In this Book

Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West

Book
By Jason E. Pierce
2016
summary

The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversity in the region. In Making the White Man’s West, author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. Using a nuanced theory of historical “whiteness,” he examines why and how Anglo-Americans dominated the region for a 120-year period.

In the early nineteenth century, critics like Zebulon Pike and Washington Irving viewed the West as a “dumping ground” for free blacks and Native Americans, a place where they could be segregated from the white communities east of the Mississippi River. But as immigrant populations and industrialization took hold in the East, white Americans began to view the West as a “refuge for real whites.” The West had the most diverse population in the nation with substantial numbers of American Indians, Hispanics, and Asians, but Anglo-Americans could control these mostly disenfranchised peoples and enjoy the privileges of power while celebrating their presence as providing a unique regional character. From this came the belief in a White Man’s West, a place ideally suited for “real” Americans in the face of changing world.

The first comprehensive study to examine the construction of white racial identity in the West, Making the White Man’s West shows how these two visions of the West—as a racially diverse holding cell and a white refuge—shaped the history of the region and influenced a variety of contemporary social issues in the West today.

Table of Contents

Cover

Cover

Making the White Man’s West Whiteness and the Creation of the American West 2016

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

pp. vii-viii

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

pp. ix-xviii

Making the White Man’s West Whiteness and the Creation of the American West 2016

Acknowledgments

pp. xix-xxii

Contents

A Note on Terminology

pp. xxiii-2

Preface

Introduction: Whiteness and the Making of the American West

pp. 3-26

Part I. From Dumping Ground to Refuge: Imagining the White Man’s West, 1803–1924

Acknowledgments

1. “For Its Incorporation in Our Union”: The Louisiana Territory and the Conundrum of Western Expansion

pp. 29-50

A Note on Terminology

9781607323969_0009

2. A Climate of Failure or One “Unrivaled, Perhaps, in the World”: Fear and Health in the West

pp. 51-64

3. “The Ablest and Most Valuable Fly Rapidly Westward”: Climate, Racial Vigor, and the Advancement of the West, 1860–1900

pp. 65-94

Introduction: Whiteness and the Making of the American West

Part I: From Dumping Ground to Refuge

4. Indians Not Immigrants: Charles Fletcher Lummis, Frank Bird Linderman, and the Complexities of Race and the Complexities of Race and Ethnicity in America

pp. 95-120

1 “For Its Incorporation in Our Union”: The Louisiana Territory and the Conundrum of Western Expansion

Part II: Creating and Defending the White Man’s West

2 A Climate of Failure or One “Unrivaled, Perhaps, in the World”: Fear and Health in the West

5. The Politics of Whiteness and Western Expansion, 1848–80

pp. 123-150

6. “Our Climate and Soil Is Completely Adapted to Their Customs”: Whiteness, Railroad Promotion, and the Settlement of the Great Plains

pp. 151-178

3 “The Ablest and Most Valuable Fly Rapidly Westward”: Climate, Racial Vigor, and the Advancement of the West, 1860–1900

7. Unwelcome Saints: Whiteness, Mormons, and the Limits of Success

pp. 179-208

4 Indians Not Immigrants: Charles Fletcher Lummis, Frank Bird Linderman, and the Complexities of Race and Ethnicity in America

Part II: Creating and Defending the White Man’s West

8. Enforcing the White Man’s West through Violence in Texas, California, and Beyond

pp. 209-246

Conclusion: The Limits and Limitations of Whiteness

pp. 247-262

5 The Politics of Whiteness and Western Expansion, 1848–80

6 “Our Climate and Soil Is Completely Adapted to Their Customs”: Whiteness, Railroad Promotion, and the Settlement of the Great Plains

Bibliography

pp. 263-280

Index

pp. 281-296

7 Unwelcome Saints: Whiteness, Mormons, and the Limits of Success

8 Enforcing the White Man’s West through Violence in Texas, California, and Beyond

Conclusion: The Limits and Limitations of Whiteness

Bibliography

Index

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