North American West

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A gang of historians has gunned down the "romantic West." They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.

From 1790 to the 1850s hundreds of Kahnawake men signed fur trade contracts, part of a vast, Montreal-centred, salaried labour force that fuelled the peltry trade for two centuries. However, these Mohawks constituted more than simply a native subset of largely French Canadian voyageur brigades. Mohawks were coveted for their abilities as canoe men, ruthless talents as trappers, and their fearsome warrior reputation. Such martial qualities had special value during the ''fur trade wars'' of 1798-1804 and 1815-1821. These Kahnawake men pursued these contracts for economic and Mohawk-specific cultural reasons. For young Kahnawake men, difficult employment, distant from home and associated with potential violence, was a means to experience rites of passage from adolescence to manhood and to prove warrior qualities. Racialized white views and the need for Mohawks as woodsmen and warriors with fearsome reputations thus coincided with Mohawk views of their masculinity and the need for adventure and income.

This historiographical article addresses the Midwest as a cultural geography of colonial amnesia, explores the relationship between the Midwest and the field of U.S. western history, and calls for historians of the Midwest to substantially revise regional narratives in much the same manner that new western historians did during the 1980s and 90s.

This is an excerpt from my book, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and the Society of Historical Archaeology, 2012). The book is a retrospective of three-decades work with the Virginia City National Landmark District, dealing with historic buildings, landscape, and archaeology. The book is a western, twenty-first-century response to the insightful work of James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten (1977).

Sectionalism denotes the division of a country, such as the United States, into sections based on shared cultures, religions, and racial, economic, and political identities. These sections then compete, putting their interests over those of the other sections. In the case of the United States, one of the most significant sectional conflicts was the Civil War, where North and South battled due to conflict over racial, economic, religious, and political differences. However, sectional conflict can be seen as early as British colonialism during which time the colonies competed with each other and with their governments in Europe and later as other sections such as the West developed its own characteristics and interests. Religion and race were frequently at the core of sectional conflicts, in everything from the Revolutionary War, the drafting of the Constitution, the failure of compromise regarding slavery, and the intermittent battles with Native Americans over land and religious practice to the emergence of the West and the great immigration and religious innovation that took place there. In all these cases, sections constructed identities in which race and religion were fundamental and were also significant points of contention. Even today, at the beginning of the 21st century, sectionalism continues with geographic sections still battling for dominance, and cultural sections square off in what is commonly called the culture wars.

The United-States grew spatially after their independence, so historians have to choose between telling a history of what eventually – until today – became the territory of the United-States or focus on what were geographically the U.S. at any moment of their history. Looking from the Pacific coast allows to offer an alternative, by enhancing the distinction between space and territory as defined by the geographers. North America then becomes a space into which imperial formations tried to carve a territory. This perspective offers a way to close the gap between U.S. expansion on the continent and overseas and also allows to compare between the British, Spanish, Mexican and US empires in North America. It also connects settler colonialism and economic imperialism with the Pacific as the new frontier. As such, California set out to be at the same time a place of expansion and investment for the center – with boom and bust – and a place of temptation, of exoticism, which could offer a counter-model, an alternative. For a long time a periphery, California, the far West and the Pacific Coast started to tell central things about what the U.S. were becoming from urban shapes to a more complex color line.

Recent scholarship on the North American West has suggested that kinship mattered more than race in social relations through at least the mid-nineteenth century, which illustrates the longevity of indigenous power in the region. In considering interactions between Chiricahua Apaches and Spaniards in the second half of the eighteenth century, this article demonstrates that kinship was indeed of central importance, but not always as a reflection of Native dominance or in lieu of the influence of other understandings of human difference such as race. Spaniards conflated nuanced knowledge of Apache political divisions and kinship relations with ideas about the innate and unchangeable character of all "barbarous" Indians to justify efforts to subjugate them through a war targeting Chiricahua and other Apache families. Spanish interest in exploiting Native war captives ultimately worked against any fixed racialization of Apache people, however, as the Spaniards argued that Spanish families could serve as key sites through which Natives might finally be Christianized and civilized through labor. For Chiricahua Apaches, meanwhile, flexible family strategies proved their principal means of persistence through the violence and forced migrations of this period as they incorporated refugees, recovered missing kin, and adopted outsiders into new family formations.

Felice L Bedford*( University of Arizona, PO Box 210068, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA), Doron Yacobi, Gary Felix, Federico M Garza:
We report on two of the oldest mitochondrial DNA clusters in existence with Jewish affiliation. Both are in haplogroup T2e1. Four unrelated individuals from the Mexico mtDNA project were found to have the control region mutations that characterize a Sephardic signature previously reported (motif 16114T-16192T within T2e). Full genomic sequencing found the identical coding region mutations as Sephardic individuals which provides genetic evidence for founders of Northern Mexico that were both female and Sephardic Jewish. This is in contrast to a more common finding of European male, but local female founders and additionally lends biological support to anecdotes and historical reports of Crypto-Jewish founding of the Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas regions of Mexico and influx to Southern Texas, USA. The haplotype is nested in an old tree with mutations at positions 2308 and 15499, presently of uncertain geographic origin. The second cluster, a Bulgarian Sephardic founding lineage (9181G within T2e) previously reported, was found here
in a population of largely Americans of European descent, but only among Jewish individuals. The non-synonymous mutation in ATPase 6 was found among both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews from diverse regions of Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, and Romania. Full genomic sequencing found great coding region variability with several haplotypes and suggested a Near East origin at least 3000 years old. This predates the split between Jewish groups, but more recent admixture between Sephardim and Ashkenazim cannot be ruled out. Together the two Jewish-affiliated clusters account for all the genetic distance found in branch T2e1 and much of
T2e. The findings suggest reexamination of the origins of mitochondrial DNA haplogroup T2e as Levantine or early back migration to the Near East. New subclades of T2e are identified.

ABSTRACT  Although Wallace's revitalization movement model has been successfully utilized in scores of ethnographic and ethnohistorical studies of societies throughout the world, revitalization is considerably less well documented in archaeological contexts. An examination of the materiality of revitalization movements affords an opportunity to redress this lack by investigating how material culture creates and constrains revitalization phenomena. In this article, I reconsider the revitalization model through a case study focusing on the archaeology of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, emphasizing the central role of materiality in the formation and mediation of these movements. In doing so, I examine the archaeological signatures of revitalization movements, concluding that they are highly negotiated and heterogeneous phenomena and that the materiality of these episodes cultivates cultural innovation. I also seek to demonstrate that the distinctive types of material culture produced through revitalization are not epiphenomenal but, rather, are crucially constitutive of revitalizing processes.

In recent years, archaeologists have used the term hybridity with increasing frequency to describe and interpret amalgamated forms of material culture.  But do postcolonial notions of hybridity (sensu Bhabha 1994; Hall 1990; Young 1995) differ in any meaningful ways from models of cultural mixture traditionally employed by anthropologists such as syncretism, creolization, and acculturation?  Or is this simply a matter of semantics, citation practices, and the adoption of yet another example of trendy anthropological jargon by archaeologists?  In this chapter I consider the meanings associated with the concept of hybridity, exploring what this term offers for the archaeological interpretation of colonial encounters.  In doing so, I compare and contrast hybridity with acculturation, syncretism, bricolage, creolization, and mestizaje in order to identify the subtly differing connotations of these concepts, as well as highlighting the contributions that postcolonial notions of hybridity offer for contemporary archaeology through a case study from the seventeenth-century Pueblos of the American Southwest.

In 1866, Mark Twain took to the stage, committed to exploit a legend of the Wild West that had all but exhausted its life cycle. The account, celebrating western abilities above eastern arrogance, told of an incident in 1859 when New York journalist Horace Greeley hurried across the Sierra. Inspiring a popular legend, the narrative was told so frequently that people tired of it. Twain recognized that this was an excellent opportunity to bring folklore to the stage and to make it the crux of comedy. In another use of the legend, the story became a means to ridicule Greeley, particularly in his 1872 bid to unseat the popular incumbent president, Ulysses S. Grant. Twain's adaptation of the legend for stage and print provides an early example of what Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey Tolbert recently described as "folkloresque."

2014 ROCKY MOUNTAIN FUR TRADE JOURNAL

http://museumofthemountainman.com/product/2014-rocky-mountain-fur-trade-journal/

William H. Ashley’s Newly Discovered 1826 Fur Trade Journal
    Describes how the diary was found and eventually made its way into the archives of the Campbell House Museum in St. Louis Museum.  Includes the complete diary with transcriptions.  By Dr. Jay H. Buckley

Tie Cutting in the Uinta Mountains of Utah left a unique and temporally changing imprint upon the landscape between 1867 and 1939. This paper analyzes some trends in the architectural changes over two distinct periods in the industry's history.

An entry from Archaeology In America: An Encyclopedia, Vol 2., 2009 covers the basics of the Crow Creek (39BF11) site itself as well as the discovery of the massacre remains found in the fortification ditch surrounding the site. This is a more complete discussion than that in the 1980 Smithsonian magazine article.

Three handwritten newspapers were published in southeastern Iowa near the end of the Iowa Territorial period. The Quarterly Visitor (1844), Domestic Quarterly Review (1844) and the Washington Shark (1854?). Printed newspapers were published in larger towns closer to the Mississippi River, but these papers appeared in small frontier communities with aspirations for growth, yet they lacked local printing presses. Each of the editors had political interests and would serve in local civic positions in the future. All were close to the business life of their young, isolated communities, and may have turned to handwritten papers as one way to improve cultural and economic  conditions on the Iowa frontier.

This research takes a critical look at the interplay of vision and the production of knowledge in the context of cultural constructions of nature and environmental perceptions. The basis for this work is an exploration of the manufacturing process and subject matter in 259 Curt Teich Company postcards of Grand Canyon National Park manufactured from 1936 to 1955. Through a content analysis and interpretation of the postcards, four themes emerge—scenery, vegetation, water, and animals—that reveal the structure of Curt Teich Publishing Company’s representation of the Grand Canyon environment. The company employed a printing technique known as “color embellishment” that allowed the manufacturer to alter the postcards with each reprinting and, in the process, create an edited view of nature at the Grand Canyon. This visual shorthand equated a series of selective and repetitive subjects and locations with ideas of scenic, wild, and grand landscapes. Keywords: environmental perceptions, Grand Canyon, national parks, postcards, Curt Teich, visual representations.

A gang of historians has gunned down the "romantic West." They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.

... ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELDWORK With the help of our fieldschool students, we have completed five years of excavations both at Ludlow and at the CF&1-owned company town of Berwind. ... InBerwind, the streets, foundations, latrines, and trash pits remain visible on the surface. ...

Background: Adverse temperature recording in vaccine's cold chain is a major issue worldwide and this condition is known to compromise the quality of vaccines very rapidly. In Cameroon, with tropical climate, vaccines exposure to abnormal temperatures is very common. This study was conducted to identify factors associated to abnormal temperature recording in cold chain in the North West region.

... ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELDWORK With the help of our fieldschool students, we have completed five years of excavations both at Ludlow and at the CF&1-owned company town of Berwind. ... InBerwind, the streets, foundations, latrines, and trash pits remain visible on the surface. ...

A gang of historians has gunned down the "romantic West." They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.

For three decades following the expedition with Meriwether Lewis for which he is best known, William Clark forged a meritorious public career that contributed even more to the opening of the West: from 1807 to 1838 he served as the U.S. government s most important representative to western Indians. This biography focuses on Clark's tenure as Indian agent, territorial governor, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis.

Drawing on treaty documents and Clark's voluminous papers, Jay H. Buckley analyzes apparent contradictions in Clark's relationship with Indians, fellow bureaucrats, and frontier entrepreneurs. He examines the choices Clark and his contemporaries made in formulating and implementing Indian policies and explores how Clark's paternalism as a slaveholder influenced his approach to dealing with Indians. Buckley also reveals the ambiguities and cross-purposes of Clark's policy making and his responses to such hostilities as the Black Hawk War.

William Clark: Indian Diplomat is the complex story of a sometimes sentimental, yet always pragmatic, imperialist. Buckley gives us a flawed but human hero who, in the realm of Indian affairs, had few equals among American diplomats.

This research takes a critical look at the interplay of vision and the production of knowledge in the context of cultural constructions of nature and environmental perceptions. The basis for this work is an exploration of the manufacturing process and subject matter in  Curt Teich Company postcards of Grand Canyon National Park manufactured from  to . Through a content analysis and interpretation of the postcards, four themes emergescenery, vegetation, water, and animalsthat reveal the structure of Curt Teich Publishing Company's representation of the Grand Canyon environment. The company employed a printing technique known as "color embellishment" that allowed the manufacturer to alter the postcards with each reprinting and, in the process, create an edited view of nature at the Grand Canyon. This visual shorthand equated a series of selective and repetitive subjects and locations with ideas of scenic, wild, and grand landscapes.

Background: Adverse temperature recording in vaccine's cold chain is a major issue worldwide and this condition is known to compromise the quality of vaccines very rapidly. In Cameroon, with tropical climate, vaccines exposure to abnormal temperatures is very common. This study was conducted to identify factors associated to abnormal temperature recording in cold chain in the North West region. Results: A total of 65 vaccinating health facilities were visited for the study from eight health districts. Concerning type of health facility, 48 (73.8%) of the health facilities were governmental facilities. About 50 (76.0%) of the facilities had a functional thermometer. Among the 50 health facilities with functional thermometer, abnormal temperatures were registered in 10 (20%) health facilities during data collection and 12 (24%) in the 2 months preceding collection. Factor significantly associated with abnormal temperature recording was the absence of an alternative power source (OR = 6.5, p = 0.03). Conclusion: The absence of an alternative source of power was significantly associated with abnormal temperature exposure in the 2 months preceding data collection. To improve on the quality of vaccines administered in North West region, each vaccinating health facility must have at least two sources of power supply.