The Mormons As a Theme in Western Historical Writing

Abstract

A MONG recent criticisms of historical writing about the West, one of the most frequent has been that too often western history deals only with surface appearances. The accusation is that historians have been content to limit themselves to narrative or simple description rather than to seek to achieve by analysis and interpretation fundamental explanations that would fully satisfy the sophisticated reader. A further protest has been that too much writing deals only with isolated episodes, especially the dramatic ones, rather than with meaningful patterns. That there must be some substance to these complaints is suggested by the undergraduate nickname for courses in western history: Cowboys and Indians. In attempts to meet such criticisms some historians have launched upon the laborious enterprise of erecting a whole new conceptual framework into which the separate pieces of western history might be fitted, while others have sought to revise the frontier hypothesis in such a way as to correct all its known deficiencies without destroying the greatest single value of the original hypothesis, which was that it gave unity and meaning to a remarkably varied spectrum of researches. Such efforts have the obvious appeal of promising a quick achievement of comprehensiveness, with at least a semblance of meaning, but they leave one wondering whether the current state of the historical art justifies this endeavor to carry out a needed reform by a single giant step. An alternative that is less dramatic but more in consonance with the limitations of our present knowledge is to take up, one by one, some of the major topics in western history and subject them to a reflective examination. Out of the insights gained from scrutinizing a series of these individual major topics, presently it may become possible to discern new interrelationships between them, new and deeper explanations, and ultimately a new synthesis of western history as a whole.