The decades following the end of the Civil War in 1865 saw the emergence of the United States as the world’s leading industrial power. The railroad became a key symbol of industrialization, particularly in the American West and Southwest. As optimistic and forward thinking as many white Americans were towards their new destiny at the close of the nineteenth century, they longed for a simpler, spiritual place in harmony with nature. Many Americans became interested in patterns of life other than their own, particularly the Native American, who had recently been vanquished in the West in the name of white “civilization.” This is the focus of filmmaker T. C. McLuhan's book Dream Tracks: The Railroad and the American Indian, 1890-1930. Dream Tracks shows the railroads’ commoditization of Native American culture in the Southwest. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway was one of these railroads. In 1896, E. P. Ripley, the Santa Fe’s new president, announced the company’s focus on the natural heritage of America, the wilderness, and Indians in the face of bankruptcy and repairing the railroad’s image as a symbol of the abuses of late 19th century capitalism. During the 1890s the company brought many painters to the Southwest to re-create the picturesque scenery as a way to attract tourists. Painters and writers from all over of the United States traveled to Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico and formed an artist colony there, attracted to the Southwest for its beautiful landscapes and exotic blend of Native American and Hispanic cultures. In 1907 the Santa Fe Railway introduced a calendar alerting the public to a romantic Indian culture in the Southwest. The art portrayed Indians as living in a preindustrial society with freedom and harmony with nature. What is interesting is how famed restaurateur and businessman Fred Harvey (of the Fred Harvey Company) worked closely with the Santa Fe Railway. Harvey’s relationship with the company began in 1876, when he opened Harvey House, his first hotel, at Florence, Kansas, on the railroad line. Harvey opened restaurants along the railroad and was not charged rent and started a number of hotels, including the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe and the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon. In these ways, Harvey (in conjunction with the Santa Fe Railway) helped “brand the Southwest.” The greatest strength of McLuhan's book is its extensive collection of art and photography of Native Americans from the William E. Kopplin Collection. Artists distorted photos by the use of hand-coloring. By adding color to the monochrome image, the picture looked more real, heightening the viewer’s perception. Until modern color photography became available for the general public in the late 1930s, hand-colorists satisfied the demand for colored photos (many artists were portrait painters who were out of work as a result of photography). These photographers captured many Southwest Native American customs, including the Hopi Snake Dance ceremony. Interestingly, many Hopi Indians refused to be photographed, believing that it would bring bad luck, shorten their lives, and ultimately lead to certain death. Her book’s images are excellent historical sources that display not only Native American life in the Southwest but how white Americans distorted Indian culture to reflect their own romantic views. McLuhan, T. C., Dream Tracks: The Railroad and the American Indian, 1890-1930. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1985.
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Today one hears about global warming, or climate change, from the entire media on a regular basis. But we often wonder how climate change will impact us where we live. In A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, William deBuys (Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range) offers a scary forecast of what the American Southwest might look like under climate change as temperatures rise and water dries up. According to deBuys, the Southwest is likely to bear the brunt of future global environmental change in the United States. In 2012 I met deBuys at a book-signing event for A Great Aridness in Flagstaff, Arizona. He was as sincere in person as the arguments he put forward in his book. What makes A Great Aridness intriguing is how deBuys shows that climate change is already changing the Southwest. Rising temperatures bring insects and fire. Three of the worst wildfires in the region occurred in the early 21st century. In 2000, after an exceptionally dry spring, the Cerro Grande Fire partly engulfed Los Alamos, New Mexico, leaving 43,000 acres charred. Two years later, in the Mogollon Plateau of central Arizona, the Rodeo-Chediski blaze burned 468,638 acres. And in 2011, the Wallow Fire, the largest fire in Arizona history, threatened Show Low and several communities before it was extinguished, burning 538,409 acres (841 square miles). These fires are more explosive due to the growth of fuel from underbrush accumulated by years of the U.S. Forest Service suppressing fire. Drought and bark beetles have taken their toll in the forests of Arizona and New Mexico; in 2003 die-offs in the two states totaled over twice the size of Delaware. Under warm conditions, beetles start their reproductive cycle earlier in the spring. As winters remain mild, beetles and other invasive insects continue to grow in number, destroy trees, and threaten species like the red squirrel and the Mexican spotted owl that depend on spruce trees for habitat. Temperatures are already rising across the Southwest. For example, in Phoenix, Arizona prior to 1945, overnight low temperatures at 90° Fahrenheit were unheard of. However, with the dramatic population rise in the Sunbelt after World War II, overnight lows have regularly reached 90°F as concrete (from rapid urban growth) absorbs heat. The drought in the early 2000s was hotter by 1-1.5° Celsius than the previous 1950s drought that struck the region. Climate computer models indicate at least a 4°C increase in temperatures over the course of the 21st century. Critics would argue that climate change predictions are hypothetical, that the Southwest has a long history of droughts before the Industrial Revolution began, and that current changes are regional in scale. True, a major drought in the late thirteenth century is believed to have driven the Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblan) civilization out. However, when global changes are added into the equation, the picture in the Southwest becomes frightening. Sea levels continue to rise at about 3.3 millimeters per year (nearly double the rate for the majority of the 20th century). In 2011, the same year A Great Aridness was published, California entered one of its worst droughts in history, bringing fires and water shortages. Indeed, climate change will put more strain on the already-stressed Colorado River, which 30 million people currently depend on for their needs. A Great Aridness is a wake-up call for action on climate change based on a study of the Southwest. William deBuys deftly puts the Southwest under a microscope using evidence that is hard to ignore. Every corner of the earth will be affected in some way by climate change. The American Southwest is no exception. DeBuys, Wiliam Eno, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. The collapse of the Anasazi civilization is perhaps the greatest “unsolved mystery” of the prehistoric Southwest. It is also the focus of Craig Childs’ book House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest. The word Anasazi comes from the Navajo language meaning “enemy ancestors,” not “old ones,” as it was once thought. The Hopi Indians, who are descendants of the Anasazi people, prefer the term “Hisatsinom” or “Ancestral Puebloan.” Childs explores this and other issues in Southwest archaeology concerning the disappearance of the Anasazi in the thirteenth century. House of Rain reads like a travel guide, a mystery, and an archaeology book. Childs explores ancient ruins and kivas throughout the entire Colorado Plateau region, including Chaco Canyon in New Mexico (the cultural center of the Anasazi) and Mesa Verde in Colorado, and even northern Mexico. The book is more interesting with descriptions of his adventures, such as wading through floods in canyons or other adverse weather conditions. Along the way Childs postulates on various archaeological theories for the decline of the Anasazi. It has been well established that a long drought in the Southwest beginning in the late thirteenth century drove these people out. But other theories abound. For example, Childs explores the validity of archaeologist Stephen H. Lekson’s theory of a “Chaco Meridian,” a connection between the peoples of Chaco Canyon, Aztec, New Mexico, and Paquimé (or Casas Grandes) in northern Mexico that explains phenomena including the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo Indian mythology, and the rise of kachina ceremonies. Overall, House of Rain is an excellent introduction to the collapse of the Anasazi population for the general reader. What makes this subject fascinating is how researchers have to rely on archaeological evidence like pottery shards and human remains for their answers, not the written record. Childs, Craig, House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2007. David J. Weber (1940-2010) was one of the premier historians of the Spanish borderlands. I had the honor of meeting him in 2001 as a graduate history student at the University of San Diego. Weber sought to dispel the notion that United States history started entirely with the thirteen English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The Spanish Frontier in North America is a narrative of Spanish colonial history from California to Florida between 1513, when explorer Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida, to 1821, when Mexico won independence from Spain and control of the Southwest. Although this book is a complete history of Spain’s empire in the American Southwest and Southeast, much of it focuses on Spanish relations with Native Americans. For years, the Spanish have been portrayed as uniquely cruel under the “Black Legend.” Instead, Weber argues that Spanish behavior was shaped by the 15th century Reconquista (“reconquest”), when the “pagan” Moors and Jews were driven out of Catholic Spain. In the Spanish mission system in the Southwest, Spanish Franciscans exploited Indian labor. However, harsh treatment of Native Americans was not confined to the Spanish; for example, as Weber points out, during the early years of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia the English committed numerous atrocities against Indians. Weber offers an excellent analysis of the causes and events of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 in New Mexico against Spanish rule. After the Spanish restored order in New Mexico they fought together with Pueblo Indians against attacks from Apache and Navajo Indians and other threats. One of the most interesting aspects of Weber’s book is the discussion of human and environmental transformations of Spain’s presence in North America. Throughout North America the Spanish introduced domestic animals, including sheep in the Southwest. Sheep play an important role in Navajo culture where wool is woven into textiles. Horses completely transformed the Apache, Comanche, and Indians of the Great Plains into powerful societies and brought further ecological changes. Grazing animals transported Old World grasses and the Spanish brought new plants, including watermelon and peach seeds. The presence of the Spanish mission system in California and throughout the Southwest is testimony of the Spanish period. Many excellent titles have been published about Spanish borderlands history since Weber’s book, including James Brooks’ Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002) and Juliana Barr’s Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (2007). (Both titles are available at Cline Library). More scholarship will likely build upon Weber’s fine work. Weber, David J., The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. Western American history is dominated by violence toward Native Americans, most notably the Bear River Massacre of the Shoshone Indians of 1863, the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyennes and Arapahos in 1864, and the Wounded Knee Massacre of the Lakotas in 1890. However, one massacre that has not attracted much attention until recently is the 1871 Camp Grant massacre in the Arizona borderlands. Unlike the other incidents, there were more sides than whites and Indians. On April 30, 1871, a force of Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, and Tohono O’odham Indians attacked a camp of Apache Indians near Tucson, killing scores of women and children. All of the parties involved had a history of conflict with the Apaches. Jacoby (Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation) deftly presents each side’s historical point of view of the events, going back, in the case of the Tohono O’odham, to the first Indian encounters with the Spanish in the late seventeenth century. The area where the Camp Grant massacre occurred, part of the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, remained a tenuous borderland governed by three separate entities (Spanish, Mexican, American). After the purchase the United States initiated conflicts with the Apaches (who had long fought the Tohono O’odham and the Spanish) during the Civil War. Following the war, the federal government launched its “Peace Policy” towards Indians, which incensed many white Arizona settlers, leading to the 1871 massacre. Jacoby provides many insights into each side’s story. For example, the Apache repeatedly stole free-ranging Spanish livestock (a source of conflict), which the Indians did not view as private property and instead saw as wild game. Although Americans believed the Apache to be one unit (as the Indians called themselves “The People,” or Nnee), they were actually a group of distinct communities possessing no formal organization. What is interesting is the interpretations of the events by each side. Many 19th-century white Arizonans refused to call the 1871 events a “massacre” and defended the killings as necessary to usher in a new era of “civilization.” The Mexican Americans and Tohono O'odham Indians had their own separate narratives as well. Shadows at Dawn is a very well written book with a clear message that there are many voices in history with different stories needing to be heard. The same applies with the peoples of the Southwest and the Camp Grant massacre. Jacoby, Karl, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. |
CategoriesAuthorTom Schmidt lives in Prescott Valley, AZ. Archives
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