By H.W. Brands
Read Dreams of El Dorado for a picture of the American West. Read it to understand the political mind of Thomas Jefferson. Read it to stand in the shadow of Joseph Meeks. Read it to feel the tenacious spirit of the early settlers. And read it to discern the diabolical depths of self-deception and racism to which some stooped to claim their piece of the American dream. But most of all read it to understand the dream:
The West had no monopoly on American dreaming. The entire American experiment in democracy was founded on a dream that ordinary people could govern themselves. And every immigrant to America came chasing a dream. But Western dreams were often larger, because the West was larger, and because for a long time was largely unknown. In the American mind, the West was not so much a place as a condition; it was the blank spot on the map upon which grand dreams were projected. (p. 480)
Dreams of El Dorado tells the story of those dreams and the bitter effort to achieve them. It is lessons on global economics (fur trade), manifest destiny, and racial injustice. It is the power of gold to fuel greed and accelerate the industrial revolution. It is the indomitable spirit of people in general and the American spirit in particular. It is Louis and Clark, Sam Houston and the Alamo, Crazyhorse and Custer, cowboys and the industrial revolution. It is Texas fighting for independence – and winning, and the Native American fighting to maintain independence – and losing.
Dreams of El Dorado is a portrait of the American West, a philosophy of frontier expansion, and a sobering commentary on a fantastic story: “The indigenous people had lost; the invaders had won.” (p. 44)
H.W. Brands provides plenty of political and historical analyses in this text. As he does he will also acquaint you with the relentless spirit of frontier people: British, American, and Native Indians. Minus Instagram (the book does provide a few early black and white photos) we are treated to the power of description – and I think that is good for us. This from the Lewis and Clark expedition:
I had proceeded on this course about two miles with Goodrich at some distance behind me when my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water, and advancing a little further I saw the spray arise above the plain like a column of smoke . . . I hurried down the hill which was about 200 feet high and difficult of access, to gaze on the sublimely grand spectacle. I took my position at the top of some rocks about 20 feet high opposite the center of the falls. This chain of rocks appear once to have formed a part of those over which the waters tumbled, but in the course of time has been separated from it to the distance of 150 yards lying parallel to it and forming an abutment against which the water after falling over the precipice beats with great fury.” The smooth sheet of water at the top of the falls became a howling maelstrom at the bottom. “The irregular and somewhat projecting rock below receives the water in its passage down and breaks it into a perfect white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment. . . . The water after descending strikes against the abutment before mentioned or that on which I stand and seems to reverberate, and being met by the more impetuous current they roll and swell into half-formed billows of great height which rise and again disappear in an instant. 28-29
I appreciate Brands’ ability to live in the tension of chronicler, story-teller, and historical analyzer. He captures the spirit of the West and the people who sought to subdue it even while providing helpful political background, such as his treatment of Jefferson.
Brands notes, “dreams of the West warped the views and even the principles of a person who could be reasonable on most other subjects. Jefferson had turned one political somersault to justify purchasing Louisiana, another to launch the federal government on a career supporting scientific research; in this third cartwheel he reversed his course on trade to become its most aggressive advocate." (p. 41) Jefferson’s Western gamble sent explorers and bolstered trappers.
Where trappers blazed trails, frontier settler followed, who in turn were followed by the missionary and even more emigrants in search of the better life. All this brought change, but it was the railroad that changed the face of the American West in ways that emigrant wagons could not. The railroad tracks were fixed for all time, apparently. They disrupted the movement of the Buffalo, upon which the plains people depended. Towns that sprang up did so on Indian territory. As in many instances of the Western century dreams collided.
Dreams -- their making and breaking was a key theme of H.W. Brands Western history (p. xv). Time and again Americans would project their dreams onto the West and be disappointed (fur trading, easy trade routes, Gold!, missionary expansion, farming, and more). These dreams were often pursued and interrupted by violence. Violence, Brands notes, is the defining characteristic of the west (p. 51). Consequently, the rule of life in the mountains was eternal vigilance, and the price of distraction was often death (p. 83).
It is impossible to condense 500 pages of historical brilliance into a few pages of summary review. There is so much more: Government following expansion (147), the Free Soil Movement (287), the Dawes Severalty Act (426), and Roosevelt’s preservation in the face of privatization. In fact, as much as trappers drove beaver pelts to practical extinction (a good thing as their fancy as the basis for many garments waned worldwide), Teddy Roosevelt was preserving large tracts of American West for the future through the creation of the National Parks.
Brand writes, "Any work of history must have a beginning and an end." Dreams Of El Dorado begins with the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and ends "in the early twentieth century, when the West had become enough like the East to make the Western experience most comprehensible as a piece of the American whole rather than as a thing apart." (P. xvi) The creation of that whole -- the American West, as the American West -- was arguably the greatest accomplishment in the history of American federal government (p. 224).
Dreams of El Dorado is a great book to acquaint you with this accomplishment.
Some key lessons for me:
1. Rethink the criticism: Some protest the inequities heaped on Native Americans. This is understandable. It is also ignorant if it is based on an assumption that one can freeze progress, especially in an age of frontier exploration and expansion. Brands writes, “If the United States had failed to advance its claim to Oregon, that region would’ve been snapped up by an international competitor: Britain, Spain, or Russia. The nineteenth century was the great age of empire, with European powers and the United States scrambling to seize parts of the world unable to defend themselves against the imperialists’ technology" (p. 39). Added to that, the Indians did not exist in one peaceful monolith. They warred among themselves vying for supremacy.
2. Dreams are powerful stuff: “The West had no monopoly on American dreaming. The entire American experiment in democracy was founded on a dream that ordinary people could govern themselves. And every immigrant to America came chasing a dream. But Western dreams were often larger, because the West was larger, and because for a long time it was largely unknown. In the American mind, the West was not so much a place as a condition; it was the blank spot on the map upon which grand dreams were projected. (p. 480) Not to excuse the travesty of the Native American experience, but those who pontificate on what America should have done are sitting on the cozy couch of progress not traversing hostile and deadly terrain in search of their piece of that progress.
3. Determination and will: The Lewis and Clark expedition is an archetype of every good endeavor, they all take great determination and will. How easy it is to see the West from a detached appreciation of hardship. Some think, "But really, how tough could it be?" as they munch on a bag of chips in their climate-controlled home. H.W. Brands helps us to see the West in its raw splendor and fury. “Out of food, they begin killing the horses to eat them. The men staggered on, counting the horses and estimating the number of days these new rations might last. ‘I’ve been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life,’ Clark wrote on one grueling day in mid-September. ‘Indeed I was at one time fearful my feet would freeze in the thin moccasins which I wore’” (p. 31). Read as well the story John Wesley Powell’s (the one armed man) daring voyage down the Colorado in chapter 44..
4. Religion travels: "In the 1840s American nationalism was scarcely distinguishable from militant Protestantism; the emerging ideology of Manifest Destiny portrayed Colombia, the spirit of America, advancing west of the flag in one hand in the Protestant Bible in the other (p. 164).
5. Slavery: H W Brands traces the impact of slavery in the West. It is complicated: the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas, and the manual labor mindset of California stand out. In California the sentiment was decidedly against slavery. Slavery stigmatized manual labor, and manual labor was the occupation of nearly all Californians. No free Californian wished to incur that stigma. But otherwise, as one Californian said, “in a country where every white man makes a slave of himself, there’s no use in keeping niggers.“ Slavery in California “triggered a titanic political value battle.” (p. 256)
6. Emigration—it’s complicated: Mass movement brought hopes of better days, but also the danger of disease, the drain on an already taxed system, and they need for protection.
7. The idealized West: Custer is a legend, but Ulysses Grant thought Custer no hero. “I regard Custer’s massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, it was wholly unnecessary, wholly unnecessary.” (p. 341) And Crazyhorse was ultimately done in by that which did in most of the Indians i.e. the destruction of Indian villages in food sources. (p. 341)
8. “Donkey stupidity”: The West is a reminder that the wise and idiots always share the same stage. By the 1870s Indian relations were tense. Tobey, a female interpreter, helping to negotiate peace between the Army and Indians had to address the hot-headed American General Canby. Negotiations were tense and Canby was angry. Toeby: "Mr. Canby, do not get mad, you cannot make peace this way." Those are wise words! (p. 356).
As cattle and cattle drives began to shape the West, Joseph McCoy (1867) recognized the power of trains to get cattle to the market. He proposed to make Junction City THE cattle crossroads of America, but was rudely turned down. No worries. He went to Kansas City instead. Brands notes, “So by that one active donkey stupidity and avarice, Junction City drove from her a trade which soon developed too many millions.” (p. 376)
Read Dreams of El Dorado: A History Of The American West. It will give you a new appreciation for our country and the power of a dream.