--The Emigrants (1951), Unto a Good Land (1954), and The Last Letter Home (1961)--that tell of the Nilsson family's journey from Sweden to Minnesota and its struggle to establish itself there. In 1973 a film was made in Sweden by Jan Troell starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann. The English version is called The New Land.

There is also Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), describing rough-and-ready cowboy life in Nevada about 1885. The focus is a mistaken lynching, an actual event of the time. In 1943 a film based on the novel, starring Henry Fonda, was made by William A. Wellman.

Dee Brown's novel Creek Mary's Blood (1980) is a history of the despoliation of Native Americans. Bruce Cutler, The Massacre at Sand Creek: Narrative Voices (1993), tells the story of that terrible episode.
Document Set 17-1

The Native American Presence: The Massacre at Sand Creek

1. A Congressional Committee Decries the Violence at Sand Creek, 1865
2. Colonel J. M. Chivington Defends His Actions, 1865
3. Conflicting Testimony, 1865
4. Major E. W. Wynkoop Explains Indian Intent, 1864, 1865
5. Governor John Evans Responds to the Congressional Report, 1865
6. Helen Hunt Jackson's Account of Sand Creek and the Aftermath, 1881This document set concentrates on one incident in the extended chain of events that ended in the destruction of the Great Plains Native American cultures. Few problems hold greater fascination for students and few topics raise a greater instructional challenge for teachers. These difficulties arise as a result of the student tendency toward facile generalization and simplistic judgment. Since the subject involves serious moral implications and emotional overtones, the objective should be to promote thoughtful analysis of the historical problem.Because of the rich documentary base, the Sand Creek incident offers a fine opportunity for students to conduct their own historical analysis. The documents enable students to think like historians and to engage in "doing history." As they sift through contradictory evidence, students will become acquainted with the historian's process.Discussion of Sand Creek's broader meaning might be preceded by lecture/discussion material on the clash of cultures in the trans-Mississippi West. Text reading should enrich this interaction, which might revolve around the impact of a technologically sophisticated culture on a seminomadic people. Further consideration of ethnocentrism would also blend well with this investigation. Similarly, examination of the "Place in Time" essay could emphasize the divergence between white and tribal cultures, as reflected in the program of the Carlisle Indian school.Most significantly, students must arrive at their own conclusions with regard to the events at Sand Creek, their causes, and the problem of responsibility. As preparation for full classroom discussion, individual students or student teams might be assigned research questions. Students could then bring their briefs to class, to be used as resource material as debate unfolds. Another option for approaching the same questions would be a mock trial of Colonel Chivington for his alleged crimes. Whatever the technique employed, the goal of the exercise would be to engage students in the process of historical analysis, including the acceptance and/or rejection of evidence.For instructors interested in film, a provocative classroom supplement will be the feature film Soldier Blue (1970). Based on the Sand Creek episode, this film approaches its subject from the Native American perspective. Not only does it reverse the imagery typical of the "western," but it also raises important questions about white culpability in the incident. By reflecting the values of the 1960s, it clearly reveals the motion picture as a document of its own time.Finally, the documents will force students to ponder the alternatives available to nineteenth-century whites in making decisions crucial to the cultural survival of the Indians. Fruitful debate might develop over the question of alternatives not adopted and the reasons for their rejection. The remarks of Helen Hunt Jackson could be used to introduce the "friends of the Indian" and the Dawes Act as a solution, which, in turn, will draw the discussion back to the problem of ethnocentrism and long-term outcomes.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 17-1


Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (1978).

Frederick E. Hoxie. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (1984).

Patricia Nelson Limerick. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987).

Loring B. Priest. Uncle Sam's Stepchildren: The Reformation of United States Indian Policy, 1865-1887 (1942, rep., 1975).

Francis Paul Prucha. American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865-1890 (1975).

Robert M. Utley. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian (1973).

------. The Indian Frontier and the American West, 1846-1890 (1984).

Wilcomb E. Washburn. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887 (1975).

Philip Weeks. Farewell My Nation: The American Indian and the United States (1990).

Richard White. "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West (1991).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 17-1


End of the Trail: American Plains Indians (film--53 min.). McGraw-Hill Films, 674 Via de la Valle, P.O. Box 641, Del Mar, Calif. 92014.

Geronimo and the Apache Resistance (videotape--60 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

In the White Man's Image (videotape--60 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

The Indians of the Plains (photographs). Documentary Photo Aids, P.O. Box 956, Mt. Dora, Fla. 32757.

Last Stand at Little Big Horn (videotape--60 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

Soldier Blue (feature film--112 min.). Budget Films, 4590 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, Calif. 90029.
Document Set 17-2

The Farmer's Frontier: Life on The Great Plains

1. Howard Ruede Homesteads a Claim, 1877-1878
2. Mary Chaffee Abell Confronts the Kansas Environment, 1871-1875
3. Hamlin Garland Recalls the Hardship of a Dakota Childhood, ca. 1880s
4. William Allen White Describes Some Kansas Refugees, 1895
5. John E. Read's Advice on Keeping Children on the Farm, 1881This chapter is designed to emphasize the rigors and challenges of daily life on the Great Plains frontier. Although the miner's and cattleman's frontiers are more romantic, the experience of farm pioneers was more characteristic of the nineteenth-century "westering" experience. These documents will afford students a realistic glimpse of the homesteader's sometimes dreary day-to-day existence. Moreover, they may provide insight into the pressures that turned frontier farmers toward political activism in the late nineteenth century.Discussion might begin by exploring the factors that drew immigrants to the Great Plains in the 1870s and 1880s. Students could examine the impact of government policy and external promotion in the peopling of the agricultural frontier. The documents deal with the response to these inducements.Even more to the point is the evidence that documents the physical and mental toll of frontier farm life. The letters home provide a sometimes graphic portrayal of men and women caught up in the struggle for existence against natural forces, rural isolation, and economic demands. Students might discuss the meaning of the term frontier, exploring its relevance for miners, cattlemen, and farmers in the late nineteenth century.As instructors review the demands of farm life, students might also be encouraged to use the Ruede and Abell accounts to construct a diary of typical daily male and female responsibilities. This log could be the basis for discussion of gender roles on the farmer's frontier, including the sexual division of labor. (See Elizabeth Pleck et al., Restoring Women to History: Materials for U.S. History II.)Even more searching discussion of women's predicament on the Great Plains might result from student reaction to Hamlin Garland's autobiographical reflections and their implications with respect to the human condition under the stress of a hostile environment. The dark pessimism of Garland's thoughts might also lead to another important discussion, this time of the diversity found in the lives of frontier women. A question on the variety of female experiences would result in a needed warning to students against too-easy generalizations about women on the frontier (see Pleck).Finally, students might be asked to review the excerpts from the Emporia Gazette, John Read's Handbook for the American Farmer, and Mary Abell's letters for evidence of the failed pioneer's response to adversity. Students could debate the wisdom of frontier farming as an intelligent nineteenth-century career choice. They may extract from these documents substantial evidence of the factors that were beginning to drive young people from agriculture by the end of the century.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 17-2


Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson, eds. The Women's West (1987).

Allan Bogue. From Prairie to Corn Belt (1963).

Everett Dick. The Sod House Frontier (1954).

Gilbert C. Fite. The Farmer's Frontier, 1865-1890 (1966).

Julie Roy Jeffrey. Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (1979).

Joan M. Jensen and Darlis A. Miller. "The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West." Pacific Historical Review 49 (May 1980): 173-213.

Dean L. May. Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West (1994).

Sandra Myres. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 (1982).

Glenda Riley. Frontierswomen: The Iowa Experience (1981). For a shortcut see Riley, "'Not Gainfully Employed': Women on the Iowa Frontier, 1833-1870." Pacific Historical Review 69 (May 1980): 237-264.

Fred Shannon. The Farmer's Last Frontier, 1860-1897 (1945).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 17-2


Domesticating a Wilderness (videotape film--52 min.). America Series, Episode 7. Time-Life Films, 110 Eisenhower Drive, P.O. Box 644, Paramus, N.J. 07652.

Great Grandmother: A Celebration of Prairie Women (film--29 min.). New Day Films, 22D Hollywood Avenue, Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J. 07423.

The Real West (film--51 min.). McGraw-Hill Text Films, 330 W. 42d Street, New York, N.Y. 10018.

Sod and Stubble (audiotape--30 min.). Audiotape Program 2, Annenberg/CPB Project American History Series. Vol. 2. Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.

The West Series (11 hrs.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.
Document Set 17-3

The Western Landscape: Nature's Gifts and Their Exploitation

1. John Wesley Powell Describes the Grand Canyon, 1869
2. Walt Whitman's View of the High Plains, 1879
3. Overcoming Natural Obstacles to Building the Union Pacific, 1869
4. John Muir on the Dominion of Nature, 1898
5. The Early Photographic Record of the Western Wilderness, 1866-1888
6. The Eye of the Camera on the Altered Environment, 1866-1871
7. Images of Nature's Bounty in Propaganda Aimed at New Settlers, 1870-1890The textbook highlights the scientific observations and personal accounts of several explorers and chroniclers of the nineteenth-century West. Especially vivid are the descriptions of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone areas, which so impressed John Wesley Powell and Henry D. Washburn. Emphasis is placed on their perception of the grandeur and dimensions of the western landscape. Moving from these descriptive comments to a policy question, the text also stresses the interplay between early attitudes toward nature and the beginnings of conservationist sentiment.By blending written accounts of the Rocky Mountain-High Plains frontier with visual representations of the West, this unit poses questions about changing attitudes toward nature as Americans encountered unfamiliar physical features on the Trans-Mississippi frontier. The inclusion of substantial material relating to the exploitation of natural resources should encourage discussion of resource management, conservation, and the determination of an appropriate relationship between protection and use.Discussion might begin with an instructor's introduction to the known and unknown West in 1865. Once the student is familiar with the concept of virgin land and limited knowledge of the West's physical features, it will be possible to explore the reactions of Powell and Walt Whitman to the unexploited interior. Introductory discussion could focus on the awesome scale and physical power of the western landscape, as described by Powell and documented in William H. Jackson's pioneering photography.This preliminary discussion could provide an opening for instructors seeking to emphasize nonprint material as documentary evidence. The photographs and artistic representations of the landscape provide striking images of physical features unknown to most nineteenth-century Americans. Instructors might bring in slides to further develop students' visual literacy. A fruitful comparison could be drawn by incorporating slides of photography and art portraying the eastern mountains, rivers, and other natural features. Discussion of these materials might center on differences between East and West in dimension, sweep, and sheer size. Contrasts between romantic and realistic portrayals of nature could also be considered.Fuller exploration of the evidence will lead students into discussion of the obvious tension between a conservationist/preservationist outlook and the developers' emphasis on use/exploitation. Students are likely to see the modern relevance of the issues raised by the conquest of the West and the obliteration of distance and separation. Discussion might center around the reasons why the conservation ethic was not widely endorsed in the 1870s and 1880s. This examination, which will force students to place the documents in their immediate historical context, might also set the stage for a follow-up discussion of conservation as a political issue when Document Set 22-3 is taken up.Finally, a theme running through these documents involves the clash between conflicting interpretations of the best uses of land and other resources. Instructors might ask students to read John Muir in juxtaposition with the posters and the description of railroad development. What was the most appropriate use of the nation's resource base? What was the "right" use in the 1880s? Why? This exploration of a significant question offers an additional opportunity to establish past-present linkage. By examining a problem not squarely confronted by nineteenth-century Americans, students can see the historical origins of an issue of the utmost urgency in their own time.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 17-3


William Culp Darrah. Powell of the Colorado (1962).

William H. Goetzman. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (1971).

Ann F. Hyde. American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture (1990).

Roderick Nash. Wilderness and the American Mind (1971).

Rodman Paul. The Far West and the Great Plains, 1859-1900 (1988).

Duane Smith. Mining America: The Industry and the Environment, 1800-1980 (1987).

Henry Nash Smith. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1951).

Frederick Turner. Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (1985).

Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick. The Frontier in American Culture (1994).

Donald Worster. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (1992).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 17-3


Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (slides). Documentary Photo Aids, P.O. Box 956, Mt. Dora, Fla. 32757.

Images of Glory (videotape--52 min.). Films for the Humanities and Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, N.J. 08543-2053.

The Iron Road (videotape--60 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.