PALO ALTO COLLEGE
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

HISTORY 1301 Manifest Destiny & The American Indian

Robert R. Hines
Assistant Professor of History

Reading Assignments:

Internet Required: (A), (B), (D) & (E).

Instructor's Introductory Note: In July/August, 2002, my family and I loaded up the Van and drove from San Antonio Texas to the northern rim of Yellowstone Park in Montana. Time taken to drive there: three days. And it was a grueling affair. T.V. for the kids in the back seat, air-conditioning, and plenty of snacks were available along the way. Exactly two hundred years earlier, in July/August of 1802, when Thomas Jefferson was the nation's president, a trip that far was inconceivable for most people. Nothing moved any faster than the speed of a horse. No human being, bag of corn, letter home to mom, no wagon train, nothing went faster than a horse. No one had EVER moved faster than a horse, and noone had any reason to believe that we ever would. It took me and my family three days to drive over 2,000 miles. Two hundred years ago, you were doing great to cover 60 miles in the same time.

Much has been made in our collective myth-making machinery of the westward movement of people and ideas, from the Atlantic coast across the broad plains, over the Rocky Mountains through to the Pacific coast. The names involved in this story are legion: Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, taking two years to get from St. Louis on the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean and back; The Mormon Trek, led by a religious visionary and a small group of outcasts, who built a thriving way of life in the deserts of Utah; the California Gold Rush and subsequent land rush to Oregon Territory; and finally the bloody war with Mexico, and the biggest land grab in American history: much of what is now the American West was taken from our closest neighbor in the brief war of 1846-48.

Truly, it would seem obvious by now, America's conquest of the West is a complicated story, and one we have used for our own patriotic and commercial purposes. Patricia Limerick, author of the book Legacy of Conquest put it this way: "In the popular imagination, the reality of conquest (has) dissolved into the stereotypes of noble savages and noble pioneers struggling quaintly in the wilderness. These adventures seemed to have no bearing on the complex realities of twentieth-century America. In Western painting, novels, movies, and television shows, those stereotypes were valued precisely because they offered an escape from modern troubles. "Gone West" has become not so much the stuff of history as much as entertainment and escapism."

 

 

(A) The Agony of Removal: The "Trail of Tears"

Read Chapter 29 of the Flyover History Text. Answer these in ONE essay:
Why were the Cherokee people divided against themselves?
How were the Cherokee removed from their homeland?
How did John Ross attempt to save his people? Why did he fail?
What were conditions like on the forced march west?
What concluding remarks do you feel need to be made about this event?

 

(B) Read the online article about George Catlin

View Catlin's paintings.

Smithsonian's Catlin Collection

Questions to answer in ONE essay:


1. Why was Catlin so anxious to visit the native peoples of the American West?
   
2. What do you think Catlin meant by his feeling that his paintings were a "collection of Nature's dignitaries"?
   
3. How did he view the term "savage"?
   
4. Was he exploiting the Indians? Patronizing them? Why or why not?
   
5. Buffalo Tales: What happened to the American Bison? Why? What is the evidence?

Now, compare Catlin's work with that of Frederic Remington.   How was Remington's work different? What view of the west comes through in his work? Which artists' vision of America is more popular today? Which one is more accurate? Why?

 

(C) Answer the following questions in one essay 1-2 pages in length:
What is meant by the term Manifest Destiny? How was expansion into the west justified by Americans? Where did we expand? Why? Who was in the way, and how did we deal with these people? In what sense was expansion into the West a betrayal of our own ideals as a nation? What were the different strains of Expansionist Ideas? What technological advances helped make expansion possible? Finally, what were the connections between American politics, expansion, and War with Mexico?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(D) Analyze the images above. (Click on the images for a more detailed view.)
What is the woman carrying? Why? What other forms of "progress" are evident in the image? Who else is moving? Where are they going? Why? How does the image in this painting contrast with the images of the Native-Americans in the Catlin paintings? For the map on the left, how did Americans view the rest of the world? How did they view themselves? What contributed to these ideas?

 

(E) Complete the Quiz for Theme Eleven

 

 

 

 

Related On-Line Resources:
Heading West: Mapping the Old West
The Buffalo Bill Historical Center
I thought this would be hokey, but it is one of the best museums I have ever seen...
Gold Rush!
Oakland Museum of California
Indian Removal, the "Trail of Tears"
The Oregon Trail
The Way West for folks who wanted a new life
The Donner Party
Some folks who went west didn't make it...

 

 

Back to the Main Menu

Online ACCD Library Catalog Palo Alto Library | Palo Alto College