Regionalism and the Humanities

14. Imagining Place: Nebraska Territory, 1854–1867

14. Imagining Place Nebraska Territory, 1854–1867 kurt e. kinbacher Nebraska Territory became a legal entity on May 30, 1854. Politically connected to Kansas Territory by a desperate maneuver to settle the national sectional debate, it emerged as a new field of opportunity for a vibrant and mobile population. The Americans who massed on the Iowa border waiting to take possession of the latest open property had little first-hand (or even accurate second-hand) information on the land they were about to claim. Despite this geographic challenge, many believed their fortunes awaited them. As an early statesman, Merrill H. Clark noted, “No one can comprehend the vast wealth of Nebraska, or realize the proud position she is destined to occupy in the history of the world.”1 When considering region, historian Dan Flores suggests that “speci fic human cultures and specific landscapes” often intertwine to create distinctive places.2 With this in mind, human imagination and development in early Nebraska were dominated by two symbiotic forces. The territory was shaped, in part, by mid-nineteenth-century farmers and town builders who adapted their imported cultures to fit the demands of a vast grassland. Simultaneously, the same players reenvisioned and then altered these prairies to meet familiar sensibilities. In both cases, settlers “conceived of their whole history of westward migration as one of continual progress,” a concept immortalized on the 252 pl ace is political great Territorial Seal and reiterated by early legislators who praised the “industrious and enterprising pioneers” who came to “better their condition.”3 In doing so—in large part by establishing market economies and reproducing familiar social structures—they brought Nebraska to statehood in just over a dozen years, a feat accomplished only by Kansas, Oregon, and Nevada during the 1860s. The Great Plains—home of Buffalo Bill, Crazy Horse, and the long cattle drive—emerged in the American consciousness as the very heart of the West during the late nineteenth century. Fin de siècle scholars, most notably historian Frederick Jackson Turner, even celebrated the Plains as the last frontier. Revolutionizing his field of study, Turner envisioned American movement across the continent as the force that separated the United States “from the influence of Europe.” Farmers— the main players in a grand process—grappled with and then settled the “wilderness.” Their movements from civilization into barbarism and back again endowed noble American citizens with the traits of “individualism, democracy, and nationalism.”4 Four decades later, Walter Prescott Webb extended this argument by suggesting that the “Great Plains have bent and molded Anglo-American life, have destroyed traditions, and have influenced institutions.” The environment was the mechanism of this change as the flat, subhumid , and treeless Plains created an institutional fault line. As American agriculturists entered the region, they were forced to construct new establishments in accordance with physical conditions.5 Enthralled with the myth of the American yeoman, Turner and Webb assumed that agriculture and rural landholding were the basis of development on the Great Plains. Writing barely a generation after Webb, James C. Malin argued that the “actual settler” running the “family size farm” was part of a social myth “more closely associated with propaganda than with history.” He suggested that by 1854 a “machine civilization broke down local self sufficiency” and brought Plains farmers into a world economy.6 By the late twentieth century, many influential scholars contended that because outlets for farm produce were vital to growth, “nucleated settlements at the edge of the frontier on or near the best routes of transportation,” Imagining Place 253 were the true engines of economic growth.7 In many instances, cities preceded farms and became “the principle colonizing agent of the western landscape.”8 Despite changing interpretations and ample criticisms, the works of Turner and Webb remain remarkably influential, as scholars alternately condemn their theses or dedicate their own work in their memory. Still, most agree that their emphasis on place at the expense of culture was grossly overstated. Currently, scholars attempt to find balance between environmental and cultural forces. Geographer Edward Soja, for instance, argues that “our actions and thoughts shape the spaces around us,” but at the same time, “spaces and places within which we live also shape our actions and thoughts.”9 The options for utilizing a particular place have limits, however, as human imagination is not always pliant. Frequently, “material and mental barriers...