The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Exploring Western American Identity, Pt 1
The Shaping of a Western Identity
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| photo by Karen Murray |
In
June 2010, The Crab Creek Review sparked
debate on a number of academic blogs about the validity of regional
classifications of contemporary writers when it published an interview with the
novelist David Guterson. Responding to a
question about ‘Northwest writers’, Guterson, who was born and has spent most
of his life in Seattle, and whose novels are mostly set in the city and its
Northwest environs, was vociferous in refuting regionalism as a valid
contemporary concept:
There might have been
a time when geography and culture converged in such a way as to make the
regional identification of artists a worthwhile practice…. Today, with the
exception of the handful of essentially isolated cultures remaining on the
planet, human beings have a limited relationship to place, and this is, of course,
reflected in the arts. To be a
‘Northwest writer’ in the 21st century simply means that, like
billions of people in other places, your sensibility and view of the world are
informed by influences near and far – but mostly far. Even thirty years ago this wasn’t the
case. There was something quite
Northwest indeed about the so-called ‘Northwest School
(Agodon
2010)
Guterson suggests that distinct regional
identities cannot exist in a country such as the United States where
twenty-four hour television, global branding and ease of travel have brought us
into contact with so many of the same influences. But is Guterson’s claim really valid? Are regional identities, which he admits were
until recent decades regarded as defining features of many authors’ work, no
longer pertinent in contemporary society?
Surely regional identities will exist, and will percolate through a
writer’s work to give it a distinct flavour, as long as regions themselves
exist.
Despite the influences which Guterson points
to, the United States United
States
It is my contention that the influences which
Guterson points to as having undermined regional identities have in fact
resulted in only superficial changes in the way we see ourselves. We may watch the same sitcoms and eat the
same franchised fast food as our compatriots in other parts of the United
States – and indeed, in other parts of the world – but I would argue that the
primary factors responsible for shaping the way Americans define who they are
as individuals are the same factors that have always shaped them: our families,
and the landscape and history of the place we call home.
American Identities: modern,
mobile, mutable
In
his essay ‘Region, Power, Place’, the writer and academic William Bevis
describes an image of American society which I believe is at the heart of
Guterson’s argument. This ‘capitalist
modernity’, Bevis writes, ‘seeks to create a kind of no-place’ where all
Americans can belong and is intrinsically at odds with regionalism (Bevis
1996:21). What we think of as modern
identity, characterised by being ‘mobile, multiple, personal, self-reflexive,
and subject to change and innovation’ (Kellner 1992:142) is not, according to
Bevis, an identity at all because it strives to eliminate regional
distinctiveness in favour of neutrality.
Euro-Americans, he suggests, particularly those aspiring to positions of
power, sacrifice real identity in favour of an indistinct and unidentifiable
ethnicity which cannot be linked to any single location. By adapting our behaviour to become ‘a
nobody, from nowhere’ (Bevis 1996:22) in order to reap the economic empowerment
modern society offers, we become defined by vocation rather than place.
Unlike Guterson, though, Bevis
continues to believe in the relevance of regionalism and views western American
literature, with its emphasis on nature and landscape, and its distinctive
regional voice, as being an important means of resisting the generic not-identity of contemporary America
Western Identities:
belonging to place
‘The question of what we are depends greatly on where we are.’
(Ladino 2009:45)
At
the close of the nineteenth century, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner
published his essay ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’
which attempted to chart the development of American identity in relation to
the westward movement of the frontier.
As mentioned in Chapter One, this ‘Frontier Thesis’ posited the idea
that as each new wave of settlement pushed further and further west,
‘civilisation’ repeatedly came up against the ‘savagery’ of the wilderness and,
in the space between these two opposing forces, a distinctive American identity
was forged. To meet the challenges of
the unfamiliar environments they encountered, Turner states that Americans were
forced to adapt their ways of thinking and that successive waves of pioneers
increasingly diverged from their long-settled European cousins. Over the three centuries in which the
frontier was on the move, this evolutionary process also created a marked
division between East and West, with the latter becoming, in Turner’s eyes,
more independent, more democratic, and more ‘American’ as it drew closer to the
Pacific coast. Turner described the
characteristics of American identity produced by the frontier as being:
That coarseness and
strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive
turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material
things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that
restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for
evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom – these
are the traits of the frontier.
(Turner
1893:59)
Western American writers, as we have already
seen in the examples of Wister’s The
Virginian and Cather’s O Pioneers!,
have actively nurtured the myth Turner created of a West ripe with optimism and
opportunity, a land where prosperity awaits the hard-working, the
pure-of-heart, the rugged and the self-reliant.
Turner’s vision remains the foundation of Western identity: the way he imagined
us is the way we wish ourselves to be.
It is an image, however, that many are increasingly forced to question.
In
the introduction to Where the Bluebird
Sings to the Lemonade Springs, Wallace Stegner’s collection of essays on
identity and the West, the author acknowledges the ‘unquenchable hope’
and ‘indigenous optimism’ (1992:xxvii) embodied in Turner’s thesis, and refers
to the West as ‘hope’s native home’ (ibid:xxi).
Yet he admits that he, himself, struggles to remain hopeful in light of
the environmental damage caused by generations of immigrants exploiting the
land’s limited resources and delicate eco-system.
Much of the optimism of the western frontier
stems from the availability of inexpensive or free land, particularly from the
1840s onwards. Land provided people,
often for the first time, with the opportunity to support themselves and their
families, independent of an employer.
Owning and cultivating one’s own property offered the hope of economic
freedom and the ability to decide the course of one’s own fate. In Stegner’s words, western hopefulness
resulted from ‘the common man’s dream of something for nothing’
(ibid:xxvi). But while free land offered
the hope of prosperity, actual
prosperity was elusive. Because of the
arid climate found throughout much of the West, it was often only through harsh
and exploitative practices that the land could, for a short time at least, be
made profitable.
In his memoir, Hole in the Sky, the writer William Kittredge looks back on the
farming and ranching empire his family built in southern Oregon during the
early years of the twentieth century – an empire the size of Delaware which he
describes as being ‘one of the paradigm ranches in the American West’
(1992:152). As with many frontier
farmers, however, the Kittredge family found the natural world to be an
imperfect place, too wet in the shadow of the mountains where the snowmelt
collected in the spring, and too dry in the alkali plains which dominated the
landscape. Determined to improve the
land’s fertility, the wetlands were drained and the desert was irrigated: ‘We
were doing God’s work, and thought we were making a paradise on earth, a perfection
of fields’ (ibid:171). For a few years,
Kittredge writes, the ‘new ground’ his family created produced the finest crops
found in the country (ibid:43).
But while the Kittredge family grew wealthy
by reshaping the land, their actions had devastating, long-term consequences
for the environment. It is this
ever-increasing damage to the landscape which tempers the natural optimism of
many contemporary westerners like Stegner.
The American West is an arid landscape which,
prior to American settlement, supported a sparse population of Native people
who lived within the limits of the resources that were readily available. Once settlement began, however, it was
necessary to find permanent sources of water.
Wells were drilled, dams were built, and rivers were redirected. As the population has grown, demand for water
has outpaced the ability of the ancient underground aquifers to replenish
themselves and access to what is now
known to be a finite supply of water has proven to be the major environmental dilemma facing the West. Stegner makes the point bluntly: ‘in the dry
West, using water means using it up’
(xxiii). High concentrations of people,
with a desire for golf courses, green lawns, swimming pools and numerous other
water-consuming luxuries of modern suburban life pose a very real threat. For ecologically-conscious Westerners like
Stegner, such concerns can make it difficult to remain hopeful about the
region’s future.
Life in the West, though, has always been
precarious, and just as the landscape has engendered a sense of hopefulness in
Western identity, its challenges have also engendered tenacity. A fine balance exists between prosperity and
failure, and Westerners take pride in their ability to endure the harsh
conditions which the West frequently metes out.
As Francis Scott Keister says in That
Old Ace in the Hole:
Goddam, I’m a Texas
native, I was born right here in the panhandle, right in Woolybucket. Us native panhandle Texans don’t whine and
bitch about wind and dust and hard times – we just get through it. We work hard.
We’re good neighbors. We raise
our kids in clean air. We got a healthy
appreciation for the outdoors. We pray
and strive to remain here forever. We
are Christians. We are bound to the
panhandle like in a marriage. It’s like
for sicker or poorer, richer or healthier, better or best. Livin here makes us tough, hard and
strong.
(Proulx
2002:197-8)
The challenging conditions of the Western
landscape are part of what differentiates the West – particularly the rural
West – from the East, and the ability to cope with these challenges is one of
the things which Westerners claim sets them apart from Easterners.
I am not the first to suggest that Western
identity is shaped by landscape. Just as
the land is subject to erosion by wind and water, spurred on at times by unwise
agricultural and logging practices, in the Western myth the land itself exerts
an eroding force on the human psyche. It
sculpts the individual and shapes them into a human version of itself, like
Keister’s assessment of Texans as being ‘tough, hard and strong’. Where this erosion is most effective,
landscape and individual fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and
the individual develops a sense of belonging to a specific place – a place where
he feels complete. Stegner describes how
he discovered his Western identity when he moved to Iowa at the age of
twenty-one: ‘the very first time I moved out of the West I realized what it
meant to me’, he writes: ‘I was a Westerner’ and once parted from the landscape
‘I also began to realize how deeply it had been involved in my making’
(1992:19,17,18).
Regional
identities are just that – regional.
They encompass vast areas of space with diverse population groups,
extremes of landscape and climate, and histories which though part of the greater
American tapestry contain patterns which are unique to and have particular
importance to specific localities. To
talk of a ‘western identity’ is to talk in generalities. Even if we limit the definition of ‘the West’
to its most westerly environs, excluding everything to the east of the Rockies,
the landscape included would take in both the coastal rainforests of Washington
and Oregon state and the high deserts of Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New
Mexico. It would include the metropolis
of Los Angeles and the rural farming communities of north Idaho. It would include the fourteen million
Hispanic Americans who have lived in the Southwest for generations, and
California’s 3.5 million Asian-born immigrants.
While there will undoubtedly be some commonalities between the people of
the West – what divides us cannot be said to be any less significant than what
unites us. Rather than a single Western
identity, numerous local identities exist, formed in part by the unique mix of
influences which come together in a specific location.
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| photo by Karen Murray |
Within Idaho, a state roughly the same size
as Great Britain but with a population density of just 19 people per square
mile,[i]
landscape, politics, history and even time zones act to separate the residents
of one part of the state from another. Eighty per cent of the state’s 1.5
million people live in south Idaho, along the 400-mile long arc of the Snake
River Plain. Southern Idaho is primarily
a desert region of volcanic and alluvial soils and thanks to widespread irrigation,
first introduced by Mormon immigrants in the mid nineteenth century, it has
become a major agricultural belt. Thanks
to the fertility of this region, automobiles registered throughout Idaho bear
license plates sporting the motto ‘Famous Potatoes’. Since 1865, when north Idahoans claim the
territorial capitol was ‘stolen’[ii]
from Lewiston and transferred to Boise, south Idaho has also been the seat of
political power. Politics, economics and religion have all contributed to the
sense of difference between north and south, and these factors have largely
been shaped by the landscape.
Winding alongside the Little Salmon and
Salmon rivers much of the way, Highway 95 is the only road in Idaho connecting
north and south. Prior to the completion
of the White Bird Hill segment of the road in 1921, travellers between the two
regions had either to travel cross country or via the neighbouring states of Oregon
and Washington to the west or Montana to the east. The historical lack of movement between the
two regions has, for the most part, continued to the current day and has
fostered a real sense of physical separation.
The feeling remains so strong that since the 1880s, north Idahoans have
made repeated calls for secession (Wrobel and Steiner 1997:183-4).
The
first big influx of Americans to north Idaho came in the wake of the discovery
of gold on the Nez Perce Indian reservation in 1860. On hearing that gold could
be found ‘in every place in the streams, in the flats and banks and [that] gold
generally diffused from the surface to the bedrock’ (quoted in Allen 1990:5),
thousands of prospectors quit the expended placer mines of California and
headed into the rugged mountain regions of Idaho Territory, above the
Clearwater River. Where prospectors
went, merchants, whiskey traders, gamblers and highwaymen soon followed (USDA
no date:2) and by early 1861, several boom towns had taken root within the
boundaries of the Nez Perce reservation, including the illegal ‘tent city’ at
the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers which would become the city
of Lewiston,[iii]
serving as a supply station and a drop-off point for prospectors travelling
into the territory by steamboat.[iv] Josephy (1965:407-8) states that ‘In January
1862, it was estimated that $3,000,000 in gold had already been shipped from
mines on the Nez Perce reservation, and it seemed to be just the start.’ An earlier treaty had negotiated access
rights for miners, but conflicts grew as Americans poured into the country and
ignored the restrictions it imposed. To
the Americans, it was clear that a new treaty was needed. In June 1863, Nez Perce leaders already living
within the boundaries of the proposed reservation signed a treaty that ceded almost
ninety per cent of the land previously occupied by the tribe (Josephy
1965:429).
From whichever perspective we choose to look,
we can see how the landscape of Idaho, in geographical, geological and economic
terms influenced its history and continues to shape the consciousness of its
people.
Land
and landscape is, of course, also a vital component of Native American
identity. The Cherokee scholar Sean
Kicummah Teuton states that ‘Indigenous people, by definition, grow from the
land, and … everything else – identity, history, culture – stems from that
primary relationship with homelands’ (2008:45).
Not only does the land directly provide the people with the necessities
of life, sustenance and shelter, but it also serves as a repository for tribal
history. Past events are connect to and
remembered through the places where they occurred, and by remembering,
retelling and reimagining these (hi)stories in situ, landscape becomes an
active participant in the sharing of cultural knowledge. Writing about her Laguna Pueblo ancestors,
Leslie Marmon Silko discusses the importance of landscape in the oral
storytelling tradition, and describes how these stories can be seen not merely
as allegorical ‘maps’ but as practical methods for locating oneself in and
finding one’s way through a specific space:
. . .[H]unting
stories [for instance] were not merely after-dinner entertainment. These
accounts contained information of critical importance. . . . Hunting stories
carefully described key landmarks and locations of fresh water. Thus, a
deer-hunt story might also serve as a map. Lost travelers and lost piñon-nut
gatherers have been saved by sighting a rock formation they recognize only
because they once heard a hunting story describing this rock formation.
(Silko
1996:32)
What Silko describes here is a
functional relationship, whereby the land is not only a repository for stories
but also serves as an aide-memoire, assisting in
the preservation of cultural memory.
By encouraging the recall of the stories attached to it, the earth
reinforces the identity of the people.
Often, though, the Native relationship with
landscape is expressed in metaphysical terms.
The poet and novelist Paula Gunn Allen, who also identifies herself most
closely with her Laguna Pueblo heritage, describes the relationship thus:
We are the land. . .
. More than remembered, the Earth is the mind of the people as we are the mind
of the earth. The land is not really the
place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the dramas of our isolate
destinies. It is not a means of
survival, a setting for our affairs, a resource on which we draw in order to
keep our own act functioning. . . . It
is rather a part of our being, dynamic, significant, real. . . .
. . .
[T]his relationship [is not] one of mere ‘affinity’ for the Earth. It is not a matter of being ‘close to
nature.’ The relationship is more one of identity, in the mathematical sense,
than of affinity. The Earth is, in a
very real sense, the same as ourself (or ourselves), and it is this primary
point that is made in the fiction and poetry of the Native American writers of
the Southwest.
(Allen
1979:191)
Allen’s
assessment follows that of Luther Standing Bear who, when recounting the Lakota
creation story, says of the relationship, ‘We are of the soil and the soil is
of us’ (1978:45).
In fiction, we see this same sentiment
expressed in Wolfsong, where Jim
Joseph is at home in the forest of Washington state, and together with his wolf
spirit guide, as he, too, becomes part of the landscape: ‘. . . [H]e became a
shadow, and then he disappeared’ (Owens 1991:4). In Jim Joseph, Owens depicts a traditional
culture and traditional forms of identity which are slipping from grasp in a
contemporary and quickly changing landscape.
The ancient forests are being ravaged with the help of the local
indigenous community, and tribal memory is all but lost in a world where
economic pressures outweigh cultural concerns.
I compare Louise to
the land, connect the idea of her somehow to when I was a kid and we’d have to
go to wakes in Camas Prairie. God, I
hated that country. It was hot and dry, nothing
but weeds or cold stinging wind at thirty below. A couple of trees. An August dust so fine it powdered your knees
when you walked, or sand-snow drifting across houses and roads, brutal and
blinding. That was Camas Prairie. Now I drive that stretch of road in winter
and summer. I come down into that valley
and the fields are pale and the sky is pale and peaceful with a sun that lights
even the ragged weeds, every distant hill, every rock shimmering a different
color. I can see for miles and I can’t
stop looking or thinking about how lucky I am to see this country, to belong
here. I can’t stop looking at this land
and I guess that’s what Louise is like to me.
She’s always changing. I can’t
get a fix on her. But because we have
shared close to the same plot of land, because we are from the same tribe, we
are alike. Something about Louise and
something about all the Indians here is something about me, a blood kinship, a
personal history shared.
(Earling
2002:28)
What Charlie expresses, here, is clearly a
spiritual union with the land around him, a land that is deeply familiar, yet also
mysterious which, like Louise, he cannot quite fathom. And while he compares Louise to the land, he
also identifies himself and the other members of the Flathead tribe with the
piece of ground they occupy. They are
alike because they come from the same land, and because of the cultural history
that land contains. For Charlie, the
land itself is key to who he and his community are.
This connection is not something he is
able to share with his wife, however:
Aida, my wife, is
Yakima Indian. She grew up far from the
Flathead, and sometimes that makes me feel distant from her, as if something is
missing between us. Aida can live here
the rest of her life, speak pretty much the same language, but her home place
is different from mine. I hold no
remembrance of the people and places of my wife’s past. Louise, on the other hand, has always been a
part of everything I have known and loved.
She is part of me.
(ibid)
It
would appear that Charlie does not see his wife as having the same sense of
belonging to the Camas Prairie that he feels and that regardless of how long
she lives on the Flathead reservation (or indeed how long they are married),
her identity will remain, at least in part, other. This admission implies that Charlie believes
there is more to identity than can be acquired through long-held familiarity or
a desire to belong, an idea we will return to later in this chapter.
[i]
According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 population density of
Great Britain was 717 persons per square mile (www.statistics.gov.uk).
[ii]
In 1863 the first governor of Idaho Territory, William H. Wallace, named
Lewiston as territorial capital, partly due to its location at the confluence
of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers, which would allow easy passage of Idaho
gold to the US Mint in San Francisco. In the very first legislative session,
calls were made for the capital to be moved to Boise but these were not passed
into law until the second session in December 1864. Questions arose as to the
legality of the second session, however, due to it taking place prior to the
January 1st 1865 start of term for the voting legislators. Three
months later, the new acting governor, accompanied by a party of soldiers from
Fort Lapwai, broke into Lewiston’s capitol, and stole the First Great Seal and
other territorial documents, taking them to Boise which was eventually given
legal status as territorial capital in June 1866.
[iii]
The erection of permanent structures was not permitted on Indian land without
consent of the Nez Perce, but many of the early buildings set up in Lewiston
circumvented the law by having canvas roofs and thus meeting the definition of
‘temporary’. Many others, however, made no pretence at keeping within the
law.
[iv]
At a distance of 465 miles from the Pacific coast, Lewiston has the distinction
of being the furthest inland seaport city in the western United States (Idaho
Dept of Commerce http://commerce.idaho.gov/communities/community-spotlights/spotlight-on-lewiston/).
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