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The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado
Deftly retracing a pivotal chapter in one of America's most dramatic stories, Elliott West chronicles the struggles, triumphs, and defeats of both Indians and whites as they pursued their clashing dreams of greatness in the heart of the continent.
The Contested Plains recounts the rise of the Native American horse culture, white Americans' discovery and pursuit of gold in the Rocky Mountains, and the wrenching changes and bitter conflicts that ensued. After centuries of many peoples fashioning many cultures on the plains, the Cheyennes and other tribes found in the horse the power to create a heroic way of life that dominated one of the world's great grasslands. Then the discovery of gold challenged that way of life and led finally to the infamous massacre at Sand Creek and the Indian Wars of the late 1860s.
Illuminating both the ancient and more recent history of the plains and eastern Rocky Mountains, West weaves together a brilliant tapestry interlaced with environmental, social, and military history. He treats the "frontier" not as a morally loaded term--either in the traditional celebratory sense or the more recent critical sense--but as a powerfully unsettling process that shattered an old world. He shows how Indians, goldseekers, haulers, merchants, ranchers, and farmers all contributed to and in turn were consumed by this process, even as the plains themselves were utterly transformed by the clash of cultures and competing visions.
Exciting and enormously engaging, The Contested Plains is the first book to examine the Colorado gold rush as the key event in the modern transformation of the central great plains. It also exemplifies a kind of history that respects more fully our rich and ambiguous past--a past in which there are many actors but no simple lessons.
The Contested Plains recounts the rise of the Native American horse culture, white Americans' discovery and pursuit of gold in the Rocky Mountains, and the wrenching changes and bitter conflicts that ensued. After centuries of many peoples fashioning many cultures on the plains, the Cheyennes and other tribes found in the horse the power to create a heroic way of life that dominated one of the world's great grasslands. Then the discovery of gold challenged that way of life and led finally to the infamous massacre at Sand Creek and the Indian Wars of the late 1860s.
Illuminating both the ancient and more recent history of the plains and eastern Rocky Mountains, West weaves together a brilliant tapestry interlaced with environmental, social, and military history. He treats the "frontier" not as a morally loaded term--either in the traditional celebratory sense or the more recent critical sense--but as a powerfully unsettling process that shattered an old world. He shows how Indians, goldseekers, haulers, merchants, ranchers, and farmers all contributed to and in turn were consumed by this process, even as the plains themselves were utterly transformed by the clash of cultures and competing visions.
Exciting and enormously engaging, The Contested Plains is the first book to examine the Colorado gold rush as the key event in the modern transformation of the central great plains. It also exemplifies a kind of history that respects more fully our rich and ambiguous past--a past in which there are many actors but no simple lessons.
446 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
19 people are currently reading
660 people want to read
About the author
Elliott West
17 books63 followersA specialist in the history of the American West, Elliott West is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Arkansas. He received his B.A. from the University of Texas (1967) and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (1971). He joined the U of A faculty in 1979. Two of his books, Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier (1989) and The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (1995) received the Western Heritage Award. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (1998) received five awards including the Francis Parkman Prize and PEN Center Award. His most recent book is The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (2009).
In 1995 West was awarded the U of A Teacher of the Year and the Carnegie Foundation‘s Arkansas Professor of the Year. In 2001 he received the Baum Faculty Teaching Award, and in 2009 he was one of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award recognizing the outstanding teacher in the nation.
In 1995 West was awarded the U of A Teacher of the Year and the Carnegie Foundation‘s Arkansas Professor of the Year. In 2001 he received the Baum Faculty Teaching Award, and in 2009 he was one of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award recognizing the outstanding teacher in the nation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
April 27, 2016
It's hard to find great, or even good, books about the American West. There are a few good authors working this realm, such as Robert Utley, but most popular histories focus on one of a few well-known topics - namely George Custer and his blazing death. The balance of books in the "American Indian" section at Barnes & Noble are comprised of polemics, which combine cultural defensiveness with political axes to crush objective (or even semi-objective) history into dust.
The Contested Plains, which frankly I'd never heard of till Goodreads, is a rare book in the sense that it deals with an underwritten aspect of the American West, and does so in a fair, equable, briskly written, and even - gasp! - slightly bemused manner (a good indication that you're reading a different kind of history is when you get to the page of epigraphs and find a quote from the movie Parenthood).
The story Elliott West sets out to tell is loosely built around the 1859 Colorado Gold Rush, spurred by the discovery of gold by Green Russell. The point of this book, though, isn't to give you a chronological history of things. Typically, history books follow a timeline, discussing and analyzing various landmarks along the way. Person A did X in 1845, and Person B responded by killing Person A in 1856, whereupon Wife A discovered that Person A had been cheating on her with Mistress C.
The Contested Plains is more interested in creating a deep context for the Gold Rush than in describing its particulars. There aren't a lot of dates bandied about. There is little in-depth discussion of singular events (the massacre at Sand Creek and the Battle of Summit Springs take only a few pages). There are no central characters picked to anchor the narrative (a difusion of contemporary voices are heard, but no single story is followed throughout).
Instead, the reader is treated to a broad-ranging look at the pre-civilization history of the American West; the history and culture of the Cheyenne (who get the nod here, instead of the more popular Lakota); the impact of the environment on men, and of men on the environment; and a variety of other topics. There are fascinating tidbits, such as the number of ponies required per person in nomadic bands (6 to 12, meaning that a village of 100 required, at minimum, 600 ponies, which means there has to be a lot of grass).
West's theory on the "contested plains" is that the conflict between whites and Indians arose from the Great Plains' scarcity of resources. This is obviously not earth shattering, but West puts an interesting spin on it. Instead of relying on the facile explanation that Buffalo Bill killed all the buffalos, West describes the conflict in terms of energy and power.
West illustrates this by giving a fuller, more nuanced view of American Indian life on the plains than you usually see. They aren't simply the great conservationists and environmental protectors of modern myth. Instead they, like all humans everywhere, survived in their environment by exploiting existing advantages. Then, the horse came, brought by the whites. The Indians used the energy of the horse to gain power. Instead of living in permanent villages, they became nomads, hunting on the plains in the spring and summer, and sheltering in wooded river valleys in winter. This (relatively) new lifestyle (horses were introduced in the 1700s) put a strain on the resources of the Great Plains. Fuel (grass and wood) grew scarcer, even before the coming of the whites.
Once the whites arrived, the jig was up. White settlers immediately and permanently went to those places where the nomadic tribes historically wintered. They cut down the wood and let their animals graze on the grass. When the wood was gone and the grass dead, the whites were able to do something the Indians could not: use the advantages of one environmental region to sustain life in another; that is, they could ship oats and coal from the East to live in the West.
Viewed in this light, the contest of the plains takes on Shakespearian dimensions, in that the tragedy is inevitable from the first moment two peoples meet.
The Contested Plains, which frankly I'd never heard of till Goodreads, is a rare book in the sense that it deals with an underwritten aspect of the American West, and does so in a fair, equable, briskly written, and even - gasp! - slightly bemused manner (a good indication that you're reading a different kind of history is when you get to the page of epigraphs and find a quote from the movie Parenthood).
The story Elliott West sets out to tell is loosely built around the 1859 Colorado Gold Rush, spurred by the discovery of gold by Green Russell. The point of this book, though, isn't to give you a chronological history of things. Typically, history books follow a timeline, discussing and analyzing various landmarks along the way. Person A did X in 1845, and Person B responded by killing Person A in 1856, whereupon Wife A discovered that Person A had been cheating on her with Mistress C.
The Contested Plains is more interested in creating a deep context for the Gold Rush than in describing its particulars. There aren't a lot of dates bandied about. There is little in-depth discussion of singular events (the massacre at Sand Creek and the Battle of Summit Springs take only a few pages). There are no central characters picked to anchor the narrative (a difusion of contemporary voices are heard, but no single story is followed throughout).
Instead, the reader is treated to a broad-ranging look at the pre-civilization history of the American West; the history and culture of the Cheyenne (who get the nod here, instead of the more popular Lakota); the impact of the environment on men, and of men on the environment; and a variety of other topics. There are fascinating tidbits, such as the number of ponies required per person in nomadic bands (6 to 12, meaning that a village of 100 required, at minimum, 600 ponies, which means there has to be a lot of grass).
West's theory on the "contested plains" is that the conflict between whites and Indians arose from the Great Plains' scarcity of resources. This is obviously not earth shattering, but West puts an interesting spin on it. Instead of relying on the facile explanation that Buffalo Bill killed all the buffalos, West describes the conflict in terms of energy and power.
Part of an effective environment is the energy that moves continuously around us. All organisms draw on that energy, convert it, and use it in order to live. As energy is captured and set to a purpose, it becomes power. The application of energy is power at its widest meaning...Through their imagination, [people:] have been especially handy at devising new paths to energy and new methods of turning it into something they can use. Because humans can imagine more means of gaining power, their impact on their world is obviously greater as well...The problem is, just as we cannot truly perceive all of our effective environment at any moment, so we cannot imagine anything close to the full consequences of changing things.
West illustrates this by giving a fuller, more nuanced view of American Indian life on the plains than you usually see. They aren't simply the great conservationists and environmental protectors of modern myth. Instead they, like all humans everywhere, survived in their environment by exploiting existing advantages. Then, the horse came, brought by the whites. The Indians used the energy of the horse to gain power. Instead of living in permanent villages, they became nomads, hunting on the plains in the spring and summer, and sheltering in wooded river valleys in winter. This (relatively) new lifestyle (horses were introduced in the 1700s) put a strain on the resources of the Great Plains. Fuel (grass and wood) grew scarcer, even before the coming of the whites.
Once the whites arrived, the jig was up. White settlers immediately and permanently went to those places where the nomadic tribes historically wintered. They cut down the wood and let their animals graze on the grass. When the wood was gone and the grass dead, the whites were able to do something the Indians could not: use the advantages of one environmental region to sustain life in another; that is, they could ship oats and coal from the East to live in the West.
Viewed in this light, the contest of the plains takes on Shakespearian dimensions, in that the tragedy is inevitable from the first moment two peoples meet.
August 4, 2024
The American West And The Teeth Of Life
On July 6, 1858, William Green Russell, a prospector from Georgia, discovered placer gold in streams flowing out of the Rocky Mountains. The fledgling city of Denver was established and the Colorado gold rush was on. In 1859, more than 100,000 individuals crossed the Great Plains in search of gold and of a better life. The United States was on the road to Civil War and was in the middle of a severe depression.
In his 1998 book, "Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado" Elliott West, professor of history at the University of Arkansas, tells the story of the Colorado gold rush in a way both sweeping and intimate. The book shows great knowledge of the settlement of the west. More importantly, it reveals a deep love for its subject and personal engagement. While showing great awareness of the messiness of human history and of moral frailty, West shows balance and thought
in his portrayal of turbulent, often tragic events.
The book is informed by vision and by philosophical meditation, as framed in the opening and concluding chapters. West has a strong sense of the uniqueness of human beings in history and of the way they both shape and respond to their environment. He sees the culture of the Indians and of the oncoming settlers as shaped by their own visions and imaginations of their destiny and of the good life. These visions unfortunately were inconsistent and clashed in the process of European settlement. He views different cultures as illustrating their own ongoing stories of life and of changing and following through for better or worse. While sometimes overwritten, the philosophical thrust of the book is moving and eloquent and adds a strong element of seriousness and humanism to West's account. West's book received six awards for historical writing, including the Bancroft Prize and the Parkman Prize.
The book describes the search for gold in Colorado and the growth of Denver in the late 1850s and 1860s. Its focus, however, is less on Denver than on the journey over the Great Plains and of the interactions between the Indians and the settlers. West again takes the long view by offering a history of Indian culture on the Great Plains from early prehistorical times. He shows how the culture changed and adapted over the centuries while assuming the form which clashed with the settlers only when the Indians acquired the horse and adopted a nomadic culture over the plains. West writes eloquently of this culture and of how it imagined itself while also pointing out that in the life of wandering and war resulting from the nomadic life on the plains and the exploitation of the buffalo, the Indian culture contained some of the seeds of its own destruction. The tribes were already fragmented and decimated by disease and internal wars by the 1850s. While not minimizing the cruelties of the onrushing settlers, West points out that for the most part the settlement proceeded by the settlers pursuing their own ends and visions rather than deliberately attempting to harm the Indians. The Indian culture, to oversimplify somewhat, became irrelevant to the settlers vision of life while in the earlier days the two cultures had managed to maintain an uneasy harmony.
Thus West offers a portrayal of both the Indians and the settlers in broad account and in individual detail with portraits of many persons and of their role in the events of the 1850s. For example, he describes a young couple, Nellie Buchanan and her husband, who left Kansas for the Rockies in the 1870s. They traveled for days and in the last settlement, the owner of a small house advised the couple to turn back. The Buchanans nevertheless moved forward. After many more days crossing a barren plain, they came to a covered farm wagon with a sign on its side saying "RESTURANT". The couple persisted in their journey ultimately making their home in Colorado.
The Epilogue to this book, titled "Stories in the Teeth of Life" is an apt summation of a long journey. West describes the ultimate course of the lives of many people, Indians and settlers, met and discussed earlier in the book in the course of the journey to the Rockies. These discussions of individuals are interspersed with broader, philosophical discussions of the course of events resulting in settlement and in the loss of Indian culture. West writes of the significance of the struggle between the Indians and the settlers:
"In the middle of the nineteenth century two cultures acted out two compelling visions in a land that could support only one. The inspired struggle -- of both people to enliven their dreams, of each to deny the other-- was one of the great American stories."
West points out that the victorious settlers who "celebrated the crushing of a rival vision were already suffering from the hubris of their own" in terms of their failure to recognize limits and the nature of their surroundings. West questions but does not decide whether the Indians and the settlers might have had other options which would have allowed their competing visions of life to live more together in peace. The message of the story is the nature of human frailty and the need for compassion going forward in understanding one another without condemnation. West concludes: "The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. 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."
"The Contested Plains" is both a detailed exploration of western settlement and a philosophical meditation on the American experience. It is a difficult, special work of history.
Robin Friedman
On July 6, 1858, William Green Russell, a prospector from Georgia, discovered placer gold in streams flowing out of the Rocky Mountains. The fledgling city of Denver was established and the Colorado gold rush was on. In 1859, more than 100,000 individuals crossed the Great Plains in search of gold and of a better life. The United States was on the road to Civil War and was in the middle of a severe depression.
In his 1998 book, "Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado" Elliott West, professor of history at the University of Arkansas, tells the story of the Colorado gold rush in a way both sweeping and intimate. The book shows great knowledge of the settlement of the west. More importantly, it reveals a deep love for its subject and personal engagement. While showing great awareness of the messiness of human history and of moral frailty, West shows balance and thought
in his portrayal of turbulent, often tragic events.
The book is informed by vision and by philosophical meditation, as framed in the opening and concluding chapters. West has a strong sense of the uniqueness of human beings in history and of the way they both shape and respond to their environment. He sees the culture of the Indians and of the oncoming settlers as shaped by their own visions and imaginations of their destiny and of the good life. These visions unfortunately were inconsistent and clashed in the process of European settlement. He views different cultures as illustrating their own ongoing stories of life and of changing and following through for better or worse. While sometimes overwritten, the philosophical thrust of the book is moving and eloquent and adds a strong element of seriousness and humanism to West's account. West's book received six awards for historical writing, including the Bancroft Prize and the Parkman Prize.
The book describes the search for gold in Colorado and the growth of Denver in the late 1850s and 1860s. Its focus, however, is less on Denver than on the journey over the Great Plains and of the interactions between the Indians and the settlers. West again takes the long view by offering a history of Indian culture on the Great Plains from early prehistorical times. He shows how the culture changed and adapted over the centuries while assuming the form which clashed with the settlers only when the Indians acquired the horse and adopted a nomadic culture over the plains. West writes eloquently of this culture and of how it imagined itself while also pointing out that in the life of wandering and war resulting from the nomadic life on the plains and the exploitation of the buffalo, the Indian culture contained some of the seeds of its own destruction. The tribes were already fragmented and decimated by disease and internal wars by the 1850s. While not minimizing the cruelties of the onrushing settlers, West points out that for the most part the settlement proceeded by the settlers pursuing their own ends and visions rather than deliberately attempting to harm the Indians. The Indian culture, to oversimplify somewhat, became irrelevant to the settlers vision of life while in the earlier days the two cultures had managed to maintain an uneasy harmony.
Thus West offers a portrayal of both the Indians and the settlers in broad account and in individual detail with portraits of many persons and of their role in the events of the 1850s. For example, he describes a young couple, Nellie Buchanan and her husband, who left Kansas for the Rockies in the 1870s. They traveled for days and in the last settlement, the owner of a small house advised the couple to turn back. The Buchanans nevertheless moved forward. After many more days crossing a barren plain, they came to a covered farm wagon with a sign on its side saying "RESTURANT". The couple persisted in their journey ultimately making their home in Colorado.
The Epilogue to this book, titled "Stories in the Teeth of Life" is an apt summation of a long journey. West describes the ultimate course of the lives of many people, Indians and settlers, met and discussed earlier in the book in the course of the journey to the Rockies. These discussions of individuals are interspersed with broader, philosophical discussions of the course of events resulting in settlement and in the loss of Indian culture. West writes of the significance of the struggle between the Indians and the settlers:
"In the middle of the nineteenth century two cultures acted out two compelling visions in a land that could support only one. The inspired struggle -- of both people to enliven their dreams, of each to deny the other-- was one of the great American stories."
West points out that the victorious settlers who "celebrated the crushing of a rival vision were already suffering from the hubris of their own" in terms of their failure to recognize limits and the nature of their surroundings. West questions but does not decide whether the Indians and the settlers might have had other options which would have allowed their competing visions of life to live more together in peace. The message of the story is the nature of human frailty and the need for compassion going forward in understanding one another without condemnation. West concludes: "The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. 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."
"The Contested Plains" is both a detailed exploration of western settlement and a philosophical meditation on the American experience. It is a difficult, special work of history.
Robin Friedman
May 9, 2011
Boring!
January 22, 2018
This is an extended review of this excellent, award-winning book from one of the top historians in the United States.
From a European perspective, the Spaniard Francisco Coronado and his men were the first to discover the Great Plains of North America. Leaving Tiguex Pueblo on the Rio Grande River in 1541, Coronado traveled through what are now Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas before returning to New Spain, looking for great cities that would yield gold and other riches. “He was looking for the Aztecs of Kansas. Instead he found the Quivira, a few villages of conical grass huts.” (34) Disappointed by the lack of cities or gold and often disoriented by the vast sameness of the Great Plains, Coronado and other Spanish explorers retreated from the region. It had no wealth, and therefore no potential.
For those Native Americans who had been living on the Plains for generations, this viewpoint could not have been more wrong. American Indians had been living on the Great Plains for over 10,000 years; it was among the longest continually occupied regions of the Americas. For them, wealth was present in many forms. Plains tribes could envision the land and see great potential where the Spanish could not. This theme of human vision runs throughout The Contested Plains. By focusing on the uniquely human ability to imagine a new reality and then act to make that vision come true, West tells the story of the Great Plains in the middle of the 19th century in a way that is at times entertaining and always enlightening.
After briefly describing the various groups that occupied the Great Plains in previous millennia (Clovis hunters, Plains Woodland tribes, and other groups), West discusses the event that would change the lives of the Plains tribes forever: the introduction of horses. Originally introduced onto the Great Plains after the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in 1680, by the late 1700s every tribe living on the Great Plains had horse herds. For many, such as the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Comanches, the horse brought an opportunity for a new way of life. This new source of power allowed Plains tribes to reimagine themselves and their natural environment. Indeed, the horse allowed the Cheyennes to dominate the Central Plains region by the 1850s and 1860s, and West’s story largely focuses on their experience.
The horse allowed for a tremendous extension of power in two ways. One is obvious, the other not. Although they had successfully hunted bison on foot for millennia, the increase in mobility provided by horses allowed Plains tribes like the Cheyennes to hunt bison more effectively than ever before. This was clear to all observers. But what was not as clear is that horses also provided an extension of power because they fed on grass—the most abundant resource the Plains had to offer. Part of the immense value of horses was that they allowed humans to extend their power without competing with humans for resources. However, the one drawback of horses is their requirement of forage and shelter during the winter, when resources are scarce. These resources only existed in river valleys. Eventually, this fact would bring the Plains tribes into contact and competition with emigrants and later settlers from the United States who depended on the same river valleys for resources.
Though Americans had traveled over the Plains on their way to Oregon and California since the 1840s, they had always viewed the Plains as an obstacle on the way to somewhere else. Like the Spanish explorers, their vision of the region’s possibilities was very limited. But this would change drastically in 1858 when two parties of Americans located traces of gold in the tributaries of the South Platte River. Rumors of gold, combined with an economic downturn that left many in the United States down on their luck and in search of opportunity, brought a flood of miners, and eventually settlers, to Colorado. For the first time, Americans envisioned the Plains as having economic value, and therefore as a place worth settling. West points out that “White pioneers who moved onto the plains east to west believed they were leaving the old country for the new. They had it exactly backward.” (31) While true, this did not stop the pioneers from bringing their exploitative resource use strategies with them. Their oxen chewed up the same river valley forage needed by Indian horses during the lean winter months and the pioneers chopped down the same trees that Indians needed for fuel as well. According to West, it is this conflict over resources that led to the conflicts of the 1860s.
And in this conflict the white pioneers (or invaders) had almost every advantage. While West does not make the mistake of portraying the Indians as passive victims, he does explain that without the forage and timber resources found in the river valleys the Indian way of life could not continue without drastic adaptations. The pioneers, on the other hand, could transport vast quantities of forage for livestock from the United States. In addition, the invaders occupied key resource areas by settling farms, stock ranches, and roadside business establishments. As a last resort, they could call on the United States Army for protection from, and revenge for, Indian attacks. Faced with a shrinking resource base and becoming outnumbered by white settlers, the Cheyennes and others had to choose between submission and resistance. Some bands, such as the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne, vowed to go down fighting, while other bands chose peace. Part of West’s Epilogue graphically describes the outcome of the struggle:
What followed was slow agony – hungry, disease-ridden families along the roads, gradual strangulation of angry bands of hunters and warriors, misunderstanding and paranoia, hopeless heroism and spurned conciliation, mounting deaths of innocents on all sides, and finally the horror of Sand Creek and the debacle at Summit Springs. Chosen paths led to symbolic ends. Black Kettle’s people were massacred in a hungry camp he had set, appropriately, halfway between Fort Lyon and the militant villages of the heartland. His search for the middle ground took him to a slaughter pen. The Dog Soldiers’ pursuit of independence ended in a dead-end ravine. There Tall Bull took his death behind his bleeding horse, the dying inspiration of an expanding world. Nearby Wolf With Plenty of Hair chose the Dog Rope, the tight final radius of the plains as a warrior’s dream. (336)
The Contested Plains is an outstanding work in many ways. It is a story that, on the surface, looks like another contest between Indians and whites over land. And it is. But West shows that the story has many layers, and explains each one in superb detail. By tying together resource use, the limits of the environment, power, and the human ability to envision and act on the environment, he paints a vivid picture. The writing is clear and engaging, some sections are very poignant. For example, West describes marriage relations between whites and Indians, and how they changed over time. He describes one man, Slim Routh, who
had married a young Lakota woman that year (1857) at Fort Laramie, but in 1861 he took a white wife in a church wedding in Denver. A friend happened to look up to see Routh’s Indian wife on the porch, watching the ceremony through the window. Like her, the few Indians with ties to Denver society stood on the outside looking in.” (241)
There are several other anecdotes that add flavor to The Contested Plains. West includes maps that are useful in understanding the geography of the Great Plains, showing the important river valleys and emigrant trails. There just is not much to criticize about this book. Anyone who enjoys environmental or western history should enjoy it and learn a great deal at the same time.
From a European perspective, the Spaniard Francisco Coronado and his men were the first to discover the Great Plains of North America. Leaving Tiguex Pueblo on the Rio Grande River in 1541, Coronado traveled through what are now Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas before returning to New Spain, looking for great cities that would yield gold and other riches. “He was looking for the Aztecs of Kansas. Instead he found the Quivira, a few villages of conical grass huts.” (34) Disappointed by the lack of cities or gold and often disoriented by the vast sameness of the Great Plains, Coronado and other Spanish explorers retreated from the region. It had no wealth, and therefore no potential.
For those Native Americans who had been living on the Plains for generations, this viewpoint could not have been more wrong. American Indians had been living on the Great Plains for over 10,000 years; it was among the longest continually occupied regions of the Americas. For them, wealth was present in many forms. Plains tribes could envision the land and see great potential where the Spanish could not. This theme of human vision runs throughout The Contested Plains. By focusing on the uniquely human ability to imagine a new reality and then act to make that vision come true, West tells the story of the Great Plains in the middle of the 19th century in a way that is at times entertaining and always enlightening.
After briefly describing the various groups that occupied the Great Plains in previous millennia (Clovis hunters, Plains Woodland tribes, and other groups), West discusses the event that would change the lives of the Plains tribes forever: the introduction of horses. Originally introduced onto the Great Plains after the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in 1680, by the late 1700s every tribe living on the Great Plains had horse herds. For many, such as the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Comanches, the horse brought an opportunity for a new way of life. This new source of power allowed Plains tribes to reimagine themselves and their natural environment. Indeed, the horse allowed the Cheyennes to dominate the Central Plains region by the 1850s and 1860s, and West’s story largely focuses on their experience.
The horse allowed for a tremendous extension of power in two ways. One is obvious, the other not. Although they had successfully hunted bison on foot for millennia, the increase in mobility provided by horses allowed Plains tribes like the Cheyennes to hunt bison more effectively than ever before. This was clear to all observers. But what was not as clear is that horses also provided an extension of power because they fed on grass—the most abundant resource the Plains had to offer. Part of the immense value of horses was that they allowed humans to extend their power without competing with humans for resources. However, the one drawback of horses is their requirement of forage and shelter during the winter, when resources are scarce. These resources only existed in river valleys. Eventually, this fact would bring the Plains tribes into contact and competition with emigrants and later settlers from the United States who depended on the same river valleys for resources.
Though Americans had traveled over the Plains on their way to Oregon and California since the 1840s, they had always viewed the Plains as an obstacle on the way to somewhere else. Like the Spanish explorers, their vision of the region’s possibilities was very limited. But this would change drastically in 1858 when two parties of Americans located traces of gold in the tributaries of the South Platte River. Rumors of gold, combined with an economic downturn that left many in the United States down on their luck and in search of opportunity, brought a flood of miners, and eventually settlers, to Colorado. For the first time, Americans envisioned the Plains as having economic value, and therefore as a place worth settling. West points out that “White pioneers who moved onto the plains east to west believed they were leaving the old country for the new. They had it exactly backward.” (31) While true, this did not stop the pioneers from bringing their exploitative resource use strategies with them. Their oxen chewed up the same river valley forage needed by Indian horses during the lean winter months and the pioneers chopped down the same trees that Indians needed for fuel as well. According to West, it is this conflict over resources that led to the conflicts of the 1860s.
And in this conflict the white pioneers (or invaders) had almost every advantage. While West does not make the mistake of portraying the Indians as passive victims, he does explain that without the forage and timber resources found in the river valleys the Indian way of life could not continue without drastic adaptations. The pioneers, on the other hand, could transport vast quantities of forage for livestock from the United States. In addition, the invaders occupied key resource areas by settling farms, stock ranches, and roadside business establishments. As a last resort, they could call on the United States Army for protection from, and revenge for, Indian attacks. Faced with a shrinking resource base and becoming outnumbered by white settlers, the Cheyennes and others had to choose between submission and resistance. Some bands, such as the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne, vowed to go down fighting, while other bands chose peace. Part of West’s Epilogue graphically describes the outcome of the struggle:
What followed was slow agony – hungry, disease-ridden families along the roads, gradual strangulation of angry bands of hunters and warriors, misunderstanding and paranoia, hopeless heroism and spurned conciliation, mounting deaths of innocents on all sides, and finally the horror of Sand Creek and the debacle at Summit Springs. Chosen paths led to symbolic ends. Black Kettle’s people were massacred in a hungry camp he had set, appropriately, halfway between Fort Lyon and the militant villages of the heartland. His search for the middle ground took him to a slaughter pen. The Dog Soldiers’ pursuit of independence ended in a dead-end ravine. There Tall Bull took his death behind his bleeding horse, the dying inspiration of an expanding world. Nearby Wolf With Plenty of Hair chose the Dog Rope, the tight final radius of the plains as a warrior’s dream. (336)
The Contested Plains is an outstanding work in many ways. It is a story that, on the surface, looks like another contest between Indians and whites over land. And it is. But West shows that the story has many layers, and explains each one in superb detail. By tying together resource use, the limits of the environment, power, and the human ability to envision and act on the environment, he paints a vivid picture. The writing is clear and engaging, some sections are very poignant. For example, West describes marriage relations between whites and Indians, and how they changed over time. He describes one man, Slim Routh, who
had married a young Lakota woman that year (1857) at Fort Laramie, but in 1861 he took a white wife in a church wedding in Denver. A friend happened to look up to see Routh’s Indian wife on the porch, watching the ceremony through the window. Like her, the few Indians with ties to Denver society stood on the outside looking in.” (241)
There are several other anecdotes that add flavor to The Contested Plains. West includes maps that are useful in understanding the geography of the Great Plains, showing the important river valleys and emigrant trails. There just is not much to criticize about this book. Anyone who enjoys environmental or western history should enjoy it and learn a great deal at the same time.
March 16, 2010
Elliot West offers a highly readable narrative of the Colorado gold rush of 1859 and the violence that soon followed. This is West’s fifth book and, as evident by the six awards it received, it is his best known. Like the New West historians, he does not frame his account in terms of white pioneers to whom Indians were merely an obstacle in their own heroic struggle. Neither does he treat Plains Indians as the victims of white conquest. West avoids both paths by fixing his gaze on the Central Great Plains region itself; he relates a tug-of-war featuring the rope. In this respect his book is an environmental history, yet West also avoids casting this as a story of humans raping the wilderness. He sidesteps these familiar approaches by placing a new actor at the center of his story, the human imagination. Thus, the rush to Colorado and its immediate consequences were “an astonishing performance of adaptive imagination” (333).
This book is an experiment in epic storytelling. The preface on imagination resembles an invocation to the muse. West then reaches back into prehistory because “the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable, and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” (xviii). Thus the Clovis hunters first imagined how the Central Great Plains could serve them and they acted accordingly. Then follows a parade of later imaginers, culminating in the nomadic Indians who “dreamed this same country into a new shape” (117) by using its grass to fuel their territory-broadening horses. The narrative pace slows into the 1859 Gold Rush from the first strike, to city founders, to westbound settlers, and finally, to their clashes with Indians. Refusing to side between the two, West says that whites and Indians alike were gripped by a myth of their own making: they “acted out two compelling visions in a land that could only support one” (336). West’s epic style seems deliberately calculated to serve his claim about the power of imagination; through epic narrative his story seems complete even without the language of oppressor and oppressed, aggressor and victim.
West shows imagination in action through guide books and advertising that lured people west, together with their diaries and letters. But when he lacks sources he unnaturally forces the point anyway. West imputes motives; for example, when Europeans introduced the horse to Indians he says that “the imaginative impact must have been magical…the dream of a life on horseback was seductive enough to break a pattern 25,000 generations old” (56-57). Acknowledging that humans possess imagination is one thing, but stating what they imagined at a particular time and place, what they meant by their own actions, demands evidence.
Imputing motives to historical actors is the lifeblood of this book and is one reason why it grips readers. It would be less compelling had West confined his assertions to his evidence. Nonetheless, his does put his characters on a moral par with one another, thereby inviting dispassionate analysis that is not clouded by the charged rhetoric of pioneer hero and hapless victim.
This book is an experiment in epic storytelling. The preface on imagination resembles an invocation to the muse. West then reaches back into prehistory because “the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable, and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” (xviii). Thus the Clovis hunters first imagined how the Central Great Plains could serve them and they acted accordingly. Then follows a parade of later imaginers, culminating in the nomadic Indians who “dreamed this same country into a new shape” (117) by using its grass to fuel their territory-broadening horses. The narrative pace slows into the 1859 Gold Rush from the first strike, to city founders, to westbound settlers, and finally, to their clashes with Indians. Refusing to side between the two, West says that whites and Indians alike were gripped by a myth of their own making: they “acted out two compelling visions in a land that could only support one” (336). West’s epic style seems deliberately calculated to serve his claim about the power of imagination; through epic narrative his story seems complete even without the language of oppressor and oppressed, aggressor and victim.
West shows imagination in action through guide books and advertising that lured people west, together with their diaries and letters. But when he lacks sources he unnaturally forces the point anyway. West imputes motives; for example, when Europeans introduced the horse to Indians he says that “the imaginative impact must have been magical…the dream of a life on horseback was seductive enough to break a pattern 25,000 generations old” (56-57). Acknowledging that humans possess imagination is one thing, but stating what they imagined at a particular time and place, what they meant by their own actions, demands evidence.
Imputing motives to historical actors is the lifeblood of this book and is one reason why it grips readers. It would be less compelling had West confined his assertions to his evidence. Nonetheless, his does put his characters on a moral par with one another, thereby inviting dispassionate analysis that is not clouded by the charged rhetoric of pioneer hero and hapless victim.
October 9, 2018
What a thoughtful book. I love the sentence in the introduction where the author’s friend tells him he can’t write about the traffic light on the corner without starting at the Magna Carta. Elliott West throws a mountain of backstory into this book, but it all works. To understand the enormity and complexity of the changes made by the settlement of the Plains and Colorado by white settlers in the 1850s and 1860s, it might not be necessary to go back 12,000 years, but it certainly does enhance the understanding, not just of the peoples who inhabit but more importantly of the land itself. He writes of the earliest animals and people to inhabit the region and how they had to live within the confines of what the land could do. He speaks about the “law of the minimum”. Plants, animals and therefore people, can only grow to the point based on what is available at a minimum. It’s a fascinating way to look at things. An ecosystem not fully understood, certainly by the whites and pushed to extremes by the natives, could not support two disparate visions for the same ground. Both groups recognized the value and necessity but could not come to meaningful terms to share it in a way both could tolerate, and may very well have never been able to share it. It’s in parts fascinating, thought provoking and even a bit boring about two thirds through, and horrific in details or wanton slaughter by guilty parties. West does a fine job of presenting both sides of the story without partiality. It spends a bit of time actually addressing the gold rush and early settlement of Denver and the surrounding area, but the main thrust is the impact on the Plains and its peoples as it should be. An important piece of work for any interested in topics such as American Exploration, Native Studies, Pioneering, Gold Rush, Early Colorado and related issues. Check it out.
June 3, 2007
West's history is an engaging, well-researched, and troubling read. Initially planning on writing about the Colorado Gold Rush (which, coming from CA, I never heard about, but it actually drew more people than our '49er version), West found the more compelling story to lie along the route across the prairie and plains states to Colorado. This region was the homeland of several Native American tribes, who had occupied the region for centuries (though some more recently than others--how often do non-Natives consider that Indians have pre-white history, changes in culture, migrations, etc.?) These tribes had fairly recently become equine. West contrasts two "visions," that of equine Indians who were now using the “fuel” of the plains grasses for their horses to hunt, and the Anglo Americans, who initially saw the plains primarily as a place to get through on the way to the promoted prosperity of the gold rush. Over time, however, whites settled in the areas in-between, causing the "Indian Wars" as the two groups fought over which human "vision" for the plains would win out. West is quite pessimistic that there could have been a compromise, unlike (to some degree) what happened in Mexico. Myself, I don't know. We can really never know, but it’s hard to imagine that the brutal massacres at Sand Creek and other places couldn't have been avoided. A very objective account; history often speaks for itself.
July 31, 2018
This is a wonderful book how the Plains were settled. I now live in Kansas which is why I chose this book. The book deals with the Colorado Gold Rush because Calif was running out of gold. A lot of different Indian tribes lived in the Plains. Most of those Indians were sent to OKlahoma, including the Ponca tribe. We went to their PowWow and some tribes get together for a whole day of dancing according to their old ways. The main problem of the developing Plains was men, women, Indian and White had different and conflicting visions of how to thrive. Railroads started to build, settlers came, the gold rush happened.
May 19, 2018
Just re-read this work in preparation for a seminar discussion. Funny how after a few years, you bring different senses to the book. In particular, this time, the theme of imagination stands out. Imagination as the basis for human agency, imagination as the motivation to modify the environment, imagination as the inspiration for great things, imagination as the root of so many difficulties. Then I get to thinking how closely akin this is to the old-fashioned idealistic theory of History, and I wonder if West is an old-fashioned romantic after all. Pretty sure he is. Takes one to know one.
September 11, 2011
I have to read this in my history class. BOOOOOOO!!!!
October 3, 2021
I will be totally honest I just skimmed this book but the discussion that I had in class about it makes it seem very fascinating. The ecological perspective West comes at it from is different. The idea of border lands vs bordered lands and the borders meaning different things to different people in the same space and time conceptually is intriguing.
December 29, 2017
This book took me almost a year to read, it is as rich a fudgy chocolate brownie, nobody can eat a whole pan of brownies in a single sitting, but each bite is so delicious. This book of course is first and foremost an account of the history of Colorado through the 1870s, culminating with the destruction of and the subjugation of the plains Indians that we whites found here when we invaded. But, it is also a rich description of how different people can see their homeland and the way of life that they can derive from that land, of how a subsistence economy values resources differently than a commerce economy, of how differing economic models fight for their supporting values.
This book can help us understand several conflicts that we experience in our would today. For example, how Israelis and "Palestinians" value the same land. How industrial culture treats native cultures in the Arctic and in the rainforests of the world. How urban dwellers value their homesites and miners value the resources critical for their livelihoods.
This book shows us how a given region of the planet has finite resources, resources such as water that are absolutely critical for our lives. When those resources are depleted the lifestyles of those who are using those resources must change. The plains Indians were nomadic, they had an annual cycle of moving during the summer to the high plains, and during the winter to encampments along river bottoms. When US soldiers set up permanent forts at the best places along the rivers they stole those critical resources form the plains Indians.
This book shows us how era after era life on the plains of North America has adapted as climate changed and new peoples arrived.
This book can help us understand several conflicts that we experience in our would today. For example, how Israelis and "Palestinians" value the same land. How industrial culture treats native cultures in the Arctic and in the rainforests of the world. How urban dwellers value their homesites and miners value the resources critical for their livelihoods.
This book shows us how a given region of the planet has finite resources, resources such as water that are absolutely critical for our lives. When those resources are depleted the lifestyles of those who are using those resources must change. The plains Indians were nomadic, they had an annual cycle of moving during the summer to the high plains, and during the winter to encampments along river bottoms. When US soldiers set up permanent forts at the best places along the rivers they stole those critical resources form the plains Indians.
This book shows us how era after era life on the plains of North America has adapted as climate changed and new peoples arrived.
September 9, 2010
I really enjoyed this, and I felt like it did its job without prattling on too much, or cutting important elements out of the narrative. The author knows that Americans tend to act like the history of the Great Plains started with westward expansion and the first contacts with Indians along the western frontier. The point of this book is that we really have two cultures that arose to exploit the plains: one Native American culture that arose and grew very powerful once horses were introduced in the 17th century, and one white American culture that exploded into the plains once gold was discovered in Colorado in the mid 19th century. Those cultures were incompatible and clashed horribly with each other, and we all know which side won.
I especially enjoyed the way that West illustrated the parallels between native and white cultures. The Cheyenne and other tribes saw that they could grow very powerful by throwing all their eggs into forsaking farming and being buffalo hunters on horseback. But when hard times came they had nothing to fall back on. The whites saw themselves getting rich by setting up huge ranching and farming operations on the plains, only to see so many of them go bust when years of drought decimated the land. It's a really complex interplay of ebbing and flowing cultures, and I'm not really doing the author's argument credit in trying to summarize it. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in frontier history.
I especially enjoyed the way that West illustrated the parallels between native and white cultures. The Cheyenne and other tribes saw that they could grow very powerful by throwing all their eggs into forsaking farming and being buffalo hunters on horseback. But when hard times came they had nothing to fall back on. The whites saw themselves getting rich by setting up huge ranching and farming operations on the plains, only to see so many of them go bust when years of drought decimated the land. It's a really complex interplay of ebbing and flowing cultures, and I'm not really doing the author's argument credit in trying to summarize it. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in frontier history.
December 20, 2016
Interesting. The early years of the Colorado Gold Rush. Focused on Denver and the Plains and the needs and desires of the white folks flooding the area which had recently become a home for nomadic horse riding Indians. The battle for resources as one group tries to survive and the other has a strong desire for the golden stuff. It was no picnic getting to Colorado, the nearest jumping off spot was about 600 miles away. The frontier gradually expanded as people came west. The California Gold Rush was mostly about ships jumping the frontier and going to California. The Colorado Gold Rush was about skipping 600 miles of frontier, setting up shop and taking over the resources of the Indians in the area with multiple conflicts. Both the whites and Indians had 2 choices each, appease and pay annuities or battle, mixed results, did not end well for the Indians.
An interesting side story is that all the Gold production in the early years was expensive. About 1/5 of workers were in transportation, the RR took about 8 or 10 years to get to Denver. The shipping costs alone were larger than the value of gold produced. Looks like charity or mal investment or Keynesian economics. Got the Colorado economy booming. Eventually, the agriculture industry got started.
An interesting side story is that all the Gold production in the early years was expensive. About 1/5 of workers were in transportation, the RR took about 8 or 10 years to get to Denver. The shipping costs alone were larger than the value of gold produced. Looks like charity or mal investment or Keynesian economics. Got the Colorado economy booming. Eventually, the agriculture industry got started.
December 29, 2015
This book nominally covers the period from the start of the Colorado gold rush to the Sand Creek Massacre, roughly 1858 to 1864. The first chapter introduces us to the native plains peoples before the arrival of the Spaniards (and the horse), going back as far as 12,000 years ago and the last chapter ties up some loose ends into the 20th century.
The key to West's telling of the story is the quest for energy and power. The plains bask in the energy of the sun, which grows prairie grass. This energy was wasted until the horse could convert it into motive power. Besides energy, water and shelter were key factors as well. Water and shelter come together in the plains - the river banks provide shelter from the harsh winter weather.
These resources came under fierce competition with the discovery of gold along the Front Range.
The book is primarily about how this struggle for resources changed the face of the plains, not only for the native peoples but for the American nation. It doesn't spend much time on the gold rush itself, but it does give a good overview.
I didn't realize how little I knew of the subject before reading the book.
The key to West's telling of the story is the quest for energy and power. The plains bask in the energy of the sun, which grows prairie grass. This energy was wasted until the horse could convert it into motive power. Besides energy, water and shelter were key factors as well. Water and shelter come together in the plains - the river banks provide shelter from the harsh winter weather.
These resources came under fierce competition with the discovery of gold along the Front Range.
The book is primarily about how this struggle for resources changed the face of the plains, not only for the native peoples but for the American nation. It doesn't spend much time on the gold rush itself, but it does give a good overview.
I didn't realize how little I knew of the subject before reading the book.
November 18, 2018
Starts reading like an academic text book, and becomes a fascinating story. I understand the American midwest region and the evolution of plains Native Americans much better after reading this book.
This book is an obvious recommendation for people interested in Native American history. Also recommended for people who now live or grew up in present-day U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, west of the Missouri to the Rocky Mountain front range, between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers. This will help you comprehend the extraordinary history and geography of where you now live.
This book is an obvious recommendation for people interested in Native American history. Also recommended for people who now live or grew up in present-day U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, west of the Missouri to the Rocky Mountain front range, between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers. This will help you comprehend the extraordinary history and geography of where you now live.
August 15, 2007
West's description of Plains landscapes and their effects on movement and settlement patterns is fascinating. The author challenges notions of an empty, static region by demonstrating how the Plains have been both a stopping place and a funnel to other regions for centuries. In describing the impact of vast expanses of sky and grass on newcomers, West captures the awe and tinge of fear that many modern readers have likely felt while driving through the region on a sunny summer day.
September 21, 2012
The story is an important one in the history of westward expansion in America. I found the book to be not very well organized. The author didn't do a very good job of keeping the story in chronological order, which ended up confusing me at some points in the book. It would have been helpful to have better maps throughout the book so as to help give the reader a better visual of the massive landscape that is described in the book.
February 22, 2018
A wonderful history book on a minor-looking topic, but researched and described in great human and emotional detail. I enjoyed reading the author's framing of the 1860s on the Plains in terms of of "reimagining landscapes", sources of energy and conflict over resources. A very good book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to experience the frontier through a mix of contemporary testimony and 20th century educated hindsight.
August 3, 2013
I am reading this book for a class on Colorado history. It is very revealing and points out that the Euro American view of the West was far different than the reality. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I have read, not just for my paper I will have to write but the impact of history on future generations and the fact that our current government fails to look back as we move forward.
April 6, 2007
What haven't I learned from this book? It is quite dense but really engaging. I find myself needing and wanting to reread it again. It tells a straightforward story from many perspectives leaving out a lot of judgement, condescention and all that other stuff that often comes from historians.
May 19, 2014
A good but tuff read, written at the not quite academic level this book requires careful and not light hearted reading. I read it over the course of a whole year, just a chapter or two between other lighter reads.
Want to read
September 27, 2007Recently acquired at the Friends of the Library bookstore for the San Pedro, CA library.
January 10, 2009
Great book for the person who is interested in the history of the west.
January 15, 2009
One of the great New Western Historians. great Person, Writer, and Teacher
February 6, 2009
This was that book that made me realize what I was trying to say in my thesis. It thus occupies a warm and fuzzy place in my heart. Also, it is mind-blowingly good.
April 8, 2012
Amazing example of Western history by an aptly named author.
February 10, 2015
A good book that shows the move west from St. Louis in the 19th century to Colorado once gold was discovered through the eyes on both Americans and Natives.
November 25, 2015
Very well done and interesting, but could have used a little editing. The author states his case well, but is somewhat repetitive. Probably 3.5 stars.
August 10, 2016
a slow read but a good read. one of those authors that will use 10 words when 5 will do. very thorough recommend to anyone that is interested in western American history
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