Elliott West - Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion

Encyclopedic in its coverage, wonderfully written, full of revealing details, shrewd and funny in its analysis, Continental Reckoning will become the standard work on the creation of the American West. Elliott West remains astute and fair in covering a place and period often reduced to ideology and polemic. No one knows the nineteenth-century American West better than he does.

Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 18651896

Vivid and compelling, Continental Reckoning is a sweeping history of how a dynamic region was made and remade in the mid-nineteenth century.... Writing with great insight and wit, Elliott West proves once again why he is one of the preeminent historians of a region that has so often been the focus of national aspirations and anxieties. Continental Reckoning is an authoritative volume and a must-read for anyone interested in western and American history.

Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America

With style, clarity, and exquisite examples, Elliott West has obliterated our national just-so story in which the West just naturally appeared. Using newly confident governments and powerful technologies, Americans mowed down some people and built up others to create a very particular nineteenth-century West. Its quite a story.

Anne F. Hyde, author of Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West

A truly extraordinary piece of work, by any measure and in every respect. Continental Reckoning is also, like all of Elliott Wests productions, beautifully written. Of the major Western historians of his generation, he wieldsby farthe most felicitous pen. And in this book, as ever, hes got a talent for the well-turned phrase. Likewise, West lards the narrative with telling details. This book will be pored over by scholars and savored by specialists and lay readers alike. It will surely be the go-to study of this epoch for years to come.

Andrew R. Graybill, author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West

History of the American West

Series Editor: Richard W. Etulain, University of New Mexico

Elliott West

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2023 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image: Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU , Fargo (folio 102.AgB66.4a).

Author photo Russell Cothren.

Publication of this volume was assisted by

a contribution from the University of Arkansas Alumni Association,

a grant from the Friends of the University of Nebraska Press, and

a gift from the Virginia Faulkner Fund, established in memory of Virginia Faulkner, editor in chief of the University of Nebraska Press.

The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: West, Elliott, 1945, author.

Title: Continental reckoning: the American West in the age of expansion / Elliott West.

Other titles: The American West in the age of expansion

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2023] | Series: History of the American West | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022013275

ISBN 9781496233585 (hardback)

ISBN 9781496234445 (epub)

ISBN 9781496234452 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : West (U.S.)History18601890. | West (U.S.)History18581860. | Land useWest (U.S.)History. | West (U.S.)Economic conditions19th century. | West (U.S.)Environmental conditionsHistory. | United StatesTerritorial expansion. | BISAC : HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West ( AK , CA , CO , HI , ID , MT , NV , UT , WY ) | HISTORY / United States / 19th Century

Classification: LCC F 594 .w27 2023 | DDC 978/.02dc23/eng/20220328

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013275

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Suzanne,

again,

my ultimate companion

Richard Etulain

Historical writing about the American West has undergone dramatic changes in the past half century and more. Specifically, historians have moved away from the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner and turned in new directions: earlier authors such as Henry Nash Smith and Earl Pomeroy helped us understand how the mythic West and western imitations of European and eastern American traditions shaped the history of the region. Other recent western histories highlight the roles of racial and ethnic groups, women and families, and urbanization in the development of the West. And widely recognized from the late 1980s onward is a new western history that has brought forth the darker, more complex sides of the regions past.

These historiographical shifts compel us to ask new questions about the history of the American West and to reexamine the past in light of our experiences in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Fresh sociological, demographic, and environmental topics are being addressed; for many specialists in the field, the regional West has supplanted the frontier West, with place being emphasized more than process.

Its time for a new comprehensive history of the American West, one that reflects new scholarship without overlooking past perspectives. Volumes in the History of the West series do just that. A history of the region in six volumes, the series builds on these recent historiographical treatments of gender, ethnicity, and the environment. The volumes reflect current thoughts about the West as a region, provide a judicious blend of old and new subject matter, and offer narratives that appeal to specialists and general readers.

In this book, Elliott West meetsand exceedsthe large goals of these series volumes. His wide-reaching overview of the American West from the 1840s to the 1880s overflows with storytelling achievements, superb research, and a new framework for viewing this near-half century. This volume illustrates why Elliott West ranks at the top of historians writing about the American West.

West knows how to tell interest-whetting stories. He employs numerous biographical vignettes and illuminative moments to give exceptional narrative power to his story. Pen portraits of individuals and notable events also enlarge the draw of his account.

In addition, West also displays his thorough, diligent research. He moves beyond the usual stories and adds new information, for example, about the California gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroads, and frontier mining and agricultural endeavors. He shows, too, the ongoing, shaping influences of the East on the West. These cross-continental connections are invaluable for understanding this period of western history.

Readers will be drawn to Wests superb use of statistics. West utilizes census and other statistical sources to substantiate and enlarge his overarching interpretations of the Westand often gives these interpretations with inviting bits of humor. This skillful use of numbers allows West to lard his history with dozens of valuable comparisons.