Lecture 11: Crossing the Plains
This lecture deals with the western movement of
Euro-Americans during the generation prior to the Civil War. The emphasis is on the great trails by
which travelers and emigrants crossed the Great Plains.
Outline of Lecture
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Introduction
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Our subject in this lecture, the overland migration, is
mythic, its scale epic. Crossing
the plains parcel to westward migration, Anglo-Americans had a notable
encounter with landscapes and peoples that were foreign to them. The two main routes across the plains
were the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon (California,
Mormon) Trail.
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The Santa
Fe Trail
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The Santa Fe Trail, pioneered in 1821 by William
Becknell, followed the Arkansas River across the central plains in order to
connect the border towns of the Missouri River with the Mexican towns of New
Mexico. Its
purpose was commerce—hence the title of Josiah Gregg’s classic travel
narrative, The Commerce of the Prairies. Documents of the Santa Fe Trade, nevertheless, reveal much
more about experiences on and attitudes toward the plains than just
business considerations.
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The Oregon
Trail
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The Oregon Trail is
also known as the California Trail and also as the Mormon Trail. It began its history in the 1840s as the
Platte River
route across the plains for farm-family emigrants to Oregon. After 1849 it also was the principal
overland route of argonauts heading for the California
goldfields. Following the same
general path, but trekking up the other bank of the Platte, came Mormon
pilgrims bound for the valley of the Great Salt Lake.
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Singing “Sweet
Betsy”
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“Sweet Betsy from Pike,” a folksong of the California
gold rush and the overland trail across the plains, is a primary document
of a peculiar sort. As a folksong, it
shows attitudes among ordinary people.
It also exposes the dynamics of gender relations in America
during the 1840s.
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Assignments
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Tocqueville
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Chapter 41: “How Americans
Understand Equality of the Sexes.”
In lecture on the overland trails, I'll be discussing gender
relations on the trail, and even considering "Sweet Betsy from
Pike" as an example of such.
That's why you're reading Tocqueville on women in a democracy at
this point.
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What are the assumptions underlying gender relations in America,
according to Tocqueville?
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Clearly discernable in Tocqueville's remarks are the lines
of what later historians would call "separate spheres." What are
the "spheres" of authority, responsibility, and competence of men
and women as here outlined?
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Are the gender relations described by Tocqueville
characterized by equality?
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WWW
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In regard to the California
Gold Rush, we're going to study the traditional ballad, "Sweet Betsy
from Pike."
To believers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints the story of Joseph Smith is credible and important, but
non-believers ridicule it. The story is one, however, of terrific narrative
power. It is presented plainly at the website
of the LDS.
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