Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:14:52.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nativism and Western Myth: The Influence of Nativist Ideas on the American Self-Image

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Bronwen J. Cohen
Bronwen J. Cohen
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his seminal work Virgin Land (1950), Henry Nash Smith depicted the bymbolic meaning that Americans attached to their Western empire during the nineteenth century. The West appealed to the American imagination variously as a possible passage to India, a land to be filled, farmed and civilized and a land to lend territorial grandeur to the existing American nation. But a certain squeamishness pervaded the attitudes of many upper-class Easterners to Western society itself, and only towards die end of the nineteenth century did they begin to show a marked enthusiasm for life in the West, and for their own pioneering origins.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 1974 , pp. 23 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Boatright, Mody, ‘The American Myth Rides the Range’, South West Review, 36 (Summer 1951)Google Scholar; Davis, D. Brion, ‘Ten-Gallon Hero’, American Quarterly (Summer 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fussell, Edwin, Frontier: American Literature and the American West (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Steckmesser, K. L., The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman, University of Oklahoma, 1965)Google Scholar; Lee, Robert E., From West to East. Studies in the Literature of the American West (Urbana, University of Illinois, 1966)Google Scholar; White, G. Edward, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt and Owen Wister (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

2 See Higham, John, Strangers in the Land. Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 (New Brunswick and New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1955).Google Scholar

3 See Haller, J. S., Science and American Concepts of Race 1859–1900, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Maryland, 1970.Google Scholar

4 See Higham, op. cit. and Gossett, T., Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

5 Smith, R. Mayo, ‘The Control of Immigration’, Political Science Quarterly (09 1888), p. 412Google Scholar; Aldrich, T., ‘The Unguarded Gates’, Atlantic Monthly, 1892, p. 57.Google Scholar

6 Patten, James, quoted by Barbara Miller Solomon in Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 126Google Scholar; Walker, Francis, ‘The Restriction of Immigration’, Atlantic Monthly (06 1896), p. 823.Google Scholar

7 The Baltimore News and Review of Reviews, quoted by J. Higham, op. cit., pp. 92–4.

8 Chicago Record—Herald, 25 September 1901Google Scholar. Quoted by Saveth, E., American Historians and European Immigrants 1875–1925 (New York, Russell and Russell, 1948), p. 129.Google Scholar

9 Walker, F., ‘Immigration and Degradation’, Forum, 9 (1891), 644Google Scholar; and his ‘Restriction of Immigration’, Atlantic Monthly (June 1896), p. 828.Google Scholar

10 See E. Saveth, op. cit.

11 See the listings on Australia in Poole, W. F., An Index to Periodical Literature.Google Scholar

12 Parkin, George in Century, 41 (1890–1891), 607.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, ‘Which Shall Dominate, Saxon or Slav?’, North American Review, 166 (1898)Google Scholar; ‘English Speaking Brotherhood’, North American Review, 167 (1898)Google Scholar; and an article by Lord Beresford on ‘The Future of the Anglo-Saxon Race’, North American Review, 171 (1900)Google Scholar. On the loss of confidence of New Englanders, see Barbara Miller Solomon, op. cit., passim.

14 See Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944) (Boston, Beacon Press, 1955), ch. 9Google Scholar; and Boller, Paul Jr, American Thought in Transition: The Impact of Evolutionary Naturalism, 1865–1900 (Chicago, Rand McNally and Co., 1969), ch. 9.Google Scholar

15 Strong, Josiah, Our Country: Its Possible Future and its Present Crisis (1886), Harvard University Press edition, 1963, p. 39Google Scholar; ‘Two Republics or One’, North American Review, 162 (1896), 509.Google Scholar

Examples of the increasing interest of historians are Shaler, Nathaniel, History of Kentucky (1885)Google Scholar; Shaler, N., ed., History of the United States (1894)Google Scholar; Brockett, L. P., Our Western Empire (1881)Google Scholar; and, among the most famous, Roosevelt, Theodore's six-volume work, The Winning of the West (1889–1896)Google Scholar. A survey of listings in Poole's Index to Periodical Literature under the headings of the West, specific Western regions, ranch, cowboys, frontier, prairies, etc., reveals the tremendous growth in coverage of these topics by American journals towards the rum of the century.

16 Historians began to look more closely at the Spanish American contribution to American history after the turn of the century, beginning with the pioneer work of Herbert Eugene Bolton. See Hanke, L., Do the Americans Have a Common History? A Critique of the Bolton Theory (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1964)Google Scholar. See Durham, P. and Jones, E. L., The Negro CowboysGoogle Scholar, on the absence of Negroes from Western mythology. Recent literature concerned with European immigrants in the West includes Rolle, Andrew, The Immigrant Unpraised: Italian Adventures and Colonists in an Expanding America (Norman, University of Oklahoma, 1968)Google Scholar; Shepperson, Wilbur S., Restless Strangers: Nevada's Immigrants and their Interpreters (Reno, University of Nevada, 1970)Google Scholar; Jordan, Terry G., ‘The German Settlement of Texas after 1865’, Southwestern Historical Quarterly (10 1969)Google Scholar; Douglas, W. A., ‘The Basques of the American West: Preliminary historical perspectives’, Nevada Historical Quarterly, 13 (Winter 1970).Google Scholar

17 Quoted by Ostrander, G. M. in Cushing Strout, ed., Intellectual History in America, vol. 2, From Darwin to Niebuhr (New York, Harper and Row, 1968), p. 41.Google Scholar

18 ‘A Colorado Round Up’, Lippincott's Magazine, 28 (1881), 62.Google Scholar

19 Roosevelt, T., The Winning of the West, vol. 1 (1889), 1903 edition (New York, Putman & Sons), p. 51.Google Scholar

20 Trent, W. P. in Forum, 21 (1896), 570–1Google Scholar; Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 22.

21 ‘Mr. Goldwin Smith's Views on our Political History’, Forum, 16 (1893), 497.Google Scholar

22 See Turner, F. J., ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ in his The Frontier in American History (1920)Google Scholar, 1967 edition (Holt. Rinehart and Winston), p. 1n.

23 See Saveth, op. cit., p. 140.

24 Turner, op. cit., pp. 2–3.

25 G. M. Ostrander, op. cit., p. 43.

26 Quoted by Ostrander, op. cit., p. 45.

27 See Turner, , The Frontier in American History, pp. 316, 327, 300.Google Scholar

28 See Saveth, op. cit., pp. 129–30.

29 Turner, op. cit., Foreword by Ray Allen Billington, p. ix.

30 Roosevelt, op. cit., pp. 126–7.

31 Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land (New York, Alfred Knopf [Vintage Books]), p. 122.Google Scholar

32 Smith, op. cit., p. 125.

33 Zogbaum, Rufus Fairchild, ‘A Day's Drive with Montana Cowboys’, Harpers Magazine, 71 (1885), 190.Google Scholar

34 Roosevelt, T., ‘In Cowboy Land’, The Century, 24 (1893), 276Google Scholar, an article based on a chapter in his earlier book, Ranch Life and Hunting Trail (1888).Google Scholar

35 ‘A Rodeo at Los Ojos’, Harpers Monthly, 88 (March 1894), 523–4.Google Scholar

36 Wister, Owen, The Virginian (1902) (New York, MacMillan, 1928), p. 17.Google Scholar

37 See White, op. cit., for perceptive analysis of some aspects of the response to social change in the East and its effect on attitudes to the West, specifically of three influential purveyors of Western imagery in this period – Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Remington and Owen Wister. White also notes their concern to depict an Anglo-Saxon West, but does not pursue this or link it with nativism.

38 Gossett, Thomas, Race: The History of an Idea in America, p. 208Google Scholar; Davis, D. Brion, ‘Ten-Gallon Hero’, p. 116.Google Scholar

39 Wister, O., ‘At the Sign of the Last Chance’, in When West Was West (New York, Macmillan, 1928), p. 215.Google Scholar

40 Remington, op. cit., p. 523.

41 Wister, , ‘La Tinaja Bonita’, in Red Men and White (1895) (New York, MacMillan, 1928), p. 215.Google Scholar

42 Norris, F., The Octopus: A Story of California (New York, Doubleday, 1904), p. 502Google Scholar. See also p. 20.

43 See ‘The American Cowboy’, Harpers Monthly, 73 (1886)Google Scholar, for an account of the origins of ranching where the Spanish American experience is not even mentioned.

44 Wister, , ‘The Evolution of the Cowpuncher’ (1895) in Red Men and White, p. xxxii.Google Scholar

45 Wister, op. cit., pp. xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxix. See also Wister, , ‘The Right Honorable Strawberries’, in When West Was WestGoogle Scholar, for a variation on the theme of the affinity of the English aristocrat for life in the West.

46 Quoted by Solomon, B. M., Ancestors and Immigrants, p. 170.Google Scholar

47 Wister, , ‘The Evolution of the Cowpuncher’, pp. xxiii–xxiv.Google Scholar

48 Quoted by G. E. White, op. cit., p. 109.

49 See Solomon, op. cit., p. 108.

50 Ibid.

51 Series of articles on ‘The Control of Immigration’, Political Science Quarterly (March–September 1888), pp. 51, 69, 414.Google Scholar

52 ‘The Control of Immigration’, pp. 217, 218.Google Scholar

53 Roosevelt, , The Winning of the West, vol. 1, p. 123Google Scholar; Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, pp. 7 and 83Google Scholar; ‘In Cowboy Land’, p. 280.Google Scholar

54 Harpers Monthly, 109 (1904), 200Google Scholar; Atlantic Monthly, 79 (1897), 609.Google Scholar

55 Something similar to this seems to have occurred in Argentina, a country which, in approxi mately the same period, faced the impact of rapid social and economic change, and an even greater relative influx of immigrants than the United States. The image of the ‘gaucho’ underwent a transformation similar to that of the American cowboy, and the cult of the ‘gaucho’ seems to have been used to contrast traditional Creole values with those of the immigrants and to depict the immigrant as inept and unsuited for an idealized, vanishing epoch of Argentinian history. This can be seen in José Hernández' famous and influential poem, Martin Fierro. See also Onega, Gladys S., La Inmigración en la Literatura Argentina (Buenos Aires, Editorial Galerna, 1969), esp. pp. 68–70Google Scholar; and Solberg, Carl, Immigration and Nationalism. Argentina and Chile 1890–1914 (Austin and London, University of Texas, 1970), pp. 154–6.Google Scholar

56 I would like to thank Dr Klaus J. Hansen, of Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, for his criticisms and comments on an earlier draft of this paper.