Abstract
Abstract This chapter takes as its vantage point Chimney Rock, one of the signature landmarks along what became the principal overland trail across the Great Plains and to the Pacific Slope during the 1840s and 1850s. Although circled covered wagons, surrounded by marauding Indians on horseback, became a staple scene in nineteenth-century paintings and twentieth-century motion pictures, those images mislead about relations between American emigrants and Plains Indians. Through the 1840s, peace generally prevailed on the trail, and trade, if not friendship, linked Americans heading west and the Indians through whose countries they traveled. The onset of the California Gold Rush multiplied the number of Americans on the trail and brought an increased presence of the United States military to the Great Plains, which put pressure on that peace. Still, it was the conflicts between “Mormons” and those they called “Gentiles” that most threatened to erupt into a full-scale war.
Published Version
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