Turner, Limerick, Religion, the West, and America

1
Turner, Limerick, Religion, the West, and America

• Todd M. Kerstetter
• History Department
• TCU
• It can be done!

2
Significance of the West--Old

• Frederick Jackson Turner
• The Significance of the Frontier in American
  History
• first presented 1893
• frontier explains American development
• savagery meets civilization
• free land continuous recession westward
• frontier disappeared by 1890

3
Significance of the West--New

• New Western Historians
• Patricia Limerick, Richard White, Donald Worster,
  and others
• born late 1980s, early 1990s
• see Trails Toward a New Western History
  (Kansas, 1991)
• A Longer, Grimmer, but More Interesting Story,
  Elliott Wests chapter in above

4
Limericks 4 Cs

• Continuity
• Convergence
• Conquest
• Complexity

(Norton, 2000)
5
Limericks characteristics that define the West

• prone to aridity, semiaridity
• Indian reservations, Indians
• borders Mexico
• borders Pacific Ocean
• federal land

• state (U.S.) power
• boom/bust economies
• intentional, commercial mythologizing
• dumping ground
• unsettled aspects of conquest--ongoing

6
Religion and the West

• Mormons, Ghost Dancers, Branch Davidians
• 1850s through 1990s
• Explores limits of freedom and tolerance in the
  West and in the United States

7
LDS/West/America

• 1856 Republican platform pledges to eradicate the
  twin relics of barbarism
• slavery
• polygamy
• 1862 Morrill Antibigamy Act
• 1879 Reynolds v. U.S.
• 1882 Edmunds Act
• 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act
• 1890 Woodruff manifesto
• 1896 Utah state constitution

8
American Indians/West/America

• 1883 Courts of Indian Offenses established
• Active measures should be taken to discourage
  all feasts and dances of the character I have
  mentioned.U.S. Secy. of Interior
• included Sun Dance
• 1890 agents at Lakota reservations called for
  U.S. Army troops to help suppress Ghost Dance
• contributed to Sitting Bulls death
• contributed to Wounded Knee Massacre