Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West by Richard W. Etulain

Abstract

REVIEWS BEYONDTHEMISSOURI: THE STORYOF THEAMERICAN WEST byRichard W. Etulain University ofOklahoma Press, Norman, 2006. Illustrations, photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 479 pages. $39-95 cloth, $24.95 paper. Congratulations toemeritusProfessorRichard Etulain of the University ofNew Mexico on the publication of this much welcomed surveyof western American history.The book is a cap stone achievement on the part of a historian whose career began some four decades ago in the Pacific Northwest. During those years, Etulain has distinguished himself as a bibliog rapher ofwestern history and a scholar of the West's literatureand popular culture. Beyond the Missouri rests on the rich scholarship of a historian who has read virtually everything in the field. In fifteen chapters, the author embarks on a journey that features Spanish incursions into the southwestern borderlands and American advances during the early nineteenth century into the landswest of the Missouri. The storycontinues to theend of the twentieth century,depicting the challenges of modern urban lifethat came to dominate the American West. Concerned lesswith theprocess ofwestern movement (that is,trails to the West), this sur veypresents an overview of a place undergoing change over centuries of time. The chapters steera judicious course between a triumphant recitation of American western expansion and theNew Western History's darker portrayal of that narrative as conquest, destruction of Natives, and environmental exploitation. Today's college undergraduates, seemingly unmoved by strident issues of their time, may appreciate therestraintandmoderation of this text in regard to the longstanding issues of the NewWestern History,which largelygrewout of the social and anti-warprotests inthe 1960sand early 1970s.Yet, all is not restraint.Referring to the fate of theCalifornia Indians, Etulain pulls no punches when he notes: "Nowhere in theAmerican West was the storyof Indian decimation more bloody and brutal than in mid-nineteenth-century California" (p. 165). A major strengthof this storyof theAmeri canWest lies in the unapologetic treatment of religion. Catholic priests and Protestant preachers appear on the overland trails and stake out their missions in thePacific North west.Mormons face environmental challenges in theGreat Basin and strugglewith the fed eral government over polygamy but finally capitulate to the "Americanization" of their commonwealth with a ban on plural mar riage (p. 356). Etulain rejects Turnerian ideas about thewestern experience having served to democratize religion in the West. He notes the persistence of doctrine, hierarchy, and tradi tion in the "instant cities" of the West and the raucous social lifethat militated against church membership in remote frontier locales (p. 173). In the twentiethcentury,fieryProtestant fundamentalist preachers faced the challenge ofmodernism. Reverend Charles Shuler and Amee Semple McPherson attracted large followings of transplantedMidwesterners in southern California. In Seattle, Presbyterian minister Mark Mathews, although backing progressive reform in the city,defended strict Presbyterian doctrine against thechallenges of modern science,especially inanthropology and psychology.At thebeginning of thetwenty-first century, rising numbers of evangelical/fun damentalist andMormon converts indicate a search for an antidote to anomie and lack of community in the modern West. Etulain's livelywriting style does not shy away from well-worn aphorisms. In reference to theChinese and Irish laborerswho built the transcontinental railroad,he notes that"theCP was built on tea and theUP on whiskey" and 3i8 OHQ vol. 108, no. 2 frequently labels San Francisco as "Baghdad by the Bay" (pp. 205,166). Moving on to the mid-twentieth century, he focuses on theRosie theRiveter image in West Coast war produc tion and follows theGerald K. Nash's thesis that World War II transformed the West into amodern societywith fulleconomic member ship inthenation. Continued economic growth afterthewar tookmany formsbut, in the case of gambling economies, the author does not hesitate to ask: What are the social costs of Las Vegas and by extension Indian gaming thatnow prevails under special legislation on reserva tions throughout the West? Finally, this storyoffersamanageable his toriography ofwestern history that isneither triumphantlyTurneresque frontier historynor militantly criticalNew Western History. The discussion takes readers through the West of Frederick JacksonTurner's ideas in the 1890s, theurban critique of Turner in the 1930s, the RayAllen Billington neo-Turnerian consensus and revivalduring theCold War in the 1950s, and to the criticalNew Western Historians of the late twentieth century.All in all, Beyond the Missouri presents...