"It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American WestA centerpiece of the New History of the American West, this book embodies the theme that, as succeeding groups have occupied the American West and shaped the land, they have done so without regard for present inhabitants. Like the cowboy herding the dogies, they have cared little about the cost their activities imposed on others; what has mattered is the immediate benefit they have derived from their transformation of the land. Drawing on a recent flowering of scholarship on the western environment, western gender relations, minority history, and urban and labor history, as well as on more traditional western sources, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own is about the creation of the region rather than the vanishing of the frontier. Richard White tells how the various parts of the West—its distinct environments, its metropolitan areas and vast hinterlands, the various ethnic and racial groups and classes—are held together by a series of historical relationships that are developed over time. Widespread aridity and a common geographical location between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean would have provided but weak regional ties if other stronger relationships had not been created. A common dependence on the deferral government and common roots in a largely extractive and service-based economy were formative influences on western states and territories. A dual labor system based on race and the existence of minority groups with distinctive legal status have helped further define the region. Patterns of political participation and political organization have proved enduring. Together, these relationships among people, and between people and place, have made the West a historical creation and a distinctive region. From Europeans contact and subsequent Anglo-American conquest, through the civil-rights movement, the energy crisis, and the current reconstructing of the national and world economies, the West has remained a distinctive section in a much larger nation. In the American imagination the West still embodies possibilities inherent in the vastness and beauty of the place itself. But, Richard White explains, the possibilities many imagined for themselves have yielded to the possibilities seized by others. Many who thought themselves cowboys have in the end turned out to be dogies.
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Contents
The Seeds of the West | 5 |
Carvings on Inscription Rock near Zuñi Pueblo 0020 202 105 | 9 |
Penitentes of New Mexico | 18 |
Empires and Indians | 27 |
Part Two The Federal Government and the NineteenthCentury West | 55 |
The Conquest of the West | 61 |
Mouth of the Yellowstone River by Karl Bodmer July 1833 | 79 |
The Federal Government and the Indians | 85 |
Wagon train on the Oregon Trail | 203 |
Transforming the Land | 212 |
Longhorn cattle | 221 |
A sod house in Nebraska 1886 | 228 |
The West and the World Economy | 236 |
The price of wheat in Britain and Chicago 18501913 | 245 |
Announcement of the opening of the Union Pacific Railroad | 251 |
Latenineteenthcentury view of Park City Utah | 261 |
Lakota Sioux meeting with a peace delegation 1868 | 105 |
Ration day for the White Rock Utes | 111 |
Exploring the Land | 119 |
George Armstrong Custers Exploring Expedition of 1874 | 131 |
Distributing the Land | 137 |
Township numbering system set up under the Ordinance of 1785 | 138 |
Original land entries 18001934 | 144 |
Homesteaders claim shack on typical prairie land in Nebraska | 151 |
Territorial Government | 155 |
Free state artillery for the defense of Lawrence Kansas 1856 | 162 |
Reward poster for the arrest of officials of the Mormon church | 175 |
Part Three Transformation and Development | 179 |
Commerce a lithograph of the first train on the Union Pacific Railroad | 182 |
Migration | 183 |
Detail of On the Way to the Mines by Charles Nahl early 1850s | 189 |
Broadside advertising railroad land | 197 |
The Economic Structure of the West | 270 |
The San Francisco docks about 1892 | 274 |
Pacific Railroad about 1870 | 283 |
New Communities and the Western Social Order | 298 |
Social Conflict | 328 |
Western Politics | 353 |
Laramie to Cheyenne Wyoming in 1903 | 383 |
Part Four The Bureaucratic Revolution in the West | 389 |
At the Centers of Power | 395 |
On the Peripheries of Power | 431 |
Washington | 436 |
Part Five Transforming the West | 459 |
The Depression | 463 |
Reshaping the West | 496 |
Other editions - View all
It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West Richard White Limited preview - 2015 |
It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West Richard White Limited preview - 2015 |
"It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West Richard White No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
acres agricultural American West Anglo American Apaches became began buffalo California cattle Chinese church City Civil claims Colorado Comanches communities companies Comstock Lode conflict Congress corporations created Democrats dominated early twentieth century East eastern economic European families farmers farms federal government forests Frémont grazing groups herds Hispanic Homestead Act immigrants Indian industry irrigation Kansas labor Lakotas Mexican Mexican Americans Mexico migrants miners mining missions Missouri Mormons mountain Navajos Nebraska Nevada Nez Percés nineteenth century North Northern Pacific Oklahoma Oregon organized party percent plains Plains Apaches political population Populists Press Pueblos racial raids railroads ranchers ranches reformers region Republican reservations River San Francisco Santa Fe settlement settlers Sioux social society South southern Spanish Tejanos territories Texans Texas towns trade trails treaties tribes Union United University University of Oklahoma urban Utah villages violence vote Washington western women workers